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2013 Narratives of Innocence and Experience: Plot Archetypes in Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet Emily S. Gertsch
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF MUSIC
NARRATIVES OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE: PLOT ARCHETYPES IN
ROBERT SCHUMANN’S PIANO QUINTET AND PIANO QUARTET
By
EMILY S. GERTSCH
A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2013
Emily S. Gertsch defended this dissertation on April 22, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were:
Joseph Kraus Professor Directing Dissertation
Douglass Seaton University Representative
Michael Buchler Committee Member
James Mathes Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
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For Oscar, my greatest supporter, and Mom and Dad, my most influential teachers.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of a number of people. To my advisor, Joseph Kraus, I owe special thanks for his unending support, guidance, encouragement, and patience. His doctoral seminar during my first year at Florida State University exposed me to the world of music and meaning and this project grew from a research paper begun in that special seminar. I have learned so much from Professor Kraus, especially in the areas of music and meaning and Schenkerian analysis, and I will be forever grateful for his guidance and friendship. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the other members of my committee—Michael Buchler, Jim Mathes, and Douglass Seaton—for their support, discerning editorial comments, and insightful suggestions. It has truly been a pleasure to work with each member of my committee and I look forward to continued professional relationships and friendships with these great teachers and scholars. The music theory faculty as a whole at Florida State University is special for many reasons. But it is the wonderful example of a collegial environment and the enormous amount of work and time that each faculty member personally invests in their students that has made the most impact on me. I will always be grateful that I had the opportunity to learn from and work with each music theory faculty member at Florida State. The professional and personal relationships I developed while attending Florida State are ones that will last a lifetime, and I will always cherish the times spent with fellow students (especially Sarah Sarver, Greg Decker, Sara Nodine, and Judith Ofcarcik). The support my family has given me during my doctoral studies is immeasurable. My parents, George and Mary Swift, have provided continuous encouragement to pursue this dream, and have offered both the material and intangible resources that have allowed me to achieve my musical and academic goals. The home- cooked meals and endless hours of babysitting only scratch the surface of the many ways they have helped me to complete this project. My gratitude for this and for their love is inexpressible. My brother, Bill Swift, has also provided an enormous amount of support and encouragement, and I am proud to call him not only my brother, but also one of my closest friends. I would like to thank my mother-in-law and father-in-law, Alida and Bruno Gertsch, for their love, encouragement, and for the weekends of
iv babysitting that enabled me to work on this project with no distractions. Finally, I would like to thank my friend Katie Bray, who is like a sister to me. She has provided me with support and encouragement for more than twenty-four years. Most of all, I would like to thank my husband Oscar. He has made many sacrifices in order to support me in reaching my goals, and I am forever grateful for his patience, unconditional love, and devotion. I cannot imagine a better person with whom to share my life. He is an amazing husband to me and a wonderful father to our children, Charlotte and Owen—I look forward to the many new adventures that await us as a family.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ...... viii List of Figures ...... ix List of Examples ...... x Abstract ...... xv 1. INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY ...... 1 1.1 Introduction to the Topic ...... 1 1.2 Review of Literature on Music and Meaning ...... 2 1.2.1 Semiotic Approaches ...... 2 1.2.2 Narratological Approaches ...... 9 1.2.3 Conclusion ...... 19 1.3 Methodology and Significance of the Project ...... 20 2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ...... 23 2.1 1842: Schumann’s "Chamber Music Year" ...... 23 2.2 Schumann’s Chamber Music Models ...... 28 2.3 Schumann and the Musical Setting of Chamber Music ...... 32 2.4 Schumann’s Compositional Process ...... 34 2.4.1 Schumann’s Early Compositional Process ...... 34 2.4.2 Schumann’s Late Compositional Process ...... 35 2.5 Conclusions ...... 37 3. A ROMANCE NARRATIVE: JEAN PAUL AND THE PERSONA IN THE FIRST MOVEMENT OF THE PIANO QUINTET ...... 38 3.1 Romance Narrative in Literature and Music ...... 38 3.2 Schumann and Jean Paul ...... 40 3.3 The Persona Theory ...... 44 3.4 Analysis: The First Movement of the Piano Quintet ...... 45 3.4.1 The Order-Imposing Hierarchy and Transgression ...... 45 3.4.2 The Exposition: P ...... 47 3.4.3 The Exposition: TR1 ...... 49 3.4.4 The Exposition: TR2 ...... 52 3.4.5 The Exposition: TR3 ...... 54 3.4.6 The Exposition: S1.1 ...... 58 3.4.7 The Exposition: S1.2 and S2 ...... 60 3.4.8 The Development ...... 64 3.4.9 The Recapitulation and Coda ...... 72 3.4.10 The Persona ...... 75 3.5 Conclusions ...... 76 4. A FAILED TRAGIC-TO-TRANSCENDENT NARRATIVE: THE SECOND MOVEMENT OF THE PIANO QUINTET ...... 78 4.1 Tragic Topics versus Tragic Narrative ...... 78 4.2 Analysis: The Second Movement of the Piano Quintet ...... 79 4.2.1 The Order-Imposing Hierarchy and Transgression ...... 79 4.2.2 Formal Problems That Complicate a Tragic Reading ...... 80
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4.2.3 “The Anxiety of Influence” and Schumann’s Misreading of Beethoven .81 4.2.4 Structural Analysis ...... 86 4.2.5 Conclusion: A Failed Tragic-to-Transcendent Narrative ...... 97 5. COMIC IRONY IN SCHUMANN’S DIALOGUE WITH BEETHOVEN’S FIRST SYMPHONY: THE THIRD MOVEMENT OF THE PIANO QUINTET ...... 100 5.1 Schumann and the Beethovenian Tradition of the Scherzo ...... 100 5.2 Analysis: An Ironic Comparison of the Scherzo Movements ...... 102 5.2.1 Irony as a Narrative Archetype ...... 103 5.2.2 Introduction to the Analysis ...... 104 5.2.3 A Comparative Analysis of the Scherzo Sections ...... 105 5.2.4 An Analysis of Schumann’s First Trio ...... 114 5.2.5 An Analysis of Schumann’s Second Trio ...... 117 5.2.6 An Analysis of Schumann’s Coda ...... 121 5.2.7 Conclusion ...... 124 6. A COMIC ARCHETYPE OF EMERGENCE: THE FINALE OF THE PIANO QUINTET ...... 126 6.1 Comic Narratives and Discursive Strategies ...... 126 6.2 “Parallel” Forms and its Application to the Quintet Finale ...... 128 6.3 Analysis: The Finale of the Piano Quintet ...... 133 6.3.1 The Order-Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression ...... 134 6.3.2 Part I: The Parallel Sonata-Rondo Form ...... 135 6.3.3 Part II: The Coda ...... 146 6.3.4 Conclusion ...... 153 7. TWO ADDITIONAL ROMANCE NARRATIVES: THE FIRST AND THIRD MOVEMENTS OF THE PIANO QUARTET ...... 155 7.1 First Movement of the Quartet: Bildung in the Sostenuto assai, Allegro ma non troppo ...... 156 7.1.1 Part I: A Romance Narrative Archetype ...... 156 7.1.2 Part II: Bildung and Complications of the Romance Narrative ...... 175 7.1.3 Conclusion ...... 181 7.2 Third Movement of the Quartet: Andante cantabile ...... 182 7.2.1 The Order-Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression ...... 182 7.2.2 The A Section ...... 183 7.2.3 The B Section ...... 188 7.2.4 The A' Section ...... 191 7.2.5 The Coda ...... 193 7.2.6 Conclusion ...... 195 8. CONCLUSION ...... 196 8.1 Summary ...... 196 8.2 Implications for Further Study ...... 199 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 200 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 209
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LIST OF TABLES
1.1 The Four Narrative Archetypes ...... 12
3.1 Order Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression ...... 46
3.2 Formal Diagram of the Exposition ...... 46
3.3 The Second Theme Area ...... 62
4.1 Order-Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression ...... 80
4.2a Form Chart. Schumann, In Modo d’una Marcia ...... 81
4.2b Form Chart. Beethoven, Rondo from the Pathétique Sonata ...... 81
4.3 Mapping the Time Aspect of Narrative onto Tonal Areas ...... 84
4.4a Form Chart. Beethoven, Pathétique Rondo ...... 85
4.4b Form Chart. Schumann, In Modo d’una Marcia ...... 85
5.1 Order Imposing Hierarchy vs. Transgression in Schumann’s Scherzo ...... 104
5.2 Form of the Menuetto from Beethoven’s First Symphony ...... 105
5.3 Form of the Scherzo from Schumann’s Piano Quintet ...... 105
6.1 Order-Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression ...... 135
6.2 Sonata-Rondo Parallel Form of Finale ...... 145
7.1 Order-Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression ...... 157
7.2 Order-Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression ...... 182
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LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Reproduction of Hatten’s Figure 2.1 from Musical Meaning in Beethoven ...... 4
1.2 Reproduction of Almén’s Figure 1 from “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis” ...... 11
6.1 Reproduction of Roesner’s Figure 2, Formal Diagram of the Piano Sonata in f, op. 14, I ...... 129
6.2 Reproduction of Roesner’s Figure 3, op. 14, I. Depiction of the Symmetrical Form Based on Tonal “Mirror” Images ...... 129
6.3 Reproduction of Brown’s Diagram of Parallel Form in a Sonata Movement ...... 130
6.4 Reproduction of Brown’s Diagram of Parallel Form in a Rondo Movement ...... 131
6.5 Reproduction of Brown’s Figure 13.3 and 13.5. A Formal Overview of the Quintet Finale ...... 133
7.1 Form Diagram of the Exposition, mm. 1–120 ...... 167
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LIST OF EXAMPLES
3.1 P Theme (“Heroic” Topic), mm. 1–9 ...... 48
3.2 Voice-Leading Sketch of P, mm. 1–9 ...... 48
3.3 TR1, mm. 9–17 ...... 50
3.4a Voice-Leading Sketch of TR1, mm. 9–17 ...... 51
3.4b Simplified Voice-Leading Sketch of TR1, mm. 9–17 ...... 51
3.5 TR2, mm. 17–26 ...... 53
3.6 Voice-Leading Sketch of TR2, mm. 17-25 ...... 54
3.7 TR3, mm. 27–50 ...... 56
3.8a Voice-Leading Sketch of TR3, mm. 26-50 ...... 58
3.8b Deep Middleground Sketch of the Exposition, mm. 1–108 ...... 58
3.9 S1.1 and S1.2, mm. 51–58 ...... 59
3.10 S1.2, mm. 57–72 ...... 61
3.11 Voice-Leading Sketch of S1.1 and S1.2, mm. 51–79 ...... 61
3.12 End of Second Theme Area, mm. 99–108 ...... 63
3.13 Development, mm. 116–190 ...... 65
3.14 Voice-Leading Sketch of the Development, mm. 116–187 ...... 70
3.15 Retransition, mm. 185–206 ...... 72
3.16 K and Coda, mm. 314–338 ...... 74
3.17 Voice-Leading Sketch of the Coda, mm. 313–332 ...... 75
4.1 Voice-Leading Sketch. Schumann, Refrain (“Funeral March”), mm. 1–10 ...... 82
4.2 Voice-Leading Sketch. Beethoven, Pathétique Rondo, Refrain, mm. 1–8 ...... 82
4.3 Opening Phrase of the “Funeral March,” mm. 1–10 ...... 86
4.4a Opening of Refrain, “Framing Motive,” mm. 1–2 ...... 88
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4.4b Closing of Refrain, “Framing Motive,” mm. 26-29 ...... 88
4.5 Transgression, Episode 1, “Singing Style,” mm. 29b–37 ...... 89
4.6 Voice-Leading Sketch, Episode 1, mm. 29b–45 ...... 89
4.7a Recomposed Opening Phrase of Episode 1, mm. 29b–37 ...... 90
4.7b Actual Opening Phrase of Episode 1, mm. 29b–37 ...... 90
4.8 Episode 2, Agitato, mm. 92–96 ...... 91
4.9a Main Motive from the Refrain, “Funeral March,” mm. 3–4 ...... 92
4.9b Motivic Manipulation in Episode 2, Agitato, mm. 92–100 ...... 92
4.10 Metrical Dissonance and Hypermeter in Episode 2, mm. 92–100 ...... 93
4.11 Metrical Dissonance Between Piano and Violin 1 in Episode 2 ...... 94
4.12 Voice-Leading Sketch. Episode 2, Agitato, mm. 92–109 ...... 95
4.13 Episode 3, “Singing Style”, mm. 132b–140 ...... 96
4.14 Opening of Final Refrain,“Funeral March,” mm. 165–173 ...... 97
4.15 End of Final Refrain,“Funeral March,” mm. 183–193 ...... 98
5.1 Beethoven, Menuetto from Symphony No. 1, III, mm. 1–8 ...... 106
5.2 Opening of Schumann’s Scherzo, mm. 1–16...... 107
5.3 Reproduction of Carl Schachter’s Voice-Leading Sketch of Beethoven, Symphony No. 1, Scherzo, mm. 1–8 ...... 109
5.4a Foreground Voice-Leading Sketch of Schumann’s Scherzo, mm. 1–8 ...... 109
5.4b Middleground Voice-Leading Sketch of Schumann’s Scherzo ...... 109
5.5 Hypermetrical Structure of Beethoven’s Scherzo, mm. 1-8 ...... 110
5.6 Hypermetrical Structure of Schumann’s Scherzo, mm. 1–16 ...... 111
5.7 Metrical Dissonance in the Opening of Schumann’s Scherzo ...... 112
5.8 Notated vs. Perceived Meter in the Opening of Schumann’s Scherzo ...... 113
5.9 Schumann, Trio I, mm. 45–48 ...... 114
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5.10 Foreground Voice-Leading Reduction of Schumann’s Trio I ...... 116
5.11 Middleground Voice-Leading Reduction of Schumann’s Trio I ...... 116
5.12 Opening of Schumann’s Trio II, mm. 123–128 ...... 117
5.13a Middleground Voice-Leading Reduction of Schumann’s Trio II ...... 118
5.13b Deep Middleground Voice-Leading Reduction of Schumann’s Trio II ...... 118
5.14 Four-Bar Compositional Blocks and Metrical Displacement Dissonance in the Opening of Schumann’s Trio II ...... 119
5.15 Motivic Transformations in Trio II, mm. 142–158 ...... 120
5.16 Progression of Piano Accompaniment Figuration in Trio II ...... 121
5.17 Coda to Schumann’s Movement, mm. 241–265 ...... 122
5.18 Deep Middleground Sketch of Schumann’s Scherzo Movement ...... 124
5.19 Voice-Leading Sketch of Schumann’s Coda ...... 124
6.1 Refrain (A), Style Hongrois, mm. 1–21 ...... 136
6.2 Voice-Leading Reduction of the Refrain (A), mm. 1–21 ...... 137
6.3 First Episode (B), mm. 21–29 ...... 138
6.4 Voice-Leading Reduction of First Episode (B), mm. 21–29 ...... 138
6.5 Second Episode (C), mm. 43b–77a ...... 140
6.6 Second Return of the Refrain (A) and the Opening of the “Development,” mm. 77b–93 ...... 142
6.7 “Development,” New Lyrical Melody, mm. 115–129 ...... 143
6.8 “Recapitulation,” Parallel Return of A, mm. 136–153 ...... 145
6.9 End of Part I, Introduction to Coda, and Closing Idea 1, mm. 217–232 ...... 147
6.10 Coda, First Fugato, mm. 245–267 ...... 149
6.11 Coda, First Fugato, mm. 268–276 ...... 150
6.12 End of First Coda and Beginning of Second Coda, mm. 295–318 ...... 151
6.13 End of Second Fugato and Introduction to Closing 1, mm. 370-379 ...... 152
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6.14 End of the Closing 1 Theme and Final Extension, mm. 396-404 ...... 153
7.1 Hymn Topic of the Introduction, mm. 1–7 ...... 157
7.2 Heroic Topic of the Principal Theme, mm. 11–18 ...... 158
7.3 First Transgression, Heroic Topic in F Minor, mm. 26–35 ...... 159
7.4a Motive y, mm. 19-25 ...... 160
7.4b Second Transgression, Motive y Recast in G minor, mm. 41–47 ...... 160
7.5 Second Transgression and Restatement of Principal Theme, mm. 41–55 ...... 161
7.6 Transition, Agitato Topic, mm. 64–77 ...... 162
7.7 Transition, mm. 86–106 ...... 164
7.8 End of Transition, mm. 107–120 ...... 165
7.9 Development, Motive x in D minor and A minor ...... 167
7.10 Development, Sequence, mm. 165–180 ...... 168
7.11 Development, Motives x and y Juxtaposed, mm. 189–203 ...... 169
7.12 Retransition, mm. 204–212 ...... 170
7.13 Recapitulation, mm. 213–226 ...... 171
7.14 Coda, mm. 309–324 ...... 173
7.15 End of Coda, mm. 334–355 ...... 174
7.16 Voice-Leading Sketch of the Introduction, mm. 1–12 ...... 177
7.17 Voice-Leading Sketch of the First Theme, mm. 13–35 ...... 177
7.18 Voice-Leading Sketch of the Development ...... 178
7.19a Opposition Between “Heroic” and “Arabesque” Topics in Exposition ...... 180
7.19b Recapitulation, “Arabesque” topic removed, mm. 213–220 ...... 180
7.20 The Cantabile Topic of the Main Theme (A), mm. 1–18 ...... 184
7.21 Voice-Leading Reduction of Main Theme, Cantabile Topic, mm. 3–18 ...... 185
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7.22 A Section, mm. 27–47 ...... 187
7.23 B Section, mm. 48–72 ...... 189
7.24 Voice-Leading Sketch of the B Section, mm. 48–70 ...... 190
7.25 Middleground Voice-Leading Sketch of the Movement ...... 190
7.26 A', mm. 73–91 ...... 192
7.27 End of A', mm. 100–108 ...... 193
7.28 Coda, mm. 117–130 ...... 194
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ABSTRACT
This dissertation explores the interaction between structure and narrative in Schumann’s 1842 chamber music for strings and piano. This repertoire, while somewhat neglected in the current scholarly analytical literature, reveals Schumann’s success at creating an identity of his own in the chamber music genre—an identity surely influenced by his love of Romantic literature, which I find makes his music especially suitable for narrative analysis. Using the narratological approach of Byron Almén as my primary methodology, I also draw upon the semiotic approaches of Robert Hatten and Kofi Agawu and the narratological approaches of Anthony Newcomb and Douglass Seaton in order to enrich the discussion. My analyses use structural support to trace musical oppositions—including oppositions in topic, style, markedness, motive, and texture—in order to support narrative readings. More importantly, I explore how oppositions in foreground voice leading correlate with expressive oppositions, thus enhancing narrative interpretations. In the first chapter I discuss the relevant theoretical and analytical literature associated with music and meaning, focusing on the current trends in semiotic and narratological theory as applied to instrumental music. I provide critiques of the theories discussed as well as insights into how each theory is useful for the current study. In the last subsection of this chapter I recognize the problems that one-to-one mappings between structure and meaning can create and discuss the benefits and pitfalls of this type of analysis. Chapter 2 provides historical context for the year during which Schumann wrote the pieces studied in this dissertation (1842) and explores Schumann’s chamber music models—Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn— and his compositional process. Chapters 3 through 6 provide comprehensive analyses of the four movements from Schumann’s Piano Quintet, op. 44. Primarily using Byron Almén’s adaptation of Northrop Frye’s theoretical model of narrative archetypes, I show how the four movements of the Piano Quintet move in clockwise motion around the circular model: the first movement as a romance archetype at the top of the circle in the realm of innocence, the second movement as a fall to the tragic archetype at the bottom of the circle in the realm of experience and tragedy, the third movement as a move to the
xv ironic archetype in the realm of experience, and the fourth movement as a move upward to the comic archetype with a return to innocence and happiness. Chapter 7 comprises two additional readings of romance narratives in Schumann’s Piano Quartet, op. 47 that reveal new features of this archetype. The first movement not only presents a hero who is victorious over external transgressions, but a hero who is also victorious over his own internal transgressions as his character grows and matures throughout the movement, a process of Bildung. The third movement illustrates a romance archetype in the form of a duet between two characters: a male and a female that represent Robert and Clara Schumann. In the final chapter of this dissertation I suggest implications for further study, focusing on other chamber music repertoire by Robert Schumann. The research and analysis undertaken in this dissertation provides both comprehensive structural and narrative analyses of six movements from Schumann’s Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet and illustrates how the existing theories of music and meaning (both narrative and semiotic) can be effectively correlated with oppositions in structural voice leading in ways that provide analytical interpretations that have a greater depth than many that currently exist.
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY
1.1 Introduction to the Topic
Relatively little attention has been paid to the 1842 chamber music of Robert Schumann in the scholarly analytical literature. Schumann’s chamber music is often criticized as attempting and failing to live up to the quality found in the chamber works of Beethoven. While Schumann might differ from Beethoven, he was ultimately successful at creating an identity of his own in the genre—an identity surely influenced by his love of Romantic literature, which makes his music especially suitable for narrative analysis. Anthony Newcomb has done some work in this area with the String Quartet in A Major op. 41, no. 3,1 but Schumann’s chamber music repertoire has not yet been fully explored with respect to structural and narrative analysis. In this project I will explore the interaction between structure and narrative in Schumann’s 1842 chamber music. Specifically, I will focus my attention on the Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, op. 44, and the Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, op. 47. After his marriage in 1840 to Clara Wieck, Schumann turned to the symphony and chamber music in 1841 and 1842 in an attempt to cultivate a reputation for himself as a “serious” composer. The two pieces I have chosen exemplify this turn to the “serious” in Schumann’s style. In addition to the chamber pieces listed above, Schumann wrote three string quartets in 1842 (op. 41), but I will focus on the chamber works for strings and piano. I will not examine his Phantasiestücke from the same year, because they are free pieces reminiscent of his earlier style that do not belong with the rest of his “serious” chamber music from 1842. Although Schumann’s Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet have been somewhat neglected and even scorned by critics, they are worthy of study, since in them one can observe interesting links between structure and narrative. In the next subsection of this chapter I discuss the relevant theoretical and analytical literature associated with music and meaning, focusing on the current trends
1 Anthony Newcomb, “Schumann and Late Eighteenth-Century Narrative Strategies,” 19th-Century Music 1
in semiotic and narratological theory as applied to instrumental music. I provide critiques of the theories discussed as well as insight into how each theory will be useful for the current study. In the last subsection of this chapter, I address the problems that one-to-one mappings between structure and meaning can create and discuss the benefits and pitfalls of this type of analysis. I also discuss the methodologies I will use and the ways in which I will enrich them for the present analytical project.
1.2 Review of Literature on Music and Meaning
The question of how meaning can be communicated by textless instrumental music, especially in the “absolute” music of the nineteenth century, is one that has plagued scholars for decades. Prior to the late eighteenth century the ideal type of music was mostly sung and involved a text on which semantic meaning could be based. With the rise of chamber music and symphonies in the late eighteenth century came a shift in the idea of meaning in music, as music was emancipated from language. The music of the nineteenth century is especially well suited to interpretation as musical narrative because of the self-aware individualization of the period and the sense of voice in the music that makes the musical experience “romantic.” In the field of music theory, three primary approaches to musical meaning have developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: a semiotic approach, a narratological approach, and a cognitive/psychological approach. I will focus on how meaning can be communicated by instrumental music in the nineteenth century employing the work of scholars who use semiotic and narratological approaches, because I have found these approaches to be the most useful to the study of Schumann’s instrumental chamber music, as will be clarified in the subsequent discussions.
1.2.1 Semiotic Approaches Musical semiotics is based on a model in which the relation between the signifier and signified involves three levels: poetic, neutral, and esthetic.2 The poietic level encompasses all aspects of the production of a piece of music—“the process of
2 The three levels of semiotic analysis encompass the central pillar of Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s theory of musical semiotics. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 2
creation.”3 The neutral level is “a level of analysis at which one does not decide a priori whether the results generated by a specific analytical proceeding are relevant from the esthetic or poietic point of view… neutral means both that the poetic and esthetic dimensions of the object have been ‘neutralized,’ and that one proceeds to the end of a given procedure regardless of the results obtained.”4 The neutral level does not refer to neutral analysis; rather it is the end result of the poietic process of creation—the score or the music itself. At the esthetic level “receivers, when confronted by a symbolic form, assign one or many meanings to the form.”5 The esthetic level, which deals with the consumption of music, allows us to “construct meaning, in the course of an active perceptual process.”6 A semiotic musical analysis involves several stages. On the neutral level, analysis consists of segmentation of the musical structure into formal units (the music’s signs) and an examination of the use of these units in relation to each other. On the poietic level, the analyst can proceed either inductively or deductively. Analysts can also proceed from analysis to the esthetic level, once again either inductively or deductively. A semiotic musical analysis can be related to the poietic level, the esthetic level, or both levels. Semiotic scholars in the field of music theory include Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Robert Hatten, Kofi Agawu, Raymond Monelle, Eero Tarasti, David Lidov, and Adam Krims. In the following discussion, I will focus on the semiotic work of Robert Hatten and Kofi Agawu because their approaches are the ones that most pertain to the work in the current study. The Semiotic Approach of Robert Hatten. Hatten’s work in the area of semiotics in music began in 1982 (when the field of meaning in music still received a rather chilly reception in theoretical circles) with his dissertation, “Toward a Semiotic Model of Style in Music: Epistemological and Methodological Bases.”7 Hatten acknowledged that his dissertation, while it provided groundwork for the study of expressive meaning, was still unable to explain expressive meaning in a more complete sense, and he wanted to provide a semiotic model of analysis that embraces both expressive and formal
3 Ibid., 12. 4 Ibid., 13. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 12. 7 Robert S. Hatten, “Toward a Semiotic Model of Style in Music: Epistemological and Methodological Bases” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1982). 3
meaning.8 This led to his 1994 book Musical Meaning in Beethoven, in which Hatten “integrates perspectives from semiotics, music theory, and music history to construct a new mode of interpretation of Beethoven’s late style.”9 Hatten’s semiotic theory in Musical Meaning in Beethoven combines structuralist and hermeneutic approaches. Central to his theory are the concepts of correlation, interpretation, and markedness of oppositions. To begin, Hatten defines two types of competencies: stylistic competency, which is the understanding of the general principles and constraints of a musical style; and strategic competency, which is the understanding of the individual choices and exceptions illustrated by a particular musical work. Stylistic correlations involve the general mapping of expressive oppositions onto oppositions in musical structures; expressive states are mapped onto stylistic types. Strategic interpretations also map expressive oppositions onto oppositions in musical structures, but in a more specific way for a particular work of music. The dialectic between the stylistic correlations and strategic interpretations is best understood by an examination of Hatten’s Figure 2.1, taken from Chapter 2 of Musical Meaning in Beethoven.
Figure 1.1. Reproduction of Hatten’s Figure 2.1 from Musical Meaning in Beethoven.10
The idea of markedness is central to Hatten’s theory, and he defines it as “the asymmetrical valuation of an opposition.” 11 In musical meaning markedness of structural oppositions correlates with markedness of expressive oppositions—marked entities are distinctive and represent the exceptional, while unmarked entities are more
8 Robert S. Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), xiii. 9 David Lidov, Foreword to Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation by Robert S. Hatten (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), ix. 10 Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 30. 11 Ibid., 291. 4
general and normative. Markedness values can grow over time in particular contexts, creating a change in markedness values. The idea of types and tokens (taken from Charles Sanders Peirce) provides another way to account for markedness in music. A type, which is understood as unmarked (i.e., the tonic triad), is a generalized category or concept. A token, which is understood as marked, is a physical manifestation of a stylistic type (i.e., a particular spacing/voicing of a tonic triad in a particular key). Another important concept in Hatten’s theory is that of “topics.” Topics, as defined by Leonard Ratner’s work in the field of stylistic references in Classic music,12 are coded style types that carry features linked to affect, class, and social occasion. Topics, Hatten observes, are a “complex musical correlation originating in a kind of music” and they “may acquire expressive correlations in the Classical style, and they may be further interpreted expressively.”13 His concept of expressive genres stems from the idea of topics, and expressive genres are “characterized or distinguished by oppositions in the style.”14 In Hatten’s words an expressive genre is “a category of musical works based on their implementation of a change-of-state schema (tragic-to- triumphant, tragic-to-transcendent) or their organization of expressive states in terms of an overarching topical field (pastoral, tragic).”15 Expressive genres, on the level of a piece or movement, result from the change of state from one topical field to another or from the use of a single topical field to the exclusion of others. Also at the heart of Hatten’s theory is the idea of musical “troping.” Troping occurs when “two different, formally unrelated types are brought together in the same functional location so as to spark an interpretation based on their interaction.”16 The idea of a trope stems from literary theory, and in music the musical event must produce an emergent meaning that crosses the established correlational field. In summary, Hatten’s meanings emerge from a correlation of stylistic types with expressive content. His complex semiotic theory considers how oppositions of musical elements give rise to expressive oppositions and how the juxtaposition of expressive types brings about new expressive interpretations. In Musical Meaning in Beethoven Hatten applies his semiotic theory specifically to the late music of Beethoven. However,
12 Leonard G. Ratner, Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books, 1980). 13 Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 295. 14 Ibid., 70. 15 Ibid., 290. 16 Ibid., 295. 5
the basic structure of his theory, which is built on correlation, interpretation, and markedness of oppositions, is easily applied to other instrumental music from the nineteenth century. In fact, Hatten provides an interesting comparison of his own ideas of expressive meaning with those of Robert Schumann. Schumann suggests that a program or suggestive title acts like a poetic description of creative criticism; so the music does not portray the program, rather the program suggests the music.17 Much like Hatten, Schumann believed that music could communicate feelings or psychological states.18 However, Hatten, unlike Schumann, uses detailed analysis to correlate each cultural unit with an opposition in the style of the work, which ties an otherwise subjective discourse to a theoretical framework.19 Accordingly, Hatten’s theory is particularly suitable for the current analytical study of Schumann’s chamber music for piano and strings. The Semiotic Approach of Kofi Agawu. Kofi Agawu takes a very different semiotic approach to the analysis of Classic music with his 1991 book Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music.20 Agawu’s theory relies on the synthesis of topical signs and structural signs. His goal is to point out features of works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven that might enhance an understanding and appreciation of Classic repertoire. He seeks to study works from the Classic repertoire by examining their structural and expressive attributes in order to determine meaning. Agawu’s theoretical notion of “playing with signs” is based on a semiotic framework that insists on mutual interaction between structure and expression. According to Agawu, “it is the dialectical interplay between manifest surface and structural background that should guide the analysis, and it is only within such a framework that we can appropriately acknowledge the rich and subtle meanings that underlie the deceptively simple and familiar music of the Classic era.”21 This semiotic theory depends on a dialectic between what Agawu calls “extroversive semiosis” and “introversive semiosis.” Extroversive semiosis represents the domain of expression with topical signs and deals with surface-level phenomena. Agawu discusses Ratner’s idea of topics in Classic
17 Leon Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 120. 18 Ibid., 121. 19 Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 231. 20 Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 21 Ibid., 25. 6
music, which are “forms of associative signification.”22 Agawu stresses two crucial facets of a topical analysis: the listener must possess stylistic competence; and “natural” and “historical” associations of topic should point to an irreducible conventional specificity.23 He also emphasizes the idea that topics are a point of departure but are not “total identities,” as they help to shape our responses as listeners; they are suggestive but not exhaustive.24 While analysis of topics is strictly identification (the first step in Agawu’s method of analysis), a topic assumes its identity by the force of contextual factors, and it is by identifying the interplay of topics that one sets up the possibility of a topical discourse. Topical analysis must be combined with structural analysis in order to provide a rich interpretation of the music. Agawu next discusses introversive semiosis, which deals with the “pure signs” of musical structure. These pure signs provide clues to musical organization and he claims that the most powerful framework for analyzing pure signs analyzes the dynamic quality of Classic music, which Schenker’s theory most clearly conveys. Agawu discusses the local dynamism within the framework of the Schenkerian Ursatz while proposing a rhetorical strategy for the Ursatz. By the rhetorical strategy of the Ursatz, Agawu is referring to the framing of Schenker’s theory in terms of a work’s “beginning-middle-ending” paradigm.25 Essentially a “beginning” is a stable point of departure that establishes the generic identity and structural unit and “contains a period that provides, in miniature, the structural process of the piece as a whole.”26 A middle is engaged with a process (as opposed to an exposition) that is open-ended and transitional—it is often unclear and structurally unimportant where a middle begins and ends. An ending has two goals: syntactic and rhetorical closure. This paradigm is clearly reflected in Schenker’s basic Ursatz (I-V-I harmonic motion supported by 3‐2‐1 melodic motion). The crux of Agawu’s theoretical idea is a combination of extroversive and introversive semiosis: by making explicit the functioning of both topical signs (extroversive semiosis) and pure signs (introversive semiosis) we can provide a richer expressive interpretation of the music. Agawu states, “It is in the interaction between
22 Ibid., 32. 23 Ibid., 33. 24 Ibid., 34. 25 Ibid., 51. 26 Ibid., 58. 7
topical signs and structural signs, an interaction that might be described in terms of play, that the essence of my theory lies.”27 He proposes approaching analysis in three stages. First, one must produce a (Schenkerian) voice-leading reduction to show the inner workings of the music and then reinterpret it in reference to the beginning- middle-ending paradigm. Second, one must provide a topical analysis that yields a discourse or plot. Third, one must examine the points of contact between them, as it is the dialectic between the two types of signs that offers the richest interpretation. Agawu uses a short excerpt from the opening movement of Mozart’s D-Major String Quintet, k. 593 to demonstrate his theory. The remaining chapters of the book provide further sample analyses to support his theory. The final chapter of Playing with Signs provides a short “Epilogue” on how this theory might apply to Romantic music. Agawu addresses the issues brought up in this chapter in his 2009 book Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music, in which he extends his semiotic theory to the Romantic repertoire.28 In this more recent book, Agawu draws upon the theoretical work of Schenker, Ratner, Adorno, and the field of musical semiotics. At the heart of his book is the study of “music as discourse,” and Agawu discusses the similarities and differences between music and language. He goes on to provide six criteria for the analysis of Romantic music: topics; the beginning- middle-ending paradigm; high points and the dynamic curve; periodicity, discontinuity, and parentheses; three modes of enunciation (speech, song, and dance); and the narrative thread. Agawu then explores Schenker’s idea that links strict counterpoint to free composition, explaining that the notion that a work is understood as a layered structure, where the journey from background to foreground is one of increasing concretization of musical content.29 Agawu concludes the theoretical portion of his book with an exploration of a paradigmatic approach to analysis. In this approach, a piece of music is understood as a succession of events that are repeated (sometimes exactly, other times inexactly) and it is the associations between events and the nature of their succession that guides the
27 Ibid., 23. 28 Kofi Agawu, Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 29 Ibid., 11. 8 construction of meaning.30 The remainder of the book provides sample analyses of works by composers including Liszt, Brahms, Mahler, Beethoven, and even Stravinsky. Agawu’s semiotic approach to musical meaning provides self-contained theoretical claims that are supported by frequent analytical demonstrations in both of his books on the topic. In Playing with Signs his semiotic theory uses works from the Classic style to integrate analysis of topics (Ratner) and a beginning-middle-end paradigm (Schenker) in order to understand better the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; it is in the “play” between these modes that semiosis occurs. It is this aspect of his theory—the interaction between topical signs and structural signs—that I find most pertinent to my analytical studies of Schumann’s chamber music. Music as Discourse, on the other hand, provides an approach to musical meaning that extends semiotic principles to the idea of thinking of music as a discourse in itself, as applied to the Romantic repertoire through mostly paradigmatic analyses, which is also directly applicable to the analysis of the chamber music of Schumann.
1.2.2 Narratological Approaches Although music is a temporal phenomenon and therefore amenable to narrative organization, there seems to be a general disagreement among scholars as to the nature and range of application of musical narrative. For example, while the vocabulary and methodology of literary approaches are often applied to musical narrative, many arguments against the pairing of musical and literary narrative exist. Some of these arguments include the absence of referentiality in music, the absence of a narrator, and the absence of a past tense. While the study of musical narrative is a relatively new discipline, there are already many recognized scholars in the field, including Carolyn Abbate, Byron Almén, Edward T. Cone, Marion Guck, Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, Peter Kivy, Michael Klein, Joseph Kraus, Fred Everett Maus, Susan McClary, Anthony Newcomb, and Douglass Seaton. The following discussion will focus on the differing narratological approaches of Almén, Newcomb, and Seaton, as their application to Romantic repertoire is most germane to the present study.
30 Ibid., 163. 9
The Narratological Approach of Byron Almén. Almén’s inspiration for his recent book, A Theory of Musical Narrative, stems from his 2003 article, “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis”31 and from his consideration of three books from different fields: Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, Eero Tarasti’s A Theory of Musical Semiotics, and James Liszka’s The Semiotic of Myth.32 In A Theory of Musical Narrative, Almén introduces a narrative approach to music that draws on Liszka’s derivation of Northrop Frye’s four narrative archetypes: romance, tragedy, irony, and comedy. To understand Almén’s theory of narrative a brief explanation of the theories of Frye and Liszka is necessary. Frye’s theory of narrative proposes a set of four narrative categories—mythoi— that distinguish between possible plot schemes using a circular model. In this model, each of the narratives is situated around the circle representing the motion from a state of innocence and happiness (at the top of the circle) to the world of experience or catastrophe (at the bottom of the circle) and then back (Figure 1.2 is Almén’s adaptation of Frye’s circular model). The binary opposition of innocence/experience is expanded into the four categories, which, proceeding clockwise around the circle are romance (the narrative of innocence at the top), tragedy (the narrative of the fall, moving downward from innocence to experience), irony (the narrative of experience at the bottom), and comedy (the narrative of renewal moving upward from experience to recovered happiness).33 Frye, in his 1957 book Anatomy of Criticism says, “We may apply this construct to our principle that there are two fundamental movements of narrative: a cyclical movement within the order of nature, and a dialectical movement from that order into the apocalyptic world above.”34 He goes on to say:
The top half of the natural cycle is the world of romance and the analogy of innocence; the lower half is the world of "realism" and the analogy of experience. There are thus four main types of mythical movement: within romance, within experience, down, and up. The downward movement is the tragic movement,
31 Byron Almén, “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis,” Journal of Music Theory 47, no. 1 (2003): 1–39. 32 Byron Almén, A Theory of Musical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), ix. 33 Ibid., 65. 34 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univeresity Press, 1957), 161. 10
the wheel of fortune falling from innocence toward hamartia, and from hamartia to catastrophe. The upward movement is the comic movement, from threatening complications to a happy ending and a general assumption of post-dated innocence in which everyone lives happily ever after.35
Figure 1.2. Reproduction of Almén’s Figure 1 from “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis.”36
Liszka’s theory of narrative includes three levels of narrative analysis: agential, actantial, and narrative. The agential level uncovers the biophysical, social, political, and economic elements through which assignments of cultural value are manifested while the actantial level tracks the changes in markedness and rank relations. The narrative level coordinates the analytical details within a finite number of archetypal plots. It is with the narrative level that Frye and Liszka’s theories intersect, and Liszka replaces Frye’s cyclical metaphor with a binary one, where the narrative categories result from the intersection of two fundamental oppositions: an opposition between order/transgression and victory/defeat.37 Almén’s theory of musical narrative essentially traces the tensions between an order-imposing hierarchy and a transgression of that hierarchy, the result of which
35 Ibid., 162. 36 Almén, “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis,” 14. 37 Almén, A Theory of Musical Narrative, 65. 11
produces one of four narrative archetypes: romance (victory of an order-imposing hierarchy over its transgression), tragedy (defeat of a transgression by an order- imposing hierarchy), irony (defeat of an order-imposing hierarchy by a transgression), and comedy (victory of a transgression over an order-imposing hierarchy) (Table 1.1). One might question the distinction between a romance and tragedy, since in both archetypes the order-imposing hierarchy “wins,” but the difference between the two archetypes lies in the emphasis on victory versus defeat. The same distinction is true when comparing an ironic narrative with a comic narrative, even though in both archetypes transgression “wins” at the end of the narrative.38
Table 1.1. The Four Narrative Archetypes.
Romance: the victory of an order-imposing hierarchy over its transgression (victory + order)
Tragedy: the defeat of a transgression by an order-imposing hierarchy (defeat + transgression)
Irony: the defeat of an order-imposing hierarchy by a transgression (defeat + order)
Comedy: the victory of a transgression over an order-imposing hierarchy (victory + transgression)
Almén’s theory emphasizes the importance of transvaluation in musical narrative. Liszka defines transvaluation as the process and play of tension between the two aspects of a value-imposing hierarchy.39 Transvaluation refers to a semiotic translation process: “a hierarchy set up within a system of signs is subjected to change over time; this change, filtered through an observer’s design or purpose is interpreted as being isomorphic to a change applied to a cultural hierarchy.”40 Almén asserts that “narrative is essentially an act of transvaluation” and it is the tension caused by transvaluation that creates the dynamism of narrative.41 Robert Hatten’s idea of markedness in music plays an especially important role in Almén’s approach. Hatten defines markedness as “the asymmetrical valuation of an
38 In his 2003 article, Almén suggested that the way that the opposition between victory and defeat was cued musically was through reference to a listener’s sympathy for either the order-imposing hierarchy or transgression. Almén explains in his more recent 2008 book that he finds this approach to be problematic, and revises his theory to allow the opposition between victory and defeat to be interpreted through emphasis rather than listener sympathy (235). 39 Almén, A Theory of Musical Narrative, 66. 40 Ibid., 40. 41 Ibid., 51. 12
opposition,” with marked entities representing the exceptional and having a greater specificity of meaning than the normative, unmarked entities.42 The idea of markedness characterizes the valuative weighting of musical units on the paradigmatic level, while the idea of rank characterizes the valuative weighting of musical units on the syntagmatic level. Rank “assigns relative value to the distinctive features in a cultural unit; that is to say, each feature of a cultural unit exists in a particular hierarchical position with respect to the other features in that unit.”43 Almén asserts that the musical unit is characterized by the paradigmatic use (markedness) of certain features rather than others by their syntagmatic arrangement (rank) in a particular sequence or order.44 He goes on to argue that determining markedness in the context of narrative interpretation “is equivalent to determining what the narrative transgression is,” and determining rank “is equivalent to determining the value of a musical event in relation to other events.”45 Therefore, it is the transvaluation, or rising and falling tension caused by the markedness and rank relations, in a piece of music that articulates its narrative trajectory. I will now briefly summarize the typical profiles of transvaluation in each narrative archetype. In a romance narrative, a rough “high-low-high” profile of the rank of the valued elements exists, in which the low rank represents the impact of the various transgression elements.46 Unlike a romance, where declines in rank value are ultimately reversed, a tragic archetype contains a rough “high-low” profile of the rank value, ending with the defeat of the valued elements.47 The trajectory of the profile of the valued elements in an ironic archetype varies depending on the emphasis (and the narrative phase): a trajectory of an ironic narrative can “expose the limitations of a hierarchy, sharply indict it, show it to be ineffectual or meaningless, or completely demolish it.”48 Because a comic archetype involves a transvaluation in which transgressive elements successfully challenge and overturn an initial hierarchy, a rough “low-high” temporal profile is imparted on the rank value of those elements—in a
42 Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 291. 43 Almén, A Theory of Musical Narrative, 49. 44 Ibid., 47. 45 Ibid., 53. 46 Ibid., 98. 47 Ibid., 139. 48 Ibid., 169. 13
comedy the initial hierarchy is normally flawed or overly rigid, which allows the transgressive element to adapt and achieve its higher status.49 Almén discusses Liszka’s levels of narrative analysis and how they might apply to his theory of musical narrative. The agential level is where the musical-semantic units are identified and are categorized as either marked or unmarked. The actantial level is where the dynamic relationships between the musical units are defined. Taken together, the agential and actantial levels describe the details of a narrative transvaluation in which two binary oppositions (order/transgression and victory/defeat) express a conflict that traces the tensions between an order-imposing hierarchy and a transgression of that hierarchy, ultimately producing one of Frye’s four narrative archetypes.50 Additionally, Almén emphasizes the importance of topical analysis in musical narrative, citing the work of Ratner and Hatten. He suggests that the expressive genres of Hatten’s semiotic approach can be successfully integrated with a theory of musical narrative because they form a subclass of possible narrative schemes in which topic plays a primary role in either articulating the overall narrative frame or the conflict that embodies the primary narrative level.51 Almén acknowledges that the relationship between narrative and topic is complex (he brings up five issues in the integration of topic and narrative) but he concludes that topical considerations have a significant influence on narrative interpretations.52 In sum, Almén’s theory of narrative in music provides a synthesis of approaches from literary theory, semiotics, musicology, and music theory. At the heart of this theory is the Liszkian idea of transvaluation—how the shifts of tension between rank and markedness relations produce one of the four narrative archetypes—but he also remains adamant in his belief that “methodological eclecticism is the most productive direction for analytical and interpretive explorations of narratives to take.”53 It is the methodological eclecticism and flexibility of Almén’s theory that is most beneficial for the present study.
49 Ibid., 188–89. 50 Ibid., 74. 51 Ibid., 73. 52 Ibid., 92. 53 Ibid., 222. 14
The Narratological Approach of Anthony Newcomb. Newcomb has written several important articles regarding narrative and music, focusing on nineteenth- century composers: Schumann, Chopin, and Mahler. This discussion will concentrate on the two articles that examine the instrumental music of Robert Schumann. Newcomb examines Schumann’s music in terms of narrative in his 1984 article “Once More ‘Between Absolute and Program Music’: Schumann’s Second Symphony.”54 He begins by pointing out that, while Schumann’s Second Symphony received high praise in the nineteenth century, it fell from favor in the twentieth century, which “suggests that our problems with the piece may be rooted in current analytical tools for absolute music.”55 Newcomb asserts that the idea of music as a composed novel is an important avenue to the understanding of nineteenth-century music and that we may find a plot archetype as the basis for these compositions.56 The plot archetype, which may reference a specific work from literature or may be implicit, is “communicated and elaborated by…the musical form of the individual work.”57 He emphasizes that “we do well to think of the thematic units partly as characters in a narrative” which “interact with each other, with the plot archetypes, with their own past guises, and with conventions of musical grammar and formal schemes analogously to the way the characters in a novel interact with each other.”58 Newcomb’s aim in this article is to revive historically appropriate analytical tools in order to interpret Schumann’s Second Symphony effectively. By thinking of the piece as a “composed novel,” Newcomb proposes using biographical information, ideas of thematic transformation, semiotic aspects of the musical style, and thematic allusions in order to support a reading of this symphony as an end-accented or heroic plot archetype in which “the struggle in the symphony from suffering to healing and redemption seems also to have been Schumann’s own.”59 In his 1987 article “Schumann and Late Eighteenth-Century Narrative Strategies,” Newcomb uses a deductive approach to narrative analysis, with the goal of
54 Anthony Newcomb, “Once More ‘Between Absolute and Program Music’: Schumann’s Second Symphony,” 19th-Century Music 7 (1984): 233–50. 55 Ibid., 233. 56 Ibid., 234. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 237. 59 Ibid. 15
being able to better understand “made” objects.60 His approach also depends on the intuition, education, and talent of the interpreter. After a lengthy discussion of narrative in literature versus narrative in music, Newcomb moves on to the crux of his article, which focuses on narrative in the music of Robert Schumann. Schumann, who immersed himself in the novels of German Romantics (especially E.T.A. Hoffman and Jean Paul), studied how the authors told a story and was intrigued by their poetics. He also tended to describe the music he liked in terms of novels. Newcomb says “Schumann, like Jean Paul, avoids clear linear narrative through a stress on interruption, embedding, digression, and willful reinterpretation of the apparent function of an event (what one might call functional punning).”61 He notes that some narratives from late eighteenth-century fiction like to question paradigmatic plots by standing conventional situations on their heads and Schumann often “delights” in doing the same thing.62 After a lengthy discussion of narrative devices found in literary works and in the music of Schumann (such as Witz), Newcomb provides a sample analysis of the final movement of Schumann’s String Quartet in A Major, op. 41, no. 3. The narrative is based on the idea that the movement depends entirely on a transformation of functions of events in a paradigmatic plot. In other words, the functions of successive events turn out to be not what they seemed when first encountered, as there is a gradual realization on the part of the listener of a reversal of formal function in the movement. The paradox of the movement is that, although the movement is indisputably a rondo, the refrain is additive in structure and tonally open, which alters the normal relation between function and succession of events in a rondo.63 Newcomb concludes that Schumann has “defamiliarized narrative conventions” and has forced the listener to “move beyond static recognition of formal schemata to dynamic questioning of formal procedures.”64 In brief, Newcomb’s approach to narrative in Schumann’s music specifically is built on the idea that “music for Schumann was an expressive enterprise and a form of communication, reflecting in some way the experience of its creator.”65 Thematic
60 Anthony Newcomb, “Schumann and Late Eighteenth-Century Narrative Strategies,” 19th-Century Music 11, no. 2 (1987): 164–74. 61 Ibid., 169. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 173. 64 Ibid., 174. 65 Ibid., 233. 16
metamorphosis, the implications of form and genre, and intertextual allusions, combined with historical background all provide support for Newcomb’s analysis of narrative in Schumann’s music, and it is for these reasons that I find Newcomb’s approach to narrative to be useful for this project. The Narratological Approach of Douglass Seaton. In his 200566 and 200967 articles, Douglass Seaton clearly defines narrative as having two essential features: plot and voice.68 Plot, which Seaton defines as an “action that has (or at least proposes) some sort of recognizable beginning and end, presents characters that act within the course of the work, and traces an intelligible contour from stability through rising tension and conflict to resolution and dénouement,”69 is commonly found in music (most notably in the sonata form). Voice, on the other hand, is not as commonly found, as the presence of a narrative persona is not always evident in music. Seaton asserts that the voice of the narrator may be established either within the music or by extra-musical conditions. Within the music, he lists three devices that may be used to indicate the persona: the piece might be cast in a particular idiom or distinctive rhetorical style that suggests a certain type of speaker;70 the voice may be established by quotation of or allusion to a specific repertoire of music; the plot of a piece may be interrupted by music that does not participate in the action and may take the form of commentary.71 Extra-musical conditions that may establish voice include: paratextual verbal indicators (titles or programs), performance conventions, and the composer’s biography.72 However one might establish the presence of a narrative persona, the listener experiences the persona “as the subjectivity underlying the action and feeling in a work.”73 Seaton emphasizes that, in order to be narrative, a musical
66 Douglass Seaton, “Narrative in Music: The Case of Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’ Sonata," in Narrative beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity, ed. Jan Christoph Meister in cooperation with Tom Kindt and Wilhelm Schernus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 65–81. 67Douglass Seaton, “Narrativity and the Performance of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata,” in Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata: Perspectives of Analysis and Performance, ed. Pieter Bergé, William E. Caplin and Jeroen D’Hoe (Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2009), 273–92. 68 Seaton acknowledges that this idea was not his own, rather it came from others, for example Bakhtin and Genette. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holmquist (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1982). Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, Translated by Jane E. Lewin (New York: Cornell University Press, 1980). 69 Ibid., 274. 70 Hatten (Musical Meaning in Beethoven, p. 169) discusses the idea that a rhetorical gesture (such as an interruption) may achieve a reversal that provides a shift in level of discourse. 71 Seaton, “Narrativity and the Performance of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata,” 276. 72 Ibid., 277. 73 Ibid. 17
work must possess narrativity in the same way as a work of literature, and therefore must contain both a plot and a narrative voice. Seaton’s idea of uniting plot and voice in musical narrative is clearly seen in his 2008 article “Back from B-A-C-H: Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major.”74 Seaton’s plot for the symphony is generally the same as Newcomb’s: an “end-accented” or “heroic” symphony in which the “course of the music suggests a struggle leading to victory or suffering leading to healing or redemption.”75 While Newcomb suggests that the protagonist in the plot is Schumann himself, Seaton asserts that we should be reluctant to “fall into this biographical fallacy—which should more correctly be called the ‘autobiographical’ fallacy—in this way.”76 He goes on to consider the use of allusions and citations in the work and what they suggest about the narrative voice—an aspect that pertains directly to this dissertation. Seaton asserts that “the persona is not Schumann, but a more general voice with an experience related to struggle and recovery, the symphony as a genre, and German musical culture and tradition.”77 He concludes that “the self-identification and self-realization in the Symphony in C Major amount to Schumann’s claim for incorporation into the community that the narrator- symphonist understood by the 1840s as the canon of great German composers.”78 Seaton’s approach to narratology in music holds firm the idea that for music to have narrative it must have both plot and voice. Seaton says,
Narratology guides an examination of passages with an eye to the ways in which every detail—rhythm, melody, harmony, dynamics, articulation, register, and texture—contributes to character. It demands insightful attention to harmonic and formal designs, including every nuance of structural implication, completion, and frustration. It requires multilayered understanding of the inside of plotted musical action and the outer frame that gives the music a voice. And it requires thorough study of historical contexts, including biography and
74 Douglass Seaton, “Back from B-A-C-H: Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major,” in About Bach, ed. Gregory G. Butler, George B. Stauffer, and Mary Dalton Greer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 191–206. 75 Ibid., 193. 76 Ibid., 195. 77 Ibid., 202. 78 Ibid., 202–03. 18
reception history. To cultivate narrative musicality demands a wide-ranging and synthetic mind.79
The effective way in which Seaton addresses the issue of the narrator is valuable in the current study, and I will use the conditions discussed by Seaton regarding the identification of voice to address the narrative persona where appropriate in the analysis of each movement studied.
1.2.3 Conclusion The semiotic and narratological approaches to musical meaning discussed above illustrate a small sampling of current trends in the field of music and meaning. Many of the difficulties in discussing meaning in textless instrumental music can be overcome with the semiotic theories of Robert Hatten and Kofi Agawu and in the narratological theories of Byron Almén, Anthony Newcomb, and Douglass Seaton. While each theory contains many strengths, there are also some weaknesses. For example, Hatten is reluctant to use Schenkerian analysis and claims that it would be difficult to correlate and map oppositions in voice leading onto expressive oppositions. Yet the use of Schenkerian analysis, when appropriate, allows us to pursue a more in-depth interaction between structuralist and hermeneutic approaches. Arnold Whittall, in his review of Hatten’s book, brings up the same question, saying, “Hatten’s lack of Schenkerian fire-power leaves him unable to pursue a fuller interaction between structuralist and hermeneutic approaches.”80 Agawu’s theoretical idea of “playing with signs” is a good one, but he does not go as far as he might in making connections between the topical signs and the structural analysis. The “play” never seems to contain any real expressive meaning. Agawu claims that topics reinforce structure, contradict structure, or are indifferent to structure, which is not particularly helpful for the construction of semantic meaning, as it doesn’t address how structure might actually contribute to the meaning. Regarding the narratological approach of Almén, a flaw in his work is found in his failure to consistently provide strong structural support for his narrative
79 Seaton, “Narrativity and the Performance of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata,” 288–89. 80 Arnold Whittall, “Review: Musical Meaning in Beethoven,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 121, no. 1 (1996): 122. 19 interpretations. Another problem with the approach of Almén is the thorny issue of the presence of a narrator, and he concludes that, while the issue of a narrator is problematic in musical narrative, the presence of a narrator is not a prerequisite for narrative with respect to music. In addition, the issue of topic is discussed by Agawu in his review of A Theory of Musical Narrative. Agawu asserts that Almén’s statement that topic is static while narrative is dynamic is problematic due to the complex temporal dispositions of different topics.81 Newcomb, who tends to use more aesthetic and emotional analysis than Almén, relies heavily on historical matters of style and topic. While Newcomb’s analysis of Schumann’s Second Symphony provides an exhaustive summary of critical reception to the work in the 19th and 20th centuries and a well-supported musical plot, he does not effectively address the issue of the narrative voice or provide sufficient structural support for his claims. Seaton addresses the difficult issue of the narrator, which is somewhat neglected by both Almén and Newcomb, by defining musical narrative as having two essential features: plot and voice. Seaton’s article on Schumann’s Second Symphony provides a narratological approach that unites plot and voice, providing a more compelling interpretation of Schumann’s Second Symphony than that of Newcomb.
1.3 Methodology and Significance of the Project
In the analyses in the present study, I will seek to reveal significant connections between music and meaning by using the narratological approach of Byron Almén as my primary methodology. However, I will also draw upon the semiotic approaches of Robert Hatten and Kofi Agawu and the narratological approaches of Anthony Newcomb and Douglass Seaton as needed, in order to enrich the discussion. I will provide detailed analyses that use structural support to trace musical oppositions— including oppositions in topic, style, markedness, motive, and texture—in order to support my narrative readings. In addition, I will also explore how oppositions in foreground voice leading can be mapped onto expressive oppositions, thus enhancing narrative interpretations. Combining these approaches has ramifications for music
81 Kofi Agawu, “Review: A Theory of Musical Narrative,” Notes 66/2 (2009): 277. 20
theory, for it can produce analyses that are deeper and more penetrating than many that exist in the current literature. It is important to recognize the problems that one-to-one mappings between structure—especially Schenkerian voice leading—and meaning can create. One pitfall of combining Schenkerian analysis (or any linear analysis that engages with the Schenkerian concepts of voice leading, prolongation, and composing out) is the perceived epistemological priority of the background. This raises a couple of questions. Just how musical are the deeper Schenkerian levels and how much meaning can one perceive from a background or even a deep middleground analysis? Lawrence Kramer addresses these questions in his article “Haydn’s Chaos, Schenker’s Order; or Hermeneutics and Musical Analysis: Can They Mix?” Kramer states, “The fundamental structure supplies the underlying unity on which the expressivity of the foreground ultimately depends.”82 Schenker’s own study of Haydn’s “Representation of Chaos” from Creation generates meaning from the bottom up by constructing a parallel in which interpretative unfolding follows compositional unfolding.83 Schenker’s graphic analyses show how he first selects deep structural elements as nodes of meaning and then scans the foreground realizations for qualitative values, which he then projects onto an image of chaos. Michael Klein discusses the pitfalls of relying on structure to bolster semantic claims in Chapter 2 of his 2005 book, Intertextuality in Western Art Music. Klein claims that “In music analysis, as in myth, the structure is the meaning.”84 He acknowledges that “the music theorist’s preoccupation with structure often comes at the expense of meaning and culture” and suggests that part of a solution to this problem “may come from more open acknowledgment of the intertextual nature of analysis.”85 Any credible narrative or expressive analysis must be grounded in the structural aspects of the music. So the question is not whether there are benefits to combining the approaches, rather it is how most effectively to use purely musical analysis to support meaning and vice versa. I agree with Robert Hatten, who says, “musical meaning is
82 Lawrence Kramer, “Haydn’s Chaos, Schenker’s Order; or Hermeneutics and Musical Analysis: Can They Mix?” 19th-Century Music 16, no. 1 (1992): 6. 83 Ibid., 8. 84 Michael Klein, Intertextuality in Western Art Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 28. 85 Ibid., 29. 21 inherently musical.”86 It is important that the interpretation of meaning support the structural analysis and that the structural analysis support the interpretation of meaning. By that, I mean that it is potentially easy to fall into the trap of forcing a structural analysis to “fit” a narrative or expressive interpretation. But, it is also important not simply to attach a narrative or expressive reading onto a structural analysis. The two approaches of analysis must benefit and inform each other while always being deeply founded in the music itself. I recognize that one cannot make general correlations between types of voice- leading constructs and specific meanings; such things only hold for a particular piece and a particular set of circumstances or cluster of musical features in that particular piece. I also recognize that, as we strip away surface features to move toward the middleground level, we also strip away elements that define semantic meaning. But the potential pitfall of combining Schenkerian analysis with semiotic or narrative analysis can be avoided by taking into account the unity found on the background level and by focusing on the foreground level, which looks at surface events in the music. It is the musical surface that provides the support for interesting musical meaning. In recent years some scholars in the field of music and meaning have been criticized for the superficiality of their analyses. By combining deep structural analysis with the approaches of Almén, Hatten, Agawu, Newcomb, and Seaton, I hope to use the interesting but analytically neglected repertoire of Schumann’s 1842 chamber music to show how structural musical oppositions, including those found in voice leading, can also relate to oppositions between order-imposing hierarchies and transgressions in order to communicate deeper musical meaning.
86 Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 276. 22
CHAPTER 2
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 1842: Schumann’s “Chamber Music Year” Robert Schumann’s music of the early 1840s reveals a new compositional direction for the composer. Prior to 1840 Schumann composed primarily (although not exclusively) solo works for the piano. In 1840, the year of his marriage to Clara Wieck, he turned to works for voice and piano, a year which Schumann called his “song year.”87 He began to look for new solutions to large-scale form by turning to instrumental music and the symphony in 1841, a year dubbed by Frederick Niecks some eighty years later Schumann’s “symphonic year.”88 The large amount of chamber music produced by Schumann the following year led Niecks to call 1842 the “chamber music year.”89 Schumann wrote a remarkable number of chamber music works in 1842. In the first half of the year he composed very little, but from June to December he composed chamber music exclusively, completing six works: three String Quartets, op. 41; the Piano Quintet, op. 44; the Piano Quartet, op. 47; and the piano trio later published as the Phantasiestücke, op. 88.90 The phrase Schumann’s “chamber music year” has been accepted in historiography,91 and while he did write the chamber works that would become the best known of his output during that short time period, this generalization is problematized when one takes into account the entirety of his chamber music output. While Schumann wrote a large number of his chamber works during the brief time period from June to December of 1842, it was not his first encounter with the genre. One of his earliest attempts at a piece in a larger form was the C-Minor Piano Quartet of 1828–1829 (Schumann labeled it as his op. V), which was likely in response to
87 Frederick Niecks, Robert Schumann (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1925), 205. 88 Ibid., 221. 89 Ibid. 90 Schumann continued his exclusive composition of chamber music into early 1843, completing the Andante and Variations for two pianos, French horn, and two cellos (op. 46) in January and February. 91 Julie Ann Hedges Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past: Schumann’s 1842 Chamber Music and the Rethinking of Classical Form” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2000), 1. 23
Schubert’s death on November 19, 1828. John Daverio suggests that the C-Minor Piano Quartet reflects a fascination with Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, D. 929 and further links the C-Minor Piano Quartet to Schubert with a statement from Schumann’s diary entry on November 31, “My quartet—Schubert is dead—dismay.”92 Schumann’s own chamber group performed the C-Minor Piano Quartet in early 1829, as is noted in his March 13th diary entry.93 This early attempt at chamber music, although not published during his lifetime, was an important step in Schumann’s compositional development, especially for someone who had not yet had formal training in composition. Schumann made other attempts at chamber music in 1828-1829, but none were completed. Sketches exist for piano quartets in B major and in A major, both from the same time period as the C-Minor Piano Quartet.94 His interest in chamber music did not fade, and in an 1838 letter to Clara he writes: “I’m playing with forms…I’ll write three violin quartets next.”95 While sketches of those quartets never surfaced, Schumann did sketch two string quartets (D major and E-flat major) a year later. Thus, it is evident that Schumann’s turn to chamber music in 1842 was far from abrupt, as he had made quite a few efforts to compose chamber pieces prior to that year. The compositions of 1842 were not the first in the genre of chamber music for Schumann, nor were they the last. The chamber works that came later further complicate the problem of calling 1842 Schumann’s “chamber music year.” He composed many more chamber works after 1842, including the Piano Trio in D Minor (1847), op. 63; the Piano Trio in F Major, op. 80 (1847); the Violin Sonata in A Minor, op. 105 (1851); the Piano Trio in G Minor, op. 110 (1851); the Violin Sonata in D minor, op. 121 (1851); and a number of works composed as sets of miniatures. Schumann did not compose all of his chamber works in 1842, but Brown notes that the works from that year hold a special place because a new and serious intent underlay their composition.96 Schumann’s earlier efforts produced mostly unfinished sketches, whereas the 1842 works show his desire not only to complete the works but
92 John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 50–51. 93 John Worthen, Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 31. 94 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 246. 95 Robert Schumann, Letter of 11 February 1838, in The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann, Critical Edition, ed. Eva Weissweiler, trans. Hildegard Fritsch and Ronald L. Crawford, vol. 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 102. 96 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 2. 24
also to have them published, performed, and even reviewed.97 In his “symphony year,” in which Schumann composed his First Symphony (op. 38), the Ouverture, Scherzo und Finale (op. 52), the Phantasie in A Minor for piano and orchestra (later the first movement of his Piano Concerto, op. 54), and the first version of the D-Minor Symphony (op. 120), Schumann revealed an attempt to cultivate a reputation for himself as a “serious” composer by writing in the large-scale forms of his predecessors. In 1842 Schumann seems to have attempted to further cultivate that reputation by writing “serious” chamber music. 1842 is the year in which Schumann’s chamber music aspirations were realized, but it came with some difficulties in his marriage. In February, while on a concert tour of German cities intended to showcase Clara’s virtuoso talent as a pianist, Robert became depressed after being insulted by court officials following a concert given by Clara in Oldenberg.98 He returned to Leipzig alone, while Clara finished her concert tour, and he wrote in their marriage diary, “This separation has once again made clear to me our particularly difficult situation. Should I neglect my talent in order to serve as your travelling companion? And conversely, should you let your talent go to waste simply because I happen to be chained to the journal and the piano?”99 During the weeks spent in Leipzig apart from Clara, Schumann studied the string quartets of Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn, as well as separate studies in counterpoint.100 This led to his three op. 41 string quartets, composed in the summer of 1842. Schumann wrote the quartets in record time, finishing the first in A minor during his birthday week (June 4–11), then writing the second in F major between June 11 and July 5, and the third in A major between July 18 and July 22.101 Within six short weeks he completed three quartets, and Clara’s birthday (September 13) was celebrated by the first performance of the three works, which took place in their home with Ferdinand David—concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig and friend of Robert and Clara—leading the quartet.102 Schumann thought of the quartets as among his finest
97 Ibid. 98 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 243. 99 Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Gerd Nauhaus, The Marriage Diaries of Robert & Clara Schumann: From Their Wedding Day Through the Russia Trip, ed. Gerd Nauhaus, trans. Peter Ostwald (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), 206. 100 Eric Frederick Jensen, Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 210. 101 Worthen, Robert Schumann, 220. 102 Ibid., 221. 25
achievements, and he dedicated them all to Mendelssohn.103 The public response to the string quartets was also favorable, and Moritz Hauptmann—a music theorist at the newly founded conservatoire in Leipzig—praised their “artistic moderation with fresh, exuberant fancy.”104 The A-Minor Quartet was first publicly performed in January of 1843, and the score of all three works was published in February (as a birthday gift to Mendelssohn) of the same year.105 Schumann next turned to the keyboard, writing the Piano Quintet in E-flat, op. 44, between September and October. Even before it was completed, Clara was excited about the new work, commenting in their marriage diary, “…but thus my Robert worked more with his mind! He has almost finished a quintet which, according to what I have overheard, again seems to me magnificent—a work filled with energy and freshness! I hope very much to play it here in public yet this winter.”106 Schumann dedicated the quintet to Clara, and she made it a staple on her concert tour in later years.107 The Piano Quintet was first played privately in December in Leipzig at the home of his friends the Voigts and remains one of Schumann’s most performed and popular compositions. Mendelssohn, who sight-read the piano part, filled in for Clara, who was pregnant and not feeling well.108 The Schumanns faced financial difficulties late in 1842, and in the same month as the premiere of the Piano Quintet, Robert accepted Mendelssohn’s request that he come and teach composition, score-reading, and piano at the new Leipzig Conservatory.109 The public premiere of the Quintet, which received positive reviews, took place on January 8, 1843 on a program with the op. 41 string quartets. Franz Brendel (who bought Schumann’s journal in 1844) comments, “the most successful of his
103 Ibid. 104 Niecks, Robert Schumann, 222. 105 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 12. 106 Schumann, Marriage Diaries, 177. 107 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 17. 108 John Gardner, “The Chamber Music,” in Robert Schumann: The Man and His Music, ed. Alan Walker (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1972), 222. 109 Worthen, Robert Schumann, 226. 26
[Schumann’s] later works are, in my opinion, the more significant songs, the Peri, and the Piano Quintet.”110 The Piano Quartet, op. 47, also in E-flat, was completed as a companion piece to the Quintet in November of 1842. Schumann first mentions the Piano Quartet in a diary entry in October 1842, writing, “I’ve also been industrious again; a quintet in E-flat major is at the copyist, and I’ve finished something else, at least in my mind, which I may not reveal to you as yet however.”111 Schumann later revealed that the Piano Quartet, along with the trio later published as the Phantasiestücke, op. 88, was intended as a Christmas present for Clara.112 While the trio wasn’t finished by Christmas, the Piano Quartet was completed November 26th.113 The Piano Quartet was performed privately on programs with the Piano Quintet in early December of 1842, but a public premiere did not occur until December 8, 1844.114 Despite its delay, the premiere was a memorable program, as it was the farewell concert of Robert and Clara Schumann at the Leipzig Gewandhaus before their move to Dresden.115 The last work composed during Schumann’s “chamber music year” was a piano trio, later published as the Phantasiestücke, op. 88. Schumann began work on this piece in early December of 1842, and Daverio speculates that the trio may have been motivated by Mendelssohn’s D-Minor Trio.116 Schumann commented on the difference in nature of the piano trio and the other chamber works completed in that year, calling attention to “its much more delicate nature.”117 Instead of using the sonata-style forms of the String Quartets, Piano Quintet, and Piano Quartet, Schumann turned back to the more intimate forms of the piano miniatures. For this reason the Phantasiestücke is often not included in discussions of Schumann’s “chamber music year.” The early years of the 1840s led to Schumann’s finally establishing a reputation as a composer of consequence, with works such as his D-Minor Symphony and the Piano Quintet. These years also reveal a marked change in Schumann’s compositional
110 Franz Brendel, “Robert Schumann with Reference to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the Development of Modern Music in General (1845),” in Schumann and His World, ed. R. Larry Todd, trans. Jürgen Thym (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 331. 111 Schumann, Marriage Diaries, 178–79. 112 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 18. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid., 19. 115 Ibid. 116 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 261. 117 Ibid. 27
style. His turn from the freer styles and forms of his piano miniatures to the more serious forms of his predecessors (namely Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven) with his symphonies and chamber music of 1841–42 expose Schumann’s desire to achieve a reputation as a “serious” composer. In the years following 1842, Schumann explored the genre of the oratorio, with his secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri (1843); after the Schumanns’ Russian tour of 1844, he experienced a crisis during which he composed very little. Following their move to Dresden in 1844, Schumann became interested in musical dramas. Mostly, though, Schumann’s compositional output in the years following 1843 is a mixture of all of the major genres, including musical dramas, miniatures, piano cycles, sonatas, chamber music, symphonies, concerti, and lieder. Daverio remarks that Schumann’s creativity in the final phase of his career was shaped by “a re-enactment and completion of the march through the genres begun years before.”118
2.2 Schumann’s Chamber Music Models Schumann was quite familiar with the chamber music repertoire of his contemporaries and composers of the past. He seemed to see himself and his contemporaries as heirs of a tradition that reached back to Bach and was upheld by composers like Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Brown asserts that the “sense of purpose he felt by composing instrumental music stemmed partly from a sense of historical self-consciousness and responsibility.”119 Plantinga remarks that Schumann did not intend for historical models to be imitated literally, rather “they serve instead as a fund of ideas and techniques usable for the enrichment of contemporary style—but it must always remain contemporary style.”120 By beginning his “chamber music year” with the creation of three string quartets, Schumann overtly aligned himself with the rigorous standards set by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.121 Prior to 1842 Schumann regularly attended rehearsals of a quartet led by Ferdinand David, gaining exposure to repertoire of contemporaries and of the
118 Ibid., 459. 119 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 37. 120 Leon B. Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 100. 121 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 38. 28
classical masters.122 In 1839 he began a prolonged study of Beethoven’s late string quartets, and it is therefore safe to say that Schumann’s study of the works of the masters began well before 1842. Schumann’s choice to begin with string quartets is notable. Plantinga observes that Schumann only reviewed fourteen string quartets in his career as a critic, examining works of Spohr, Cherubini, Reissiger, Verhulst, Taubert, and Schapler.123 Carl Dahlhaus remarks that the history of the string quartet (and the symphony and sonata) after Beethoven is “problematic, being split by a rift, or perhaps we should say a gaping abyss, between their roles in reception history and in the history of composition.”124 Dahlhaus goes on to say that while Beethoven’s string quartets may have previously “reigned in the concert repertoire,” the later development of the genre was “checkered and disjoint.”125 Nonetheless, Schumann tackled the string quartet head on in the summer of 1842. As mentioned earlier, Schumann studied the string quartets of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven in the spring of 1842, during the weeks he was alone in Leipzig while Clara finished her concert tour. In a May 1842 entry in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Schumann wrote, “The quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven! Who does not know them and who dare cast a stone at them? Though it is definite evidence of the indestructible vitality of those creations that, after the lapse of half a century, they still delight all hearts, it is not to the credit of the recent artistic generation that in so long a period of time nothing comparable has been created.”126 He also turned seriously to the study of counterpoint and fugue during March and April of 1842, and the results of this contrapuntal study are obvious in all three of the string quartets of op. 41, especially in the introduction of the A-Minor Quartet, which begins with a motive presented in fugato.127 This interest in counterpoint also carried through to the finales of both the Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet. We do not know exactly which quartets of Mozart and Haydn captured Schumann’s attention in the spring of 1842. His high regard for Mozart’s music in
122 Ibid. 123 Plantinga, Schumann as Critic, 187–88. 124 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 78. 125 Ibid. 126 Konrad Wolff, ed., On Music and Musicians, trans. Paul Rosenfeld (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), 68. 127 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 249. 29
general is seen in his 1841 statement in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik that Mozart’s music “becomes ever fresher with repeated hearings.”128 Haydn, widely known as the “father” of the string quartet, did not hold as high a place in Schumann’s mind, as he goes on to say “nothing new is to be found in the music of Haydn.”129 No matter how highly Schumann regarded the quartets of Mozart and Haydn, it is evident that he was familiar with their works from the many rehearsals of David’s quartet group he attended. In addition, Daverio notes that after Clara returned to Leipzig she and Robert read through many of the scores of Haydn and Mozart’s quartets at the piano.130 Daverio goes on to discuss a “built-in affinity between Haydn’s and Schumann’s styles, especially as regards their respective approaches to sonata form” and Schumann’s less obvious debt to Mozart which involves “the handling of sonata form.”131 “I love Mozart dearly,” Schumann wrote in a November 1842 diary entry, “but Beethoven I worship like a god who remains forever apart, who will never become one with us.”132 The works of Beethoven seem to play an influential role in Schumann’s turn to chamber music. Of Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets, the last five held the greatest attraction for Schumann. Schumann wrote, “they [the late string quartets] seem to me to be on the extreme boundaries of human art and imagination thus far attained.”133 In 1842 Schumann said, “In Beethoven’s later quartets…treasures may be found which the world scarcely yet knows, and amid which we may mine for years to come.”134 Jensen observes the influence of Beethoven’s late quartets on Schumann’s quartets in several general features: the unusual and unexpected tonal relationships, extreme chromaticism, disruptive rhythmic configurations, emphasis on fugato and imitation; and adaptations of conventional structures.135 Beyond these broad similarities, Jensen asserts that there is a specific association between Schumann’s first quartet and Beethoven’s op. 132, which bear strong structural and thematic similarities in their respective slow movements.
128 Plantinga, Schumann as Critic, 94. 129 Ibid. Quoted from NZfM, 14 (1841), 89. 130 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 249. 131 Ibid., 251. 132 Schumann, Marriage Diaries, 253. 133 Jensen, 210. Quote taken from “Rückblick auf das Leipziger Musikleben im Winter 1837–38.” 134 David Whitwell ed., Schumann: A Self-Portrait In His Own Words (California: Winds Press, 1986), 59. 135 Jensen, Schumann, 211. 30
When it came to his contemporaries, Schumann held the highest regard for the works of his good friend Mendelssohn. While Schumann admired the chamber works of Schubert as well (recall the earlier discussion of the influence of Schubert’s death on Schumann’s C-Minor Piano Quartet in 1828-29), most of Schubert’s quartets (except for the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, which Schumann praised) would not have yet been available to him in published form in 1842.136 Schumann dedicated his op. 41 quartets to Mendelssohn, and he seems to have been most concerned about Mendelssohn’s opinion of his work. In October 1842 Schumann, after a performance of his quartets by David’s string quartet, revealed his pleasure at Mendelssohn’s reaction to the music, “Mendelssohn told me later while leaving that he cannot really explain to me how much he likes my music. That made me very happy; since I consider Mendelssohn the best critic; of all living musicians he has the clearest vision.”137 The three string quartets of op. 41 are the only string quartets in Schumann’s output. The majority of his chamber music includes the piano, and Daverio remarks that Schumann was exposed to works for piano and strings from a young age.138 Daverio goes on to say that in the Blätter und Blümchen aus der goldenen Aue, a book assembled during his early teenage years in Zwickau, Schumann mentions his first exposure to chamber music for piano and strings, including Mozart’s Piano Quartets in G Minor (k. 478) and E-flat Major (k. 493) and the Piano Quintet (op. 1) of Prince Louis Ferdinand.139 Near the end of 1828 Schumann formed his own piano quartet with himself as pianist, Johann Friedrich Täglichsbeck as violinist, Christoph Sörgel as violist, and Christian Glock as cellist.140 Although there is no documentation to prove it, it is likely that Schumann’s piano quartet from the late 1820s read through the two piano quartets of Mozart just mentioned and perhaps even the piano quartets of Beethoven (WoO 36, no. 1 in E-flat major; WoO 36, no. 2 in D major; and WoO 36, no. 3 in C major). It is also highly likely that Schumann became familiar with the piano quartets of his friend Mendelssohn: op. 1 in C minor, op. 2 in F minor, and op. 3 in B minor (all composed between 1822–1825), although probably not until much later.
136 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 248. 137 Schumann, Marriage Diaries, 177–78. 138 John Daverio, “Beautiful and Abstruse Conversations: The Chamber Music of Robert Schumann,” in Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music, ed. Stephen E. Hefling (New York: Routledge, 2004), 210. 139 Ibid. 140 Ibid., 211. 31
Regarding piano quintets, neither Haydn, Mozart, nor Beethoven wrote for a piano and string quartet, although Mozart wrote a famous piano quintet for piano and winds. Whether Schumann was aware of Schubert’s well-known “Trout Quintet” (D. 667) is uncertain (the “Trout Quintet” is scored for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass and was composed in 1819 and published in 1829). Despite the lack of clarity on Schumann’s specific models for his piano quartet and quintet, he is definitely not the first, or last, to have composed in the genre. The role of the piano in both the Quartet and Quintet of Schumann alternates between musical substance and virtuosity; the Quintet, especially, is a “play of quasi- symphonic and more properly chamber-like elements.”141 Critics have faulted the Quintet for what some consider an overly prominent piano part, and according to one explanation, offered by Homer Ulrich, Schumann conceived the piano as a counterbalance to the four strings and not as one part among five equals.142 In summary, the primary models for Schumann’s chamber music are Haydn, Mozart, and, especially, Beethoven. Mendelssohn’s work, especially his Piano Trio in D minor (op. 49) and piano quartets (op. 1, op. 2, and op. 3), also had an influence on Schumann. Despite his familiarity with and knowledge of the works of these great composers, Schumann valued those who came before him but also wanted to forge an identity of his own. He understood that, to be a worthy successor of Beethoven’s innovations, one could not imitate them, but rather transform them into something new.143
2.3 Schumann and the Musical Setting of Chamber Music The performance contexts of chamber music, originally composed for small groups of instruments that could perform easily in a palace chamber, began to evolve in the nineteenth century. The word “chamber” signifies that the music was to be performed in a small room in an intimate atmosphere, and it was most often amateur musicians who performed the genre prior to the nineteenth century. Although amateur chamber music playing still thrived in the mid-nineteenth century, it was also a period
141 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 256. 142 Homer Ulrich, Chamber Music; The Growth & Practice of an Intimate Art (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1948), 293. 143 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 66. 32
of increasing professionalization of chamber music performance. Professional quartets were formed, and there were a growing number of professional and public chamber music concerts and concert series. Many changes in society and in musical tastes occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century that had an impact on chamber music composition and performance. Dahlhaus remarks that chamber music in the nineteenth century was “forced by its technical difficulties to go outside the world of domestic music-making and into the bright glare of the public concert.”144 He further comments that “this dilemma, neatly captured in the self-contradictory concept of a “public chamber music concert” has never been fully resolved.”145 The spirit of conversation between individual performers in chamber music began to dissolve with the rise of public chamber concerts, but despite this the conversation was still there in the texture, although now a sophisticated enactment of that intimate conversation staged for an audience. Schumann reached compositional maturity during a time period in which chamber music had come to occupy an intermediary position between private and public entertainment.146 Schumann wrote that in a true quartet “everyone has something to say…a conversation, often truly beautiful, often oddly and turbidly woven, among four people.”147 An example of a private performance occurred on January 8, 1843, as a part of Musikalische Morgenunterhaltung (“Musical Morning- Entertaining or Conversation”), where Schumann’s A-minor String Quartet and Piano Quintet were performed for only those who were invited to the event.148 Other examples of private performances have already been discussed, such as the performance of the three string quartets in the Schumanns’ home to celebrate Clara’s birthday (September 1842), and the performance of the Piano Quintet at the home of the Voigts, with Mendelssohn at the piano (December 1842). Schumann noted in 1838 that the four members of a string quartet, unlike the members of a symphony orchestra, “constitute their own public” thus supporting the
144 Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 171. 145 Ibid. 146 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 254. 147 Stephen Hefling, “The Austro-Germanic Quartet Tradition of the Nineteenth Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet, ed. Robin Stowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 239. 148 Ibid. 33
private nature of chamber performance.149 Adorno mentions the same idea in his analysis of the changing social function of chamber music in the nineteenth century.150 Daverio remarks that “Schumann’s [string] quartets, in short, may number among the last representatives of the true chamber idiom where players and listeners are one.”151 The audience for chamber music continued to grow larger, and during the Schumann’s 1844 tour of Russia a “private” performance of the Piano Quintet drew close to forty listeners.152 One might speculate that the more orchestral textures of both the Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet (although much more so in the Quintet) deserves, and in fact requires, a move from private venues to the public sphere. The virtuoso piano part of the Piano Quintet, Daverio notes, “will only receive its due from an artist at home on the concert stage.”153 Schumann’s chamber works for piano were intended for professional pianists—Clara and Mendelssohn—rather than amateurs.
2.4 Schumann’s Compositional Process The following discussion about Schumann’s compositional process is based on the pioneering work of Linda Roesner and her 1983 dissertation titled “Studies in Schumann Manuscripts with Particular Reference to Sources Transmitting Instrumental Works in the Large Forms.” Roesner examines the manuscripts of a number of works by Schumann from the standpoint of his creative process as a composer, his working habits and methods of preparing a work for performance and publication, and his stylistic development.154
2.4.1 Schumann’s Early Compositional Process Most of Schumann’s manuscripts contain evidence that their contents were not written down in a single continuous act—the variety of inks and pen points or pencil show the many passes he made through both the sketches and the fair copy. The use of different ink and pencils indicates where he may have broken off and begun the
149 Ibid., 541–42. 150 Theodor W. Adorno. Introduction to the Sociology of Music (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 85–86. 151 Daverio, Robert Schumann, 255. 152 Ibid., 254. 153 Ibid., 255. 154 Linda Roesner, “Studies in Schumann Manuscripts with Particular Reference to Sources Transmitting Instrumental Works in the Large Forms” (Ph.D. diss., NYU, 1983), iv. 34
compositional process again.155 Almost all the manuscripts for Schumann’s early piano music (including the sonatas) are either fragmentary preliminary sketches or more finished sources ready to give to copyists.156 There are few, if any, manuscripts that indicate middle stages of continuity drafts in his early works. Since there are no continuity drafts for early works, we can conclude that Schumann wrote his early works from the preliminary sketches at the piano and the fair copies were then subjected to numerous revisions.157 Or, it might be that continuity drafts existed but were discarded, unlike sketches (which show the moment of inspiration) or fair copies (which one needs). One exception is the “Fandango” of 1832 (later the first movement of the Piano Sonata in F-sharp Minor, op. 11), which reflects an intermediate stage of composition.158 The op. 11 “Fandango” sketches reveal how the composer improvised diverse ideas without any consideration of how they would be fitted together.159 The Piano Sonata in G Minor, op. 22, manuscript (1833–38) sheds additional light on Schumann’s early compositional procedures. He made changes by extracting, moving about, omitting, and substituting large blocks of finished material, while leaving intact the surrounding musical text, indicating a “piecemeal approach to composition.”160 In addition, the “idea” sketch was constructed by writing down an open-ended improvisation on a basic melodic or rhythmic pattern.161 Schumann’s early approach to composition was mosaic-like, as different ideas can easily be changed around, added, abridged, or omitted with minimal effect on the overall form.162
2.4.2 Schumann’s Late Compositional Process For Schumann’s later works, continuity drafts survived. The manuscripts of his Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major, op. 38, show the same techniques he used in his chamber works—a mixture of mosaic and improvisatory techniques—but now he would leave empty bars in continuity drafts to be filled in later. An examination of the
155 Ibid., 112. 156 Ibid., 280. 157 Ibid., 301. 158 Ibid., 280. 159 Ibid., 401-2. 160 Ibid., 326. 161 Ibid., 327. 162 Ibid., 342. 35
manuscripts of his later large-scale works indicates that his approach changed, as he worked out structural changes in the sketches, as opposed to earlier works, where he made major structural changes at the fair-copy stage.163 The sequence for the sketches of the op. 41 string quartets was predominantly regular—they reflected fairly accurately the compositional order of the music, while the sketches for the later Violin Sonata, op. 105, and E-flat-Major Symphony are more complicated and difficult to follow.164 Schumann’s revisions in the op. 41 quartets reflect his growing concern with structural balance—for example, shortening previously excessive transitional passages—but continued his earlier practice of repeating large blocks of material in development sections.165 While Schumann was increasingly thinking about solutions to problems of large forms with op. 41, the revisions and music reveal that his approach was still largely rooted in the additive techniques of his early style.166 By the early 1840s Schumann’s improvisational approach to large-scale composition had been brought under control—even though he still composed at the piano—as seen in sketches of op. 38 and op. 41.167 In a letter of 1838 Schumann cautioned Clara against the pitfalls of improvisation.168 Continuity drafts that appeared in the early 1840s provide a complete sketch outline of the works, which indicates that long-term planning had replaced the moment-to-moment evolution of the earlier works; most of the structural revisions took place in the sketch or continuity draft and not in the fair copy, as it did in his earlier works.169 Less reliance on improvisation in the early 1840s led to a change in how Schumann handled thematic material—the works contain fewer thematic ideas than the early works—and these ideas are more thoroughly worked out.170 However, the mosaic-like fitting together of ideas in the early works does carry over to the later works, in that he constructed many of his themes by adding together four-bar phrases on common or related ideas. Large-scale orchestral and chamber works of his later
163 Ibid., 342. 164 Ibid., 83. 165 Ibid., 386. 166 Ibid., 387. 167 Ibid., 401-2. 168 Ibid., 402. 169 Ibid., 403. 170 Ibid. 36 years (the D-Minor Trio, op. 63, the E-flat-Major Symphony, op. 97, and the violin sonatas) show a complete break with additive methods in favor of ongoing thematic processes and continuity in the larger structural sense, the result of his study of counterpoint of Bach and his involvement with large forms in general.171
2.5 Conclusions Both practical and personal reasons influenced Schumann’s changes in compositional interests and style in the early 1840s. Clara’s father was reluctant to let his daughter marry Schumann and one of the concerns he expressed was how Robert would support his wife. After their marriage in 1840 Schumann’s journal continued to do well, but he had definitely not met with commercial success as a composer. In addition, the immensely personal piano works that dominated Schumann’s output prior to 1840 separated him, at least somewhat, from the concert-going public. In a letter to Clara from the late 1830s, Schumann acknowledges this by writing, “You were wise not to play my pieces—they aren’t suited for the public—and it would be pitiful if I were to complain later that the audience hadn’t understood something which wasn’t intended for public acceptance; it wasn’t intended for anything at all and exists only for its own sake.”172 By turning to the genres of the symphony in 1841 and chamber music in 1842, Schumann sought to provide works for the public that are both more accessible and more comprehensible than the immensely personal and complex piano works.
171 Ibid., 404. 172 Brown, “A Higher Echo of the Past,” 22–23. From a letter of March 19, 1838. 37
CHAPTER 3
A ROMANCE NARRATIVE: JEAN PAUL AND THE PERSONA IN THE FIRST MOVEMENT OF THE PIANO QUINTET
Northrop Frye’s 1957 book Anatomy of Criticism posits a set of four narrative archetypes (romance, tragedy, irony, and comedy) that use a circular model: the narratives are conceived as moving around a circle, representing a move from a state of innocence and happiness at the top (romance), down to a state of experience or catastrophe (tragedy), moves to a different state of experience with irony, and back up to the narrative of renewal and recovered happiness (comedy). The analyses that follow in Chapters 3 through 6 will use Byron Almén’s adaptation of this circular model, which maps Liszka’s binary oppositions (order-imposing hierarchy/transgression and victory/defeat) onto Frye’s circular model, to provide readings of each of the four movements of Schumann’s Piano Quintet, op. 44. The movements of the Piano Quintet move around the entire circular model of narrative archetypes, from a state of innocence or happiness (first movement), falling to the world of experience with tragedy (second movement), to more experience with irony (third movement) and finally upward from experience to recovered happiness with comedy (fourth movement). We begin with the first movement, a heroic romance narrative that is enriched by the influence of Jean Paul on Schumann as a composer, by the idea of two characters (Florestan and Eusebius) in the movement, and by the idea of a persona who is an aspiring Romantic artist seeking a place among the great figures in the world of art.
3.1 Romance Narrative in Literature and Music The romance archetype occupies the narrative of innocence and happiness in the upper right quadrant of Almén’s circular adaptation of Frye’s archetypes. According to Almén, a romance is “the archetype of wish fulfillment, of the valorization of the ideals
38 of a community.”173 The romance archetype produces a narrative in which the order- imposing hierarchy is victorious over its transgression, and a rough “high-low-high” profile is applied to the rank of the valued elements. This “high-low-high” rank profile is the result of the implication of a potentially endless series of confrontations with the elements that threaten the dominant hierarchy; the “low” rank represents the impact of the various elements of transgression.174 In literature, romance frequently employs idealized, mythical, and imaginary elements that have more to do with the imagination than with current cultural conditions. This is true in musical romances as well, where extra-musical or topical references are often pastoral, mythic, transcendent, or divine.175 A romance narrative, though, does not just embody the romantic topics listed above; rather it must involve the victory of an order-imposing hierarchy over its transgression. Emphasizing the victory of the order-imposing hierarchy is crucial with a romance narrative, which means that the analyst must view the hierarchy in a positive light. According to Almén, the romance archetype occupies uneasy ground within our current interpretative landscape, because society of the twenty-first century is the child of a demythologizing and ironic age. He goes on to say,
While the other three archetypes find productive service in the modern world—tragedy as a reminder of the necessary limits of human desire and achievement, irony in its awareness of the insufficiency of any system, and comedy in its subversive call to hope and redemption in the face of inequality—the romance seems at the very least irrelevant, if not dangerously fatal…Given society’s current trend toward iconoclasm and the dangers of fundamentalisms of all kinds, what purposes are served by narratives that “defend the faith” or project the ideals of a community?176
One answer to this question of purpose is Almén’s idea that “romance narratives point to the necessity and importance of determining a hierarchy of values through
173 Byron Almén, A Theory of Musical Narrative (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008), 97. 174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid., 97. 39
which to negotiate the world.”177 In addition, while romance narratives may not provide a specific productive service in the modern world, they do, according to Almén, provide a “path between nostalgia for an imaginary past and the potential for engendering a new future.”178 In the following analysis of the opening movement to Schumann’s Piano Quintet, the romance narrative contains not only romantic topics such as the pastoral, it also traces the path of a heroic protagonist who attempts and ultimately succeeds in navigating through a world full of uncertain hierarchical values and transgressions against those values. Through his journey, the hero manages to overcome these uncertainties and successfully navigate this path between nostalgia and a new future. But, the journey of the heroic protagonist is not one of a conventional succession of functional events. It is instead one that avoids clear linear narrative, much like the novels of Jean Paul, which Schumann loved and admired. A brief examination of the influence of Jean Paul on Schumann is necessary before beginning the analysis of Schumann’s movement.
3.2 Schumann and Jean Paul Schumann, who was an avid reader of literature of all types, was especially fond of the works by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763–1825). In her recent book Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul Erika Reiman makes the case that “the ’sleight of mind’ required to traverse the dense, digressive prose of Jean Paul may find useful application to the fragmentary, enigmatic, harmonically, and rhythmically surprising tendencies in Schumann’s piano cycles.”179 Reiman relays a large amount of evidence from Schumann’s letters and diaries to show his affinity for the works of Jean Paul throughout his life; by the late 1820s his personal writings displayed the impact Jean Paul had already exerted on his life and artistic viewpoints. Below are a few of the representative examples of his fascination in his late adolescence with the works of Jean Paul, as noted by Reiman:
177 Ibid., 98. 178 Ibid., 98. 179 Erika Reiman, Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul (New York: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 3. 40
I have often asked myself where I would be if I’d never known Jean Paul: but he seems to be entwined with at least one side of me . . . I would perhaps write in just the same way, but I wouldn’t flee others’ company as much, and I’d dream less . . . I can’t exactly imagine what I would be . . . I can’t puzzle out the question.
J. Paul has three sorts of spirit: soul, humour, wit, just as a turkey has three sorts of meat; one explains another and the three are as closely related as the three kinds of meat in the turkey.
Jean Paul . . . and Beethoven hang beside one another in my room; they have already made some people unhappy; these people became too elated and could not be happy—and yet they were happy. For me it’s melancholy, a delight made of joy and pain mixed together. . . .180
While the above quotations are from the diaries of his late adolescence, Schumann did read and reread the works of Jean Paul throughout his life. Reiman notes that Schumann purchased a complete edition of Jean Paul’s works in 1853 at the age of forty-three, and he mentions reading all five of the major novels in the summer of that same year. 181 It is evident that Jean Paul had an enormous impact on Schumann’s literary and artistic formation. In her book, Reiman focuses solely on the influence of Jean Paul on Schumann’s piano cycles from 1831–39, and she effectively demonstrates how Jean Paul’s digressive style and new ideas of form and genre permeate Schumann’s solo piano music. But Reiman acknowledges that the influence of Jean Paul on Schumann’s early piano cycles could also be traced through Schumann’s later output, such as his songs, chamber music, and symphonies, since there is “a strong continuity of style, particularly on a small-scale level, between Schumann’s piano music and his other works.”182 Anthony Newcomb does just that in his article "Schumann and Late-Eighteenth Century Narrative Strategies," which culminates with an analysis of the final movement from Schumann’s String Quartet in A Major, op. 41, no. 3 (1842). Anthony Newcomb
180 Ibid., 9-10. 181 Ibid., 11. 182 Ibid., 191. 41
says knowledge of Schumann’s love of the early German Romantics, especially Jean Paul, is well known and notes that
One can in fact make a documentary case that Schumann recognized as applicable to music certain narrative strategies in novels of his time, for he constantly described the music he liked best in terms of novels, and he explicitly acknowledged the inspiration that he took for his own compositions from the technique of his favorite novelists.183
In relation to Schumann’s own compositional output, Newcomb asserts “Schumann, like Jean Paul, avoids clear linear narrative through a stress on interruption, embedding, digression, and willful reinterpretation of the apparent function of an event (what one might call functional punning). He does so in such a way as to stress the process of narrative interpretation (the listener’s part in what Ricoeur calls ’following a story’).”184 Newcomb acknowledges that literary critics have recognized another ideal of narrative in some late eighteenth-century fiction that is different from the linear or teleological, and “such narratives delight in questioning paradigmatic plots by standing conventional situations on their heads.” He argues that Schumann often takes pleasure in doing the same thing.185 Newcomb and Reiman are not the only authors to acknowledge the significant influence of Jean Paul on the music of Schumann. The basic concept inherent in Jean Paul’s style of prose is that of Witz (“wit”), discussed at length by John Daviero in Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age.” According to Daverio, Witz is “that element which can transform a series of disconnected fragments into a constellation of mysteriously related terms.”186 Reiman discusses Witz in terms of Jean Paul, saying that “Witz brings the most far-fetched comparisons to life, discovering the unknown similarities underlying immense superficial difference. . . . uncovering the deeper
183 Anthony Newcomb, “Schumann and Late-Eighteenth Century Narrative Strategies,” 19th-Century Music 11 (1987): 168. Schumann’s Papillions is the only piece in which a clear programmatic connection to Jean Paul exists, as Schumann drew parallels between Papillion and Jean Paul’s novel Flegeljahre, but Newcomb points out that there are many other parallels between the two artists. 184 Ibid., 169. 185 Ibid. 186 John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age”(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 141. 42
affinities between all things.”187 Newcomb notes that the narrative device of Witz, so beloved by Jean Paul, is “the faculty by which subtle underlying connections are discovered (or revealed) in a surface of apparent incoherence and extreme discontinuity.”188 Schumann’s musical equivalence of Witz is found in Newcomb’s analysis of the A-Major String Quartet rondo in the way the composer interconnected seemingly disparate fragments, which is the musical equivalent of Witz.189 In his discussion of the influence of Jean Paul on Schumann, John Daverio notes that Jean Paul remained the writer to whom Schumann returned most often, and he indicates that Schumann made his own attempt at a Bildungsroman with his novel Selene, which is dated from late 1828.190 In Schumann’s novel the heroic character, Gustav, is described by Schumann as a hoher Mensch (“high human being”). Daverio observes that Schumann departs from Jean Paul’s notion of a hoher Mensch “as an individual sublimely indifferent to earthly cares.”191 Instead, Schumann associates the hoher Mensch with the “ability to temper Promethean energy through Olympian restraint.”192 He writes, “Gustav must pass through all the schools of life; he must learn both to hate and to love; his youthful demeanor must be tender and mild in order to show that the higher being can submit to the fetters of calm, but that his Promethean sparks remain unextinguished nonetheless.”193 It is this idea of a hoher Mensch that provoked Schumann, a few years later, to split the dual personality of the superior being into the dynamic (“Florestan”) and contemplative (“Eusebius”) characters that occupy so much of Schumann’s critical writings and his own music.194 Daverio notes that the hoher Mensch “emerges in retrospect as a cipher for the author-composer’s idealized attempt to neutralize the conflicts in his own being, to rise above his human limitations.”195 This idea of two opposing characters, “Florestan” and “Eusebius,” will play an important role in the following narrative analysis of the opening movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet. I will map the Florestan personality onto Almén’s concept of order as the heroic protagonist, and the Eusebius personality onto Almén’s concept
187 Reiman, Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul, 16. 188 Newcomb, “Schumann and Late-Eighteenth Century Narrative Strategies,” 169. 189 Ibid. 190 Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age," 40. 191 Ibid., 41. 192 Ibid. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid., 41. 195 Ibid. 43
of transgression. The eventual victory of order over transgression will represent the victory of the Florestanian character over the Eusebian one—at least in this movement. This discussion of Jean Paul and Schumann barely scratches the surface of the enormous influence that Jean Paul brought to bear on Schumann in both his literary and musical works. Nevertheless, it helps to put into perspective the following analysis, both in terms of the composer’s use of the literary technique of Witz and in terms of the presence of the Florestan and Eusebius characters. But before beginning the analysis, a brief discussion of persona in music is necessary.
3.3 The Persona Theory The idea of a musical persona was first explored in a scholarly study by Edward T. Cone in his 1974 book The Composer’s Voice. Cone suggested “every composition is an utterance depending on an act of impersonation which it is the duty of the performer or performers to make clear.”196 Cone asserted that even in “pure” instrumental music “there is a musical persona that is the experiencing subject of the entire composition, in whose thought the play, or narrative, or reverie, takes place—whose inner life the music communicates by means of symbolic gesture.”197 In a recent article Robert Hatten and Jenefer Robinson claim “music can sometimes be heard as containing a persona, a fictional or virtual agent whose emotions are expressed in the music.”198 They go on to say that it is often appropriate to hear or imagine a fictional or virtual persona in the music with whom we can identify or sympathize, allowing us as listeners to gain further insights into the structure and meaning of music.199 They assert, “once the listener is able to identify the complex emotional states as being expressed by a persona; it also becomes possible to identify an entire piece as enacting the psychological story of a persona...regardless of whether we identify with the composer, with the performer, or—the most general case—with an imagined agent in the music.”200 In his approach to narratology in music Douglass Seaton insists that for music to contain a narrative it must have two essential features: plot and voice. His idea of the
196 Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkley: University of California Press, 1974), 5. 197 Ibid., 94. 198 Jenefer Robinson and Robert S. Hatten, “Emotions in Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 34 (2012): 71. 199 Ibid., 72. 200 Ibid. 79. 44
voice, or persona, is deeply rooted in Cone’s theory and is supported, in some senses, by Hatten and Robinson’s more recent article. Seaton is careful to point out that while plot is commonly found in music, especially in Romantic music, not every piece of music contains a narrative persona. In my analysis of the opening movement from Schumann’s Piano Quintet, I will show, using the ideas of Cone, Robinson and Hatten, and Seaton, that this movement’s persona can be identified as a Romantic artist who is trying to achieve some sort of personal success, which can be mapped onto a composer who aspires to write works in large forms and his desire to rise to the compositional level of Beethoven.
3.4 Analysis: The First Movement of the Piano Quintet In the following analysis of the first movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet, I provide a narrative reading of the movement as an example of a romance narrative archetype, in which an order-imposing hierarchy is victorious over its transgression. I suggest that a reading of the movement as a romance narrative, in which a protagonist is victorious, can be enriched by three ideas: (1) that this movement portrays the profound influence of Jean Paul’s literary techniques— especially that of Witz—on Schumann in terms of the formal structure, (2) that this movement could be interpreted as containing a protagonist who can be mapped onto Schumann’s “Florestan” character and who in is conflict with a “Eusebius” character, and (3) that the persona is an aspiring Romantic artist.
3.4.1. The Order-Imposing Hierarchy and Transgression As shown in Table 3.1, the structural characteristics of the tonic major key (Eb), characteristics associated with a normative sonata form, regular four-bar hypermeter, metrical consonance, and the “heroic” topic of the Florestan character represent the order-imposing hierarchy in this movement. Transgression, on the other hand, is represented by keys that go against the tonic major key (especially bIII), characteristics of Jean Paul’s Witz that prevent the success of sonata form, irregular hypermeter, metrical dissonance, and topics that represent Eusebius (“pastoral” and “sensibility” topics).
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Table 3.1. Order Imposing Hierarchy versus Transgression.
Order-Imposing Hierarchy: Transgression:
Structural Characteristics of the Tonic Major Keys That Go Against the Tonic Major Key (Eb) (Especially bIII)
The Characteristics Associated with a Characteristics of Jean Paul’s Witz that Normative Sonata Form Prevent the Success of the Sonata Form
Clear Four-Bar Hypermeter Hypermeter Difficult to Determine
Metrical Consonance Metrical Dissonance
Heroic Topic Pastoral and Sensibility Topics (Representing Florestan) (Representing Eusebius)
Table 3.2. Formal Diagram of the Exposition.
Exposition
Theme: P TR1 TR2 TR3 S1.1 S1.2 S1.1 S1.2 S1.1 S2 K
I I V V bIII V V V V V V V Key: Eb Eb Bb Bb Gb Bb Bb Bb Bb Bb Bb Bb
Measure #: 1 9 17 27 51 57 73 79 95 99 108
Pastoral/ Pastoral/ Con Topic: Heroic Lyrical Heroic Lyrical Sensibility Sensibility Sensibility Heroic heroic heroic fuoco
Last Hints Attempt Attempt Hints at Euseb. attempt Flor. Character: Flor. Flor. at to gather Foiled to gather Foiled Euseb. to gather (success) Euseb. energy energy energy
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In addition to establishing the characteristics associated with order and transgression, it is important for the reader to have an understanding of the overall form of the movement. While this movement generally adheres to the norms associated with sonata form, there are several formal anomalies that contribute to the narrative trajectory of the movement. The most notable is the delay of the arrival of the dominant key area in the exposition through Schumann’s use of Gb major (bIII).202 A summary of the form of the exposition is seen in Table 3.2.
3.4.2. The Exposition: P This movement opens with a principal theme (from here on referred to as P) that exhibits characteristics of order (Example 3.1). In E-flat major, mm. 1–2 contain a bass pedal point that stresses tonic, and P goes on to present a single phrase in a clear four- bar hypermetrical structure ending with a perfect authentic cadence in m. 9. The full chordal texture includes a doubling of the melody in the piano and the first violin, and the dynamic marking is forte. The accents in mm. 1–2 and 5–6 emphasize the heroic nature of P, which can be divided into two primary motives: (1) motive x, the large upward leap in m. 1 (and repeated in mm. 2, 5, 6 and 7); and (2) motive y, the leap down and two steps up which is found in m. 3 (and repeated in m. 4). This heroic P theme portrays the protagonist as Florestan, the more outgoing of the pair of contrasting artistic characters. In this theme Florestan is a hero who is confident, aggressive, and somewhat rambunctious in nature, supported musically by the sense of urgency imparted by the ascending leaps and the intense rhythmic drive to the cadence in m. 9. The Kopfton (3) is quickly—even impetuously—achieved in m. 3 by the gestures of reaching-over in mm. 1–3, and the phrase closes with a local descent to scale degree 1 in m. 9 (Example 3.2).
202 Peter Smith discusses Schumann’s tonal pairing of Eb and eb/Gb at length in his chapter, "Associative Harmony, Tonal Pairing, and Middleground Structure in Schumann’s Sonata Expositions" in Rethinking Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 238. 47
Example 3.1. P Theme (“Heroic” Topic), mm. 1–9.
Example 3.2. Voice-Leading Sketch of P, mm. 1–9.
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While Florestan seems generally invincible in the opening eight measures, there is a slight hint of transgression with the use of b6 (Cb) as a member of a fully diminished seventh chord in m. 2. While the viio7 is the result of a passing motion in the voice leading, this harmony is strikingly dissonant due to the tonic pedal. The mode mixture b6 returns in m. 5, this time supported by a supertonic half-diminished seventh chord in third inversion. The fleeting sounds of the minor mode through the use of b6 merely hint at a transgression, as they occur only briefly in inner voices and are immediately corrected both times to n6 in the following measures. Despite the references to b6, the rank value of order is high at the end of P due to the heroic nature of the theme and the strong rhythmic drive to the cadence.
3.4.3. The Exposition: TR1 The opening of the transition (what I will call TR1) provides an antithetic character to the heroic P theme beginning in m. 9, with a more lyrical and introverted version of the P material that constitutes the first hint of Eusebius (Example 3.3). This is a “lyrical” topic, due to the legato melody, change in texture from thick block chords to a dialogue between the piano and strings, and the piano dynamic marking. The P material is reworked—it no longer prolongs tonic but rather leads to a chromatic ascending 5–6 sequence that culminates with a tonicized half cadence in Eb in m. 17. TR1 moves toward the dominant, as expected in a transition, but it reworks the musical material from P in ways that suggest the influence of Eusebius. There is a marked downturn in energy in mm. 9–10 due to the fp and more lyrical statement of the melody, and energy is only slowly regained through the ascending sequence that follows in mm. 10–16. The new texture, in which the piano presents the melody and the strings interject in dialogue with the piano, is more intimate than the homophonic opening version of P, suggesting Eusebius’s more tender nature.
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Example 3.3. TR1, mm. 9–17.
The TR1 material contains a willed ascent, but it is not easily obtained—as it is slow and labored due to the chromatically embellished ascending sequence. The voice leading, seen in Example 3.4a, only reaches scale degree 2 (the Kopfton 3 is never achieved). The AbM (m. 10), BbM (m. 12), Cm (m. 14), and Dm (m. 16) triads are illusory (as clarified in Example 3.4b); even though they are tonicized, they are actually only apparent chords in the ascending 5–6 sequence. This connects strongly to Eusebius’s transgressive nature in this movement, distracting the Florestan character from a completely goal-oriented motion. While the overall voice leading does lead clearly from I to V, it does so in a contemplative and thus “Eusebian” way.
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Example 3.4a. Voice-Leading Sketch of TR1, mm. 9–17.
Example 3.4b. Simplified Voice-Leading Sketch of TR1, mm. 9–17.
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The beginning of TR1 provides a more introverted form of expression. In comparison to the extroverted P of Florestan, TR1 is more lyrical, lending credence to an interpretation of TR1 as hinting at characteristics of Eusebius, or at the very least moving in that direction. Overall, the opposition between the way that the P material is presented in mm. 1–9 and its transformation in TR1 in mm. 9–17 reveals the first suggestion of a conflict between the hero and transgressive external forces.
3.4.4. The Exposition: TR2 The second subsection of the transition, which I call TR2, begins in m. 17 with a reassertion of the original form of the P theme (Example 3.5), using the same full chordal texture, f dynamic marking, and accents found in mm. 1–8. It seems that the hero obstinately refuses to relinquish his hold on P material, now standing on the dominant to create an expectation of a medial caesura (MC)203 at the tonicized half cadence in m. 25 (V/Eb) (Example 3.6). The octave Bbs that follow in mm. 25–26 act as hammer strokes that seem to confirm that this is, in fact, the MC. In terms of the narrative trajectory, the return to the original form of the P material in TR2 raises the rank value of order, as the confident nature of the hero returns and the transition ends with a half cadence in the tonic key. The challenge to our protagonist has been set aside—at least for now—with the return of the more confident version of the P material in m. 17. However, the octave Bb hammer strokes in mm. 25–26 are a marked moment, as the result of the accents, the thinning of the texture to a single pitch class, and the registral expansion to four octaves. I suggest that we hear these Bb hammer strokes metaphorically as a fateful warning, as if something is about to go terribly wrong.
203 James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). The medial caesura is defined by Hepokoski and Darcy as “the brief, rhetorically reinforced break or gap that serves to divide an exposition into two parts, tonic and dominant (or tonic and mediant in most minor-key sonatas)”; it separates TR from S (24). 52
Eb: V V
V7/V V V V7/V V Example 3.5. TR2, mm. 17–26.
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Example 3.6. Voice-Leading Sketch of TR2, mm. 17–25.
3.4.5. The Exposition: TR3 The third and final subsection of the transition, which I call TR3, confirms what the hammer strokes predicted: that something has, in fact, gone amiss. The protagonist is derailed from his journey in m. 27 with the return of the lyrical topic from TR1, only now in the lowered mediant, G-flat major (Example 3.7). The character of the lyrical topic is now more hesitant and introspective due to the texture (the piano alone has the melody), piano dynamic level, and the added embellishments (the rolled chord in m. 27 and grace note in m. 28). The transition loses energy at this point, transgressing against the established order because the arrival on the dominant in mm. 25–26 is now undercut by the diversion to G-flat.
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Eb: bIII6
“i” “i6 ” bIII6
bIII It+6 V/V
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It+6 V/V V/V Example 3.7. TR3, mm. 27–50.
TR3 lowers the rank value previously associated with order for several reasons. First, G-flat major (bIII) is marked because we expect the transition to remain in the dominant key after its arrival, not to digress to the lowered mediant. As a key area, bIII is also marked due to the mode mixture required to achieve it. In what appears to be a strange reversal, the tonic key returns in the minor mode with the lyrical topic presented a minor third lower (mm. 31–38). But a voice-leading sketch of TR3 (Example 3.8a) reveals that the E-flat minor triads in m. 31 and m. 35 are merely apparent tonics— they are ultimately false, since they are generated structurally as part of a bass arpeggiation from Bb2 (m. 27) to Bb2 (m. 39). This use of E-flat minor is marked because of the minor mode and the use of b6 (Cb), which was foreshadowed in the opening measures of the movement. In mm. 35–50 (a sixteen-bar phrase) the statement of the basic idea (mm. 35–38) on eb might be an attempt to correct the digression to Gb, but when the first violin enters with the melody in m. 35, the piano accompanies with broken eighth-note chords, creating an increase in momentum for another move to Gb as the basic idea is repeated in mm. 39–42 (Example 3.7).204 Measures 43–50 lead to the expected goal of F major (V/Bb) through an augmented sixth chord in m. 43 (the
204 Peter Smith, in "Associative Harmony, Tonal Pairing, and Middleground Structure in Schumann’s Sonata Expositions," discusses the tonicizations of Gb in the transition as participating in an overarching shift from Eb major to Eb minor, which allows an "abrupt shift from the darkness of a six-flat Eb/Gb tonal pairing to the tense sharp-side world of Bb" (238). 56
previous Gb triad in m. 42 has become an augmented sixth through the addition of En). This chromatic predominant ushers in the dominant of B-flat major, and the half cadence in m. 50 emerges as the true medial caesura. A deep middleground sketch of the exposition (Example 3.8b) shows that the Gb introduced in the soprano in m. 27 is actually only an apparent neighbor tone to F (2). The Gb, through a voice exchange (mm. 27–43), eventually takes its proper place in the bass as b3 in a large-scale chromatic voice exchange that encompasses mm. 1–43. This sketch further reveals that the F in m. 17 (TR1 and TR2) is ultimately a consonant passing tone on its way to En in m. 43; the F at m. 50 is the actual scale degree 2 in the voice-leading structure. This interpretation of the deep middleground voice leading supports the narrative: 3 (G) is now chromaticized to b3 (Gb) through modal mixture, which transforms the consonant tonic triad to the highly dissonant “nI+6,” thus weakening the rank value of order associated with major-mode 3 over tonic. The introduction of the augmented sixth chord in m. 43 prepares for the real medial caesura, after it was declined at m. 25. From a narrative perspective, since Gb is b6 of the dominant key, the Gb major functions as a retreat into a strange fantasy world, which is Eusebian.205 The lowering of the rank value of order by this “Eusebian” Gb (b3 in Eb/b6 in Bb) prepares for the ascendancy of transgressive Eusebius in the second theme area. As can be seen in the simplified voice-leading sketch (Example 3.8b), structural b3 (Gb) is, on the surface, a discontinuity (Witz); however the Gb ultimately moves where it is supposed to go, which is to F (2)—although it gets there in a roundabout way by moving into the bass—for the medial caesura. TR3 thus presents the first significant transgression against the established order. The digression from the apparent dominant (Bb) to the marked chromatic mediant (Gb), combined with the more hesitant, introspective nature of the lyrical topic presents the first substantial obstacle for the order-imposing hierarchy to overcome in the movement.
205 Michael Klein discusses the use of the lowered submediant as a retreat into the realm of fantasy in his article “Chopin’s Fourth Ballade as Musical Narrative,” Music Theory Spectrum 26/1 (2004): 23-56.
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Example 3.8a. Voice-Leading Sketch of TR3, mm. 26–50.
Example 3.8b. Deep Middleground Sketch of the Exposition, mm. 1–108.
3.4.6. The Exposition: S1.1 The second thematic area opens with what sounds like an “introduction” (which I call S1.1) to the “proper” second theme (Example 3.9).206 This S1.1 module features an idiosyncratic emphasis on the dominant (with an added dissonant ninth) that gives it both transitional and expository qualities at the same time, contributing to a marked formal ambiguity that is indicative of the Eusebian character. Labeled as a “sensibility”
206 Peter Smith, in "Associative Harmony, Tonal Pairing, and Middleground Structure in Schumann’s Sonata Expositions," calls the material from mm. 51–56 "caesura fill" that prolongs the dominant of Bb (243). 58 topic due to the intimate and personal nature of the music, S1.1 begins with a dynamic collapse and dolce markings. The immobile S1.1 theme (Example 3.9) is marked for several reasons. First, its V7 chord delays the resolution to tonic (Bb) until m. 57, delaying a sense of forward progress. Second, this prolonged V7 contains a dissonant ninth that is introduced in m. 51 and does not resolve to an octave until m. 56. Indeed the rising chromatic lines F-Fs- G in the piano (mm. 52–53 and 54–55) twice prevent this resolution, resulting in a marked emphasis on G5 on strong hypermetrical beats in mm. 53 and 55. Finally, the phrase structure of this theme is marked because it features an eight-bar grouping in which the tonic resolution in the seventh and eighth measures overlaps the first and second measures of S1.2 through a phrase elision. The unexpected nature of this passage in mm. 51–57—its tentative expansion of a very dissonant V7 chord with added ninth and the somewhat jarring two-bar overlap in mm. 57–58—all support a reading of this passage as being transgressive against the established order. The music seems to get bogged down with the sensibility topic in this passage, as it directly opposes the heroic forward-moving trajectory of the first theme. In most of the recorded performances of this movement the musicians take time at the end of m. 56 to lead into the more proper S1.2 theme. The Eusebian character is without doubt in control in S1.1, supported by the introspective, pleading nature of this introduction to the second theme. Having finally reached an intermediary goal in m. 50 with the medial caesura, a relaxation occurs in mm. 51–56 that opens the way to Eusebian introspection. S1.1 S1.2
V9——–––———————————————————————————————————————————————8 Example 3.9. S1.1 and S1.2, mm. 51–58.
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3.4.7. The Exposition: S1.2 and S2 The arrival of the proper second theme in mm. 57–72 (Example 3.10) features what I call a "pastoral/heroic" topic. Identified here as S1.2, it is based on the S1.1 material, but it indexes the pastoral due to the simplicity of the harmony and slower harmonic rhythm, the balanced phrase structure, and the simple block chord accompaniment in the piano. While this theme does have a pastoral tinge, it is complemented by a sense of heroic striving due to the rising scalar motion in the cello; hence I read this theme as the hero’s reaction to the Eusebian character. The strings pass the melody back and forth, while the piano takes on a strictly accompanimental role using an ascending 5–6 technique. One could argue that this rising motion in the piano builds tension, but when the music reaches D minor (iii) in m. 65 it leads to V7/V, which sets up the V9 again for a return of S1.1. The circularity of the harmonic progression provokes a metaphor of the protagonist making slow progress up a hill (S1.2), rolling back down after the failed attempt to reach the top, then taking a long pause to catch his breath (return of S1.1) before trying again (return of S1.2). Theme S1.2 lacks the sense of complete relaxation found in S1.1 due to the piano accompaniment’s gentle syncopation and ascending sequence—almost as if it is an attempt to rebuild the energy level indicative of the heroic topic of P. A voice-leading sketch of the second theme reveals a motion from F5 (5 locally) to A5 as a pattern of reaching over (Example 3.11). The motion from an inner-voice D5 connects to the A5, and the ascending 5–6 sequence supports this line. The reaching- over gesture (F5–[G5]–A5–G5) is a marked feature for two reasons. First, the goal- related descending fifth-progression from F (2 in Eb major and 5 in Bb major), so often a feature of second themes in sonata forms, is replaced here by a dramatic stepwise ascent that nevertheless is forced back down to the upper neighbor of F in m. 70 to set up a return of S1.1 in m. 73. This suggests an attempt at forward progress that encounters a huge counterforce—despite the presence of several ascending gestures in the voice leading, the drag of transgression (Eusebius) prevents true motion forward in the second theme area, since the melodic structure repeatedly falls back to G5 and F5. The quality of “yielding” inherent in the stepwise descent of the reaching-over can be mapped onto transgression, as the theme-actor Florestan “strives” upward, but is continually forced back down to F5.
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Example 3.10. S1.2, mm. 57–72.
S1.1 S1.2 S1.1 S1.2
Example 3.11. Voice-Leading Sketch of S1.1 and S1.2, mm. 51–79.
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Table 3.3. The Second Theme Area.
S1.1 S1.2 S1.1 S1.2 S1.1 S2 V V V V V V Bb Bb Bb Bb Bb Bb
51 57 73 79 95 99
Sensibility Pastoral/heroic Sensibility Pastoral/heroic Sensibility Con fuoco
Eusebius Attempt to gather Foiled by Attempt to gather Foiled by Last attempt to energy Eusebius energy Eusebius gather energy-- successful
The second thematic area contains three attempts to regain the heroic directness and energy required to break through the Eusebian obstacle in a quest for the essential expositional closure (EEC).207 As Table 3.3 shows, each attempt contains a Eusebian start (the unsure, questioning sensibility topic of S1.1) and then a quest to refocus with the pastoral/heroic topic of S1.2, which has a forward drive due to its ascending voice leading. It takes three full starts of the pastoral/heroic topic to reach the breakthrough of the con fuoco topic (S2) in m. 99 that brings the EEC in m. 108 and completes a structural descent from 5 to 1 in the local key of B-flat major. The sense of circling created by the return of the “introduction” material and the stubborn refusal of the voice leading to move forward inspire a metaphor of a protagonist being pulled away from his desired goal two times by his encounter with the Eusebian character. When the con fuoco topic is reached in mm. 99–108 (Example 3.12), there is a marked moment with the bell-like sforzando chords that recall mm. 25–26 but this time arpeggiate Bb-Db-Gb. The German augmented sixth in m. 102 moves to a V9 in first inversion in m. 103, yet another marked feature as the bass Gb is pushed upward through G to A. This harmonic move signals a reversal: in order to break the surreal, sugary Eusebian dream in S1.1, the protagonist rejects Eusebius’s dream-like state by the willed “hoisting” of the bass upward to initiate a drive to the cadence. The hero overcomes the obstacles encountered in the second thematic area, as evidenced by the
207 Hepokoski and Darcy define the essential expositional closure (EEC) as the second main moment of structural punctuation in an exposition after S-space has begun, as “the first satisfactory perfect authentic cadence that proceeds onward to differing material” (120). 62
rapid resolution of the dominant ninth and descending fifth-progression that leads to the goal of the EEC in m. 108 (Example 3.12). The closing material (K) presents the heroic topic in the dominant key, B-flat major, creating a rounding effect as the listener prepares for the return of P and the repetition of the exposition. The use of the heroic topic as closing material also solidifies the strength of order at this point in the narrative, as the exposition ends with the rank value of order at its highest level yet due to the struggle encountered in the dream-like S1.1 theme and overcome in the final iteration of the increasingly heroic S1.2 theme.