Sunteți pe pagina 1din 13

Review

Reviewed Work(s): Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style by James
Webster
Review by: Floyd Grave
Source: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1992), pp. 261-272
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/763614
Accessed: 17-02-2019 19:06 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Journal of Musicology

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Review

James Webster,
Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony
and the Idea of Classical Style.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991

Floyd Grave

Eighteenth-century composers rarely cast their


symphonies in minor keys. They especially shunned those on the
sharp side, and it appears that only a single work in the genre,
Haydn's so-called Farewell Symphony, occupies the remote terrain of 261
F-sharp minor. The Farewell is unusual in many respects, most of
which have been overlooked by historians, and its prominent stature
in the composer's oeuvre probably owes less to listeners' appreciation
of its baffling musical substance than to the appealing legend of its
origin. Through the power of music-or in any event through the
pantomime arranged for the concluding Adagio-the shrewd Ester-
hazy kapellmeister disarmed his princely employer into acknowledg-
ing the musicians' plea for a long-overdue return to Eisenstadt. As
recounted in Georg August Griesinger's early biographical sketch, the
gradual disappearance of orchestral personnel had its intended ef-
fect, and orders for departure came the following day.l No other
authentic report of the work's genesis exists. The autograph manu-
script bears only the neutral title "Sinfonia in Fis minore," and the
final movement contains no more explanation than the words "nichts
mehr" where the cessation of instrumental lines begins.
Contemporary reception was mixed. While a notice in the Mercure
de France from 1784 dismissed the final movement as a joke, a 1799

Volume X * Number 2 * Spring 1992


The Journal of Musicology ? 1992 by the Regents of the University of California

I Georg August Griesinger, Biographische Notizen iiber Joseph Haydn (Leipzig,


1810), pp. 28-29; trans. in Vernon Gotwals, Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits (Madi-
son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 19.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY

editor's footnote in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung dwelt


profoundly moving effect. The poignant but potentially comic
tacle of players abandoning the symphony before its close earn
piece its unauthentic "Farewell" title in the 178os. The some
larger-than-normal legacy of sources indicates at least moderat
terest during Haydn's lifetime, and two fellow artists, Wranitzk
Dittersdorf, were inspired to write programmatically similar w
involving performers' departure (and arrival as well, in the c
Wranitzky's Sinfonia Quodlibet).2
Its enduring fame notwithstanding, the Farewell is not an e
symphony to love, given the gestural anomalies of its first mov
(especially the unexplainable D-major interlude in the midst
development section), unrelieved languor and textural auster
the first Adagio, harmonic asperities of the minuet, denial of t
contrast in the trio, and labored attenuation of the closing Ada
players snuff out their candles and shuffle for the exit. But the
well has found a true champion in James Webster, who has em
from a deep study to declare its stature as masterpiece of the f
order and a "stunning triumph of long-range musical planning"
262 112).
Why did the work's reputation languish for so long, and why
its special secrets remained hidden? Much of the blame fal
long-standing historiographical bias that brands Haydn's pr
accomplishments as stylistically immature. The competing pres
of the young Mozart may have something to do with the attit
Webster decries, for attributing stylistic adolescence to central
pean music from the early 177os comes easily if one of its prin
exponents is still a teenager. But Webster's chief concern is th
plorable extent to which scholarship still falls under a shad
teleological dogma and long-abandoned political agendas that sla
scholarly commentaries on the period starting with Kiesewetter
183os, and including early 20th-century writings by Sandb
Adler, and Fischer. Inherited historiographical baggage include
evolutionist model of progress toward perfection in the age of H
and Mozart, 1780-1800, with hints of decline thereafter (Kie
ter), the hard-won synthesis of strict and free style in Haydn's
quartets (Sandberger), Viennese patriotism and aesthetic con
tism (Adler), and the assumption that much of the history of

2 Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf s II ridotto is printed in The Symphony 1720-184


B1, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda (New York: Garland, 1985). Paul Wranitzky's S
Quodlibet is described in Jan LaRue, "A 'Hail and Farewell' Quodlibet Symp
Music and Letters XXXVII (1956), 250-59.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEW

century music involved preparation for the "high Cl


1780 to 1815 (Fischer). Observing that these schola
stylistic development have "dominated musicologi
close to a century, meeting people's need for an acco
fusing, crucial period in music history that is not onl
emotionally satisfying," he recasts Sandberger's acco
growth to artistic and technical maturity in the form

Once upon a time there lived a talented young comp


Joseph Haydn. He composed cheerful string quartets, b
not fully satisfy him.... Heavy of heart, he wandered f
years in the wilderness of symphonic experimentation,
he discovered the secret of stylistic synthesis through the
beit. Then he returned home and began to compose Cla
quartets.... And everyone lived happily ever after (p. 34

Not only have historians failed to grant early Hay


and quartets the unprejudiced hearing they deserve,
yses tend to concentrate on individual movements, a
stranger to its neighbors. Webster argues that the e
tions of cyclic integration in 18th-century instru
scarcely been addressed, and that the stubborn refus
multimovement composition as a whole inhibits und
tentially important features of large-scale rhetoric an
hesion.

"Through-composition," the term he adopts for this largely ig-


nored phenomenon, partially retains its textbook connotation of mu-
sical continuity that spans multiple stanzas of a song instead of closing
and repeating at the end of each verse. In the larger sense proposed
here, it refers to processes that reach over boundaries (especially
those between movements) that otherwise denote closure and sepa-
ration.

Of course, a composition designed to progress without closure


and pause between movements demands to be heard as a totality, and
Haydn's corpus of multimovement instrumental music affords one
example: the Sonata No. 30 in A, examined in close detail in this
book, which knits three movements together without a break. But
what about a piece whose first movement ends with a foreshortened,
conspicuously unsatisfying close? Or in which the first movement em-
bodies a musical problem that gets resolved only later in the cycle? Or
in which the heavyweight rhetoric of the last movement specially
marks it as a culmination?

Aiming to show that the Farewell Symphony exhibits all these


symptoms of cycle-as-totality, and many more, this "single-minded

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY

exploration of the through-compositional genius of Haydn" (p.


in a "virtually inexhaustible masterpiece" (p. 5) bears traits fami
scholars of Webster's writing: awesome command of factual inf
tion, encyclopedic knowledge of pertinent musical repertories,
ranging grasp of the specialist literature, eclectic analytical proc
fondness for typologies and tabulations of data, sharp-penned d
tions of other scholars' faulty propositions, and crafty use of s
quotes. But another ingredient here seems new: a rhetorically i
commitment to the subject of his inquiry, which he pursues wit
zeal of an apostle. His demonstration of Haydn's mastery of
integration gathers momentum as it unfolds, and it climaxes at
end with the force of a revelation.
The argument begins with the description of the Farewell Sym-
phony as a kind of double cycle. The first part comprises three dis-
crete yet peculiarly unsettled movements. Their sequence of principal
keys (F-sharp minor, A major, F-sharp major) recurs in the second
part, a run-on pair of movements that resolves and culminates the
symphony as a whole: F-sharp minor Presto, linked to the closing
Adagio whose tonally progressive, binary design leads from A to
264 F-sharp major. Within this design, processes involving destabilizatio
and disruption-of harmony and voice-leading, theme, rhythm, reg-
ister, and texture-help sustain unbroken tension until the "apothe-
osis" of the final Adagio.
Although the burden of Webster's analysis falls on questions of
tonal organization and motivic continuity, he recognizes the benefits
of examining a multiplicity of musical interactions involving harmonic
rhythm, phrase rhythm, and other coordinations of musical elements
on different levels of structure. In this effort toward something re-
sembling "comprehensive analysis" (p. 4), his approach calls to mind
the methods of Jan LaRue. Webster's own account of his method
emphasizes what he calls a "multivalent" strategy of picking and
choosing among a variety of analytical vantage points. Two guiding
principles remain in force throughout: first, the avoidance of any
reductive procedure that would suppress, normalize, or obscure the
"freedom, irregularity, [and] unpredictability" (p. 53) on which so
much of Haydn's art depends; and second, the preference for com-
prehending a Haydn composition in terms of processes unfolding in
time (including long-range processes that span several movements),
rather than as a static, architectural design dependent on symmetries
of theme, tonal relationship, and structural proportion.
Principal influences include Edward T. Cone's notions of large-
scale rhythm and the dynamic relationship between musical events
and their consequences; Donald Francis Tovey's insights into the

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEW

drama of musical form and tonal organization; and


understanding of the relationship between motive an
his absorption with the potentially long-range impli
destabilizing events.
Although Webster insists on preserving "the integr
ground" (p. 53), his analyses draw heavily on Schen
leading reductions to explain sources of long-rang
continuity as well as disruption, instability, and deni
method constitutes a special challenge in light of the
and the goals of Webster's inquiry. The importa
structural implications of surface events seems to co
ductive purposes of an orthodox Schenker graph, an
compositional features that he finds most compelling
behavior of dynamic structures that unfold in unanti
are more likely to hinge on the denial of closure than
accomplishment.
Despite the cumbersome apparatus involved, in
equipped with alternative readings, debate over comp
and interrupted or uninterrupted structural descent
about the location of structural dominants and down
ker graphs serve him well, especially when their str
scores essential peculiarities in the music: for examp
tion of the structural dominant from the middle of the first-
movement exposition to the final cadence of the recapitulation, or t
contrast between ambiguities in the first three movements and th
relative clarity of structural voice-leading in the last two.
Woven into the fabric of Webster's voice-leading studies are the
complementary strands of a motivic analysis that reveals thema
continuities embracing the entire work. Haydn's own statement abou
his method of composing furnishes a basis for this line of inquiry.

I sat down, began to improvise, sad or happy according to my mood,


serious or trifling. Once I had seized upon an idea, my whole en-
deavor was to develop and sustain it in keeping with the rules of art.
Thus I sought to keep going, and this is where so many of our new
composers fall down. They string out one little piece after another,
they break off when they have hardly begun, and nothing remains in
the heart when one has listened to it.3

No one who has worked closely with Haydn's music is disinclined


to take the composer at his word: motivic continuity matters in
Haydn; it is basic not only to the coherence of his music but to its

3 Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits, p. 61.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY

expressive substance. Disavowing the "thematicist" proclivity


earthing hidden motivic transformations in radically different
cal contexts, Webster advocates "an ad hoc pursuit of [Haydn's
ever-changing complexes of motives ... integrated into a comp
sive view of the composition" (p. 203). This means chasing dow
motivic manifestations of through-composition with a vengea
applied to any composer but Haydn, the procedure would
charges of overanalysis, but in the Farewell Symphony, the m
amply justifies the method. The first-movement exposition fu
three elemental motives: a triadic arpeggiation, a short series
peated notes initiated off the beat, and a scalar descent. All th
shown to be controlling participants in the thematic discours
unfolds throughout the symphony. Derivations from the o
ideas are sometimes tangible, sometimes obscure, but logically
nected through intermediate processes in a manner that s
LaRue's concept of "multistage variance."4 Webster himself ci
affinity with Schoenberg's "developing variation" concep
though he takes care to distance himself from such Schoenber
lowers as Hans Keller and Rudolf Reti, and from the organicis
266 nations of "Seek and ye shall find" unity mongers (p. 196), h
heavily in the analysis of motivic relationship-not only as a s
large-scale continuity but as a key ingredient in the final mo
whose significance as a culmination involves the "transfigurat
motives into essences" (p. 1 1 1).
In the author's account of the work, the closing Adagio
responsibility for resolving several movements' worth of tonal,
mic, and affective conflict and tension. Yet the very conc
prolonged negative climax seems tenuous: a culmination in
forces dwindle progressively and the musical substance dissolve
the bass up in a way that contradicts familiar procedures of l
tion and bass-supported cadential repetition.
Webster acknowledges that "as an ending, it is not 'easy'; it
between the apparently opposed values of structural closure a
substantiality; our attempted synthesis of them into a reassur
unified state will be fragile at best, not easily sustained. This m
lence, this resistance to a univalent conclusion, almost forces
move 'outside' the work 'as such'-which is to say, to reinterpr
the basis of the external program" (p. 112).

4 Jan LaRue, "A Haydn Specialty: Multistage Variance," in Joseph Haydn,


tional Congress Wien, 1982, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda, pp. 141-46; "Multistage
Haydn's Legacy to Beethoven," The Journal of Musicology I (1982), 265-74.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEW

But the known external program, strictly speakin


cerns a vanishing orchestra in the last movement
insistence on the through-compositional essence of t
that all principal, determining aspects must involve
cesses that span the entire symphony, he has no cho
the missing programmatic associations.
Working backward from the theme of departure
symphony ends, he links the first-movement exposi
ulation with the musicians' plight in Eszterhaza, and
section's D-major interlude with a mirage-like vis
deliverance from current hardship. The tonal pat
phony traverses corresponds to their journey from a
to the comforts of their Eisenstadt home.
The connection drawn between tonal movement and the orches-
tra's migration is plausible in 18th-century terms. Abbe Vogler, for
example, draws explicit connections between tonal change and voyage
in an alien land as he describes an ensemble from his 1771 singspiel,
Der Kaufmann von Smyrna.5 According to Vogler's commentary, sud-
den removal from the orbit of the dominant represents forced sepa-
ration of the protagonists from their European homeland; a modu
latory passage suggests their wandering; and temporary stabilization
in the subdominant (a surrogate tonic, in effect) corresponds to ref-
uge in the home of their protector.
But problems remain for Webster's travelers. The tonal plan of
the symphony, which moves through the realm of F-sharp minor
toward eventual resolution in F-sharp major, corresponds to their
struggle and ultimate attainment of their goal. Yet the scenario for
the final Adagio seems to suggest the beginning of a journey rather
than its end. Thus the trip in question must have more to do with the
musicians' anticipations of release from the bleakness of Eszterhaza
than the actual journey itself. Indeed, Webster proposes "Absence
Symphony," "Symphony of Longing," or "Departure Symphony" as
titles more appropriate than "Farewell."
Yet even viewing the work from this perspective does not fully
explain the extreme affective difference between the beginning of the
symphony and its conclusion, the relentless orchestral energy of the
Allegro assai as opposed to the weightless pianissimo of two violins on
the edge of silence at the end of the last movement. It suits Webster's
purpose to emphasize the transformation the music must undergo

5 Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule III (1781), 178. Vogler's commentary is


discussed in Floyd K. Grave and Margaret G. Grave, In Praise of Harmony: The Teachings
of Abbe GeorgJoseph Vogler (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), pp. 188-93.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY

between these opposed states, and his choice of words under


the contrast at every opportunity. Stirred by the "violence
minor mode" and the "violence of the opening theme" (p. 30
"violent, tonally wide-ranging [first] movement" (p. 57) reaches
max of violence" (p. 45) in a recapitulation whose oscillation of
and Neapolitan-sixth chords constitutes the "most savage passag
this entire savage movement" (p. 49). When the final Adagio at
an "apotheosis of ethereality" (p. 1 io), this represents the outcom
the "alternatingly violent and troubled style" of the first three
ments (p. 72).
Whatever its merits as a description of the music, this sava
and violence seems out of phase with a program that might be
marized as discontent leading to nonconfrontational protest. Pr
ably the violence has something more directly to do with the w
position at the peak of Haydn's so-called "Sturm und Drang" pe
Curiously, in a book where historians' labels come under painful
tiny, Webster retains this familiar term, at least in the narrow s
a designation for Haydn's music from the late 176os through th
1770s.
268 The "Sturm und Drang" question arises in a recent essay by Ju-
dith L. Schwartz, "Periodicity and Passion in the First Movement of
Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony."6 Schwartz, the only other scholar so
far to have examined any part of the work in detail, rejects the term
"Sturm und Drang" because of its anachronistic association with a
somewhat later literary movement. She substitutes the word "sublime"
as it is used by i 8th-century writers to describe artistic expression that
runs counter to recognized values of formality, symmetry, and ratio-
nal order. A passage she cites from Sulzer echoes Edmund Burkes'
distinction between the sublime and the beautiful:

In works of taste, apparently, the term sublime is generally applied


to whatever in its way is much greater and more powerful than
might have been expected; for this reason, the sublime arouses our
astonishment and admiration.... The sublime works on us with
hammer-blows; it seizes us and irresistibly overwhelms us. The r
lationship between a charming landscape and the breathtaking vis
of lofty mountains ... is similar to that between the beautiful and
sublime.7

6 In Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor ofJan LaRue, ed. Eugene K.
Wolf and Edward H. Roesner (Madison: A-R Editions, 1990), pp. 293-338, where it
stands adjacent to Webster's "The D-Major Interlude in the First Movement of Haydn's
'Farewell' Symphony," pp. 339-80, an independent essay whose content overlaps some
of the material in the book.
7 "Erhaben," in Johann Georg Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Kiinste

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEW

In Schwartz's analysis of a relatively civilized Allegr


ous humor" and "structurally controlled passion" involv
juxtapositions of the sublime (notably in the exposition
ulation) and the beautiful (the D-major interlude). Whe
draws a connection between "violence and rhythmic ob
two-bar modules]" (p. 71)-an "almost mechanical ph
combines with the prevailing instability to create a rhy
only be called obsessive" (p. 38)-Schwartz proposes
impulse and control, accomplished in part through dyn
ceived patterns in phraseology. The diversity of phrasi
involves a hierarchy of phrase-units and a series of
projected "gradation patterns" by which phrase length
gressively shorter, thereby accelerating the phrase rhy
approach to critical junctures in the music.8 In the fir
exposition, for example, accelerating phrase rhythm co
increasing harmonic unrest and release from the orbit o
ended surface continuity, repeated-note upbeat fig
exchange patterns, and quasi-canonic imitation intensify
propulsion and enhance the disintegration of the ph
pattern culminates in a sequence of five one-bar motiv
effect a large-scale anacrusis), which leads with compel
"violent event" in Webster's account (p. 36), a cadence o
the very point of anticipated safe arrival in the relativ
Webster's accent on obsessive momentum and pervas
impulse, though not implausible, oversimplifies the iss
ology. Schwartz's account has the advantage of clarifyi
teractions of rhythm and tonal organization, and it re
tions between surface activity and large-scale processes
only within the first movement but over the span of th
a whole. The opening of the fourth movement, for exa
porates an approximately similar pattern: a structur
harmonically stable sixteen-bar statement followed by
of tonic, progressive shortening of the phrase unit, an
ment of open-ended, directional motion by canonic imit
treble and bass. This time, when the pattern does indeed
the appearance of the expected relative major, the even
both a similarity in rhetorical gesture and a critica

(Leipzig and Berlin, 1771-74), pp. 104-05; trans. in Peter Le Huray


eds., Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centu
Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 138.
8 Schwartz, "Periodicity and Passion," pp. 299-304.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY

heightening tension and tonal complexity in the first move


promise of normalization and stability in the fourth.
As these differing opinions on affect and phraseology sugg
the Farewell Symphony invites multiple interpretations of its r
In an attempt to view at least some of its complexities from a
perspective, Webster devotes the latter, far lengthier part of th
to an examination of other Haydn compositions whose special t
bear significant resemblance to those seen in the featured work
ics reconsidered include progressive form, destabilization, r
harmonic juxtapositions, remote tonal relationships between m
ments, dynamic confrontations of minor and major mode, cycli
cedures, thematicism, and extramusical associations. The connec
thread is always the phenomenon of through-composition,
emerges as a distinctive trait in many of Haydn's instrumental
positions, notably those belonging to his "Sturm und Drang" pe
Fresh insights into symphonies and quartets abound, and the r
documented commentary on strands of research that have s
our understanding of Haydn and his contemporaries have suffi
substance to make this material mandatory reading for all spec
270 in the period.
A network of cross-references links the first part of the book
the second, and the diligent reader, pawing continuously from
part to the other, will see how this close study of the Farewell
phony opens a window on the landscape of Haydn's creativity a
instrumental composer. However, the many references to even
devices in other Haydn compositions do not fully coalesce into
listic frame of reference for measuring what happens in the Fa
True to his principles, Webster avoids making reductive genera
tions about Haydn's music-or worse, making his data confo
some theory of stylistic evolution. On the contrary, he stresse
uniqueness of a particular remote relationship, destabilization,
termovement connection, and he repeatedly reminds the reade
"Haydn never repeated himself" (p. 334).
The apparent dilemma-how to appreciate both the uniqu
of a Haydn inspiration and its significance as a reflection of h
sonal style-may partially explain Webster's penchant for exami
certain works as pairs: Symphonies Nos. 15 and 25 with their m
festations of cyclic organization, or the string quartets Opp. 2
and 54 No. 2 with their culmination-finales. The profound cont
in technique that distinguish each member of the pair undersco
unrepeatability of Haydn's strokes of genius; but at the same t
their conceptual similarities shed light on consistencies in his tr
thought.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEW

The pairing that proves most consequential for W


argument is that of the Symphony No. 46 in B maj
well itself. Written in the same year, in another un
likewise uses the pair of crook extensions that Hayd
horn players so that they could place the pitch of th
half step lower than their crooks would normally a
C; F-sharp instead of G. More important, it constit
example of through-composition: most conspicuousl
recall of the minuet in the midst of the finale (the only
of such a device prior to Beethoven's Fifth). No less
the Farewell in its violation of generic norms, the r
rhetorical quality of the final movement as a cu
virtue of its suggestion of interrupted narrative an
iniscence, it may point toward extramusical associat
Tempted to propose that these chronologically cl
a pair in some important sense, Webster suspects th
riddle of Symphony No. 46 resides "in its manifold
the Farewell Symphony." He speculates that the tw
programmatically, and he toys with the idea of anot
of life at Eszterhaza and Eisenstadt. Citing evide
nections, he concludes that Haydn "must have intend
to be heard in a definite order" and contemplates
possibility that [Haydn] composed overarching 'cycle
complete instrumental works" (p. 287).
Some of the proposed relationships between Sym
and 46 may seem tenuous, but Webster's pairing
proves central to his strategy in arguing for a revis
role in the development of "Classical style" and for
his relationship to the accomplishments of Beethov
full impact of his point, one must recall first of al
concepts of 18th-century style evolution require m
and 70s, including Haydn's, to be understood as lim
and immature compared to the ripe accomplishm
and second, that even very recent accounts charact
genius in terms of his undreamt-of liberation from
and stylistic norms of his immediate predecessors.
list of Beethoven's transcendent inspirations is
achieved through "actual thematic recurrences from
to another,"s and the work that best represents such

9 Joseph Kerman and Alan Tyson, "Beethoven, Ludwig van,


Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: M
pp. 381-83.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY

course the Fifth Symphony, where the fourth-movement rem


cence of the scherzo contributes to "a dynamic weaving-toget
non-integral movements to form a whole that cannot be spec
advance"lo-the very scheme that Haydn worked out in his
symphony while Beethoven was still an infant!
Trying to make the point stick solely on the basis of the Fa
Symphony would have been risky. But when he couples the F
minor symphony with its companion that so pointedly anticip
most striking through-compositional feature of Beethoven
Symphony, the argument becomes more persuasive. Indeed, t
idence obliges us to concede that whatever traits we cite to po
Beethoven's revolutionary stature, we should omit cyclic inte
from the list.

Webster's aim is not to redefine Beethoven's historical position,


nor to deny the astonishing originality of his Fifth Symphony
(Beethoven evidently did not know Haydn's Symphony No. 46), but
to impress us with the urgency of his historiographical lesson. His
scorn for standard accounts of style change, evolution, and period-
ization is well taken, and while his working substitute for the "Classical
272 style" label-"First Viennese European Modern Style" (p. 357)-may
disappoint, the book is sufficiently ambitious without his attempting
to rewrite the historical tales he has discredited.
This study will have accomplished enough if it offers readers new
insight into the long-obscure secrets of a puzzling symphony and the
principle of cyclic integration that it embodies. It will have achieved
more than its author could hope for if it also stimulates dialogue on
the validity of historical narratives we take for granted and promote
rethinking of the fundamental assumptions and motivations on which
those narratives are founded.

Rutgers University

10 Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley
University of California Press, 1984), pp. 234-35.

This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Sun, 17 Feb 2019 19:06:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

S-ar putea să vă placă și