Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edward T. Cone (1917-2004) was professor emeritus of music at Princeton University, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1985. He wrote two of the twentieth century's most influential books about "Western music, Musical Forms and Musical Performance" (Norton) and "The Composer's Voice". Robert P. Morgan is professor emeritus of music at Yale University and the editor of "Cone's Music: A View from Delft", a collection of previously published essays.

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"As a critic, Edward Cone drew the best from his Princeton mentors Roger Sessions, Richard Blackmur of the New Criticism, and the no less legendary musicologist Oliver Strunk. His work--elegant and profound, self-aware but never self-important, resolutely undogmatic--is above all true to what can only be called an exquisite ear. Few have written better on Schubert, Berlioz, or Stravinsky, and none better on the crux of composer, performer, and listener he saw as axiomatic to musical experience. We are indebted indeed to Robert Morgan for this large, dazzling new trove of Cone's writings."--Joseph Kerman, professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

"This collection is a treasure. Like Edward T. Cone's other extraordinary writings, these unpublished essays offer a wealth of critical and analytical thought on some of the central composers and compositions of classical music. What emerges, beyond the many wonderful insights about individual compositions, is not a theory but the persistent exemplification of Cone's style of analysis, one that balances listening and reflection with particular deftness."--Fred Everett Maus, University of Virginia

"This book underlines the values of an outstanding pioneer in the field of musical-critical discourse at a time when the historical legitimacy of those values benefits from being reinforced. Edward T. Cone was undeniably a master of the lecture, and his trademark lucidity and good humor are apparent everywhere here."--Arnold Whittall, author ofExploring Twentieth-Century Music

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"As a critic, Edward Cone drew the best from his Princeton mentors Roger Sessions, Richard Blackmur of the New Criticism, and the no less legendary musicologist Oliver Strunk. His work--elegant and profound, self-aware but never self-important, resolutely undogmatic--is above all true to what can only be called an exquisite ear. Few have written better on Schubert, Berlioz, or Stravinsky, and none better on the crux of composer, performer, and listener he saw as axiomatic to musical experience. We are indebted indeed to Robert Morgan for this large, dazzling new trove of Cone's writings."--Joseph Kerman, professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

"This collection is a treasure. Like Edward T. Cone's other extraordinary writings, these unpublished essays offer a wealth of critical and analytical thought on some of the central composers and compositions of classical music. What emerges, beyond the many wonderful insights about individual compositions, is not a theory but the persistent exemplification of Cone's style of analysis, one that balances listening and reflection with particular deftness."--Fred Everett Maus, University of Virginia

"This book underlines the values of an outstanding pioneer in the field of musical-critical discourse at a time when the historical legitimacy of those values benefits from being reinforced. Edward T. Cone was undeniably a master of the lecture, and his trademark lucidity and good humor are apparent everywhere here."--Arnold Whittall, author ofExploring Twentieth-Century Music

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Hearing and Knowing Music

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Musical Examples........................................................................ixList of Tables..................................................................................xiAcknowledgments.................................................................................xiiiIntroduction....................................................................................1Part I: Aesthetics..............................................................................7Essay One: The Missing Composer.................................................................11Essay Two: The Silent Partner...................................................................16Essay Three: The Irrelevance of Tonality?.......................................................38Essay Four: Hearing and Knowing Music...........................................................49Part II: Opera and Song.........................................................................61Essay Five: Mozart's Deceptions.................................................................65Essay Six: Siegfried at the Dragon's Cave: The Motivic Language of The Ring.....................80Essay Seven: Schubert's Heine Songs.............................................................106Part III: The Composer as Critic................................................................117Essay Eight: The Composer as Critic.............................................................121Essay Nine: Schubert Criticizes Schubert........................................................135Part IV: Analysis...............................................................................149Essay Ten: Schubert's Symphonic Poem............................................................153Essay Eleven: Debussy's Art of Suggestion.......................................................159Essay Twelve: Stravinsky at the Tomb of Rimsky-Korsakov.........................................170Essay Thirteen: Stravinsky's Version of Pastoral................................................181Essay Fourteen: Stravinsky's Sense of Form......................................................190Published Works of Edward T. Cone...............................................................207Index...........................................................................................211

Chapter One

A few years ago a little book by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy, promised to reveal, according to its subtitle, What Every American Needs to Know. Its eloquent plea for a more rational system of education based on a modicum of shared knowledge was supplemented by a list of "What Literate Americans Know." So far as music is concerned, at least, that list made melancholy reading; and it still does in the updated and expanded edition that appeared a year later, whether we take it as detailing what literate Americans actually do know, or what they ought to know.

The list is, as one would expect, limited to Western music since 1700; even within those limits it reveals many biases and blind (or deaf) spots. No English composer is mentioned, and only one French. (No, it's not Debussy; it's Bizet.) Of the four operas that make the list, none is German. Schubert is there, but not Schumann; Stravinsky and Prokofiev, but not Schoenberg and Shostakovich; Berlin and Gershwin but not Kern; and certainly not Copland or Carter. The only instrumental title specified, beyond Sousa marches and Strauss waltzes, is Handel's Water Music! The most numerous category of composition is that of popular song: nursery songs, hymns, the standard Stephen Foster repertoire in detail, modern "folk" songs, "White Christmas," and so on.

One can of course deplore certain inclusions and exclusions. More important, however, is the attitude suggested by the "classical" choices that do make the grade. By mentioning Beethoven but none of his symphonies, Schubert but none of his songs, Wagner but none of his music dramas, the list seems to be saying: what is important is not familiarity with works of art, but knowledge of facts about them. The book actually makes this point of view explicit in its recommendation of what it calls schemata. A schema is a rough model that supplies just enough relevant information about a given subject to enable one to read or converse on a superficial level. Such a schema for Beethoven might be: "Austrian composer, Napoleonic period, nine symphonies, deaf." Obviously one need not know any of Beethoven's music to construct such a schema: one may never have heard a note. But one can carry on what might be called cocktail conversation: "To think that he wrote his best music when he was stone deaf!"

Is that what we mean by literacy in the arts? Isn't the view of culture presented here the one illustrated by the cartoon, "Quick, Mac, where's the Mona Lisa? We're double-parked!"? And isn't the type of music education that such a view encourages the one that Virgil Thomson excoriated years ago as the "Appreciation racket"?

The only kind of schema that makes sense for dealing with composers—or with artists of any kind—is that of style. When we hear the word "Beethoven" we must respond, not with a bunch of facts about the man, but with an aural concept of the style of his music—of the way it sounds. And the only relevant schema for the individual composition is the work itself: not words about it but the memory of it. And that means we must know a sufficient number of his compositions—and know in the sense of being able to remember, not just to have heard them. For the schema of the individual artwork can only be based on an aural image. When we read the words "Beethoven's Fifth," they must convey an image of sound, and I don't mean simply the opening motto. Interestingly, this is what the list itself implies when it labels the Parthenon as a visual image. And I think it is also implied by the presence of so many old favorite songs: these are present to all of us as audible images—music as well as words. Such knowledge is essential. And as for those songs, I'm not objecting to their presence on the list; I am only suggesting that a musical literacy that is restricted to that source of musical imagery is neither wide nor deep.

The way to understand music is thus through first-hand experience. Only on that basis can one then begin to appreciate the role of music in our cultural history; only then can one realize that Western music is one of our proudest intellectual achievements. In other words, only experience of music as a fine art can lead to understanding of music as a liberal art.

There is another point. In arts the list is restricted to what literate people do know. But in science, as I mentioned, it is broadened to include what they ought to know. In "A Note on the Scientific Terms," an appendix supplied by the physicist James Trefil, one reads:

Because there is little broad knowledge of science even among educated people, the kind of criteria used to compile our lists for the humanities and social sciences—for example, would a literate person be familiar with this term?—simply can't be used for the natural sciences. The gap between the essential basic knowledge of science and what the general reader can be expected to know has become too large.

This is typical of our reverence for science and I am not against it. But it is true for the arts as well. And indeed the list makes a small move in this direction by including stylistic and technical terms in visual art: for example, the architectural orders, abstract expressionism, impressionism, art nouveau, art deco, etc. But this doesn't call for much real knowledge. And in music the intellectual level is even lower: musical instruments, directions like crescendo (but no diminuendo), pianissimo (but no piano), and a few forms like concerto, sonata, symphony (so that you can read a concert program). There is no sense that music is an intellectual activity, and that Western music especially is one of the supreme intellectual achievements of mankind. Melody is there, and rhythm, but not harmony and counterpoint, which make Western music what it is and differentiate it from other music. Nor, certainly, is tonality: the sense of key and the structure of music necessary to convey and exploit that sense of key. A proper schema for tonality would cover the history of music from the use of modal scales in Greek antiquity, through the early Christian adaptation of those modes, the rise of polyphony in the Middle Ages, the discovery of the implications of harmony in the Renaissance, the gradual development of the modern tonal system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its flowering in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its overelaboration in the late nineteenth and the crisis of the twentieth century, with the possibility of atonality and substitute systems such as the twelve-tone system. Is all that too much to expect of a normally literate person?

That reminds me of another crucial omission in the list: Arnold Schoenberg. By anybody's count, he was one of the two most important composers of the twentieth century, and actually one of the easiest for whom to give a schema (in the bad sense): Austrian composer associated with the rise of atonality and the development of the twelve-tone method. And it is much easier to give a quick explanation of the twelve-tone method than of tonality (which you really have to experience to understand).

All this is by way of showing what real literacy in music involves, and I'm sure that proponents of the other arts could show corresponding concepts. But of all this, there is nothing in the book. The arts—even literature—are reduced to names, titles, isolated words. This reflects a common view: that the arts are not intellectual pursuits.

What then do the arts really have to do with culture? Hirsch's book treats culture as shared knowledge. But I believe that there is another equally important aspect of culture: shared experience. It is not sufficient, for example, for a people to have a common history: they have to share that history. One way is to keep the history alive—as, for example, Jewish tradition and ritual does at the Passover, Christian ritual during Holy Week; or, for another, as the Old South did in keeping its memories of the Civil War alive. But for most of us, our history is not alive. What keeps it alive for us is Art and Literature. Gone with the Wind may not be a great novel, but it has made the Civil War a national experience for a generation. Washington Crossing the Delaware may not be a great painting, but it again has given us all a shared experience.

But shared artistic experience is not to be limited to historical recreation. Shared aesthetic experience is a powerful force for community, even when—maybe especially when—it is not overtly realized as such. Probably architecture is the most obvious example. Hasn't the culture of Italy, for better or for worse, been largely shaped by the constant architectural presence of Imperial Rome? And didn't the cultural synthesis of the High Middle Ages depend on the fact that the philosophy and religious ideals of the period were not just taught and talked about but were actually experienced in the gothic edifice of the cathedral itself—as Erwin Panofsky and other art scholars have convincingly shown?

What I am primarily interested in, of course, is shared musical experience. I am afraid that in our own country today the musical experiences most widely shared are country music and rock—alas, not even good jazz anymore. But contrast certain European countries. In Vienna you can still choose the musical Mass you want to hear on Sunday in any one of several beautiful baroque churches: a shared experience of ritual, music, and architecture.

Or consider the example of Berlioz, who was acutely aware of the role of his art as a source of shared experience. And he wanted the experiences to be widely shared—no chamber music for him! His Memoirs include a telling story:

In 1840, as the month of July drew near, the government proposed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 1830 Revolution with public ceremonies on an imposing scale. The relics of the glorious victims of the Three Days were to be translated to the monument lately erected to them in the Place de la Bastille. The Minister of the Interior decided to commission me to write a symphony for the occasion. I wished, to begin with, to recall the conflicts of the famous Three Days amidst the mourning strains of a bleak but awe-inspiring march; to follow this with a kind of funeral oration or farewell address to the illustrious dead, while the bodies were lowered into the cenotaph; and to conclude with a hymn of praise at the moment when, the tomb being sealed, all eyes were fixed on the high column on which Liberty with wings outspread seemed soaring towards heaven like the souls of those who had given their lives for her.

Can you imagine the National Endowment for the Arts commissioning such a work from the leading radical composer of today—one who was constantly at war with the accepted musical values and academy of his day—and his accepting the commission in that spirit? But that is what it means to have a true national culture, and for the arts to take their place in it.

In conclusion, let me read another passage by James Trefil, defending his inclusion of scientific terms that ought to be known by the public:

In the end, the purely instrumental utility of scientific knowledge may be less important than the wider value to be gained from being acquainted with science as one of the great expressions of the human spirit. Science has been and continues to be one of the noblest achievements of mankind. From a humanistic point of view, its attainments are on a par with great achievements in art, literature, and political institutions, and in this perspective, science should come to be known for the same reasons as these other subjects.

Now read it again, substituting music.

Chapter Two

In order to explain my title, I start with a well-known example, the opening Adagio of Beethoven's Sonata quasi una fantasia, Op. 27 No. 2. We are so familiar with this famous movement that we do not realize how strangely it begins. After an introduction, the first theme enters—but its opening phrase immediately modulates from the tonic C-sharp minor to the relative major, E. And the next phrase, separated by an extra measure and a shift to E minor, is already a transition to the second subject. What has happened to the original key, and to the first theme? Certainly it is possible to begin a lyrical melody with a modulation—but normally that is followed by a return to the original key, before further excursions are made. That in fact is what does happen in the recapitulation: from tonic to relative major, then relative major back to tonic. But how should we understand the beginning? The trouble arises because we accept the opening phrase as pure introduction. A much more satisfactory form results if we hear that phrase not as introduction but as proto-thematic, adumbrating the melody that is openly stated by an answering phrase. Then we have a normal modulating period whose first phrase establishes the tonic and whose second moves to the relative major.

How can that interpretation be established in performance? If the pianist tries to emphasize a concealed melody—perhaps the right thumb line, or perhaps the top notes of the arpeggios—he destroys the mysterious atmosphere and ruins Beethoven's carefully composed effect of a gradually emerging melody. So the pianist must give only the merest hint—probably rhythmic rather than melodic, letting the increasingly rapid chord changes above the slowly moving bass suggest that the phrase may be at least partially thematic and not purely introductory. But the pianist can be successful only if the listener assumes the role of active collaborator. He or she must follow those progressions and try to understand their significance. One might say that both the listener and the pianist must practice, that only through repeated hearings or playings can one comprehend the formal role, and therefore the expressive significance, of the passage. Certainly in my case, only after having heard the sonata many times—indeed, after having learned to play it—did the advantage of such a reading occur to me.

Roger Sessions entitled a well-known book The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener. And by now the identity of the silent partner of my own title has, I hope, become clear. It is, of course, the listener.

I

A novel, according to Wolfgang Iser, implies an appropriate reader toward whom it is directed. In the same way, a composition implies its ideal listener. That is why in an earlier article, I have expressed my dissatisfaction with pure syntactic analysis, whose "aim is to arrive at a spatially oriented view of the composition as a whole, and [whose] method is atemporal study." For such analysis, I insisted, "does scant justice to our experience of hearing a composition in real time." It should therefore, as I recommended, be complemented by a diachronic analysis—one based on an examination of the composer's strategies as they reveal themselves during the actual temporal course of a composition. Such an exercise would share some of the aims and methods of analysis based on phenomenological principles. My own approach makes an assumption which those influenced by certain literary theories would no doubt consider untenable: that it is not only possible but desirable to determine how a composer meant for a work to be heard. That is why in a later essay I referred to "intentional analysis." For diachronic analysis, the analysis of how music moves through time, although by no means limited to a definition of the composer's intention, should take it into account.

To establish how a work is to be heard is to establish how it is to be listened to. In clarifying the composer's aims, intentional analysis at the same time defines the listener's role—more strictly, the listener's job—as my little discussion of the Beethoven sonata tried to demonstrate. Music is not simply a score, nor even a performance of a score, but rather a heard performance of a score. To be sure, the listener may be the performer, or the composer may be both; the composition may be mentally performed and therefore silently heard; but the principle remains.

(Continues...)

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