FREUD AND THE PROBLEM WITH MUSIC: A HISTORY OF LISTENING AT THE MOMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Michelle R. Duncan May 2013 © 2013 Michelle R. Duncan FREUD AND THE PROBLEM OF MUSIC: A HISTORY OF LISTENING AT THE MOMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS Michelle R. Duncan, Ph. D. Cornell University 2013 An analysis of voice in performance and literary theory reveals a paradox: while voice is generally thought of as the vehicle through which one expresses individual subjectivity, in theoretical discourse it operates as a placeholder for superimposed content, a storage container for acquired material that can render the subjective voice silent and ineffectual. In grammatical terms, voice expresses the desire or anxiety of the third rather than first person, and as such can be constitutive of both identity and alterity. In historical discourse, music operates similarly, absorbing and expressing cultural excess. One historical instance of this paradox can be seen in the case of Sigmund Freud, whose infamous trouble with music has less to do with aesthetic properties of the musical art form than with cultural anxieties surrounding him, in which music becomes a trope for differences feared to potentially “haunt” the public sphere. As a cultural trope, music gets mixed up in a highly charged dialectic between theatricality and anti-theatricality that emerges at the Viennese fin- de-Siècle, a dialectic that continues to shape both German historiography and the construction of modernity in contemporary scholarship. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Michelle Duncan was born in Yankton, South Dakota. Both of her parents were teachers; from early on, a culture of learning informed her worldview. When she was three, her family relocated to Downers Grove, Illinois, while her father pursued advanced degrees at Loyola and Northwestern in Chicago. While there, she, her older brother, and her parents took advantage of cultural opportunities unavailable in South Dakota—plays, musicals, art exhibits, and Chicago Cubs games—and developed an appreciation for international gastronomy. During summer breaks, they often traveled throughout the United States, often with a tent and their Ford station wagon. When Michelle was nine, her family returned to South Dakota. Throughout her youth, Michelle loved books, music, and the performing arts, and she became an accomplished pianist. In middle and high school, she participated in numerous ensembles and theatre productions, earning distinction as a singer and actress. After graduating from Aberdeen Central High School, she studied voice performance at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She saw her first opera in Denver, a production of Turandot at Opera Colorado featuring Hungarian soprano Eva Marton, which made a profound and lasting impression. Deciding to see more of the world, she traveled to the Netherlands and Germany, where she lived for eight years—studying voice, seeing many concerts and operas, and developing a love of Germanic language, literature, and culture. After several years working in the classical music industry, she and her two iii young daughters moved to Oakland, California, where Michelle enrolled as an undergraduate in Mills College, studying voice, German, and Comparative Literature. Her senior thesis was a study of Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio. Michelle graduated with honors from Mills with a BA in German Literature, and earned the Marie Naumann-Etienne Prize for Excellence in German Studies. iv Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Belva Trask Duncan, 1940-1998 And to my daughters, Sara and Hannah, with enormous love and gratitude v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation could not have been written without the support, friendship, and guidance of many people. It is with enormous gratitude that I thank Michael Steinberg, Doktor Vater and mentor since my early days in graduate school, who kept faith in me and in my project even when my resolve faltered. Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg recognized that this was a dissertation topic before I did, and has also been a trusted mentor and confidante. Over the years, the Steinbergs have been a second family to me and to my children, sharing our laughs and tears, joys and sorrows—and unabashedly living and loving opera. A very special acknowledgement also to Patrizia McBride, special committee co-chair, who saw the project through to completion, along with committee members Anette Schwarz and Elke Siegel. For their willingness to take this on and their magnanimity toward all matters both intellectual and professional, I will be forever grateful. I am also grateful for the long-term support of the Department of German Studies at Cornell, including the Director of Graduate Studies, Peter Gilgen, and the always helpful Miriam Zubal. My thanks also to three former committee members: Biddy Martin, who opened my eyes to the wonders of psychoanalysis; David Bathrick, whose critical insight kept me on target in German Studies; and Rebecca Schneider, who emboldened me to ask difficult questions, and to embrace my intellectual instincts. Rebecca’s voice can be heard in much of this writing. Travel and research opportunities to undertake this probject were generously provided by the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell, the vi Arnold Schoenberg Foundation in Vienna, the Zantop Travel Fund of the Women in German, and the Cornell Graduate School. I must also thank the Graduiertenkolleg Körper-Inszenierungen at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft at the Freie Universität Berlin for an International Fellowship, and the DCR-Wander Artist Residency in the Hague.!!! ! Many of these ideas germinated during discussions among the Cornell opera group, where I met Emanuele Senici and Alessandra Campana, who I continue to trust as though they were my older siblings. Thanks to the always lyrical Joseph Campana; to Mary Ann Smart, who edited chapter one and helped me to keep the academic endeavor in perspective; to David Levin and the anonymous readers of the Opera Quarterly, who offered helpful comments on chapter two; and to my friend and colleague Adam Sacks. I am also indebted to the Richards-Yearsley family, and other Berlin friends who helped sustain us through exciting and challenging times, especially Markus Boeggemann and amazing cake-baker, Rosalind (Hammer) Meisterman. To my children, Sara and Hannah Kellermann; to Troy van der Plas and his family in the Hague; to my partner, Michael Gibson, and his parents, Marva and Walter Luttrell and Dr. Harris Gibson; to my late mother, Belva Duncan (d. 1998) and late grandmother, Gertrude Trask (d. 2011); and the rest of my professors, friends, and family members who have had a hand in this endeavor, however large or small. Thank you for your patience, understanding, and encouragement. I could not have done this without you. Michelle Duncan vii TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH……………………………………………iii DEDICATION……………………………………………………..…….v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………....vi TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………...viii PREFACE……………………………………………………………….ix INTRODUCTION…………………………………………….………...1 CHAPTER ONE……………………………………………….……....22 The Operatic Scandal of the Singing Body: Voice, Presence, Performativity CHAPTER TWO…………………………………………………….....63 Sound Remains: of Sirens, Songs, and Soma CHAPTER THREE………………………………………………...…..92 Freud’s Scriptural Rhetoric CHAPTER FOUR……………………………………………….........118 Freud Contra Wagner WORKS CITED……………………………………………………… 150 viii PREFACE The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years—response to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters— stay with you, mark you, become you. The cost of “discontinuity” (that pattern still imposed on women) is such a weight of things unsaid, an accumulation of material so great, that everything starts up something else in me; what should take weeks takes me sometimes months to write; what should take months, takes years. --Tilly Olson Silences ix INTRODUCTION As the person who developed the art of the talking cure, Sigmund Freud provides us every reason to consider him one of the most adept listeners in modern history. At the same time, the art and science of listening that Freud pioneered is surrounded by problematic and unexplored boundaries. One key area, often mentioned but never explored in depth, concerns Freud’s assertion that he is unable to enjoy and to understand music. In light of this assertion, it is curious that he sought the contribution and expertise of key musical figures during the early, formative years of psychoanalysis. Given the importance of musical culture during fin-de-Siècle Vienna, Freud knew that by including Max Graf and David Josef Bach as two of the first members of the Psychoanalytic Wednesday Society, he was engaging with core participants in this saturated moment of cultural conflict and modernism. Did he assemble these musical personalities in his early circle to task them to listen for him, and thus to help him understand the potential role of music in both his psychological and metapsychological arguments? Since Freud forever changed the way that we listen, what do we hear when we listen for Freud--in psychoanalysis, in music, and in the historical as well as the theoretical dimensions of their interrelation? In this study, I analyze