1927 Beethoven as lawgiver and bearer of Classical values
He did not revolutionize [musical] art; he did not invent new artistic means, laws, or forms; he released neither himself nor others from the traditional rules of his art ... And just as he respected the laws of art, he respected those of reality.
He never separated art and reality, never understood music as unconditionally absolute or used music as a surrogate for religion. His greatest works in fact serve the expression of moral concepts: the idea of Christianity and of the moral upbringing of man.
(Arnold Schmitz, Das romantische Beethovenbild [ 1927))
Here, on the occasion of the centenary of Beethoven 's death, the
German musicologist Arnold Schmitz presides over the symbolic death …show more content…
This proved crucial in many of the right-wing, ultra-nationalist readings of
Beethoven which appeared around 1927 in Germany.34
In line with this new agenda, musical thought in 1920s Germany takes a decidedly objective turn, namely, the turn to form. Halm himself conceptualized music as an objective, spiritual power, made visible through its form.35 And he celebrated Beethoven 's music above all as a triumph of formative power, of Gestaltung. 36 Thus Beethoven 's music registers on a supra-individual level - Halm discourages interpretative conflations of the music with the personality of the composer, claiming instead that even the most individually idiosyncratic passages in Beethoven 's music serve a coherent whole. As an example of this, he cites the famously premature horn call in the first movement of the Eroica as an expression not of some personal whim but of Beethoven 's overmastering sense for form. 37 Here we observe Beethoven 's music becoming more and more objective, the personal idiosyncrasies of his musical style heard more and more as supra-individual, natural forces.
Beethoven enjoyed pride of place in Halm 's grand view of the forces …show more content…
Beethoven is still a hero, his music is unmistakable in its message and force, and it attains and expresses the highest synthesis of the temporal and the spatial, the dramatic and the epic, the circumstantial and the monumental. Other signal trends in the growing analytical literature around
Beethoven rallied to the same call of synthesis and unity. The rise of motivic analysis, for example, culminating in the Schoenbergian ideal
He did not revolutionize [musical] art; he did not invent new artistic means, laws, or forms; he released neither himself nor others from the traditional rules of his art ... And just as he respected the laws of art, he respected those of reality.
He never separated art and reality, never understood music as unconditionally absolute or used music as a surrogate for religion. His greatest works in fact serve the expression of moral concepts: the idea of Christianity and of the moral upbringing of man.
(Arnold Schmitz, Das romantische Beethovenbild [ 1927))
Here, on the occasion of the centenary of Beethoven 's death, the
German musicologist Arnold Schmitz presides over the symbolic death …show more content…
This proved crucial in many of the right-wing, ultra-nationalist readings of
Beethoven which appeared around 1927 in Germany.34
In line with this new agenda, musical thought in 1920s Germany takes a decidedly objective turn, namely, the turn to form. Halm himself conceptualized music as an objective, spiritual power, made visible through its form.35 And he celebrated Beethoven 's music above all as a triumph of formative power, of Gestaltung. 36 Thus Beethoven 's music registers on a supra-individual level - Halm discourages interpretative conflations of the music with the personality of the composer, claiming instead that even the most individually idiosyncratic passages in Beethoven 's music serve a coherent whole. As an example of this, he cites the famously premature horn call in the first movement of the Eroica as an expression not of some personal whim but of Beethoven 's overmastering sense for form. 37 Here we observe Beethoven 's music becoming more and more objective, the personal idiosyncrasies of his musical style heard more and more as supra-individual, natural forces.
Beethoven enjoyed pride of place in Halm 's grand view of the forces …show more content…
Beethoven is still a hero, his music is unmistakable in its message and force, and it attains and expresses the highest synthesis of the temporal and the spatial, the dramatic and the epic, the circumstantial and the monumental. Other signal trends in the growing analytical literature around
Beethoven rallied to the same call of synthesis and unity. The rise of motivic analysis, for example, culminating in the Schoenbergian ideal