APPENDIX II
Integration, the longed-for reconciliation of general and particular in the aesthetic Gestalt, will probably be impossible as long as reality outside art persists in remaining unreconciled. Any art-work which raises itself above society is immediately brought to earth by reality and its distress. As long as reconciliation is confined to an image, it has an impotent, invalid quality even as an image. Accordingly, tension in great works of art would need to be not only resolved within their scope – and even Schoenberg demanded no more than this – but also preserved within that same scope. But this means nothing less than that precisely in legitimate works the whole and the parts cannot coincide in the way demanded by an aesthetic ideal by no means confined to classicism. A correct hearing of music requires no less a spontaneous awareness of the non-identity of whole and parts than the synthesis which unifies them. Even in Beethoven the resolution of the tension – a resolution in which he was unequalled, since nowhere else was the tension so powerful – required an element of contrivance. Only because the parts are already fitted to the whole in his work, preformed by it, are identity and equilibrium achieved. The price of this is paid on the one hand by the decorative solemnity with which the identity is proclaimed, and on the other by the deliberately planned insignificance of the individual element, an insignificance which from the outset drives that element beyond itself so that it may become something, awaiting the whole which the individual element becomes while being abolished by it. The medium which made this contrivance possible was tonality, the general principle whose typical manifestations in Beethoven coincide with the particular elements, the themes. With the irrevocable demise of tonality this possibility has gone; nor, once its principle has become transparent, it is to be desired, t…]
I spoke earlier of the preformed and relatively subordinate quality of many musical ideas in Beethoven, to which Paul Bekker also drew attention. This statement must now be qualified by conceding that Beethoven was supremely capable of producing the so-called melodic invention whenever this was needed. Much that his fastidious severity passed over because he wanted to keep his distance from rising Romanticism for the sake of objectification nevertheless is preserved as an aspect of his work. For example, the first movement of what became popular as the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata from op. 27 can be seen as a prototype of the nocturne later to be cultivated by Chopin. But there are also passages in Beethoven in which beauty of melody is just as intrinsic as in Schubert. I shall play such a passage from the slow movement of Beethoven’s Third ‘Razumovsky’ Quartet of 1806, written when Schubert was still a small child.
String Quartet op. 59,3, Eulenburg score, p. 15, second-lowest staff, after the double bar line, beginning with cadence 2, up to lowest staff, bar 2, closing with the A minor chord.
In utmost contrast to this type, and peculiar to Beethoven, are those beautiful passages – if we wish to call them that – whose beauty is generated only by relationships. I should like to give you two extreme examples. The theme of the variations in the ‘Appassionata’ begins:
Piano Sonata op. 57, Andante con moto, first eight bars.
However, this theme only becomes really eloquent if it is heard directly after the coda of the first movement, a fully worked-out catastrophe.
The same Sonata, close of first movement, from più Allegro onwards, then the variations theme.
After that explosion and collapse, the theme of the variations sounds as if it were bowing under a gigantic shadow, a crushing weight. The veiled quality of the sound seems to consolidate this sense of a heavy burden.
The Piano Trio in D major, op. 70, no. 1, is commonly known as the ‘Geister’ Trio, because of the Largo assai ed espressivo, one of Beethoven’s conceptions in which he comes closest to the Romantic imago. Now allow yourselves to feel the effect, in direct succession, of the close of this movement and the beginning of the presto finale which follows it:
Piano Trio in D major, op. 70,1, Peters edition, p. 170, last staff, from letter S to the fermata over the fourth bar of the Presto.
In isolation, the start of the Presto might not sound very striking; but after the close of the Largo, which is darkened beyond any classicist measure, the opening has something of the palely comforting dawn of a day which promises to put right all the havoc that has gone before; the expression of early bird-calls, without Beethoven’s having in any way imitated birdsong.
The consoling passages in Beethoven are those in which, beyond the densely woven internal relationships of the musical structure which seem to leave no way out, something nevertheless dawns which is exempt from that structure, and does so with a power that makes it difficult to believe that what such passages say cannot be the truth and is subject to the relativity of art as something made by human beings. They are passages like the sentence from Goethe’s Elective Affinities: ‘Hope descended from the heavens like a star’,312 perhaps the highest which were ever granted to the language of music, and never to its individual works. Beethoven wrote such passages from a very early stage. The Piano Sonata in D minor, op. 31, no. 2, after a few transitional bars, sets out a theme expressing their essence.
Piano Sonata op. 31,2, Adagio, bars 27–38, closing with the piano F major chord.
I would also draw your attention to the fact that, when this theme is repeated, a variant is inserted.
From the same passage play successively bars 31 and 32 and then bars 35 and 36, upper voice only.
Through the addition of the song-like second step downwards from C to Bb the seemingly extra-human theme is humanized, answered by the tears of one whom the earth has reclaimed.313
Beethoven’s music fashions the character of dawning hope most perfectly in the retransition to the recapitulation of the Adagio from the First ‘Razumovsky’ Quartet, one of the greatest works of chamber music in the whole literature. As the simplicity of the passage, for which language offers no other term than that of the sublime, is equal to its perfection, one must experience the preceding development to feel its full effect. The passage will be played to you without any commentary from me.
String Quartet op. 59,1, Adagio, Eulenburg score, p. 36, 3rd staff, last bar (46), up to p. 40, bar 84, closing with the F minor entry.
The antagonist of the character of hope in Beethoven is that of absolute seriousness, when music seems to throw off the last vestige of play. I shall show you two models of this, too. One is the truly implacable close of the short, intermezzo-like Andante from the Piano Concerto in G major.
Fourth Piano Concerto, G major, the last eleven bars of the Andante, beginning with the arpeggio chord at a tempo.
While this passage speaks for itself, although the characteristic motif of the basses articulates the whole piece, the context of the following one needs to be explained. It comes from the first movement of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata and, like that from op. 59, no. 1, it is taken from the retransition to the recapitulation. Perhaps it may be said that, in many cases in Beethoven, all his powers of artistic shaping are concentrated on the preparation for the repetition, since this is the schematic aspect of the sonata form which, from the standpoint of autonomous composition, needs to be justified each time it occurs. As if to compensate for the schematic residue of the structure, he deploys his productive imagination to the utmost. After the development has ended in a kind of cadenza and the belief has been aroused that the music can start again from the beginning without further ado, Beethoven, with a chord of the fourth degree of the subdominant key, placed most threateningly in the bass register, lays open for a second the abyss of the passion which the sonata had unleashed earlier. The retransition, then the moment of seriousness and thus the start of the recapitulation are as follows:
‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, op. 47, Peters edition of the Violin Sonatas, p. 189, seven bars after letter I (begin with E on violin and left hand), up to p. 190, ferma ta before letter M.
Extract from the radio talk ‘Schöne Stellen’ (GS 18, pp. 698ff) – written in 1965