Example 6
Amain concern of an interpretation of Beethoven is to understand his forms as the product of a combining of pre-ordained schemata with the specific formal idea of each particular work. This is a true synthesis. The schema is not just an abstract framework ‘within’ which the specific formal concept is realized; the latter arises from the collision between the act of composing and the pre-existing schema. It both stems from the schema and alters, abolishes or ‘cancels’ it. In this precise sense, Beethoven is dialectical, as can be seen most clearly in the first movement of the ‘Appassionata’. Through the articulation of the development in terms of the two thematic groups of the exposition, the expansion of the coda, also polarized between these two groups, and the addition of a second coda which integrates both thematic forms while, as it were, abolishing itself, an entirely new form emerges from the bi-thematic sonata while strictly preserving the schema. This new form is itself developed from the dualistic schema, while dramatically remodelling it. Dramatically and not – despite the work’s ‘strophic’ character – epically, because of the identity of the two themes. It is, however, precisely this identity – the moment of strictest unity – which is new in relation to the schema, whereas its remodelling into dramatic stages, which might be called ‘acts’ – that is, what seems most boldly innovative – itself emerges from the schema.
[142]
The uniqueness of Mozart, from the point of view of the philosophy of history, is that the ceremonial, courtly, ‘absolutist’ character of the music finds itself at one with bourgeois subjectivity. This prob- ably accounts for the success of Mozart’s music.141 A close relationship to Goethe (Wilhelm Meister ). By contrast, in Beethoven the traditional forms are reconstructed out of freedom.142
[143]
Study the pieces in which he first dared to do this;143 their crucial role: the C minor sonata op. 30 no. 2, the D minor sonata 31, 2, the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata and the Eroica (the last two simultaneously). On these latter works: the problem of the absolute dimension. Later it falls by the wayside. – NB: The conclusion of the Variations in op. 47 [‘Kreutzer’ Sonata].
[144]
There is a passage in Wagner where he says that Beethoven left the existing forms intact and introduced no ‘new’ ones. Where?144
[145]
The view I adhered to more or less up to the Philosophy of Modern Music, that a subject-object dialectic exists between the composer and the traditional form,145 is still too one-sided and undiscriminat- ing. In reality, the great traditional musical forms already shape this dialectic in itself, leaving to the subject a certain hollow space (for the philosophy of history, this is of utmost relevance to the very late Beethoven, who turned precisely this hollowness outwards). The schema of the sonata contains parts – the thematic and developmental parts – which are already aimed at the subject and which can accommodate the particular, and others in which, by virtue of the schema itself, conventional generalities emerge, like death in tragedy or marriage in comedy. These are fields of tension (for example, the transition in the first movement of Eine kleine Nachtmusik ) and, especially, fields of dissolution, as in the Mozartian exposition which concludes with a trill on the dominant. However, the dialectic between subject and object in music stems from the relation between these schematic formal moments. The composer has to fill the space set aside for invention in, precisely, an unschematic way in order to do justice to the schema. At the same time, he must so conceive the themes that they do not contradict the objectively prescribed forms146 – whence the classicist requirement that the invented characters should not be spaced too far apart. And, conversely – and this is the specifically Beethovenian achievement in the inner history of form, which goes beyond Mozart – he must treat the ‘confirmed’, or prescribed, fields in such a way that they lose the external, conventional, reified, subjectively alien moment – what Wagner called the clatter of crockery on the princely table that is to be heard in Mozart147 – without forfeiting their objectivity, so that the latter is actually regenerated from the subject (Beethoven’s Copernican revolution148). This state of affairs might finally explain why the subjectivist Beethoven left the sonata pattern as such intact. But the reconciliation of these demands, in showing up a contradiction objectively contained within the form, finally abolishes the prescribed order. The subject-object relationship in music, therefore, is a dialectic in the strictest sense; it is not a tugging at each end of a rope by subject and object, but an objective dialectic disconnected from the logic of form as such. It is the actual movement of the concept within the subject matter, which needs the subject only as an agent who complies with necessity out of freedom (but only the free subject can perform this function). And that is, at the same time, the supreme confirmation of my conception of the musical process as directed towards the objective.
[146]
In Beethoven’s procedures the most profound features of Hegelian philosophy will be discerned, such as the twofold position of ‘mind’ in the Phenomenology as both subject and object. As the latter it is merely ‘observed’ in its movement; as the former, through observing, it brings the movement about.149 Something very similar can be seen in Beethoven’s most authentic developments, as in the ‘Appassionata’ and in the Ninth Symphony, and probably in the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata as well. The theme of the development is mind, that is, the recognition of self in the other. The ‘other’, the theme, the inspired idea, is, to begin with, left to itself in these developments, and observed; it moves in itself. Only later, with the forte entry, comes the intervention of the subject, as if anticipating an identity as yet unattained. It is only this intervention which creates the actual model of the development through a resolution, that is, only the subjective moment of spirit brings about its objective movement, the actual content of the development. The subject-object dialectic is therefore to be traced in the development. What is meant by the subject here can be defined more closely in the note on the fantasia-like character of the development [cf. fr. 148].
[147]
English terminology for musical forms has a second term for ‘development’ which clearly comes from an earlier usage: the ‘fantasia section’. This needs to be investigated in detail. There is clearly a connection between the ‘binding’, integrating part of the form and its most optional, improvisational, fantasizing, ‘off limits’ element. Even the irreplaceable development might be seen in this context as replaceable – as, indeed, in Mozart, it actually is. The development would thus have two poles: cadenza and fugue. Indeed, in the sonata form the development is the only part which is ‘free’, not determined by rules governing themes, modulations, harmonic progressions, andso on. And the shaping of the development around a model, which gives this section its true seriousness in Beethoven, also has something about it of a playful ‘fantasizing on the model’, of freedom. Perhaps this is indeed the mechanism by which, in Beethoven, the objectivity of form becomes palpably embodied in the subject. It is perhaps Beethoven’s developments which most closely resemble his free fantasias for pianoforte. Developments in Beethoven which come closest to improvisations need to be studied next – for example, the short E major sonata op. 14; then, look for traces of them in the major developments, as in the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. – There is much reason to believe that the analogy between the sonata and the drama, whereby the ‘conflict’ corresponds to the development, is no more frequently applicable than ‘thematic dualism’ is to be found in large-scale sonatas. The classical norm is the exception while the high point in this respect, paradoxically, is the Eroica. And it contains, precisely, the widest deviation.
[148]
The bipartite nature of the development – first a fantasizing part, then the resolute establishment of a model – is to be found as early as the C major sonata, op. 2, no. 3.
[149]
The bipartite structure of the development – a non-binding fantasia section and a strictly motif-based part brought about by a resolution and usually after sequences on a model – is found in embryonic form in Mozart. Here, however, the latter part usually has the function of a retransition (in being derived from the head motif of the main theme). Follow this up historically.
[150]
The curious relationship between development and coda. The lat- ter’s relative importance increases with that of the former. It is also related to the development’s musical content. This is seen in exemplary form in the Eroica and in the Ninth, but even in the short Violin Sonata in A minor [op. 23] the coda is a recapitulation of a vivid and autonomous development section. In the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, which, in terms of ‘extensive intensity’, comes closest to the Eroica, it is the coda, not the development, which introduces a new theme [cf. first movement, bars 547ff|.
Example 6
This theme has, however – quite unlike the statement of the model in the Eroica – the formal character of a close, an Abgesang. – In theoretical terms, the relationship between development and coda may well correspond to the non-identical identity of process and result which is found in the dialectic.
[151]
Hölderlin wrote of the ‘calculable law’ of tragedy.150 The predetermined object of this theory might well have been the Beethovenian development of the symphonic type. The curve of the development in the decisive works is probably identical. It begins with what in the eighteenth century was called the fausse reprise, a recapitulation of the beginning in which the head theme or motif is functionalized by primarily harmonic means. This is followed, after an initial rise, by a descending segment of the curve, customarily associated with a certain dissolution. Then comes the equivalent of Hölderlin’s concept of the caesura.151 This is the moment when subjectivity intervenes in the formal structure. Stated in terms of expressive categories, it is the moment of decision. (The ‘Difficult Decision’ of the last quartet [op. 135; title of fourth movement] has a technical pre-history running through Beethoven’s entire oeuvre. ) By this decision the actual model of the development is established, often marked forte and always with the character of something definitively crucial or serious, or however it may be described. In the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata this moment comes with the statement of the triplet model [first movement, bars 11 Off]. In the ‘Appassionata’ it occurs at the E minor entry of the main theme under the semiquaver motion (‘entry’) [first movement, bar 78]; in the Ninth Symphony it is marked by the C minor entry of the concluding motif from the main theme [first movement, bar 217]. The same phenomenon probably also provides the solution to the problem of the new development in the Eroica. Its entry comes at precisely the moment of decision. In view of the large scale of the movement and perhaps, also, in order to give pure expression to the principle of the development’s caesura, of the ‘intervention’, Beethoven has resorted here to the extreme device of defining the moment of the new by introducing something unexpectedly new. The development in the Eroica is not to be defined in terms of analogies with other developments, of latent thematic relationships, but, in an exact reversal of this, the principle of other Beethovenian developments will be inferred from this extreme. When this is done, the central question of the legitimacy or otherwise of ‘mediation’ in symphonic logic will arise. Only this approach gives some promise of success in interpreting form in Beethoven. The development of the Ninth Symphony is especially curious, being heavy with allegorical depth. For the working-out and intensification of the closing motif does not lead directly, as in similarly constructed works, to the climax and the beginning of the recapitulation, but ebbs away into a second resolution, which even involves a reintroduction of material from the second subject. Then, suddenly, with a kind of jerk, the main development is resumed and, precipitously, almost as if no further procrastination were tolerable, the climax is reached in a few pages of score. It is almost like Hamlet, who, after infinitely protracted, preparatory ‘developments’, finally, at the last moment, helplessly compelled by the situation, achieves in an unplanned, gestural way what could not be accomplished as a ‘development’. The formal schema of the Gordian knot.
[152]
Furthermore, in the Ninth Symphony a problem already emerges that was to overshadow all else in Wagner and Bruckner: the relation of the important, allegorical, immutable main theme to the functional unity of the movement. Beethoven’s solution is one of tact in the Goethean sense. The opening of the development in the Ninth is highly paradoxical: a variation of the invariable. Everything is held in suspension. This will need to be explored in terms of the most precise technical categories. It ought then to be possible to explain the final coda above the chromatic basses with reference to this problem..
[153]
Caesura and turning point in Beethoven: drastically, with the trumpet in the third Leonore Overture (bars 272ff), and far more grandly with the turn in the Adagio of op. 59, 1 [cf. Text 8, p. 182].
[154]
The turning point in the development of the first movement of the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, after the passage in B when the main theme is exploded with the low Ff [bar 212]. This is one of the most magnificent passages in Beethoven. It has something gigantic about it – something by which the sense of proportion in relation to the individual body is entirely suspended.152
[155]
NB: The caesura in Beethoven’s last works develops very gradually; for example, the close on the dominant and the general pause before the second theme in the slow movement of the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata [bar 27].
[156]
The two-part structure of the major developments, for example, ‘Appassionata’, ‘Waldstein’, ‘Kreutzer’, Eroica, op. 59, 1, Ninth Symphony: the first part more vacillating, fantasizing; the second firm, built on a model, objectified, but with the character of a decisive act of will, a turning point: it must be so. This comes extraordinarily close to Hegel’s concept of the subjective moment in truth as the condition of its objectivity. In Beethoven, something like a dialectic of theory and practice manifests itself here – the second part of the development is ‘practical’ both as an application of theory and as its logical precondition. The whole, Being, can only exist as an act of the subject, that is, as freedom. This principle is raised to a self-conscious level in the new theme of the Eroica, which fulfils the form just as it bursts it asunder (being, in this, both a completion and a critique of the bourgeois totality). In Beethoven’s compulsion to introduce the new theme here lies the secret of the decomposition of his late style. That is, the deed demanded by the immanence of the totality is no longer immanent in it. This may well be the theoretical basis of the new theme.153
[157]
When, in Beethoven, polyphony remains, to an extent, external to the composition, not permeated by the harmonic principle,154 his composition problem is largely that of compensation, of tact. A splendid example of what I mean is the counterpoint to the recapitulation of the main theme in the Andante of the First Symphony. It begins as a true melodic voice, but gradually – and very ingeniously – is turned, from bar 5, into an accompanying, harmonic voice (while it retains a melodic core in quavers, this is resolved into chords by the semiquavers); then it comes to an end. In this way the counterpoint is mediated against the grain of a composition which is really alien to it. This would be as unthinkable in Bach as in Schoenberg, but reveals here both an unerring sense of form and the antinomy.
[158]
The privileged position of the first movement of the Eroica. It is really the Beethovenian piece, the purest embodiment of principle; the most careful composition, the absolute peak to which all the earlier works lead up. Perhaps one of Beethoven’s most fundamental impulses was not to repeat this piece. Dialectical reflections on ‘perfection’ in art could be attached here.
[159]
Among the most astonishing features of Beethoven’s work is that nothing is ever type-cast, fixed, repeated, each work being a unique conception from a very early stage. Even the prototypical Eroica, the model par excellence, is never repeated. This is the aspect which Bekker, quite inadequately, calls the ‘poetic idea’.155 But what is it in reality? Each work a cosmos, each one the whole – and for that very reason different? Can be studied in, for example, the Violin Concerto and its relationship to the C major Piano Concerto. The only exceptions to this are the last quartets, but in them the boundary between one work and another is sublated; they are not works but, as it were, fragments of a concealed music.
[160]
On the sketches for the cycle An die Ferne Geliebte: the essence of the musical inspiration lies in the realization that it is no such thing. The inspirational idea is a concretization of critique. This is the subjective side of the dialectic objectively carried through within Beethoven’s musical logic.
[161]
On the connection between idiom – a wide-ranging concept extending from the pre-existing language of music to its forms – and the specific composition: the last movement of the Eroica, up to the introduction of the main theme, can only be understood if the bass of the – initially withheld – theme is heard in advance, with a knowledge transcending the movement, as the bass of the still anticipated theme – prospectively. Otherwise the bass on its own, especially after the double bar line, would be completely meaningless. Meaning in music requires the prospective view, which cannot be generated by the piece itself but only by the accumulated musical idiom.
[162]
It is necessary to clarify the concept of musical development within the text. It is not identical to that of the variation, but narrower. A central moment is the irreversibility of time. Development is a variation in which a later element presupposes an earlier one as something earlier, and not vice versa. Altogether, musical logic is not simply identity in non-identity, but a meaningful sequence of moments; that is, what comes earlier, and what later, must itself constitute the meaning or result from it. Of course, the possibilities of this are legion, for example: intensity arising from something weaker, complexity from simplicity; but this direction (from simple to complex) by no means defines the concept. It can also result in the simple element: the theme; it can simplify the complex, dissolve the closed, and so on. Such types could be enumerated; but the concrete composition decides over the logic of what comes before and after. Or are there general laws, after all? One of the most central questions of musical aesthetics.156
[163]
The following correlations are valid:
Closed theme – open form (rondo)
Open theme – closed form (sonata)157
[164]
The Fantasia for piano op. 77 is especially interesting because it may be assumed to be a retrospective notation of actual fantasizing on the piano (perhaps at the request of Brunswik158). However, two fundamental points emerge. Firstly, a form is essentially inherent in the fantasia as a rejection of continuous development in principle; it is the same form that is found in Mozart, a composition made up of sections which are internally unified but merely juxtaposed, arbitrarily successive. Secondly, this fantasia form is essentially static. Just because of the endless succession of the new, no progress is made. There is no identical core to be developed. But without such identity there is no non-identity, and therefore, really, no musical time. This is reflected exactly in the linguistic usage whereby fantasias and preludes are the same (both remaining this side, as it were, of music’s time continuum). Accordingly, consistently a-thematic music would be, in principle, timeless, and the static quality of twelve-tone music would merely make manifest what is inherent in absolute musical nominalism: that incessant novelty abolishes progression, experience, the new. – The threshold dividing Beethoven from this static condition, however, is clearly the written form of the music – that is, precisely its reification. There is, therefore, only as much dynamism as there is fixity – only as much ‘subjectivity’ as objectification. [165]159
The Finale of the very important short A minor sonata op. 23 is like a preparatory study for the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata. – The movement is extremely loose, a rondo with a main theme recurring in unvaried form with striking frequency, to which secondary ideas are opposed in an unconnected way, almost as if filling in spaces. The organizing principle is located at great depth, so that the first and second subsidiary ideas (in A major [bars 74ff] and F major [bars 114ff and 121ff], respectively) form a relationship of theme and variation, without this being obvious (harmonies over one bar in both cases):
Example 7
Example 8
The movement is held together, as it were, behind the scenes. But just this loose accumulation allows Beethoven, at the end, to disclose the identity of the two subsidiary sections (that is, to establish it as a result); he does so, after a general pause, by suggesting the first, over only eight bars, and then making the second follow directly [bars 268ff]. An example of Beethoven’s superb sense of form: the looser a formation, the greater must be its internal economy.
[166]
Theory of the Beethovenian Variation Form: to achieve a maximum of different characters with a minimum of compositional means. The theme’s treatment is by paraphrase, rather than direct intervention: the bass outline is maintained throughout (all this does not, of course, apply to the Diabelli Variations). But the impression is never given of a mere change of clothes. The reason for this, apart from the very clear profile of each individual variation, is, above all, that while the harmonic sequence is constant, it does not play ‘around’ the melody; rather, each of the corner notes which coincide with the harmony is retained melodically, while the harmonic line as such is not preserved. Usually, in face of a lyrically melodic theme, the variations are stressed rhythmically, in a symphonically dynamic way. The theme often contains one very characteristic element (for example, the momentary modulation into B major [bars 23ff] in the concluding movement of op. 96), which excursion is then maintained, organizing the form through its very conspicuousness. Otherwise, the treatment of form is curiously relaxed, relying, no doubt, on the cohesive strength of the theme, which allows loosely related elements to be juxtaposed. An adagio variation often precedes the allegro conclusion. In op. 96 thematic ingenuity is confined to one element: the G major fugato in the concluding Allegro [bars 217ff] is formed from the notes of the theme, made unrecognizable by the rhythm (the serial principle). – The variation form is particularly suited to the late-middle ‘epic’ style. The incomparable variation movement in the great B
major trio [op. 97]. But the principle holds good as far as op. 111.
[167]
The form of the Abgesang in large-scale variation movements, as in the Bb major Trio [op. 97] and in op. Ill; also as early as the coda in the C minor Variations [WoO 80]. Its deep meaning? The subla- tion of the endless sameness of variations.
[168]
In the coda of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony there is a similar Abgesang theme to that in the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata: fulfilment and, at the same time, an awareness that there is no stopping now. This gesture may be called tragic. Pocket score,160 pp. 37f, with the crotchets of the violins.
[169]
Regarding some characters in Beethoven; in particular, the closing sections: in the Finale of the first Piano Trio from op. 1. The character of nonchalant exuberance, of jauntiness. There used to be a command ‘At ease’ after marching on the spot. Likewise, there is a musical ‘At ease’, a letting go of the static element which is probably inherent in all symmetry. It is the immanent overcoming of the tectonic principle of music: perhaps this is the idea of the Abgesang. It animates that theme of Beethoven.
The concluding section of the first movement of the Pastoral. On the theory of Beethoven’s humour. The earthy ‘Here we are’, with something of the innkeeper’s errand boy about it. Humour, that is, a suspension of negativity, is very deep-seated here. The comic nar- row-mindedness of that which posits itself; the spuriousness of the ‘healthy’, the assertion that ‘I’m just fine’; what is true and yet, in relation to the whole, untrue and, by that yardstick, comic. Much like the announcement: ‘This tastes good.’ What is decisive is not just that Beethoven, as a ‘Netherlander’, has this element, but that he has it as something sublated and positively negated.
NB: The comic element in all eating, partly because it is never happiness itself but an Id mediated by the Ego.
[170]
Certain expressive configurations in Beethoven have attached to them certain musical symbols – or rather allegories (it is these which become petrified in the late style). But where do these symbols find the almost incomprehensible power to convey such expression in practice? This is one of the most central questions. For the present, the only answer I can imagine is that the origin of meaning in Beethoven lies in purely musical functions, which are then sedi- mented in the scattered technical means available at the time, to which they accrue as expression. All the same – cannot these functions themselves be traced back to expression?
[171]
One of Beethoven’s most splendid formal means is the shadow. The Andante of the ‘Appassionata’ begins as if it were bending under the weight of the first movement, and remains beneath it: perhaps it was this sense of form which excluded the Andante favori from the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata: the introduction to the Rondo, which replaces it, holds its breath. – But the first variation of the Arietta from op. Ill is also in shadow. The animated voice hardly dares stir after the compelling appearance of the theme. The moment of ‘oppression’ has its place here. This expression mark appears in the Arioso [properly: Adagio] of the B major String Quartet [op. 130, Cavatina, bar 42], but also applies to the Arioso from op. 110 and the E passage in the Arietta Variations [bars 119ff]. The moments of oppression in Beethoven are those in which subjectivity ‘appropriates’ a Being alien to it. ‘Before you bodies take upon this star’,161 oppression prevails. – Quartet in Fidelio*
[172]
The Allegretto in the Seventh Symphony needs very detailed interpretation. It has often been said that it, too, retains the character of a dance. But this does not do justice to the idea of the movement, which consists rather in the dialectic between rigid objectivity and subjective dynamism. The theme is initially rigid, sustained in the manner of a passacaglia, while being at the same time extremely subjective and éven secretive. (NB: The category which mediates between subject and object within the theme itself is that of fate. The subjective secret is objective doom.) It counts among the Romantic characters in Beethoven, reminding us of Schubert, especially the counterpoint (cf. the slow movements from op. 59,3 and from the F minor quartet [op. 95], which also recalls the Allegretto in the relationship between sombre lyricism and polyphony). The objective rigidity does not stem from the theme itself, but from the unvarying variations. The opening of the Trio which follows, the human sound, the thaw, repeats ontogenetically, as it were, what happened to music as a whole with the advent of Haydn and Mozart. The Fugato, as a reversion to the objective intention(?) then leads to the negative triumph of the objective character. At the close this subjectivity persists, but is wholly shattered. All this still very obscure.
[173]
The meaning of classicist gestures in Beethoven, for example, ‘Jupiter rolling his thunder and lightning’ at the start of the Violin Sonata in C minor [op. 30,2]. The characters are taken from classicism. A phenomenology – typology – of Beethoven’s basic materials needs to be drawn up, on the principle: which gesture is this imitating? Other such characters: furrowing the brow, growling, and so on. But all this is then sublated within the composition.
[174]
Just as there is such a thing as musical stupidity, in the case of Beethoven – in the Eroica, for example – I am forced to adopt the idea of musical intelligence, both in the procedure itself and in an expression it conveys of ‘cleverness’, adroitness, smartness. For example, the interpolations in the first section of the development in the first movement of the Eroica, the model of which first appears on p. 23.162 This needs to be investigated. NB: Something operatic here; as also, frequently, in Fidelio. The intention of leading onwards. ‘Intelligence’, as a subjective moment, steps in to cancel out the objective gravity, the static quality of the matter itself. ‘Wit.’ Affinity to the principle of the amusing, the conversational, perhaps even of the gallant.
[175]
The substantive content of music is translated into syntactic categories. For example, the dramatic moment in the Eroica – the semiquaver theme making its entry above the chord of the diminished seventh [first movement, bars 65ff] – is an interruption of the second subject group, which is then taken up again; this is a conjoining construction resembling a subordinate, concessive clause. Such means are decisive in constructing the musical context.
[176]
Integration in Beethoven is often achieved when the form is ‘kept going’, as when that which is subsiding, fading away, is made to continue through an intervention, but in such a way that this intervention has the character of objective necessity; for example, the first movement of the Eroica, p. 16, where the chromatic bass drives the passage onward at the switch to A V.
[177]
A distinction must be made between manifest and latent – or ‘subcutaneous’ (Schoenberg) – thematic relationships. Being subjective, the difference is naturally relative; that is, what is perceived as themat- ically related depends on concentration, training, and so on. But objectively, functions which are manifestly thematic and those with an organizing function should be identified – for example, the first and second themes of the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. There are borderline cases, such as the theme of the closing section of the first movement of op. 59,2, in its relationship to the main theme. This methodological principle is very important, since it enables us to escape the undifferentiated vagueness of maintaining that ‘everything is thematic’. –
There are in Beethoven moments of formal retardation, that is, those which dam the flow of the whole form (as is often the case with harmonic details), in order to give greater force to the entry of the fields of dissolution. For example, op. 59,2, first movement, bars 55–6. The specific character of continuation in Beethoven is often attached precisely to such figures. (Also in the Finale of ‘Les Adieux’.) Consequent phrases or codas, often with an ineffably peaceful expression, for example, op. 59,2, Adagio, bars 48–51.
[178]
In the symphonic scherzi the compositional achievement lies primarily in the metre, especially at the ‘subcutaneous’ level, such as the concealed 3/2 in the Fourth Symphony, or in the asymmetries of the thematic juxtaposition (Eroica ).
[179]
Regarding the prospective and the retrospective intentionality of form, a passage from the development of the Second Symphony, Eulenburg pocket score, p. 22, is very instructive. It concerns the entry of the theme of the second thematic group after a general pause. Initially, this entry seems formally (wrong\ anticlimactic, rhapsodic. It seems wrong, above all, because the listener’s sense of form is affronted when, in the development, which is supposed to sublate what has already been stated, the main characters appear in the same sequence as in the exposition. The antecedent phrase seems faithful to the pattern; but instead of the expected consequent phrase, there is a ‘residue’ which is treated as a new developmental model and leads to a very free, seemingly ‘new’ variant of the second (march) theme (p. 23, bottom). Through the omission of the consequent phrase, however, the antecedent phrase is ‘negated’, so that the error of the entry (whether real or feigned) is corrected. Such relationships are an essential part of musical form. But they are sedi- mented content; in this case mockery, parody. Cf. the term fausse reprise. Something of the dialectical, non-linear character of musical form can be demonstrated by this passage; it also provides a concrete example of my thesis concerning formal idiom as a reification of intentional content.
[180]
Analysis of first movement of op. 59,2. The whole movement is the history of the relation between the first and third bars, that is, of their identity. This identity is only realized in the coda, meaning that the beginning is only comprehensible from the vantage point of the coda. Teleology in Beethoven: a force retroacting in time.
[181]
In the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata everything simultaneous is immensely simple, lapidary – the density lies in the unfolding in time. The piece moves so fast that successive elements appear simultaneous.
[182]
The phrase ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne’ [O friends, no more these sounds]163 sums up the formal law governing all Beethoven’s work. It is placed in the Ninth like the players in Hamlet. Applies especially to the Fifth Symphony. Cf. 79 [and fr. 339].164
[183]
The flagging of energy to be found in Schubert and Schumann is the price exacted for the attempted transcendence of form. More form is less. This flagging – in Schubert the unfinished works, in Schumann the mechanical element – is the first manifestation of the decay of music as an objective language. The language falls breathlessly behind the moment invoked, or is its empty shell.
[184]
On the dialectical relationship of form to content in music: if Beethoven’s supremacy over Wagner is seen in his richness of structure, his concrete abundance of relationships as compared to the abstract filling of time with identical entities in motion, this reflects not merely his ‘technical’ superiority to the more primitive Wagner, but also the precedence of content, as plenitude and concreteness, over the emptiness of Wagnerian expression in terms of its content.
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Brahms, with incomparable formal tact, faced the consequences of increasing subjectivity as it affected the large-scale form. The critical point in this regard is the finale. (NB: It probably always was: the ‘happy ending’, the finale always gives an impression of embarrassment. Beethoven’s great finale movements always have a paradoxical character – perhaps, in the antagonistic world, music was never able to close, as has now become obvious. Compare the failure of the concluding movements of Mahler’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies.) Here, Brahms showed a splendid resignation: in principle, his best final movements go back to the Lied, as if music were returning to the land of childhood. For example, the Finale of the C minor Trio, above all the close in the major, like the last stanza of a Lied. Another example is the wholly lyrical Finale of the Violin Sonata in A major. The Finale of the G major Sonata, on the ‘Regenlied’, acts like a key. – This possibility, too, is already sketched in Beethoven – for example, the Rondo of the Piano Sonata in E minor [op. 90] and, to an extent, the concluding variations from op. 109 and even (take care!) op. 111. Also, the Finale of op. 127(?).*
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* [In margin:] The variations movement of the 'Appassionata' is not quite detached from the rest. Through its link to the Finale and its shortness it has something of the quality of an introduction.
* [At head of text:] Concerning the Beethoven study.