Freedom in Musical Form

[Michael]

I forgot to mention that the McClarey quote above concerns certain passages in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth. I think this forum has (superficially) touched on this topic before. I wouldn't mind taking it a little bit further. Any takers?

I don't really want to go into all this, but didn't Susan McClary almost suggest that Beethoven was a frustrated rapist? Not only that, but practically a potential serial killer. She describes the final section of the first movement of the Ninth as "an unparalleled fusion of murderous rage and yet a kind of pleasure in its fulfillment". She also says that Beethoven is forcing closure by bludgeoning the piece to death. This is programme music with a vengeance.
I think the psychoanalytical rot set in back in the fifties with Richard and Editha Sterba's "Beethoven and his Nephew".

[Peter]

I don't really want to go into all this, but didn't Susan McClary almost suggest that Beethoven was a frustrated rapist? Not only that, but practically a potential serial killer. She describes the final section of the first movement of the Ninth as "an unparalleled fusion of murderous rage and yet a kind of pleasure in its fulfillment". She also says that Beethoven is forcing closure by bludgeoning the piece to death. This is programme music with a vengeance.
I think the psychoanalytical rot set in back in the fifties with Richard and Editha Sterba's "Beethoven and his Nephew".

I think it has its roots further back than that and I agree with you about Sterba and also Solomon. This topic would need a new thread if anyone dares to go down this road!!

[Quijote]

I'm surprised there are any 'takers' for her views - I can only assume she is incapable of enjoying music as it obviously causes her such a Freudian migraine! Strange, as I'm writing this Ethel Smyth's March for the suffragettes is playing on BBC radio 3.

Ah, but she does enjoy music, and if I remember correctly she has a particular penchant for Monteverdi and Schubert.
Before we all get on our high horses (me included), let's not forget that McClary is not suggesting that LvB was a rapist, but that she chooses to "sexualize" harmonic tensions by using such a metaphor. I have chosen to resurrect this topic in light of some recent reading I have done (and I was hoping to link it to a thread entitled "How Do You Listen To Music") but maybe it's OK to raise it here.
The reading in question is : Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing, Ed. Andrew Dell'Antonio, University of California Press, 2004. The chapter I would like to address with you is the essay by Robert Fink, Beethoven Antihero: Sex, Violence, and the Aesthetics of Failure, or Listening to the Ninth Symphony as Postmodern Sublime.
So, let's all calm down and take a look at what this essay offers ...

[Quijote]

I don't really want to go into all this, but didn't Susan McClary almost suggest that Beethoven was a frustrated rapist? Not only that, but practically a potential serial killer. She describes the final section of the first movement of the Ninth as "an unparalleled fusion of murderous rage and yet a kind of pleasure in its fulfillment". She also says that Beethoven is forcing closure by bludgeoning the piece to death. This is programme music with a vengeance.
I think the psychoanalytical rot set in back in the fifties with Richard and Editha Sterba's "Beethoven and his Nephew".

See my posting just above Michael. You raise a good point though : your analysis (your "take") of the Ninth is ... well, what? Formalist? The music "for-and-in-itself" sort of thing? By which I mean a closed, autonomous self-referential work? I think it can be analysed that way (and has been for nearly 150 years and certainly was my training). Thing is, maybe McClary is continuing an interpretive tradition that started way back with AB Marx (you remember him, didn't Beethoven admired this fellow?) and other 19th century commentators that was not without "sexualized" [ouch] content.

[Quijote]

I think it has its roots further back than that and I agree with you about Sterba and also Solomon. This topic would need a new thread if anyone dares to go down this road!!

I do believe in standing up and being counted! Let's do it, and assez (= enough!) with all this pussyfooting around !

[Peter]

Ah, but she does enjoy music, and if I remember correctly she has a particular penchant for Monteverdi and Schubert.
Before we all get on our high horses (me included), let's not forget that McClary is not suggesting that LvB was a rapist, but that she chooses to "sexualize" harmonic tensions by using such a metaphor. I have chosen to resurrect this topic in light of some recent reading I have done (and I was hoping to link it to a thread entitled "How Do You Listen To Music") but maybe it's OK to raise it here.
The reading in question is : Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing, Ed. Andrew Dell'Antonio, University of California Press, 2004. The chapter I would like to address with you is the essay by Robert Fink, Beethoven Antihero: Sex, Violence, and the Aesthetics of Failure, or Listening to the Ninth Symphony as Postmodern Sublime.
So, let's all calm down and take a look at what this essay offers ...

You're unlikely to find me getting on any horse! Now I'm perfectly calm and suggest actually McClary is the one in need of tranquilisers - the reason she chooses to 'sexualise harmonic tensions' is that she has a very personal strident feminist agenda and interprets everything in this blinkered narrow way. You obviously have an interest in the 'new musicology' of which Rosen has this to say "McClary sets up, like so many of the "new musicologists," a straw man to knock down, the dogma that music has no meaning, and no political or social significance. (I doubt that anyone, except perhaps the 19th century critic Hanslick, has ever really believed that, although some musicians have been goaded into proclaiming it by the sillier interpretations of music with which we are often assailed.)'

[Sorrano]

PS - Oh yeah - 99 percent of it is crap, just like any other style of music

Ahhh, but it's GOOD crap!

[Michael]

See my posting just above Michael. You raise a good point though : your analysis (your "take") of the Ninth is ... well, what? Formalist? The music "for-and-in-itself" sort of thing? By which I mean a closed, autonomous self-referential work? I think it can be analysed that way (and has been for nearly 150 years and certainly was my training). Thing is, maybe McClary is continuing an interpretive tradition that started way back with AB Marx (you remember him, didn't Beethoven admired this fellow?) and other 19th century commentators that was not without "sexualized" [ouch] content.

I have decided to delete my own post. I put in too many double entendres even for my taste!

[Quijote]

Please be patient, I'll be returning to McClary, sex, Beethoven's Ninth (first movement in particular), the Sterbas, rapists and eruptng volcanoes shortly. Phew!

[Quijote]

It goes to show there are gullible people out there, Ed, who want to believe the things dished up to them by the avant garde, just as they did with Andy Warhole. What's the famous line that comes from the Australian film, "The Adventures of Barry McKenzie" (James told it to me recently)? It goes something like this:

A character asks Barry shortly after he arrives from Australia, "Do you like Stockhausen", and Bazza replies, "No, but I think I just trod in some"!! (I hope my paraphrasing is accurate - no doubt JoE will set me straight if it isn't).

And once I have dealt with sex, McClary, "impotent" cadences, rapists and such like, I really will have to address this "haw-haw" philistinism. I did make an attempt before, but I deleted it because it was too sloppy. All things in due time ...

[Peter]

And once I have dealt with sex, McClary, "impotent" cadences, rapists and such like, I really will have to address this "haw-haw" philistinism. I did make an attempt before, but I deleted it because it was too sloppy. All things in due time ...

That'll be interesting, but don't make the patronising mistake of assuming that every one who doesn't share your tastes is automatically a "haw-haw" philistine.

[Quijote]

That'll be interesting, but don't make the patronising mistake of assuming that every one who doesn't share your tastes is automatically a "haw-haw" philistine.

It has nothing to do with taste. I call it "haw-haw" philistinsism because it is based on bad faith and false suppositions. I am perfectly able to accept that one man's meat is another man's poison.

[Quijote]

Sorry, for the PC-inclined : one person's meat is another person's poison. We shall have to rethink the entire nursery-rhyme repertoire; thus : "Person and person went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. Person fell down and broke his/her crown, and person came tumbling after.

[Sorrano]

Sorry, for the PC-inclined : one person's meat is another person's poison. We shall have to rethink the entire nursery-rhyme repertoire; thus : "Person and person went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. Person fell down and broke his/her crown, and person came tumbling after.

The PC Inclined will just have to deal with non-PC posts just as non-PC people will have to deal with PC inclined posts. That sounds fair to me.

[Peter]

It has nothing to do with taste. I call it "haw-haw" philistinsism because it is based on bad faith and false suppositions. I am perfectly able to accept that one man's meat is another man's poison.

You'll need to explain that one since that remark itself is a supposition.