探討音樂修辭和表達意義

Ways of Listening: Aesthetics, Metaphors, and Quotations in Music – Part II

引言:

真的很久沒有寫新的文章了。教學越來越忙，雖然這表示我的收入多了，生活穩定了，但，這並不是我最喜歡的情況。不過，我已前也確實寫了不少文章，當然以英文寫的佔多，因為我的中文打字很慢。所以，我也只好出版多一些英文寫的文章了。以下的是一篇絕對有實力的學術文章，也是我往後開拓現代音樂美學，意義研究的啟蒙文章。以自己寫的文章作為自己的啟蒙老師，怕是由我開始的了。以下的文章也有數千字，所以會分期刋載。如讀者是喜歡音樂分析的，必能從這篇文章得益。

Quotation and Metaphorical Concept

The important role of metaphor in shaping our thinking and affecting our daily lives have been discussed by Lakoff and Johnson in the book, Metaphors We Live By. About metaphor, Lakoff has stated: “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”[1] Metaphor is not a mere rhetorical device in linguistics. It is in fact the one that governs not only our actions and activities, but also our thinking processes and ways of understanding. We always seek out personal metaphors to highlight and make coherent our own pasts, our present activities, and our dreams, hopes, and goals as well. A large part of understanding is the search for appropriate personal metaphors that make sense to us. It involves unending negotiation and renegotiation of the meaning of our past experiences. As a result, the process of understanding can lead to a continual development of new stories, as well as a creation of new realities in our daily lives. As metaphors exist in a person’s conceptual system, therefore, in this paper, all metaphors created for understanding of musical quotation are to be understood as metaphorical concepts.

It is, however, nothing new for one to understand music in terms of metaphor in the western music history. For example, in the Cours complet d’ harmonie et de composition musicale (1803-05) by Jerome-Joseph Momigny, there are extensive analyses of movements by Mozart and by Haydn alternating technical description with narrative or dramatic readings. From Powers’ description on Momigny’s writing of Haydn’s symphony no.103, movement one, we can see that Momigny’s understanding of the music was no doubt governed by the metaphorical concepts he made. In fact, Powers stated, “ Momigny’s reading of Haydn Symphony 103 / I, ……the movement is read as a scene in the countryside, with a storm, villagers taking refuge in a temple, elders and grown men, women trembling for their children, and so on, with occasional fragments of text supplied to musical motives to enliven the narrative.”[2] Clearly, Powers’ words, such as storm, temple, elders, men, women, are related to a pictorial images consisting of the weather, temple and people, which are important metaphors to structure Momigny’s thinking. But it was not a unique privilege for Momigny to read music with metaphors, many other philosophers and music critics did so in the 19th century, such as Hanslick’s use of personification to conceptualize his idea on music as a living form,[3] which could animate beauty from the projection of sound, Schopenhauer’s view on music as a representation of human’s will,[4] the Berlin critic Heinrich Hermann’s description on Beethoven’s symphony no. 3 as an almost Shakespearean world of magic, or the Russian critic Oulibicheff Marx’s review on the same work as a military “drama” for delineating a battle and victory of a hero, which the battle is fought for the human freedom.[5] In the recent musicological scholarship, Susan McClary, also used the metaphor of “sexual intercourse” to explain the western tonal system and the musical phenomenon of Beethoven’s symphony no. 9.[6] As such, music in general, and quotations in particular, can be understood in terms of metaphor. This reading is capable of creating a new way of listening, which is capable of offering different perspectives for us to muse, to recall, and to search what happened and what was there.

[1] Lakoff, Metaphors, 5.

[2] Harold Powers, “Reading Mozart’s Music: Text and Topic, Syntax and Sense,” in Current Musicology 57, (1995): 5-44.

[3] We can refer to Mark Evan Bonds’ discussion on this topic in his book, A History of Music in Western Culture ( UpperSaddleRiver, H.J. : Prentice Hall, 2003), 366.

[4] Ibid., 361.

[5] Thomas Sipe, Beethoven: Eroica Symphony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 54-62.

[6] Susan McClary, Feminie Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (London, Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press, 2002)53-79.

To be continued…..

David Leung (theorydavid)

2011-12-01 (published)

Ways of Listening: Aesthetics, Metaphors, and Quotations in Music – Part I

引言:

真的很久沒有寫新的文章了。教學越來越忙，雖然這表示我的收入多了，生活穩定了，但，這並不是我最喜歡的情況。不過，我已前也確實寫了不少文章，當然以英文寫的佔多，因為我的中文打字很慢。所以，我也只好出版多一些英文寫的文章了。以下的是一篇絕對有實力的學術文章，也是我往後開拓現代音樂美學，意義研究的啟蒙文章。以自己寫的文章作為自己的啟蒙老師，怕是由我開始的了。以下的文章也有數千字，所以會分期刋載。如讀者是喜歡音樂分析的，必能從這篇文章得益。

Introduction:

For some listeners, the response is almost instantaneous. A mistuned March parade easily sparks the most spectacular sound picture in Ives’ orchestral set. A hurdy-gurdy waltz furtively occasions in the movement of the most ambitious Mahler’s symphonic music. The ability in both to weave banalities into wonders, with the mundane – whether it be the band music in one or the street waltz in the other – being transmuted into the stuff of marvels, reconfirms us a saying, that, “in music, nothing seems impossible.” Would it be a singer’s voice, a familiar tune, a sonic gesture or a rhythmic pattern or any other musical device that can exert such tremendous impact on listeners? I would suggest that musical quotation is able to do it.

Musical borrowings have long occupied an important place in western music. For centuries, composers have incorporated materials from existing music or earlier works into their compositions.[1] From the parodic masses of Dufay’s or the use of Lutheran hymns by J.S. Bach to the “re-composition” of earlier music in Stravinsky, borrowing as a compositional procedure constantly presents itself as a challenge to the composer’s imagination. Yet there has never been such an epoch as the 20^th century in which quotations and references feature so extensively in works of numerous composers. And it is in the music of Charles Ives, an American native composer that one discovers, perhaps for the first time in history, some missed opportunities and unrealized potential in western music.

One of the first tasks that confront Ives’ scholars who undertake research into his music has always been to go through the labyrinth of quotations in the composer’s works. Peter J. Burkholder, who identifies different kinds of “quotations” in Ives’ music, focuses on exploring the complex musical, psychological and philosophical motivations behind the borrowings, and shows the purpose, techniques and effects that characterize each one. Wiley Hitchcock offers a general but succinct survey of Ives’ music in his Ives: A Survey of the Music, providing analyses of some important pieces and tracing the sources of the quotations. Philip Lambert’s studies apply set theory analysis to music, revealing the pitch organization and structural coherence of the works. Larry Starr adopts Lambert’s approach but offers analyses that relate Ives’ musical settings to the composer’s philosophical ideas and biographical background. Other scholars also advocate research on Ives’ uses of quotations in relation to the European musical tradition, American patriotism, the early 20^th century socio-cultural background of New England and other European masters such as Stravinsky, Mahler and Schoenberg. Doubtless the above-mentioned research takes place in the domain of either the compositional dimension or the biographical terrain of Ives. As such, the issues of quotation, if any, are viewed mainly from the composer’s scope.

Despite the multifarious approaches, however, few regard it an issue of aesthetics or attempt to address quotations from the perspective of the audience. How does a listener experience, feel or respond when facing the network of quotations in Ives’ music? In what way do listeners respond to these quotations in relation to their own socio-cultural surroundings? Referring to the functions of music, Tia DeNora remarks that music “is not merely a ‘meaningful’ or ‘communicative’ medium. It does much more than convey signification through non-verbal means. At the level of daily life, music…may influence how people compose their bodies, how they conduct themselves, how they experience the passage of time, how they feel – in terms of energy and emotion – about themselves, about others, and about situations.”[2] Music in general, and quotations in particular, can be read as a force of social life, a medium of social relation, a technology of self, or a device of social ordering.[3] Furthermore, if music, just as what Nora has claimed, consists of an interlacing of experience (feeling, action) and the materials that are accessed as the referents for experience and its metaphoric and temporal parameters,[4] it may thus be seen to serve as an operating platform for the temporal structure of one’s past events, as well as the emotional responses.

This article attempts to explore different ways of listening to Ives’ quotations by offering a critical survey of some of his music. Quotations, as I would like to argue, can and ought to be read and understood in terms of metaphor. In fact, just as Lakoff has claimed, “metaphor permits an understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another, creating coherences by virtue of imposing gestalts that are structured by natural dimensions of experience.”[5] From this sense, metaphor is not only a matter of imaginative rationality, but also aesthetic experience. It is created from our daily surroundings and cultural experiences, and is able to conceptualize our cognitive minds and to induce our emotional sensations. New metaphors are capable of creating new understandings and new realities, involving all the natural dimensions of our sense experiences, especially that of sound. Analysis, therefore, is no mere counting of quotes or characterization in terms of compositional techniques. It rather evokes the totality of the sonic world of a specific time, place and event, operating in every dimension of the listeners’ psychological and aesthetical states. Be it a tune, a rhythmic pattern or a specific sonority, a reference to a style or genre, a quotation is a tangible link between the sonic and cultural reality of the past and those of the present, as well as a metaphorical representation in one’s own imagination. Applying ideas and concepts borrowed from paintings and literature, it is hoped that an intertextual reading of the quotations will open up new areas of scholarship on the subject.

To Be Continued…..

David Leung (theorydavid)

2011-11-18 (published)

[1] Peter Burkholder, “Borrowing: Types of Borrowing,” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2^nd ed., 1 [computer music Library], cited on 2006/5/1, available from www.Grovemusic.com/data/articles/music/5/529/52918.xml?section=52918.1

[2] DeNora Tia, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000), 16-17.

[3] Ibid., 7.

[4] Ibid., 67.

[5] George Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980), 235.

玩盡規則 — 在寫作上應用修辭手法

前言: 早前寫了一篇文章關於寫作和聲應否跟隨 rules ，不講 feel。有一位教 Flute 的老師 Spencer Chan 留言，表示同意我的平衡觀點。他評論道: “所言甚是！就正如我們中國人說中文時，雖不會理會文法，但這並不代表我們可以不合文法，只是作為中國人，文法已牢牢印在心中，隨心而發便可說出合文法的說話吧。我們雖沒有刻意使用文法，但其實已是根據文法去說我們的說話，絕不能將「我愛你」說成是「我你愛」。無論樂器還是樂理、作曲、編曲，我們都應將 rules 熟練到可以隨心而發才去講 feel。”

在這裡，我是很感謝有讀者留言以表鼓勵。我上一篇文章，也是有發表過近似 Chan Sir 的論點。可是，我仍然想就他所說的最後一句話的意義，再加以擴展補充。我認為就算將所有音樂或和聲的 rules 這個文法熟練，仍是不夠去發揮音樂中的神采與靈氣，表現 feeling，因為還欠了一樣東西，就是我們還要熟練到可以運用 rhetorics 去玩盡所有的 rules.

正文:

寫作文章，總離不開怎樣在循規蹈矩，奉公守法之餘表現自我個性。循規蹈矩和奉公守法是必須的，因為任何語言皆有其使用者必須遵從的模式，法則，邏輯，結構特徵成方式，或是語言要成為一種有效的表達和溝通工具的先決條件，不然的話，語言不但無法學習，更無法使用。所以，寫作音樂，和聲的法則規條，是有它的效用。

這當然並不意味這些原則和規範是寫在石頭上的鐵律，永遠都一成不變。可是，若果我們寫文章，只力求文法正確，那麼，我們最多只能做個稱職的審稿編輯，而不是個作家，或個藝術家，甚至作曲家。作家之所以是作家，不是因為他家的文章全無錯誤，而是因為他其獨特的聲音和鮮明的個性。在音樂上，亦是如此。因此，Beethoven 是 Beethoven，不會是另一個 Mozart，就算兩者都是以 tonal harmony 的法則和以 major-minor system 來寫作其音樂。這就解釋為何同學們就算學完了 Advance Harmony，也是不能完全懂得個別作曲家和其特定作品的音樂風格和特點。因為 Advance Harmony 只是 Generalized 了的一般法則。

返回我們的編輯和作家的比喻。正如作家林沛理所說，他們兩者最大的分別就是: 前者懂得如何在客觀 impersonal，屬於每一個人 communal 的文法中留下個人的印記 stamp，甚至簽名 signature, 而後者只會做文法的保安和執法者 grammar police。這就能解釋為何我們一聽第五交響曲的開頭四個音，就知是 Beethoven 留下的印記，而不是 Schubert 的。

所以，要寫得優美，寫得動人，寫得有 feel，寫得有個人 style，無論作家又好，作曲家又好，都要懂得玩弄那些 rules，最佳的方法，就是運用不尋常的修辭法 rhetorics。

我現試以英語寫一段落，請讀者看看，評評我是否能將個人的印記，通過不落套的 rhetorical setting 去將我在暮年才以合唱指揮和總監的身份，能以音樂再度踏足表演舞台的感受，烙印在文字裡 ?

Fifty — the promise of more than a decade of nothingness, a thinning list of closest friends to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there has been music in me, who, unlike the deadly utterance of my boss, is too stubborn ever to carry my old fading dream from age to age. As I pick up the baton guiding their wan faces, they tremble against my only deepest zest for music and the formidable stroke of fifty dies away with the reassuring pressure of their hardly murmurs. I wonder as if it is singing, though. Still I stand up to the promise through the stage in the slowly dimming light.

朋友們，你們看看如何。我倒希望合唱團的成員有人明白我這個真的感受。我相信這段的英語程度不淺。可能只有 BT明白，她的英語不錯。所以，如果我們真得體會 rhetorics 的效用，我們應會明白，第一句本人用了 — 符號去 replace verb，(玩盡文法，句法是由某作家借學過來的) 再加三個 head motive 似的 thinning。你知道 briefcase of enthusiasm 是暗指我對上班做事的熱誠嗎? metaphor 是也。nothingness 在此處是指一事無成。stand up to 是指迎向，迎戰那往後十年的一事無成。還有，我們 recording 時是關上燈的。reasurring pressure 是對比，contrast 著 chorus 歌唱的 murmurs，因為他們不是專業的合唱團。

如果文字可以造出個人風格效果，音樂語言，也是一種溝通媒介，所以也定必可以。當然，音樂比較抽象，我們要更多不同的 theory，才可以幫助我們進一步了解其意義。我們也不可能以語文的修辭法，完全不變的套用到音樂上。因為音樂彙語的結構跟語文文法的結構是不同的。我早前曾淺談音樂的修辭學，可是，以我所知，現在有很多當代音樂理論家也正研究這個學科，如 Robert Hatten 的Markedness and Markedlessness，Allanbrook 的 topical theory 等。我有機會，就會跟各位談談他們的 theory 要點。

總的來說，藝術家要懂得 rules，然後要玩盡 rules, 再來印上個人簽名，才可以表達自己的 feel，音樂的神彩。

全文完………

David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-03-25 (published)

貝多芬的英雄，英雄的貝多芬

前言: 無論是愛好音樂的聽眾，又或是研究音樂的學者，說到貝多芬，總有說不盡的話題。我也不例外，也很想發表我對貝多芬第三交響曲，英雄，的音樂評論。在還沒有接續上一篇未完成的文章，討論貝多芬對後世交響曲和作曲家的影響前，多補充一下對貝多芬的樂曲的個人解讀，對看我文章的朋友，也是好的。說不定看過我的樂評後，真會買一張貝氏的第三交響曲的鐳射唱片來聽。這就是我發表以下評論的第一個原意。第二個原意，當然就是希望同學們通過我這篇樂評，掌握怎樣寫一篇好的音樂分析，又或是音樂評論的文章。我相信參巧以下文章的寫作風格，遺詞造句，同學們應該可以學會怎樣以樂音的角度去形容音樂，而不是只單純地引用一大堆如屬七和絃，又或 G 大調一類的專業音樂名詞去描寫音樂，就像很多音樂教科書一樣。第三個原意，不用多說，是幫助我上一篇文章曾談及學音樂的同學們，學會以專業的角度去了解貝多芬的樂曲，就算做功課也好，出來當老師也好，做學術簡介也好，好歹也可以有一些實質才料發表給聽眾知道，不用常常江湖救急了。

正文:

Beethoven’s Eroica

“It represents not only one of the most incredible achievements in the history of symphony, but also the most important step on the progression of the whole western music history,” Paul Henry Lang, the renowned musicologist and critic, once stated it when he commented on Beethoven symphony no. 3 in Eb major, Eroica (1803). Although Eroica was written more than two hundred years ago, its impact on today’s listeners remains tremendous.

It has already been widely known about Beethoven’s admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte and he dedicated this symphony for him. But after Napoleon’s self-coronation as the French Emperor, Beethoven gave up the idea. In fact, this legend has nothing related to the magnificent power of Eroica. Compared to the stormy impact Eroica brought to the audience of different times and nations, the political turbulence caused by Napoleon was but a slight summer breeze. In no more than a few decades did Europe recover from Napoleon’s devastation. Eroica, on the contrary, had changed the entire concept of symphony and effectively brought the genre to a new stage.

Before Eroica was premiered to his main patron Prince Lobkowitz in 1804, Beethoven had built up his fame as a composer-performer by writing several instrumental pieces, including at least two symphonies, three piano concertos, in the classical style of Haydn. If Beethoven were merely satisfied with these achievements and continued working in a similar style, he might still had his name appeared in history with those contemporaries, such as Johann Nepomuk Hummel or Lugwig Sphor, but he certainly would not have become a revolutionary hero standing uniquely in the history of music.

Beethoven’s revolutionary spirit has already been unleashed in the slow movements of both the piano sonata no. 13, Pathetique and Piano Concerto no. 3. But it is still difficult to envisage the later development of Beethoven’s musical style from these movements. Doubtless Eroica has a particular attribute that no previous works of his possess. From the first note to the last, the music seems to narrate the life of a dramatic hero struggling from a tragic opening to a triumphant ending. In fact, this narrative character enhanced by pure instrumental music is pioneering. Neither Mozart’s mature symphonies nor those of Haydn can exert such expressive power. In Beethoven’s hands, the classical ideal of balance of emotions and intellects is no longer maintained. The fact that Beethoven boldly gave up the classicism of Haydn and Mozart proved to be far-reaching. Eroica becomes the first symphonic work stepping into the terrain of Romanticism.

In the outer appearance, Beethoven basically maintains the principles of what his predecessors did to classical symphony for Eroica. For example, it is a symphony of four movements, which is a typical classical style developed by Joseph Haydn. Also, Beethoven uses different keys to express various contrasting moods in all movements and let the home key returned after modulations, in order to keep unity. However, Beethoven makes a great change in the design of structure. This change not only makes an unavoidable expansion of the length, but also destroys the classical balance between movements, and replaces it with the unceasing dramatic impulses. Both the length and complexity of the first movement has gone beyond all past instrumental works. The first theme appears only in a brief glimpse in the opening few bars, and thus, tonal unity has been broken just after the first ten seconds. Not until the music reaching the coda can a comparably stable theme be heard. This completeness makes the ending theme looks like an opening theme, as if it should have appeared in the exposition. In retrospect, Beethoven seems to have raised a thirteen-minute whirling storm over the first movement.

Beethoven’s revolutionary “storm” commences with two Eb tonic chords playing in tutti. The “heroic” theme, which is based on the arpeggiation of this Eb triad, is then heard. Putting tonic materials in the very beginning of a movement are the most direct and effective ways to establish the stability of a work. But it is only a fleeting stability because of the sudden intrusion of a C# note. According to the principle of harmony, this dissonant C# must be resolved. This unpleasant intrusion disappears shortly afterwards by resolving to another unstable dominant seventh chord. Music is said to go back to its stable “home” again. But this “home” only reflects a temporary placidity. A terrible storm is forthcoming.

For today’s ears, the chromatic C# note is only a piece of black cloud in the sky. Twentieth century music has been notorious for consisting notes of what the principles of classical harmony regard as “wrong.” To understand the disturbance caused by this C#, we need only to recall the audience of the late eighteenth-century Vienna.

Just before the private premiere of Eroica to Prince Lobkowitz, the revolutionary spirit has already pervaded the entire Continent. The success of American Revolution in 1776 and French Revolution in 1789 brought a chain of impacts to the socio-political structure of Europe. One of the results was the rise of the social status of bourgeoisie and layman. But this rise simultaneously denotes the fall of the aristocracy. Doubtless the late 18^th century is a time for the blossom of humanity and equity, but it is also a time for the growth of anxiety and frustration. When the princes and nobles listened to symphonic works, they have already accustomed to the so-called Haydnian elegance and nobility for years. This fading classical style was still a highly revered beauty. The aristocratic Viennese did not need anything brutal to raise their anxieties, or to increase their worries. Thus, when Beethoven “Eroica” stood before them in the concert, this inflected C# was seen as a loss of social balance, or even a symbol of brutal invasion.

But even greater anxieties were bought to those Viennese laymen. Just a few days before Eroica’s first public performance in the concert hall (1805), Vienna was occupied by Napoleon’s army. The nobles fled the city. The audiences in the concert were the ones threatened by military invasion. Thus it is not hard to understand why they easily link the music of the first movement to a sonic description of a battlefield, where they can think of general, soldiers, horse rearing, sabre shining or column of men streaming through the mountain. The awed sounds of war, being fused with the stirring music, were hovering among listeners. This inflected C#, therefore, was certainly seen as a symbol of brutal invasion.

Instead of the unstable C# note in the heroic theme, the other stormy feature embedded in Eroica is the scalic running passages. These passages can always arouse listeners a feeling of spirited forward motions. It is essential for an overwhelming musical storm. Although Beethoven begins his heroic theme with triple time, he makes use of syncopation and shift of dynamics to enhance a sense of two-beat march style of rhythm after the short opening. In addition, using the fragmented heroic theme as the main developing cell is another important source for generating motions. The turbulent storm first starts blowing in the low strings by the heroic theme. The high strings then answer. Every time when repeating, the theme is raised a tone until it reaches the climax. Only the first four notes of the main theme can survive after the climax, and are taken gradually by the woodwinds and brasses. This is not a moment for rest, but the anticipation for another flow. Shortly afterwards, the four-note heroic fragment reoccurs with increasing frequency, arresting every listener in a moment of high tension.

Another example of Beethoven’s whirling storm happens in the second movement, the Funeral March. After two-third of the music, the opening theme returns softly in the first violin, hovering along the high register without any support. The whole orchestra then roars with an Ab. The brass at the same time repeats the C, then the F over the agitated string triplet-tremolo. The music now is like a whirling storm, seeming to engulf everything without any intention to stop. What the orchestra playing is no longer the Mozartian slow movement of elegant singing, but a hysteric growl of extreme pain that goes beyond any listener’s imagination. Never has such thing happened in previous symphonies. Never such thing has happened in the previous symphonies. Furthermore, Beethoven seems to let his hero added with a little tragic, dark color. He fragments the funeral theme and let it dissolves in the quietness at the end of this movement, symbolizing the death and getting buried of the hero. Is this tragic hero Beethoven himself or other? Perhaps, no one knows the answer, even Beethoven himself.

The replacement of minuet and trio with scherzo in the third movement also reflects Beethoven’s another innovative character. In order to maintain the stormy motion of this movement, Beethoven gives up his predecessors’ favorite, the courtly dance of minuet and trio. The music is no more “lofty” enough to please the Viennese upper classes, or to extend their vanishing noble dreams. It is reformed to a spirited and energetic chapter, seeming to mock at the hypocrisy of the Viennese upper class. In fact, the use of a scherzo to replace the Minuet and Trio in the third movement of a symphony becomes one of the major characteristics of Beethoven’s symphonies.

If Beethoven were asked why he made such reformation, he might answer like this: “Why not!” A storm is still a storm. There is no reason why the finale of Eroica is not a storm. If the finale of Haydn and Mozart’s symphony is only the dessert, without any question, Beethoven’s finale will be the main course, or in the other words, the most powerful part of the storm. Usually, the classical symphony focuses on the first two movements in which all important ideas are displayed. The classical finale, thus, will be lighter and more relax in mood. But Eroica is absolutely different. The overwhelming power of the revolutionary storm can be easily felt in this triumphant ending. Beethoven must have known that a light and vivid finale could not counterbalance the gigantic and complex preceding movements. Therefore, Beethoven not only uses the duple meter, a March design for this spirited movement, but he also increases the complexity of the music and makes the length two times longer than the usual classical finale.

Furthermore, the structure of this movement does not follow any classical model. Sometimes, the music flows in form of a variation suite. But in another time, it freely appears as a fugato. The heroic theme propels forward like a fierce storm, seeming to use one man’s strength to break all bondages of the old social hierarchy and set all the people of any class free to a land of liberty, equity, and fraternity. This is why Sir George Grove has once commented: “Eroica is a portrait of Napoleon, but it is Beethoven who paints himself on it.”

In short, from no. 1 to no. 9 (Choral Symphony), Beethoven’s symphonies can always enter into a new terrain that no one has discovered. In fact, Eroica was Beethoven’s most favorite symphony throughout his life. But not many Viennese contemporary listeners showed the same appreciation. Some critics fiercely attacked it by saying that it is the most difficult symphony to understand. They criticized that Beethoven could not control many parts of the music, letting them flowing illogically. If Beethoven cut off some unmanageable parts, the music could be more bright, fluent, and understandable. As such, the Viennese mass seems being unready to accept Beethoven’s revolutionary storm.

However, no matter how 18^th century Viennese aristocratic listeners disliked this symphony, the old epoch has passed. Eroica was just like a short gleam from dawn after a long deep night, anticipating a splendid coming of a new and dazzling era.

David Leung (theorydavid)

2011-03-12 (published)

Interpreting Beethoven’s Middle and Late Styles of Work

前言: 對於 Beethoven 來說，或許耳聾了是一個不幸中的恩賜。就是因為他不再須要了解別人的想法，只為根本聽不到他們說甚麼，所以，他就可以用近乎肆意放縱的心態去創作，想寫甚麼就寫甚麼，不須理會別人的感受，甚至喜歡與否。這樣，他流下來那如謎一樣的音樂，讓各種各色人去評論，研究，探索，甚至閒談，吹捧。這都只因這些樂曲往往帶有無限詮釋的可能，跟本是不需要，甚至是不可能讓聽眾達致一個共同的理解。有人說，這類曲樂，往往在貝多芬晚期風格 (late style 1824-1827) 的音樂裡呈現。可是，我卻認為貝多芬的中期的音樂風格 (middle style 1803-1820) 的音樂，如英雄交響曲 op.53 等，都已經浮現了這種如謎一樣的特性。而且，我認為這些帶有如謎一樣的音樂特性，正是現代藝術的多角度詮釋 (multiple readings) 的先驅。並為在貝多芬往後一佰多年後的後現代詮釋理論奠下了基石。就讓我們看看前人和今人甚樣看 Beethoven 的中與晚期作品風格裡的謎樣特性。

正文:

Interpreting Beethoven’s Middle and Late Styles of Work

To many experienced concertgoers, Beethoven’s late style works are apt to lack of the composer’s earlier boldness and charm, for which the classical aesthetics is highly praised. The eerie sound is only to signify the listeners that conventional elements have struggled to break away from the work, leaving only incomprehensible fragments behind, and communicating itself as if in cipher, expressing “expressionlessly”. In fact, these fissures and rifts are hard to decipher, just like a spontaneous composite of “irrational” dissonances, perhaps noises, and a series of irrational chopping sound blocks under the governing of an uncontrollable mind.

For this dramatic change of style from an ineffable genius to a nutty deaf madman, the acceptable explanation may be that these works are products of a subjectivity, or of a “personality” ruthlessly proclaiming itself, which breaks through the elegance of form for the sake of expression, replacing sweet harmonies for the dissonance of its sorrow and rejecting any superficial sensuous charm for a deep contemplative profundity.

One explanation for Beethoven’s change of style is that he had a change of personality when he became deaf. His later music, particularly the six late string quartets, starting from op.127 to op. 135, loses previous charm and becomes more dissonant and yet more contemplative.

Therefore, it is not surprise that Theodor Adorno regards Beethoven’s late works are “relegated to the margins of art and brought closer to a personal documentation”. This is why referencing Beethoven’s individual biography and his life are seldom absent from discussions of his late works; as if, in face of human’s life, struggle, destiny, and finally death, conventional art concept has to forfeit its right and give way to the philosophical and aesthetic theory. Thus the concepts of self-consciousness, irony, sublimity, together with the ideas of subjectivity and psychological reflection are often applied in the interpretation of Beethoven’s later works.

However, reading music, symphony in particular, as philosophy, rhetoric, narrative or religious meditation is not only restricted to Beethoven’s late works. In the mid-style Beethoven, works such as Symphony no. 3 in Eb major, Eroica, and Symphony no. 5 in C minor, are also well opened to various modes of interpretation. Scholars, philosophers and musicologists of different generations are like to apply a narrative reading to the mid-Beethoven’s works. For example, both the 19^th century philosophers A.B. Marx and Alexandre Oulibicheff coincidentally offered a programmatic interpretation to Eroica. They both claimed that they could hear the music of the first forty-five bars of this Napoleon-oriented program symphony as a sonic picture of a battlefield where generals, array of soldiers and horses with flags, canons, guns and swords are all participating in the battle.

Besides the battlefields, to many scholars, Erioca is always read as a narration of the growth of a hero, thereby describing the dualistic contrast of the musical elements as the conflict between the hero’s inner nature and his/her external world. Sometimes, this psychological reading could be elevated to a higher humanistic level. Romain Rolland projects the hero’s battle as a battle jointed between two souls, figured roughly as the will and the heart. And the fighting will go on continuously between one’s “ego of love” and the “ego of will” as the self continues growing up. Even the formalists who tend to eschew any programmatic interpretation exploit the dual nature of the contrasting elements in Eroica to give a reading in terms of structural downbeat orientation versus structural upbeat orientation. As we have seen, a narration centers around a metaphoric hero’s or self’s growth, conflicts, struggles, conquer and finally victory seeming to be the basic paradigm for all sorts of interpretation of Eroica, or even of the mid-style works of Beethoven.

To more or less, using programmatic interpretation to understand Beethoven’s music relates to the rising importance of the concept of idée in 19^th century Romanticism. In fact, the power of idée, or idea, in symphonic works is its ability to override formal musical considerations if necessary. Forms, harmonies, and other musical parameters are subjective to idée. When thinking the main theme of Eroica as an idée representing a human hero, the development of this theme is typically characterized as a spiral process in which the hero goes forth, suffers a crisis of consciousness, overcomes certain obstacles, experiences “death” for eternal glory, and finally returns enriched and renewed. Scott Burnham, a contemporary scholar, agrees with the importance of reading Beethoven’s music as a hero narrative and furthers claims that the value of such programmatic reading lies in our “continued subscription to the subject-laden values of the so-called Goethezeit, or Age of Goethe”. According to Burnham, the worldview of the Goethezeit is an “ennobling and all-embracing concept of self”. The emerging forms of the Romantic imagination are based on the “scenarios of the individual self, such as birth and death, personal freedom and destiny, self-consciousness, and self-overcoming”. Due to the unique on-going musical process set in Beethoven’s works, it is hardly surprise that Beethoven’s heroic style merges the Goethean enactment of becoming with the narration of consciousness. And this accentuation of the dramatic process of “becoming” comes along with many German dramas of the Goethezeith, which are usually expressed as the heroic quest for freedom as the underlying idea.

True, it is the idea “freedom” that brings us closer to Beethoven’s symphonic works. In fact, according to Daniel Chua, Beethoven’s middle period works are no longer confined to be interpreted as philosophical heroism, but has elevated to represent a form of humanistic quest for total freedom. Chua borrows Theodor Adorno’s word to explain how the idea of “freedom” can be expressed in Beethoven’s music by saying that “the musical processes of Beethoven’s heroic works articulate the very structures of freedom.” But this is a particular form of freedom, not the cliché slogan of freedom, say, political freedom, of one commonly thinks of nowadays. Indeed Beethoven’s own voice of “freedom”, which can be derived from the German Idealist thought, is a kind of freedom to be articulated by the zero equation between the subject and its actions, which is capable of enabling humanity in two ways: first, “zero, as the origin of human self-creation and generates everything from nothing; second, nothing is the frictionless condition where the will is free from all determination.” Here, the keyword that brings us closer to the understanding of the idea of Beethovenian freedom is “nothing”, that is, in Adorno’s sense, nothing is signified, and “nothing” does anything. Of course, for the philosopher, zero-origin of creation that articulates the freedom of void does not simply mean an empty sign of music. What Beethoven does is to turn the empty sign into a symphonic procedure. It is zero origin because nothing is found at the origin of the creative act in Beethoven’s symphonic music.

Take the opening of symphony no. 9 as example. According to Adorno, the music heard in the initial measures just signifying nothing. This absolutely nothing is due to the nothingness of the programmatic element of this work that refers to. And the music goes on a “continuum of nothing” mainly because the symphony merely begins with an alien two-note gesture leaping downwardly in a bare, hollow sound of open fifth without showing any sign to articulate the forthcoming materials. Its appearance here is just like a free act over which no material has precedence. True, nothing is narrated here. As the music goes on, it still contains nothing and becomes nothing. From this sense, the idea of Beethovenian “freedom” is said to be articulated in the freedom of the void, which is only imaginable in the context of aesthetics, not in the reality.

From the above discussion, Beethovenian scholars seem favor of using programmatic narration to interpret Beethoven’s mid-style works, viewing his music as a representation of a hero’s growth. The success of using this paradigm in many musical interpretations, to more or less, I believe, is because of the revolutionary milieu that makes the fin de siècle Europe well-prepared for accepting of such a “hero” come, and the power of the so-called motivic variation technique, which is largely demonstrated in numerous Beethoven’s works for its fitness for such paradigm. On the contrary, since the political-cultural milieu and Beethoven’s compositional language have been greatly changed in his late period, the paradigm of interpretation thus turns inwardly to the individual side of Beethoven’s personal psychological and aesthetical states, rather than the socio-cultural side. That is why the concept of self-consciousness and irony are well fit for explaining the music of late Beethoven. However, for the far-reaching and overwhelming power of Beethoven’s music, whether it is Beethoven’s mid- or late style works, thinking his music as a philosophical idea is always possible. Daniel Chua’s exploration on Beethovean freedom is undoubtedly a typical example of illustrating this.

David Leung (theory david)

2011-03-11 (re-published)