Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University

Beethoven’s Eroica Sketches: A Form-Functional Approach Introduction, Methodology, and Contributions This dissertation introduces new insights into Beethoven’s compositional process to his third symphony. It accomplishes this aim by reconstructing the transcribed single-line sketches to the Eroica found in the Eroica Sketchbook (Beethoven, Lockwood, and Gosman 2013), and by analyzing the reconstructed sketches with form-functional theory (Caplin 1998; 2013). More broadly, this study reorients the analyst’s perspective by valorizing the sketches instead of critiquing them. Form-function theory provides an ideal framework for finding and understanding the strengths in the sketches for three primary reasons.1 First, it prioritizes the role of local harmonic progressions as a determinant of form. We can realize the harmonies that Beethoven implies in his single-line sketches with a high degree of objective accuracy. By contrast, other musical parameters such as texture, dynamics, or instrumentation, which are vital criteria for other well-defined sonata theories (e.g., Hepokoski and Darcy 2011), are very sparse in the sketches and therefore difficult to reconstruct without substantial subjective interpretations. Second, form-function theory minimizes motivic content as the basis of formal function. This feature is important for describing how Beethoven uses the same musical material for different formal functions in successive drafts, and conversely, how he preserves particular formal functions while changing their musical content. Third, the theory establishes well- defined formal categories that can be applied flexibly at all levels of analysis of the sketches (Caplin 1998, 4). These strictly defined categories enable an analyst to elucidate Beethoven’s formal and phrase- structural strategies in individual sketches and compare them across drafts with firm theoretical foundations in an aesthetically neutral environment. By repositioning the analyst’s focus, reconstructing the sketches, and embracing the well- defined theory of formal functions, I provide new insights into Beethoven’s compositional process to the Eroica and his middle-period compositional process more generally.2

1 These features are strengths of form-function theory more generally. See (Caplin 1998, 3–5) 2 For many writers, the Eroica is the piece that defines Beethoven’s heroic “middle period.” Lewis Lockwood, for example, writes, “Of all Beethoven’s works, the Third Symphony, by virtue of its final title, its character, and its magnitude, has been the mainspring behind the notion of a “heroic style” and the labeling of the years from 1803 to 1812 as the “heroic period” (Lockwood 2005, 213). See also (S. G. Burnham 1995; S. Burnham 2020). Posen 1 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University Structure My dissertation will consist of five parts split into chapters. In the first part, I describe my theoretical approaches, scope, and aims of the project. I begin by providing historical context to the sketches by discussing how Beethoven’s single-line continuity sketches relate to what Leopold Mozart referred to as “il filo” (Gjerdingen 2007, 369–97), what eighteenth-century German theorists like Joseph Klein would have called the “Melodie” (Bonds 1991, 91–92), what seventeenth and early eighteenth- century Italian composers might have called partimenti (Sanguinetti 2012, 14), and what Lewis Lockwood has termed a “cue staff” (Lockwood 1970, 45). I use this historical framing to contextualize my approach to reconstructing the sketches into what I call “continuity frames” (Example 1) by realizing the essential harmonies and basic contrapuntal frameworks that the single-voice sketches imply. Finally, I rationalize the use of form-function theory to analyze the continuity frames in place of other sonata theories and approaches and discuss how this methodology offers new perspectives that have hitherto been unexplored. In parts 2-5, I investigate Beethoven’s compositional process to the Eroica by examining the sketches to the individual movements, roughly in the order that they appear in the sketches on pages 4- 91 in the Eroica sketchbook. In each of these parts, I highlight how compositional elements from one movement might influence those in another, discuss the problems that prior approaches introduced, and attempt to solve or re-contextualize the shortcomings of prior approaches with my new methodology. Part 2, which focuses on the sketches to the first movement, is substantially larger than the other parts because there is considerably more scholarly discourse on this movement. 3

Context and Scholarly Position Gustav Nottebohm was the first to transcribe and study Beethoven’s sketches to the Eroica and his widely respected monograph (1880) greatly influenced modern perspectives on Beethoven’s compositional process to the piece.4 In summarizing his analysis of the Eroica sketches found in Landsberg 6, one of Beethoven’s largest, extant desk sketchbooks, Nottebohm characterized Beethoven’s first sketches to the symphony as “very ordinary and conventional,” noting that they “have

3 (Nottebohm 1880; 1979) Nottebohm’s influence is wide-reaching. See, for example, (Tovey 1941; Lockwood 1992; Earp 1993; Beethoven, Lockwood, and Gosman 2013) 4 Translation (Nottebohm 1979). Heinrich Schenker, for example, considered Nottebohm’s monograph on Landsberg 6 one of the only pieces of secondary literature on the Eroica worth consulting (Drabkin 2020, 88). For more on Nottebohm’s profound influence on subsequent Beethoven sketch studies, see Johnson’s (1978, 4– 12) comprehensive historical survey on this topic. Posen 2 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University in themselves little or even nothing at all of Beethoven’s peculiar style and individuality” (Nottebohm 1979, 97). Study of the sketches proved, he claimed, Beethoven’s labored compositional process: “All those passages in the score which bear the stamp of Beethoven’s own individual style. . . which, . . . inspire us, shatter us, move us to tears—all of them were far from the creation of a moment.” Beethoven was only able to bring forth his style “after many repeated attempts and, for the most part, at the expense of considerable effort” (Nottebohm 1979, 96). In short, Nottebohm argued that the Eroica did not emerge smoothly—Beethoven’s compositional labor was as heroic as the symphony itself.5 Following in Nottebohm’s wake, scholars have tended to view the Eroica sketches through a heroic, evolutionary narrative. In this account, the earlier sketches are laden with compositional problems and subsequent drafts gradually show how Beethoven revised or excised these problems to transcend the failings of his earlier musical experiments. This characterization initially appears logical: it would make sense, for example, that if Beethoven altered or removed a passage, he must have found it problematic in some way. But while this reasoning appears sound, it can inadvertently confuse our understanding of Beethoven’s compositional process, or worse, greatly mischaracterize it. To understand the problems that result from analyzing the sketches through Nottebohm’s heroic narrative and to see the benefits of adopting my alternative approach, consider the following extended example. In their analytical commentary to their transcription of Beethoven’s Eroica sketchbook, Lewis Lockwood and Alan Gosman explain that in the first continuity sketch of the exposition to the first movement, Beethoven “seriously disrupts” sonata conventions by introducing the opening theme six times, which frequently suggest “keys that are out of place” (Beethoven, Lockwood, and Gosman 2013, 33) (Example 2). The most problematic re-entry of the main theme material, one that Nottebohm (1880) first described, was the third entry, because it introduced the dominant key (B♭ major) before the arrival of the new subordinate theme material in the same key (Example 2, #3). According to Nottebohm, which Gosman and Lockwood recapitulated, Beethoven revised this passage because it “would simply have weakened the ensuing entry of the second group melody in the same key” (Nottebohm 1979, 54).6 In other words, Beethoven removed this passage

5 In a recently published monograph on the Eroica, William Drabkin recapitulated Nottebohm’s conclusions. (Drabkin 2020, 82) 6 Gosman and Lockwood (2013, 33) make a very similar statement. Alan Gosman devoted further his attention to this problem in the 2016 New Beethoven Research Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia (Gosman 2016). I thank Alan Gosman for sharing his presentation script with me. Posen 3 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University because he eventually recognized that it was incompatible with the sonata form he supposedly worked to construct. At first, Nottebohm’s and Gosman’s explanation for Beethoven’s revision of this supposed problematic entry of the main theme material seems cogent. But further inquiry into subsequent sketches reveals that this explanation twists Beethoven’s compositional process into something more puzzling and mysterious. As Donald Francis Tovey observed, “Beethoven wrote several sketches of this opening before he could get rid of a tiresome tendency of the main theme to appear on the dominant before its proper third statement” (Tovey 1941, 82). Similarly, Lockwood and Gosman noticed that the “errant” entries of the main theme were “not simply deleted from later drafts of the final version” (Beethoven, Lockwood, and Gosman 2013, 33); but rather, “A surprising number of future drafts stubbornly maintain[ed] the opening theme’s intrusion into domains typically reserved for other themes and other keys” (Beethoven, Lockwood, and Gosman 2013, 54). If Beethoven removed the dominant entry of the main theme material and the other “errant” entries because they violated sonata conventions, why was Beethoven so “stubborn” 7 about preserving these seemingly “untenable” designs in so many subsequent sketches? This perspective creates a serious quandary: the explanation for why Beethoven revised the passage makes sense, but then his larger compositional process becomes inexplicable. The insights we gain from studying Beethoven’s sketches are limited fundamentally by the perspectives that inform our inquiries and the types of questions we seek to answer. To address the dilemma posed by the example discussed above and many others like it, I reframe the analytical focus from one that uses ill-defined sonata theories as a type of procrustean bed to define the failings in the sketches, to one that uses the well-formed and aesthetically neutral categories of form-function theory to search for and explain the strengths in the sketches. I suggest, for example, that the dominant entry of the main theme (Example 2, #3) was not a sonata problem, but was rather a deliberate and remarkable solution to a larger design goal. Closer analysis reveals, for example, that the tonal design of the Transition, Part 2 anticipates the tonal excursion of the Subordinate Theme, Part 2 with main theme material in the same three keys that were tonicized earlier in the transition (B♭ major, D♭ major, and E♭ minor) (Example 3). In other words, the so-called “problematic” dominant entry actually proves pivotal for unifying and motivating the unconventional design of the subordinate theme. This in

7 Lockwood and Gosman explain that, “A surprising number of future drafts stubbornly maintain the opening theme’s intrusion into domains typically reserved for other themes and other keys.” (Beethoven, Lockwood, and Gosman 2013, 54) Posen 4 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University turn invites other new questions worth investigating that have the potential to grant us significant new insights into Beethoven’s compositional process. When we analyze Beethoven’s sketches to the Eroica as viable pieces worthy of study rather than malformed experiments, we can begin to understand unusual passages and their large-scale formal implications in more productive ways. This new approach influences profoundly how we understand the compositional genesis of the Eroica and Beethoven’s compositional process more broadly. Nottebohm’s pioneering work may have set the stage for subsequent Beethoven sketch studies, but with new theories and new questions, the time is ripe for a reappraisal of his compositional process.

Posen 5 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University Examples Example 1: Continuity Frame excerpt of the first continuity sketch to the exposition of the first movement (i.e., CS1.1 excerpt). Smaller notes indicate additions to Beethoven's original single-line continuity sketch, shown in regular size notes.

Posen 6 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University Example 2: Page 11 of Landsberg 6, Entries of the Main Theme Material in the first Continuity Sketch (CS1.1)

Example 3: Tonal foreshadowing in Transition, Part 2 Manifesting in Subordinate Theme, Part 2

Posen 7 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University Selected Bibliography Beethoven, Ludwig van, Lewis Lockwood, and Alan Gosman. 2013. Beethoven’s “Eroica” Sketchbook: A Critical Edition (Volume 1). 2 vols. Beethoven Sketchbook Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Brandenburg, Sieghard, William Drabkin, and Douglas Johnson. 1979. “On Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven’s Sketches.” 19th-Century Music 2 (3): 270–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/3519805. Buurman, Erica. 2013. “Beethoven’s Compositional Approach to Multi-Movement Structures in His Instrumental Works.” Ph.D., University of Manchester. Byros, Vasili. 2009. “Foundations of Tonality as Situated Cognition: An Enquiry into the Culture and Cognition of Tonality, with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony as Case Study.” Dissertation, New Haven: Yale University. Caplin, William E. 1991. “Structural Expansion in Beethoven’s Symphonic Forms.” In Beethoven’s Compositional Process, edited by William Kinderman, 27–54. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 1998. Classical Form. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013. Analyzing Classical Form: An Approach for the Classroom. New York: Oxford University Press. Caplin, William E., James Hepokoski, and James Webster. 2010. Musical Form, Forms & Formenlehre: Three Methodological Reflections. Edited by Pieter Bergé. Leuven University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qf01v. Caplin, William E., and Nathan John Martin. 2016. “The ‘Continuous Exposition’ and the Concept of Subordinate Theme.” Music Analysis 35 (1): 4–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12060. Carr, Bruce. 1977. “Future Directions in Sketch Research.” In Beethoven, Performers, and Critics: The International Beethoven Congress, Detroit, 1977, edited by Robert Winter and Bruce Carr. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Churgin, Bathia. 1998. “Beethoven and the New Development-Theme in Sonata-Form Movements.” The Journal of Musicology 16 (3): 323–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/763994. Cooper, Barry. 1990. Beethoven and the Creative Process. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press. ———. 2000. “The Compositional Act: Sketches and Autographs.” In The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, edited by Glenn Stanley, 32–42. New York: Cambridge University Press. Drabkin, William. 1978. “Beethoven’s Sketches and the Thematic Process.” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 105: 25–36. ———. 1991. “Beethoven’s Understanding of ‘Sonata Form’: The Evidence of the Sketchbooks.” In Beethoven’s Compositional Process, edited by William Kinderman, 14–19. University of Nebraska Press. Earp, Lawrence. 1993. “Tovey’s ‘Cloud’ in the First Movement of the Eroica: An Analysis Based on Sketches for the Development and Coda.” Beethoven Forum 2: 55–84. Gosman, Alan. 2016. “Before Its Time: Beethoven’s Experiments with the Dominant Key Early in Sonata-Form Movements.” In . Vancouver, British Columbia. Gossett, Philip. 1974. “Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony: Sketches for the First Movement.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 27 (2): 248–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/830560. Hepokoski, James A. 2016. “Sonata Theory, Secondary Themes and Continuous Expositions: Dialogues with Form-Functional Theory.” Music Analysis 35 (1): 44–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12061. Hepokoski, James A., and Warren Darcy. 2011. Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late- Eighteenth-Century Sonata. Reprint edition. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Horne, William. 1992. “The Hidden Trellis: Where Does the Second Group Begin in the First Movement of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony?” Beethoven Forum 13 (2): 95–147. Jackson, Timothy L. 2016. “The First Movements of Anton Eberl’s Symphonies in E-Flat Major and D Minor, and Beethoven’s Eroica: Toward ‘New’ Sonata Forms?” In Explorations in Schenkerian Analysis, edited by David Beach and Su Yin Mak, 1st ed., 61–96. Eastman Studies in Music. Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer; University of Rochester Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782048633.006. Johnson, Douglas. 1978. “Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven’s Sketches.” 19th-Century Music 2 (1): 3–17. https://doi.org/10.2307/746188. Kerman, Joseph. 1982. “Sketch Studies.” In Musicology in the 1980s: Methods, Goals, Opportunities, edited by Kern Holoman and Claude V. Palisca. New York: Da Capo Press.

Posen 8 Thomas W. Posen Dissertation Prospectus. Approved Winter 2020 McGill University ———. 2017. “Tovey’s Beethoven.” In Beethoven, by Michael Spitzer, edited by Michael Spitzer, 285–302. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315096506-14. Kinderman, William, ed. 1991. Beethoven’s Compositional Process. Vol. 1. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 2009. “Beyond the Text: Genetic Criticism and Beethoven’s Creative Process.” Acta Musicologica 81 (1): 99–122. Korsyn, Kevin. 2016. “At the Margins of Music Theory, History, and Composition: Completing the Unfinished Fugue in Die Kunst Der Fuge by J. S. Bach.” Music Theory and Analysis 3 (2): 115–44. https://doi.org/10.11116/MTA.3.2.1. Kramer, Richard. 1975. “Notes to Beethoven’s Education.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1): 72– 101. https://doi.org/10.2307/830917. ———. 1991. “The Sketch Itself.” In Beethoven’s Compositional Process, edited by William Kinderman. North American Beethoven Studies 1. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press in association with the American Beethoven Society and the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San Jose State University. Lockwood, Lewis. 1970. “On Beethoven’s Sketches and Autographs: Some Problems of Definition and Interpretation.” Acta Musicologica 42 (1/2): 32–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/932267. ———. 1982. “Eroica Perspectives: Strategy and Design in the First Movement.” In Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process, 3:118–113. ———. 1991. “The Beethoven Sketchbooks and the General State of Sketch Research.” In Beethoven’s Compositional Process, edited by William Kinderman. Vol. 1. University of Nebraska Press. ———. 1992. Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process. Reprint edition 2014. Berlin, Boston: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674430204. ———. 2009. “From Conceptual Image to Realization: Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Sketches.” In Beethoven and the Creative Process, edited by William Kinderman and Joseph E. Jones, 108–22. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Morgan, Robert. 1993. “Coda as Culmination: The First Movement of the Eroica Symphony.” In Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, edited by Christopher Hatch and David Bernstein, 357–76. The University of Chicago Press. Nottebohm, Gustav. 1880. Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. ———. 1979. Two Beethoven Sketchbooks: A Description with Musical Extracts. Translated by Jonathan Katz. London: Victor Gollancz. November, Nancy, ed. 2020. The Cambridge Companion to the Eroica Symphony. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108524995. Richards, Mark. 2013. “Sonata Form and the Problem of Second-Theme Beginnings.” Music Analysis 32 (1): 3– 45. https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12011. Sipe, Thomas Owen. 1998. Beethoven: Eroica Symphony. Stanley, Glenn. 1994. “The ‘Wirklich Gantz Neue Manier’ and the Path to It: Beethoven’s Variations for Piano, 1783-1802.” Beethoven Forum 3 (1): 53–80. Tovey, Donald Francis. 1941. “The Integrity of Music.” In A Musician Talks. London and New York: Oxford University Press. Vande Moortele, Steven. 2015. “The Philosopher as Theorist: Adorno’s Materiale Formenlehre.” In Formal Functions in Perspective: Essays on Musical Form from Haydn to Adorno, edited by Steven Vande Moortele, Julie Pedneault- Deslauriers, and Nathan John Martin, 411–33. University of Rochester Press. Wade, Rachel. 1977. “Beethoven’s Eroica Sketchbook.” Fontes Artis Musicae 24: 254–89.

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