Music and Concept
P10
A possible epigraph for a chapter of the book on Beethoven: Clemens Brentano. The echo of Beethoven’s music (I, 105F), especially:
Selig, wer ohne Sinne
Schwebt, wie ein Geist auf dem Wasser
[Happy is he who floats like a spirit over the water]
and
Selbst sich nur wissend und dishtend,
Schafft er die Welt, die er selbst ist.
[Knowing and singing himself alone,
he creates the world that he himself is.]
Might well be an epigraph for Chapter 1.
Music can express only what is proper to itself: this means that words and concepts cannot express music’s content directly, but only in mediated form, that is, as philosophy.
In a similar sense to that in which there is only Hegelian philosophy, in the history of western music there is only Beethoven.
The will, the energy that sets form in motion in Beethoven, is always the whole, the Hegelian World Spirit.
P11
The Beethoven study must also yield a philosophy of music, that is, it must decisively establish the relation of music to conceptual logic. Only then will the comparison with Hegel’s logic, and therefore the interpretation of Beethoven, be not just an analogy but the thing itself. Perhaps one comes closest to this by following up the ancient comparison between music and dream. Except that the analogy is concerned less with the play of representations – which appear only intermittently in music, like flower garlands in pure ornamentation – than with logical elements. The ‘play’ of music is a play with logical forms as such: those of statement, identity, similarity, contradiction, the whole and the part; and the concreteness of music is essentially the force with which these forms imprint themselves on the material, the musical sounds. They, the logical elements, are largely unambiguous – that is, as unambiguous as they are in logic, but not so unambiguous that they have a dialectic of their own. The theory of musical forms is the theory of such unambiguity, and of its sublation.
The boundary between music and logic is not, therefore, located within the logical elements, but in their specifically logical synthesis of a different kind, constituted solely by the constellation of its elements, not their predication, subordination, subsumption. This synthesis, too, is related to truth, but to one which is quite unlike apophantic truth, and this non- apophantic truth will probably be definable as the aspect through which music coincides with dialectics. This discussion should terminate in a definition such as : Music is the logic of the judgement-less synthesis. Beethoven should be tested against this, in the twofold sense that, on the one hand, such logic is demonstrated through his work; and, on the other, that the work is determined ‘critically’ as music’s mimesis of judgement, and therefore of language. The meaning of the work with regard to the philosophy of history is understood in terms both of the ineluctability of this mimesis and of music’s attempt to escape it – to revoke the logic which pronounces judgement. If the relationship between Beethoven and major philosophy are to be revealed, some of the most fundamental categories will have to be clarified.
1 Beethoven’s music is an image of that process which great phiolosophy understands the world to be. An image, therefore, not of the world but of an interpretation of the world.
2 The sensuous component of music, which is devoid of qualification yet is mediated within itself and sets the whole in motion, is the motivic-thematic dimension.
Question: interpret the difference between motif and theme.
P12
3 The ‘spirit’, the mediation, is the whole as form. The category which, in this context, is identical between philosophy and music, is work. What is called conceptual exertion or work in Hegel is thematic work in music. The recapitulation: the return to oneself, the reconciliation. Just as this remains problematic in Hegel (in that the conceptual is posited as the real), in Beethoven, where the dynamic element is set free, the recapitulation is also problematic.
One needs to counter the objection that all this is mere analogy, since music lacks the conceptual medium which forms the very essence of philosophy. Here I shall just note a few points to be used against this objection. (NB: It is no part of Beethoven’s intention or idea to refute humanity, and so on, which is itself constituted only by music’s complexion.)
1 Beethoven’s music is immanent in the same way as is philosophy, bringing forth itself. Hegel, who has no concepts outside philosophy, is , in that sense, likewise concept-less in face of the ‘heterogeneous continuum’. That is to say, his ideas, like those of music, are explained only by each other. This idea must be followed up exactly, since it leads to the innermost depths.
2 The form of music as language in Beethoven’s work must be analysed.
3 The pre-philosophical concept in philosophy corresponds to the conventional musical formula, on which the work if done. A concise answer must be given to the question: what are immanently musical concepts? (NB: Make quite clear that these are not concepts about music.) The answer can only be attained against traditional aesthetics, the doctrine of the visual-symbolic-monistic nature of art, which provides the dialectical force setting the Beethoven theory in motion. The
whole study might possibly be introduced by a discussion of music and concept. NB: The difference between music and philosophy must be defined in the same way as their identity. In one place [cf. fr. 225], I described each piece by Beethoven as a tour de force, a paradox, a creation ex nihilo. That may be the deepest connection with Hegel and absolute Idealism. What I described as the ‘floating’ element in my study of Hegel is at bottom precisely this. And that might be decisive for the construction of the book on Beethoven. Might the late style, finally, be a critique of just that – of the possibility of keeping music alive out of pure spirit, as an absolute becoming? Dissociation and ‘maxims’ point to this. Hegel had eliminated precisely the ‘dictum’ which lacks a contradiction…
P13
Towards a Theory of Beethoven
1 In the totality of its form, Beethoven’s music represents the social process. In doing so it shows how each individual moment – in other words, each individual process of production within society – is made comprehensible only in terms of its function within the reproduction of society as a whole.(Decisively connected to the aspect of reproduction is the nullity of the individual element, the fortuitousness of the initial material, which yet, at the same time, is more than just fortuitous. The theory of the Beethovenian theme should be added here.) Beethoven’s music is, in a sense, a means for putting to the test the idea that the whole is the truth.
2 The special relationship between the systems of Beethoven and Hegel lies in the fact that the unity of the whole is to be understood merely as something mediated. Not only is the individual element insignificant, but the individual moments are estranged from each other. This can be exemplified by the antithetical relationship of Beethoven’s music to folksong, which also represents a unity, but an unmediated one – that is, one in which there is no boundary between the thematic kernel, or motif, the other motifs and the whole. By contrast, the Beethovenian unity is one which moves by means of antitheses; that is to say, its moments, taken individually, seem to contradict each other. But therein lies the meaning of Beethovenian form as a whole, the seemingly antithetical motifs are grasped in their identity. The analysis of the first movement of the String Quartet in E minor [op.59,2] as the history of the opening fifth, and more generally as a demonstration of the mediated identity of the first and second themes, belongs here. The Beethovenian form is an integral whole, in which each individual moment is determined by its function Within that whole only to the extent that these individual moments contradict and cancel each other, yet are preserved on a higher level within the whole. Only the whole proves their identity; as individual elements they are as antithetical to each other as is the individual to the society confronting him. That is the real meaning of the ‘dramatic’ element in Beethoven. Recall Schoeberg’s formula about music being the history of a theme.
P14
This, however, should be shown historically to be a social relationship, by demonstrating that the antithesis between tutti and solo is at the origin of thematic dualism both Beethoven’s music and in the sonata form in general. The concept, especially, of the mediating phrase and the ‘entry phrase’ should also be developed in this context. The theoretical interpretation of the closing section has still to be worked out. 3 Beethoven’s music is Hegelian philosophy: but at the same time it is truer than that philosophy. That is to say, it is informed by the conviction that the self-reproduction of society as a self-identical entity is not enough, indeed that it is false. Logical identity as immanent to form – as an entity at the same time fabricated and aesthetic – is both constituted and criticized by Beethoven. Its seal of truth in Beethoven’s music lies in its suspension: through transcending it, form takes on its true meaning. This formal transcendence in Beethoven’s music is a representation – not an expression – of hope. At this point a precise analysis of the D major passage from the slow movement of the great String Quartet in F major [op. 59,1; third movement, bars 70ff] must be given. In the formal sense this passage appears superfluous, since it comes after a quasi-retransition, after which the recapitulation fails to appear it is made clear that formal identity is insufficient manifesting itself as true only at the moment when it, as the real, is opposed by the possible which lies outside identity. The D♭ major theme is new: it is not reducible to the economy of motivic unity. This throws light on phenomena incomprehensible to traditional interpretations of Beethoven, such as the introduction of E minor theme in the great development section of the Eroica [first movement, bars 284ff], and on major expressive moments in Beethoven, such as the second subject group in the slow movement of the Piano Sonata, op. 31, no.2 [second movement, bars 31ff], and certain passage in Fedelio and in the third Leonore Overture.
4 The key to the very late Beethoven probably lies in the fact that in this music the idea of totality as something already achieved had become unbearable to his critical genius. The material path taken by this realization within Beethoven’s music is one of contraction. The developmental tendency in those works of Beethoven which precede the late style itself is opposed to the principle of transition. The transition is felt to be banal, ‘inessential’; that is, the relation of disparate moments to a whole which holds them together is seen as no more than a prescribed convention, no longer tenable. In a sense, the dissociation found in the last works is a consequence of the moments of transcendence in the ‘classical’ works of the middle period. The element of humour in Beethoven’s last works can probably be equated with his discovery of the inadequacy of mediation, and is their truly critical aspect.
P15
Beethoven’s critical procedure, the ‘self-criticism’ so often invoked, arises from the critical sense of the music itself, whose principle is the immanent negation of all its postulates. That has nothing to do with Beethoven’s psychology. The expression of the main theme of the Ninth is not, as Bekker [Beethoven, p.271] fatuously maintains, ‘like a gigantic shadow of the demon that has been conjured up…dissonances crying out in pain’ (where??). It is a pure representation of necessity. But perhaps it is precisely here that the contrast to Hegel becomes palpable. This contrast marks the demarcation between art and philosophy. To be sure, in Beethoven, too, necessity is produced by consciousness – it is, in a sense, a necessity of thought. But when contemplated by aesthetic subjectivity, it does not become reconciled to it, is not that contemplation. The gaze of the work of art, which is manifested in this theme, and wants, through its meaning, to be gazed upon in turn, has something withstanding, resistant about it which is really unknown to idealistic philosophy – for which everything is its own work. In this way the work of art, in the dualism constituted between itself and the beholder (a dualism posited by the art-work itself), is more real, more critical, less ‘harmonistic’ than philosophy. Of course, this theme is the World Spirit, but as an appearance it remains in one aspect external, distanced from the person perceiving it. The Ninth Symphony puts less faith in identity than does Hegel’s philosophy. Art is more real than philosophy in that it acknowledges identity to be appearance. In this connection cf. note on Rembrandt in this notebook. The following definition of the nature of philosophy from the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind looks like a direct description of the Beethovenian sonata:
For the real subject matter is not exhausted in its purpose but in working the matter out; not is the mere result attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with its Becoming. The purpose by itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a mere activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realization; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. (G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, transl. by J.B.Baillie, London 1971,p.69)
P16
In relation to my study, this passage is quite inexhaustible – almost too good to be used as an epigraph:
1 Regarding ‘purpose’, consider Schoenderg’s definition of the fate of a theme. What matters is precisely the exposition of this fate. The theme is not an end in itself, but neither is it simply incidental – that is to say, without the theme there is no development. The theme is (in true dialectical fashion) both: it is not independent – that is, memorable, vivid, and so on. Consider, in addition, the difference between themes, on the one hand, and fields of tension and disintegration, on the other. In the equidistance of all elements from the centre which I have claimed to be a characteristic of modern music, the dialectic comes to a standstill.
2 Directly connected to this is the critique of ‘tendency’ – of development in itself – as ‘mere activity’; that is, development exists only as development of a theme, in which it ‘exhausts’ itself through work (the concept of thematic work, and of work in Hegel); as development of something existent (touched on in the Philosophy of Modern Music). But what makes development in Beethoven more than mere activity is the affirmed re-emergence of the theme.
3 Against results: final chords, or codas, are in a sense results, without which the activity would be empty bustle, but on their own they are – through their thing-like nature – literally the ‘corpse which has left its guiding tendency behind it’. (Regarding all this, consider Max [Horkheimer]’s objection: philosophy is not supposed to be a symphony.) On the problem of the recapitulation: Beethoven made it a kind of guarantee of the idealism informing his music. Through it the result of the work, of the universal mediation, proves itself identical to the immediacy which is dissolved by the reflection which is its immanent development. That Beethoven derived this element from tradition in no way negates what has been said, since, firstly, the influence of tradition is deeply linked to the blinding effect of ideology ( work alienated from itself being transfigured as creation; this idea needs to be explored in detail); secondly, Beethoven, like Hegel, made the imprisonment of the bourgeois spirit within itself into a driving force, and thus ‘incited’ the recapitulation. In the work of both, we find the bourgeois spirit exalted to the utmost. But it is profoundly revealing that, nevertheless, the recapitulation in Beethoven remains aesthetically dubious in the same fundamental way as does the thesis of identity in Hegel; by a deep-seated paradox these elements are, in both, abstract and mechanical.
P17
Out of the recapitulation Beethoven produced the identity of the non-identical.
Implicit in this, however, is the fact that while the recapitulation is in itself the positive, the tangibly conventional, it is also the moment of untruth, of ideology. In his last works Beethoven did not abolish the recapitulation; he actually emphasized the moment of it which has just been mentioned. – It must be stated that, in itself, the recapitulation is not only bad but has, tectonically, an extremely positive function in ‘pre-critical’ music. Really, it only became bad through being made into the good, that is, through being metaphysically justified by Beethoven. This is pivotal aspect of dialectical construction. The idealistic ‘system’ within Beethoven’s work is tonality, through the specific function it takes on as fully worked out moments. Aspects be considered are:
1 Subsumption: everything comes under tonality; it is the abstract concept governing this music – everything is its ‘business’. It is the abstract identity of Beethoven’s work; that is, all its moments can be defined as basic characters of tonality. Beethoven ‘is’ tonality.
2 Against this: it does not remain abstract but is mediated: it is becoming, and is thus constituted only through the coherence between its moments.
3 These interrelationships are the negation of the moments through reflection on themselves.
4 Like abstract concepts and assumptions, tonality, being concretely mediated, is the result of Beethoven’s work. This is, really, the moment which I call the ‘full working-out’ of tonality. Herein lies the moment of Beethoven’s work which relates to the philosophy of identity – its trust, its harmony; but also, for better or worse, its compulsive character.
5 The ideological moment appears to me to lie in the fact that tonality, although merely given and pre-existent, appears to emerge ‘freely’, as if from the musical meaning of the composition itself. But, again, this is also a non-ideological moment since tonality is not, of course, contingent, but is really ‘reproduced’ by Beethoven as a priori synthetic judgements are reproduced by Kant.
P18
6 The category of the tragic in Beethoven is the – harmonistic – resolution of negation in identity.
7 Like Beethoven’s music, tonality is the whole.
8 Affirmation within tonality is identity as expression. The result: It is so. NB: The relation of tonality to the subject-object problem. In Kant, the system versus the ‘rhapsodistic’. In this context, consider especially the introductory sections of the Architecture of Pure Reason. On the concept of homoeostasis. The biological resolution of tensions – cf. Fenichel, [ The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, New York 1945, p.12] (consult sources). In Schoenberg’s Style and Idea, precisely this is defined as the meaning of music (entirely Hegelian, by the way: the Idea as the whole). This has the following consequences:
1 In this respect even imageless music is ‘image’; perhaps this is the true stilo
rappresentativo.
2 Homoeostasis contains an (inseparable) moment of musical conformism – not excepting Schoenberg. Is an ‘allostatic’ music at all possible?
3 Herein lies the real coincidence with Hegel: from this standpoint, their relationship can be defined as one of logical unfolding, not of analogy. This is , no doubt, the missing link between them. The preponderance of tonality is seen in the fact that in the classical models of Beethoven’s solemn style – the C minor Sonata op.30 [no.2; for violin and piano], the Fifth Symphony, the ‘Appassionata’, the Ninth Symphony – the main theme descends on the music with the anticipated force of the whole; against this the individual subject, as the second theme, defends itself. Almost too distinctly in that Sonata in C minor for violin and piano. The developmental law of Beethoven’s music: through its preeminence, the idea is anticipated, takes on a decorative aspect, as if produces by the composer’s cast of mind rather through-composed. The through-composition then catches up, but only gradually. Again, compare the Violin Sonata [that is, op. 30,2].
P19
Beethoven. In relation to him, the concept of negation as that which drives a process forward can be very precisely grasped. It involves a breaking off of melodic lines before they have evolved into something complete and rounded, in order to impel them into the next figure. The opening of the Eroica is one example, but the tendency is seen most clearly in the Eighth
Symphony, first movement, where the opening theme, maked tutti, is broken off [bar 33] to
make room for the octaves and then the second theme. – Within the same complex we find interrupting, interpolating themes, such as the figure from the first movement of the Eroica [bar 65]. Throughout this passage, just as in Hegel, it is the whole, a power ruling behind the scenes, which really intervenes. Still to be worked out: where does this coincidence originate and what does it mean? The experience which nourished the concept of the World Spirit; on this point, see a note in Q [cf. fr. 79]. Music and dialectical logic. One from – the form? – of negation in music is obstruction, where progression gets stuck. The C♯ early in the Eroica [bar 7]. In it the force making the music proceed is pent up. But this note also has a motoric function, through the processive effect of the minor second, E♭-D. This is obstructive in that it does not form part of the scale, and thus conflicts with tonality as the objective spirit, which the individuated, thematic element here opposes. Central. The relationship between
Beethoven and Hegel can be explained very Precisely with reference to the conclusion of the development of the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, when, after the B major episode, the main theme is exploded by the low F♯ as the new quality [first movement, bar 212]. The retransition which follows has something gigantic about it, a kind of inordinate stretching. Compare this with the passage from the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, concerning the new quality which gathers beneath the germ layer, then bursts violently forth (the same inordinateness is found at the end of the Fugue). The whole recapitulation of the first movement is especially important, since the force of the preceding music subjects it to the widest modifications. Discuss this passage, for example, the chord of the diminished seventh below the F in the phrase [bar 234] :
P20
To be interpreted in the slow movement: the critical B in the chord of the
Neapolitan sixth [bar 14]. The indescribable effect of the dissected triad as the closing group, and the mystical passage preceding it, where the right hand crosses over. Beethoven’s work
contains an exact equivalent of the Hegelian category of Entäusserung [objectification]: one might speak of a homecoming: ‘I am the earth’s once more’; utmost remoteness must ‘come back into the world’. In the first movement of the Piano Concerto in E♭ major, to the passage
of unworldly rapture in which the piano, in its highest register, is more flute-like than any flute [bars 158-66], the march which follows is juxtaposed with harsh abruptness [bars 166ff]. – In the same movement, of incomparable grandeur, we find a character of fulfillment, of a pledge redeemed – precisely that which is refused by Stravinsky; as in : A true theory of musical form would need to elaborate such categories fully. – The rhapsodic exuberance at the end of the Rondo: now there is fear no longer (quite unlike the case with Mozart’s music, which knows no fear). – The transition from the second to the third movement is deeply related to the junction (which is not mediated) between the Finale and Largo in the ‘Geister’ Trio: the dawning, the
sacredness of day. – The Rondo is very closely related to Le Retour [Piano Sonata in E♭ major, op.81a, third movement] , even in the details of its passage-work.
P21
The truly Hegelian quality of Beethoven is, perhaps, that in his work, too, mediation is never merely something between the moments, but is immanent in the moment itself. ‘[…] and holds the opposites, so to speak, close together’ – on op.2 no.1 [ Wolfgang A.] Thomas-San-Galli, Ludwig van Beethoven, Munich 1913,p.84. The configuration of Beethoven’s oeuvre in pairs of works assists interpretation as an external sign of its dialectical nature. Through it the Beethoven of the middle period (Fifth and Sixth; Seventh and Eighth) transcends the closed totality of the oeuvre, as the very late Beethoven transcends it within the individual work. The truth of Plato’s dictum that the best writer of tragedies must also be the best writer of comedies lies in the insignificance of each work qua work. The solemnity of the Fifth and the dialect of the Sixth do not ‘complement’ each other, but represent the self-movement of the concept. A discussion of the dialectic in Beethoven requires an account of stillness through motion, as in the first movement of the ‘Pastoral’ Sonata op.29 [now op.28], and in the first movement of the Violin Concerto. On music and dialectical logic. It can be shown how Beethoven only gradually attained a fully dialectical mode of composing. In the C minor Violin Sonata from op.30 – one of the first fully Beethovenian conceptions, and a work of the highest genius – the antagonism is still unmediated, that is, the thematic complexes are set out in splendid contrast, like armies or pieces on a chessboard, then collide in a dense developmental sequence. In the Appassionata the antithetical themes are at the same time identical in themselves: identity in non-identity. ‘The Absolute’ in Beethoven is tonality. And it is no more absolute than Hegel’s absolute. It is also: spirit. Consider Beethoven’s remark that one need not give any more thought to basso continuo than to dogma. In music everything individual is ambivalent, oracular, mythical – while the whole is unambiguous. This is music’s transcendence. But it is from the single meaning of the whole that the multiple individual meanings can be identified.
P22
After a performance of the second Leonore Overture under Scherchen, the following, probably decisive link in the structure of my argument became clear to me: the negation of the individual detail in Beethoven, the insignificance of the particular, has its objective reason in the nature of the material: it is insignificance in itself, and not as a result of the immanent movement of the music’s form. That is to say that the more one delves into any particular element in tonal music, the more this is seen as merely an examplar of its concept. An expressive minor triad states: I am something, I mean something; and yet it is only a group of sounds which has been placed here, as if heteronomously (cf. Beethoven’s remark on an effect due to the skilful placing of a chord of the diminished seventh, and wrongly ascribed to the composer’s natural genius). Beethoven’s autonomy cannot endure such mis-attribution: it is the very point at which the category of autonomy becomes musically concrete. He draws the logical conclusion from both – from the particular’s claim to be something, and from its actual triviality. Its meaning is rescued through its nothingness: the whole in which it is absorbed realizes the precise meaning which the particular wrongly claims. This is the core of the dialectic between part and whole in Beethoven. The whole redeems the false promise of the individual detail. The priority of the whole in Beethoven is widely understood; my task is to trace and interpret its origin in relation to particular moments. The current state of knowledge is summed up in Riemann’s trite formulation: ‘The classical mode of composition’ (here he does not distinguish Beethoven from Mozart and Haydn) ‘always has the overall development, the broad outline, in view. Critics concur in their general admiration for the mighty effects the classical masters are able to draw from initially unpretentious thematic material, through developing it further.’ Hugo Riemann, Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, vol.II, part III, Leipzig 1922, p.235. On the affirmative, harmonistic element in the negation of the detail by the whole, cf. Bekker, Beethoven, p.278. – Also, the ‘more agreeable’ element in the bass recitative [that is, Ninth Symphony, fourth movement]. More agreeable for the audience, that is, through concealment. Important.
P23
The nullity of the particular; the fact that the whole means everything and – as at the close of op.111 – that it retrospectively conjures up as accomplished facts details which were never actually there: this remains a central concern of any theory of Beethoven’s music. It is based, really, on the fact that no values exist ‘in nature’, and that they are solely the result of work. This view combines quintessentially bourgeois (ascetic) elements with critical components: the sublation of the individual moment in the totality. – In Beethoven, the particular is intended always to represent the unprocessed, preexisting natural stuff: hence the triads. Precisely its lack of specific qualities (unlike the highly ‘qualified’ material of Romanticism) makes possible its complete submergence in the totality. – The negativity of this principle later manifests itself in the diatonic natural themes, the false primal phenomena, of Wagner. In Beethoven this principle is still sustainable
1 through the homogeneity of the material. Even its smallest features are differentiated through the economy of the whole.
2 in Wagner, the trivial individual element is supposed to mean something in itself; never in Beethoven. The supreme example of what is at issue here is the opening of the recapitulation of the ‘Appassionata’ [first movement, bar 151]. In isolation it is no way striking. In conjunction with the development it is one of the great moments in music. In the Violin Concerto the
melody, resembling a closing group, over the dotted D of the horns [second movement, bars 65ff and bars 79ff], is the most overwhelming expression of spaciousness, of gazing into the
distance (how feeble, by contrast, is Siegfried on Brunhilde’s rock!); at the same time, it shows an extreme ‘lack of inspiration’: the almost meaningless, melodically unformed quality of the dissected chords and formulaic seconds of the principal voice. This paradox contains the whole of Beethoven; to resolve it would be to an understanding of him to the level of theory. When Eduard [Steuermann] had played the Four Impromptus [op.90] by Schubert (with the
matchlessly great one in C minor), I raised the question why this music was so incomparably sadder than even the most somber pieces by Beethoven. Eduard thought it was due to
Beethoven’s activity, and I defined this, with his agreement, as totality, as the indissoluble
union of whole and part. This would mean that Schubert’s sadness results not just from the expression (which is itself a function of musical temper), but from the liberation of the
particular. The liberated detail is abandoned, exposed, just as the liberated individual is also alone, sorrowful – the negative. From this follows something about the twofold nature of Beethoven, which must be emphasized: that is, the totality gives a quality of the particular holding its own (which is lacking in Schubert and in the whole of Romanticism, especially Wagner); at the same time, it imparts to the particular an ideological, transfiguring quality which reflects Hegel’s doctrine of the positivities of the whole as the summation of all
individual negativities – that is, it imparts a moment of untruth. On the difference to Hegel: the dialectical movement of music from nothing to something is possible only if and as long as the nothing is unaware of its nothingness: that is, as long as the quality-less themes are content to be themes, without being given a bad conscience by the melody of the Lied. Once this bad conscience has arisen – as in Schubert, in Weber and even, to an extent, in Mozart’s Singspiel element – the trivial theme is open to criticism instead of unfolding within the totality to become its own critique: it is experienced as trite, meaningless. Schubert’s great instrumental works are the first manifestation of this awareness, which is irrevocable: after that,triadic themes became really impossible, in terms of their internal structure. They had strength only as that different awareness did not exist, and the subtlest analysis would be needed to define concretely why this was so. But once the theme has taken on substance, the totality becomes a problem (not simply impossible). The whole of Brahms’s music later crystallized around this problem. Beethoven’s achievement lies in the fact that in his work – and in his alone – the whole is never external to the particular but emerges solely from its movement, or rather, is this movement. In Beethoven there is no mediation between themes, but, as in Hegel, the whole, a pure becoming, is itself the concrete mediation.(NB: In Beethoven there are really no traditional elements, and the inventive richness of , especially, the young Beethoven has the essential purpose of dissolving the topological existence of individual themes. There are so many that none can make itself autonomous. This may be shown, for example, with reference to the first movement of the early Piano Sonata in E♭ major [op.7].)
P25
This achievement becomes impossible if the development of the material as a whole (NB: not just of the particular inspirational idea), if its increasing richness, enforces an emancipation of melodies. To the emancipated melody the whole is no longer immanent. But it remains as a task confronting this bad individuality. In this way the whole does violence to the particular. This is true not only of Schumann’s formalism or of the deformation of themes by the ‘New Germans’ (Siegfried’s horn theme in the Götterdämmerung). It applies, too, to the most intimate figures; for example, when, in Schubert’s B minor Symphony, the second theme is reinterpreted to give it a symphonyic forte character, violence has already been done to it. This theme is so thetic in character that it rebels against the change – especially since this change of character does not evolve but is merely placed before us. It is very instructive to compare this to change in the character of a single theme in Beethoven. An example is the close of the String Quartet in F major, op.59,1, when the Russian theme emerges slowly and in a quite unharmonized form. Here, the change of character, the way in which the folksong theme is made interchangeable, acts both as a means of creating tension and as a disguise which brings about the resolution. The theme is not so, but presents itself so, and the sweetness of the harmonization is that of dissimulation – as if the theme, looking back, had disclosed this one, last, alluring possibility, but had not succumbed to it. It is precisely this renunciation which also marks the boundary dividing Beethoven from Romanticism. The close of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata is also relevant. In this context it is worth noting the paradox whereby the tendency towards fungibility (or interchangeability) – as the organizing principle of a musical whole – increases together with the impossibility of fungibility, that is, with the uniqueness of the particular detail. This paradox circumscribes the whole recent history of music up to Schoenberg. The twelve-tone technique is probably its totalitarian resolution – hence my misgivings about this technique. Wagner know of this paradox in his own production. His music is an attempt to resolve it by reducing the particular to fungible basic forms – fanfares and chromatic elements. But the historical state of the material gave him the lie. The fanfares merely impersonate aridity. Not even poverty can be reinstated – what in Beethoven was bare but significant in the sense used by Goethe can look merely threadbare even in Schubert; in Wagner it has become theatre and in Strauss kitsch.
P26
The works of great composers are mere caricatures of what they would have done had they been allowed. One should not assume any pre-established harmony between the artist and his time, inseparable as the two may be. Bach – the destroyer of organ music rather than its consummator – is infinitely more lyrical than is allowed by the repressive ‘style’ of the reuding basso continuo: how recalcitrantly the Fugue in F♯ major, the ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’, I [BWV 859], the ‘French’ Suite in G major and the ‘Partita’ in B♭ major submit to its dictates. At the same time, the joy in dissonance, especially in less-known works like the motets. This is still more true of Mozart. His music is a sustained attempt to outwit convention. In piano piece such as the B minor Adagio, the Minuet in D major; in the ‘Dissonance Quartet’; in passages of Don Giovanni and heaven knows where else, traces of the dissonance he intended can be discerned. His harmony is not so much an expression of his nature as an effort of ‘tact’. Only Beethoven dared to compose as he wanted: that, too, is a part of his uniqueness. And it was, perhaps, the misfortune of the Romanticism which followed that it no longer faced the tension between the permitted and the intended: this is a position of weakness. Now, they could dream only what was allowed. Wagner. The significance of the element of Haydn in Beethoven, not only in the first pieces but in more mature works such as the Sonata in D major, op.28 (formation of chromatic inner voices and their implications). Cf. the Presto of the C major Sonata (Peter, no.21) by Haydn. Also its first movement. In Beethoven everything can become anything, because it ‘is’ nothing; in Romanticism everything can represent anything, because it is individuated. Beethoven’s music does not merely contain ‘Romantic elements’, as music historians maintain, but has the whole of Romanticism and its critique within itself. This must be shown in detail. The relationship to Hegel. Chopin; ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, first movement. Mendelssohn, middle movement in G minor of the G major Sonata [op.79]. ‘Les Asieux’. – Ferne Geliebte, the passage of semiquaver-sextuplets [‘Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder’, bars 21-5]. With reference to the first movement of op.27, no. 2, it must be shown how Beethoven, in Hegelian fashion, bears within himself the whole of Romanticism – not merely its ‘mood’ but its cosmos of forms – in order both to cancel it and to preserve it at a higher level. For example, the Romantic element of crepuscular shading (the shift from D♯ to D); the preservation of ‘atmosphere’; the hybrid form between instrumental music and Lied; the absence of contrasts (in the sustained triplets) as a reduction to subjectivity. Only Schoenberg was again able, with such genius, to disregard possibilities he had once taken up. – At the close the principal motif is reflected from the depths, a model for the conclusion of Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu. Schumann’s humour as ‘gallows humour’ – ‘Was kost die Welt?’ [What price the world?], and so on, expresses the incompatibility between the subject and what it says, feels, does. It is directed against the composing subject, and is deeply connected to a certain negligence. Relation to Beethoven? Difference? The affirmative gesture of thanksgiving at the end of the ‘Spring’ Sonata has, through its character, become a formula of Romanticism, as in the coda of the first movement of Schumann’s Fantasia in C major. It could be shown how this gesture has been debased to one of ‘transfiguration’, as at the end of Liszt’s Liebesträume or in the Overture of the Flying Dutchman. On the relationship between Beethoven and Romanticism: Euripides is accused (by Mommsen) of ‘slovenlines’ in his manner of tying the dramatic knot in the prologue and untying it by divine intervention. What happened after Beethoven is analogous, while Schoenberg leads the attempted reconstruction. In may be fruitful to ask which of Beethoven’s achievements passed over into Berlioz – who, compared to him, represents something like the early history of modernity. As far as I can see, it was the unexpected rhythmical obstructions and sforzati, and the ‘inserted’ expression marks; both amount to the same thing – a revolt against the idiomatic element from within the idiomatic, without replacing the threadbare idiom by another. (This, by the way, exactly describes the principle of the late Beethoven. ) All this emerged as the shock of modernity in Berlioz, whereas in Beethoven it had been concealed beneath the germ layer of tradition. In Berlioz such tendencies are set free, but by the same token become detached, undialectical, absurd – the moment of madness in his work. He is related to Beethoven much as Poe is to German Romanticism. To him Valréy’s observation about all that has been lost to art through modernity applies empastically. (Also the remark in a letter of Jacobsen’s to the effect that Niels Lyhne was composed badly by intention.)
P28
On the 32 Variation [WoO 80]: have not the grace notes in Beethoven already an element of shock, which also drives the music forward? A physiognomy of all Beethoven’s embellishments will need to be given. The long trills of the late style: the superfluous element, reduced to the most cursory formula. – Analysis of the changing functions of these mannerisms would probably allow Beethoven’s treatment of traditional musical elements to be studied as if under a microscope. The concept of ‘musical’ music, which Busoni derides in his easy on aesthetics, has a very precise meaning. It refers to the purity of the musical medium and to its logic, in contrast to language. It locates the strength of the musical configuration in its extreme remoteness to language. Music speaks because it is pure of language – it communicates, not through its expression or content, but through the gesture of speech. In this sense Bach’s is the most musical music. That is equivalent to saying that his composition does the least violence to music, becomes meaningful through its immersion in the meaning-less. The opposite type is Beethoven. He forces music to speak, not merely through expression (which is no less present in Bach) but by bringing music closer to speech through its own disposition. Therein lies his power – that music is able to speak, without word, image or content – and also his negativity, in that his power does music violence, as indicated on p.113 of this notebook [cf. fr. 196]. Conversely, the musical musician is in danger of becoming a specialist, an expert, a fetishist – from Bach to Schoenberg. Underlying this is a genuine paradox: the limit set to both tendencies is that of all music, indeed of art itself. – Music is able to speak through both its remoteness and its closeness to language. – In this respect, Mozart represents a kind of indifference point.
