THEMATIC SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Editor’s Preface

Acknowledgements

1 Prelude’

‘Image from childhood’ 3 – Musical analysis 4 – Basic motif: ideology and truth; subject and aura; image and ban on images 6 – Faits divers 8 – versus

2 Music and Concept

The philosophy of music; Beethoven and Hegel; mimesis of judgement and attempt to break out 10 – More true than Hegel; ‘standing firm’; on the sonata form; problem of the recapitulation 12 – Tonality as a ‘system’; homoeostasis; negation as driving force; divestment and return; the absolute and tonality

The dialectic of part and whole: insignificance of the detail and priority of the whole; nature and work; ‘withstanding’ and ideology 22 – From the insignificant to the ‘banal’ detail; the whole as concrete mediation; dividing line with Romanticism

Historical constellations: Bach, Mozart, Haydn; relationship to Romanticism; from the prehistory of modernism 25 – Music’s remoteness from and nearness to language

3 Society

The human as nature; social and individual character 29 – Bourgeois society and French Revolution; social work and development in music; epic stupidity and intrigue in tragedy; Don Quixote’s secret 32 – ‘Public meeting’; autonomy and heteronomy 41 – Text 1: The Mediation between Music and Society

4 Tonality

Beethoven’s ‘principle’; language of bourgeoisie; musical logic 49 – Melody and theme; negation of mere nature; technical equivalents of the ‘demonic’ 50 – Divergence and resistance; theory of Beethoven’s sforzati; melos and harmony 52 – The problem of key 55 – The ‘language’ of tonality; modern music and critique of tonality; ‘material’ versus language

5 Form and the Reconstruction of Form

Beethoven’s Copernican Revolution; traditional form and spontaneity; the subject-object dialectic 60 – Formal sense and development; development and fantasia, development and coda; caesura and turning-point

‘Tact’; against repetition; prospect 66 – Musical time; closed and open form; theory of the variation, idea of the Abgesang 67 – Characters in Beethoven: impudence, humour; configurations of expression and gesture

Musical integration; form as sedimented content; objective and formal transcendence

6 Critique

Primacy of the recapitulation; dialectic of mastery of material; early form of mass culture 75 – Rebellion and conformism; the bombastic; manipulated transcendence 77 – Drastic reduction of overtures; critique of heroic classicism: the lie of totality; Beethoven’s ‘sombre aspects’: denial of likeness to animals

7 The Early and ‘Classical’ Phases

The sonata as ‘struggle’; classicism and Romantic elements; C.G. Carus 81 – The ‘Appassionata’ 83 – The ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata 84 – Violin Sonatas op. 12 86 Mysteries of time: symphonic and epic types; intensive and extensive types; type and character 88 – The Piano Trio op. 97

Parerga, especially on middle Beethoven

8 Vers une analyse des symphonies

Eroica 101 – Fourth Symphony 106 – Fifth Symphony 107 – Pastoral 109 – Eighth Symphony 112 – Ninth Symphony 113 – Symphony and dance 116 — Text 2a: Beethoven’s Symphonies 117 – Text 2b: Radio and the Destruction of Symphonic Form

9 The Late Style (I )

Text 3: Beethoven’s Late Style 123 – Piano Sonata op. 101 126 – ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata 128 – Text 4: Ludwig van Beethoven: Six Bagatelles for Piano, op. 126 130 – String Quartet op. 132 132 – Irregularities 134 – Stepping back from appearance; Beethoven’s saturnine gaze

10 Late Work without Late Style

The problem of the Missa Solemnis 138 – Text 5: The Alienated Magnum Opus

11 The Late Style (II )

Language of the collective; suspension of the ego; defiance and ‘tact’ 154 – Withering of harmony; challenge to idealism; conventions as ruins 156 – Between polyphony and monody; religion and basso continuo

Allegorization; production of ‘categories’; the ‘truly human element’ 158 – Late style and axiomatic wisdom 160 – Relationship to death

12 Humanity and Demythologization 162 Music as language; images of the imageless; demythologization and myth 162 – Idyll and Empire; Fidelio

Expression of the human and conditions of humanity 164 – Neediness as leaven; spirit and the chthonic; the giant Suckelborst and Rübezahl 165 – Rauschen, mimesis, standing fast

The category of seriousness 169 – Star and hope 170 – Text 6: The Truth Content of Beethoven’s Music

Music and mastery of nature; spiritualization and animation; the instrumental as recollection of nature 172 – ‘Les Adieux’ 174 – Leavetaking, thanking and unhappy consciousness 175 – Power of illusion; illusion and myth 176 – Beethoven and the Shekinah

Appendices

I Text 7: Rudolf Kolisch’s Theory of Tempo and Characters in Beethoven

II Text 8: ‘Beautiful Passages’ in Beethoven

III Text 9: Beethoven’s Late Style

Abbreviations

Editor’s Notes

Editorial Afterword

Comparative Table of Fragments

Thematic Summary of Contents

Indexes

I Beethoven’s Works

II Names