What Does It Mean to Listen to Beethoven?
It would be an understatement to say that Beethoven’s written manuscripts and sketches have received considerable attention from scholars. These documents have been the focus of countless studies of his compositional process and biography. Historiographically speaking, Beethoven is understood to have played a central role in establishing the primacy of the written score as a musical artifact, a primacy that has only recently been called into question by renewed attention to the history of performance.
But what was the significance of writing to somebody who increasingly could not hear? I will argue in this paper that Beethoven began, as early as the mid 1790s, to treat writing as a creative medium in its own right, using it to arrive at textures, rhythms, and musical structures that have a strong visual component. Psychologist Albert Bregman, in his book Auditory Scene Analysis, has defined an “auditory stream” as a grouping of sounds that are perceived together, and “stream segregation” as the process of separating out sounds into discreet events. Both of these processes have visual analogues, as noted by Gestalt psychologists. I will suggest that Beethoven used writing both to formulate and to separate auditory streams visually, producing novel musical effects that appealed to both the eye and the ear. I will also present evidence that Beethoven was highly attuned to the rhythm of the writing process, which in turn suggested to him rhythmic possibilities that could be realized in the finished works.
In support of these ideas I will examine sketches from the “Kafka” miscellany for Op. 10, no. 2, from Landsberg 6 for the “Eroica,” from Petter for the 7th Symphony, and from Artaria 195 and Wgm A47 for Op. 109, as well as the manuscript of Op. 59, no. 1. I will also draw on my recent experience playing selections from the late piano sonatas on two Broadwood replicas by Chris Maene to suggest how Beethoven may have moved between the equally tactile experiences of sketching and of improvising at the piano to compose the final movement of Op. 109.
By looking at the written record of Beethoven’s compositional process in ways that take account of the significant fact of his deafness, I hope to broaden our understanding of writing as a physically creative process by which he actively expanded the vocabulary of music.
This lecture is presented by the UT Austin Musicology & Ethnomusicology Division and the Association of Graduate Musicology/Ethnomusicology Students.
Dr. Robin Wallace, Professor of Musicology, has taught at Baylor University since 2003. Dr. Wallace received his AB from Oberlin College and his MPhil and PhD from Yale University. Prior to Baylor he taught at the Petrie School of Music at Converse College. Dr. Wallace is the author of Take Note: An Introduction to Music Through Active Listening, an introductory textbook published by Oxford University Press. He is an authority on the critical reception of the music of Beethoven, which is the subject of his first published book and of two volumes of primary sources he translated and edited. His publications also include numerous journal articles, reviews, and book chapters. He is currently writing a book about Beethoven’s deafness. Dr. Wallace teaches the music of the Romantic period to both undergraduates and graduate students. He also teaches in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, whose graduates fondly recall his performance of John Cage’s 4’33" even if they don’t remember a note of the music.