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Beethoven's Eroica Sketches: a Form-Functional Approach

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Beethoven's Eroica Sketches: a Form-Functional Approach 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
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