The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination - Part 9
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Part 9

95. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, p. 91.

96. Ibid., p. 92.

97. The quotation comes from Leopold von Ranke, Fursten und volker von Sud-Europa, vol. 2 (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1834), p. 34.

98. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, p. 105.

99. Ibid., p. 97.

100. Ibid., p. 93.

101. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, p. 243.

102. Munzer, Mademoiselle, pp. 12930. ("Von neuem klang das geheimnisvolle, strenge, drohende Motiv auf. Unvorgeschriebene Dissonanzen erhohten seine Schauerlichkeit.... 'Ich wei nicht,' sagte aber da ihr harmloser Gatte. 'Mir klingt es mehr falsch als sozusagen pikant.' 'Adolf,' rief die Justizratin entrustet, 'das ist eben das Ungluck deiner einseitigen juristischen Ausbildung. Du hast nie etwas fur deine musikalische Erziehung getan. Jetzt racht es sich und du vermagst nicht, der kunstlerischen Einsicht deiner Familie zu folgen.' Der Schlu des ersten Satzes ubertraf den vom Mittag noch um ein betrachtliches an ungeloster Dissonanz, denn diesmal spielte das Fraulein richtig, und nur Eduard geriet plotzlich in Fis-dur hinein. Der Justizrat zuckte empfindlich zusammen und stohnte horbar, aber die Justizratin wand sich sozusagen vor Wonne und sagte im Tone tiefster Verachtung: 'Richard Strau!!' ") 103. Ibid., p. 132. Ellipsis in the original. ("Da lachelte sie und offnete leise, gutig und liebevoll die unverschlossene Tur des Knabenzimmers....")

CHAPTER 3. Infinities.

1. Karl Marx, "Neumodische Romantik," in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, I. Abteilung, Band 1 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1975), p. 675. ("Das Kind, das, wie ihr wit, an Gothe schreib, / Und ihm weis machen wollt', er hab' sie lieb, / Das Kind war einst im Theater zugegen, / 'ne Uniform thut sich bewegen. / Es blickt zu ihr gar freundlich lachelnd hin: / 'Bettina wunscht, mein Herr, in ihrem Sinn, / Das Lockenhaupt an sie zu lehnen, / Gefat von wundersamem Sehnen.' / Die Uniform erwiedert gar trocken drauf: / 'Bettina la dem Willen seinen Lauf!' / 'Recht, spricht sie, weit du wohl, mein Mauschen, / Auf meinem Kopf giebts keine Lauschen!' ") 2. As translated in Maynard Solomon, "Beethoven's Tagebuch of 18121818," in Beethoven Studies 3, Alan Tyson, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 261.

3. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, James Creed Meredith, trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 60.

4. Ibid., p. 89.

5. Ibid., p. 82.

6. For a particularly good a.n.a.lysis of this idea, see James Kirwan, The Aesthetic in Kant: A Critique (London: Continuum, 2004).

7. Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 1920.

8. Quoted in Isaiah Berlin, The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism (London: John Murray, 1993), p. 20.

9. J. G. Hamann, "Aesthetica in nuce: A Rhapsody in Cabbalistic Prose," Joyce P. Crick, trans., in Cla.s.sic and Romantic German Aesthetics, J. M. Bernstein, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 13.

10. Ibid., p. 4.

11. Quoted in Berlin, The Magus of the North, p. 99.

12. Quoted in Oscar Sonneck, Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), p. 49.

13. Eric A. Blackall, The Novels of the German Romantics (Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 236.

14. John H. Finley, Four Stages of Greek Thought (Stanford University Press, 1966), pp. 34.

15. Dennis Ford, The Search for Meaning: A Short History (University of California Press, 2008), p. 30.

16. Michael P. Steinberg, Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century Music (Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 71.

17. William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade (New York: Warner Books, 1983), p. 134.

18. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Heroism," in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 190304), p. 250.

19. See Owen Jander, "The Prophetic Conversation in Beethoven's 'Scene by the Brook,' " The Musical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (Autumn 1993): 50859.

20. See Raymond Knapp, "A Tale of Two Symphonies: Converging Narrative of Divine Reconciliation in Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth," Journal of the American Musicological Society 53, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 291343.

21. Hoffmann's habit of cherry-picking to suit his Romanticism is the most common criticism of his review of the Fifth. Robin Wallace refers to the "almost irrational consistency" of Hoffmann's focus on the kingdom of the infinite, saying that Hoffmann's "foremost aim was always to explain how the music worked upon his emotions, and he chose to do so as directly as possible, even when that meant overlooking important pa.s.sages in favor of those which suited him best." And Abigail Chantler notes how Hoffmann isolated and rhetorically amplified certain features of the symphony-the somewhat unusual key relationships in the Andante, the use of the timpani in bridging the last two movements-in order to shoehorn everything into his organically unified whole, how he "attributed to unrelated musical features an extra-musical kinship in order to justify their inclusion in the work." (See Wallace, Beethoven's Critics [Cambridge University Press, 1986], pp. 24, 26; Chantler, E.T.A. Hoffmann's Musical Aesthetics [Ashgate Publishing, 2006], p. 75.) 22. Stephen Rumph, "A Kingdom Not of This World: The Political Context of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Beethoven Criticism," 19th-Century Music 19, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 51. Steven Ca.s.sedy has speculated that Hoffmann's formulation may be echoing a rather casual reading of Kant; see his "Beethoven the Romantic: How E. T. A. Hoffmann Got It Right," Journal of the History of Ideas 71, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): especially pp. 24.

23. After Napoleon's exile, Hoffmann's criticism of the French would be more explicit. In 1814, he would chastise the "unutterable sacrilege of that nation [France]" that "led finally to a violent revolution that rushed across the earth like a devastating storm"; by 1821, he could disdain the operas of the great French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, wondering "how it was that this empty, monotonous sing-song ... could be regarded as music for almost a hundred years, at least by the French." (Hoffmann, "Alte und neue Kirchenmusik," as translated in Rumph, "A Kingdom Not of This World," p. 56; Hoffmann, "Further Observations on Spontini's Opera Olimpia," in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings, David Charlton, ed. Martyn Clarke, trans. [Cambridge University Press, 2004], p. 435.) 24. Rumph, "A Kingdom Not of This World," p. 61.

25. Johann Gottfried Herder, "An die Deutschen," as translated in Elie Kedourie, Nationalism, 4th ed. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), p. 53.

26. Harold Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies: Cultural Ident.i.ty in France and Germany 17501914 (Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 6061.

27. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 134.

28. Ibid., p. 123.

29. Ortiz M. Walton, "A Comparative a.n.a.lysis of the African and Western Aesthetics," in The Black Aesthetic, Addison Gayle Jr., ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971), p. 165.

30. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, p. 135.

31. Hoffmann to Carl Friedrich Kunz, August 19, 1813, in E. T. A. Hoffmanns Briefwechsel, Erster Band, Friedrich Schnapp, ed. (Munchen: Winkler-Verlag, 1967), p. 409 ("so wird es Ihnen nicht sehr darauf ankomme[n]").

32. Hoffmann, "The Poet and the Composer," Martyn Clarke, trans., in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings, pp. 18990.

33. Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 18701871 (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 212.

34. As proposed by Klaus Martin Kopitz. See his Beethoven, Elisabeth Rockel und das Alb.u.mblatt "Fur Elise" (Koln: Verlag Dohr, 2010).

35. Richard Wagner, My Life, vol. 1 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1911), p. 469.

36. Ibid., p. 476.

37. Wagner to Theodor Uhlig, February 1851, in Wagner, Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, J. S. Shedlock, trans. (New York: Scribner and Welford, 1890), p. 94.

38. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, E. F. Payne, trans., vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), p. 257.

39. Ibid., p. 69.

40. Ibid., p. 72.

41. Ibid., pp. 26162.

42. Richard Wagner, "Beethoven," William Ashton Ellis, trans., in Richard Wagner's Prose Works, vol. 5 (London: William Reeves, 1896), pp. 7273.

43. Ibid., p. 92.

44. Ibid., p. 84.

45. K. M. Knittel, "Wagner, Deafness, and the Reception of Beethoven's Late Style," Journal of the American Musicological Society 51, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 73.

46. Edward Dannreuther, "Beethoven and His Works: A Study," Macmillan's Magazine 34 (July 1876): 194.

47. George Grove, "Beethoven," in J. A. Fuller Maitland, ed., Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: Macmillan, 1911), p. 262.

48. Oliver Lodge, The Substance of Faith Allied with Science: A Catechism for Parents and Teachers (London: Methuen & Co., 1907), p. 87.

49. Knittel, "Wagner, Deafness, and the Reception of Beethoven's Late Style," p. 82.

50. Cosima Wagner's Diaries: Volume I, 18691877, Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack, eds., Geoffrey Skelton, trans. (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 191.

51. Ibid., p. 586.

52. Richard Wagner, "Beethoven," pp. 99100.

53. Ibid., p. 126. Ellis renders Wagner's frecher Mode as "shameless Mode"; "insolent fashion" is Edward Dannreuther's translation.

54. Cosima Wagner's Diaries: Volume I, p. 246.

55. Percy M. Young, Beethoven: A Victorian Tribute; based on the papers of Sir George Smart (London: Dennis Dobson, 1976), pp. 8285.

56. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 18111947 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 424.

57. Ryan Minor, "Prophet and Populace in Liszt's 'Beethoven' Cantatas," in Liszt and His World, edited by Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Cooley (Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 118.

58. Ibid., p. 150.

CHAPTER 4. a.s.sociations.

1. William E. Channing, The Works of William E. Channing, D.D. Eleventh Complete Edition, with an Introduction (Boston: George G. Channing, 1849), vol. 5, p. 308.

2. John Sullivan Dwight, "Academy of Music-Beethoven's Symphonies," The Pioneer 1, no. 2 (Jan.Feb. 1843): 57.

3. Lindsay Swift, Brook Farm: Its Members, Scholars, and Visitors (New York: Macmillan Company, 1900), p. 154.

4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Life and Letters in New England," in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 10 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 190304), p. 340.

5. Ibid., p. 343.

6. James Clarke Freeman, quoted in James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1888), p. 249.

7. Swift, Brook Farm, p. 156.

8. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thoughts on Modern Literature," The Dial 1, no. 2 (October 1840): 149.

9. As related by Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, vol. 1 (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852), p. 234.

10. Margaret Fuller, "Lives of the Great Composers, Haydn, Mozart, Handel, Bach, Beethoven," The Dial 2, no. 2 (Oct. 1841): 202.

11. A. Bronson Alcott, "Orphic Sayings," The Dial 1, no. 1 (July, 1840): 93.

12. Octavius Brooks Frothingham, George Ripley (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886), pp. 8485.

13. Ibid., p. 9.

14. George Willis Cooke, Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight (New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1898), pp. 5859.

15. Quoted in Frothingham, George Ripley, p. 124.

16. Ibid., p. 613.

17. Emerson, "The Conduct of Life," in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 6, pp. 27677.

18. Emmanuel Swedenborg, The True Christian Religion; Containing the Universal Theology of the New Church (New York: American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society, 1855), pp. 376, 388.

19. Ibid., p. 804.

20. John Sullivan Dwight, "Musical Review: Music in Boston During the Last Winter," The Harbinger 1, no. 8 (Aug. 2, 1845): 124.

21. John Sullivan Dwight, "Review: Festus, a Poem," The Harbinger 2, no. 2 (Dec. 20, 1845): 27. "Festus" was a long philosophical poem by the English poet Philip James Bailey which had some currency in nineteenth-century America (Tennyson, for example, admired it). Dwight concluded his Swedenborg-Fourier-Beethoven thought by asking, "and shall we not say, in poetry, 'Festus?' " He had at least enough critical perspicacity to include the qualifying question mark.

22. Frothingham, George Ripley, p. 192.

23. A. Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane to A. Brooke, August 1843, in Clara Endicott Sears, Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915), p. 50.

24. Louisa M. Alcott, "Transcendental Wild Oats," in Sears, Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands, p. 169.

25. Quoted in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Part of a Man's Life (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905), p. 12.

26. D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Cla.s.sic American Literature (Penguin Cla.s.sics, 1991), p. 112.

27. Nathaniel Hawthorne to Sophia Peabody, September 3, 1841, in Hawthorne, The Letters, 18131843, Thomas Woodson et al., eds. (Ohio State University Press, 1984), p. 566.