Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process: Essays from Music, Literature, and Theater 1580463177, 9781580463171

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Part One: Texts, Variants, and Variations: Evolving Contexts in Literature and Theater
1 From Varieties of Genetic Experience to Radical Philology
2 Variant and Variation: Toward a Freudo-bathmologico-Bakhtino-Goodmanian Genetic Model?
3 The Genetic Record of a Voice: Variants in Barthes’s Le Plaisir du texte
4 Can Genetic Criticism Be Applied to the Performing Arts?
5 “The hardy Laurel”: Beckett and Early Film Comedy
Part Two: Genetic Processes in Music: From Beethoven to Leroux
6 From Melodic Patterns to Themes: The Sketches for the Original Version of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, Op. 53
7 From Conceptual Image to Realization: Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Sketches
8 The Process within the Product: Exploratory Transitional Passages in Beethoven’s Late Quartet Sketches
9 “They Only Give Rise to Misunderstandings”: Mahler’s Sketches in Context
10 A Study of Richard Strauss’s Creative Process: Der Rosenkavalier’s “Presentation Scene” and “Schlußduett”
9 “They Only Give Rise to Misunderstandings”: Mahler’s Sketches in Context
10 A Study of Richard Strauss’s Creative Process: Der Rosenkavalier’s “Presentation Scene” and “Schlußduett”
11 Genetic Criticism and Cognitive Anthropology: A Reconstruction of Philippe Leroux’s Compositional Process for Voi(rex)
AFTERWORD
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX

Citation preview

Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process

Copyright © 2009 by the Editors and Contributors All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2009 University of Rochester Press 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.urpress.com and Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-317-1 ISBN-10: 1-58046-317-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Genetic criticism and the creative process : essays from music, literature, and theater / edited by William Kinderman and Joseph E. Jones. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-317-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-58046-317-7 1. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) 2. Arts, Modern. I. Kinderman, William. II. Jones, Joseph E. NX160.G46 2009 700.1—dc22 2009037102 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process

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William Kinderman Part One: Texts, Variants, and Variations: Evolving Contexts in Literature and Theater 1

From Varieties of Genetic Experience to Radical Philology

19

Geert Lernout 2

Variant and Variation: Toward a Freudo-bathmologico-BakhtinoGoodmanian Genetic Model?

35

Daniel Ferrer 3

The Genetic Record of a Voice: Variants in Barthes’s Le Plaisir du texte

51

Armine Kotin Mortimer 4

Can Genetic Criticism Be Applied to the Performing Arts?

68

Jean-Louis Lebrave 5

“The hardy Laurel”: Beckett and Early Film Comedy

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Robert B. Graves Part Two: Genetic Processes in Music: From Beethoven to Leroux 6

From Melodic Patterns to Themes: The Sketches for the Original Version of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, Op. 53

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Alan Gosman 7

From Conceptual Image to Realization: Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Sketches

108

Lewis Lockwood 8

The Process within the Product: Exploratory Transitional Passages in Beethoven’s Late Quartet Sketches

Peter McCallum

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“They Only Give Rise to Misunderstandings”: Mahler’s Sketches in Context

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James L. Zychowicz 10 A Study of Richard Strauss’s Creative Process: Der Rosenkavalier’s “Presentation Scene” and “Schlußduett”

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Joseph E. Jones 11 Genetic Criticism and Cognitive Anthropology: A Reconstruction of Philippe Leroux’s Compositional Process for Voi(rex)

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Nicolas Donin Afterword

217

Philip Gossett List of Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgments This book would not have come into existence without the support of many individuals and several institutions. Most of the chapters began as papers read at the international symposium “Genetic Criticism in an Interdisciplinary Context: Literature, Visual Arts, Theatre, Music” held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in March 2007. The conference in turn grew out of an ongoing collaboration centered on creative process studies between the University of Illinois and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. Crucial support of these activities has been provided by the UIUC/CNRS Cooperative Research Program, as administered by International Programs and Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and by the Division des relations européennes et internationales (DREI) of the CNRS. Additional generous support for the conference and the related workshop of Moisés Kaufman’s play 33 Variations came from the College of Fine and Applied Arts, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (KCPA), the School of Music, and the Department of Theater at UIUC. Many individuals helped facilitate these events. Especially indispensable support came from Mike Ross (director, KCPA), Karen Quisenberry (production, KCPA), Tom Mitchell (interim head, Department of Theater), Katherine Syer (School of Music), and Karl Kramer (director, School of Music). Warmest thanks also to Geoffrey Merritt (Parasol Records), Richard Powers, Willis Regier, and John Bonadies. Several excellent papers presented at the conference could not be included in the book because they were published elsewhere. The conference participants not represented here include Almuth Grésillon, Jonathan Fineberg, and David O’Brien. Grateful acknowledgment is due as well to the Alexander von Humbolt Foundation, which has generously supported my ongoing research on the creative process. A continuation of the collaborative program on genetic criticism between Illinois and the CNRS resulted in another conference held in Paris on “Genèses Musicales: Méthodes et Enjeux” in May 2008; a collection of essays based on that symposium is expected to appear in 2010. W. K.

Introduction Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process William Kinderman Not only the final outcome but also the process of creative endeavor has long attracted attention in various artistic disciplines, but only recently has the potential of such research been seriously explored. The most rigorous basis for the study of artistic creativity comes not from anecdotal or autobiographical reports, but from original handwritten sketches and drafts and preliminary studies, as well as from revised manuscripts and typescripts, corrected proof sheets, and similar primary sources. Especially since the eighteenth century, writers, composers, and painters have been much concerned with originality of style, which has encouraged intense preliminary efforts preceding and leading toward the production of finished artistic works. The term “genetic criticism” or “critique génétique” relates not to the field of genetics, but to the genesis of works of art, as studied in a broad and inclusive context.1 This approach stands in contrast to the so-called “new criticism” of the mid-twentieth century, with its formalist focus on the text itself and disinclination to probe issues of creative process, lest these involve entanglement with the so-called intentional fallacy. More recently, growing recognition of the value of contextual studies and of the problematic nature of the notion of a single definitive text have exerted a welcome influence. Especially promising are approaches that integrate source studies with interpretative analysis, probing the aesthetic meaning of artworks in a rich contextual field. The chapters in this volume explore aspects of genetic criticism in an interdisciplinary context. A common through-line of many of these chapters pertains to the essential continuity between a work and its genesis. Genetic criticism might appear to destabilize the final text, undermining the work-concept by privileging genesis over structure. However, such an approach often opens perspectives that serve as a promising platform for critical interpretation, and analysis remains vitally important to the evaluation of sketches and drafts, whose content is often elusive and enigmatic. In practice, the insights offered by genetic criticism can

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sometimes enrich our experience and appreciation of a composition more than studies that are confined to the finished work of art. Such an approach departs from the idea of a singular, isolated, unassailable text, lifted out of history. Appropriately, then, this collection begins with a study that addresses the connections between genetic criticism, textural studies, and edition theory. Geert Lernout observes that outside of France, much work in “genetic criticism” has been pursued by scholars unfamiliar with that particular term. As an alternative, he proposes the formulation “radical philology,” whereby “radical” denotes the novelty and “philology” the continuity of this approach. Locating a classical model for philological scholarship in biblical studies, Lernout finds a basic incompatibility between genetic criticism and a priori assumptions about the infallibility of texts, claiming that “all serious critical and historical textual work is possible only if we leave behind all forms of religious and ideological dogma.” The etymology of the word “text,” which derives from the Latin noun textum, meaning “woven fabric,” and the verb texere, “to weave,” reminds us of the status of texts as objects made of fallible materials, objects that are varied, supplemented, repaired, adorned, and reused in manifold ways. The ways texts are viewed has changed significantly over time. An awareness of this context alerts us to a dimension of genetic studies that reaches beyond the creative efforts of individual writers and artists: the matter of preexisting models and historical continuity. Some commentators, such as Harold Bloom, have regarded the cultural legacy of the past not simply as an asset to posterity but also as a burden, triggering an “anxiety of influence” that artists have sought to counteract by willfully “misreading” their predecessors, thereby clearing creative space for themselves.2 Such a tensional attitude toward the past is especially characteristic of the past two centuries. Cultural critique is particularly threatening in a religious context, and Lernout describes the “fear of beginnings” that characterizes the handling of sacred texts by apologists, and identifies their dilemma: “truly Holy Books, precisely because they are divine and perfect, cannot logically have an historical beginning.” The quest to explore origins is a far-reaching occupation that needs to confront the transmission of texts over long periods of time, involving translation and reassessment in changing historical contexts. Consider, for example, the famous dictum about which Immanuel Kant wrote in his Critique of Judgement of 1790: “perhaps nothing more sublime was ever said.” Almost thirty years later, the same maxim inspired Ludwig van Beethoven, who framed the inscription behind glass on his worktable: I am all that is and that was and that shall be, and no mortal has lifted my veil.3

Beethoven lifted the quotation from an essay by Friedrich Schiller, who had taken it in turn from a little-known treatise by Karl Leonhard Reinhold titled Die

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Hebräischen Mysterien oder die älteste religiöse Freymaurerey (The Hebraic Mysteries or the Oldest Religious Freemasonry). Reinhold published his study in 1788 under the pseudonym “Br[uder] Decius” (Brother Decius). He originally wrote it as a Freemason addressing fellow masons; following the suppression of the order, he had joined the Order of the Illuminates, in which his pseudonym was Decius. His treatise on the Hebrew mysteries was first published two years earlier for the Vienna Journal für Freymaurer edited by Ignaz von Born, Grand Master of the Masonic lodge Zur Wahren Eintracht (True Concord), a lodge visited at times by both Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was a member of the sister lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit (Beneficence) and whose opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) of 1791 is deeply invested with Masonic symbolism, with the character Sarastro modeled on Ignaz von Born. In tracing this chain of connections to an obscure eighteenth-century Masonic tract, we have only yet scratched the surface. Plutarch (ca. 45–120 CE), in his treatise Isis and Osiris, alluded to “an enigmatic sort of wisdom” in Egyptian thought as reflected in the aforementioned dictum inscribed in a statue at Sais that no longer exists.4 Further clues about the significance of this dictum have surfaced since the eighteenth century. In his 1997 study Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism, the Egyptologist Jan Assmann probed the sources and context for Reinhold’s small book, which for Assmann represents “the missing link between Spencer and Freud,” a treatise whose importance lies in its equation of Egyptian esoteric monotheism and Mosaic revealed monotheism. As Assmann writes, “Reinhold does not see any difference between the Egyptian, or Hermetic, idea of the One and Biblical monotheism. He thinks that Moses believed in God as the One-and-All and instituted a new mystery religion which can be interpreted as the oldest form of Freemasonry.”5 In the 1780s, when Reinhard sought the roots of Freemasonry in ancient Egypt, he could not have known of Akhenaten, Pharaoh Amenophis IV from the fourteenth century BCE, the founder of the first known monotheistic counterreligion, whose memory was suppressed after his death and rediscovered only in the nineteenth century after hieroglyphs had been successfully deciphered. What has fascinated many writers in the past century is the apparent relationship between Akhenaten’s monotheistic revolution and the mythic figure of Moses. Assmann asks, “Was Akhenaten the Egyptian Moses? Was the Biblical image of Moses a mnemonic transformation of the forgotten pharaoh?”6 Sigmund Freud and Thomas Mann, among others, have wrestled with these questions, as more recent authors continue to do.7 But the “sublime” equation of the unnameable deity with nature (alias Isis) was already recognized by Reinhold and embraced by Beethoven in the form of his “Deist manifesto,” the Egyptian inscription from the statue at Sais that he kept at his desk. Such dense, open-ended chains of connections mirror some of the kinds of research pursued by scholars of genetic criticism in their restless quest to disclose and interpret the avant-texte or “pre-text” of cultural works. This “pre-text” can be

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long, recalling the maxim attributed to Hippocrates and echoed in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister: “ars longa, vita brevis” (art is long, life is short). Medieval epic poems offer another such example. While the Egyptian dictum from Sais has endured across the millennia, the weaving of tales in the European medieval context spanned hundreds of years in a longstanding oral tradition. The first surviving written versions of these epics stem from the end of the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In this context, little emphasis was placed on a presumed originality of authorship, as embodied in the singular textural manifestation of an artwork. In his study In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, Bernard Cerquiglini describes medieval writing as a “workshop” activity that thrived on continuations and repetitions, producing multiple valid versions. There are several true versions of the medieval epic The Story of the Grail (Perceval), the last romance by Chrétien de Troyes, for instance, and recognition of such plurality is basic to scholarship and to the making of editions. For Cerquiglini, “Variance is the main characteristic of a work in the medieval vernacular; a concrete difference at the very basis of this object, it is something that publication should, as a matter of urgency, make visible.”8 The collaborative aspects of the medieval context add further complexity. Within twenty years of the time when Chrétien broke off his work on Perceval, there were two attempts to continue his tale, as well as two very different versions of the Grail story placed within a Christian tradition, whereas the German version, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, while based on Chrétien, introduces many strikingly divergent features and new ideas. When then did the modern notion of a singular definitive original text come into existence? A pivotal period was undoubtedly the nineteenth century, when the cult of genius encouraged expectations of originality and the introduction of copyright legislation lent support to the idea of authorship as ownership. Texts could then be regarded as fixed entities and authors as the owners of these fixed objects. More recently, an outgrowth of this conception has become known as intellectual property, a term whose modern usage dates from the 1980s.9 What many thus take for granted is actually a historical development of fairly recent vintage. Lydia Goehr, assessing the ascendancy of the “work-concept” in music, has regarded Beethoven as the key figure, and places that development around 1800.10 Aesthetic and social changes helped nourish this concept of the autonomous artwork, regarded in the laudatory sense as an original masterpiece. It is revealing to set the plurality of the medieval versions of the Grail myth against the singularity of the most celebrated modern version, Richard Wagner’s final opera Parsifal (1882). In some ways, Parsifal represents an extreme embodiment of the autonomous work-concept, in that its author not only devoted unusual attention to the drama and music but also specifically designed the work for the special conditions of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, reserving staged performances for this single unique theater. The notion of Urtext (original text) applies here not only to the relation of verbal text and music but also to the staging, and after Wagner’s death in 1883 his widow Cosima sought to preserve the

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memory of the original production for decades.11 Like a guardian of the Grail, she vigorously resisted change and asserted for as long as possible the exclusivity of the performances in Bayreuth. The approach of genetic criticism productively deconstructs this impression of artistic autonomy, restoring a lively sense of the historical context and intertextuality of Parsifal. The project had occupied Wagner intermittently for more than forty years, and lines of connection exist between this final work and every one of his earlier major operas and music dramas. In the sense outlined by Daniel Ferrer in his chapter in the present volume, the avant-textes of Parsifal include Perceval by Chrétien de Troyes and especially Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, both of which influenced Wagner even as he varied, resisted, and critiqued these sources in much the manner described by Harold Bloom. The wealth of sketches and drafts for the music are especially rich in revealing unsuspected connections. From them we learn for instance that Wagner contemplated but subsequently rejected an encounter between Parsifal and Tristan in his earlier opera, Tristan und Isolde; that his initial effort to devise music for the Flower Maidens in Act 2 was bound up with the awkward obligation to write a march for the American centennial in Philadelphia in 1876; that the famous opening theme of Parsifal was devised as a variation on the “Excelsior” theme composed by his father-in-law, Franz Liszt; and that Wagner expanded the powerful orchestral Transformation Music in Act 1 as his final compositional effort in 1881 after reacting in anger to the news that too little music had been written for the purposes of the staging.12 This last point is deliciously paradoxical yet characteristic of the kinds of discoveries made through investigation of the creative process: the composer did not want to continue further labors and thought his project complete, yet practical circumstances intervened and in the end, the work benefited substantially from his inconvenience. This brings us to a crucial point for genetic studies of music, a major emphasis of the present volume. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the notion of “absolute music,” denoting an art that had emancipated itself, through a long historical process, from its traditional dependence on words, dance, or ritual. Beethoven’s legacy loomed large in the debates over “absolute music,” casting a shadow that covered both sides of the aesthetic controversies that raged around Liszt and Wagner on the one hand, and Brahms and critic Eduard Hanslick on the other. By the twentieth century, approaches to musical analysis had become more rigorously systematic, as reflected for instance in the theories of tonal coherence developed by Heinrich Schenker, an Austrian analyst who exerted much influence on North American music theory in the post–World War II period. However, the cultivation of systematic methodologies of musical analysis risks misunderstanding if it identifies the apparent autonomy of the “absolute music” of the Viennese Classics with modern notions of a merely abstract structural matrix. For Beethoven, as for Schiller, the idea of artistic self-determination meant something quite different, whereby the autonomy manifested in the work

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by no means insulates it from the world according to the ideal of l’art pour l’art, but, on the contrary, enables the work to display a “representation of freedom” as a goal for human striving. When Beethoven described his artistic aims in a letter to his student and patron the Archduke Rudolph, for instance, he referred characteristically to the need for “freedom and progress . . . in the world of art as in the whole of creation.”13 In the second half of the nineteenth century, Gustav Nottebohm pioneered research on Beethoven’s musical sketchbooks, an unparalleled documentation of the creative process. The voluminous Beethoven manuscripts have become the locus classicus for genetic criticism in music, even if that particular term has been rarely employed. Although Schenker dealt extensively with Beethoven’s manuscripts, his interest in these sources declined noticeably as his graphic analytical method became more systematic.14 As he focused his attention on the structural autonomy of musical movements, the alternative threads revealed by sketches and drafts seemed beside the point, since Schenker was concerned to construct “a theory of musical coherence that will not open pieces to the infinite intertextuality of the déja entendu,” as Kevin Korsyn puts it. Consequently, Schenker addressed one movement at a time; he had “no way to deal with multimovement designs,” although these aspects assume outstanding importance in Beethoven’s works, and can be fruitfully studied from the perspective of genetic criticism.15 The tendency of post-Schenkerian analysts to regard musical structure as a closed system reduced the apparent relevance of Beethoven’s sketches. In the formulation of Douglas Johnson, in a much-discussed article of 1978, “if . . . the codification of Schenkerian principles eliminated the need to consider alternative solutions to analytical problems . . . then the sketches could be safely characterized as failed experiments.” For Johnson, a Schenkerian study like Allen Forte’s book The Compositional Matrix of 1961 “dramatized the view [of the sketches] as a branch of pathology.”16 With musical analysis identified largely with Schenkerian methodology, and these analytical insights accessible from the text of the finished autonomous work, it follows that the sketches would have biographical but no analytical value. In retrospect, Johnson can be seen to have overestimated the capacity of musical analysis, guided by a belief that the structure of a given work can be read as though it were transparent in the published score.17 Empirical experience shows, however, that analyses often differ, that no one methodology—such as Schenker’s system—is definitive, and that an overemphasis on “structure” shortchanges other aspects of the artistic experience, such as expressive, gestural, and symbolic meaning.18 If the musical text is understood as a closed system of relations—exuding an aura of infallibility—then avant-textes including the sketches seem excluded from the aesthetic field of the work itself. Yet underlying this position is an attitude of dogmatic ideology, which as Lernout observes, is incompatible with genetic criticism. As soon as we embrace an open view of

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the work—acknowledging its continuity with historical sources and even the intertextuality of the “déja entendu”—the potential enrichment of such contextual studies becomes apparent.19 Similar issues surface in the area of philology. It is problematic if artifacts such as Beethoven’s musical manuscripts are treated with excessive reverence as objects for their own sake, and are thereby deprived of an interpretative context. The so-called diplomatic sketchbook editions published by the Bonn BeethovenHaus from the 1950s to the 1970s conspicuously avoided editorial intervention and analytical interpretation, offering transcriptions that aimed to be “legible facsimiles” of the original documents; missing clefs, accidentals, and other notational signs were not supplied, and the printed transcription imitated the visual appearance of the manuscripts even if this made little musical sense and if interpretative emendation was urgently needed.20 Furthermore, these editions also avoided the need for reconstructing the sketchbooks by incorporating those pages that were removed by Beethoven or others but that survive in separate collections.21 With the need for interpretation shunned in these editions, the musical content of the sources is not well conveyed. What is called for is an integrated approach, whereby musical analysis takes guidance from the sources, and the philological work of transcription draws upon analytical insight. The presence of facsimile publications of the original documents can allow the accompanying transcriptions to aim toward a realization of Beethoven’s musical intention. The special importance of documents like the Beethoven sketchbooks lies precisely in their position at the nexus between biography and analysis, history and theory. In the case of Beethoven’s monumental 33 Variations on the Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120, for instance, the sketches provide a highly suggestive perspective on the finished work. Although the Beethoven-Haus edition of the main source, the “Wittgenstein” Sketchbook, is inadequate, most of the manuscripts preserving Beethoven’s initial period of composition have survived. When these documents are assembled and transcribed, they offer a picture of the piece as it existed in its draft version from 1819, several years before its completion in 1823. In my book Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, I included transcriptions of pages now in Paris that Beethoven used in the “Wittgenstein” Sketchbook itself, as well as an extended draft on loose papers that can be reassembled from fragments held in several different collections. As these manuscripts show, Beethoven had conceived twenty-three of the thirty-three variations by this time, and the order of these variations remained unchanged when the work was expanded in 1823. The most revealing musical insight gained from the reconstruction of Beethoven’s 1819 draft of the Diabelli Variations pertains not to the sketches but to the finished work. Through this genetic study, we realize that Beethoven’s final labors on his gigantic set of variations had a guiding purpose: three new inserted variations (nos. 1, 15, 25) relate closely to the original theme by Diabelli, exaggerating its repetitious or trivial features, while many new variations

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were incorporated toward the conclusion. The idea of building up groups of variations (the fast variations nos. 25–28 and slow variations in minor nos. 29– 31) belongs to this stage of work; but even more fascinating is Beethoven’s practice of writing variations alluding to external contexts, such as the étude-like Variation 23, the Bachian Fughetta (no. 24), an homage to Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations (no. 31), the Handelian beginning of the fugue (no. 32), and the Mozartian character at the outset of the final variation. Capping the enormous sequence of variations is yet another allusion in the coda, this time to the final movement of Beethoven’s own last sonata, the Arietta movement of Opus 111.22 Neither analysis nor philology on its own is capable of disclosing such an evolving creative idea, and when all the evidence is unequivocal, there is nothing to prevent disclosure of the artist’s intention. As used in this book, the term “genetic criticism” designates an approach toward primary sources that goes beyond traditional philology in its quest for meaning. Various recent studies have displayed a renewed interest in the potential of philology if such work is pursued in an enhanced interpretative field. In his 2003 book The Powers of Philology,23 for instance, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht argues for this approach as an alternative to an often free-floating textual interpretation and to the more recent redefinition of literary scholarship as “cultural studies,” which often entails a loss of intellectual focus. Such revitalization of philological scholarship can achieve its potential only if it takes into account the hidden desire that has inspired philology since its Hellenistic beginnings: the desire to make the past present again by embodying it. Gumbrecht calls upon the humanities to recover the concept of “lived experience” (Erlebnis), and he sees virtue in this proposal precisely on account of “the impossibility of making this notion compatible with the sphere of the collective and social,” insisting that “lived experience, as that which precedes such [collective and social] interpretation, must remain individual.”24 While Gumbrecht does not privilege the “original Erlebnis of the great artists,” he does credit Wilhelm Dilthey’s notion of a “retranslation of objectivations of life into that spiritual liveliness from which they emerged,”25 a formulation that comes close to describing some of the kinds of insights enabled through genetic studies. The goal is not simply to reconstruct the past, but to utilize source studies as a focus and springboard to new insights in the present. That Gumbrecht’s conviction is shared is evident from several contributions to the 2007 interdisciplinary volume on Ästhetische Erfahrung und Edition (Aesthetic Experience and Editions), whose authors have adopted approaches compatible with Gumbrecht’s view, including the Paris researcher Almuth Grésillon. Grésillon’s studies Éléments de critique génétique: lire les manuscrits modernes, and most recently La mise en oeuvre: Itinéraires génétiques, represent a notable contribution.26 As Grésillon puts it, the approach of genetic criticism begins “not with the text, but with the desire to penetrate into the genesis of a literary artwork and convey this process through interpretation.”27 The task often begins with the first surviving

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sketches for a work, but it can also be pursued by exploring alternative versions of a finished product or sketches and drafts that never reached a final realization.28 Another valuable approach is to explore parallels between different works involving possible models or sources of influence, as in Robert B. Graves’s chapter on Samuel Beckett and early film comedy in the present volume. Beckett declined to acknowledge his indebtedness to Laurel and Hardy, but Graves convincingly traces the connection and crosses the lines of genre in his study of pseudocouples, suggesting how Beckett sought to make his character pairs more complementary, creating a symbiosis out of the contrasting figures on stage. Investigations of the genesis of literary works often uncover a complex process of revision and development, as has been revealed in ever more detail in critical studies and editions of manuscripts by writers such as Heine, Proust, and Joyce. In his contribution, “Variant and Variation,” Daniel Ferrer draws on Hans Walter Gabler’s critical edition of Joyce’s Ulysses to analyze the allusive sequence of “theme and variations” in a passage from the “Sirens” episode that invites comparison to musical procedures. What is revealed in such genetic studies is sometimes quite remote from a linear teleological progression, involving not only variants and developments but also detours, transformations, or even the negation of an initial idea. Thus Armine Kotin Mortimer, in her chapter on Roland Barthes in the present volume, describes “the pleasure of . . . rewriting of an original trace, thus refusing origins.” In view of the potential enrichment of literary criticism through such source studies, it is unfortunate that these areas of activity are so often isolated from one another. The need for a closer connection of textual studies to literary criticism has long been recognized, and not only under the banner of genetic criticism. In 1982, Jerome J. McGann described widespread concern over a schism between source studies and literary interpretation, and saw this rift as having grown deeper over the preceding fifty years. For him, textual criticism is “conceptually fundamental rather than preliminary to the study of literature,” and it consequently needs “to be reconceived along lines that are more comprehensive,” and “be returned to the center of every hermeneutic enterprise.” The circumscribed, practical concerns of completing a text of some particular work do not exhaust the contribution of textual studies to literary criticism, and McGann observes that “literary study surrendered some of its most powerful interpretive tools” when it allowed textual criticism to be regarded as “preliminary” rather than integral to the study of literature.29 Performing arts such as theater pose special interpretative challenges, owing to the apparent absence of a “finished work as a totally autonomous object that, by granting the status of avant-texte to the traces of the creating process, makes genetic criticism possible,” in the formulation of Jean-Louis Lebrave. In such contexts, key aspects of the artistic realization remain resistant to analysis as often practiced, though as we have seen, an integrated conception of the relation between analysis and artwork may help bridge the gap. Friedrich Schiller

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described the artistic goal in performance in terms of a “play drive” that blends the rational and sensuous, or thinking and feeling sides of human nature, while preserving a spontaneous, improvisatory quality,30 while Theodor W. Adorno offered a paradoxical formulation, claiming that the work itself was “a copy of a nonexistent original”—for, paradoxically, there is no work as such—it must become.31 Both formulations point toward the need to embody a sense of dynamic communication or presence (Präsenz)—an aspect Gumbrecht regards as a “dominant component” in the successful staging of opera, that most complex of performance arts.32 Most of the chapters in the present volume derive from an international conference on “Genetic Criticism in an Interdisciplinary Context” held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March 2007; the conference arose in turn from the ongoing research collaboration between the Centre nationale de recherché scientifique in Paris and the University of Illinois. Coordinated with the conference were workshop performances of a new play by distinguished playwright Moisés Kaufman, 33 Variations. Kaufman’s play explores the creative process of Beethoven as situated at the intersection of life and art, and thoughtfully probes our engagement with the artistic legacy of this brilliant, fascinating, and witty composer. 33 Variations has made its way successfully to the professional stage, opening at the O’Neill Theater on Broadway in New York in March 2009, with Jane Fonda coming out of retirement to assume the lead role of the musicologist Katherine, a role named in allusion to the music scholar Katherine Syer. The Illinois workshop of 33 Variations enriched the conference as a play exploring Beethoven’s creative process that was itself a work in progress, then still undergoing considerable revision, with passages of text added and deleted at each performance. The theme of the play was especially fitting because of the focus on music at the conference, where Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations were discussed and performed.33 The stage set for much of 33 Variations depicts the Beethoven Archive at the composer’s birthplace in Bonn; facsimiles of Beethoven’s sketches are prominent, sometimes as projected images coordinated with the live production of sound. Rarely if ever has a stage work probed so seriously the subject matter of genetic criticism in music.34 Beethoven’s posthumous role as a “deaf seer,” in Wagner’s words,35 has exerted irresistible fascination, and the surviving legacy of his sketchbooks and other manuscripts amounts to thousands of pages. Beethoven’s commitment to the writing and revision process was extraordinary, and the notational specificity and formal control of his music encourages close study, even while the phenomenal nature of music as expressive sound complicates the interpretation of his aesthetic aims. To fellow musicians at that time, Beethoven was an unpredictable artist whose flights of fancy soared beyond the expected to touch luminous and uncanny realms. Ignaz von Seyfried, describing Beethoven’s keyboard improvisations, wrote of Beethoven’s “tendency toward the mysterious and gloomy” and alluded to an esoteric dimension in his art: “But who shall sound the depths of

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the sea? It was the mystical Sanskrit language whose hieroglyphs can be read only by the initiated.”36 On another occasion, Seyfried wrote about his experience turning pages when Beethoven performed his Third Piano Concerto in 1803: “. . . he asked me to turn the pages for him; but—heaven help me!—that was easier said than done. I saw almost nothing but empty leaves; at the most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all of the solo part from memory, since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to put it all down on paper.”37 More than twenty years later, in 1826, the violinist Karl Holz described what Beethoven had put on paper—his sketches—as “hieroglyphics, which no human being will decipher! These are the secrets of Isis and Osiris.”38 Shall we dare attempt deciphering these hieroglyphs bearing the “secrets of Isis and Osiris?” The longstanding debate in music scholarship about the potential value of analysis of manuscript sources to shed light on the finished works now seems decided in favor of genetic criticism, to judge from the vitality of continuing work on Beethoven and other composers. A major monograph series for genetic studies of musical works has been Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure, published by Oxford University Press, with Lewis Lockwood as founding editor and Malcolm Gillies as editor since 1997. Recent Beethoven sketch studies have moved well beyond the pioneering nineteenth-century efforts of Nottebohm, and the expanding field of creative process studies has explored earlier music and especially composers of the twentieth century.39 The traces of “lived experience” in a composer’s sketches can help supply a valuable critical focus, discouraging an overly narrow treatment of sources as well as highly structuralist approaches to analysis. An intermingling of biographical and artistic spheres, and of historical and analytical concerns, serves to inhibit the cultivation of discrete methodologies, which in our age of specialization too easily lead charmed lives of their own. If studies of the creative process in music along these lines have rarely been identified explicitly as “genetic criticism,” they are nevertheless often fully compatible with that approach in their aims and methods.40 The most celebrated of Beethoven’s sketchbooks is the “Eroica” Sketchbook (Landsberg 6), an edition of which is currently being prepared by Lockwood with Alan Gosman. The chapters in this volume by Gosman and Lockwood are connected to this ongoing editorial work, whereas Peter McCallum’s study relates to his edition in progress of Beethoven’s last large sketch source, the Kullak Sketchbook, another prize from Beethoven’s “precious hoard,” as Lockwood describes it. McCallum explores Beethoven’s practice in his last years of employing transitions in his works that seem spontaneous and “sketch-like,” suggesting unrealized compositional possibilities while also framing key musical passages as an enactment of authorial decisions in the here-and-now. Such passages often transcend individual movements, inviting “an upward spiral of self-referentiality” that might have made Schenker cringe. Paradoxically, such apparently

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improvisatory passages often demanded much sketching and deliberation during the creative process. If the passages discussed by McCallum assume the quality of an overriding search for continuity sustained by memory and expectation, Gosman interrogates sketches of pianistic figuration whose relationship to the completed “Waldstein” Sonata seems uncertain. At what point does conventional material become part of a distinctive artwork in the making? A fruitful approach to such questions should avoid premature conclusions, allowing for what Lockwood describes as a “dynamic, reciprocal relationship between fixed and variable aspects of the material.” The chapters by James Zychowicz and Joseph E. Jones concern the creative processes of two leading musical figures of the Austro-German tradition at the threshold of the twentieth century: Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. As Zychowicz observes, Mahler was sensitive to what he regarded as misjudgments about Beethoven’s sketches, and he “champion[ed] . . . Beethoven’s compositional process as if it were his own,” while fearing that his own surviving sketches would lead to misunderstandings. Mahler particularly criticized interpreters of Beethoven’s sketches for having “no notion of what entirely different things could have come from such a first inkling in his hands”—in other words, for embracing an overly linear view of the creative process, lacking sufficient awareness of the transformative possibilities latent in a deceptively simple sketch. One advantage of the approach of genetic criticism is that it gives serious attention to such alternative possibilities, and seeks to avoid judging preliminary working materials exclusively in relation to the finished work. The “Presentation Scene” in Act 2 of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier is a celebrated yet disputed passage, and the closing Mozartian duet has been condemned by one eminent critic (cited by Jones in this volume) as the “poorest thing in the opera.” While not denying the presence of triteness, and integrating source studies with interpretive analysis, Jones shows why this quality fits the larger dramatic context. His philological investigation of compositional sources shows Strauss making harmonic choices that shape the dramatic action; no failure of technique is indicated. In this instance, we encounter a typical Straussian “juxtaposition of the profound and the trivial,” a kind of mirror to everyday life conveying something of the fallibility of the human condition, implying that young Sophie will someday resemble the Marschallin. Important as well is the recognition that the closing duet is not a discrete unit, and Jones shows how “Strauss’s handling of the first encounter of the young lovers—the so-called Presentation Scene—as traced from his earliest sketches to the finished score bears significant implications for interpreting the work’s conclusion.” It is most unusual for a scholar to explore the creative process of a very recent work in direct collaboration with the composer himself, but this is precisely what has been undertaken by Nicolas Donin, together with cognitive anthropologist Jacques Theureau, in the final chapter of this collection. The piece in question is Voi(rex), a work for six instrumentalists, one vocalist, and live electronics

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composed in 2002 by Philippe Leroux. This case study carries the chronological scope of our investigations into the twenty-first century. The undertaking also sheds light on the reciprocal relation between composition and analysis, all the more since Leroux himself wrote a detailed article on the subject that refers to the collaborative study.41 As with Kaufman’s 33 Variations, we are confronted here with a fascinating interplay between art and life, thought and experience, and are reminded once more of the integrative, open-ended nature of the creative process. The present volume brings together contributions from European, Australian, and American scholars to the growing interdisciplinary field of creative process studies or genetic criticism as broadly conceived and practiced. The essays emphasize music, literature, and theater, but also draw upon examples from the visual arts and film. It is hoped that future studies may find the approaches developed here to be of value in an evolving international scholarly context.

Notes 1. A valuable recent collection of essays in the genetic criticism of literature is Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes, edited by Jed Deppman, Daniel Ferrer, and Michael Groden (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Noteworthy among various other symposia and publications in this field is the colloquium organized by Almuth Grésillon with Antoine Compagnon on “critique génétique/Genetic Criticism” held at Columbia University in 1994, with published proceedings in the Romantic Review (1995). One special issue of the journal Word & Image (vol. 13, 1997) is entirely devoted to genetic criticism. That “critique génétique” has been a focus of the Centre nationale de recherché scientifique in Paris is evident from their journal Genesis: Revue internationale de critique génétique. Other relevant sources are listed after individual chapters in the present volume. 2. Two of Bloom’s most influential books in this vein are The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973; rev. ed., 1997), and A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 3. The inscription as copied by Beethoven is “Ich bin alles, Was ist, Was war, und Was seyn wird, Kein sterblicher Mensch hat meinen Schleyer aufgehoben.” It is one of three such inscriptions from Egyptian monuments that appear in Schiller’s essay “Die Sendung Moses.” The watermark in the paper used by Beethoven suggests a date of 1819. For a facsimile and detailed recent discussion of the manuscript, which is held at the BeethovenHaus at Bonn, see Friederike Grigat, “Beethovens Glaubensbekenntnis: Drei Denksprüche aus Friedrich Schillers Aufsatz Die Sendung Moses” (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2008). 4. Plutarch’s Moralia, vol. 5, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 25. Babbitt supplies the following translation of the inscription: “I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and my robe no mortal has yet uncovered.” 5. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 117. 6. Ibid., 24. 7. See, for instance, among other recent studies Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, Die Sendung Moses (Munich: Fink, 1997), 179–226; Carl Schorske, Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 191–213;

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and Michael P. Steinberg, Judaism Musical and Unmusical (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. 48–56. 8. Bernard Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, trans. Betsy Wing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 37–38. 9. Two landmark events in the complex legal development of “intellectual property” were the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1967 and the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. 10. Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992). 11. For a study of similar attitudes concerning the staging of opera earlier in the century, see Rachel Cowgill, “Mozart Productions and the Emergence of Werktreue at London’s Italian Opera House, 1780–1830,” in Operatic Migrations: Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries, ed. Roberta Montemorra Marvin and Downing A. Thomas (Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2006), 145–86. 12. For a study of the genesis of the music of Parsifal, see my chapter “The Genesis of the Music,” in A Companion to Wagner’s “Parsifal,” ed. William Kinderman and Katherine Syer (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), 133–77. 13. My translation. The letter is dated July 20, 1819, and appears in translation with a brief commentary in Elliot Forbes, ed., Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), vol. 2, 741–42. For a related discussion of the “world background” in Beethoven’s aesthetics, see the introduction to my study Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; expanded ed., 2009) as well as Walter Riezler, Beethoven, trans. G. D. H. Pidcock (London: Forrester, 1938; first published 1936), 108–9, 198, among other studies. 14. Schenker engages with Beethoven’s sketches and autograph scores in his editions with commentary of four of the last five Beethoven sonatas (Die letzten fünf Sonaten von Beethoven: Kritische Ausgabe mit Einführung und Erläuterung, 4 vols. [Vienna: Universal, 1913–21; 2nd ed. 1971–72]) but such references to sources disappear by the time of his study of the Fifth Symphony (Beethoven: Fünfte Symphonie [Vienna: Universal, 1925; 3rd ed., 1978]). 15. Kevin Korsyn, Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 99–100. Korsyn points out that even when Schenker’s analytical graphs reveal structural relations between movements he cannot acknowledge them, which “constitutes a remarkable blind spot in his work but one with its own logic” (99). 16. Douglas Johnson, “Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven’s Sketches,” 19th-Century Music 2 (1978): 15. 17. On this point see Gianmario Borio, “Sull’interazione fra lo studio degli schizzi e l’analisi dell’opera,” in La nuova ricerca sull’opera di Luigi Nono, ed. Gianmario Borio, Giovanni Morelli, and Veniero Rizzardi (Venice: Leo S. Olschki, 1999), 3. Johnson softened his skeptical position about the value of sketches in analysis in “Deconstructing Beethoven’s Sketchbooks,” in Haydn, Mozart, & Beethoven: Studies in the Music of the Classical Period, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 225–35. 18. Recent work on these topics has appeared in the monograph series on Musical Meaning and Interpretation edited by Robert S. Hatten, including Hatten’s book Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004). 19. Conventional features of a common musical language have been shared by many composers, but it is the way these elements are assembled that manifests the originality of an artist like Mozart.

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20. Such was the case with sketchbook publications edited by Joseph Schmidt-Görg between 1952 and 1972, such as Beethoven: Ein Skizzenbuch zu den Diabelli-Variationen und zur Missa solemnis, SV 154 (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1968 [facsimile vol.] and 1972 [transcription vol.]). 21. Such source reconstruction is a major contribution of Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 22. For a detailed account, see my study Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 23. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, The Powers of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003); a German version appeared as Die Macht der Philologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003). 24. Ibid., 84. Gumbrecht cites in this regard the work of Wilhelm Dilthey and HansGeorg Gadamer, particularly Gadamer’s subchapter “Der Begriff des Erlebnisses” in Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1965), 60–66. 25. This quotation is drawn from Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 62, cited in Gumbrecht, The Powers of Philology, 84. 26. Almuth Grésillon, Éléments de critique génétique: lire les manuscrits moderne (Paris: PUF, 1994) (German translation appeared as Literarische Handschriften. Einführung in die “critique génétique” (Bern and Berlin: Peter Lang, 1999); La mise en oeuvre: Itinéraires génétiques (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 2008). 27. Almuth Grésillon “‘Critique génétique’ Handschriften als Zeichen ästhetischer Prozesse,” in Ästhetische Erfahrung und Edition, ed. Rainer Falk and Gert Mattenklott (Berlin: Niemeyer, 2007), 74. 28. For a recent interdisciplinary investigation of issues pertaining to alternative versions of artworks, see Reinmar Emans, ed., Mit Fassung: Fassungsprobleme in Musik- und Text-Philologie (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2007). A recent collection of studies of divergent versions of musical works is Transkription und Fassung in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Gabriele Buschmeier, Ulrich Konrad, and Albrecht Riethmüller (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008). 29. The quotations are drawn from McGann’s essay “The Monks and the Giants: Textual and Bibliographical Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works” in his edited book Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 190, 182. 30. Schiller’s theory is developed in his letters Über die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man) of 1795; also see Joseph Chytry, The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 82. 31. Theodor W. Adorno, “Aesthetische Theorie,” in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 20 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971–86), vol. 7, 32. My translation. 32. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “Produktion von Präsenz, durchsetzt mit Absenz: Über Musik, Libretto und Inszenierung,” in Ästhetik der Inszenierung, ed. Josef Früchtl and Jörg Zimmermann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), 76. 33. My studio recording and lecture recital of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations was released as a double-CD by Arietta Records in 2007. 34. Mark Bly, dramaturg for 33 Variations, describes the genesis of the play in his article “Variations on an Obsession,” American Theatre 26, no. 3 (March 2009), 36–39, 68– 70. Also see Michael Schulman, “The Boards: Primary Sources,” The New Yorker (April 6, 2009), 24.

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35. In his 1870 essay “Beethoven,” published a century after the composer’s birth, Wagner wrote: “A musician sans ears!—Can one conceive an eyeless painter? / But the blinded Seer we know.” See Actors and Singers: Richard Wagner, trans. W. Ashton Ellis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 91–92. 36. Beethoven: Impressions by his Contemporaries, ed. O. G. Sonneck (New York: Dover, 1967, first pub. New York: Schirmer, 1926), 36. 37. Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, ed. Elliot Forbes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), vol. 1, 329. 38. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, ed. Karl-Heinz Köhler and Dagmar Beck (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1968–93), vol. 9, 97. The German text is as follows: “das sind Hieroglyphen, wo kein Mensch draus klug wird! / Das sind die Geheimnisse von Isis und Osiris.” 39. See especially Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450–1600 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Patricia Hall and Friedemann Sallis, eds., A Handbook to Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Hermann Danuser and Günter Katzenberger, eds., Vom Einfall zum Kunstwerk: der Kompositionsprozess in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Laaber: Laaber, 1993). My three-volume edition Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003), inaugurated a new Beethoven Sketchbook Series; each publication will include a color facsimile of the original manuscript, a complete annotated transcription, and extensive critical commentary. 40. For a recent study of compositional process in music that is coordinated in its terminology with interdisciplinary work in genetic criticism, see Bernhard Appel, “Sechs Thesen zur genetischen Kritik kompositorischer Prozesse,” Musiktheorie 20 (2005): 112–22. 41. Philippe Leroux, “De Voi(rex) à Apocalypsis: essai sur les interactions entre composition et analyse,” L’inouï, revue de l’Ircam 2 (2006): 43–61.

Additional Sources Falconer, Graham. “Genetic Criticism.” Comparative Literature 45 (1993): 1–21. Gabler, Hans Walter, ed., with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. James Joyce, Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. 3 vols. New York: Garland, 1984, 1986. Gabler, Hans Walter, ed., with George Bornstein and Gillian Borland. Contemporary German Editorial Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Hay, Louis, ed. Essais de critique génétique. Paris: Flammarion, 1979. Kinderman, William. “Beyond the Text: Genetic Criticism and Beethoven’s Creative Process.” Acta Musicologica 81, no. 1 (2009): 97–120. McGann, Jerome J. A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Taylor, Gary, and Michael Warren, eds. The Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare’s two versions of “King Lear.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Part One

Texts, Variants, and Variations: Evolving Contexts in Literature and Theater

Chapter One

From Varieties of Genetic Experience to Radical Philology Geert Lernout At a conference in honor of Hans Walter Gabler, Louis Hay, the founder of critique génétique, demonstrated that in France, the success of genetic criticism has been challenged. Apparently, French genetic critics have been so successful that they have been exposed to a torrent of abuse. Since genetic criticism, with some notable exceptions, has not made a significant impact on the study of English literature, some of us might be jealous of such a backlash; at the very least, it shows that in France, genetic criticism has acquired the status of a dominant paradigm that merits questioning and challenging. My own field, the study of the work of James Joyce, has been especially open to critical and theoretical fashions for reasons that I address in my book The French Joyce. It is only in recent years that the genetic study of Joyce’s work has graduated from its position as a respectable but minor subject of interest into a subfield that, at least in Europe, seems to attract a considerable number of graduate students who view genetic Joyce studies as an interesting alternative to the currently popular theoretical approaches such as postcolonial or cultural studies. In the manner of all enthusiasts, these new converts tend to emphasize the novelty of the approach. Both in the restricted context of Joyce studies and in the context of the wider field of textual studies, I propose a more liberal approach that stresses the continuity of genetic criticism with the more traditional fields of bibliography, textual study, and edition theory. In the case of the study of the works of James Joyce, I see no qualitative difference, for example, between the work of David Hayman and A. Walton Litz in the 1950s and 1960s,1 on the one hand, and the much more recent work of the “genetic” scholars, on the other. In fact, the same kind of work is still undertaken by scholars such as Hayman, and despite the impact of “theory” on the field (and on the intellectual career of Hayman himself), there seems to be no substantive difference between the pre-theoretical and the post-theoretical work. This continuity is less obvious if we focus on the historical roots of French critique génétique in structuralism and post-structuralism, which is evident especially in the case of the Joycean généticiens, most of whom began

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their academic careers as students of Hélène Cixous. In this chapter, I argue that the French case is an exception rather than the rule. To me, the history of the study of a writer’s manuscripts is much more a story of continuity than of the kind of novelty that is now associated with the term “genetic criticism,” a designation that all would agree is new in cultures where French is not spoken. In Germany, the English-language world, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere, research has been done (and continues to be done) that is sufficiently close to what falls under the umbrella of critique génétique in France, although some scholars involved in this type of research may not even be aware of the existence of the term “genetic criticism.” It also does not seem useful to make a strict distinction between the study of modern manuscripts, which is the traditional field of genetic studies, and the philological study of the works of classical, medieval, and early renaissance manuscript culture. The distinction between the study of old and new manuscripts may not be as useful as many might imagine. Manuscripts obviously acquired a radically new role with the advent of the printing press, when for the first time exact copies of a text became available; and, of course, we should distinguish between an author’s manuscripts of a work and copies of that work in another person’s hand. Equally evident is the fact that the copies of a work in a manuscript tradition before the invention of printing have a different relationship to one another than do manuscripts, typescripts, and other prepublication documents in the era of the printing press. At least some of the manuscripts dating from the early fifteenth century are genetic and authorial. Hans Walter Gabler and others have pointed out in their studies of the genesis of modern and modernist works that writers who created successive drafts and versions of a work (or of parts of a work) function both as writers, when they produce new text, and as copyists, when they transfer textual materials from one version of the text to the next, carefully and more often somewhat less carefully. In the process of copying their own text, they produce the same types of mistakes made by copyists in the old manuscript tradition. In fact, any study that looks closely at a text must address such issues, even studies of versions of a text that were produced in the digital era. Even when contemporary publishers use digital technology such as optical character recognition to salvage editions of a work not yet available in digital form, using the resulting digital file to create a new edition, the mistakes typically made by such applications are similar to those made by human copyists in the earliest manuscript traditions. Considering the history of textual scholarship as it has been described by authors such as Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Rudolf Pfeiffer, Giorgio Pasquali, Arnaldo Momigliano, Luciano Canfora, and Anthony Grafton, it is difficult to overlook the relevance of the history of philology (and of historical disciplines in general) for the kind of work that we do today.2 I would like to repeat a suggestion I made flippantly several years ago in the context of the genetic study of Finnegans Wake: perhaps we might avoid some confusion if we simply exchanged the term “genetic criticism” with the term

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“radical philology.” For one thing, the new term would avoid the confusion of our textual work with subdisciplines in biology and medicine. The revised terminology also neatly captures the combination of old and new in what we do: the noun stands for continuity while the adjective denotes novelty. Recently, the classicist Sean Alexander Gurd adopted the same term for his rather different idea about the path the study of classical texts should follow.3 For the work of scholars who study Joyce’s manuscripts, the serious textual study of the Bible and other religious texts is as important as the study of textual problems in Greek or Latin texts. We all know that the study and theory of literature owe an important debt to the traditions of Biblical exegesis. One could even argue that without the history of Bible study, hermeneutics and literary theory might not exist. What most of us do not sufficiently realize is that especially in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, there was, next to the humanist study of Greek and Latin texts, an equally strong tradition of Biblical textual research. The most influential students of classical literature and pioneering textual scholars, such as Richard Bentley and Karl Lachmann, worked on editions of the Bible that were based on the philological principles they had developed in the course of their study of classical texts. Both scholars assumed that these kinds of philology essentially were part of the same discipline and both tackled near-contemporary texts in their own mother tongue: Bentley famously (and disastrously) edited Milton’s Paradise Lost and Lachmann published a critical edition of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s collected works. From the perspective of the potential confluence of all textual study, I wish to address a suggestion that was made in 1983 by one of the most important representatives of what is now commonly described as the “old new bibliography,” G. Thomas Tanselle: By not familiarizing themselves with the textual criticism of classical, Biblical, and medieval literature, textual scholars of more recent literature are cutting themselves off from a voluminous body of theoretical discussion and the product of many generations of experience. And by not keeping up with developments in the editing of post-medieval writings, students of earlier works are depriving themselves of the knowledge of significant advances in editorial thinking.4

To paraphrase Tanselle, as textual scholars, we can all learn from the work that has already been done in neighboring disciplines, and one of the most important things we can learn from the history of the study of the holy books is the supreme relevance of our kind of work. This relevance is certainly not self-evident. Textual scholars often find it difficult to convince outsiders of the importance of their work. How many people really care where the comma goes? What percentage of the text’s readership would be greatly disappointed if we had lost one item, or two items, or even half of the catalogue of ships in the Iliad? How many people would sleep less soundly if they realized that they will never know

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for sure whether Melville did or did not mean to write about “soiled fish” instead of “coiled fish?” Yet there is one category of texts where words, letters, and even commas matter very much to a great number of people. Even the space between words can make a difference; the Biblical scholar Bruce Metzger points out that in scripta continua the sentence “godisnowhere” has two different meanings depending on where you happen to put the spaces between the words. By the second century, the rabbis already knew the importance of absolute textual accuracy. Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha (90–135 CE) supposedly told a young copyist, “My son, be careful in your work, for your work is heaven’s work; for should you omit one letter or add one letter, you will destroy the entire universe.”5 Although textual scholars may admire the sentiment, they are fortunate that the rabbi has been shown again and again to have been very much mistaken. Apparently, the Bible offers an example of the kind of text for which textual scholarship is not just an option, but is quite simply essential. Three of the most influential religions in the world are based on a written revelation, the faiths that Islam calls “Ahl al-Kitab” (the peoples of the book): Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These religions have texts that are revered, read, recited, sung, and studied. If, as these religions claim, their texts in one way or another represent the very word of God, it is only natural that the exact nature and even the order of these words is of great consequence to the believers, as the seventeenth-century printer of the “wicked Bible” discovered when he forgot to include a threeletter word in the seventh commandment, which in his version read: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” The printer was lucky to escape with a fine of £300, equivalent to a lifetime’s wages, and the loss of his printing license. All religions with written revelations have problems maintaining control over their texts, even fairly recent faiths such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, whose revelation, The Book of Mormon, had the distinct advantage of having a first edition that was printed and thus available in identical copies. This was in contrast to the traditions of the books that were previously mentioned; textual scholars have not discovered two early copies (or fragments) of biblical books or of the Qur’an that contain the exact same text. Despite the claims of some fundamentalists, we have no access to these texts’ autograph manuscripts: we do not have autographs of the Bible or the Qur’an. The earliest extant copies usually date from a much later period than the autographs. Not surprisingly, these three religions have developed their own ways of reassuring their followers that the copy of the Bible or Qur’an with which they are familiar is an exact copy of the original. This always entails extremely strict rules on the copying and handling of the scriptures; sometimes it involves reverence for each individual copy of the holy text (such as in the Jewish and Muslim traditions). Sometimes translations of the text are prohibited, or at least there is a tacit understanding that the “real” text can be found only in the original version. Christianity differs in this respect, because on the one hand, the authors of the books of the Christian Bible had already worked with the Septuagint Greek

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translation of the Hebrew books of the Bible, and on the other hand, it was the Latin translation of the New Testament that became so influential in the western regions of the Roman Empire. In reaction to the Reformation’s return to the Hebrew and Greek originals, the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent rejected this reasoning by selecting Saint Jerome’s Vulgate translation as the only version of the Bible to have doctrinal value. In the textual study of the holy scriptures, the Jewish and the Christian traditions have played a major but belated role, and it is probably not a coincidence that the scholarly study of the text has always been contested by the faithful. This tension can be observed already in the correspondence between Augustine and Jerome, two early figures in the church who disagreed about the exact nature of the text that for them had become the “Old Testament.” Like the Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century, Saint Jerome felt that the differences between the Jewish original and the Greek translation of the Septuagint necessitated a revision of the Vetus Latina or Old Latin translation that was current among Western Christians. In cases where versions of the text differed, Jerome preferred what he called the hebraica veritas of the Hebrew originals, which he used in his own translation that later would become the widely accepted Vulgate. Saint Augustine, like the Counter-Reformation Church of Rome, argued that because all seventy or seventy-two Septuagint translators had been inspired directly by the Holy Ghost, differences between their translation and the Hebrew original reflected conscious choices by the Divine Author of the original. According to Augustine, we should therefore respect the changed divine intentions rather than revert to an original that had been explicitly rejected. A famous example of such a controversy concerned the ages of the patriarchs: Jerome calls it “a celebrated question, and one which has been publicly aired in argument by all the churches.”6 According to the chronology in the Septuagint (and thus in the Old Latin Bible version used by Augustine), Methusaleh survived the Flood by fourteen years, whereas earlier in Genesis there is an explicit claim that all life on earth perished except Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. According to the genealogies in the Hebrew Bible, Methusaleh too dies in the year of the Flood. As is obvious in this and many other cases, decisions regarding textual issues were never purely scholarly in nature and all of the Christian churches have struggled with the problem of deciding between the Greek and the Hebrew versions of the Old Testament texts. It remains one of the major differences between Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity (the latter only accepts the Bible in Greek). Recently a case has been made that because the authors of the New Testament texts used only the Septuagint versions of the Old Testament, serious Christians should do the same. This is just one example; the scholarly status of the revealed text is always contested, especially by the aforementioned fundamentalist groups within these traditions that insist on the inerrancy of their revelation. It would be interesting to compare the various ways that the three religions of the book have dealt with

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the findings of textual criticism, which range from straightforward rejection to reluctant and sometimes even enthusiastic adoption. David Parker, the author of one of the most recent and thorough examples of a radical philological study of the New Testament, has even claimed that textual criticism is more than an essential tool for theology: “It is an essential theological tool.”7 In the next section, I widen the horizon and briefly explore a related phenomenon that extends beyond the relationship between a single religious tradition and its own sacred texts. In general, most of the religions of the book have an admittedly limited interest in each other’s sacred texts. This is probably most prevalent in Islam, because as the youngest of these religions of revelation, it accepted and adopted from the beginning a number of elements from both Jewish and Christian writings. In the present context of the strained relations between these three religions, it is no surprise that we find apologists who have adopted the methods of textual scholarship in order to criticize the other religious traditions.8 Examples of this trend are widespread on the Internet, especially in spaces where interfaith discussion is strongest, although the word “discussion” is probably too academic a term for the often violent attacks that are viewed by some fundamentalist participants as mere skirmishes within the greater context of their holy war, which, like all apocalyptic conflicts, can have only one outcome: the complete annihilation of the enemies of “the truth” and total victory and eternal bliss for one’s own faction. Needless to say, these quarrels are marginal phenomena, throwbacks to an older form of religious polemic that has somehow managed to survive into our secular age. Such discussions certainly do not aim at trying to understand the “other” revelations. This is evident when Christian apologists attack the Mormon and Muslim scriptures or when Jews counter Christians’ attempts to show that Jesus is present in the Torah. These interventions are not part of an interfaith dialogue and should be considered in the context of apologetic and missionary activity. Strangely, the evangelical and fundamentalist forms of Christianity insist on attacking the Book of Mormon and the Qur’an for failing to stand up to the scrutiny of historical and textual study, which they too carefully refrain from applying to their own scriptures. That this is not a purely Christian pursuit is obvious when we consider Web sites such as Islamic Awareness, which describes its mission in these terms: “The primary purpose of Islamic-Awareness website is to educate Muslims about the questions and issues frequently raised by the Christian Missionaries and Orientalists. You will find a variety of excellent articles and responses to missionary and orientalist writings.”9 The equation of orientalists and Christian missionaries is understandable, up to a point, because of the tendency in this kind of polemic to view the two categories as similar, although most of the more violent attacks against Islam stem less from scholarly orientalists and more from polemical evangelical missionaries whom one can hardly accuse of being scholarly. Unfortunately, most Muslim scholars fail to distinguish

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these facile polemics from the genuine scholarly work on the history of Islam and on the text of the Qur’an. From the perspective of theology or even of comparative anthropology, this interfaith discussion may well be a fascinating subject of study in itself, but for this present study, it is intriguing to observe the crucial role of the findings of textual scholarship in such discussions. I argue that textual scholarship can be an effective weapon in religious debates, and while there are countless examples of the genre in the Jewish and Christian tradition, I will demonstrate the procedures by reflecting upon a study by M. M. Al-Azami titled The History of the Qur’anic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testament.10 The publisher is the UK Islamic Academy in Leicester, England, a company that describes itself as “a research and publishing company that has been pioneering quality Islamic literature since the 1980s.” The author was born in India, studied at Cambridge and Cairo, and taught for most of his life at the King Saud University in Riadh where he was responsible for teaching the science of hadith, the Islamic traditions relating to the words and deeds of Mohammad. He is the author of a number of apologetic books, and in 1980 he received the King Faisal International Award for his work in Islamic studies. In the preface, Al-Azami explains that his book is in part a response to an article on Islamic scholarship that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in January 1999, in which the American journalist Toby Lester claimed that despite believing the Qur’an to be “the unadulterated Book of Allah, Islam scholars were thoroughly incapable of defending their view in any scholarly fashion.”11 Al-Azami’s ambition in this book is not only to disprove Lester’s assertion, but to “cover the histories of the Old and New Testaments by means of comparison” since “most of the scholars that Lester quotes are either Jews or Christians.”12 Thus, from the first page of this book, the context of the study is not cultural, historical, or even intellectual, but blatantly adversarial. According to Al-Azami, if you are not a Muslim, you are either a Jew or a Christian, and this primary allegiance wholly defines your position toward Islam. From a scholarly distance, it is fascinating to observe how the apologists in these debates consistently apply double standards. One example is the comparison of quantities that cannot be weighed against one another. For instance, AlAzami claims that the oldest Qur’anic manuscripts date from the first century, after the moment when they were written down, whereas the “oldest complete and dated manuscript of the Hebrew Bible” belongs to the beginning of the eleventh century CE and the earliest dated Greek manuscript of the gospels is only a century older.13 What he neglects to state is that the Qur’an acquired a structure as a cohesive book very early in its development, whereas the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles were (and still are) collections of books that came together in single codices relatively late in their histories and for which the term “complete” can have only an anachronistic meaning. While Al-Azami does not say how old the first complete and dated manuscript of the Qur’an is, he uncritically accepts

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all early Islamic manuscripts, including two letters from the Prophet himself. These he considers genuine despite the fact that the reproductions of the two documents in his book clearly show different hands at work.14 Al-Azami rejects such an objection as nonsense, arguing that the Prophet “had more than sixty scribes, and to expect their handwritings to match one another is absurd.”15 For this point to be valid, the next critical question would ask why there are no early Qur’anic manuscripts in one of these sixty hands. In other words, we have another example of special pleading: the Qur’anic traditions are clearly given the benefit of the doubt and this privilege is not granted to similar arguments regarding the Jewish and Christian writings. When Al-Azami reproduces an early text of the Qur’an with the inscription “84 AH”16 that clearly differs from the current text of the book, he writes simply that the inscription is “based on Qur’anic verses.” In a footnote he maintains that this inscription is “derived” from two different verses and “could be due to a slip in the writer’s memory,”17 quoting from Bruce Metzger’s study The Text of the New Testament to the effect that “memory can play strange tricks.” It is equally likely that this inscription is the original and that the versions in the present Qur’an are later variants and derivations. Most of the earliest authoritative documents of the Qur’an date from a later period than this inscription. Moreover, if we accept as fact that memory sometimes plays tricks on the mind, we cannot but cast doubt on the revelation of the Qur’an itself, which is ultimately based entirely on the Prophet’s faultless memory: every part of the book was dictated by Mohammad, who reproduced from memory what he had heard from the angel Gibriel. This discussion of textual differences in the Qur’an and the Bible is complicated further by the fact that Al-Azami ascribes the existing variations within the textual tradition of the Qur’an not to accidents of transmission, but to the responsibility of the Prophet himself. One example is found in the fourth verse of the Sura “al-Fatihah” where the word “malik” can be (and has been) read either as “King” or as “Owner” of the Day of Judgment. Al-Azami cites two early followers who each claim to have learned their differing ways of reciting the word from the Prophet himself, which is the ultimate argument for the authenticity of a specific Islamic tradition. Whereas from an outside perspective it is clear that one of these traditions must be wrong, for Al-Azami this means that both interpretations were correct and he views the story as proof that the Prophet authorized both interpretations. The stress on the unbroken nature of a tradition that allows variation only when each variant can be traced to the Prophet himself is based partly on the assumption that the Islamic religion is without the many sects and factions that characterize the early history of Christianity, which inevitably led to different textual traditions.18 Yet when confronted with the Islamic tradition of Ibn Masud, an early follower of Muhammed who had disagreed with the committee that supervised the final formation of the Qur’an, Al-Azami claims it is

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no coincidence that Masud’s divergent tradition is found mainly in Shiite (and thus sectarian) sources. The basic problem with Al-Azami’s book and other partisan religious writings that seek to apply the findings or methods of textual criticism is the a priori assumption that the Bible or the Qur’an in its present form represents exactly the form of the words as transmitted to the Prophet or to the writers of the Bible. Not sharing that belief makes one, in the words of our author, “an outcast,” “an apostate,” or “a wicked deviant.”19 By definition, such a partisan attitude makes textual scholarship as a critical science impossible and it becomes futile for a believer to discuss his own scriptures in terms of textual scholarship, if only because the object of this methodology is the establishment and study of a text whose origins and whose original form cannot be beyond doubt. Once this is admitted, believers in one religious revelation are morally disqualified from using the methodology of textual scholarship for the study of the sacred writings of another belief. It becomes a simple issue of double standards: one cannot expose another’s holy text to a methodology from which one’s own has been miraculously exempted. In applying textual scholarship to the study of sacred writings, these believers resemble the supporters of intelligent design in their implicit respect for the methodologies of science, but they share the same flawed logic in the overall structure of their argument. Both religious textual scholars and the supporters of intelligent design believe that they have solved a problem by claiming that a supernatural intelligence is responsible for that which we cannot fully explain. Such a conviction offers some individuals a degree of peace of mind, but there is also a risk that the believer will bracket an area for which apparently no explanations are needed. That is not the way science works, as the judge in the case against the school board of Dover, Pennsylvania, has found, and neither does it solve the problem of religious texts.20 In the special case of sacred writings, it only leads to new problems. If we base our approach to the text on the fact that it is the product of a divine revelation, we might assume not just one miracle but a whole series of them. If the Prophet heard the revelations directly from the angel, we have to assume there was a second miracle when he faultlessly dictated the text to his scribes from memory, a third when he corrected the mistakes written down by the scribes, a fourth when this text was first copied without any mistakes, and so on. A similar case can be made for the revelations allegedly made to Moses, to David, or to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, or even for the most recent revelations that were given to Joseph Smith. A single miracle is never sufficient. This argument has not escaped the attention of the apologists. The bottom line of Al-Azami’s defense of divine revelation is that there can be no scholarly objectivity in religious affairs, or in his own words, “if the non-Muslim scholars did not set out to prove Mohammad’s dishonesty or the Qur’an’s fallacy, what would hinder them from accepting Islam?” Genuine scholarly discussion is impossible in this kind of context; Al-Azami subsequently draws the conclusion

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that only contributions to a debate about the Qur’an by practicing Muslims “are worthy of our attention.”21 For the believer the issues are extremely clear. Al-Azami opens his book with three questions. After an initial inquiry about the nature of the Qur’an, he asks “If any complete or partial manuscripts are uncovered at present or in the future, claiming to be Qur’an but differing from what we now have in our hands, what impact would this have on the Qur’anic text?”22 The answer is as straightforward as it is circular: “There will never be a discovery of a Qur’an, fragmented or whole, which differs from the consensus text circulating throughout the world. If it does differ then it cannot be regarded as Qur’an, because one of the foremost conditions for accepting anything as such is that it conform to the text used in Uthman’s Mushaf.”23 The final question asks who is “entitled to be an authority on the Qur’an? Or in general terms, to write about Islam and all its religious and historical facets?” and again the answer is offered unequivocally: “Certainly anyone can write on Islam, but only a devout Muslim has the legitimate prerogative to write on Islamic and its related subjects.”24 For Al-Azami, it seems impossible to read the Qur’an from a nonpartisan perspective and there are only two positions available for writers on Islamic issues—one of a devout and uncritical Muslim, and one of an orientalist imperialist. Ironically, the only reason Al-Azami is exposed to this kind of critique is that in his discussion of the Qur’an he is forced to mention the particularities of the text that he cites as part of his defense of certain issues, but these details simply do not add up when all evidence is taken into account. This is true not just for Muslim apologetics, but for all religions based on Godgiven texts that are inerrant by definition; textual criticism or philology cannot be applied without the preliminary assumption that the text to be studied has human and thus historical origins. And it is not coincidental that in their attacks on the findings of textual scholarship, some Jewish and Christian scholars employ the same strategy as the defenders of the creation story in dealing with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Typically, they point out that the historical reconstructions suggested by scholars are far too complicated, contradictory, or simply not universally accepted. This is the case when Biblical scholars apply the “documentary hypothesis” to the writing of the Pentateuch. This critical theory supposes that in the creation of the first five books of the Bible, there were at least five different documents or layers of writing involved: an author who refers to God as YHWH (or J), a writer who uses the term Elohim (E), an author of the Book of Deuteronomy (D), a Priestly writer (P), and a final editor or redactor (R). They can then conclude that in these circumstances, it is simpler to abide by the traditional and religiously orthodox position: that Moses himself wrote these books. For the aforementioned reasons, these interfaith or sometimes even intrafaith skirmishes (they are so one-sided that they can hardly be called “debates”) are seldom intellectually or morally acceptable. Again, this problem is not exclusive to Islam; Christian fundamentalists who defend the King James translation

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against modern (i.e., post-1881) revisions of the Biblical Textus Receptus do not hesitate to use ad hominem arguments, as when they point out that Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort (who were responsible for changing the Greek text underlying the King James Version of the Bible when they incorporated findings from the newly discovered variant texts of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus into the Greek version of the Textus Receptus) were not the Anglican gentlemen they purported to be, but were pagans, devil worshipers, communists, homosexuals, and, even more damagingly, Roman Catholics.25 For the religions of the book, apologetic writers can use textual criticism as a powerful weapon in their attacks against rival religions, but it is also a tool that can be employed in good faith by those who are prepared to subject their own sacred texts to the same kind of scrutiny. This fact alone should disqualify textual criticism as a methodology in interreligious discussions, except for those scholars who are prepared to pay the full price. Most religious traditions based on a book dramatize the problem of the text’s authority, and, on the contrary, the intentional fallacy does not play a role in any of these traditions. In fact, the driving force behind these books is the search for the intentions of the divine author. Representatives of the nonfundamentalist traditions within these religions often claim that the fallible scribes may have failed occasionally to understand fully or to transmit fully these divine intentions; while the meaning of the message is inerrant, its concrete realization may be prone to human fallibility and error. I have attempted to show that the serious study of holy scriptures can teach us something about the value and, incidentally, the corrosive power of textual study when applied to holy texts. The discussion turns now to how relevant the logic of these holy scriptures might be for the study of modern literature, specifically for the work of James Joyce. For the greater part of the past two millennia, the most influential book in the West has been the Bible. The importance of its Old and New Testaments needs not be demonstrated in a culture for which the Bible as the book of God was only balanced by the book of nature—both written by the same author with the same message that could be studied by means of the same hermeneutics. A point of departure for such a view is the first verse of the Gospel of Saint John, a poetic phrase so well-known that it is often mistaken for the beginning of the book of Genesis (which, of course, it mimics) and thus of the Bible itself: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In one sense this is a Christian translation of an idea that had already been expressed in the Jewish Targum as “memra,” loosely meaning wisdom or emanation. This was the independently existing creative power of the creator that had little to do with “the word” as the smallest linguistic unit. In his comments on the book of Genesis, Philo of Alexandria had expressed this idea with the Greek word “logos” as God’s mental activity during the act of creation.26 Originally memra and logos were introduced in order to deal with the problem of

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the Biblical anthropomorphisms, which had become an embarrassment within the Hellenistic philosophical milieu in which Philo worked. As one finds also in the works of Homer, the Bible seemed to depict a God that was markedly more human and far less transcendental than the manner of God that functioned in a philosophy based on the thinking of Plato and Aristotle. The solution to the problem was the same for the case of Homer as it was for the Bible: allegory. Whenever the Jewish YHWH/Elohim and the Jewish patriarchs, on the one hand, and the Greek gods and heroes, on the other, behaved in an all-toohuman or even undignified fashion, the Homeric or Biblical stories were to be read with the assumption that the real meaning of the narrative was the moral or otherwise uplifting story that was embedded behind an objectionable surface. For the Jewish Bible, this allegorical strategy of dealing with anthropomorphism had two important byproducts. First, the Bible’s own importance as scripture could be strengthened by assuming that the book did not have a historical beginning but was coexistent with God and had even served as the blueprint of creation. Second, and at least as important as this fear of beginnings, was the fact that the study of the Bible itself could also be shown not to have had a beginning. All the patriarchs, Noah, and even Adam and his children, had already known the Torah (in the Jewish tradition) or had known the Gospel of Jesus (in Christianity). It is obvious that the author of the opening verse of the fourth gospel was aware of the definite parallel to the first verse of Genesis and thus of the entire Bible. What we do not know is whether he also knew that the verse itself was not without its own problems: Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’arets. The rabbis were worried that the first word bereshit (“the beginning”) not only preceded the verb expressing the act of creation, bara, but even the name of the creator himself, Elohim. How could there be a beginning before the creation and how could the beginning (syntactically) precede the creator? We know of this concern from a rabbinic story about the seventy or seventy-two translators of the text into Greek who individually rendered these lines, and afterward, were all found to have produced the identical word order: “God created in the beginning the earth.” This version of the Greek text of Genesis is found only in this tradition and is not attested to in any Greek text, so the story is probably a myth. The inherent problem seems to be that truly holy books, precisely because they are divine and perfect, cannot logically have a historical beginning. In some of the other gospels, we find the word “genesis” in a context that suggests similar anxieties. In fact, the first words of the gospel of Matthew and thus of the entire New Testament are “Biblos geneseos,” which are translated in the King James Version as “The book of the generation [of Jesus Christ].” This in itself is a reference to the creation story because “genesis” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew toledot, a word usually translated as “generation,” that also introduces and describes the second account of the creation. It is on the basis of these parallels that Saint Jerome called the first book of the Jewish Bible “Liber genesis,” a

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phrase that has come to mean “beginnings” in general. Ultimately we owe the name “genetic criticism” to Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translators. Though some might consider it blasphemous, I believe James Joyce thought of his last and most complex book, Finnegans Wake, in terms of scripture. After the critical success of Ulysses, his revolutionary novel about an ordinary day in the life of a very ordinary Dubliner named Leopold Bloom, Joyce began to work in the autumn of 1922 on what would become Finnegans Wake, a multilingual prose landscape with no plot to speak of, few characters, and very little development, which he completed in 1939. In the history of literature, it stands out as one of the most radical and demanding works in the language (if this is indeed still English). The initial difficulty of the prose stems from Joyce’s consistent use of multilingual puns that often obscure the narrative. During the seventeen years he worked on Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s closest friends and supporters often admitted that they could not see where his work was leading. Ezra Pound, for instance, wrote that “nothing short of a divine vision or a new cure for the clapp can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization.”27 At times Joyce felt obliged to defend his new writing procedures; for example, with Ulysses, he had written the longest day in literary history. Now he was engaged in writing the longest night: “One part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.”28 Joyce’s ambitions for this book were limitless. We know that he sometimes commented that if the Lord Jesus could found his church on the pun “Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam” (Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church), Joyce could do likewise and base his own creation on a series of puns. Already on the very first page of Finnegans Wake there is a suitably Irish variant of Jesus’s original pun: “tauftauf thuartpeatrick,”29 where it occurs amid a cluster of references to the first two books of the Bible, signaling Joyce’s ambition to out-create the Creator of the universe: Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: . . . nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: . . . peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.30

Immediately following on the Celtic story of Tristan, we find in just a few lines of dense prose the main narrative ingredients of the Torah: Moses and the burning bush, Isaac and Jacob, Noah, his children, and the rainbow symbolizing the first covenant. If Joyce planned to write his own version of scripture and therefore compete with the existing Jewish and Christian revelations, one could argue that his intentions were made quite clear on page one of his book.

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Ironically, genetic critics have always known that the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake was not where Joyce began when he set out to write the book.31 After several false starts (a series of independent sketches that he would incorporate later into the final text), Joyce finally filled both sides of a sheet of Restaurant des Trianons paper with a story about a certain Harold or Humphrey Coxon, whose name had not yet found its final form, but who was destined to be the central hero of his new project. In that sense, these pages represent the real genetic beginning of Finnegans Wake. Perhaps with these two beginnings Joyce was emulating the Biblical Moses, who also tells the story of creation in two consecutive versions. As evidence that Joyce may have wanted to out-create the Creator, his second part was followed by a third beginning that emerged when he decided to develop the first sketch in a new copybook. On the first page, and in a clear handwriting, we find a passage that begins “Guiltless he was clearly for so once at least he clearly declared himself to be. They tell the story that one fine spring morning some years after the alleged misdemeanour whilst crossing the fair expanse of the park he met a cad with a pipe.”32 This developed into the story of the protagonist HCE’s guilt that would become the heart of Book I and ultimately of Finnegans Wake. Just as in Ulysses, the last word would be given to a woman, yet this third and final beginning of the genesis of Finnegans Wake was not written by Joyce himself but by his wife Nora, whose penmanship is distinctly different. It is only fitting that the last beginning of the genesis of the last of Joyce’s books was written by a woman. We know from the books alluded to in his writings and those we know he read that Joyce was interested in how religions came into being and, in particular, how holy books were written. He read widely on Mohammad, on Joseph Smith, on the Buddha, and of course also on the scriptures of the religion in which he grew up. He may have been an apostate from Catholicism, but he certainly knew more about the Bible and about the history of Catholicism than most Catholics of his time— enough at least to tell his father that no good Catholic should read either the Bible or Ulysses.33 It is no coincidence we have discovered that, like the Author of the Universe, Joyce had great difficulty in finding a single beginning of his creative act. What is it that Joyceans, geneticists, and radical philologists can gain from investigations of the history of critical scholarship of the Bible and of other holy books? The first benefit is certainly a sense of continuity that would emphasize the commonalities among these scholars instead of focusing on what separates us from this previous generation of textual researchers. More important, we can learn from modern Bible scholarship that serious critical and historical textual work is possible only if we leave behind all forms of religious and ideological dogma; in this sense, it is logical that the rise of Biblical scholarship coincides with the first development of the scientific worldview. In both cases, the principal enemy of the new way of thinking was dogmatism; the historical and critical method offered scholars from different cultural, national, and social backgrounds a common perspective from which to look at the world—just as

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in the twelfth century Aristotle’s philosophy was the common language that enabled Jews, Muslims, and Christians to communicate with one another. In a way, Salman Rushdie has addressed such issues in his novel The Satanic Verses (1988), a powerful statement against all dogmatism and fundamentalism that shows the profound influence of James Joyce. As genetic scholars or as radical philologists, we need not be ashamed to belong to a scholarly discipline whose pioneers included Lorenzo Valla, Desiderius Erasmus, and Baruch Spinoza. It was Spinoza who first expressed the principles that would enable scholars to read the text of the Bible as they read other historical texts that had been studied and edited by the humanists. And we should not forget why Spinoza wanted to read the Bible historically and critically: he lived in dark times when, in the name of the holy book, thousands of people were tortured and killed for their divergent interpretations of the holy scriptures. In the last generation of our own time, we have witnessed an unexpected rise of fundamentalism in the major religions of the world. As textual critics, we have the responsibility to support those brave souls who, within the different religions that have a holy book, continue the work begun by Spinoza.

Notes 1. See David Hayman, “From Finnegans Wake: A Sentence in Progress,” PMLA 63 (March 1958): 136–54; David Hayman, ed., A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963); and David Hayman, “‘Scribbledehobbles’ and How They Grew,” in Twelve and a Tilly: Essays on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of Finnegans Wake, ed. Jack P. Dalton and Clive Hart (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 107–18. See also A. Walton Litz, “The Evolution of James Joyce’s Style and Technique from 1918– 1932” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 1954); and A. Walton Litz, The Art of James Joyce: Method and Design in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (London: Oxford University Press, 1961). 2. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, History of Classical Scholarship (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Giorgio Pasquali, Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (Firenze: Le Lettere, 1988); Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); idem, History of Classical Scholarship: 1330 to 1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); Arnaldo Momigliano, Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (London: Basil Blackwell, 1977); Luciano Canfora, Le vie del classicismo (Laterza: Biblioteca di cultura moderna, 1989); Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); Volume II, 1993; idem, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Perhaps it is easier for me to see such a continuity because my first university degree was in philology; at the time, I was so proud that I made sure this newly acquired expertise was properly registered on my passport so that today I may well be the only officially registered “philologist” in Belgium and environs. 3. Sean Alexander Gurd, Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 4. G. Thomas Tanselle, “Classical, Biblical, and Medieval Textual Criticism and Modern Editing,” Studies in Bibliography 36 (1983): 22.

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5. Quoted in Ronald S. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 40. 6. Quoted in ibid., 61. 7. David Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 94. 8. The term “apologist” is used here in its technical sense to refer to the practictioners of apologetics, the branch of theology that defends the faith against objections. 9. See www.islamic-awareness.org. 10. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami, The History of the Qur’anic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments (Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003). 11. Ibid., xv. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., xvi–xvii. 14. See the reproduction in ibid., 124. 15. Ibid., 123. 16. Eighty-four years after the Hijra, the migration of Mohammad from Mecca to Medina, corresponding to the years 702–3 CE. 17. Ibid., 127. The italics are in the original. 18. Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Ehrman has also published a more accessible book discussing these issues: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: Harper, 2005). 19. Al-Azami, History of the Qur’anic Text, 199. 20. See the full ruling in the case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, www.pamd. uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf. 21. Al-Azami, History of the Qur’anic Text, 341. 22. Ibid., 12. 23. Ibid., 13. 24. Ibid. The italics are in the original. 25. It might be interesting to point out that the King James defenders go to great lengths to show that King James was not a homosexual: as an example, see www.jesus-islord.com/rumors.htm. 26. See Philo, “On the Creation,” in The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993). 27. Quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 584–85. 28. James Joyce, Letters III, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 146. 29. FW 3.10. All editions of Finnegans Wake have the same layout, so references are given as page and line numbers. FW 3.10 means that the passage can be found on the tenth line of page three. 30. FW 3.4–14. 31. See my essay on the first chapter of Finnegans Wake: “The Beginning: Chapter I.1,” in How Joyce Wrote “Finnegans Wake”: A Chapter-by-chapter Genetic Guide, ed. Luca Crispi and Sam Slote (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 49–65. 32. Quoted from David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 64. 33. Ellmann, James Joyce, 541.

Chapter Two

Variant and Variation: Toward a Freudo-bathmologicoBakhtino-Goodmanian Genetic Model? Daniel Ferrer The aim of this chapter is to clarify the relationship between what genetic critics1 (or philologists) call variants and what musicians call variations.2 Some work that has been done to understand the nature of variation, and in particular Nelson Goodman’s analysis of variation in terms of reference rather than according to formal criteria,3 can help us to define the status of variants. Such a definition may serve as a helpful complement to a general model of the genetic process based on a dialogic relationship between versions. There is an obvious connection between the notions of variant and variation: both have to do with similarity and diversity. However, their core meanings are quite distinct despite the fact that in loose specialized usage, as well as in general parlance, the terms overlap (even dictionaries often use one word to define the other). Typically, one speaks of variants when there is a choice between elements regarded as equivalent, and of variation when the similar but different elements are juxtaposed in space or in time.4 A few examples should clarify this issue. For an instance of genetic variant, we can look at the genesis of the first sentence of Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, for which there are three extant versions. Virginia Woolf first wrote, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the silk herself.” Then, she crossed out the word “silk” and inserted the word “gloves” in its place,5 and later on,6 the sentence became “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the silk herself.

gloves flowers

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The three variant words are obviously different, yet we know that they are somehow equivalent. The fact that “silk,” “gloves,” and “flowers” are substituted for one another in the same position unites them as part of the same paradigm. We can try to analyze what they have in common: all three are nouns, they refer to things one might purchase, and more specifically may be categorized as luxury goods. Now let us consider an example of variation taken from a literary work that deliberately sets out to imitate musical forms: the “Sirens” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses.7 —He’s killed looking back. She laughed: —O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots? With sadness. Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.8

One might regard the last paragraph as an illustration of theme and variations; the second and third sentences are similar to the first, but at the same time they are different. Yet this is not sufficient to categorize them as variations. If we stop to think about it, the same argument (“at the same time similar and different”) could be made about any two sentences, and even about any two things. Goodman remarks that definitions of what counts as a variation in music have changed over the course of history, broadened to encompass the new practices of composers. It is likely that new ways of varying will continue to be discovered and that definitions will be altered further. No formal criterion seems to be universally valid and none can be sufficient. As Goodman expresses it: The question immediately facing us is “When is a variation?”; that is, “Under what circumstances does a passage v having the requisite musical relationship to a passage t function as a variation upon t?” This question takes priority over the question “What is a variation?” much as the question “When is art?” takes priority over the question “What is art?”9

His solution to this problem seems obvious; one has the impression it is trivial and that we have always known it: a passage v functions as a variation on t only when v refers to t in a certain way. Functioning as a variation involves not only the requisite musical relationship but also a referential one.10

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It is indeed clear that the second and third sentences of the “Sirens” passage refer to the first one in some way. Understanding the mode of reference is not, however, so simple a matter: “when functioning as a variation a passage does not merely possess but exemplifies the musical feature(s) it must have in common with the theme.”11 Moreover, the variation must denote the theme through that feature. Technically, according to Goodman, this is a case of reversal of direction in a denotational hierarchy, but more simply stated, the common feature alludes to the theme. Goodman also emphasizes the point that the differences refer to the original as well as the similarities. In short, it is through contrast that the differences exemplify features of the theme. But how can an absent feature exemplify something? In the same way that one can refer, ironically for instance, to a notoriously crooked politician as “honest Jacques” or to a notoriously stupid one as “George the genius.” In our example from Joyce’s “Sirens,” the second and third sentences obviously allude to the first through the words they have in common, but also embody contrast through the different ways of combining these words. Now, can we transpose this analysis of variation to variants? Can we treat variants as variations in absentia? Suppose one discovered the three “Sirens” sentences in an isolated manuscript. It would be difficult to decide whether they were meant as variants or as variations. Did the author write them down in succession so that he could choose from them later, or did he intend to use all three in relation to one another? This is not a hypothetical problem; editors of authors who are fond of repetitions, echoes, and ruminations, such as Proust or Céline and most poets, are often confronted with this issue, and it is probably well known to students of musical manuscripts. It is also common that what begins as an array of variants is eventually used by the author as a set of variations. These matters are perhaps more palpable in the field of the visual arts. Goodman contends that Picasso’s series of pictures on the theme of Las Meninas are variations on the famous painting of Velasquez, and that Rembrandt’s several drawings of the Last Supper are variations—he calls the last one an “exemplary” variation—on Leonardo’s fresco (see figs. 2.1 and 2.2). The drawing obviously alludes to the fresco, “referring to it by exemplification of certain shared features and contrastive exemplification of certain differing features,”12 in Goodman’s words. Examples include the expression of the faces and the dog voraciously eating in the foreground. Concerning engravings, Goodman insists that, in spite of “differences in primer and printing—in ink, wiping, paper, and so on—among the impressions,”13 different impressions of a print, like different interpretations of a musical work, are not variations but instances of the same work. In this case, Goodman’s position seems questionable,14 but we will concentrate on another aspect that he does not consider: the various states of an engraving.

Figure 2.1. Rembrandt, The Last Supper after Leonardo da Vinci, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman collection 1975 (1976.1.794). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Figure 2.2. Da Vinci, The Last Supper, tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

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Examining two prints of Hogarth’s The Bruiser (figs. 2.3 and 2.4), we observe that they are indeed different in terms of inking and paper. There is, however, a more substantial difference: they belong to two different states of this engraving. One detail that stands out immediately is the added picture in the bottom right-hand corner of the print (compare figs. 2.5 and 2.6). Hogarth modified his plate after he produced the first print, a very common practice among engravers. This is the equivalent of a textual or musical variant. Genetically speaking, Hogarth has altered his plate in the same way that a writer alters his manuscript with deletions and substitutions. The status of these altered prints is not quite the same. There were clients interested in purchasing them; it is believed that Rembrandt, for instance, produced so many versions of his various engravings because he had a market for them. For connoisseurs who were eager to collect all the successive states of these prints, they were clearly variations, desirable in so far as they were different in their basic similarity. For a connoisseur, the version of The Bruiser with the framed picture refers to the version without the framed picture in the bottom corner. The allusiveness of a state of an engraving in relation to the previous one (or the previous ones) is even more evident if we step back further in the history of this print. We find that the caricature of the Bruiser-Churchill is based on Hogarth’s own self-portrait (see fig. 2.7). The artist used the same copper plate to launch an attack against his rival Charles Churchill. Normally, we would hesitate to speak of a variant in cases where there are two different works, with completely different purposes. But technically, it can be analyzed as a series of transformations (of variants) upon the same basis. It is, of course, also a variation. The allusive component is clear: the dog, the sturdy indomitable English pug, acts as a kind of double of Hogarth in the portrait, looking away with a disgusted expression and urinating on a copy of Churchill’s Epistle to Hogarth (see fig. 2.8). The dog as contemnor alludes to the dog as double. More generally, the burlesque and bitter mood of The Bruiser alludes to (i.e., it exemplifies through contrast) the dignified and defiant mood of the self-portrait in the same way that the homely atmosphere of Rembrandt’s Last Supper, with its dog eating in the foreground (fig. 2.9), contrasts with the ethereal atmosphere of Leonardo’s fresco (and perhaps with Italian painting in general as opposed to Dutch realism). It is tempting to generalize from this borderline case that genetic variants can be treated as variations: they allude to previous versions, exemplifying, both positively and negatively, some of their properties. As an example, let us examine the genesis of the aforementioned “Sirens” passage:

Figure 2.3. William Hogarth, The Bruiser. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 2.4. William Hogarth, The Bruiser, 7th state. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 2.5. Detail of figure 2.3.

Figure 2.6. Detail of figure 2.4.

Figure 2.7. William Hogarth, Gulielmus Hogarth. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 2.8. Detail of figure 2.3.

Figure 2.9. Detail of figure 2.1.

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First draft15 —He’s killed looking back, she said gaily! O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots? Second draft16 —He’s killed looking back she said ^+tittered+^ gaily. O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots? Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from the light, curving ^+twining+^ a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she ^+twisted+^ twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering her hair behind her ^+a curving+^ ear. Final version —He’s killed looking back. She laughed: —O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots? With sadness. Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.

The second draft alludes explicitly to the unexpressed sadness that was present in the first draft. The elaborate diction of the narration exemplifies the colloquial style of Miss Kennedy’s exclamation through its contrasting qualities. It could be argued that this seems plausible enough only because the most substantial part of the variant is an addition. Could we understand the relationship between the second draft and the final version in the same way? Could we say, for instance, that the formulation of the final version alludes through contrast to the symmetrical relationship between the words “gaily” and “sadly” in the second version? One problem with this way of presenting things is that the reader does not normally have access to canceled variants in the same way that the listener or viewer of a variation has access to the musical or pictorial theme. So if there is an allusion, it is bound to be lost, just as in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, where the grateful allusions of the narrator’s aunts are wasted on Charles Swann because they are so subtle that he does not perceive them. Nonetheless, the aunts’ remarks are still allusions despite their imperceptibility; the allusive component is a fundamental part of their makeup. The idea of an impenetrable allusion may seem strange and almost contradictory, but it is something that students of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake are confronted with all the time.17 Moreover, can we be sure that such allusions are entirely lost? One might suggest that past variants are not absent: traces of them might be enmeshed in the fabric of the later versions through a mechanism that I have called the “memory of the context.”18

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Returning to The Bruiser, we can observe that the palette in the right-hand corner is a remnant of the previous state. It was fully justified in the portrait of a painter, but it has nothing to do with the new context. Hogarth obviously drew the same conclusion, since he later covered the palette with a picture whose subject echoed that of the oval painting. But the palette remains perceptible underneath. Even if Hogarth had obliterated it entirely in a later state, its presence might still have been felt, albeit obscurely, in the composition in the equilibrium of ellipses of different sizes; some compensation would probably have been introduced, or an imbalance would hint at the absent shape. In the case of Mrs. Dalloway, we find that “silk” and “gloves” completely disappear from the first sentence, but they are not lost on a larger scale as they resurface elsewhere in the novel. Mutatis mutandis, then, Goodman’s analysis of variation can be usefully imported into genetic theory. It completes and clarifies a conceptual model that I proposed recently—one that I had called jokingly a Freudo-bathmologicoBakhtinian model.19 Succinctly put, the model is Freudian because of the notion that one cannot fully understand an utterance by considering solely its present state and without reconstructing its transformational history, which finds its basis in the fundamental Freudian notion of transference. Bathmology is the science of degrees delineated by Roland Barthes, after Blaise Pascal. According to Pascal, the same attitude, respect for the powers that be, has a different significance for the mob, for what he describes as the half-clever, for the clever, for bigoted Christians, and for the true believer.20 The external behavior of the clever man and the mob is apparently the same, but so too is it fundamentally different because the clever man’s attitude exists in full knowledge of the position of the mob and of the position of the half-clever. In the same way, if a first variant introduces an addition, and a second variant later cancels that addition, the third state, in spite of appearances, will not be identical to the first because it alludes to the second state. Finally, and most important, the model is Bakhtinian, because it integrates Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas of the counterstatement (Gegenrede), of a dialogic response “directed toward its referential object [and] at the same time reacting intensely to someone else’s word.”21 Specifically, it absorbs what Bakhtin calls “hidden polemic,” his conception of a discourse that, to quote Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, “draws in, as it were, sucks in to itself the other’s” discourse. In this model of the genetic process, it is not the discourse of the other that is the hidden basis of the statement, but one’s own past utterance, and the “hidden polemic,” of course, is obscured even more since it relates not to a published text but to material that is normally private. The most recent layer to add to this model would be a transposition of Goodman’s analysis of variation as a means of understanding the mechanism of the counterstatement—the way a word can be influenced by another external word. It is a form of allusion, one referring to the other through similarities and

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differences, through the positive and negative exemplification of each word’s various characteristics. For the writer in the process of creation, each variant assumes the status of a variation, alluding to the preceding version and exemplifying its potentiality through difference. For the reader of the manuscripts, superseded variants are paradoxically a kind of variation on the final work. They exemplify its characteristics through contrast and aid in its interpretation in much the same way that Rembrandt’s drawing of the Last Supper is, according to Goodman, an interpretation of Leonardo’s fresco. This model contributes to our understanding of one of the most important but challenging concepts of genetic criticism: the concept of avant-texte. The avant-texte is always defined retrospectively and arbitrarily in relation to the final work. One might say that the avant-texte encompasses every document that can be construed as entering into a relation of variation with the final work. Thus, we can conclude that it is indeed useful, from the point of view of genetic theory, to draw upon the musical concept of variation in an effort to revive and rejuvenate the old philological notion of variant. Through this process, one might define more clearly the nature of the relation between the different drafts and the final version of a text or work or art.

Notes 1. As a matter of fact, genetic criticism has long tried to move away from the term “variant” because it tends to be associated with a local emendation rather than a global creative process. The term has persisted, however, because it is something that everybody understands and it is something that genetic criticism has in common with textual criticism, even if it is used in a quite different context. 2. I am referring here to both the specific genre and the more general musical principle. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians defines variation as “A form founded on repetition, and as such an outgrowth of a fundamental musical and rhetorical principle, in which a discrete theme is repeated several or many times with various modifications. Identifiable as a formal type from the 16th century, it nonetheless reflects a technique and process important in nearly all music, including music in which the improvised repetition of the strophes of song or dance forms is a part.” See Elaine Sisman, “Variations,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 26, 284. 3. Nelson Goodman, “Variations on Variation—or Picasso Back to Bach,” in Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin, Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), 66–82. 4. One speaks of variants of an itinerary (one can use one route or the other) and of linguistic variation between, for instance, American and British English (both are spoken simultaneously on the planet). But it is clearly a question of point of view; one could say that the various itineraries coexist on the map, or that a given speaker has a choice between a British and an American form, since he or she cannot utter both at the same time. However, the speaker would not normally experience this as a choice, or as a variation (only a linguist would call it that), unless he is singing “I say tomayto and you say tomahto.”

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5. Her edit appears on the typescript of what was still a short story titled “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” (Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library). 6. This version appears in the first complete draft of the novel, then called The Hours (British Library). 7. But if we accept Roman Jakobson’s definition of the poetic function as a projection of the axis of similarity upon the axis of contiguity, we could find examples almost anywhere in literature. 8. See Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition, prepared by Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (New York and London: Garland 1986), vol. 2, 77–84. 9. Nelson Goodman, “Variations on Variation—or Picasso Back to Bach,” 67. 10. Ibid., 68. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 73. 13. Ibid. 14. Goodman, ibid., denies that interpretations are variations, because they do not count as different works or different parts of the same work (“the several performances of a work are not variations upon, but rather constitute, the work” [66]), but when he wants to explain “the why of variation . . . what is accomplished cognitively and aesthetically by variation,” he states that variations are interpretations: “Earlier in this paper I postponed the question of the why of variation—of what is accomplished cognitively and aesthetically by variation. The best answer, I think, can come from looking at such examples as the Picasso variations, listening to the music in conjunction with such looking, and observing the effect of such experiences. Variations upon a work, whether in the same or a different medium— and still more, sets of variations—are interpretations of the work” (81). 15. National Library of Ireland. 16. Ibid. 17. Daniel Ferrer, “Allusion et absence d’accès: du cas particulier de Finnegans Wake au cas général de l’avant-texte,” in L’Allusion et l’Accès, ed. P. Vernon (Tours: Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, 2005), 15–25. 18. Daniel Ferrer, “La toque de Clementis: rétroaction et rémanence dans les processus génétiques,” Genesis 6 (1994): 93–106. See also the English-language translation by Marlena Corcoran: “Clementis’s Cap: Retroaction and Persistence in the Genetic Process,” Yale French Studies 89 (1996): 223–36. 19. Daniel Ferrer, “Quelques remarques sur le couple énonciation-genèse,” Texte 27/28 (2000): 7–23. Available at www.texte.ca/texte27.html. 20. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fr. 90, ed. L. Lafuma, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), 53. 21. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 197.

Additional Sources Barthes, Roland. “Reading Brillat-Savarin” [on bathmology] in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard. Berkeley: University of California, 1989. Deppman, Jed, Daniel Ferrer, and Michael Groden, eds. Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-textes. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004.

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Ferrer, Daniel, and Jean-Louis Lebrave. “De la variante textuelle au geste d’écriture variant.” In L’écriture et ses doubles: genèse et variation textuelle, ed. Ferrer and Lebrave. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1991, 9–25. Freud, Sigmund. “The Dynamics of Transference.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 12 (1911–13), trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1981. Goodman, Nelson. Of Mind and Other Matters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Nichols, John Bowyer. Anecdotes of William Hogarth, written by himself, with Essays on His Life and Genius, selected from Walpole, Gilpin, J. Ireland, Lamb, Phillips, and others. To which are added a Catalogue of his Prints, List of Paintings, Drawings, etc. London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1833. Available at http://books.google.com/ books?id=2xIEAAAAYAAJ&hl=fr&output=html. Winters, Edgar. “Pictorial Variations.” British Journal of Aesthetics 38, no. 3 (1998): 294–306.

Chapter Three

The Genetic Record of a Voice: Variants in Barthes’s Le Plaisir du texte Armine Kotin Mortimer Roland Barthes’s manuscripts have been held at the Institut Mémoire de l’Édition Contemporaine, known as IMEC, since 1996.1 Before then, I was fortunate enough to be invited in 1990 by Barthes’s half-brother, Michel Salzedo, to examine the manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte in the very apartment where Barthes had lived, rue Servandoni in the 6th arrondissement in Paris. What led me to this genetic line of inquiry was this: a portion of one manuscript page photographed on the cover of the “pocket” edition, in the Points series at the Editions du Seuil, included words not found in the corresponding passage in print. At my request, the publisher generously supplied a photocopy of the manuscript in 1989, and I conducted a systematic study of what Barthes called “writing by subtraction” in a 1995 article. “J’écris parce que je ne veux pas des mots que je trouve: par soustraction” (I write because I want nothing to do with the words I find—by subtraction), he wrote in Le Plaisir du texte, and page after manuscript page gave proof of this assertion.2 Le Plaisir du texte is the book that theorizes the practice of subtraction, which, unbeknownst to readers of the printed book, is the principal cause, along with intertextuality, of the remarkable density of this extremely short but often misunderstood book.3 A second study of the manuscript yielded a contribution to the vexed question of the order of the fragments. As is well known, starting with his 1970 book Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Barthes wrote all his books in fragments that range in length from a few lines to a few pages. In manuscript, fragments are almost always one to a page (in this case, there are six that run longer), a form that allowed Barthes great freedom in constructing the book, so that the final, published text was always the product of a play of movement with the manuscript folios, including the combination of fragments into larger sections. In the case of Le Plaisir du texte, the manuscript reveals choices about the order of the fragments that only a genetic reading can discover; meanings change (and often the titles of the fragments) according to

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the position of the fragments and their relationships to each other. The traces that remain of different systems of numbering the pages demonstrate the importance of this concept of the book as a malleable construction. As for Barthes’s practice of the variant, like writing by subtraction and the play of manuscript fragments, the sense of the book changes with the genetic record. From the perspective of the finished wording, manuscript versions yield additional meaning. Because of writing by subtraction, the study of variants will often recuperate text that Barthes eliminated from the final version. But whatever their form, variants multiply the dimensions of the condensed thought in Le Plaisir du texte; examining those multiple dimensions returns us to the final text enriched with greater meaning. There is, however, something paradoxical about reading the genetic record of Roland Barthes’s writing. He was passionate about the refusal of “filiation,” of origins, of heritage; he regretted that language engendered further language until it mushroomed into the “scène ménagère” or family fight, whose only ending was murder. He was obstinately antigenetic, as he said in his book about himself, Roland Barthes (often called his autobiography, but generically ambiguous for several reasons and best not thought of as an autobiography). “La défection des origines,” a section of that book, contains the assertion that his work is toujours, obstinément, antigénétique, car l’Origine est une figure pernicieuse de la Nature (de la Physis): par un abus intéressé, la Doxa “écrase” ensemble l’Origine et la Vérité, pour en faire une seule preuve, l’une et l’autre se renflouant, selon un tourniquet commode. . . . Pour déjouer l’Origine, il culturalise d’abord à fond la Nature . . . puis cette culture, il la remet dans le mouvement infini des discours, montés l’un sur l’autre (et non engendrés).4 [always obstinately antigenetic, because the Origin is a pernicious figure of Nature (of Physis): the Doxa, with abusive self-interest, “crushes” together Origin and Truth, turning them into a single proof, with each reinforcing the other by means of a convenient turnstile. . . . To foil Origins, he first fully culturalizes Nature . . . then he reinserts this culture into the infinite movement of discourses, one mounted upon the other (but not engendered).]

Truth should not be found by means of Origins, where “right thinking” tends to place it: we should not turn to the genetic record to find the truth about Barthes. But if we do not think of our study of origins as leading to the Truth; if, like Barthes, we turn Nature thoroughly into Culture and replace Culture into the circuit of discourses, then there will be no final truth to which we make claim. As Réda Bensmaïa has written in his excellent study The Barthes Effect, when Barthes seizes upon a word, “it is never to give it a definitive or complete meaning, but always to cut it with others, just as insipid wine is cut with a heady variety,” with the result that a multiplicity of meanings is born.5 As Bensmaïa argues, “A sort of generalized metonymy” takes over where “words constantly replace other words,

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words constantly are added to each other.”6 The practice of the genetic criticism of Barthes’s texts, if done well, leads less to filiations or sources than to a multiplication of meanings along with the multiplication of origins. That is what the genetic record of Le Plaisir du texte shows above all. In my transcription of the manuscript, insertions are marked with angle brackets: < and >. Underlining and crossings out are those done by Barthes. Bold type indicates his late corrections done with a soft felt-tipped pen. Words that remained illegible are indicated by XXX, although the manuscript is extremely legible— including almost all the crossed-out material. My own interpolations are found between accolades or what are often referred to as curly brackets: { and }.

The Voices of the Variant The “culturalized” but natural voice is the subject of the last section of Le Plaisir du texte, where the voice is placed into the infinite movement of discourses clambering one on top of the other, each clamoring for superiority for but a moment, and never being engendered or arriving at the final meaning, thus allowing the genetic reading of Roland Barthes to be Barthesian in its practices. I consider “Voix” emblematic of Barthes’s practice of the variant. Moreover, this section is particularly interesting from a genetic point of view because the manuscript was extensively reworked. “Voix” opens with “writing aloud” (l’écriture à haute voix), the idea of a vocal writing that is not at all the spoken word. Only in the printed version did Barthes add the term I have just used, “écriture vocale” or vocal writing, as a synonym for “l’écriture à haute voix.” The reworkings of the manuscript reveal here how much Barthes feared his readers would not understand his notion of this very special orality, which is not to be understood as speaking or speech and that he will soon relate to a certain kind of music. For greater clarity, he displaced an explanatory sentence, moving it toward the top and inserting it immediately after the first sentence of the section on “Voice” and also adding a second example to illustrate this concept. Here is the manuscript version from the top of the section (see fig. 3.1): {1a} S’il était possible de concevoir une esthétique du plaisir textuel, il faudrait y inclure ceci: l’écriture à haute voix (qui n’est pas du tout la parole). {Seven manuscript lines follow.} L’écriture à haute voix (qui n’est pas pratiquée aujourd’hui mais qui était peut-être celle que demandait Artaud n’est pas expressive;7 [If it were possible to conceive of an esthetics of textual pleasure, one would have to include this: writing aloud (which is not at all speaking). {Seven manuscript lines follow.} Writing aloud (a practice not in use today but perhaps the one that Artaud required is not expressive;]

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Figure 3.1. Manuscript folio of “Voix,” first page.

The seven manuscript lines concern the actio of ancient rhetoric that prescribe rules for the expressivity of emotions. This cut produced the following final version: {1b} S’il était possible d’imaginer une esthétique du plaisir textuel, il faudrait y inclure: l’écriture à haute voix. Cette écriture vocale (qui n’est pas du tout la parole), on ne la pratique pas, mais c’est sans doute elle que recommandait Artaud et que demande Sollers. Parlons-en comme si elle existait.8

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[If it were possible to imagine an esthetics of textual pleasure, one would have to include: writing aloud. This vocal writing (which is not at all speaking) is not in use, but it was no doubt this that Artaud recommended and that Sollers requires. Let us speak of it as if it existed.]

As an example of writing aloud, Artaud’s 1948 radio rant against God, “Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu,” is famous; it is one of the high points of surrealistic excess. What strikes one immediately are the tone, pitch, rhythm, and timbre of the voice—to the extent that one almost does not hear the words being spoken. Artaud’s “writing aloud” does not seek to express a meaning, Barthes would seem to say. The reference to Philippe Sollers, with the verb “demande” in the sense of “require” implies a different understanding of writing aloud, as something one would have to understand to be able to read Sollers. The novel by Sollers called Lois, to which this observation applies perfectly, dates from the year of the manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, 1972; the frequent references to Sollers in Le Plaisir du texte underscore the importance to Barthes of the avant-garde writing Sollers was producing at that time. In Lois, effects of rhythm, sonorities in juxtaposition, twisted, reversed, or exploded phonetic distortions are pushed to the foreground on all levels, from within the word to the level of the paragraph. Although a written text, this novel relies on the trace of the sounds the writing vehiculates to produce an effect in the reader. The fact that Sollers practiced reading aloud, both privately, as an assessment of his work in progress, and publicly, contributes to Sollers’s importance as an illustration of Barthes’s writing aloud. It seems that the pleasure of the text adheres not so much to the possibilities of expressing meaning inherent in the human voice, but rather to the kind of voice that disturbs our comfortable relation to sound. Writing aloud is itself a variant on writing. This point is explained a little later in this section called “Voix.” The manuscript further defines writing aloud by saying that it is {2a} portée non par les inflexions, les intonations, mais par le grain de la voix (ce peut donc être une lecture apparemment immobile); le grain peut être lui aussi l’objet d’un certain art, d’une certaine science de conduire son corps.9 [carried not by the inflections, the intonations, but by the grain of the voice (it can therefore be an apparently immobile reading); the grain also can be the object of a certain art, of a certain science of conducting the body.]

The final version is more explicit: {2b} elle est portée, non par les inflexions dramatiques, les intonations malignes, les accents complaisants, mais par le grain de la voix, qui est un mixte érotique de timbre et de langage, et peut donc être lui aussi, à l’égal de la diction, la matière d’un art: l’art de conduire son corps.10

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[it is carried not by dramatic inflections, clever intonations, accommodating accents, but by the grain of the voice, which is an erotic mixture of timbre and language, and can therefore also be, like diction, the subject of an art: the art of conducting the body.]

The opposition is between this pleasurable art of body conduct and the expressiveness of the voice—inflections, intonations, and accents, each accompanied by an adjective and each the object of disdain. One notices that “science” (the science of bodily conduct) disappears from the final version; dropping the reference to science is one of the forms of subtraction the variant of pleasure produced en route from the manuscript to the final version. Barthes continued to revise his text, still explaining the concept of writing aloud. Here is the manuscript: {3a} l’écriture-à-haute-voix ne s’intéresse plus du tout aux phonèmes, aux unités phoniques du sens (la phonologie est tout entière du côté du phén géno-texte: d’où la repugnance du structuralisme à considérer l’écriture et à plus forte raison XXXXXXX ce paradoxe: l’écriture sonore); ce qu’elle cherche (dans une perspective de jouissance) ce sont les sons corporels, pulsionnels: [contrairement à toute logique de la communication, de l’expression, elle recommandera par exemple de patiner les consonnes—au lieu de les faire emphatiquement, clairement exploser. C’est ce que recommandait le chanteur Charles Panzéra. C’est en effet du côté de la musique (bien qu’elle soit elle aussi en grande partie corrompue par XXX une exigence toute naturaliste d’expressivité) qu’il faut placer l’écriture-à-haute-voix.11 [Writing-aloud no longer takes any interest in phonemes, in the phonic units of meaning (phonology is entirely on the side of the phen genotext: hence structuralism’s repugnance to consider writing and a fortiori XXXXXXXX in this paradox: sonorous writing); what it seeks (in a perspective of jouissance) are the sounds of the body, of the drive: [in contradiction with any logic of communication, of expression, it will for instance recommend gliding on the consonants—instead of making them discharge emphatically, clearly. That is what the singer Charles Panzéra recommended. In fact, it is on the side of music (even though it too is largely corrupted by XXX a completely naturalistic requirement for expressivity) that one should place writing-aloud.]

In this first draft, Barthes seems to work out a fragile distinction—so fragile, that he hesitated between “phenotext” and “genotext.” The passage in parentheses about phonology will be dropped, and the final version of this development is very different: {3b} L’écriture à haute voix n’est pas phonologique, mais phonétique; son objectif n’est pas la clarté des messages, le théâtre des émotions; ce qu’elle cherche

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(dans une perspective de jouissance), ce sont les incidents pulsionnels, c’est le langage tapissé de peau, un texte où l’on puisse entendre le grain du gosier, la patine des consonnes, la volupté des voyelles, toute une stéréophonie de la chair profonde: l’articulation du corps, de la langue, non celle du sens, du langage. Un certain art de la mélodie peut donner une idée de cette écriture vocale;12 [Writing aloud is not phonological, but phonetic; its objective is not the clarity of messages, the theater of emotions; what it seeks (in a perspective of jouissance), are the incidents of the drive, it is language carpeted with skin, a text where one can hear the grain of the throat, the gliding of consonants, the voluptuousness of the vowels, an entire stereophony of intimate flesh: the articulation of the body, of the tongue, not of meaning, of language. A certain art of mélodie can give an idea of this vocal writing.]

Beginning with the notion of the sounds or incidents of the unconscious drive— the adjective “pulsionnels”—the manuscript version continues to develop the opposition between “writing aloud,” as Barthes was trying to define it here, and the normal phonological expressiveness of language, which here as elsewhere he wished to avoid. A clear example of this opposition is evident in the singing styles of Charles Panzéra and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; Panzéra’s technique highlights gliding consonants, while Fischer-Dieskau (though Barthes does not name him) aims for the clarity of the messages and the staging of the emotions. Writing aloud would not seek the logic of communication or expression, nor would it emphasize consonants. But as he revised his text, Barthes collapsed that entire development into a virtual, underground current, avoiding the clarity of opposition and the visibility of the example (Panzéra). Instead, he wrote of a language coated with skin, of a text having the graininess of the throat, the gliding on consonants (which is what remains of the reference to Panzéra), the voluptuousness of vowels, and the stereophony of deep flesh—all the poetic inscriptions of the articulations of the body rather than of meaning or language. His very language illustrates writing aloud. Such changes are already significant, but immediately after the semicolon that follows the introduction of the topic of mélodie, the final version announces the death of French melody—”la mélodie est morte”—and drops the subject of music altogether, whereas the manuscript had continued with an interesting elaboration on this topic (see fig. 3.2). {3c} Ce qui, historiquement, l’a déjà accomplie {l’écriture à haute voix}, c’est la mélodie, et singulièrement pour nous Français, la mélodie française (entièrement refoulée par la mode actuelle), seule pratique où le corps de la langue (française) soit travaillée érotiquement. Une évaluation de notre musique de ce point de vue mettrait sans doute au premier rang les mélodies de Debussy, quelques unes de Fauré et même de Duparc, sans égard à la valeur (idéologique) des styles musicaux—sans s’occuper de savoir si ces auteurs sont

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Figure 3.2. Manuscript folio of “Voix,” second page.

modernes ou non—conformément à ce qui a été dit de l’époché du plaisir, qui ne fait pas acception de modes.] Entièrement censuré dans la littérature et la musique, ce plaisir de la voix (antipathique à toute philosophie de la parole) a cependant aujourd’hui immédiatement s’accomplir: au cinéma. Le cinéma pourrait (et le fait dans certains films) saisir la sonorité et en faire un signifiant intégral (et non le signe parasite de “quelque chose” d’émotif ou d’intellectif).13

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[What, historically, has already achieved it {writing aloud} is melody, and particularly, for us French, the French mélodie (completely repressed by current fashion), the only practice in which the body of the (French) language is worked on erotically. An evaluation of our music from this point of view would no doubt place in the first ranks the melodies of Debussy, some of Fauré and even Duparc’s, without regard for the (ideological) value of musical styles—without attempting to know if these authors are modern or not—in line with what has been said about the epoche of pleasure, which does not take fashions into account.] Entirely censured in literature and music, this pleasure of the voice (antipathetic to any philosophy of speech) has nevertheless be immediately obtained today: in the cinema. Cinema could (and in certain films does) seize sonority and make of it an integral signifier (and not the parasitical sign of “something” emotive or intellectual).]

None of this remains in the final publication. Barthes performed the death of French melody by excising this whole development from his text. Perhaps he decided to “repress” these sentences about French mélodie himself, since he is evoking the censure that has made it incapable of expressing the pleasure of the voice. The square brackets, which are quite rare in the manuscript, might well be the first trace of this self-censuring repression, and the single diagonal line across roughly seventeen lines of manuscript suggests that Barthes eliminated this variant with one hasty gesture at the moment he was typing up his text. The variants in Barthes’s thinking revealed by the study of this manuscript offer interesting and illuminating knowledge, because the manuscript is the depository of the traces of the rereading Barthes undertook, pens in hand, to prepare it for publication before typing up a ne varietur typescript himself. It is thus the stage of creation that shows Barthes simultaneously reading and writing—not unlike the record he will make of reading and writing together in his pseudo-autobiography—and it is thus the most significant stage of the genetic record of his voice. The revisions that occur in the manuscript itself mostly show Barthes seeking his terms, hesitating on the choice of a word, deciding on something else, giving a different syntactic form to his sentence, and often recovering later in the same passage something he had crossed out before. Here is one interesting example: {4} (Notons Notonsez en passant que le procédé représentatif est XXXX immédiatement moral mais que cela ne l’empèche nullement d’être “scientifique.” La graphologie est un XXX a pu engendrer aussi bien une morale (le roman classique) qu’une “science” (la graphologie, par exemple).14 [Let us note Let us Note in passing that the representative process is XXXX immediately moral but that this does not prevent it in the least from being “scientific.” Graphology is an XXX was just as able to engender a moral (the classical novel) as a “science” (graphology, for example).]

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In the final version, “une morale” is replaced by “un art,” and the scare quotes on “science” were a late revision.15 Such changes made on the tip of the pen especially serve to show the flow of Barthes’s thought and allow us to capture his thinking in the act of creation. The following pages highlight some of the changes that produce the variants of his voice, his “writing aloud”—the poetic inscriptions of the articulations of the body rather than of meaning or language.

The Personal/Sexual Barthes corrects his text by attenuating passages that would apply too easily to his own life and in particular to his sexual life: not very surprising, as his discretion was well known. Some simple changes included the removal of denotative words, like “bander” (meaning to have an erection) and the adjective “érotisé” applied to modern texts that transmute language, where also the word “ejaculation” is replaced by “jubilation.” And yet, as variants on pleasure, it would be a mistake to attribute changes of the personal and sexual solely to modesty. The second fragment in the section called “Babil” includes these two sentences in the published version: {5a} Le babil du texte, c’est seulement cette écume de langage qui se forme sous l’effet d’un simple besoin d’écriture. On n’est pas ici dans la perversion, mais dans la demande.16 [A text’s babble is just that froth of language that is formed by the effect of a simple need for writing. In this case, we are not in perversion, but in demand.]

In comparison, the manuscript reveals Barthes’s striking effort to explain himself between these two sentences (where one observes a few word changes as well). Thus, after the first sentence, we read the following passage overloaded with crossings-out and corrections: {5b} un automatisme d’hygiène> la jouissance d’écrire, lorsque cette jouissance est mate; l’onanisme de l’écriture n’y cherche pas un voyeur: aucune possibilité de perversion. Au sérail même, il y a un espace, un contrat, un désir: on échange du plaisir et de l’argent, et l’argent fait partie de la perversion (ce billet que je tends tremble de désir): la machine désirable me désire, désire cet argent que je suis; mais le texte-babil n’est rien d’autre que la coulée d’un plaisir hygiénique : on n’est pas ici dans le désir la perversion.17 [an automatism of hygienics> the jouissance of writing, when this jouissance is defeated; the onanism of writing does not seek in it a voyeur:

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no possibility of perversion. In the seraglio self, there is a space, a contract, a desire: pleasure and money are exchanged, and money is part of the perversion (this bill that I proffer trembles with desire): the desirable machine desires me, desires this money that I am; but the babble-text is nothing but the running on of a pleasure that is hygienic : in this case, we are not in desire perversion.]

The masturbatory fantasy and the voyeurism disappear from this description of love in terms of sex, just as we no longer hear of the comparison with a seraglio or with prostitution, which vividly illustrated the role of desire in writing (and at the same time the role of money in desire) and explained the difference between perversion and demand. The palpable derision bearing on the notion of demand situated Barthes’s thinking in clearly oppositional terms: the babble-text is mechanical and hygienic, in contrast to the potential rapture that may come with perversion. This opposition is attenuated, almost occulted in the final version. The manuscript holds that the babbletext comes from a hygienic automatism, a simple drive, from the automatic effect of scription. Écriture or “writing,” on the other hand, was compared to the mechanism of sex which, even in the case of prostitution, presupposes the presence of desire; it is desire that determines the contract sealed by money that is proffered by a trembling hand. By opposing écriture, the babble-text defines writing as jouissance or rapture. One could hardly provide a better description of the reader with the text of pleasure; the image comes via an extended metaphor, which is the central metaphor of the book: the textual translated into the sexual. Clearly, such suppressions do much to make up the density of Le Plaisir du texte, which is its most salient characteristic. Such density arises with the decision to remove the personal/sexual variant and leave only the abstract. Another example is the case of emotion, seen as contradictory to the usual phallic, muscular, and virile image of masculine pleasure because emotion is sentimental and marked by illusions. Barthes aims to describe emotion, or passionate love, as a sexual pleasure, and he reaffirmed his thought as follows in the manuscript: {6a}—Tout ceci vaut à la fois pour l’expérience privée, apparemment horstexte, et pour le texte lui-même, dont l’émotivité, la sentimentalité même, peuvent être jouissive (il faut essayer de parler du texte comme de ce qui vous arrive dans la vie—et réciproquement).18 [—All this is true both of private experience, apparently outside the text, and for the text itself, whose emotivity, whose very sentimentality, can be rapturous (we should try to speak of the text as of something that happens to you in life—and vice versa).]

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But none of this rapture of sentimentality, both private and personal, assimilating the text to one’s life, remained in the printed book; replacing these words, we find an idea that seems at best an abstraction of the thought expressed in the manuscript: {6b} La jouissance comme sagesse (lorsqu’elle parvient à se comprendre ellemême hors de ses propres préjugés)?19 [Jouissance as being chaste (when it succeeds in comprehending itself outside its own prejudices)?]

In eliminating the personal illustration, Barthes wagers that he can speak about pleasures and raptures of the body and of the text without naming the action of the body in pleasure. The abstraction is so great that the English translator of this book did not know how to understand that multivalent word “sagesse,” which in this case has little to do with wisdom or common sense but clearly leans toward the quality of being “sage”—in other words, not sleeping around. A comprehending reader of Barthes would have understood, without the eliminated passage, how “sagesse,” the record of the genotext in the phenotext, implied emotion and sentimentality. The action of the body is the subject of another case of a variant that disappeared from the printed text: {7} Transposée dans l’ordre amoureux, l’opposition du plaisir et de la jouissance est celle de la drague et du coït : coucher n’est qu’un plaisir, c’est draguer (malgré l’apparence transitive) qui est jouissif, rigoureusement improductif.20 [Transposed to the order of love, the opposition of pleasure and jouissance is that of cruising and coitus : to sleep with is only a pleasure, it is cruising (in spite of its transitive appearance) that is rapturous, rigorously unproductive.]

This sentence is very interesting, but unfortunately, nothing of it was retained, even with the attenuation of “coït” into the more impersonal “accouplement.”

The Explicitation of Terms Because of such subtractions, the definitive version of Le Plaisir du texte is much more ambiguous than the manuscript, and if ever a critical edition were published, variants would serve in many cases as a kind of glossary to make the final

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text more explicit. A simple example: the manuscript gave a parenthetical clarification of what it means to be a writer, the very Barthesian notion of the écrivain (as opposed to the merely instrumental writer he called the écrivant). That parenthesis glossed écrivain as {8} “le sujet pris et dépris dans l’écriture” (the subject taken up and undone in writing).21 A subject taken up by writing has nothing to surprise us, but “dépris,” a word not found in dictionaries, is another matter. To define the writer as a subject “disprized” or undone in writing is provocative and paradoxical, a definition to retain along with others that have been discussed in the critical literature about Barthesian écriture. Another gloss is for the ordinary word “analyser.” The manuscript gives us this parenthesis: {9} “(ce mot dénotant une opération de recul qui ne s’en laisse pas accroire)” ([this word denoting a distancing operation which does not let itself be fooled or taken in]).22 The printed text gives nothing but ambiguous scare quotes,23 which are all that remain, in the phenotext, to point to the attitude of resistance to belief recorded in the underscored words of the genotext. Another example appears in a fragment of the section called “Bords” or “Edges,” where Barthes proclaims Severo Sarduy’s novel Cobra to be a text of rapture, of jouissance. The manuscript version reveals Barthes trying out different expressions, seeking his terms: {10a} Dans Cobra, de Severo Sarduy, livre de plaisir, l’autre bord, c’est la plénitude même de la langue. Par le flux pressé de tous les plaisirs de langage, La langue, qui était au bord de se déconstruire à force de s’explorer sans loi, se sature et se reconstruit par le flux pressé de tous les plaisirs de langage.24 [In Cobra, by Severo Sarduy, a book of pleasure, the other edge is the very fullness of language. By the hurried flow of all the pleasures of language Language, which was on the edge be deconstructed as a result of exploring itself lawlessly, becomes saturated and reconstructs itself by the hurried flow of all the pleasures of language.]

What does not remain in the definitive version is especially the notion of a deconstruction that would arise from an audacious exploration of language. Rather, abandoning the comment on the absence of laws in Sarduy’s invented language as translated by Sollers, Barthes explains himself with much more assurance, but much less clearly: {10b} Dans Cobra, de Severo Sarduy (traduit par Sollers et l’auteur), l’alternance est celle de deux plaisirs en état de surenchérissement; l’autre bord, c’est l’autre bonheur: encore, encore, encore plus! encore un autre mot, encore une autre fête. La langue se reconstruit ailleurs par le flux pressé de tous les plaisirs de langage.25

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[In Cobra, by Severo Sarduy (translated by Sollers and the author), the alternation is between two pleasures in a state of augmentation; the other edge is the other happiness: again, again, again more! Yet another word, yet another celebration. The language is reconstructed elsewhere by the hurried flow of all the pleasures of language.]

Again the final version shows considerable distance from the manuscript version. There is a certain tension in this type of rewriting, because more explicit text is also more final and definitive, putting an end to the pleasurable circulation of meaning. This is the situation in another case where Barthes avoids being explicit. He discusses two different kinds of reading pleasure, one that goes straight to the articulations of the narrative (reading for the plot, essentially) and one that sticks to the text (reading for the language), describing the first as suitable for the classical text and the second as appropriate for the modern or “limit” text. And then, on the manuscript, Barthes allowed himself to write a summarizing sentence, which he then struck out: {11} “La première lecture implique, certes, un plaisir; mais dans la seconde, c’est de jouissance qu’il s’agit” (The first reading implies, to be sure, a pleasure, but in the second it is a matter of rapture).26 The doctrinal concision of this summary risked displacing the preceding lines and simplifying his thought. It was a sentence full of words Barthes did not want. In the same fragment, he made the judicious choice to strike out the names of a number of authors of rapture or jouissance, a veritable galaxy that would have made explicit the type of writer for whom the applied, languageoriented reading was the better one. A few fragments later, he similarly removed explanatory adjectives from the description of old-fashioned books, which provide a guilty pleasure because of their ideological coloring (novels of Emile Zola come to mind). The refusal to “name names” is one of the characteristic transformations between the manuscript and the book. Variants also point to Barthes’s thinking about psychoanalysis, which was evolving probably around the period when he was rereading the manuscript. As a language of system and a science, psychoanalysis appears in the printed book as something of an object of suspicion, and it is generally depreciated, but variants in the manuscript show a kind of desire for it as a possible place of pleasure. One phrase eliminated from the book described psychoanalysis as a {12} ““ ().27 In another place, having removed the explicit reference to psychoanalysis in a section entitled “Fétiche,” he let stand the following text: {13a} “Le texte est un objet fétiche, et ce fétiche me desire” (The text is a fetish object, and this fetish desires me),28 whereas the manuscript was much more explanatory: {13b} “Le texte est contradictoire: c’est un objet fétiche et ce fétiche me désire (c’est peut-être cela le plaisir du texte: une configuration impossible, que la psychanalyse n’avait pas prévue)” (The text is contradictory: it is a fetish object, and this fetish desires me

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[perhaps that is the pleasure of the text: an impossible configuration, which psychoanalysis had not predicted]).29

Variants Added After the Manuscript Not all the variants supply words lost when Barthes subtracted. One interesting case of an addition to the printed text shows Barthes’s inspiration after the point at which he was revising his manuscript with his various pens. When preparing the typescript, he claims his lazy two-finger typing makes him drop words, but it also happens that a clever improvement, sometimes an amplification, occurs presumably at this late stage. A good example occurs in a very short fragment of the section called “Babil,” which tells us: {14a} “L’écriture est ceci: la science des jouissances du langage, son kamasutra” (Writing is this: the science of the raptures of language, its kamasutra).30 The idea that writing can be linked to the Kama Sutra was present in the manuscript, and it is retained in the printed text, but the brilliant inspiration Barthes found as he turned his manuscript into a typescript was an explanation of this new sort of Kama Sutra: {14b} “(de cette science, il n’y a qu’un traité: l’écriture elle-même)” ([of this science, there is only one treatise: writing itself]).31 This addition is willfully circular or tautological: writing is the treatise on the Kama Sutra of writing. I say willfully, because such tautology, being paradoxical and outside the norms of fixed language, augments the pleasure of the text for Barthes. Here is another idea that becomes more precise in the printed text and where the manuscript version seems feeble in comparison. It is well-known that Barthes shunned adjectives as dangerous to the pleasure of the text because they allow the text to “babble” as if in answer to a demand. Instead, the brio of the text would be its “will to rapture” whereby it exceeds the demand; the brio combats the power of adjectives, which the manuscript describes as {15a} “toujours des traces idéologiques” (always ideological traces).32 Though the idea is already well stated, when he typed up the final version, Barthes augmented this into one of the unforgettable phrases of the book, which describes adjectives as {15b} “ces portes du langage par où l’idéologie et l’imaginaire pénètrent à grands flots” (those doors of language whereby the ideological and the imaginary penetrate like a flood).33 Although the manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte is only one stage in the creative process, it is the key document for an understanding of Barthes’s writing. It was his practice to jot his thoughts on small pieces of paper at the moment they occurred to him; if we could read them, these famous “fiches” would draw us remarkably close to the birth of his ideas. So close, in fact, that they would be an exception to Almuth Grésillon’s sensible comment that it is “Impossible de voir naître sur le papier un désir d’écrire” (Impossible to see a desire to write being born onto paper).34 A desire to write is precisely what these fiches record. Three fiches are published in facsimile in Roland Barthes, where the legends indicate

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that they can be written “au lit,” “dehors,” or “à une table de travail” (in bed, outside, on a desk),35 and in conformity with the critique of his own systems in that book, one other image of a two-sided fiche bears a legend that underscores the incoherence of the inchoate: “L’idée aventureuse. Toute chaude, on ne peut rien démêler encore de sa qualité: bête? dangereuse? insignifiante? à garder? à rejeter? à déniaiser? à protéger?” (The adventurous idea. While still warm, you can’t sort out anything yet about its quality: Stupid? Dangerous? Insignificant? To retain? To throw out? To smarten up? To protect?).36 A future systematic study of the fiches deposited at the IMEC will be of enormous value; for the time being, they are not accessible to researchers. Barthes produced his manuscript pages from the fiches, and the relationship between the fiches and the manuscript will be an entirely new area of study. The third stage in the development of the “adventurous idea” lies somewhere between the manuscript and the printed book, and that is the typescript, also produced by Barthes himself. If all the versions of the text have their particular interest, the importance of the manuscript cannot be underestimated. It is in the process of writing the manuscript that Barthes sought the words to couch his inchoate thought in language, and the manuscript also records the moments when he reread his words and rewrote them with the ultimate printed text in mind. However elliptical Barthes’s writing-reading of his manuscript may be, it is what determines the distinctive nature of this book: condensed, displaced, intertextual, and yet very personal. These are the variants of Barthes’s voice, the pleasure of which lies in the rewriting of an original trace, thus refusing origins. Le Plaisir du texte was the only book Barthes wrote that was not the result of a request or a course, and he wrote it in the place that was for him close to his heart, the house in Urt, in the southwest of France, during sixteen warm days on August 8–24, 1972.

Notes 1. This study was supported in part by a grant from the Campus Research Board, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for travel to study the manuscript in Paris. 2. Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973), 65. The folios of the manuscript are identified by a sequential numbering system that I assigned to them when I studied the manuscript; Barthes numbered his pages according to more than one scheme, but the only consistent numbering system is the one I instituted while transcribing the manuscript. All translations are mine; the multivalent word jouissance is sometimes left in French, sometimes translated as “rapture.” 3. See Armine Kotin Mortimer, The Gentlest Law: Roland Barthes’s “The Pleasure of the Text” (New York: P. Lang, 1989), the thesis of which is that Barthes’s book both illustrates and theorizes intertextuality. 4. Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 142. 5. Réda Bensmaïa, The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective Text, trans. Pat Fedkiew (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 26. 6. Ibid., 29.

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7. Roland Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte (Paris [now Caen: IMEC], fol. 97. 8. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 104. 9. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 97. 10. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 104. 11. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fols. 97–98. 12. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 105. 13. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 98. 14. Ibid., fols. 78–79. 15. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 90. 16. Ibid., 11. 17. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 3. 18. Ibid., fol. 33. 19. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 43. 20. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 71. 21. Ibid., fol. 5. 22. Ibid., fol. 89. 23. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 98. 24. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 8. 25. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 17. 26. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 15. 27. Ibid., fol. 28. 28. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 45. 29. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 38. 30. Ibid., fol. 6. 31. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 14. 32. Barthes, Manuscript of Le Plaisir du texte, fol. 16. 33. Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, 25. 34. Almuth Grésillon, “La critique génétique, aujourd’hui et demain,” L’Esprit Créateur 41, no. 2 (2001): 10. 35. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 79. 36. Ibid., 165.

Additional Sources Artaud, Antonin. “Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu.” Radio broadcast. Available at www.epc.buffalo.edu/sound/mp3/sp/artaud_antonin/artaud_jugement.mp3. Mortimer, Armine Kotin. “Coïncidence: Réécriture et désécriture de Roland Barthes.” Genesis 19 (2002): 169–89. ———. “L’écriture par soustraction: Le manuscrit du Plaisir du texte.” Études françaises 30, no. 3 (1995): 149–72. ———. “Le manuscrit du Plaisir du texte de Roland Barthes et l’ordre de l’écriture.” Genesis 9 (1996): 105–16. Pierrot, Anne Herschberg. “Les manuscrits de Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, style et genèse.” Genesis 19 (2002): 191–215. Sollers, Philippe. Lois. Paris: Seuil, 1972.

Chapter Four

Can Genetic Criticism Be Applied to the Performing Arts? Jean-Louis Lebrave As he began work on staging Sophocles’s Electra, Antoine Vitez jotted down notes in which he considered the very feasibility of such a project. He stated that he wished to avoid two “ways” of “playing a Greek tragedy”: actualization and reconstitution. Vitez criticized actualization for being “an ingenuous demagogy,” a “negation . . . of the historical events to be stated,” and reconstitution for “asserting a gap between the work and us.”1 In an effort to move beyond this dilemma (“Neither actualization nor reconstitution. I am trying to find something else”), Vitez drew upon his experience as a translator by conceiving of staging as a translation process. In his use of the translation process as a model for the process of theatrical creation, Vitez offers an interesting entry point for a genetic investigation of this process. However, the equation of staging and translation raises a number of questions. If Sophocles’s Electra is a work, what about its translations, by Paul Mazon,2 by Robert Pignarre,3 and by Antoine Vitez himself? Is the staging based on Vitez’s translation an original work? What is the status of this work? Is it a product, comparable to a novel or a movie? How should the roles of the director, the actors, and the author be defined? How does a theatrical text—a script—relate to its performance on stage? This chapter will address these questions through an examination of Electra’s three different stagings by Antoine Vitez, whose archives are deposited at the Institut Mémoire de l’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC):4 the first in Caen in 1966, the second in Nanterre and Ivry in 1971, the third at Paris’s Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) in 1986. What typology of genetic traces can be constructed from this particularly rich material? Vitez began by translating the Greek text himself, and thus the first traces are those of the translating process. From a semiotic point of view, the drafts of a translation are identical to those of a novel or an essay. The following brief example (fig. 4.1) is an excerpt from Vitez’s drafts of the first translation in 1966. Particularly interesting are Vitez’s insights into this translating process as well as the analysis of his own practical translating work. The archive of the 1966 staging includes a yellow folder with four sheets written in black ink, paginated from

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Figure 4.1. IMEC, Fonds Vitez, VTZ2 F1-01.01. Reproduced with permission of Institut Mémoire de l’Édition contemporaine (IMEC), Caen-Paris.

1 to 4. Vitez explains his translating choices in the latter two pages, which he dates “Thursday, October the 7th, 1965” and “Sunday, October the 10th, 65.” A diplomatic transcription of page three appears in figure 4.2.5 [Translation:] Mazon: Why do you only pursue what afflicts you? Me [Vitez]: Say, why do you always wish to suffer? Pignarre: Say, for which reason do you always wish to suffer? I take from Pignarre the “Dis” (say) with which the line starts. I remember dubbing. The movements of the lips. It is very important that the first word of the line is Ti (say), instead of a heavy word such as “Pourquoi” (why). The words of love, pain, doubt, etc., have a meaning, but also a phonetic expression. And when this expression is the same in the original language (or at least, as in this case, in the original text) and in French, the translation must coincide. The level of phonetic communication is another level of translating next to the level of conceptual communication. There is a meaning in the movement of the sentence itself, in its prosody. Empirically, production managers of dubbing companies translate on both levels, and some of them, like Richard Heinz, are very good translators.

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Figure 4.2. Antoine Vitez, notes on translating for the 1966 staging of Electra. IMEC, VTZ2. F2-02.01.

By contrasting “conceptual” and “phonetic” communication, Vitez points to something very specific to the performance of an actor: the meaning cannot be reduced to the written word, and the latter needs to be uttered in order to be complete. How does Vitez’s empirical work relate to this theoretical position? In what ways does Vitez differ from scholars and philologists such as Mazon and Pignarre?6 One example comes from Electra’s first monologue (lines 86 to 120 in the original Greek text). Pignarre translates the end of the monologue as follows: “Send me my brother! Alone, I no longer have enough strength to fight; the burden of my sorrow is heavier!” The translation by Mazon differs as follows: “First, bring me my brother back, as I alone no longer have enough strength to resist the burden of pain that carries me away.” In a lengthy footnote, Mazon explains the meaning of the image and his reason for deliberately altering the original text:

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The image—so Mazon—is of scales with the burden of Electra’s sorrow on one side, weighing heavier than the strength she possesses to pull down the other side. Electra’s words are literally: “I do not have the necessary strength to lift the sorrow that counterbalances my will.” In the translation, the idea of Greek agein has been deliberately transferred from one side to the other.7

In his 1966 draft, Vitez translates successively this way: —first, “Pour moi, je n’ai pas la force de lutter” (As for me, I have strength no longer to fight), —then “Je n’ai pas la force de porter le poids trop lourd de ma douleur” (I lack the strength to carry the too heavy burden of my pain), —and finally, an Alexandrine,8 graphically isolated in the manuscript: “Je suis seule, la douleur est trop lourde, et je n’ai plus de force (I am alone, the pain is too heavy, and I no longer have any strength). This passage remained consistent in 1971,9 but was further modified for the 1986 staging. In a Russian notebook that is part of the archive of this staging,10 photocopies of the 1971 text are glued together, annotated, modified, or struck out. On the page facing the photocopy are new variants of the translation. First, Vitez changes the text of the photocopy, “breaking up” the Alexandrine by displacing the word “et” and by adding a caesura, noting it with a slash: “Je suis seule, et la douleur est trop lourde, / je n’ai plus de force” (I am alone, and the pain is too heavy / I no longer have any strength).

Subsequently, this sentence is struck out and Vitez rewrites the whole translation on the page facing the photocopy, abandoning the Alexandrine and returning to a more literal translation that is relatively close to Mazon’s wording: “I am alone, and the pain is heavy, I do not have the strength to lift the weight which is on the other pan [of the weighing scales]” Vitez applies quite faithfully the rule he had formulated in 1966: “Avoid the Alexandrine, even the most prosaic one. For it evokes irresistibly the French classical tragedy and immediately changes the color of the language. For that reason, when an Alexandrine comes to me, I either break it up or cut it up or extend it: one foot more or one foot less is enough.”11 As this example illustrates, the marks left by the translating process show that performance is already present at an early stage of textualization. Even if the same type of observations can be made about nontheatrical textualization processes (see, for example, Flaubert’s gueuloir), performance remains in “classical” cases behind the scenes (of the work) and disappears as such in the final product or survives only as an indirect trace.

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Working notes, which point to the progressive elaboration of the staging, are specific to theatrical genesis. Several subtypes can be distinguished according to the different kinds of marks left in the archive. Some are purely verbal, as in the following example from the 1971 staging. On a sheet labeled “other themes” dated “May 30, 1971” (see fig. 4.3), the staging suggestions, mixed with fragments of lines, differ from the stage directions only through the asserted will of the director (“je voudrais”).12 [Translation:] First scene between Chrysothémis and Electra. Electre.—What? The most hated man? Chrysothémis.—And whom she killed? Is it what you mean? At this point, Clytemnestra enters. She starts arranging one, two or three bunches of flowers, saying Orestes’s text [one of Ritsos’s “parentheses” added for the 1971 staging] in a soft voice, page 140 of the Syphus edition: “And the voice of the mother, so present, so matter-of-fact, everyday, just so—. . . and strong, both imposing, inexorable. I want (je voudrais) her to have some work to do (making bunches of flowers, doing some tidying up related to the play, like unfolding a carpet, or preparing the curtain) while she says Ritsos’s text.

The phrase “I want” (je voudrais) shows that what is involved in this “work in progress” is not the future text, but the shaping of the intended performance. The intertwining of text genesis and performance genesis can be more complex, as is demonstrated by the following example, also from the 1971 staging. The

Figure 4.3. Antoine Vitez, suggestions for the 1971 staging of Electra. IMEC, VTZ2. F11-03.02.

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archive contains eighty-seven punched loose leaves that were probably removed from a binder.13 On the recto side of the first sheet, Vitez wrote “HLEKTRA” in Greek characters along with his name, address, and telephone number. Moreover, a typewritten text is attached to each recto side of thick, white paper sheets. Other grayish sheets are inserted and served for Vitez as a place to jot down staging suggestions. They are numbered “one prime,” “two prime,” and so on. For example, facing each other, one finds the recto of a sheet numbered “5” and the back of a sheet numbered “5 prime.” Attached to the first one is the typescript of Electra’s first monologue, which bears annotations in the margin by another hand such as “E1” facing the first line (as early as 1966, characters are identified by their initials: E for Electra, Eg for Egisthes, etc.), “she is turning in the center” further down in the margin, and at the bottom, “E4,” “Eg1 kicks her,” “E5,” and “Eg2.” Facing the text on the right page, there are annotations on the sheet numbered “5 prime” (see fig. 4.4).14 [Translation:] Read as in a newspaper one would have found on holidays, with a foreign tourist’s voice. . . . I have no longer any strength. KATΩ a shout, as if imitating anguish

Figure 4.4. Antoine Vitez, indications for the first scene in the 1971 staging of Electra. IMEC, VTZ2. F11-03.02.

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Meanwhile, she is being kicked around, her body is being rolled over. This move may change Electra’s position. She will start talking again from another place on the stage.

Two aspects of this example must be noted. First, the writer of the annotations is not Vitez himself, but likely his assistant. This genetic storage involving a plurality of participants recalls the plurality of actors (the author and his secretaries) found in textual “composition” during the Middle Ages. That the assistant acts as a mere secretary is irrelevant here. Second, verbal staging suggestions are enriched with additional schematic notes, which are not to be read, but rather are to be interpreted. These notes are comparable to representations of the stage that make use of a specific, nonlinguistic notation system—like a stenographic recording of the actors’ positions and movements. A more explicit example appears in figure 4.5, where the textual commentary has completely disappeared.

Figure 4.5. A nonverbal annotation. IMEC, Fonds Vitez,VTZ2. F11-02.01. Reproduced with permission of Institut Mémoire de l’Édition contemporaine (IMEC), Caen-Paris.

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In this case, the trace can be understood as a storage device for future rehearsals and performances. It is, at the same time, the last state reached by the staging process (the result of this process must be memorized) and by a performing instruction (the future collective performance must be programmed). Figure 4.6 illustrates many of the features described above. On two sheets that he assembled together, Vitez wrote down two stasimons (monologues sung by the chorus on stage), which he distributed into three columns according to how he wanted the text to be performed: “said,” “recited,” or “sung.” For the second stasimon,15 Vitez attached a third sheet on the right portion of the first, with indications in red commenting on the text as it is distributed on the left page. For instance, facing the expression “les oiseaux de l’air” (the birds of the air), one finds the following comment: very free, very swinging. Only long syllables: les

oi

seaux

de

l’air

Below, Vitez added this instruction: “since the very beginning, one can imagine the non-rhythmical strumming of a guitar, with temptations of rhythm, for example during the recitative.”

Figure 4.6. Antoine Vitez, performing indications for two monologues by the chorus in the 1971 staging of Electra. IMEC, VTZ2. F11-03.02.

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The distribution of the stasimon is as follows:

The last type of trace consists of the discontinuous layers that result from the succession of the three stagings (1966, 1971, and 1986). The corresponding documents are similar to the genetic documents that textual geneticians have experience analyzing. In this case, Vitez’s revisions to the text result from the elaboration of a new, different work, and not simply of another textual state, as the aforementioned Russian notebook strikingly shows. For the 1986 staging, Vitez removes “Ritsos’s parentheses” and proceeds with a last revision of his translation. Photocopies of the text as it stood in 1971 are attached to the backs of the sheets, including the parentheses printed in italics, and handwritten revisions of the text face these photocopies. The result of this rewriting process appears in the 1986 publication.16 For example, the beginning of the text is as follows:

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Two kinds of data are of special interest. First, Vitez works for the third time on the substance of the translation itself, at the levels of both the semantic contents and the vocal-metrical substance. “Apollo” is replaced by a description of the square itself. The “clos” (close) and the “vierge” (virgin) are replaced by the more common expressions “enclos” (enclosure) and “fille” (girl), which are more neutral in keeping with the principles of actualization and reconstitution that he wanted to avoid in 1965. At the same time, Vitez seems unable to refrain from adding Alexandrines in these revisions: “Enfant de qui jadis commandait devant Troie” (Child of the one who was in command in front of Troy), “L’enclos de cette fille harcelée par un taon” (The enclosure of the girl harassed by a horsefly), “là, Oreste, la place du dieu tueur de loups” (there, Orestes, is the square of the god who kills wolves), and “et ce palais sanglant des enfants de Pélops” (and that bloody palace of Pelops’s children). Second, the text itself as an overall entity is deeply transformed. In 1971, Vitez had inserted Ritsos’s parentheses in Sophocles’s text. In that staging, the monologue of the “tutor” was divided into two different parts by an initial parenthesis that was relatively long. Even if, from a strictly textual point of view, one might consider the removal of the parentheses as a simple return to the earlier version of the text, it attains a completely different status in the realm of performance. What is the status of each of the three stagings by Vitez regarding Sophocles’s tragedy, and moreover, what is the status of each individual staging in relation to the other two? Are we contemplating one single work represented in three different modalities? Or can the three stagings by Vitez be considered as three different works by Vitez? To answer these questions, I will summarize briefly the results of the preceding analysis. At first, the creative process is constantly geared toward performance, even at the early stage of textualization through translation. From

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the beginning, Vitez anticipates the performance of the play on stage, as the comparison with dubbing clearly demonstrates. From a strictly semiotic point of view, one might equate the genetic archive of Electra with a “classical” genetic archive. But Vitez’s anticipation shows that the creative process will continue after publication to include the stage as a space beyond the printed text, a space where it was spoken and performed. The movements of the lips in dubbing are a metonymy for the theatrical performance as a whole. A second point concerns the idiosyncratic nature of the traces left from performances in the genetic archive. Of course, the archive consists only of written materials that contain numerous verbal utterances describing and prescribing sequences of actions, movements, and gestures, which are similar to usual stage directions. Other forms of notes are also present, including drawings, schemata, and more generally, signs that belong to an organized system and as such constitute conventional notation. In the textual field common to genetic criticism, the equivalent to these instructions for actions are the reading instructions left by the writer for himself in his own manuscript. Examples include cross-reference systems that order a series of disconnected textual fragments, or as in Flaubert’s drafts, lines that organize and disentangle the interwoven variants in order to prepare for the production of a clear copy. However, these notations remain literally in the margins. And the only muscles they may activate are those of the eyes. Such notations suggest a twofold genetic process. On the one hand, they reveal, in statu nascendi, ideas for positions on the stage, actors’ movements, and ways of “speaking,” “reciting,” or “singing.” These hypotheses for staging solutions are experimented with, tested, and compared to one another, just as different rewritings of a same word or utterance compete during textual production. On the other hand, they program the concrete performance that actors will memorize and execute on stage, and that will define the identity of this particular staging among all possible stagings of a given play. In both cases, we see how an event involving several actors that occurs in a distinct physical space and during a certain duration is transcribed within the constraints of written notations as instructions for a performance. In Emile Copfermann’s Talks with Antoine Vitez,17 Vitez points to the tension between the stability and durability of texts and the precariousness of performance. He emphasizes the inescapably ephemeral nature of theater, which involves both pleasure (“being a director is getting drunk on something ephemeral”) and suffering (“I can see Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel [The Naked Night] any time, but he will never be able to see my Faust.”). One might interpret his comments as a variation on the difference between two kinds of works. In the performing arts, which are inscribed within the duration of a process with a beginning and an end, a work functions as a product that disappears as soon as it is produced. In that sense, it is never identical to itself, even when it is repeated. On the contrary, texts are works whose physical shape can be reproduced identically as many times as needed without any alteration. Indeed, Vitez does profess that he “suffers” from the “precarious and perishable” nature of theater “compared to the new performing art” of

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cinema. But at the same time, he asserts that this fragility is constitutive of theatrical art. Paradoxically, one of the greatest theater directors of the twentieth century ends by negating the specificity of performance even though all his work is precisely on performance. Paying an unexpected tribute to the written text, he writes “what is performed is the work, the work is eternal; only the written work has the durability of cinematographic work.” Therein lies a fundamental issue. Can performance instructions, and therefore performance itself, be reduced to something ephemeral laid upon a work that is immortal only as a text in the case of a play, or as a score in the case of a musical work? What is the status of those handwritten annotations with which musicians “enrich” scores in order to prepare for their performance? To answer these questions, we might consider the relationship between writing and performance. On the one hand, writing is freed from the constraints of memory, since it transfers the text on an external medium. On the other hand, writing represents liberation from the constraints of performance, since it allows the speaker to escape the pressure of the hic et nunc that affects speech. Such a revolution occurs rather late in the history of writing and in the history of composition practices as well. As long as the written text plays the role of an aide-mémoire for reading aloud, the verbal exchange is complete only after “giving the voice back” to the text (in the words of Françoise Desbordes) through a performance.18 In Antiquity, this restitution was made possible by annotations comparable to those found on modern music scores. They become unnecessary when the elaboration of the written text is sufficient to enable a virtual reading without the need to perform the phonatory movements. The written text becomes fully autonomous only with the advent of silent reading, which makes performance superfluous. One might argue that a trained musician is able to read a score mentally, just as a reader reads a novel silently. But it is unlikely that musical scores will ever undergo the same evolution as written texts, with mental reading supplanting performances of the work. Likewise, silent reading is possible for the text of a theatrical play, but such readings will never make a performance superfluous. It is even possible to draw another parallel: unlike literary works such as novels, theatrical works cannot free themselves from the pressure of the here and now, since the play has to be drawn from memory with the actors performing their text by heart. In conclusion, the traces that I have described and analyzed in the archive of Vitez’s stagings of Electra provide crucial evidence for the role of performance in the genesis of these stagings. But it is impossible to avoid a paradox that is seemingly inherent to theater and to the performing arts in general. Clearly, the instructions for a future performance are not the performance itself. Performance is ephemeral, disappearing as soon as it is produced, as Vitez emphasized. As with novels or poems, the genesis of a staging leaves traces of the creating process, but the result of this process vanishes forever at the very moment it comes to fruition. In contrast, in written prose or poetry, the genetic process terminates in a fixed durable product. Therein lies the paradox.

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I would argue that it is the existence of the finished work as a fully autonomous object that, by granting the status of avant-texte to the traces of the creating process, makes genetic criticism possible. Could it be that the necessary incompleteness of theatrical works condemns any form of theatrical genetic criticism to remain incomplete, due to the lack of a completed object toward which it can aim?

Notes 1. Antoine Vitez, Écrits sur le théâtre. 2. La Scène. 1954–1975, ed. Nathalie Léger (Paris: P.O.L., 1995), 137–38. 2. Paul Mazon, Électre de Sophocle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002). 3. Robert Pignarre, Électre de Sophocle (Paris: Garnier, 1964). 4. Created in 1988 through the initiative of researchers and publishers, the IMEC (Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives) manages archives and studies concerning major publishing houses, journals, and actors of twentieth-century French cultural life: publishers, writers, intellectuals, artists, book traders, journal editors, journalists, critics, literary agents, translators, printers, graphic designers, and so on. 5. IMEC, VTZ2. F2–02.01. 6. Paul Mazon translated Electra for the famous Budé collection; Robert Pignarre published a translation in a collection of essays issued by Garnier-Flammarion. 7. Mazon, Electra of Sophocles, 142. 8. A verse of twelve feet, typical of French classical tragedy. 9. Antoine Vitez, Électre de Sophocle. Avec des parenthèses de Yannis Ritsos (Paris: Les Éditeurs français réunis, 1971). 10. IMEC, VTZ2. F11–01.02. 11. Vitez, Écrits sur le théâtre, 141. 12. IMEC, VTZ2. F11–03.02 13. Ibid., F11–02.01 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., F11–03.02 16. Antoine Vitez, Électre de Sophocle (Paris: Actes Sud, 1986). 17. Emile Copferman, Conversations avec Antoine Vitez (Paris: P.O.L., 1999), 156–57. 18. Françoise Desbordes, Idées romaines sur l’écriture (Lille: P.U.L., 1990), 234–35.

Additional Sources Banu, Georges, and Danièle Sallenave. Antoine Vitez. Le théâtre des idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1991. Deppman, Jed, Daniel Ferrer, and Michael Groden, eds. Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-textes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Lebrave, Jean-Louis. “Penser, dicter, écrire: pour une histoire des pratiques de composition.” Romanic Review 86, no. 3 (1995): 437–50. Léger, Nathalie, and Almuth Grésillon, eds. “Théâtre.” Genesis 26 (2006).

Chapter Five

“The hardy Laurel”: Beckett and Early Film Comedy Robert B. Graves When the first director of Waiting for Godot, Roger Blin, initially met with Samuel Beckett in 1950 to discuss the production of the play, Blin suggested that it be staged as a circus. Not wanting to offend Blin, Beckett gradually shifted their conversation around to the films of early comics such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. According to Deidre Bair, Beckett’s first biographer, Blin immediately got the hint and gave up the circus idea,1 but one can sympathize with Blin because Vladimir and Estragon themselves compare their evening (albeit unfavorably) to an assortment of popular theatrical forms, with Estragon emphasizing the circus. They describe their evening as: vladimir: estragon: vladimir: estragon:

Worse than the pantomime. The circus. The music-hall. The circus.2

All of these modes of entertainment informed Beckett’s early views of character, action, place, and time, but Beckett was right to steer Blin in the direction of early film, even though Beckett, like later critics, failed to acknowledge his special debt to the films of Laurel and Hardy. No doubt Beckett was correct when he told Blin that Hamm and Clov, as well as Didi and Gogo, were ultimately he and his long-time companion and wife Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, but the artistic shape in which he developed these couples and later directed productions of his plays was informed in no small way by this famous comedic pair, or what Colin Duckworth might have called a “pseudocouple,” following Beckett’s reference in The Unnamable to the interdependent title characters of Mercier and Camier.3 Beckett’s passion for the cinema is well documented. As a young man in Dublin, Bair tells us, Beckett “never missed a film starring Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy (who became the “hardy Laurel” in the novel Watt), or Harold Lloyd.”4 During the 1930s, Beckett saw every Marx Brothers movie he could, and

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his love for films continued well into the 1950s; moviegoing, in fact, was by then one of the few activities he still regularly enjoyed with Dumesnil. Of the Beckett critics, Ruby Cohn was the first to observe a specific debt to film when in 1973 she pointed out that Vladimir’s and Estragon’s comic exchange of hats in the second act of Waiting for Godot was inspired by a scene in the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup (1933).5 In the same year, Hugh Kenner identified a verbal echo from Laurel and Hardy’s Way Out West (1937): hardy: laurel: hardy:

Get on the mule. What? Get on the mule.6

and in the dialogue near the end of Waiting for Godot: vladimir: estragon: vladimir: estragon: vladimir:

Pull on your trousers. What? Pull on your trousers. You want me to pull off my trousers? Pull ON your trousers. (85)

Furthermore, Kenner deftly describes Laurel and Hardy’s relationship in terms evocative of Vladimir and Estragon: They journeyed, they undertook quests, they had adventures; their friendship, tested by bouts of exasperation, was never really vulnerable; they seemed not to become older, nor wiser; and in perpetual nervous agitation, Laurel’s nerves occasionally protesting like a baby’s, Hardy soliciting a philosophic calm he could never quite find leisure to settle into, they coped. Neither was especially competent, but Hardy made a big man’s show of competence. Laurel was defeated by the most trifling requirements.7

Following these leads, this chapter explores how such correspondences informed the development of Beckett’s early full-length dramas and the changes in both text and staging that he introduced as he later came to direct his own plays. Laurel and Hardy were so popular in Europe before the war that at least thirteen of their movies were filmed in languages other than English; some films, such as Night Owls (1930) and Pardon Us (1931), survive in five different versions—English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German. For each version, a separate cast of supporting actors who could speak the language was assembled.8 McCabe and Kilgore describe how Laurel and Hardy, who spoke only English, “wrote out their lines on a blackboard, out of camera range, in their own phonetic approximations of the sounds spoken to them by a language coach.”9

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Most of the Laurel and Hardy films that Beckett employed deal in one way or another with the pseudocouple’s response to war in France or its territories. These films premiered in the late 1930s and by the early 1940s had been seen widely in the United States, United Kingdom, and France. As Beckett worked and reworked these materials—both in his scripts and in realized productions that he later directed—he gradually pared away the realistic specificity of film, boiling down plot, character, and setting to their most basic elements. The 1938 Laurel and Hardy film Block-Heads, for example, provided Beckett with both visual and verbal motivations for important elements in Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days. The first half of Block-Heads features one of Laurel and Hardy’s darkest sequences: it opens with the pair in the Allied trenches in France during World War I. Hardy is sent to battle, but Laurel is ordered to guard his post until relieved of duty. Laurel begins marching up and down the trench, which is soon empty of soldiers. In a montage, we see battle scenes, bombs exploding, the Armistice, and soldiers returning triumphantly home. We move ahead twenty years to 1938 and find Laurel still marching back and forth in the now well-worn trench, waiting for Hardy and the other solders to return. Like Vladimir and Estragon, Laurel will keep his appointment. Finally, a French airplane pilot rescues Laurel (“Reinforcements at last!” says Vladimir [70]). When the pilot informs Laurel that the war has been over for twenty years, Laurel adumbrates Vladimir’s “How time flies when one has fun!” (69) with “Huh! How time flies! Just seems like yesterday.” Ultimately, Hardy locates Laurel at a “National Soldiers Home” and a touching reunion scene follows that is reminiscent of Vladimir and Estragon’s reunions at the beginning of each act of Waiting for Godot: hardy: laurel: hardy: laurel: hardy: laurel:

Well, you haven’t changed a bit. Neither have you, too. You know, if I hadn’t seen you, I never would have known it was you. Gee, I’m sure glad to see you. I’m glad to see you, too. Have you missed me all this time? I certainly have. I missed you, too.10

After this dialogue, Hardy invites Laurel over to dinner to “celebrate,” although, as always, the pseudocouple soon finds plenty to disrupt their harmony. In Act I of Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon plan a similar celebration: So there you are again . . . I’m glad to see you back. I thought you were gone for ever. estragon: Me too. vladimir: Together again at last! We’ll have to celebrate this. (9) vladimir:

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A similar moment occurs in Act II when they embrace after separating for the night: estragon: vladimir: estragon: vladimir:

Stay with me! Did I ever leave you? You let me go . . . he thinks I’m gone for ever. . . . I missed you . . . at the same time I was happy. (52)

In Block-Heads, there are corresponding reassurances: hardy: laurel: hardy: laurel: hardy: laurel: hardy:

I want you to remember: from now on, my home is your home. Thank you, Ollie. [They shake hands.] You’re welcome. And I’m never going to let you out of my sight again. . . . I’m sure glad to see you, kid. Gee, Ollie, you know this is just like old times, you and I being together. You took the words right out of my mouth. We sure used to have a lot of fun, didn’t we? We sure did.

Although Laurel and Hardy greet each other with deep affection, their scene of friendship is unusually prolonged here because of a misunderstanding about Laurel’s physical condition. Before Hardy arrives, Laurel has looked for a comfortable place to rest and found an unused wheelchair built especially for amputees. Finding it impossible to sit in this unusual chair with both legs in front of him, he tucks his right leg under himself and sits down. Hardy enters the grounds of the home and smiles broadly when he first sees Laurel, and then movingly grimaces when he wrongly assumes that Laurel is missing a leg because of the war. Hardy wheels Laurel around the grounds and, at first, is happy to do so. But soon, Laurel’s “disability” causes friction between the two, just as Estragon’s bad foot induces much bickering in Waiting for Godot. The rightful owner of the wheelchair demands it back, and Hardy insists on carrying his friend in his arms, even while their renewed friendship is tested by Hardy’s tripping over various objects and Laurel’s irritating method of holding onto Hardy. Similarly, in the first Grove Press edition (1954), Vladimir offers to carry Estragon after Lucky has kicked Estragon in the shins: estragon: (on one leg). I’ll never walk again!

vladimir: (tenderly). I’ll carry you. (Pause.) If necessary. (22) Beckett cut these lines in his later productions of the play, probably because they too explicitly recalled the stock comic bit where Laurel jumps into Hardy’s arms.

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It is as though Beckett wanted to retain the essence of the filmic lazzo, while sloughing off some of its obvious particulars. The situation of the pseudocouple, one immobile, the other ambulatory, recalls several pairs in Beckett’s output (one thinks immediately of Clov pushing Hamm’s armchair on castors in Endgame). This parallels one of Laurel and Hardy’s most pervasive gags, as one of them routinely gets caught up in some contraption or another while the other attempts to extricate his friend and, invariably all too soon, himself. In Block-Heads, for example, the sequence ends with Laurel and Hardy’s positions reversed, providing the central image for Beckett’s Happy Days (1961). After many pratfalls in Block-Heads, Hardy finally realizes that Laurel has both legs in working order. They get in Hardy’s car to go home to dinner, but his parked automobile is blocked by a large dump truck and Hardy, by now much less solicitous of his friend, orders Laurel to move the truck. As Laurel fumbles with the levers in the truck-cab, though, he inadvertently dumps a massive load of sand on Hardy. The film cuts to Hardy with only his head showing above a huge, conical mound of sand (see fig. 5.1). Laurel slowly gets out of the cab, walks back to the rear of the truck, and performs an elaborate “take” when Hardy’s predicament finally imprints itself on his half-a-mind. In a close-up shot, Hardy—eyes closed, hat on head—emits a short, melancholy sigh. Not knowing what else to do and at the point of tears, Laurel halfheartedly begins to grab handfuls of sand to extricate his friend. In Act I of Happy Days, Winnie is “imbedded up to above her waist in exact centre of mound,” while in Act II, she is “imbedded up to neck, hat on head, eyes closed” (see fig. 5.2).11 Willie, like Laurel the less articulate partner, ineptly circles the mound. We never learn how Winnie and Willie came to such a pass, but as in Block-Heads, there are hints of some sort of scorching holocaust years before. In fact, Winnie tells us that the “last human kind . . . to stray this way,” a Mr. and Mrs. Shower (or Cooker), thought that Willie should undertake the Sisyphean labor of extricating her. Winnie reports their overheard conversation: “Why doesn’t he dig her out? he says—referring to you, my dear. . . . Dig her out with what? she says—I’d dig her out with my bare hands, he says” (43–44). In the film, Laurel attempts this very task, although he too is aware of how fruitless his efforts will be. The pattern is reversed in Endgame. Nell and Nagg, stumpless, sit embedded in sand in their ashbins, while Clov summarizes the experience of both pseudocouples: “Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.”12 Later, as Ruby Cohn points out, Hamm refers to Eubulides of Miletus who said, “One grain of corn is not a heap. Add a grain and there is yet no heap. When does a heap begin?”13 According to Hamm, that heap may constitute a life: “all life long you wait for that [heap] to mount up to a life.” The problem, as Eubulides of Miletus pointed out, is knowing when that heap constitutes a life.

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Figure 5.1. Still photo of Laurel and Hardy from the set of Block-Heads, Hall Roach Studios (1938). Courtesy University of Southern California Cinema-Television Library.

While thoroughly comic, the scene in Block-Heads represents a feeble, human response to an overwhelmingly hostile physical environment. The comedy, in fact, derives from the futile attempt to deal with situations increasingly and surprisingly beyond the control of the protagonists. James Agee identifies such confrontations as the essence of film comedy when he describes the scene in Swiss Miss (1938) where Laurel and Hardy attempt “to move a piano across a narrow suspension bridge. The bridge is slung over a sickening chasm, between a couple of Alps. Midway they meet a gorilla.” Agee concludes, “It is simple enough— simple and real, in fact, as a nightmare.”14 Yet Block-Heads provides not just a nightmarish stage image but also supplies a model for the pseudocouple’s response to such entrapment, which is at once both futile and persevering, even if neither partner has the vaguest notion of why they continue on in the face of such disasters. To be sure, Beckett suggests several possible explanations for such disasters and the corresponding inability of his characters to refrain from facing them. But like Laurel and Hardy, Beckett’s pseudocouples invariably react to their predicaments not so much with determination as with a grim understanding that they must confront life together. Their run-ins with surreal physical obstacles force each partner to confront the even more difficult conditions of living with each other and of living without each other.

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Figure 5.2. Final moments of Beckett’s Happy Days in Peter Hall’s National Theatre production at the Old Vic, London, 1975. Courtesy Zoë Dominic and Catherine Ashmore.

While Laurel and Hardy clearly provided Beckett with a model of petty squabbling and tit-for-tat abuse, they also presented a pattern of oppressively interdependent love. When he directed Happy Days at the Royal Court Theater in 1979, for instance, Beckett made several minor adjustments that reflect the lasting imprint of Laurel and Hardy’s symbiotic relationship, such as moving the whole mound slightly off center as it is in the Laurel and Hardy film, the effect of which, according to James Knowlson, “was to focus on the Winnie-Willie couple rather than on Winnie alone.”15 Laurel and Hardy’s love for each other is deep, of course, but like Winnie and Willie’s, Hamm and Clov’s, and Vladimir and Estragon’s, it is also profoundly constricting, because it derives not from romantically sanctioned sympathy but from an inability to conceive of themselves as separate. There is a scene in Their First Mistake (1932), for instance, when Hardy’s wife sues him for divorce and names Laurel as the alienator of Hardy’s affections. As Laurel and Hardy lie in bed together, Hardy complains, “She says that I think more of you than I do of her.” Laurel replies, “Well, you do, don’t you?” And all that a grimly resigned Hardy can say is, “We won’t go into that.”16 This symbiotic love is best witnessed, perhaps, in the Laurel and Hardy scene that provided the model for the contemplated suicide in Waiting for Godot. In Becket’s play, Estragon suggests that he and Vladimir hang themselves from

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a bough of the tree on stage. Vladimir wants Estragon to go first, because he thinks that Estragon is lighter than he is. But Estragon intuitively senses a flaw in that plan. If the lighter Estragon succeeds in hanging himself first, Vladimir may not be able to die since his greater weight might well break the bough. “Gogo light—bough not break—Gogo dead,” Estragon reasons with some effort, “Didi heavy—bough break—Didi alone” (17). In Flying Deuces (1939), which again takes place in France, Laurel and Hardy survive a similar suicide scene. Flying Deuces was also very popular in France, undoubtedly because it featured a long sequence where the two friends join the French Foreign Legion. At the beginning of the film, Hardy is rejected by the girl of his dreams and is determined to drown himself. Laurel and Hardy walk down a flight of steps to the Seine, with Laurel carrying a heavy stone attached to a large coil of rope (fig. 5.3). Hardy ties one end of the rope around his own waist; they say farewell and shake hands. Distraught, Laurel turns to leave. hardy: laurel:

Where are you going? Well, I don’t want to get my name dragged into this.17

But Hardy dismisses Laurel’s concern and ties the other end of the rope around Laurel’s waist. laurel: hardy: laurel:

What’s this for? Now when I count three, we’ll both jump in. What have I got to jump in there for? I’m not in love.

Laurel attempts to untie the rope around his waist, but Hardy slaps his hands away (fig. 5.3). hardy:

So that’s the kind of a guy you are. After all I’ve done for you, you let me jump in there alone.

Hardy then echoes Estragon’s fear of surviving without his partner, or rather, like Estragon, Hardy uses the possibility of the other partner being left alone to convince him that things must be arranged so that they both manage to die: Do you realize that after I’m gone, that you’ll just go on living by yourself? Why people would stare at you and wonder what you are, and I wouldn’t be here to tell them. There’d be no one to protect you. Do you want that to happen to you? laurel [tears welling in his eyes]: I never thought of that. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, Ollie. hardy:

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Figure 5.3. Still photo of Laurel and Hardy from the set of The Flying Deuces, RKORadio Pictures (1939). Courtesy University of Southern California Cinema-Television Library.

Similarly after Estragon has explained that the lighter Vladimir might well find himself alone after attempting suicide, Vladimir admits “I never thought of that,” and adopts Hardy’s argument that his partner needs his protection. Estragon always comes crawling back “because you don’t know how to defend yourself” (53), Vladimir asserts: “When I think of it . . . all these years . . . but for me . . . where would you be” (9). Misty-eyed, Laurel and Hardy prepare to jump in the Seine, when Laurel suddenly pulls Hardy back from the edge because of a reservation analogous to Estragon’s concern about unequal weights. laurel: Ollie, just thought of something. You think the water’s deep enough? Maybe you might bump your head. And just . . . hardy: Well, I never thought of that.

Laurel senses that Hardy, because he is heavier, might meet with some special accident not connected with drowning, and urges Hardy to give up his plan. A similar technical problem confronts Vladimir and Estragon’s second suicide attempt when they find that the only rope at their disposal (the cord of Estragon’s trousers) is not strong enough to hang oneself on. Beckett’s protagonists soon give up their suicide plans, but in the film Hardy persists and once again threatens to leave Laurel alone—

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hardy: What are you trying to do, talk me out of this? I came here to jump in this river, and that’s what we’re going to do. Now quit this horsing around, or I’ll jump in without you. laurel: Don’t leave me, Ollie!

—reminding us of parallel moments in Waiting for Godot: Estragon’s “Stay with me!” (52) and Vladimir’s “Don’t leave me!” (74), for example. Finally, Hardy falls in the Seine, not by design, but from shock upon seeing a shark. Laurel tries to help him out of the river but falls in as well. Similarly, Estragon asks Vladimir “Do you remember the day I threw myself into the Rhone? You fished me out” (49). As Laurel and Hardy climb out of the water, an officer of the French Foreign Legion, who has overheard their suicide plans, suggests that they join the Legion instead. They do so, and the remainder of the film follows their attempts to avoid service in battle and escape from a stockade. Still, there is one last adumbration of Waiting for Godot. As they arrive in Africa, Laurel—like Lucky—puts down his bag and performs a dance. And indeed, the previous image of Laurel and Hardy tied together by a rope around a heavy weight carried by Laurel may also have provided the seminal idea for the rope that infrangibly links Pozzo and Lucky as well as Lucky’s bag of sand in Waiting for Godot. In general, Vladimir’s inclination toward a rhetorical response to life lies closer to Hardy’s character. Like Hardy (“you’ve held me back for years,” Hardy tells Laurel in Laughing Gravy [1931], “and I’m sick of it”),18 Vladimir more often suggests that it might be better if they parted. Similarly, Estragon’s interest in food and the body more closely resembles Laurel’s simpler concerns. And yet as Ruby Cohn points out, any strict dichotomy between Vladimir and Estragon gradually blurs over the duration of the play, and it is apparent that Beckett’s mingling of attributes from his two protagonists may draw inspiration from Laurel and Hardy’s similar mixing of traits, as well as their interdependence, which was so very different from other early film comics who generally battled alone.19 McCabe and Kilgore quote Marcel Marceau who contrasted Laurel and Hardy’s interdependence with both Charlie Chaplin’s and Buster Keaton’s individuality. Laurel and Hardy, said Marceau, believed that “life is sweet despite the fact they knew what brutal faces our good world presents to us,” whereas Chaplin was a lonely figure “at odds with police and Victorian society,” and Keaton “at odds with props, women, or the absurdity of life itself.” Laurel and Hardy, Marceau concludes, were “very much alike: two fools of God—two wonderful clowns at odds with themselves in the framework of a Victorian society.”20 Similarly, in his 1975 Schiller-Theater production of Warten auf Godot, Beckett emphasized the interchangeability of the pseudocouple by having Vladimir wear a black jacket, clearly too small for him, which must have originally belonged to Estragon. According to Walter Asmus’s rehearsal diary, “Estragon, on the other hand, wears black trousers which fit him, with a striped jacket which is too big for him;

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it originally belonged to Vladimir.”21 There again, while Vladimir is based principally on Hardy, and Estragon on Laurel, Beckett ignored or even reversed the difference in weight when he cast the extremely tall and slim Stefan Wigger as Vladimir and the very short and round Horst Bollmann as Estragon in the 1975 Schiller-Theater production. At the same time, he added a stage direction in the revised text, “Removes his hat, scratches his head” (484), clearly reasserting the influence of Laurel on Estragon. Similar exchanges of clothing occur frequently in Laurel and Hardy films. Normally Hardy wears a solid-black suit while Laurel is dressed in a gray, striped one. In Liberty (silent, 1929), however, Laurel and Hardy escape from prison and must change into civilian clothes so quickly in a taxicab that they put on each others’ trousers: Hardy winds up with his own black jacket and Laurel’s gray pants, and Laurel wears his own gray jacket but with Hardy’s baggy pants.22 In Perfect Day (silent, 1929), Laurel and Hardy take off their jackets to fix a flat tire; when they hurriedly put them back on, Laurel is engulfed by Hardy’s dark jacket and Hardy is severely pinched by Laurel’s gray one, each wearing the opposite colored trousers as in Beckett’s Berlin mise-en-scène.23 In Thicker Than Water (1935), the mixing of attributes goes even deeper: Hardy is hospitalized by his wife’s beating and Laurel is obliged to donate blood. When the transfusion equipment malfunctions, their blood mixes and their personalities merge. At the end of the film, they exchange clothes (even Hardy’s mustache); and Laurel acts like Hardy (“Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” he tells him), while Hardy breaks down in tears in the classic Laurel manner.24 In his later stage productions, Beckett also sought to make the behaviors and physical traits of his pseudocouples more complementary and symmetrical than they had been in earlier productions. The many stage directions Beckett added for his German productions often call for movements by one character on stage that correspond strictly to opposing movements of the other half of the pseudocouple. In this way, Beckett emphasized not the specific personal characteristics of either Laurel or Hardy, or even of Beckett’s own creations, but rather their symbiosis. The double act has been a staple of comic entertainment for centuries, of course, but normally as a duo of master and servant like Don Juan and Leporello, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Don Juan and Sganarelle. In the form of two characters of equal stature more or less permanently attached to each other, the double act has reached prominence only in the past hundred years or so with the advent of nonliterary forms such as vaudeville, film, and television. James Knowlson has brilliantly described the inspiration Beckett found in a wide variety of visual and musical arts,25 but Beckett’s obsessive exploration of friendship in his early stage works and his revisions of them for performance were stimulated most directly by his deep understanding of the mutual dependency that informed the most popular pseudocouple of the twentieth century, Laurel and Hardy.

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Notes 1. Deidre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography, 2nd ed. (New York: Summit Books, 1990), 404. See also Mary Benson, “Blin on Beckett” (1978), in Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot: A Casebook, ed. Ruby Cohn (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1987), 26; Ruby Cohn, From Desire to Godot: Pocket Theater of Postwar Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 150; and Douglad McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld, Beckett in the Theatre: The Author as Practical Playwright and Director, vol. 1 (London: J. Calder, 1988), 68. 2. Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson, The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, vol. 1 (New York: Grove Press, 1993), 33. Page references to Waiting for Godot are from this revised edition of the play or from the original Editions de Minuit French edition (Paris, 1952). In a few cases of comparison, I quote from the first American edition (New York: Grove Press, 1954). 3. Bair, Samuel Beckett, 483; Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 11; and Colin Duckworth, “Godot: Genesis and Composition,” in the introduction to his edition of En attendant Godot (London: Harrap, 1966), xlvi. 4. Bair, Samuel Beckett, 48, 417; Samuel Beckett, Watt (New York: Grove Press, 1959), 252–53. 5. Ruby Cohn, Back to Beckett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 133. 6. Hugh Kenner, A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1973), 24–25. Way Out West, DVD, dir. James Horne, 1937 (Santa Monica, CA: Hallmark Entertainment, 2005). 7. Kenner, A Reader’s Guide, 24. See also Katherine Worth, Samuel Beckett’s Theatre (Oxford: OUP, 2001), 72. 8. Roland Lacourbe, Laurel et Hardy (Paris: Editions Seghers, 1975), 144. 9. John McCabe and Al Kilgore, Laurel and Hardy (1975, repr. New York: Bonanza Books, 1983), 178. 10. Block-Heads, DVD, dir. John Blystone, 1938 (Santa Monica, CA: Hallmark Entertainment, 2005). 11. Samuel Beckett, Happy Days (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 7, 49. 12. Samuel Beckett, Endgame (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 1. All citations from Endgame are from this edition. 13. Cohn, Back to Beckett, 144. 14. James Agee, Agee on Film, vol. 1 (New York: Putnam, 1958 and 1983), 8. 15. James Knowlson, ed., Happy Days: The Production Notebooks of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), 189. 16. Their First Mistake, dir. George Marshall, 1932 (broadcast, 2006). 17. The Flying Deuces, DVD, dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1939 (Kino Video, 2007). 18. Laughing Gravy, dir. James Horne, 1931 (broadcast, 2006). 19. Ruby Cohn, Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1962), 214–15. 20. McCabe and Kilgore, Laurel and Hardy, 7. 21. McMillan and Fehsenfeld, Beckett in the Theatre, 137. 22. Liberty, dir. Leo McCarey, 1929 (broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, 2006). 23. Perfect Day, dir. James Parrot, 1929 (broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, 2006). 24. Thicker Than Water, dir. James Horne, 1935 (broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, 2006). 25. James Knowleson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).

Part Two

Genetic Processes in Music: From Beethoven to Leroux

Chapter Six

From Melodic Patterns to Themes: The Sketches for the Original Version of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, Op. 53 Alan Gosman Melodic patterns fill Beethoven’s earliest sketches for the first movement of his Piano Sonata in C Major, Op. 53. The entirety of the sketches for the “Waldstein” Sonata are found in the Landsberg 6 sketchbook, on pages 107 and 120–45. Although there was certainly a great deal of compositional planning for the sonata that is not documented in the sketchbook, it is instructive that Beethoven’s nascent sketches so prominently featured patterns. And there are many ways that these patterns open up creative space for the sonata’s themes. Example 6.1 transcribes the sketches found on page 107, which are commonly considered to be the earliest for the first movement of the “Waldstein” Sonata. One might expect the first sketch to provide the opening theme to the movement—measures on which the rest of the musical material of the movement will emanate. However, this example does not suggest a composer preoccupied with drafting the first measures of a new sonata. The keyboard exercises in this example probably precede Beethoven’s invention of any particular theme in the “Waldstein,” and one is hard pressed to explain their exact formative role in this sonata. Gustav Nottebohm, Barry Cooper, and Katherine Syer all present intriguing reasons to treat the scalar exercises of example 6.1 as a starting point. Nottebohm writes, “It is reasonable to assume that the attention to keyboard technique and this particular type of exercise had some influence on the brilliant passage-work of a piano composition started shortly after these sketches were written.”1 Barry Cooper balances the possibility that these exercises “may be of no significance” to the “Waldstein” with the chance that they are the work’s “earliest possible sign.”2 He points to the fact that the exercises are mostly in C major and

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Example 6.1. Patterns preceding sketches for the opening theme of the Waldstein Sonata. Landsberg 6, p. 107, i–xii. 4 4

time as a possible link to the sonata’s first movement. In addition, he suggests that the presence of one pattern in E minor (lines 11–12) may offer evidence that E will be an important subsidiary key in the upcoming work. According to both authors, these patterns inspire some of the most general decisions for the sonata: key, level of virtuosity, and instrument. Katherine Syer draws attention to the fact that these patterns appear on the first page of eighteen-staff paper in the “Eroica” sketchbook, whereas the previous pages are all on sixteen-staff paper. She raises the possibility that Beethoven added these pages to provide extra space for the Vestas Feuer sketches as well as future projects, which would include the “Waldstein” Sonata.3 Physically, the

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sketchbook begins anew on different paper that prominently features the Cmajor scales as its opening. These patterns, as well as generally pointing ahead to the “Waldstein” Sonata, also create a marked departure from the surrounding sketches for the opera Vestas Feuer.4 Beethoven began his Vestas Feuer sketches in November 1803. They start on page 96 and continue largely uninterrupted until page 116 except for the patterns on page 107. Beethoven abandoned the opera with his last sketch on page 120, just before the second “Waldstein” Sonata sketch. The surprising inclusion of basic C-major scales on page 107 may reflect Beethoven’s difficulties with composing the opera. Mikhail Bakhtin’s comments in his essay, “Discourse in the Novel,” appropriated from literature to music, can offer some insight into Beethoven’s likely musical struggles with the composition of Vestas Feuer. Bakhtin writes: . . . the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own.5

It is possible that Beethoven was overwhelmed by the “other” while composing Vestas Feuer and never felt that it could become his own. Mozart’s operatic influence would have been strong even without direct connections between Vestas Feuer and one of Mozart’s operas. But Beethoven certainly experienced Mozart’s presence more acutely given the connections that did exist. Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist for Vestas Feuer, had also been Mozart’s librettist for The Magic Flute and even performed the role of Papageno at its premiere. Furthermore, Beethoven became loath to set Schikaneder’s libretto, writing to Friedrich Rochlitz in January 1804: I hoped that he [Schikaneder] would produce something more clever than usual. How wrong I was. I hoped at least that he would have the verses and the contents of the libretto corrected and improved by someone else, but in vain. For it was impossible to persuade this arrogant fellow to do this. Well, I have given up my arrangement with him, although I had composed several numbers. Just picture to yourself a Roman subject (of which I had been told neither the scheme nor anything else whatever) and language and verses such as could come out of the mouths of our Viennese women apple-vendors.6

Between Mozart’s voice on the one hand, and Viennese women apple-vendors on the other, Beethoven may have found it impossible to satisfactorily find his own voice. Beethoven’s insertion of the patterns from example 6.1, ten pages into sketching Vestas Feuer momentarily quiets the opera’s exigencies. The piano

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figurations and simple scales on page 107 are far removed from the problems associated with setting Schikaneder’s text. Along with providing an escape from the influence of other people’s words and music, these patterns provide the possibility for a new, less-cluttered creative space. The patterns of example 6.1 introduce as neutral and impersonal a starting point as possible, one diametrically opposed to Bakhtin’s world of language. The simple patterns are far removed from the compositional intentions of past composers and are as close as Beethoven could come to referring to a dictionary to get his notes as he begins his own search for musical meaning. The sketches suggest no compositional angst; not surprisingly, Beethoven did not correct any of the notes. Perhaps what makes these scales such a powerful starting point for Beethoven is that they temporarily silence the musical intentions of others. From a compositional perspective, these patterns break from the previous activity and offer a protected space to begin exploring ideas for a new work. Example 6.2 is the first clearly recognizable sketch of the “Waldstein” Sonata. Nottebohm writes that the draft “plunges almost immediately into the main theme.”7 This sketch, like that in example 6.1, shows Beethoven starting with a repeated pattern; the first three measures contain a recurring scalar fourth in the left hand and an arpeggiation in the right hand. Beethoven’s sketch tests how he can proceed from the end of the development into the theme at the point of the recapitulation. Barry Cooper points out that Beethoven found this juncture to be a difficult area to work out.8 Beethoven returns to these measures repeatedly throughout his sketches for the movement. His dissatisfaction with the initial link between the development and recapitulation sections is perhaps the reason that the right hand breaks off its arpeggiated pattern in the third measure and becomes unreadable, as I have marked with a question mark. It is natural to consider the arrival of the main theme in measure 4 as the true beginning at the expense of the repetitious patterns of the first measures. After all, this measure marks the start of the recapitulation. The awaited arrival of tonic harmony in measure 4 offers a clear starting point. By contrast, measures 1–3 prolong the final dominant chord that concludes the development section. However, our understanding of these first three measures is enriched when we also consider them as a beginning—a way of thinking that Beethoven’s sketch seems to encourage. Measures 1–3 can be heard as a pick-up that leads into the opening theme, functioning as a large-scale upbeat—an effect that is advanced by the repetition of simple patterns. The constant descending fourths create an uncomfortably confined space, and with each repetition of the fourth, we increasingly anticipate anything resembling a tune. The patterns of measures 1–3 in example 6.2 and those in example 6.1 both seem to anticipate the emergence of a theme. Yet, Beethoven has a very different awareness of what will follow while composing each of these pattern beginnings. The scales in example 6.1 may have been a compositional trigger that led

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Example 6.2. First sketch of the first movement’s opening theme. Landsberg 6, p. 120, ix–xii.

Beethoven toward the main ideas of the “Waldstein” Sonata, although the patterns themselves provide only the vaguest sense of what comes next. In contrast, the repeated fourth of example 6.2 more specifically anticipates the opening theme of the “Waldstein” Sonata’s first movement. Although measures 1–3 were jotted down prior to the theme, they must have been written with the theme already in mind. As evidence, the descending fourth is related motivically to the descending fifth that appears in the last measure of example 6.2. The circled notes in example 6.3 show another instance of the descending fourth in the theme. The bass line slowly reveals this descent from C to G over the course of the opening nine measures. The final version of the first movement lengthens the three-measure opening of example 6.2 to a staggering fourteen measures. The claustrophobic effect rooted in the opening of example 6.2 is magnified in the final version as the repeated patterns persist, creating further anticipation of the main theme’s arrival. A score of measures 142–59 of the sonata appears in example 6.4. This passage begins pianissimo, but as the pattern asserts itself, the dynamic increases up to the fortissimo at measure 155. The pattern reminds listeners of the exposition’s principle theme and signals its readiness to return. But the descending fourths not only remind us of what has happened. They also signal, and through their repetition necessitate, the impending return of the opening theme. When listeners finally hear the recapitulated theme beginning at measure 156, there is a sense that the long-awaited theme has finally succeeded in escaping from the repetitive passage. This progression from pattern to theme strikes a powerful effect, and it is worth considering that this effect was of great compositional importance to Beethoven—an opportunity for his pent-up creative energies to forge ahead. In this sense, Beethoven’s use of repeated patterns offers an extended upbeat to the theme, a compositional prelude to whose momentum the theme owes its existence.

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Example 6.3. Waldstein Sonata, first mvt., mm. 1–13.

The next sketch related to the “Waldstein” is found on page 120, lines xiii–xiv, which directly follows the sketch reproduced in example 6.2. This latter sketch, shown in example 6.5, introduces a short passage in E major. The idea consists of two, four-beat segments that I have marked with brackets. These measures obviously lack a fully worked-out theme and sound more like a contrapuntal pattern designed to harmonize a descending scalar bass. An E in the bass on the final downbeat would complete this scale; both Barry Cooper and I imply this note in our transcriptions.9 There are two harmonic arrivals in this sketch: the fourth chord, which is a dominant-harmony chord, and the eighth chord, which is a tonic-harmony chord. Three first-inversion chords lead up to each of these more stable points. Interestingly, the two descending fourth patterns appear immediately after the sketch in example 6.2, in which descending fourths are so prevalent. The passage is an effective demonstration of how

Example 6.4. Waldstein Sonata, first mvt., mm. 142–59.

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Example 6.5. Octave divided into two descents of a fourth. Landsberg 6, p. 120, xiii–xiv.

to divide an octave descent into two equal parts while simultaneously providing metric accents on the dominant and tonic harmonies. Cooper correctly asserts that the key of this sketch and the surrounding material indicate “an attempt at a second subject.” He adds, however, that “there is little similarity with the final version.”10 Example 6.6 provides the final version of this theme. If Beethoven hoped that this first sketch would attain the quality of a final version, we cannot help but notice the improvement of the final version and the myriad weaknesses of the first sketch. For if example 6.5 is “an attempt at a second subject,” as Cooper says, it pales in comparison to the eventual result. Yet if we consider the first sketch as a starting point—as a largely amorphous pattern intended to open up possibilities—the success of the first sketch is remarkably impressive. Examples 6.7a and 6.7b show the next two sketches for the second theme. I will consider example 6.7b first, even though Beethoven probably composed example 6.7a earlier. Example 6.7b features a melodic descent similar to that in example 6.5. In example 6.4, the inner voice descends an octave from G♯ to G♯ by means of two disjunct descending fourths. The melody in example 6.7b descends a ninth. Beethoven likely extended the descent by a step in order to conclude this phrase with a half cadence, which would not have been possible if the final pitch was G♯. The slur over the first four notes is intriguing because it suggests that in this later sketch Beethoven continued to think of two descending fourths, but now connected by a note in-between. Example 6.8 draws attention to this persistent grouping of fourths. This is the second time in Beethoven’s sketches for this movement that a repeated pattern of descending fourths generates a theme with a descending fifth. Example 6.9a shows the descending fourths that precede the descending fifth of the opening theme, with the motive extended by one note through an added D at the top of the descent. Example 6.9b shows the inner-voice fourth descent from the first sketch followed on the right of the page by the descending fifth that makes up the theme. In this case, the note C♯ is added to the bottom of the theme’s descent. Charles Rosen, in his book The Classical Style, dismisses this relationship between the descending fourths and fifths shown in examples 6.9a and 6.9b, writing:

Example 6.6. Waldstein Sonata, first mvt., mm. 35–42.

Example 6.7a. Sketch of the first movement’s second theme. Landsberg 6, p. 123, vi–vii.

Example 6.7b. Sketch of the first movement’s second theme. Landsberg 6, p. 122, iii.

Example 6.8. Grouping of the melody from example 6.7b into two fourth descents separated by a note.

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Example 6.9a. Extension of patterned fourth descent into fifth that occurs in a theme. First movement, first theme.

Example 6.9b. Extension of patterned fourth descent into fifth that occurs in a theme. First movement, second theme. It is only on paper, however, that we can identify this [the descending fifth in ex. 6.9a] with the descending fifth outlined more slowly by the opening of the “second group” (mm. 35–36) [shown in ex. 6.9b]: they are only distantly related, as the descent of the second theme is more directly presented as an inversion of the rising motion of the first three measures of the movement.11

But the proximity of the early sketches for each idea presents strong evidence that Beethoven did in fact recognize a descending-fifth motive shared by both themes. Nottebohm and Cooper both consider the sketch in example 6.7a to be earlier than the one in example 6.7b. Cooper convincingly argues that the sketch on page 123 (ex. 6.7a) is part of the earliest compositional stage of “preliminary sketches” for the movement, in which Beethoven worked out problematic sections.12 Cooper believes the sketch on page 122 (ex. 6.7b) is part of a later compositional stage in which Beethoven provides a “complete outline” of a section. This chronology is surprising because the sketch in example 6.7a, although earlier, resembles the final version of the theme more closely than the sketch in example 6.7b because of its initial descent followed by an ascent. Cooper’s chronology also raises the question of why Beethoven would temporarily abandon certain aspects of the sketch in example 6.7a that he ultimately chose to include in the final version.

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Example 6.10a. An alternate path from the descending octave of example 6.5. Patterned descent from example 6.9. Landsberg 6, p. 120, xiii–xiv.

Example 6.10b. An alternate path from the descending octave of example 6.5. First sketch for original second movement, opening theme. Landsberg 6, p. 121, viii–ix.

The explanation for this surprising order may lie in yet another theme generated from the simple pattern shown in example 6.5. One page earlier, on page 121, Beethoven first sketched the opening theme for the original second movement of the “Waldstein” Sonata—the movement that became the Andante favori, WoO 57. Beethoven sketched the first few lines for this piece in E major, but later recomposed it in the key of F major. Examples 6.10a and 6.10b align the first sketch of the second movement with the material from example 6.5. Example 6.10b only slightly varies the earlier sketch; they each descend in nearly identical fashion, with the main adjustment appearing at the end of the phrase to accommodate a half cadence. This theme from the second movement is remarkably similar to the first movement’s second theme. At an early stage of the “Waldstein” Sonata’s composition, Beethoven may have been concerned with the striking similarities between the two themes. This offers another explanation for why the sketches for the second theme of the first movement seem to regress from the relatively advanced version shown in example 6.7b to the original pattern in example 6.7a. Beethoven may have chosen to restart the first movement’s second theme in order to differentiate it from the opening theme of the second movement. It is remarkable that he ultimately returned to and refined the more advanced version of the second theme and composed entirely new material to replace his original second movement. Thus, the pattern shown in example 6.10a may have fulfilled too successfully its role of triggering the composition of a theme. It generated a pair of themes: the first movement’s second theme as well as what became the Andante favori. Beethoven’s decision to replace the original second movement with the Intro-

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duzione is perhaps a reaction to this close affinity. The Introduzione is designed, as its title indicates, to direct the listeners’ attention forward to the rondo movement. Beethoven’s original second movement did just the opposite, reminding the listeners of a theme from the first movement.13 The sketches for the “Waldstein” Sonata reveal the compositional importance of melodic patterns yielding to themes. Beethoven’s process is a musical counterexample to Bakhtin’s avowal that “it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!” Beethoven certainly would have composed a very different sonata had he not so often begun with basic patterns that are fitting for a music dictionary. What appear to be the simplest of materials led to some of Beethoven’s most powerful musical expressions.

Notes 1. Gustav Nottebohm, Two Beethoven Sketchbooks: A Description with Musical Extracts, trans. Jonathan Katz (London: Gollancz, 1979), 102–3. 2. Barry Cooper, “The Evolution of the First Movement of Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata,” Music and Letters 58, no. 2 (1977): 171. 3. Katherine Syer, “A Peculiar Hybrid: The Structure and Chronology of the ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook (Landsberg 6),” in Bonner Beethoven-Studien, vol. 5, ed. Ernst Herttrich (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus Bonn, 2006), 159–82. 4. The history and libretto of Vestas Feuer is described in Lewis Lockwood, “‘Vestas Feuer’: Beethoven on the Path to ‘Leonore,’” in Variations on the Canon: Essays on Music from Bach to Boulez (in Honor of Charles Rosen on His Eightieth Birthday), ed. Robert Curry, David Gable, and Robert Marshall (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 78–89. 5. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 294. 6. Briefe, no. 176. The translation is a slight modification of letter no. 87a in The Letters of Beethoven, vol. 1, trans. Emily Anderson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), 105, made by Lewis Lockwood, “‘Vestas Feuer: Beethoven on the Path to ‘Leonore,’” 80–81. 7. Nottebohm, Two Beethoven Sketchbooks, 103. 8. Cooper, “The Evolution of the First Movement of Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata,” 171–72. 9. Ibid., 172. 10. Ibid. 11. Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1997), 398. 12. Cooper, “The Evolution of the First Movement of Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata,” 171–73. 13. Despite the overwhelming tendency of the Introduzione to point forward, the section’s first two measures make a subtle reference to the original second movement. The Introduzione begins with an F-major chord—the same key as the Andante favori. However, the addition of an augmented sixth, D♯, at the end of measure 1 raises questions about the stability of F major. This augmented-sixth chord must resolve to an E-major chord. E major was the key for the first Andante favori sketch along with the first movement’s second theme.

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Additional Sources Cooper, Barry. Beethoven and the Creative Process. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Kinderman, William, ed. Beethoven’s Compositional Process. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press in association with the American Beethoven Society and the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University, 1991. Rovelli, Federica. “La genesi della Sonata op. 53 di Ludwig van Beethoven.” PhD diss., Università degli studi di Pavia, 2005. Wade, Rachel. “Beethoven’s Eroica Sketchbook.” Fontes artis musicae 24 (1977): 254–89.

Chapter Seven

From Conceptual Image to Realization: Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Sketches Lewis Lockwood A contemporary illustration shows a room in Beethoven’s last home in Vienna, a fair-sized apartment in the upper storey of a large building on the Glacis, the so-called House of the Black-Robed Spaniards (the Schwarzspanierhaus), in which he lived for the last eighteen months of his life. This wash drawing was made by Johann Nepomuk Hoechle a few days after Beethoven’s death on March 26, 1827, and it is an act of homage and of mourning for his loss. In the foreground is the big piano that the maker, John Broadwood, had sent him in 1818. Burntout candlesticks stand on either side of the piano as daylight streams in from the window upon the floor and the empty chair, intensifying our awareness of Beethoven’s death. Music lies helter-skelter on the piano though not on the piano rack, while two more stacks of music are piled up on the floor, as if someone had begun to straighten up the room.1 The five-shelf bookcase shows a disordered array of scores and perhaps some of Beethoven’s sketchbooks, which by now would have numbered more than seventy manuscripts of different sizes and formats. Elsewhere in the apartment there would have been piles of music, published and in manuscript, along with his fairsized library of books by classic and contemporary authors. The window opens out on Vienna, with the steeple of Saint Stephen’s and other buildings visible in the distance. In this depiction we are seeing the artist’s creative space from the inside, and the sound of his piano would have reverberated in the neighborhood. A curious touch is the inkpot and quill on the windowsill, suggesting that Beethoven could also write music or correspondence while leaning on the sill and looking out. Striking is the absence of a small writing desk or table next to the piano chair, for we know from his instructions to his pupil, Archduke Rudolph, that he always kept a small desk next to the piano so he could move from improvisation to writing and back again.2 But it appears from Gerhard von Breuning’s description of the apartment that he had another room for composing that is not shown.

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Another drawing, made by Joseph Daniel Böhm around 1820, shows Beethoven out walking with music paper clutched in his left hand.3 It is the correlative opposite of the lithograph in that now there is no frame or interior space. Here the focus is on the deaf composer tramping the streets enveloped in thought, wearing his stove-pipe hat and his overcoat with big pockets into which he could stuff his smaller sketchbooks and maybe a conversation book in case he had to talk with someone or sit at a tavern. Portrayed from the back, he is shown going away, distancing himself from the beholder. By implication he is moving away from society at large, an aloof artist who expects the world to follow him. As Reinhold Brinkmann has shown, this is the image that Arnold Schoenberg employed when in 1911 he portrayed himself, also from the back, walking in Vienna (perhaps even on the same streets).4 The two portraits hint at the problematic correlation between an artist’s outer and inner life, dimensions that seem to be separate but intertwined, like the strands of a cable. How to connect the circumstances of Beethoven’s life to the aesthetic content and structure of his work, how to see a true creative artist as a whole person and intelligently construe the works in the light of personality, are enduring problems that confront every biographer and historian. A suggestive approach is offered by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, biographer of Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud, in her book titled Creative Characters. Young-Bruehl proposes that there is a reflexive quality at work here, that artists have “consciously or unconsciously, an image of their characters, [that is,] of their general psychic . . . organization, which they both aspire to . . . and project into whatever they create.” She calls this image a “character-ideal.” She writes: [this character-ideal] appears in their works, their social visions, their philosophies of nature, and also [in] their understandings of creative processes, their own and others’. Creators are their own border-guards, charged with stamping their cipher—their psychic “character” in the graphic sense—on all departing products of their minds.5

That obsessive planning, sketching, and revising were essential to Beethoven’s “creative character” goes without saying, and so was his tenacious preservation of the growing body of his sketchbooks and sketch-papers throughout his life. Despite his notoriously chaotic mode of existence, his inner artistic life was a model of purpose, discipline, and order. One visitor described his apartment in 1809 as “the dirtiest, most disorderly place imaginable,” with moisture and dirt on the walls and furniture and other signs of total neglect.6 In his thirty-five years in Vienna, Beethoven moved his lodgings at least thirty times, not counting summers spent out of town, and people noticed that when he moved from one place to another he always lost some of his belongings. But somehow he managed to maintain a steady, active working life, with comparatively short lapses in

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productivity, and no matter how many times he moved he held on to his growing mass of sketchbooks and kept them close. This precious hoard, virtual diaries of his working life, contains material for almost every work he ever wrote from the Bonn years to the last quartets. They formed a memory bank to which he could return, provided him daily working spaces for the earlier phases of labor on a given composition until he arrived at a fairly final autograph score, and sometimes served as repair stations for nearly finished works that needed revision. They also contain countless ideas for pieces and movements that remained unfinished or barely begun—hints, thoughts, wisps of ideas that might have taken wing but did not.7 Keeping this mass of sketchbooks might have been a way of shielding his inner world from the difficult conditions of his outer life, above all his deafness, isolation, and loneliness. They form, in Young-Bruehl’s sense, a private domain of his artistic personality that reifies and underpins the finished works. They also remained in his control, whereas the finished works had to leave the nest. Very few of his final autographs are really fair copies, as Beethoven’s self-criticism drove him to make changes as long as he could keep the work in his hands; sometimes he even entered new material into the versions made by his copyists before sending the corrected copies to his publishers.8 It is time to turn to my main example, the first movement of the “Eroica” Symphony, composed in 1803–4. For this symphony we have ample sketches for every movement at the earliest phase of its emergence. No intermediate sketch material is known and the autograph manuscript is lost. Of the later phases there survives only the corrected copy, with its famous canceled dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte.9 Figure 7.1 and examples 7.1–2 display a small part of the earliest sketch material for the first movement, and all the known material is contained in the sketchbook manuscript Landsberg 6 of the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, housed since World War II in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków.10 Figure 7.1 provides a facsimile of the earliest continuity draft of the first movement exposition, which occupies most of page 11 of the sketchbook. It is the first of four such drafts for the exposition. Example 7.1 is a modern transcription of page 11. Example 7.2 is the facing page, page 10, which contains a revision of part of the material on page 11. What does this continuity draft show us? First impressions count for a great deal, and even a cursory glance suggests that Beethoven was writing at high speed, completing four drafts for this section within ten pages.11 With these four drafts, entered between pages 11 and 20 of the sketchbook, plus their revisions and addenda on adjacent pages, he brought the exposition from an embryonic state to substantial maturity in what may have been a short span of clock time. A close look at page 11 shows some important features. First, the two tonic chords, the famous hammer-blows that open the movement, are missing. Instead we find two introductory measures expressing the dominant-seventh harmony, with dominant-seventh chords attacked on the first beat of measure 1 and the

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Figure 7.1. Facsimile of the Eroica Sketchbook. Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, MS Landsberg 6, p. 11.

third beat of measure 2. This sets up a complex rhythmic preparation for the arrival on the tonic in measure 3, where the first theme begins and launches the vast movement on its way. Some differences from the final version appear as early as the second staff, measure 3, where the first transition appears after the first two statements of the main theme. And the next major event is the arrival of the main theme on the dominant, B-flat major (staff 2, m. 11). But over this entry Beethoven writes “Vi=,” his usual symbol to show he is writing an alternative reading of this passage on another staff or another page; it is the first two letters of the word “Vide,” and the “-de” will denote the substitute passage, written nearby. The substitute reading turns up on page 10, the facing page, and on staff 5 we see the second half of the word “Vi=de.” What he then writes on page 10, staff 5 is revealing. He removes the third statement of the main theme from the dominant key, B-flat major, and restores it to the tonic, E-flat major. This decision will last into the final version. In fact, in the symphony as we know it the main theme in literal form in the dominant will not appear anywhere in the earlier part of the exposition. He will find room for a brief statement of it in the dominant at the very end of the exposition (mm.

Example 7.1. Transcription of p. 11 of the sketchbook. Landsberg 6.

conjecture reading shows half-note bn which then would resolve to c in mid-register.

(1) The small notes in mm. 1 and 2 were added in a very thin hand and in lighter-colored ink [cf. N 80, p. 8 “Die ersten zwei Takte hat Beethoven später geändert”]. (2) (3) I follow N80, p. 7 in ignoring the app. (4) Original has 7n over low c; editorial

Example 7.2. Transcription of p. 10 of the sketchbook. Landsberg 6.

(1) Beethoven writes n changes to ab, confirms with note-name. (2)

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148–49 of the final version) after the heavy cadential chords and just before the double bar that ends the exposition, bringing about first its full repeat and the second time the move to the development section. But something else on the page-10 alternative draft is very striking. At staff 5, measures 1–4, as his material stands on the dominant while preparing for the locally climactic third statement of the main theme on the tonic, he invents a new figure that will have its own importance in the final version, and which has an organic connection to the main theme. This is because the intervals of page 10, staff 5, measures 1–4, construed now on the dominant, B-flat major, bring the same sequence of scale steps, 1–3–1–5–1, that we find in the main theme, but with a change in octave register, with a rhythmically simple pattern of staccato quarter notes, and with a lively pattern of rising and falling that uses increasingly larger intervals over its four-measure span. This new figure, whether legato or staccato, will play a vital role in the final version, first in syncopated form as a transition figure at measures 29–32, and at later points in the movement, especially in the long retransition to the recapitulation (mm. 338–84) where it combines with the opening motif in literal form and in imitation in the winds. Its derivation from the main theme is a compositional feature of high subtlety.12 Construed as an altered version of the main theme, this figure and its uses exemplify the density of thought that Beethoven brings to this work, a density that marks the “Eroica” as not only his largest symphonic work to date but as his most profound and searching effort to deepen the logic of his musical discourse. When Beethoven first played the symphony at the piano for his pupil Ferdinand Ries, Ries was moved to write in a letter, “By his own testimony it is the greatest work he has yet written. Beethoven played it for me recently, and I believe heaven and earth will tremble at its performance.”13 The “Eroica” is justifiably regarded as the major turning point in Beethoven’s development from his first maturity to his second. A little example like this one exemplifies one of the ways in which the “Eroica” foreshadows some of the profound complexities of his last piano sonatas and string quartets, and why this symphony, despite its date, anticipates the late works. There are essentially two ways of construing Beethoven’s sketch material, in the broadest sense. One is the “progressive,” “evolutionary” interpretation, by which we follow his steps in building a composition from particles to larger formal entities. Stephen Spender summed up this viewpoint in a famous essay, contrasting: some poets [who] write immediately works which . . . scarcely need revision. Others write their poems by stages, feeling their way from rough draft to rough draft, until finally, after many revisions, they have produced a result which may seem to have very little connection with their early sketches.14

This point of view is intuitively so persuasive that it is hard to see how it could fail to inform our vision. But here is another point of view. It stems from the perception that the composer may have begun with a basic “conceptual image” of the work or the movement, though at the earliest stages it may only be a

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distant intuition, an Ahnung. This image probably has a few elements that have the capacity to remain intact through other changes, elements that can turn out to be invariants in the compositional process. What could the conceptual image be like? As reported by Czerny and some other witnesses, it was Beethoven’s habit to compose with “a picture [ein Bild] in my mind” and Czerny and other contemporaries liked to ascribe the origins of particular works or movements to external images or natural sounds.15 Taking this testimony literally led some later commentators to search for pictorial and fictional imagery that might have inspired many of his works. Very rarely do his sketchbooks show any allusions to literary works, as in his references to the tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet in the sketches for the slow movement of Opus 18, no. 1, with textual allusions written in French.16 On one occasion late in his life, when Schindler asked Beethoven to explain the deep impression that Czerny’s performance of Opus 31, no. 2 and Opus 57 had on audiences, he may have said, probably impatiently and certainly enigmatically, “Just read Shakespeare’s Tempest.”17 But such references are extremely rare in his instrumental works, and they hardly constitute a hunting license for scholars. A well-known fiction-hunter of this type was Arnold Schering, who found specific literary analogues for every one of the Beethoven symphonies and many of the piano sonatas, all invented by Schering by intuition based on a few remarks reported by Schindler and other writers, and on what Schering thought were appropriate literary analogies for the works.18 Others, including Owen Jander, have taken up the same line of argument without, in my view, wholly convincing results. I will argue that the “conceptual image” I am talking about in this chapter was, for each instrumental work, primarily a musical thought with a particular shape or Gestalt, what Roger Sessions meant by “a musical idea” that gives rise to a train of thought. This basic shape, whether a motif or theme with a definite rhythmic form, remained for Beethoven an anchor, an invariant against which he could build successive elaborations and contrasts.19 By extension, for a large cyclic work he would begin by planning one of the movements in detail, not necessarily the first movement, and then hold this movement steady while he decided what other movements to place against it. This procedure could sometimes change at late stages, as when in a few cases he substituted an entirely new movement. Prominent examples are the “Kreutzer” Sonata finale, originally intended for the A-major Violin Sonata, Op. 30, no. 1, or his replacement of the long and highly formal Andante favori of the “Waldstein” sonata with the mysterious and dramatic Introduzione. The model for sketch procedure I am proposing implies a dynamic, reciprocal relationship between fixed and variable aspects of the material. My impression is that in many cases it was only as his sketches for a movement or a work grew in complexity that Beethoven could discover what elements of his basic idea he could capitalize on and which ones he needed to minimize or discard. In the “Eroica” first-movement sketches the invariants are certainly these: (1) the key, E-flat major, which may have had Masonic associations for him; (2) the meter and tempo (3/4 Allegro), and a 3/4 that often moves in two-measure modules that can imply 6/4, with hemiola and syncopation as types of rhythmic

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contrast; and (3) the first theme, both in its pitch content and basic rhythmic configuration, and its opening location in bass register. The first theme is a triadic turning theme (1–3–1–5–1) with the notes in this particular order, and it is essential that the first figure moves from scale step 1 to 3, then returns to 1 before moving on to 5, then leaps back to 1 again. So this portion of the theme unequivocally expresses the tonic harmony, which it is the purpose of the opening measures of the movement to establish, There follows the famous chromatic “cloud” in which the pitch 1 moves down to sharp-7 and to flat-7, back to sharp-7, and back to 1. This unit is also a turning theme, now around the pitch 7.20 And it is from the rich contrast of this triadic opening unit with its chromatic continuation that the remainder of the movement flows onward to new thematic elements. Some other items in the page 11 continuity draft (the first of four) that approach the condition of invariance are these: 1. an opening with two introductory chords, but as yet they are not on the tonic or on the first beats of measures 1 and 2; 2. the rising sixth motif (p. 11, staff 4) is fixed early and remains fixed while other secondary themes change; 3. he lengthens the exposition by creating a series of segments that are highly contrasted in rhythm, profile, and character, and the sketch looks forward to the syncopations that brilliantly enliven the exposition; 4. he seeks a principal or dominating secondary theme that will be as different from the opening theme as he can make it. This secondary theme should be contemplative, moves in repeated quarter notes, yet distantly echoes the chromatic motion of the “cloud” portion of the first theme. The two viewpoints—the “evolutionary” and the “invariant/variant”—are not incompatible. They form different ways of grasping the intricate changes that Beethoven brings to his material, different perceptions of his ways of building up structures that are strong enough to realize the implications of his conceptual image yet interesting enough to deviate from it in some basic features. As we think about the second viewpoint we realize that we have come to the borders of a much larger issue, that of identity and change, a problem that resonates in Western science and philosophy and in many other fields of inquiry. Many discussions of artistic creation, in many fields, reflect on this duality, and it has the potential to relate Beethoven sketch studies to wider intellectual concerns, well beyond music. For example, Rudolf Arnheim in his book, Visual Thinking, stresses what he calls the “constancies” in human perception of the shape and character of an element in a particular artistic context.”21 Arnheim writes: When the image of an object changes, the observer must know whether the change is due to the object itself or to the context, or to both; otherwise he understands neither the object nor its surroundings. Intertwined though the two

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appear, one can attempt to tease them apart, especially by watching the same object in different contexts and the same context acting on different objects.22

And Arnheim stresses as well the need to appreciate and enjoy “the infinite and often profound and puzzling changes the object undergoes as it moves from situation to situation” such as “the changing appearance of a landscape or building in the morning, the evening, under electric light, with different weather and in different seasons.”23 Despite the obviously different conditions that affect the visual perception of physical objects and the auditory perception of musical events, we can feel the kinship between Arnheim’s “object” and Beethoven’s “theme” or “motif” as they undergo change and development yet retain some basic features that make them recognizable. Needless to say, this mode of composition goes far beyond Beethoven, and became an essential point of departure for his most important successors, including Brahms and certainly Wagner, whose “leitmotiv” system for organizing operatic structures took its point of departure from the Beethovenian tradition. It reaches perhaps its farthest state, in our tradition, in Schoenberg. Yet it remains a constant in Beethoven’s or any other composer’s work that if a theme or motif were to be so transformed as to become truly unrecognizable, the aesthetic process on which its use depends would fail. Years ago, the physicist Hermann Weyl reflected on identity and change in mathematics and in nature, but also on its role in human experience.24 He quotes the famous soliloquy in Der Rosenkavalier in which the Marschallin, an older woman, looks at herself in a mirror and remembers herself as a young girl. She says (in part): Where is she now? Yes. Go seek the snows of yesteryear! But how can it really be that I was once the little Resi And that I will one day become an old woman . . . How can it happen? How does the dear Lord do it? So that I always remain the same. And if he has to do it like this, then Why does He let me watch it happen with such clear vision? Why doesn’t he hide it from me? It is all a mystery, so deep a mystery. And one is here to endure it. And in the “how”—there lies the difference. [“Und in dem “Wie”—dort liegt der ganze Unterschied.”]

Arnheim’s and Hofmannsthal’s imagery may seem far removed from the “Eroica” exposition. But if we think about the narrative logic of a musical entity like the “Eroica” first movement under the rubric of “identity and change” the analogy may work its way into our consciousness more deeply than we might at first suspect. The composer’s conceptual image, his basic idea, is a starting point for a complex, highly articulated structure that unfolds in time. Time is the essential dimension of the personal experience on which the Marschallin is brood-

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ing. She wants to know how her image of herself can remain intact throughout her life, surviving the ravages of time and change. Thinking biographically, we can ask whether something like this feeling inhabited Beethoven’s mind as he experienced his own artistic development over the years yet kept his sketches tenaciously by him. Thinking analytically, within his works we can want to know something analogous about musical identity and change, about such a movement as this one, about how its themes and motifs can undergo dynamic transformation and yet retain in some way characteristic traits that bind them to the original theme from which they sprang. To understand the work we need to make room for perceptions of both identity and change. This question has wide ramifications. It asks us to consider some of the ways in which the genesis of an artwork connects with, and bears upon, the structure of its final form. It raises the question of how artistic experience connects with life experience, a seeming truism that becomes elusive as soon as we try to pin it down, as in biography. Yet even to consider such possibilities is to become aware of the vastly extended intellectual adventures to which study of the sketches of a great artist might lead us.

Notes 1. See Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), figs. 20–23. For details on the building see Gerhard von Breuning, Aus dem Schwarzspanierhaus (Vienna, 1874), translated as Memories of Beethoven, ed. Maynard Solomon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 57–66. Gerhard von Breuning (1813–92), son of Beethoven’s boyhood friend Stephan von Breuning, lived around the corner from the Schwarzspanierhaus from mid-1825 to 1827, when Beethoven died. He gives vivid details of Beethoven’s daily life in these years, and a floor plan of the apartment (see Solomon, 61–62). Also Kurt Smolle, Wohnstätten Ludwig van Beethovens von 1792 bis zu seinem Tod (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus Bonn, 1971), 84–89 and figure 55. Rita Steblin offers the view that the bust in the corner might be of Schubert; see her article “Hoechle’s 1827 Sketch of Beethoven: A Secret Tribute to Schubert?” Beethoven Forum 8 (2000): 1–23. 2. See letter to Archduke, July 1, 1823, Beethoven Briefe, ed. S. Brandenburg (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1996), vol. 5, no. 1686. Also Susan Kagan, Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven’s Patron, Pupil, and Friend: His Life and Music (New York: Pendragon Press, 1988), 32. 3. Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven, figure 15 as well as her figure 17 showing Schoenberg’s self-portrait of himself walking, also seen from behind. 4. Reinhold Brinkmann, “Schoenberg the Contemporary: A View from Behind,” in Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the Transformation of Twentieth-Century Culture, ed. Juliet Brand and Christopher Hailey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 196–220. Also my chapter, “On Schoenberg’s View of the Beethoven Quartets” in Music of My Future: The Schoenberg Quartets and Trio, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 40. 5. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Creative Characters (New York: Routledge, 1991), x. 6. Baron de Trémont, excerpt from his account of his visit to Beethoven in 1809, in O. G. Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions by his Contemporaries (New York: G. Schirmer, 1926, repr. Dover Publications, 1967), 70. On the larger importance of his sketchbooks to

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Beethoven’s self-image see my Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York: Norton, 2003), 19–21 and passim. 7. For a full summary of the surviving sketchbooks see Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 8. A good example is the principal second subject of the exposition of the A-major Cello Sonata, Op. 69, which Beethoven finished composing only in the corrected copy. See my Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 39–41, 255, n. 14. 9. The corrected copy contains Beethoven’s famous change of dedication on its title page. A facsimile was published as Otto Biba, ed., Beethoven, Symphonie Nr. 3, “Eroica” (Vienna: Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, 1993). For an account of Beethoven’s changes in the title, see Maynard Solomon, Beethoven, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Schirmer Trade Books, 1998), 173–75. 10. See Johnson, Tyson, and Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 137–43, and earlier writings cited there. The basic literature on the sketchbook goes back to Gustav Nottebohm, Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1880). See also Rachel Wade, “Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook,” Fontes Artis Musicae 24 (1977): 254–89. My own essays on aspects of the genesis of the “Eroica” derive from Landsberg 6; see my Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process. Other noteworthy contributions include Philip Gossett, “The Arias of Marzelline: Beethoven as a Composer of Opera,” Beethoven Jahrbuch 10 (1983): 141–83, and Katherine R. Syer, “The Structure and Chronology of the ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook,” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5 (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2006), 159–82. Alan Gosman and I are currently developing a critical edition of the sketchbook. 11. See Donald Francis Tovey, who remarked on the unusual speed of Beethoven’s sketch hand in his A Musician Talks: The Integrity of Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), 79–82. Tovey unerringly raised some of the same basic questions about the continuity drafts for the “Eroica” exposition that are pursued in this chapter, and he was undoubtedly following the transcriptions published by Nottebohm in his Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803. 12. To my knowledge, the intervallic connection between measures 29–32 and the main theme (mm. 3–6) in the final version was first pointed out by Walter Riezler in his Beethoven, of which I cite the eighth revised edition (Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1951), 293, and the English translation (New York: Vienna House, 1972), 251. I find no reference to this connection in Schenker’s massive analysis of the symphony in Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, vol. 3 (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1930), 25–101, translated as The Masterwork in Music, ed. William Drabkin, trans. Ian Bent et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 13. Ferdinand Ries, Briefwechsel und Dokumente, ed. Cecil Hill (Bonn: Röhrscheid Verlag, 1982), 61f. (no. 14). An English translation of the passage is found in my Beethoven: The Music and the Life, 210. 14. Stephen Spender, “The Making of an Artist,” Partisan Review 8, no. 3 (1946): 294– 308, republished in Brewster Ghiselin, ed., The Creative Process (New York: Signet, 1955), 112–25, esp. 114. I cited this passage in an earlier essay that is seminal for this discussion: “Beethoven’s Sketches for Sehnsucht, WoO 146,” in Beethoven Studies I, ed. Alan Tyson (New York: Norton, 1973), 97–122, which is reprinted in my Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process, 95–117. See also my chapter “The Beethoven Sketchbooks and the General State of Sketch Research,” in Beethoven’s Compositional Process, ed. William Kinderman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 6–13.

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15. For the quotation about a “picture in my mind” see Charles Neate as quoted by Alexander Wheelock Thayer in Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, ed. Elliot Forbes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 620. Neate was not a casual visitor but a qualified English musician who spent several months in 1815 with Beethoven, going on walks with him in the countryside. From Thayer’s account, Beethoven’s remark on “a picture” came up when Neate mentioned the “Pastoral” Symphony and “Beethoven’s power of painting pictures in music.” 16. See Gustav Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig: J. Rieter-Biedermann, 1887), 485; Forbes, Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, 261; Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life, 164; Bernd Edelmann, “Die poetische Idee des Adagio von Beethoven’s Quartett Op. 18, Nr. 1” in Rudolph Bockholdt Festschrift, ed. Norbert Dubowy and Sören Meyer-Eller (Pfaffenhofen: Ludwig, 1992), 247–67. For the sketches, see the sketchbook Grasnick 2, published as Beethoven: Ein Skizzenbuch zu Streichquartetten aus Op. 18, 2 vols., ed. W. Virneisel (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1974), 8 in the transcription volume. 17. See Anton Schindler, Beethoven as I Knew Him, ed. Donald W. MacArdle, trans. Constance S. Jolly (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 406. Schindler also alleges that Beethoven told him (in 1823) that when he had written Opus 31, no. 2 “audiences were more poetic (sensitive?) than now (1823) and that for this reason it had not been necessary to supply them with the idea. Everyone, he continued, had sensed in the Largo the spiritual condition of a person consumed by melancholy and had felt the many nuances of light and shadow in this portrait of depression” (406). 18. Arnold Schering, Beethoven in Neuer Deutung (Leipzig: Kahnt, 1934), and his Beethoven und die Dichtung (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1936). On Schering and the sonatas, see William Newman, The Sonata in the Classic Era (New York: Norton, 1972), 504. For a brief overview, see Solomon, Beethoven, 515 (under the heading “Programmatic Interpretations”). 19. See Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), esp. 46. Sessions writes, for example, “I would say that a musical idea is simply that fragment of music which forms the composer’s point of departure, either for a whole composition or for an episode or even a single aspect of a composition.” The spirit of Sessions’s remarks is entirely consonant with the present approach. 20. On the “cloud,” a term from Tovey, see Lawrence Earp, “Tovey’s ‘Cloud’ in the First Movement of the Eroica: An Analysis based on Sketches for the Development and Coda,” Beethoven Forum 2 (1994): 55–84. In the Eroica Sketchbook (Berlin MS Beethoven Aut. Landsberg 6, now in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków, page 5) while sketching early ideas for the first movement exposition, Beethoven writes down the opening theme of the finale of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in B-Flat Major, K. 595, but in E-flat major, 3/4 time (like the “Eroica” but not like Mozart’s original, in B flat and 6/8), reflecting his recognition of its opening with chord tones of the tonic triad and continuing with linear step motion after its seventh note. See my Beethoven: The Music and the Life, 59. 21. Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 37–53. Among the few musicologists to make use of Arnheim’s seminal work as aesthetician and psychologist was Leo Treitler in his article “Music Analysis in a Historical Context,” which originally appeared in College Music Symposium 6 (1966) and was reprinted in Treitler’s Music and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 67–78. 22. Arnheim, Visual Thinking, 38. 23. Ibid., 45. 24. Hermann Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949).

Chapter Eight

The Process within the Product: Exploratory Transitional Passages in Beethoven’s Late Quartet Sketches Peter McCallum In several major works of his last decade, Beethoven wrote passages preceding the finales that might be compared to “composing out loud,” where, in a feigned improvisatory moment, the music pauses as though the invisible protagonist driving it has stopped to gather his or her thoughts before embarking on the final musical action. At times, it is as though Beethoven has inserted a page or two from his sketchbook, or is fancifully staging the creator reviewing his options, in a stylized representation of the decision-making steps of the compositional process. In such passages, Beethoven positions himself like Dante, midway through the journey of his piece, in the middle of a dark wood where the way ahead is lost. He halts, tests ideas, tries alternatives, derives a theme from an earlier one, or draws musical or symbolic connections with something that we have already heard. Examples occur in the Piano Sonata in A, Op. 101, the Cello Sonata in C, Op. 102, no. 1, the Piano Sonata in B Flat, Op. 106, the Ninth Symphony, Op. 125, and the String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132.1 In the best-known example, the introduction to the finale of the Ninth Symphony, the most striking feature is not so much what is represented—the brushing aside by the baritone of the three earlier movements—but the change in rhetorical tone that is ushered in at the break between the instrumental exposition and the vocal exposition of the main theme. Beethoven feigns indecisiveness, recalling incipits of the three earlier movements as though casting about for an idea or direction. The moment of decision is marked by a dramatized return to the opening fanfare before the baritone appropriates the earlier double-bass recitative (which Beethoven had asked to be played in time when given to instruments alone) singing the words “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!” thus not only signaling the path chosen but also embodying it. As the introduction to a finale, each of the examples referred to above could be viewed as extending the traditional practice of “preludizing” before a more structured movement in order to throw weight and significance

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onto what follows. By stepping outside of the frame hitherto established in the work, and bringing us vividly into an immanent moment of creation, such passages create an impression of the finale as a culmination of all that has gone before. They test the boundaries of the artwork prior to reconfirming them in the finale, and the change of narrative tone thus serves as a device for shifting the balance of emphasis toward one of end-oriented culmination. In this context, it is of interest to note that in addition to the examples in completed works cited above, the sketches for all of the last five string quartets contain such passages, each of which was deleted, replaced, revised, or curtailed. It would be wrong, of course, to see this exclusively as a trend of Beethoven’s last decade. Beethoven had been developing techniques for throwing emphasis onto the finale for most of his mature compositional life as many of his major symphonic finales attest. Nevertheless, the exploration of self-quotation and selfreference to achieve this in these late examples is significant, not only because of the expanded expressive and rhetorical scope that it enabled but also because of the resource and inspiration it bequeathed to later composers of cyclical works. In each of the last five quartets, Beethoven’s approach was slightly different. Collectively they provide insight into his instincts for narrative and structure at the end of his creative life.

String Quartet in E Flat, Op. 127 In the final version, the four-measure unison flourish that introduces the finale of Opus 127 (ex. 8.1) has none of the improvisatory or out-of-frame qualities described above, and the quartet as a whole is in some ways less end-oriented than any work since the Eighth Symphony. If there is any sense of enigmatic hesitancy in the move from the third movement to the fourth, it is at the close of the Scherzando Vivace. There are at least three different ideas for this introduction among Beethoven’s surviving sketches, although the variety of paper types used in the sources and other issues make it difficult to determine the order in which they were made. First we will consider an idea that is sketched in the pocket sketchbook Grasnick 42 (fol. 16r) and also in the desk sketchbook Autograph 11, Bundle 23 (fol. 22r), an idea that is similar in spirit to that of the final version except that it features a more frenetic eighth-note rhythm (ex. 8.2). It is of interest in the current discussion for several reasons. The first is because the figuration of measures 1–6 on the first line, and more particularly of the upper parts on the third line, recalls some of the motivic figuration of a discarded earlier movement of this quartet, la gaieté: allegro grazioso. Sketches for this movement are among the manuscript pages collected in the miscellany Artaria 206,4 and, as has been discussed by Sieghard Brandenburg, Beethoven abandoned the sketches as the A-flat variations of the second movement began to take shape, with elements of

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Example 8.1. Op. 127, fourth mvt., mm. 1–8.

Example 8.2. Grasnick 4, fol. 16r, staves 3–5.

the discarded movement appearing to find their way into the variation theme and the character of the second movement.5 The second point of interest is the use of the word “them[a]” on the second line. Although it is not exactly clear what this refers to, it is a term used in another sketch for this movement found in Autograph 11, Bundle 2 (see ex. 8.7 later in this chapter), where it serves as a label for a theme that is an early version of the principal theme of the Grosse Fuge. Before coming to that sketch, mention should be made of a sketch on a looseleaf page, Mh 99 (ex. 8.3),6 that Brandenburg, Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter surmise may have originally belonged to the desk sketchbook Autograph 11, Bundle 2, itself made up of heterogeneous paper types.7 The absence of key signatures and accidentals and ambiguous note placement in the bass present problems in transcribing and interpreting this sketch. If one assumes that the key of E flat has arrived by the beginning of the Allegro (m. 3) in preparation for the statement of the main theme on staves 4 and 5, then there appears to be an enharmonic transition from G♯ to A♭ in the first two measures.8 The lack of clarity in the notation leaves several possibilities regarding the exact progression that Beethoven intended, but it seems that the

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Example 8.3. Mh 99, staves 1–5.

Adagio passage connects an E-major tonality to the home key via an enharmonic reinterpretation of the G♯ to A♭, the latter note being one of prominence in the theme of the finale. This enharmonic connection is also a feature of the third variation (in E major; see ex. 8.4) of the second movement (in A♭), and Beethoven’s shifts to and from the home key are equally abrupt. Beethoven returns to this relationship in the Coda of that movement (ex. 8.5), highlighting the enharmonic shift by the simultaneous notations of the G♯ and A♭ in measures 124 and 125. Thus, it would appear that the sketch on Mh 99 (ex. 8.3) for an introduction to the finale of Opus 127 was designed as a reminiscence of the harmonic change that had already been explored in the second movement and may have been designed to recall the progressions around measures 124 and 125 (shown in ex. 8.5). Although he did not pursue this reminiscence in the introduction to the finale in the completed version of the quartet, Beethoven did return to this harmonic juxtaposition in the Coda of the finale as seen in example 8.6. The Coda begins in C major and, through a series of sequential repetitions, each descending by a major third, moves through A flat (ex. 8.6, m. 262) and E major (ex. 8.6, m. 265) before returning to the home key of E flat (ex. 8.6, m. 269). In the context of the previous discussion, this passage is of interest because it connects an E major tonality with both A flat (as in the enharmonic connection noted in the second movement, exx. 8.4 and 8.5) and with the home key of E flat (as in ex. 8.3, the transition sketch on Mh 99). A further point of interest about this Coda is that the discarded second movement, la gaieté, was in C major. Had Beethoven retained it, and had the E-major transition pattern he toyed with in Mh 99 (ex. 8.3) been preserved (and perhaps expanded), then this completed Coda would have acted as a summary of the key scheme of the entire quartet. As it stands, it can be seen as a reminiscence of what might have been.9 The final draft for this introductory passage (ex. 8.7) also comes from Autograph 11, Bundle 2 and is better known in the sketch literature because it contains the first reference to the theme that was eventually to be used in the Grosse Fuge.

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Example 8.4. Op. 127, second mvt., mm. 60–79.

The function of the Thema is uncertain though the suggestion that it was intended here as part of the finale of the E-flat quartet is plausible.10 The passage-work that immediately follows is not dissimilar to that which appears in the Grasnick 4 sketch (ex. 8.2), which itself bears some resemblance to features of the discarded la gaieté movement. It is also of interest that the repeated quarternote figure, marked pp in the third system (ex. 8.7, staves 5–6) also has parallels

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Example 8.5. Op. 127, second mvt., mm. 120–26.

with thematic material in the la gaieté movement, and, of course, with the second theme of the published finale (mm. 55ff.). On the final system in the bass (ex. 8.7, staves 7–8) is the first hint of the rhythmically displaced variant of the theme eventually used in the Coda of the finished version. Thus, in summary, Beethoven appears to have initially experimented with a transition to the finale that made references to other music in the quartet. Some of this related to the important tonal area of E major, which he had exploited in the second movement and to which he would return in the Coda. Other aspects may have referred to the discarded la gaieté theme, or at least picked up ideas from that movement, while others relate to the Thema that was eventually used elsewhere to monumental effect. The sketches thus suggest that the introduction to this movement initially had some of the rhetorical function of reminiscence and of recalling earlier thoughts outlined at the outset of this chapter. The introductory passage to the finale of Opus 127 has one other reference that is relevant to the topic of reminiscence and deserves mention in view of Beethoven’s concurrent work on a BACH overture and his later work on the Grosse Fuge: the third measure of the completed finale of Opus 127 contains the notes HCAB (marked in ex. 8.8) in unison on all instruments—the reverse of Bach’s motto theme. The same is true of the last four notes of the Grosse Fuge theme.

Example 8.6. Op. 127, fourth mvt., mm. 256–69.

Example 8.7. Autograph 11, bundle 2, fol. 27r, staves 1–8.

Example 8.8. Op. 127, fourth mvt., mm. 1–8, and Op. 133, mm. 26–30.

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Example 8.9. Grasnick 4, fol. 20r, staves 2–3.

Sketches for the overture on BACH, on which Beethoven was working contemporaneously with the composition of the last three movements of Opus 127, appear on folio 20r of Grasnick 4 and folio 19v of Autograph 11, Bundle 2 (exx. 8.9 and 8.11). The likely date for them is around December 1824. The BACH sketch on folio 20r of Grasnick 4 (ex. 8.9) is remarkable for its apparent attempt to combine the pitches of the BACH motive harmonically as well as melodically. The notation “B h c” above the staff also suggests a degree of permutational thinking about this motive. As we shall see, in connection with the String Quartet, Op. 135, Beethoven was clearly engaged with the possibilities of permutational and retrograde variations of motives. There is another reason to associate the last movement of Opus 127 with the BACH motive. If the Thema on folio 27r of Autograph 11, Bundle 2 is written out in the key of B flat, the key in which it appears in the Grosse Fuge, its last four notes are HCAB (also true of the final Grosse Fuge theme, as noted in ex. 8.8). Whether Beethoven noticed this is unknown, but he did indeed write it out in B flat (probably at a later date, as argued by Brandenburg) on folio 26v (ex. 8.10, staves 4 and 6, right). This is the immediately preceding facing page (on the same opening) to the sketch in E flat given in example 8.7. On the basis of the different writing instrument and the deletion of notes 5– 12, Stadlen surmised that Beethoven may have returned to the manuscript and inserted the B-flat version in example 8.10 at a later date when he was appropriating the idea for the finale for Opus 130. This may well have been the case, although it should be noted that in the context of an introduction to a movement in E flat, this version in B flat may have served Beethoven’s purposes just as well. With the exception of the Thema reference in the Grasnick 4 sketch (ex. 8.2), the surviving sketches for Opus 127 do not appear to make any other references to this theme. One other relationship between Beethoven’s BACH overture and the Grosse Fuge theme further suggests the genetic influence of the former on the origin of the latter. On folio 19v in Autograph 11, Bundle 2, there are two sketches for the overture (ex. 8.11, staves 9–10 and 14–16) that place the notes B–H– A♭–G (the first four of the Grosse Fuge theme) in points of prominent rhythmic emphasis. Thus, it may not have escaped Beethoven’s notice that the first two notes of the motive for his Grosse Fuge—B and H—encapsulate the BACH motive. This

Example 8.10. Autograph 11, bundle 2, fol. 26v, staves 1–6.

Example 8.11. Autograph 11, bundle 2, fol. 19v, staves 9–16.

Example 8.12. Artaria 201, p. 123, staff 3.

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Example 8.13. Autograph 8, bundle 2, fol. 8r, staves 3–4.

reading of events is somewhat contradictory to Brandenburg’s suggestion that the B-flat notation postdated the original notation of the Thema in E flat in that it gives primacy of conception to the B-flat version as an idea which grew from Beethoven’s preoccupation with the BACH motive at this time.11

String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 The opening theme of the first movement of the next quartet, Opus 132, features obvious motivic connections to the Thema that are well known and will not be reviewed here. (Sketches for the opening theme of Opus 132 first appear on folio 29r of Autograph 11, Bundle 2; however, since there is a section break between this folio and folio 27, whose recto side includes the sketch given in example 8.7, caution must be exercised in making deductions about the genetic origin of the Grosse Fuge theme on the grounds of proximity in the sketchbook). Concerning the primary focus of this chapter is the recitative section, più allegro, leading into the finale of the quartet. It has been widely known since Thayer’s biography that the theme of the finale of Opus 132 was originally sketched in D minor in connection with the finale of the Ninth Symphony.12 An outline sketch for the entire symphony in the desk sketchbook Artaria 201 (ex. 8.12)13 reveals a five-movement plan with a Presto before the choral finale, while another sketch for this theme in Autograph 8, Bundle 2 (ex. 8.13)14 is labeled “finale instromentale,” the presumed fourth movement before the choral finale. The first indication that Beethoven planned to reuse this theme in the Aminor quartet appears in a sketch on folio 25r of Autograph 11, Bundle 2 (ex. 8.14). This theme arises in the early stages of planning for the quartet and is preceded by a flourish with something of the spirit of the agitated recitative of the final version. The version of the theme in example 8.14 (staff 3, final measure) appears to derive directly from a version originally intended for the Ninth Symphony, a sketch that appears in folio 5r of the De Roda sketchbook.15 The De Roda sketchbook was made up of diverse paper types with pages (including this one) that were already partly used. Folio 5r has orchestral measure lines ruled down

Example 8.14. Autograph 11, bundle 2, fol. 25r, staves 1–6.

Example 8.15. De Roda sketchbook, fol. 5r. © Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

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Example 8.16a. De Roda sketchbook, fol. 5r, staves 1–2.

Example 8.16b. De Roda sketchbook, fol. 5r, staves 13–14.

Example 8.17. De Roda sketchbook, fol. 2v, staves 1–8.

the page (see ex. 8.15), and a sketch in D minor in ink on the top staff (ex. 8.16a), which was apparently written before the sketchbook was assembled. A version of the theme in A minor in pencil marked “finale” appears on the bottom staves (ex. 8.16b). The pages that follow the first sketch that includes the finale theme used in the published version, on folio 25r of Autograph 11, Bundle 2 (ex. 8.14) contain a series of concepts and ideas for later movements and include a Marcia serios[o],

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pathet[ico]16 (fol. 25v), a 3tes Stück, and a 4tes Stück (fol. 26r). The first specific mention of a recitative in the sketches comes on folio 2v of the De Roda sketchbook (ex. 8.17) in what appears to be an outline of the remaining movements from the slow movement to the end.17 Sketches in a conversation book (Heft 89), which can be dated with reasonable precision from around May 27, 1825, suggest that by that date the shape of the quartet after the slow movement was beginning to emerge into what was to be its final form. Those sketches set out, in order, incipits and ideas for the slow movement, the march, a recitative, and a finale using the thematic material of the published version.18 However, several sketches in the Moscow sketchbook,19 the pocket sketchbook that Beethoven used between May and June of 1825 in parallel with the previously discussed pages in the De Roda sketchbook, suggest a degree of continuing uncertainty. At the time that he started working in the Moscow sketchbook it is clear that the slow movement was well advanced. The remaining movements, however, in addition to the march, recitative, and finale, also included an Alla danza tedesca in A major (which was eventually discarded, transposed into G, and used in Opus 130). The first page of the Moscow sketchbook (ex. 8.18) appears to show a concept sketch in which the Alla danza tedesca is still part of the quartet (ex. 8.18, staff 4), perhaps following the slow movement (ex. 8.18, staves 2/3). After this sketch, ideas for an Alla danza tedesca in A major cease, and the remaining sketches for Opus 132 in the Moscow sketchbook are devoted to the finale and the two movements leading up to it, including three drafts and several smaller sketches for the recitative. It is interesting to note that, on at least three occasions after the work was completed, Beethoven referred to Opus 132 as having six movements (rather than the five customarily listed today), suggesting he regarded the recitative as a separate movement. For instance, on August 11, 1825, Beethoven wrote to his nephew saying he was in a “mortal fright about the quartet” (Opus 132) because Karl Holz had taken away the “third, fourth, fifth and sixth movements.” In two further letters, one to his nephew and the other to Karl Holz, both dated August 24, he announced that the “last quartet too” (that is, Opus 130) would “also” have six movements.20 In summary, when Beethoven made the decision to use the discarded theme from the Ninth Symphony in one movement of Opus 132 (not necessarily the finale, initially), he appears to have simultaneously had the idea of preceding the finale with some kind of flourish, so that this theme would first be heard when the music was already in a state of momentum. As the distinctive character of the Heiliger Dankgesang took shape (after Beethoven’s illness in April and early May and his move to Baden on May 7), the need to find a way of making a decisive break after the intensity of this movement came to the fore: the Alla danza tedesca was discarded and the Alla Marcia and recitative were expanded.21 Rather than performing a reflective function here, the recitative serves to dramatize, quicken, and return the music to a state of vivid pulse after the intensely

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Example 8.18. Moscow sketchbook, p. 1, staves 1–8.

inward world of the slow movement. In that respect, it is similar to the recitative of the Ninth Symphony. The intertextual relationship between Opus 132 and the Ninth Symphony, and whether the recitative might be regarded as part of this, remains an open issue, although clearly Beethoven himself was aware of the relationship and the genetic origin of the quartet finale in the symphony.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 The finale of the next quartet, Opus 130, eventually picked up the Thema, which earlier had been sketched for Opus 127, and which also became the principal subject for the Grosse Fuge. Barry Cooper has shown that the evidence in the pocket sketchbook, Egerton 2795,22 suggests that Beethoven’s original conception may not have been the monster finale of the finished work.23 Nevertheless, the fugue that eventuated became one of Beethoven’s most implacable and imposing movements: implacable for the originality of its voice leading and resulting texture, imposing for its severity of motivic logic. In the final version the introduction comprises a passage of snapshots of the kind found in the Ninth Symphony, but in the quartet they are glimpses of the future, not of the past, hence Beethoven’s use of the operatic term “Overtura” in preparation for the “Fuga.” To some extent, it is the nature of the fugal principle to set out essential themes from the start, but the degree of terseness with which they are

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set out in the Overtura represents something quite new that was to have a profound influence on later composers. There is evidence in the sketches that suggests Beethoven also experimented with a series of retrospective snapshots, similar to those used in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. The first sketch in the Kullak sketchbook (Beethoven’s last desk sketchbook24) relates to the second countersubject of the Grosse Fuge, which, in the final version, is heard first against the principal theme in the Overtura at measure 21 and is expanded upon in the Meno mosso e moderato section in G-flat major (mm. 159ff.). The sketch is in the tonic key of the Grosse Fuge, B flat, and begins with a semicadence on the dominant with the pitches G–F forming a neighbor-tone pattern (ex. 8.19). The sketch continues with the second countersubject, which itself can be seen as a pattern of descending neighbor tones. One cannot definitively establish from the sketch itself whether this passage was intended for the very opening or the return of this material at measure 673 of the completed movement, although given the sketch for the Overtura on the next folio, the former seems more likely.25 The antecedent passage to which this sketch seems to connect appears on a page from the pocket sketchbook Autograph 9, Bundle 2,26 where Beethoven was also sketching the fugue (ex. 8.20). This page contains incipits for two earlier movements, the Alla danza tedesca and the Cavatina, both of which contain the G–F neighbor-tone figure and a fermata comparable to that in the Kullak sketch seen in example 8.18. The fermata and the emphasis on F in these cadences prompt the suggestion that this sketch was the one to which the Kullak sketch (ex. 8.19) connects. If this indeed was his intention, then Beethoven seems to have considered writing a transition passage that pointed back to previous movements in the manner of the Ninth Symphony. As in many of his earlier transitions, such as those for Opus 101 and Opus 102, no. 1, his pretext may have been to demonstrate a point of motivic connection, linking these ideas and the countersubject together by stressing, in this case, the neighbor-tone figure. However, what is of more interest is the suggestion that, as with the Ninth Symphony, he wished to insert a rhetorical gesture that would disrupt the sense of musical flow by reaching back to earlier movements—as though the composer is standing back from his creation before what had become a monumental finale. The Grosse Fuge and the Ninth Symphony finale share several features beyond their imposing stature. They pursue an innovative four-movements-in-one structure, and in each, the expressive scope seems to transcend the experience of the previous movements. While the Ninth Symphony set aside public symphonic discourse in favor of exuberant and populist joy, the Grosse Fuge takes the voice-leading individuality of quartet discourse to such an extreme of freedom that, paradoxically, it appears to move beyond the individual so that the structure seems driven by uncompromising objectivity of form. In such a context, it is understandable that Beethoven should experiment with the same rhetorical strategies to mark the start of these movements

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Example 8.19. Kullak sketchbook, fol. 1r, staves 1–2.

Example 8.20. Autograph 9, bundle 2, fol. 29v, staves 1–3.

and particularize their utterance. That he eventually selected retrospective reminiscence to introduce the extroversion of the Ninth Symphony finale, and prospective gnomic prescience to introduce the uncompromising inner coherence of the Grosse Fuge, seems apt. It is important to stress that although Beethoven explored pointing out this motivic relationship between movements, the relationship itself was not genetic in the sense that earlier material generated later ideas. For the Grosse Fuge, the countersubject arose independently in the sketches—not only independently of the Thema to which it eventually made a counterpoint but also slightly prior to it.27 This introductory passage therefore sheds light on Beethoven’s view of thematic links. Throughout his life, he was interested in such motivic connections, and especially in his later years, in making them manifest. However, the evidence also suggests that whatever his mode of exegesis in pointing them out to the listener, they were not necessarily generative in the sense of one being generated in the composer’s mind by the other. There is no evidence that these connections had for Beethoven the kind of generative significance (in the religious sense) they later had for Schoenberg, who prefaced his discussion of such relationships in Opus 135 with extravagant biblical allusions to the Supreme Commander.28 What is significant here is the invocation of the whole work to create an exalted perspective just before the finale, and the shift in narrative tone created by the intertextual or self-referential gesture. It is of further interest that after he discarded the Grosse Fuge as the finale for Opus 130 and wrote a new finale, he experimented initially with a similar strategy for the alternative finale. In his sketches in the pocket sketchbook, Paris Ms 62 and Ms 66,29 Beethoven recalls music from the first movement in staff 1 as is

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Example 8.21. Paris Ms 62 and Ms 66 sketchbook, MS 66 (5)rb, staves 1–8.

shown in example 8.21 (the context and ambiguity about the original structure of the sketchbook Paris Ms 62 and Ms 66 make it difficult to determine whether this is an introduction or coda for the movement).

String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 Beethoven’s struggles with the finale of Opus 131 have been outlined in detail by Robert Winter, who discovered that the music of the slow movement of Opus 135 was first conceived as a transitional passage leading to the finale of Opus 131, and later, as a Coda or fully fledged eighth movement of that quartet, before it was removed from Opus 131 altogether.30 Of the many approaches to the finale of Opus 131 in Beethoven’s sketches, one, on folios 39r–39v of the Kullak sketchbook (ex. 8.22), is especially pertinent to the subject under discussion here. The sketch begins with the words “nach E dur” and presents an early idea for linking the fifth movement (Presto, in E major) with the finale, a function eventually taken over by the short sixth movement, which makes no overt reference to music heard earlier in the quartet. The sketch for a transitional passage given in example 8.22, however, refers back to the first movement of Opus 131 and appears to generate a new theme from it. This new theme, in D-flat major, is the basis for the material that was eventually jettisoned from Opus 131

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and ended up as the slow movement for Opus 135. The situation is comparable to what was previously discussed in Opus 127. As with that quartet, in Opus 131 Beethoven abandoned the referential transitional passage, shifting the function of referring back to earlier music to the finale itself. Opus 131 is, as Maynard Solomon has noted, a work marked by both profound dissociation and profound integration.31 The discarding of this recitative-style transitional passage and the incorporation of elements of it into the finale represent an integrated extension of the more disruptive strategy of reminiscence. This transitional passage in example 8.22 is spread over two pages and contains a complicated network of cues;32 for the purposes of this discussion, it is sufficient to note three components: 1. a reference to the fugue theme of the first movement (ex. 8.22, fol. 39r, staff 10), 2. a theme derived from it by a permutation of the order of the first four notes (ex. 8.22, fol. 39r, staves 12, 14), 3. and a further derivation of 2, in D-flat major, familiar as the principal theme of the slow movement of Opus 135 (ex. 8.22, fol. 39v, staff 1). This sketch, together with a parallel one in the pocket sketchbook, Autograph 9, Bundle 4, represents the first appearance of components (2) and (3) above in any of Beethoven’s sketchbooks. It is probable that, in this case, the relationship was genetic, and that the D-flat theme can be seen as having its origins in the first movement theme of Opus 131. It seems, at least in this sketch, that Beethoven wanted us to draw this conclusion, although, as was previously discussed, his representations of such genesis sometimes appear to be a feint, and are not always to be taken at face value. This makes the eventual removal of the D-flat theme all the more surprising. Although profoundly integrated with the material of Opus 131, its strength of melodic form seems to have caused it to outgrow its original context. Beethoven developed it independently in duple time with the titles Süßer Ruhegesang and Friedengesang (two leaves later on fol. 41v) and then moved it to the end of the quartet where it sprouted several variations. He finally deleted it altogether, probably at the autograph stage, perhaps feeling that it deserved more extended treatment and that he did not want to create a fully fledged eighth movement for this quartet. The final twenty-two measures of the completed finale of Opus 131 replace the appearance of the D-flat melody and variations, with the brief Poco Adagio, twelve measures before the end, perhaps representing a wistful regret at its removal. In summary, the discarded transitional passage both unified and expanded the finale by recalling earlier music, and Beethoven eventually found ways of integrating the unifying element within the finale itself, while curtailing the expansion.

Example 8.22. Kullak sketchbook, fol. 39r, staves 8–16; fol. 39v, staves 1–8.

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String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135 Beethoven’s last string quartet is in a sense a special case because of the use of preexisting material, the canon Es muß sein, WoO 196, and because of its representational associations encapsulated in the verbal motto, “Muß es sein? Es muß sein!” (Must it be? It must be!), a motto that is both explicatory and enigmatic. Beethoven’s introduction to the finale in the completed version, the Grave ma non troppo tratto in F minor, conceals its genesis beyond the obvious point that the “Muß es sein?” and “Es muß sein!” motives are inversions of one another. A sketch on folio 54v of the Kullak sketchbook (ex. 8.23) sheds some light on this passage. Partway through writing the quartet, Beethoven had decided to use WoO 196 as the finale of this quartet, possibly due to the similarities between the canon and the material he was developing for the first movement: the second phrase of the canon contains the same pitches as the first notes of the first movement. Sketches for each appear on close or adjoining pages of the Kullak sketchbook (fols. 49r and 50r for the opening of the first movement, fol. 50v for the canon), and while they do not offer conclusive evidence, they suggest that the motivic link, noticed by various writers, was likely to have been deliberate and perhaps an extension of the joke which, according to evidence in Beethoven’s letters and conversation books, was current among his close associates at the time. The joke refers to a well-known anecdote about the connoisseur Ignaz Dembscher’s reluctance to finance a benefit concert for the violinist Schuppanzigh, and involved the phrase, “Es muß sein,” preceded by the question, “Muß es sein?” The canon, WoO 196 provided a mock musical setting for “Es muß sein,” but, at the time that he decided to use this theme for the finale of Opus 135, no music existed for the question, “Muß es sein?” Beethoven’s initial attempt to frame the question in music, on folio 54v of the Kullak sketchbook (ex. 8.23), would no doubt have pleased Schoenberg, who noted prime, inversion, and retrograde inversion forms of the motive in his article “Composition with Twelve Notes.”33 As the sketch in example 8.23 shows, Beethoven’s first thought in providing a musical question was to use the retrograde form (ex. 8.23, staff 5 of fol. 54v)—the only Schoenbergian permutation that Schoenberg had been unable to find in the completed quartet. Beethoven’s reasoning may have been to reflect the reversal of order of the first two words of the answer (“Es muß”) to frame the question (“Muß es?”). Immediately below this (ex. 8.23, staff 6 of fol. 54v), he appears to extend this thought process one step further. If one aligns the three notes of the “Es muß sein” motive, A–C–G, with the words, “Es muß sein” and then creates the musical question by reordering the notes in the same way the words are reordered, the question would be C–A–G, a motto that lacks the reversal of direction that characterizes both mottos of the final version. On the staff immediately below the retrograde form, Beethoven’s version of the question builds an alternative musical form of the question from this motive, although the notes have been inverted, perhaps to signify a question (despite

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Example 8.23. Kullak sketchbook, fol. 54v, staves 5–16.

the measure line through staves 5 and 6 of folio 54v, the lower staff appears to be a variation of the upper motive, not something designed to be heard simultaneously in contrapuntal combination). Further down the page (ex. 8.23, staff 13 of fol. 54v), Beethoven arrives at a form of the question based on inversion, which was the solution he used in the completed piece. The permutations of the original motive given in example 8.23 would have provided Schoenberg with the complete retrospective historical justification of the serial system that he appears to have been seeking. The sketch where he settled on the use of inversion to represent the question (ex. 8.23, staff 13 of folio 54v) offers some support to Christopher Reynolds’s suggestion that part of the joke was the pun on Es–E♭,34 a note that is prominent in the first, second, and final movements of Opus 135, E-flat minor making

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a bizarrely notated appearance at the very end of the completed finale (mm. 247–49). The absence of clefs and key signatures on folio 54v (which reflects Beethoven’s usual practice in sketches) creates an ambiguity as to whether the pitch for “Es” is E♭ or E♮, and Beethoven carried this ambiguity through to the autograph score. On the bottom of the first page of the autograph, Autograph 19b,35 Beethoven wrote out the motto phrases on a hand-drawn staff, again without clefs or key signatures though the bass clef is clearly intended (ex. 8.24). Since the key signature for the first page is F minor, there is thus ambiguity as to whether the note for the word “Es” is E♭ (Es) or E♮ natural (this ambiguity is removed in modern editions through the addition of clefs and key signatures). Thus, the undecided nature of the E♭ or E♮, implicit in Beethoven’s original notation, may actually have been deliberate.

Conclusion Several times in the discussion of these examples it has been mentioned that their interest does not lie exclusively, or sometimes even primarily, in the motivic connections they point out or, perhaps in some cases, feign to point out. At least as important is the shift of narrative tone, the brief moment where the implied narrator steps into the piece as the composer himself. On one level, the example in the Ninth Symphony can be seen as a highly dangerous strategy, a gesture of revealing the artifice of art that cannot be repeated often without destroying the sense of musical autonomy that lies at the heart of attentive listening.36 By dragging the flow of the music into a rather crude representational symbolism that is at odds with its natural fluency, such passages disrupt habits of perception, which, if pursued to their logical end, point the way to an art based on collage and ungrounded relativism. In seeming to represent the composer stepping back and observing himself composing, they invite an upward spiral of self-referentiality: the flash of insight from stepping outside the frame and observing from without is repeated at a higher level as the flash itself is also observed, and so on, ad infinitum. Yet, as with plays within plays, the interest of such passages is partly that they point to such a void without falling into it. Beethoven instinctively saw such self-referentiality as a way of refreshing the narrative tone, creating a focus for the finale as culmination in the process. Such self-referentiality was not taken up significantly until the symphonies of Mahler. Subsequently it became a central concern of neoclassicism and later of conceptual artworks and postmodernity. In these later styles, frequently built on irony and double coding, playing with the artwork’s frame became a way of commenting on the artifice of expression and representation, and the arbitrariness of perception as it attempts to group and interpret stimuli. In The Truth in Painting, Jacques Derrida alludes to the way meaning in artworks is created at the boundary, noting that the tension between artwork and frame is always disruptive.37

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Example 8.24. Op. 135, fourth mvt. autograph. Mus. Ms autogr. Beethoven 19b, fol. 1r.

Beethoven’s interest in creating and disturbing those boundaries in his late works expanded the scope of his strategies for expression, form, and narrative with a significant rhetorical device; it remains a salient feature of late achievement.

Notes 1. The reminiscence of the first song of An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98, in the final song, “Nimm sie hin den, diese Lieder, die ich dir, Geliebte, sang,” is also relevant to this technique, although the rhetorical shift is not disruptive, and, in the context of a song cycle, is less surprising. On narrative tone and self-commentary in Opus 130, see Richard Kramer, “Between Cavatina and Ouverture: Opus 130 and the Voices of Narrative,” Beethoven Forum 1 (1992): 164–89. On play and strictness and the “end-weighting” of the finales of the Nintth Symphony and Opus 130, see Barbara Barry, “Recycycling the End of the ‘Leibquartett’: Models, Meaning and Propriety in Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 130,” Journal of Musicology, 13 (1995): 355–76.

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2. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven Grasnick 4, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturebesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 292–Be A 293. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Biblioteka Jagiellońska for providing a microfilm copy of Grasnick 4 and Artaria 206 in an earlier phase of this research. 3. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven 11, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturebesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 023–Be A 025. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin for providing a microfilm copy of Autograph 11, Bundle 2, Artaria 201, Autograph 9, Autograph 19b, and Autograph 24 (the Kullak sketchbook), and for allowing access to some of these manuscripts in an earlier phase of this research. 4. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven Artaria 206, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin– Preußischer Kulturebesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 294–Be A 296. 5. Sieghard Brandenburg, “Die Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Beethovens Streichquartett Es-Dur Op. 127,” Beethoven Jahrbuch 10 (1983): 221–76. See particularly 273–74. 6. Mh 99, Beethovenhaus (Beethoven-Archiv) Bonn. Published in the Beethovenhaus’s Digital Archives at www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=5058&tem plate=einstieg_digitales_archiv_en&_mid=Sketches%20by%20%20Beethoven. 7. See Brandenburg, “Die Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Beethovens Streichquartett Es-Dur Op. 127,” 241–46, and Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory, ed. Douglas Johnson (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1985), 299–305. 8. The note placement of the bass part and the absence of accidentals in the sketch make possible a number of readings (see facsimile published by the Beethovenhaus at the address given in note 6). In this transcription I have assumed the apparent D in the bass of the second chord is a poorly drawn E, thus using the augmented chord as a pivot for an abrupt key change in a manner comparable to that used in a different modulation in measure 163 of the Diabelli Variations. Another possible and harmonically plausible reading would be that the bass for the first three measures is F–E♭–D. 9. The quick succession through descending major thirds was also used by Schubert in the coda to the first movement of the String Quartet in G major, Op. 161/I, measures 415–22. 10. The sketch was first described by Nottebohm who used it, together with the sketch on the preceding page (given in ex. 8.10) to suggest that the first four notes of the Grosse Fuge theme had a two-faced effect (“zweifache Wirkung”) on both Opus 132 and Opus 130. This view was questioned by Joseph Kerman and rejected by Peter Stadlen, Sieghard Brandenburg, and Barry Cooper, who argued that the B-flat sketch in example 8.10 was a later addition. Gustav Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana: nachgelassene Aufsätze (Leipzig: Verlag von C. F. Peters, 1887), 550–51; Joseph Kerman, “Beethoven Sketchbooks in the British Museum,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 93 (1966–67): 77–96; Peter Stadlen, “Possibilities of an Aesthetic Evaluation of Beethoven’s Sketches” in Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bonn 1970, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1971), 111–17; Brandenburg, “Die Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Beethovens Streichquartett Es-Dur Op. 127,” 240–41; Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 211.

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11. As is well known, that preoccupation was not without its frivolous side. In a letter of August 1, 1824, to his lawyer, Johann Baptiste Bach, Beethoven adorned the address with the BACH musical motto. Beethoven also used the BACH motive to invoke the woozy effect of champagne in a pun on the name of his visitor and drinking companion, the pianist, Friedrich Kuhlau, in the canon, “Kühl, nicht lau,” WoO 191, written on September 2, 1825. See Emily Anderson, The Letters of Beethoven, vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1961), 1134, 1245. 12. Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, rev. and ed. Elliot Forbes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 890–91. The sketch transcription given on page 890 is from Gustav Nottebohm, “Skizzen zur neunten Symphonie,” in Zweite Beethoveniana, 180. 13. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven Artaria 201, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturebesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 219–Be A 221. Nottebohm, whose transcription of the sketch given in example 8.12 is often quoted, incorrectly places the word “comincia” over the incipit of the first movement rather than over the second. Nottebohm, “Skizzen zur neunten Symphonie,” 167. 14. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven 8, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 283–Be A 285. This sketch is also transcribed in Nottebohm, “Skizzen zur neunten Symphonie,” 180 (see note 12). Nottebohm’s transcription omits the second layer (marked “oder”) in measures 6–8. Further sketches for this theme appear on folios 36v and 36r. 15. De Roda, Beethovenhaus (Beethoven-Archiv), Bonn. The De Roda sketchbook is published in facsimile at the Digital Archives of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn at www. beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=5058&template=einstieg_digitales_ archiv_en&_mid=Sketches%20by%20%20Beethoven. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Beethovenhaus for supplying a microfilm copy in the early stages of this research. 16. Transcription of the words is due to Hans-Günter Klein, Ludwig van Beethoven: Autographe und Abschriften, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kataloge der Musikabteilung, ed. Rudolf Elvers, Erste Reihe: Handschriften, vol. 2 (Berlin: Verlag Merseburge Berlin, 1975), 59. Klein gives “Marcia serios pathet.” 17. A slightly different transcription of this sketch page appears in Sieghard Brandenburg, “The Historical Background to the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ in Beethoven’s Aminor Quartet, Op. 132,” in Beethoven Studies III, ed. Alan Tyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 166. The present transcription owes a debt to some aspects of Brandenburg’s reading, though also differs from it in some respects. In particular, the transcription of the word “eingang” above staff 3, and the interpretation of the ambiguously placed note on the second beat of the first measure of staff 7 as a B (rather than as a D on the staff above) are both due to Brandenburg. The other variants from Brandenburg’s readings are offered as possible alternatives where note placements are ambiguous. In the system, staves 2/3, Brandenburg transcribes the words as “in F moll, aufhören.” On the system, staves 4/5, Brandenburg transcribes the section after the key signature in F-sharp major (as dominant of B) rather than the E major given here. The differences between the versions do not affect the argument presented. Readers are urged to compare versions and consult the original, which is published in facsimile at the Digital Archives of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn at www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=5058& template=einstieg_digitales_archiv_en&_mid=Sketches%20by%20%20Beethoven. 18. Karl-Heinz Köhler and Grita Herre, Ludwig van Beethovens Koversationshefte, vol. 7 (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1978), 287–88. The sketches occupy 23r–25r of

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Heft 89. The sketch for the slow movement on folio 23r is marked “Dor[isch]” indicating that this sketch was done at a time when the slow movement was not fully developed and would therefore predate those in the Moscow sketchbook. A later sketch on folio 27v contains a draft for the slow movement’s title: “DankHimne eines Kranken an Gott Bey seiner Genusung Gefühl neuer Kra[f]t u. widererwachtem Gefühl.” Ibid., 291. 19. Moscow sketchbook, fol. 155, no. 2, State Central M. I. Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow. Published (1) in facsimile with commentary by M. Ivanov-Boretzky in Musikalische Bildung 1–2 (January–March 1927): 9–91; (2) as Ludwig van Beethoven: Moscow Sketchbook from 1825, facsimile, trans. with commentary Elena Vjaskova (Moscow: Gnesins Musical Academy of Russia, 1995). Page 1 of the Moscow sketchbook is in faint pencil and both facsimiles and the transcription by Vjaskova were consulted in the preparation of the transcription given here. Staff 1 is illegible in the published facsimiles and the transcription given here is entirely due to Vjaskova and by comparison with measure 47 of the published version of Opus 132/III. Vjaskova gives additional pitches in staff 5 that are not legible from either facsimile and are not included here. Readers are urged to consult Vjaskova’s transcription and commentary. 20. See letters 1410, 1415, and 1416 in Anderson, The Letters of Beethoven, vol. 3, 1231, 1236–38. 21. Barry Cooper discusses the decision to discard the Alla danza tedesca in terms of its being replaced by the Alla Marcia. While this was the eventual outcome, it is also worth noting that, at some stages of the compositional process, Beethoven appears to have intended to use both movements. For example, there is a sketch for the Alla Marcia on folio 9v (staves 1/2ff.) and on folio 12v (staves 1–2) of the De Roda sketchbook and a sketch for the Alla danza tedesca, in A major, between these on folio 11v (staff 8). The discarding of the Alla danza tedesca and the consolidation of the Alla Marcia, recitative, and finale all crystallized after the character of the Heiliger Dankgesang become clear. Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process, 209. 22. Egerton 2795, British Library, London. 23. Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process, 209–14. 24. The Kullak Sketchbook. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven 24, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 068–Be A 071. 25. Taken as a whole, the sketches for the Grosse Fuge in the Kullak sketchbook occupy roughly the first ten folios (with a final Grosse Fuge sketch occurring on fol. 12r) and document the last stages of work on the piece. On folio 2r, Beethoven seems to have turned his attention to the Overtura, with a sketch for the opening of the movement in open score. 26. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven 9, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 018–Be A 023. 27. The sixteenth-note countersubject first appears on folios 8v and 9r of the pocket sketchbook, Autograph 9, Bundle 5, the book Beethoven used immediately after Egerton 2795. The Thema also appears on folio 9r, but the first sketch combining the two contrapuntally is on folio 10v. 28. Arnold Schoenberg, “Composition with Twelve Tones,” in Style and Idea, ed. and trans. Dika Newlin (London: Williams and Norgate, 1951), 111. 29. Ms 62 and Ms 66, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Ms 62 and Ms 66 are currently stored as a series of detached bifolia, numbered Ms 66 (1), Ms 66 (2), and so forth. It

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is clear from the pattern of stitch-holes on the central fold that they were once roughly bound together. One possible reconstruction of the original sketchbook is given in Johnson, Tyson, and Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 454–55. According to this reconstruction, the page transcribed in example 8.20, would be page 53 of a total of 60 (59 survive in Ms 62 and 66: half a bifolio (Ms 66(4)) has been removed at some stage). The assistance of the Bibliothèque Nationale in allowing access to these manuscripts and in providing a microfilm copy early in the research is gratefully acknowledged. 30. Robert Winter, Compositional Origins of Beethoven’s Op. 131 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982). 31. Maynard Solomon, Beethoven (London: Granada, 1980), 450–51. 32. The network of cues is discussed in some detail by Winter. See his “Compositional Origins of Beethoven’s Op. 131,” 167. 33. Arnold Schoenberg, “Composition with Twelve Tones,” 111. 34. Christopher Reynolds, “The Representational Impulse in Late Beethoven, II: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135,” Acta Musicologica 60 (1988): 180–94. See particularly 190. 35. Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven 19b, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Published in Die Beethoven-Sammlung, Part 3 of Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002–5), microfiche, Be A 055–Be A 056. Because of the faintness of the hand-drawn staff, a transcription rather than a facsimile is given in example 8.23. 36. Thayer relates an anecdote about Beethoven’s difficulty with composing the bridge between the instrumental and the vocal components of the finale, which captures the notion of stepping outside the frame. According to this anecdote, Beethoven wrote a sketch that he showed to Schindler with the words, “Let us sing the song of the immortal Schiller Freude.” Thayer, Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, 891. David Levy observes that the finale has a theatrical antecedent in Fidelio, noting the near quotation of Schiller’s “An die Freude” in the finale to Act II: “Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, Stimm in unsern Jubel ein!” (He who has obtained a cherished wife, join together in our rejoicing!). David Benjamin Levy, Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony, rev. ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 44–45. 37. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoffrey Burnington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 47.

Additional Sources Köhler, Karl-Heinz, Grita Herre, and Dagmar Beck, eds. Ludwig van Beethovens Koversationshefte. 11 vols. Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1978–2001. Nottebohm, Gustav. Beethoveniana von Gustav Nottebohm with a new introduction in English by Paul Henry Lang. 2 vols. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1970. Originally published as Nottebohm, Gustav. Beethoveniana. Leipzig: Verlag von C. F. Peters, 1872. ———. Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1865. ———. Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1880.

Chapter Nine

“They Only Give Rise to Misunderstandings”: Mahler’s Sketches in Context James L. Zychowicz Like the innovative art and architecture of his time,1 the music of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) reflects new approaches to structure in which detail and effect take their place alongside other, more traditional elements.2 Yet the creative divergence implicit in such innovation makes it difficult to deal with Mahler’s works in precisely the same way as the music of the preceding generation. Rather, the composer’s emphases are critical to understanding his intentions, and clues are found not only in Mahler’s published correspondence3 and reported conversations,4 but also emerge vividly in the sketches and drafts that document his compositional process. While Mahler was skeptical about sketch study, per se, it is those very materials that contain clues about important aspects of his own music, offering a perspective that the principles of genetic criticism will be shown to enhance.

Mahler and Sketches Mahler, who spent much of his career as a conductor, was able to compose only when his responsibilities during the performing seasons eased sufficiently to allow him to concentrate on his own music. It was important for him to approach his compositions systematically, so that he could put the sketches away at some point and return to them later, without having to retrace his steps. The sketches were, for him, private documents, that is, materials he intended for his own use; and despite the fact that he gave some pages to his friends, he did not expect that the manuscripts would necessarily mean anything to others. In fact, in the conversations with Mahler that she took down, Natalie Bauer-Lechner reports that the composer once

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. . . spoke of his sketchbooks and sketchsheets: “For God’s sake [see] that they aren’t preserved and don’t outlive me—I will see to that, and will destroy everything that is unfinished. For they only give rise to misunderstandings. What have they divined from Beethoven’s! That, for instance, he supposedly worked on compositions that are completely different from each other in the same volume. That’s nothing! All sorts of things merely occurred to him continuously, which he jotted down and preserved for a later time, and which he then used at the right opportunity. Or they say that the completed work signifies such progress beyond the sketched draft: meanwhile they have no notion of what entirely different things could have come from such a first inkling in his hands.5

These comments are significant for several reasons, including Mahler’s championing of Beethoven’s compositional process as if it were his own. Hardly dispassionate about what an analyst might know, Mahler put himself in the mind of Beethoven. It is as though Mahler himself were experiencing the divergent ideas. Given the ardent tone of this passage, it is not difficult to substitute Mahler’s name for Beethoven’s in this interchange, which also suggests the discomfort Mahler himself would have felt if his own sketches were made public. At the time of this conversation with Bauer-Lechner, the critics had responded to his first three symphonies in various ways, some favorable, others hostile. For Mahler then to make available his own sketches and thus reveal some aspects of his latest music en route to its completion would have been imprudent. Moreover, it would open the door to further disparagement by the press at the very time when Mahler was retrenching himself by abandoning overt connections to explicit programs6 for his earlier symphonies just as he was seeing those works into print.7 At the same time Mahler’s reference to Beethoven’s sketches brings to mind the efforts of Gustav Nottebohm8 (1817–82) who died a decade before the conversation with Bauer-Lechner, but whose last book had been published just a few years earlier. Mahler may have thought that the selections Nottebohm used from various sketchbooks of Beethoven did not represent the earlier composer’s creative life effectively. Indeed, Nottebohm’s approach stands out for the way the analyst abstracted ideas from the sketches to support the image he was creating, and this is a perspective that could give pause to another composer, such as Mahler. Having already endured criticism on the part of some critics, Mahler was expressing the caution that would protect him from further misunderstandings, if his own sketches were in some way made public. Given the relative paucity of material for any single work, except the unfinished Tenth Symphony, 9 the auto-da-fe that Mahler intended for his sketches and drafts was apparently no empty threat. In contrast to the quantity of sketches that survive as part of Beethoven’s legacy, the compositional materials for Mahler’s music are relatively meager. While it is impossible to know with absolute certainty the precise number of pages that once existed, external evidence offers some clues. For example, the folder indicated for the Fourth

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Symphony that now contains the Particell (short score) of that work’s slow movement10 appears to have once enclosed many more pages than the few that survive. Moreover, the quantity of materials for the unfinished movements of the Tenth Symphony11 may also give some idea of the number of pages that were involved with other multimovement works. In comparison with the latter, the extant pages for earlier symphonies seem to be a portion of a much larger number of sketches and drafts. It is unlikely, though, that Mahler destroyed his manuscripts in some melodramatic display, but rather, dealt with them systematically, as he took his music to increasingly more detailed states of completion. No full set of sketches exists for any single work, but enough materials from the different stages of composition survive to elucidate aspects of Mahler’s working method.12 Such is the case with the Fourth Symphony, for which various kinds of sketches may be found from almost every stage of work. Thus, from the early plans of movements, to such refined later documents as the fair copy, each phase of composition is represented. As a summer composer, Mahler arrived at an approach that allowed him to leave off his work at the end of summer and return to it at the beginning of the next. This was the case in 1900, when Mahler is reported to have thrown the sketches into a drawer when he was apparently not yet finished with the music. Bauer-Lechner quotes Mahler’s anguish about having to curtail work in the summer of 1899 just as he had reached a critical point in what would be the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony: You can imagine how I felt when I broke all that off and left Aussee. . . . I rolled up the few sketches, which no one else could possibly decipher, into a single parcel, threw them into the bottom drawer of my writing-desk, and didn’t look at them any more; indeed, I can’t even think of them without the most piercing stab of grief. . . .13

Mahler’s frustration at having to stop work is understandable, since he must have achieved some momentum. Yet the fact that he could leave the sketches, even with the reluctance he admitted to Bauer-Lechner, and return to them successfully after almost a year suggests a solid working process that supported his compositional efforts. Moreover, approaching Mahler’s sketches and drafts from the perspective of genetic criticism14 is useful in placing the materials in context, which requires an understanding of the composer’s working methods. This process emerges from an immersion in Mahler’s working materials, so that the various stages of composition and phases of work can be discerned from the content of the materials and the relationships that exist between various kinds of sketches and drafts en route to the completed work.15 Inevitably, sketch study—through the lens of genetic criticism—can reveal the choices that the composer made as he finished his score, and sometimes it is equally intriguing to investigate the false starts and

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Table 9.1. Overview of Mahler’s working process: symphonic music. Stage of Work

Kinds of Materials

Nature of Work

I. Early Ideas

1. Plans of Movements

Conceptual phase

2. Sketchbooks

Themes and motives

3. Preliminary Sketches

Self-contained passages on single sheets

4. Short Score

First efforts at continuous movements

5. Draft Score

First orchestration

6. Fair Copy

Complete work, sometimes with revisions

7. Published Score

Usually includes revisions of the fair copy

8. Later Revisions (after publication)

Further revisions and refinements

II. Sketches and Drafts

III. Finished Work

tentative steps that he did not pursue, but that were, for a time, as valid as what he ultimately committed to using in the completed work. Such ideas emerge readily when viewed in the context of Mahler’s working process, since his systematic approach to composing allowed him to work efficiently in the limited time he had for his own music.

Mahler’s Compositional Process In composing his symphonies, Mahler pursued three distinct stages of work as shown in table 9.1: 1. Early ideas (as found in plans of movements and sketchbooks); 2. Sketches and drafts leading to the fair copy; and 3. The fair copy and later revisions of the finished score. For each of these stages, specific kinds of documents exist: 1. Mahler committed his early ideas to sketchbooks and plans of movements, the latter sometimes being lists of movement titles or tempo markings with key designations;

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eventually finish it. The series of the pairings of instrumental movements with orchestral songs in that plan also reflect the connections between vocal and instrumental music that are crucial for understanding the structure of the Fourth Symphony with its goal in the song Das himmlische Leben. Yet the relationship between instrumental and vocal idiom in his music is an element that Mahler never explicitly discussed in his conversations with Natalie Bauer-Lechner and others, but one that emerges in a document like this one. Understood in this way, the plan of movements for the Third Symphony with Das himmlische Leben as its Finale and the one for the “Symphonische Humoreske” are not the preferred schemes, but serve as a means to an end—a way of manipulating ideas. Like the sketchbooks that he would consult as he began work, the plans of movements allowed Mahler the creative space to imagine the various pieces that would take shape as a symphony.

Plans of Movements and Plans for Texts Barring any perceived or inferred misunderstandings about their function, the plans of movements show Mahler committing to work on a new symphony. Even if he would reject many of its specifics, as with the plan for the six-movement “Symphonische Humoreske” that became the four-movement Fourth Symphony, the outline offered a starting point. With vocal works, though, Mahler would sometimes deal with the texts in a similar manner, writing out the texts he wanted to set, and this provided another point of departure for composing the music. While various commentators have acknowledged dissimilarities between the sources of Mahler’s texts and the verses he set in his songs, a careful examination of the materials reveals a range of differences, from somewhat subtle changes in word choice to more thorough revisions of poetic structure. Mahler’s attention to his texts is apparent in the various manuscripts in which he manually copied out the verses. Several of these documents have survived, such as his handwritten copy of Klopstock’s hymn “Auferstehung” used in the Finale of the Second Symphony.”18 A similar situation exists for his copies of two poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn that Mahler intended to use but never implemented in his Eighth Symphony.19 For the latter example, Mahler indicated the disposition of the voices alongside the verses, an element that connects the music with the text. On another level, an analysis of some of the song texts is useful in demonstrating the way in which Mahler composed his Lieder. For a song like “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?!” it is not enough to find the nominal source, since it contains only part of what Mahler used in his setting. It is also not enough to say that he composed the verses not found in the source, since he did not. While he had composed some of the poetry for his song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Mahler also used some verse from one of the fragmentary “Tanzreime” found in Des Knaben Wunderhorn at the beginning of one poem he himself completed.20

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Table 9.2. Mahler’s text for “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?!” and its sources.

Mahler used a different strategy for some of his later settings of Wunderhorn poetry, when he combined texts from several existing poems. With, for example, “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?!” Mahler manipulated the texts to arrive at a ternary structure of the verses, which supports his approach to the song. (See table 9.2, which includes both original texts aligned with the text Mahler used in his setting.) While Mahler began with the poem “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht,” he used the middle section of his text from another poem from Des Knaben

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Wunderhorn, specifically the one titled in that source “Wers Lieben erdacht.” While no evidence exists to explain Mahler’s decision to use these two poems together, the verb “erdacht” is common to both, and the situation described in both texts is likewise similar. In taking a portion of the latter dialogue song with its verses alternating between a woman and a man into his single-voice text, Mahler achieved a sophistication not found in either source by itself. In this regard, his hybrid text may be regarded as more artful in the shift of tone at its center, an element that he reinforced with his musical setting. Just as he sometimes reduced the number of verses in a strophic text to compress his setting,21 the selection of verses from the two poems to arrive at the text of “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?!” shows Mahler having ultimately composed what is essentially a new text for his song. With this text, Mahler’s approach resembles the way in which Charles Ives worked on his songs. While some similarities between the efforts of Ives and Mahler have already been explored,22 it is less usual to find composers shaping their texts as actively as did these two composers. As H. Wiley Hitchcock states in the introduction to his edition of 129 Songs, Ives would also shape some of his own texts when he prepared them. Ives was “editor of texts by others, manipulator and selective user of such texts, and even transmogrifier (into lyrics) of texts never intended as such by their authors. . . .”23 Mahler treated his texts in a similar way, since he not only used verse without revision, as he did with the poetry of Friedrich Rückert, but he also would, at times, adapt two or more poems from the anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn to create a new text. Like the “transmogrifier” Hitchcock labels Ives, Mahler adapted verse from Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra for his Third Symphony. Ives similarly allowed his texts to be “an expression of that composer’s persona,”24 and this phrasing reflects the way in which Mahler went beyond other composers who previously had set poetry from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Mahler’s engagement with the texts was profound, and rather than create a “persona,” it allowed those Wunderhorn texts to give a name to Mahler’s approach early in his career.25 Here, though, analysis cannot rely exclusively on the manuscripts in which Mahler wrote out his texts, since relatively few such documents survive.26 Rather an understanding of this part of Mahler’s creative process must result from close readings of his sources in order to understand the nature of the materials he used to create his texts. In fashioning some of his Wunderhorn poems, Mahler also gave shape to the structure of his songs, an element that becomes even more critical later in his work, when he manipulated multiple texts from Hans Bethge’s Die chinesische Flöte for “Der Abschied,” the final section of his symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. This is but one phase of the various stages of composition in Mahler’s vocal music.

Sketches and Drafts When Mahler began to compose a symphony in earnest, though, he used singlepage sheets to work out what have come to be known as preliminary sketches

Figure 9.2. Two leaves from a sketchbook that contains material Mahler used for his Seventh Symphony (Médiathèque Gustav Mahler, Paris, France, La Grange Collection).

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(Vorentwürfe). (For an outline of this and other stages of composition, refer to fig. 9.2.) These materials are crucial, as they stand between the initial impulses that prompted him to start a new symphonic work and the more continuous short score in which the individual movements took shape. Having employed single leaves of bifolio sheets in landscape orientation (Querformat), he proceeded to work out self-contained passages that generally occupy a single page. While possible, it is less usual to find ideas that continue across pages. Rather, he composed modular sections that he would assemble later, after he had the opportunity to review the ideas that emerged during this stage of the compositional process. If Mahler took ideas from the sketchbooks forward into the preliminary sketches, he would cross out the former, so that he could identify any unused ideas immediately (see the representative sketchbook pages in fig. 9.2). He would also cross out material in the preliminary sketches as he worked on them, either to negate a passage or to replace it with another. While ideas in sketchbooks usually occupy a single line, the preliminary sketches customarily contain systems of up to four staves, but without consistent textures. Not content at merely transcribing ideas from the sketchbooks, he developed the themes and motives in the preliminary sketches, and sometimes added pitches (to suggest the supporting harmony) or inscribed some lines of rudimentary counterpoint or figuration. His attention to detail varied, since some passages show him crossing out several notes and inscribing others over them in various portions of the preliminary sketches. Sometimes he would compose passages of stems without noteheads that give the shape and overall direction of the line, without the specific pitches that he would provide later. At various points Mahler also left indications for scoring within the sketches such as “Streicher” (strings) and such abbreviations as “Cl.” (for clarinet) or “Tpt.” (for trumpet). Yet such markings are relatively infrequent, as if Mahler wanted to invoke a specific timbre—he never reviewed the preliminary sketches or even the short score with the specific intention of planning the orchestration. Thus, the various indications of scoring stand out within materials that are otherwise devoted to working out thematic groups and various passages in which Mahler would develop ideas. Figure 9.3, which reproduces preliminary sketch page 6 for the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, contains several of these elements. At some point, though, Mahler reviewed his preliminary sketches and put them in order, prior to taking each movement into the short score. Since he sometimes composed various pages at different times, the hand and writing instrument occasionally differ from one sheet to the next, but he clearly marked the sequence of pages at the top, usually with Arabic numerals. Some of the pages bear indications of the section to which they belong, such as “Reprise,” “Wiederholung,” to cite two examples, and such labels most likely emerged at the time when Mahler assembled the preliminary sketches for a single movement and then referred to the set when he composed the short score.

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Figure 9.3. Preliminary sketch page “6” for the first movement of the Fourth Symphony (Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, Case MS VM 1001 M21 S4).

When Mahler took the preliminary sketches into the short score, he was no longer constrained by the somewhat modular character of those materials and pursued, instead, a continuous draft for each movement. The more predictable four-staff texture along with a uniform hand and writing instrument is characteristic of the short score, thus reflecting its continuity. Not merely copying the preliminary sketches, he used the short score to compose transitions and other passages in which he shaped the structure. Since the short score involves some new composition, it is possible to find such material interleaved in the short score or set as insertions at the bottoms of pages—Mahler usually marked “Einlage” (insertion) passages with a caret and placed a corresponding mark at the point where the insertion is to occur. In some places Mahler gave himself options; one sketch for the Fourth Symphony includes two choices, one marked “Entweder,” the other “oder” (Either . . . or . . . ) and he eventually chose between the options presumably when he proceeded with the next stage of work. Even with the relatively late material representing his more advanced conception of his music, the earlier materials are certainly not without interest. Mahler’s notations to himself include various kinds of comments, such as notes on orchestration that he often used later. At the same time, he also used the

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sketches for personal annotations, such as those found in the draft score of his Ninth Symphony27 and sketches for the Tenth.28 Other sketches contain annotations that represent, at times, programmatic ideas that must have conveyed to him personal associations that helped him to realize the music in later drafts. Some annotations are more substantial and not necessarily private. For all the quotations from his vocal music that occur in his symphonies, Mahler was nowhere explicit in his comments to Bauer-Lechner, Alma, or others about his plans to do so. Yet one preliminary sketch for the Scherzo of the Fourth Symphony is intriguing for Mahler’s note to himself regarding the quotation of the song he used for the Finale: “Erst von hier himmlisches Leben—deutlich” (First from here, Das himmlische Leben, clearly). This explicit reference is unprecedented and shows the composer planning his work strategically, rather than composing in a milieu where such resemblances—Anklänge—have sometimes been explained as part of his musical language. With this annotation Mahler is not just speculating about what he wanted to do, as sometimes occurs in his letters.29 Rather, the instruction about the song “Das himmlische Leben” is part of the sketches that he would take from one phase of work to another, as he attended to such details en route to arriving at the completed score. More clearly than any analytic surmise, this reference to the song is a definite indication of the relationship between the instrumental and vocal idioms in the Fourth Symphony, and thus demonstrates the value of source studies in understanding Mahler’s music. Once the Particell met his approval, Mahler proceeded with the draft score or Partiturentwurf, his first orchestration of the work in full score. For this Mahler used bifolio sheets inscribed on all four sides, which sets them apart from the ripped folio pages of the preliminary sketches that usually contain music on one side. The numeration of the draft score bears consideration, as he indicated the order of bifolios but did not necessarily number each page of the draft score. In cases where Mahler made annotations about instrumentation in the short score, he referred to them when he composed the draft score and went further to include some basic tempo markings and, at times, some rudimentary dynamics. While articulations may occur in the draft score, they usually occur with consistency in the fair copy, as is the case with other expression markings. Yet the emphasis at this stage of work is on scoring the music for full orchestra, an effort that for Mahler essentially ended a composition, as he noted on the final page of the draft score for the Fourth Symphony’s third movement—it was the last movement, since the fourth movement, the Song-Finale was already finished (see fig. 9.4). Yet that did not mean he would not attend to further details as he brought the music to performance. Once the draft score was finished, Mahler could proceed with the fair copy, a stage of work that was sometimes left to a copyist. Despite the detailed annotations in his draft scores, Mahler once lamented confusion on the part of the copyist for the Fourth Symphony, who almost reversed the order of the inner movements. At that time Mahler suffered a severe hemorrhage and feared that

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had he died, the work would suffer because the movements would have been presented out of the intended order.30 With the fair copy, though, comes a more fixed state of the work. The presentation differs with its upright format (Hochformat), and any revisions are left to in-line corrections of the score itself, or in some cases, annotations in the margins. At this stage, Mahler revised the scoring in order to refine the sound of the work, without making substantial changes in the content. Even after reaching such a fixed state, Mahler did not cease to refine his music, as he corrected proofs and even made further revisions on the published scores so that his latest thoughts could be included in subsequent printings.

Toward a Conclusion From the perspectives offered by genetic criticism, it is difficult to imagine misunderstandings arising from knowledge of Mahler’s sketches, but rather we gain insights into his music and his creative process. Genetic criticism affords the analyst the ability to do what Helen Vendler holds to be one of the “truer” functions of criticism, “to restore the neglected and discover the new.”31 In viewing the documents Mahler used en route to complete his works, it is possible to retrieve perspectives that may be less evident through analysis that deals solely with the finished work. Such insights complement other approaches and offer the imprimatur of authenticity that comes with using primary materials. Closer, perhaps, than letters and other verbal materials, like the conversations with Bauer-Lechner, the sketches offer a view of the music from the inside. In the context of Mahler’s compositional process, these materials also provide a crucial glimpse into the way his works took shape, especially on those complicated pages that contain corrections and, perhaps, competing versions of various passages. Artifacts from a time when the music was still taking shape, the sketches reveal the possibilities that Mahler evaluated as he made choices that he used to complete his thoughts. Keeping in mind Mahler’s concern about Beethoven, sketches may not show what a composer actually thought as he worked on his music, but studies of the sketches are nonetheless relevant when it comes to understanding the works to which they belong. Even at the risk of feared misunderstandings, it is fortuitous that not all of Mahler’s sketches were destroyed because of the ideas that they preserve. The sketches remain illuminating documents that demonstrate the way in which Mahler allowed his ideas to develop, as he gave shape and nuance to the scores of his carefully structured music.

Notes 1. Of the various studies of Viennese culture in Mahler’s time, several remain useful not only as points of departure, but references meriting a return, and among them is

Figure 9.4. Final draft score pages from the third movement of the Fourth Symphony (Médiathèque Gustav Mahler, Paris, France, La Grange Collection). Mahler’s annotation at the end of the score reads “3. Satz (und somit die ganze Symphonie)/ am Sontag 6 August [1900] zu Maiernigg beendet” [third movement (and thus the entire Symphony) completed on Sunday, August 6 [1900] in Maiernigg]. (The date of completion was actually Sunday, August 5, 1900, according to Bauer-Lechner.)

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Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna (New York: Knopf, 1980). See especially pages 82–110 in the chapter titled “The Ringstrasse, Its Critics, and the Birth of Urban Modernism.” To place the era into a historic context, see Steven Beller, A Concise History of Austria (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. 151–77. 2. Mahler’s treatment of detail emerges in investigations of his compositional process, as he arrived at increasingly refined scores. See, for example, the attention he accorded the nuances of scoring, barring, and other elements of the Fourth Symphony when he composed the draft score, as discussed in the present author’s study of that work. See James L. Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure, ed. Malcolm Gillies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 111–39. Richard G. Hopkins has dealt with the structural aspects of such elements in Closure and Mahler’s Music: The Role of Secondary Parameters, Studies in the Criticism and Theory of Music (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). 3. The most comprehensive collection of Mahler’s correspondence published to date is Gustav Mahler: Briefe, ed. by Herta Blaukopf, 2nd ed. (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1996). The selection of Mahler’s letters has been published in English translation, Gustav Mahler: Selected Letters, ed. Knud Martner, trans. Eithne Wilkins, Ernst Kaiser, and Bill Hopkins (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979). Martner’s volume does not contain all the letters found in Blaukopf’s edition. 4. Several authors reported their conversations with Mahler, including his wife Alma, whom he married in 1902. Prior to Alma, the musician Natalie Bauer-Lechner spent much time with the composer between 1892 and 1901, especially during the summers when he would devote his efforts to composition. See Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler, ed. and annotated Knud Martner (Hamburg: Karl Dieter Wagner, 1984), and its English translation, Recollections of Gustav Mahler, ed. and annotated Peter Franklin, trans. Dika Newlin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Franklin distinguished between Natalie’s Mahler and Alma’s Mahler in his later biography of the composer; see Peter Franklin, The Life of Mahler, Musical Lives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 116–17. 5. Natalie Bauer-Lechner, “Mahleriana,” undated manuscript in Médiathèque Musicale Mahler (Paris), which is quoted and translated by Stephen Hefling in “Variations ‘In nuce’: A Study of Mahler Sketches and a Comment on Sketch Studies,” in Gustav Mahler Colloquium 1979, ed. Rudolf Klein (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981), 125. This passage was not included in Bauer-Lechner’s published Erinnerungen. 6. Mahler overtly dissociated himself from programs in late 1900. In an undated letter (most likely written around November 20, 1900) to the critic Max Marschalk, Mahler clarified his stand by taking his discussion back to Beethoven: “From Beethoven onwards, there is no modern music that has not its inner programme.—But any music about which one first has to tell the listener what experience it embodies, and what he is meant to experience, is worthless.—and once more—pereat—every programme!— One simply has to come provided with ears and a heart and—not the least—give oneself up willingly to the rhapsodist. A residue of mystery always remains—even for the creator!” See Blaukopf, Gustav Mahler: Briefe, 277, and the English translation in Martner, Gustav Mahler: Selected Letters, 262. The typographic emphasis in Martner’s translation is not in the German-language edition. It is important to distinguish between the plans of movements, sometimes with descriptive titles that are part of Mahler’s compositional process, and the narrative descriptions that he wrote for the concert programs, but in some cases, the descriptive titles made their way into the latter, as occurred with the Third Symphony.

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7. Mahler published his Second Symphony in 1897 (rev. ed., 1903), the First Symphony in 1899 (rev. ed., 1906), and the revised (two-part) version of his first major work, the cantata Das klagende Lied appeared in 1901. 8. The perspective on Gustav Nottebohm’s work found in Douglas Johnson, “Gustav Nottebohm,” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, http://grovemusic.com (accessed February 3, 2007) is useful for putting his accomplishments in perspective. His publications include Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven (1865); Beethoviana (1872); Beethovens Studien (1873); Zweite Beethoveniana (1887). (The last publication is posthumous.) Yet even a cursory examination of one of Nottebohm’s studies reveals a scholar whose own knowledge is impressive, even though the mode of presentation he chose to use does not reflect the more contextual orientation modern scholarship has taken in studies of Beethoven’s sketchbooks. 9. The fullest facsimile of the sketches has been published by Walter Ricke. See Gustav Mahler, X. Symphonie: Facsimile nach der Handschrift (Munich: W. Ricke, 1967). 10. This manuscript is among the holdings of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. 11. Of the various studies that exist of the materials for Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, the performing version by Deryck Cooke contains a diplomatic transcription of the sketches. See Deryck Cooke, ed., Gustav Maher: A Performing Version of the Draft for the Tenth Symphony, 2nd ed. (New York and London: AMP/Faber, 1989). For an introduction to some of the issues involved with this work, see Colin Matthews, “The Tenth Symphony,” in The Mahler Companion, ed. by Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 491–507. 12. For an overview of Mahler’s compositional process, see Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, 2–8. 13. Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler, 143; English translation, Franklin, Recollections of Gustav Mahler, 154. 14. For applications of genetic criticism to manuscript study, see Pierre-Marc de Biasi, “Toward a Science of Literature: Manuscript Analysis and the Genesis of the Work,” in Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes, ed. Jed Deppman, Daniel Ferrer, and Michael Groden (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 36–69. De Biasi deals specifically with literature, but some of his comments can be applied to manuscript study in general, especially when he demonstrates the differences that exist between this approach and others. As he states, “. . . the old study of genesis traditionally devoted itself to a tentative stylistic evaluation. In general, the methods and results were not very penetrating: the most darting enterprises of this kind tended to present a more or less voluminous selection of ‘variants,’ chosen without any precise criteria from among those best suited for illustrating what one already intended to make of them . . .” (40). 15. See the present author’s study of Mahler’s compositional process in Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Some further discussion may be found in the same author’s “Reevaluating the Sources of Mahler’s Music,” in Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 419–36. 16. See the summary table of Mahler’s plans of movements for the Third Symphony in Henry-Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler, vol. 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973; repr. with corrections, London: Victor Gollancz, 1974), 798–99; rev. ed., Gustav Mahler: Chronique d’une vie, vol. 1: Vers la gloire 1860–1900 (Paris: Fayard, 1979), 1038–39. 17. Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, 35–46. Mahler never fully excised all the connections to Das himmlische Leben from the Third Symphony, and the resulting intertextuality enhances the integrity between the Third and Fourth Symphonies. 18. This page is part of the collection of Henry-Louis de La Grange, currently found in the Médiathèque Gustav Mahler, Paris.

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19. Among the holdings of the New York Public Library, Lincoln Center, is a manuscript in Mahler’s hand that contains two texts: one labeled “1. Trio Sopran,” with the text of “Schluss” from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and the second labeled “2. Trio Alt,” with the text of “Morgenlied” from the same source. The texts most likely belong to the materials for the Eighth Symphony, which was to have a section devoted to the Christ Child, in the four-movement plan for that work. For a reproduction of the no longer extant plan, see Alfred Rosenzweig, “Wie Gustav Mahler seine Achte ‘Achte’ plante: Die erste handschriftlich Skizze,” Der Wiener Tag, June 4, 1933. See also Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, 53–54. 20. Mahler used some lines of the “Tanzreime” at the opening of the first song, “Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht,” as shown in the following table: Table 9.3. Mahler’s text for “Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht” and its source. Mahler’s Text

Source (Des Knaben Wunderhorn)

“Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht”

From “Tanzreime” (a group of short verses in the third section of Des Knaben Wunderhorn)

Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, Fröhliche Hochzeit macht, Hab’ ich meinen traurigen Tag! Geh’ ich in mein Kämmerlein, Dunkles Kämmerlein, Weine, wein’ um meinen Schatz, Um meinen lieben Schatz! Blümlein blau! Verdorre nicht! Vöglein süß! Du singst auf grüner Heide. Ach, wie ist die Welt so schön! Ziküth! Ziküth! Singet nicht! Blühet nicht! Lenz ist ja vorbei! Alles Singen ist nun aus. Des Abends, wenn ich schlafen geh’, Denk’ ich an mein Leide. An mein Leide!

Wann mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, Hab ich einen traurigen Tag: Geh ich in mein Kämmerlein, Wein um meinen Schatz. Blümlein blau, verdorre nicht, Du stehst auf grüner Heide;

Des Abends, wenn ich schlafen geh, So denk ich an das Lieben. O du mein liebes Hergottle, Was han i der denn thaun; Daß du mir an mein lebelang, Net willst heurathen laun. Jezt will i nimmer betta, Will net in Kirche gaun; Geb acht, i kann de nötha, Du wirst me heura laun.

21. An example of such effective compression maybe found in Mahler’s setting of the six strophes of the Wunderhorn poem “Verspatung” in the three-strophe song Das irdische Leben, a piece that functions as a kind of antecedent to Das himmlische Leben.

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22. See Robert P. Morgan, “Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era,” 19th-Century Music 2 (1978): 72–81; repr. in Geoffrey Block and J. Peter Burkholder, eds., Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 75–86. 23. Charles Ives, 129 Songs, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock, Music of the United States of America, ed. Richard Crawford, vol. 12 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2004), xlix–l. 24. Ibid., xlix. 25. Various commentators have alluded to Mahler’s “Wunderhorn” period, which is usually associated with the time in which he composed the three symphonies that include settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies. See in this regard Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 26. See, for example, the text of the final movement of the Second Symphony, which is part of the Médiathèque Gustav Mahler, Paris (La Grange Collection). 27. The annotations are reproduced on the facsimile of the draft score (Partiturentwurf) of the Ninth Symphony. See Erwin Ratz, ed., IX. Symphonie [von] Gustav Mahler: Partiturentwurf der ersten drei Sätze, Faksimile nach der Handschrift (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1971). At the time the facsimile was published, only the first three movements were extant; the fourth movement was discovered in the 1980s, but not published in facsimile. It is currently among the holdings of the Médiathèque Gustav Mahler, Paris (La Grange Collection). For a description of this manuscript, see James L. Zychowicz, “The Adagio of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony: A Preliminary Report on the Partiturentwurf,” Revue Mahler Review 1 (1987): 77–113. 28. The annotations may be seen in the facsimile, that is, Mahler, X. Symphonie: Facsimile nach der Handschrift. See also the recent discussion of them by Steven D. Coburn, “Cyclic and Referential Elements in Mahler’s Tenth Symphony,” Naturlaut 5, no. 2 (2006): 2–19. 29. The comment about “Das himmlische Leben” is more concrete than some of the epistolary comments, which can be quite poetic, such as Mahler’s letter to Willem Mengelberg in which he referred to his efforts in the Eighth Symphony: “Try to imagine the whole university beginning to ring and resound. These are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving . . .” (Mahler, Briefe, rev. ed., 335); Martner, Selected Letters, 294. 30. Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, 125–26. 31. Helen Vendler, The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets, Critics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 20.

Additional Sources Andraschke, Peter. Gustav Mahler IX. Symphonie: Kompositionsprozeß und Analyse. Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft Vol. 14. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1976. Hefling, Stephen. “The Composition of ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.’” In Gustav Mahler, ed.Hermann Danuser, Wege der Forschung, vol. 653, 96–158. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992. Mahler, Gustav. IX. Symphonie [von] Gustav Mahler: Partiturentwurf der ersten drei Sätze, Faksimile nach der Handschrift. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1971. Reilly, Edward R. “An Inventory of Musical Sources.” News about Mahler Research 2 (1977): 2–6. ———. “Mahler’s Manuscripts and What They Can Tell Us.” Muziek & Wetenschap 5 (1995/96): 363–83. Zychowicz, James L. “Toward an Ausgabe letzter Hand: The Publication and Revision of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.” Journal of Musicology 12 (1995): 260–72.

Chapter Ten

A Study of Richard Strauss’s Creative Process: Der Rosenkavalier’s “Presentation Scene” and “Schlußduett” Joseph E. Jones Addressing two significant lacunae in the critical scholarship concerned with Der Rosenkavalier promises insight into Strauss’s evolving conception of the opera and some of the aesthetic strategies that impacted its completed form. A substantially undervalued area for investigation involves the earliest extant compositional manuscripts, which reveal, above all, Strauss making harmonic choices that would shape the dramatic action of the opera. Although the musical thematic content of Der Rosenkavalier has been explored in depth,1 thorough analysis of the opera’s large-scale tonal planning has yet to be pursued. The following study undertakes such analysis in the process of reevaluating the opera’s conclusion, how the final duet of Octavian and Sophie reflects upon their first meeting and how it illuminates underlying aesthetic premises of the opera as a whole. The moment when Sophie drops her handkerchief in the opera’s final measures has been interpreted as a sign that she is already open to infidelities at the very onset of her relationship with Octavian, a gesture that renders ambiguous much that has happened in the drama. As I will show, Strauss’s handling of the first encounter of the young lovers—the so-called presentation scene—as traced from his earliest sketches to the finished score bears significant implications for interpreting the work’s conclusion.

Context In her memoir Singing with Richard Strauss, Lotte Lehmann describes the presentation scene in Act II of Der Rosenkavalier: “Musically the arrival of Octavian is framed in the sort of glamour that only Richard Strauss was able to create; the truly magnificent duet between Sophie and Octavian contains all the splendour of youth and all the beauty embodied in these two human beings. And the

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inevitable happens, as it must—Octavian immediately and desperately falls in love with the girl.”2 Her account of this beloved operatic moment reveals the essence of what attracts many to the opera. Norman Del Mar contends that the “translucent orchestral colouring and beauty of imagination make it one of the most magical passages in the whole of Strauss’s output.”3 Yet this scene in which Octavian presents Sophie with Ochs’s silver rose has also been a target for criticism. Well-known to Strauss scholars is Joseph Kerman’s dismissal in his seminal Opera as Drama, first published in 1956: “Sophie begins the second act promisingly . . . but the scene of the presentation of the rose has all the solidity of a fifty-cent valentine, and when the young lovers come together at the end of the opera, all Strauss can produce is a sort of feeble folk song.”4 Theodor Adorno also finds something cheap in the music of this scene, maintaining that “the willingly enriched Straussian phrase lends his music a tinsel-like quality which easily degenerates into jingle-jangle, first in the celesta chords of Der Rosenkavalier.”5 These conflicting viewpoints on Der Rosenkavalier’s most famous scene point to broader issues concerning the reception of Strauss’s music. Works such as Don Juan (1886) and Also sprach Zarathustra (1895) earned him a reputation as one of Germany’s most innovative composers, and the scandalous premieres of Salome in 1905 and Elektra in 1908 extended this reputation to the stage. The 1911 premiere of Der Rosenkavalier certainly led to financial success, but critical response was mixed. Critics often condemned the anachronistic use of waltz themes and references to earlier operatic models as evidence of a stylistic regression in his output—an assessment that persisted for the remainder of Strauss’s life and wellbeyond his death in 1949.6 Recent reconsiderations of the post-Elektra repertoire have yielded a stronger sense of modernistic qualities under the seemingly outmoded musical surfaces. Revisionists such as Bryan Gilliam and Charles Youmans call attention to Strauss’s stylistic multiplicity and an engagement with the repertoire of the past, often from a parodistic or ironic perspective. Despite this convincing reassessment, a regressive stigma still shadows much of his mature output—especially his most popular opera, Der Rosenkavalier. The high points of the presentation scene include Octavian’s grand entrance, Sophie’s vocal rapture upon smelling the artificially scented rose, and the pair’s stunned expression of wonder when their eyes meet for the first time. Commentators often offer a colorful plot synopsis, but their analyses rarely move beyond superficial descriptions of Strauss’s lush melodies. An exception is Sophie’s soaring vocal line “wie himmlische, nicht irdische, wie Rosen vom hochheiligen Paradies” (heavenly, not earthly, like roses from the sacred paradise), which has served as the starting point for Kevin Korsyn in his recent critique of contemporary musical research. Korsyn cites two radically different but equally enthusiastic responses to Sophie’s melody by Wayne Koestenbaum and Eugene Narmour.7 While Koestenbaum focuses on the blurred dimensions of time and gender, and more broadly on the construction of gay identity, Narmour employs a systematic model that involves precise measurements of elements such as pitch

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duration and dynamics in audio recordings. Korsyn contends that such antithetical styles of discourse contribute to a crisis in the musicological field where “musical research is becoming a Tower of Babel.”8 Probing the sketch materials in tandem with close analysis of the finished score promises a richer sourcebased foundation for discussing this scene, one that is emblematic of this pivotal work in Strauss’s career.

Strauss’s Compositional Process Despite the vast quantity of extant primary source materials, few studies have dealt directly with Strauss’s compositional process.9 When he approached a new operatic project, Strauss often began his creative work by marking up the source text with musical annotations. These annotations (Anmerkungen) appear in the margins (Randnotizen) or in between lines of text, and range from simple tonal designations such as “H moll” (B minor) to multimeasure rhythmic or melodic sketches. For Der Rosenkavalier, only five pages with Strauss’s annotations in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Handexemplare (his working drafts of the libretto) are known to exist.10 Günther Brosche and Bernd Edelmann have compared the various tonal designations and mini-sketches to the finished score. Both emphasize that Strauss’s creative process is driven by his initial vivid conception of tonal areas and associative tonalities, but they warn against narrow or overly definitive interpretations of Strauss’s markings. Gilliam likens the annotations to mnemonic devices and reminds us that “much of the broad tonal plan occurred in the composer’s mind.”11 In short, Strauss’s tonal designations might refer to the harmonic framework for an entire scene, a localized transition or modulatory chord, or simply to key associations with one of the characters. Strauss then worked in small pocket-sized sketchbooks, making entries that were later incorporated into larger desk-sized sketchbooks—sometimes in the same day. Two broad categories of manuscripts can be identified generally by the dimensions of the paper. First are pocket-sized sketchbooks containing raw sketches (Rohskizzen), sometimes described as “preliminary sketches,” as well as continuity drafts. Like many other composers, Strauss carried around these small sketchbooks so that he could quickly jot down ideas as they came to him.12 A second category of sketchbooks contains clean copy sketches (Reinschriftskizzen), sometimes referred to in Strauss scholarship as “fair sketches.” With the great majority of musical material worked out, Strauss then wrote the Particell, which contained the vocal parts harmonized by a two- or three-staff accompaniment that could be played at the piano. The resulting short score presents for the first time a fully realized draft of the work with all of the scenes or sections in the correct order and with some indications of orchestration and staging. This important phase in the genesis of his operas is followed by the laborious process of orchestration, a venture that often occupied Strauss during the

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winter months. Strauss was known to deemphasize the creative energy required to produce his autograph full scores; in a piece that appeared in the New York Times on his seventy-second birthday, June 11, 1936, the composer described the evolution of his music at this stage as “the hard part” of composing.13 Minimal research has been devoted to Strauss’s preparation of these advanced manuscripts, a fact that may be attributed to their general lack of revisions. Any differences, however, are not insignificant and future efforts toward the publication of critical editions of Strauss’s collected works undoubtedly will reveal cases where late revisions suggest new interpretive possibilities. For Der Rosenkavalier, the most neglected source materials are the sketches, which appear in seven pocket-sized sketchbooks held at the Richard-StraussArchiv in Garmisch-Partenkirchen14 and in one sketchbook catalogued as Mus. ms.9983 at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Table 10.1 offers a brief summary of the contents of each source as it relates to this opera. Of special interest for this essay are the sketches in Tr.22 that concern the opening of Act II as well as a page labeled “Schlußduett” (ending duet) in reference to Octavian’s and Sophie’s G-major duet that concludes the opera.

The Opening of Act II Musically, Act II opens with opposing tonalities set a tritone apart—G major and D-flat major.15 Virtually unexplored in the opera thus far, G major introduces new characters and a fresh dramatic setting that strongly contrasts the private and reflective conclusion of Act I, set in the Marschallin’s bedroom. However, shortly after reaching a dominant pedal at measure 1/1, and before the curtain has opened, Strauss modulates to the distant key of D-flat major via a halfstep slip from the dominant.16 For composers still working with an associatively charged tonal language as explored by many Romantic composers, D-flat major might have a symbolic association with otherworldly experiences or the sublime. A later example for Strauss is the final Ariadne–Bacchus duet and orchestral coda of his Ariadne auf Naxos.17 Already heard in Act I of Der Rosenkavalier is a prominent and distinctive passage in D-flat major that bears significance here: the Italian singer’s aria “Di rigori armato il seno” is offered in this remote key as a private performance for the Marschallin during her morning routine (the levée scene). The subject of the aria’s text, an idea that plays a crucial role throughout the opera, is the overwhelming power of instantaneous attraction that may weaken with the passage of time. Repeated at its melodic climax, the text “ma fui vinto in un baleno in mirar due vaghi rai” (but in a flash I was conquered upon seeing two lovely eyes) anticipates the meeting of Octavian and Sophie in Act II. In Act I, the Italian aria is set apart from the surrounding material in D major; worlds apart are instantaneous love and the Baron’s focus on the financial details of his arranged

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Table 10.1. Sketchbooks containing materials for Der Rosenkavalier.

marriage. The tonal disjunction creates a deliberate chaos as their conversation with the attorney transpires during the Italian singer’s second stanza. Ochs’s boorish behavior reflects his cultural impoverishment and lack of manners, and his complete self-interest, in addition to his lack of any genuine love interest in his bride-to-be. Here, as elsewhere, Strauss and Hofmannsthal shape musicaldramatic structures that suggest irony by juxtaposing contrasting material. At the opening of Act II, the sudden shift to D-flat major ushers in a new theme that is often associated with the engagement of Sophie and the Baron (see ex. 10.1). Significant in a broader dramatic way is its affinity to material from the final scene of Act I, when Octavian struggles with the Marschallin’s emotional distance (see ex. 10.2).18 The Marschallin’s critique of an idealized form of love and Octavian’s resistance to this account of their affair as trivial result in a lingering ambivalence. Octavian is liberated enough that he can be swept away by Sophie during the presentation scene, but his feelings for the Marschallin are not completely displaced. The initial musical sketch for the passage in Act II reveals that Strauss conceived of this distinctive harmonic pairing at an early stage in the score’s genesis (see fig. 10.1). The opening measures of the sketch show Strauss’s transition out of the Dflat major passage and the restoration of G major with the first vocal entrance of the act, Faninal’s exclamation in the third measure “Ein ernster Tag, ein großer Tag” (A solemn day, a grand day). Subsequent vocal passages for Faninal, the Haushofmeister, and Sophie’s personal assistant Marianne repeatedly revisit these two tonalities. Sophie’s entrance at measure 9/2 returns to the initial key signature of one sharp as she contemplates her upcoming marriage in E minor. All the while, her personal assistant Marianne offers a play-by-play of Octavian’s approaching caravan. Strauss sets her excited interjections in contrasting major tonalities, amplifying the dramatic disconnect in the libretto—Sophie’s inner and more serious monologue resides in the minor while Marianne, concerned with external activities, tends toward major keys.

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Example 10.1. D-flat major theme from the orchestral opening of Act II.

Example 10.2. Octavian’s related melody in Act I.

Figure 10.1. D-flat major and G major at Faninal’s entrance, Act II. Tr.22, p. 13. © Richard-Strauss-Institut/Richard-Strauss-Archiv (hereafter, RSI/RSA).

Sketches for the ensuing measures reveal Strauss’s early intention of restoring E major, Octavian’s chief tonality, in anticipation of the young man’s arrival. Sophie’s glorification of marriage (“Aber die Ehe ist ein heiliger Stand”) lightens from E minor to its parallel major and the footmen soon call out the rose-bearer’s last name “Rofrano, Rofrano!” to fanfare figures sung over the dominant pedal. When the rose-bearer’s carriage becomes visible through the window, similar fanfare figures are heard as Marianne pronounces triumphantly “Er kommt, er kommt.” It is at this moment that the tonal center shifts decisively to Octavian’s E major and, as example 10.3 shows, Strauss planned this modulation already at the sketchbook stage.19 The sketch is representative of his preliminary drafts in that it emphasizes the development of harmonic trajectory over the vocal melody or setting of the text. With the footmen’s continued shouting of “Rofrano, Rofrano,” Strauss carries on with the fanfare figures in his sketches (see ex. 10.4). The resulting primacy of the chord pattern F–E♭–E will prove to be a crucial building block in the presentation scene that follows.

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Example 10.3. Shift to E major with fanfare figures. Tr.22, p. 100. © RSI / RSA.

Example 10.4. E-major fanfares, corresponding to mm. 17/5–18/3. Tr.22, p. 99. © RSI / RSA.

An extended B-major pedal with timpani intensifies the harmonic and dramatic tension up to the moment when Octavian becomes physically visible to Marianne as she watches through the window, resulting musically in a robust E-major cadence. Further dominant-tonic cadences cement this tonality and the sense of Octavian’s imminent entry, which will unfold for him as a fresh start in the world of women. But a series of climactic chords favoring G major begins at measure 23/3 and leads to a sustained pedal on that tonic. At the moment Octavian emerges, dressed in all white and silver and carrying the rose, do E major and his rising motive prevail? Will G major and its association with the Faninals’ palace serve as the backdrop for Octavian’s presentation of the rose to Sophie that is her invitation to leave the home of her father and start a different life? Alternatively, might the sustained G pedal assume the role of a dominant, shifting our expectations to C major, the purest of tonal spaces? A transcription of Strauss’s very first sketch for this pivotal moment reveals his plan (ex. 10.5). G major sustains through the first beat of the third measure, drops to F on beat four, and then bursts upward to a brilliant sounding F-sharp major at the metrical shift to 44, corresponding to the exact moment Octavian enters the

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Example 10.5. Transcription of sketch for Octavian’s entrance, corresponding to mm. 23/3–24/4. Tr.22, p. 3.

stage. The resulting harmonic pattern (G–F–F♯) directly parallels the earlier fanfare motive (F–E♭–E) shown in example 10.4. Suddenly far removed from the G-major opening, Strauss opens up the sonorous landscape for the highly anticipated meeting of Sophie and Octavian.

The Presentation Scene It is often noted that the onstage action around Sophie and Octavian seems to freeze or slip into a dream-like state at the precise moment he enters the room. Hofmannsthal’s performance directions encourage this interpretation: Octavian’s line “Wo war ich schon einmal” (Where was I before) is to be sung “wie unbewußt” (as though unconscious). The end of the scene is even more explicit in this regard: “Sophie schüttelt ihre Versunkenheit ab und reicht die Rose der Marianne” (Sophie wakes from her reverie and gives the rose to Marianne), and then moments later, “Sophie und Octavian stehen einander gegenüber, einigermaßen zur gemeinen Welt zurückgekehrt, aber befangen” (Sophie and Octavian stand opposite of one another, partly restored to the everyday world, but embarrassed). Strauss and Hofmannsthal never openly discussed in their letters how to shape this particular scene, but Strauss clearly favored this interpretation. Not only do the oscillating, glittering chord sequences played by the celesta, harp, flutes, piccolo, and three solo violins depict the unusual silver rose in Octavian’s hand, but they also transport the listener to a musically distant realm where indeed, time seems to stand still. When Strauss recalls these “rose chords” during Octavian’s and Sophie’s duet at the end of the opera, they reclaim this pivotal moment when the young lovers first meet. The first sequence of rose chords follows a theme closely associated with Sophie, played by a solo oboe over a shimmering C-sharp orchestral pedal (see ex. 10.6). The melody appears on the middle staff of the sketch’s second measure and is enharmonically identical to the oboe theme in the presentation scene, beginning on D♭ (C♯) and landing on the localized tonic G♭ (F♯) during the

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Example 10.6. Oboe melody associated with Sophie.

Figure 10.2. Tr.21, pg. 67, corresponding to mm. 263/3–4. © RSI / RSA.

second half of beat one. Here too, Sophie’s melody is harmonically isolated from its surroundings, operating within the broader context of the Baron’s C major. Returning to the presentation scene, the high tessitura and remarkable orchestration of the rose chords (plucked instruments, high winds, and celesta) create an iridescent sound.20 The Particell for Act II, completed on October 6, 1909, is the first stage in the compositional genesis of this scene where Strauss fully worked out this chord sequence (fig. 10.3). This melody surfaces first at the end of the levée scene in Act I (m. 264/4) when the Marschallin and Ochs discuss the silver rose and who will deliver it, thus pointing ahead to its intended recipient, and more important, anticipating the tonal center of the presentation scene. It is interesting that Strauss drafted the melody while working on the levée scene in May 1909, some weeks prior to his receipt of the text for Act II (fig. 10.2). The harmonic pattern of the first three chords G–F–F♯ is noteworthy in that it reenacts the moment Octavian entered the room and connects back to the fanfare motive that accompanied the footmen’s calls of “Rofrano, Rofrano!” As the profiled duet concludes on a unison F-sharp tonic, the couple vows never to forget this moment for the rest of their lives (“will ich nie vergessen bis an meinem Tod”). It is at this juncture that commentaries typically end, as repetitions of the initial rose chords sequence and Sophie’s oboe theme over the same shimmering C-sharp pedal create a sense of recapitulation and closure. However, two musical events in the last few measures seem to reflect upon Octavian’s and Sophie’s exchange, perhaps casting a shadow on their elevated experience. Strauss follows the solo oboe with a theme strongly associated with the

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Figure 10.3. The core sequence as drafted in the Particell for Act II, p. 6. © RSI / RSA.

Example 10.7. Theme associated with the Marschallin sounding in the English horns, first bassoons, violins, and celli.

Marschallin that is characterized by an upward leap of an octave followed by a steep descent (see ex. 10.7). This theme is first heard during the Act I Einleitung and it recurs throughout that act, for instance, in the opening scene when the Marschallin reassures Octavian of her affections after his naive, Tristanesque reflections (m. 27/1). Perhaps the most prominent statement occurs in the closing moments of Act I. The orchestra bears what can be understood as an expression of feeling toward Octavian as the Marschallin frankly asserts that he will soon leave her for someone younger or more beautiful. This passage features the same melodic profile of an octave leap followed by a sharp descent in the upper staff of the accompaniment reduction (ex. 10.8). As Octavian sets off to fulfill his duty as the Baron’s “Rosenkavalier,” the theme sounds again, like a lingering emotion, on the last page of the score to Act I. The recall of this melody at the end of the presentation scene is interrupted by an altered sequence of rose chords, which unfolds in a sinking or deflated fashion. The tensional interlacing of these materials as the Marschallin’s prediction seems to be coming true also gives voice to the enduring and potentially quite genuine feelings between Octavian and the Marschallin, despite what time will bring. The initial sonority of the sequence is a diminished G sharp while the orchestra suspends a C-sharp diminished-seventh chord, both sounding over an F-sharp pedal in the bassoons and double basses. Emotional and tonal complexity and a sense of ambivalence prevail in this passage with eight of the twelve possible chromatic pitches sounding simultaneously. The Marschallin’s theme resumes in a state of suspended animation and the final rose chords sequence slips further from the lofty heights of the duet. The luster of the ceremonial presentation is already fading, soon to be set aside by a more conventional but equally artificial formality—the “chair dialogue.”

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Example 10.8. Theme associated with the Marschallin’s affection for Octavian, end of Act I.

The second musical device that weakens the ending is the E-flat clarinet figure at measure 38/5, which seems to invade the dreamy space of the duet and put an end to the implied stoppage of time (ex. 10.9). In performance, stage directors often use the clarinet figure as a signal for the dozen or so onlookers to “unfreeze” and exit the stage. Like the harmonic progression that accompanied Octavian’s entrance, this melodic motive too can be traced back to an earlier theme. The intervallic contour of the initial four pitches C♯–A♯–F♯–C♯ is identical to Sophie’s description of the oil-scented rose, the silver token of beauty with an uncannily real fragrance. Example 10.10 itself is derivative of previous material—a variation on Sophie’s oboe theme that drops to the lower dominant on the fourth note rather than leaping up to the higher octave (compare with ex. 10.6). Sounding here in rhythmic diminution and in G sharp, the clarinet is shrill and grating over the orchestra’s F-sharp pedal. The effect might remind listeners of the jarring birdcalls and bell ringing that irritated Octavian in the opening scene of Act I. Here, as in the Marschallin’s bedroom, Octavian finds himself in a moment that he wishes would never end, with an external force intruding on his private space.

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Example 10.9. E-flat clarinet’s aural disruption, mm. 38/5–7.

Example 10.10. Model for the E-flat clarinet figure in example 10.9.

The alarming clarinet figure in tandem with the motivic specter of the Marschallin pull both the onstage drama and audience back to reality, or to invert Sophie’s description of the silver rose, the action returns to something earthly rather than heavenly (“wie irdische, nicht himmlische”). We are reminded of the Marschallin’s premonitions in Act I, and the recall of her musical material at this critical moment further presages the conclusion of opera. The final moments of Act III will cast their own shadow over Sophie’s and Octavian’s new relationship, and any doubts about the permanency of their bond at this stage of the drama must be kept in mind as they sing their Schlußduett. Back in the less exalted tonal space of G major, Strauss launches the chair dialogue with another incarnation of the four-note motive.21 The shift from the exceptional to the conventional is apparent not only in this harmonic lurch (F sharp to G), but also in a formal shift. In his earliest sketch for the beginning of this dialogue, Strauss began to number the measures in groups of four and jotted down the word “Periodenbau!?”—a note to himself that seems to imply more regular or self-contained formal units. As one would expect, the finished score contains no such special markings at this moment; the sketch stage alone records Strauss’s thoughts to himself, written out, about a shift in compositional approach away from the more boundless dimensions of the presentation scene. The act’s overall tonal trajectory thus far, from G major to F-sharp major and back to G major, parallels the dramatic action. That is, the magical, private sphere as represented by a dense tonality is framed by a more conventional, public space as represented by a modest key signature. Table 10.2 includes an overview of Act II spanning from the orchestral introduction and lively preparations for Octavian’s arrival through the presentation scene, and concluding with the chair dialogue. A broad harmonic arch emerges, with G major at each end and with tonal and thematic references to Act I throughout. Strauss sets apart the presentation scene with its remote key, towering melodies, and luminous orchestration that starkly contrast the surrounding material.

Table 10.2. Harmonic summary of the beginning of Act II.

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The Opera’s Conclusion Strauss showed interest in the end of the opera long before the libretto for that portion took shape. On June 26, 1909, he requested text from Hofmannsthal with a prescribed rhythm to accompany music he had already written for Sophie’s and Octavian’s final duet in Act III. Ten months before Hofmannsthal mailed his first drafts for that act, Strauss described a specific musical model that he hoped Hofmannsthal would accommodate. He writes, For the end of Act III, the softly-fading duet of Sophie and Octavian, I have a very pretty melody. Could you possibly write for me about 12 to 16 lines in the following rhythm: Süsse / Eintracht, du / holdes / Band voll golden / Liebe / Hand in / Hand fest ver / eint für / alle / Zeit fest ver / eint in / Ewig / keit I can’t think of anything better at the moment, but it’s only the rhythm that matters. Something akin to a popular vaudeville poem: about 3 verses, 12 lines. On the above pattern!22

On June 6, 1910, Hofmannsthal mentions that although he felt somewhat confined by the meter scheme presented to him by Strauss, he ultimately found it agreeable and gleaned from the proposal for the conclusion of the opera “etwas Mozartisches” (something Mozartian).23 The text he supplied not only followed the prescribed rhythm, but even utilized fragments of Strauss’s suggested text: “alle Zeit” and “Ewigkeit.” Strauss’s untexted sketch for the Schlußduett confirms that he did in fact have the framework of the tune worked out prior to the genesis of the text, as is shown in figure 10.4. Lewis Lockwood and others have drawn comparisons between this passage and Papageno’s and Pamina’s duet “Könnte jeder brave Mann” from Act I, scene 3 of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, which Strauss echoes in key, meter, and general melody shape.24 While the sketch deviates from Mozart’s duet and Strauss’s finished score, the overall shape of the melody (especially in Sophie’s vocal line) and the triadic harmony suggest a substantial affinity, as do the shared key of G major and the 44 meter. Alternatively, David Murray draws a comparison with the “fourteen angels” duet that concludes Act II of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, a work whose premiere Strauss conducted in 1893.25 Del Mar cites yet another possible model, this time promoted by Strauss himself, who apparently claimed (metaphorically or not) that the melody was “stolen from Schubert.”26 The prototype could be Schubert’s Heidenröslein (D.257), which shares the key of G major and a similar melodic profile. Indeed, in its description of a youth and a

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Figure 10.4. Sketch labeled “Schlußduett III. Akt.” Tr.22, p. 6. © RSI / RSA.

rose, Schubert’s song might seem more analogous than Mozart’s duet about the harmony of friendship. The compositional source materials would suggest that Strauss’s draft of the duet bears closest affinity to the Mozartian model. Since its overall shape remains consistent through the stages of the Particell and autograph full score, Die Zauberflöte was quite possibly the inspiration for Strauss.

Recapitulatory Gestures in the Schlußduett Strauss’s completed musical setting of the Schlußduett, dating from the summer of 1910, differs considerably in style from Octavian’s and Sophie’s previous duets. After the presentation scene, they sing an extended passage following the departure of Faninal and the Baron to discuss wedding arrangements. The two duets in Act II contain relatively few diatonic thirds and freer rhythmic structures. While the Schlußduett has a much simpler musical surface, there are notable textual and harmonic links to the presentation scene that bear on our interpretation of the end of the opera. A comparison of the texts from each scene highlights several common words and expressions: for example, “Ewigkeit,” “himmlische(n),” “selig(keit),” and “Zeit” (eternity, heaven, blessedness, and time). Strauss strengthens these textual links by recapturing the tonal backdrop of their initial appearance in Act II. The pairing of D-flat major and G major in the build-up to the presentation scene reemerges to play a prominent role at the end of Act III. Preceding the G-major Schlußduett, which, interestingly, fills the more conventional and public space, is the famous all-soprano trio set in Dflat major that culminates with the Marschallin’s explicit blessing of the young couple. The duet opens with regular four-measure phrases that Octavian and Sophie sing mainly in diatonic thirds (“Spür’ nur dich / Ist ein traum”) followed

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Example 10.11. Recapitulated E-major passage, originally heard at m. 328/7 in Act I.

by successive eight-measure solos. A double bar at measure 300/1 marks a shift to E major, the third tonal area that set up the presentation scene. Passing through the back of the stage, Faninal remarks to the Marschallin that young people will always stay the same and the Marschallin poignantly replies “Ja, ja.” The ensuing orchestral interlude recapitulates an extended passage from the end of Act I, when the Marschallin coolly told Octavian that he could ride beside her carriage during her afternoon trip through the Prater—an especially hurtful comment that betrays the former intimacy of their relationship.27 Strauss quotes the E-major material at length (ex. 10.11). Strauss’s recapitulatory gestures continue as the young pair is left alone again to reprise the first part of the Schlußduett. Harps—central players in the remarkable orchestral texture of the presentation scene—feature prominently in the transition back to G major as a timbral allusion to their magical first encounter. The vocal parts are marked “träumerisch” (dreamily), another reference to the atmosphere of the Act II duet. The stage is set for a return of the rose chords, which Strauss inserts between phrases of the reprised text (see ex. 10.12). In the presentation scene, the core sequence of chords echoed Octavian’s grand entrance with the initial chords G–F–F♯ over the broader harmonic foundation of F-sharp major. With the Schlußduett set a half step higher in G, one might expect the recalled sequences to begin on G♯, also a half-step higher. At first, however, Strauss does not simply transpose the music from their first meeting; instead, the first two sequences progress in a seemingly haphazard pattern, beginning on G-flat minor and E-flat minor, respectively, and both moving toward the dominant D. The duet proceeds until the young couple’s unison G on the soaring text “Ewigkeit” (eternity) finally yields the expected core sequence in literal transposition at measure 304/1. Interestingly, Strauss uses the enharmonic spelling A♭–G♭–G rather than G♯–F♯–G. If the sonority of F-sharp major is intimately associated with Octavian and Sophie falling in love, why does Strauss avoid the original pitch spellings at the moment their union is sanctified? It is tempting to interpret this as another reflection of the instability of the young couple’s bond. As has been argued, a process of critique or questioning already began near the end the presentation scene when the intruding theme associated with the Marschallin led to a distortion of the final two

Example 10.12. Rose chords recapitulated at the beginning of the Schlußduett.

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Example 10.13. Fragments of the rose chords at the end of the Schlußduett.

sequences. Strauss’s avoidance of sharps in the Schlußduett extends broadly to all the remaining recapitulated sequences. Following this double-length sequence at measure 304/1, Octavian and Sophie deliver the final words of the opera (“Spür’ nur dich allein”) in overlapping lines that ascend toward a high cadence in the tonic G major. This leads to a sequence four times the usual length that also begins with the transposed equivalent of the core sequence (A♭–G♭–G), but then seems to meander onward indiscriminately. If the harmonic distortion of the extended rose chords is not readily apparent to the listener, Strauss follows with a more obvious destabilizing gesture. A solo oboe plays Sophie’s characteristic theme at measure 305/4 (as it did at the conclusion of the presentation scene), leading directly into a series of hesitating, fragmented sequences (see ex. 10.13). Though the nature of the recall is inarguably strong as Octavian and Sophie are locked in a tender embrace, the orchestral accompaniment featuring the music most identified with their love disintegrates into near silence. The oddly extended and then fragmented recall of the rose chords suggests the possibility that the extent of their bond is illusory. The idea of permanence or “Ewigkeit” features in the texts of each of Octavian’s and Sophie’s duets, but so too does self-doubt: “Is it a dream? It can’t truly be that we two will be together for all time and eternity.” Strauss’s setting underscores a sense of doubt that fans well beyond Sophie’s perspective. The G-major duet is worlds away from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a work whose philosophical seriousness Hofmannsthal and Strauss parody in the opera’s opening scene. Lockwood argues that the Schlußduett references the Die Zauberflöte melody as a self-conscious allusion to the century in which

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the action takes place. More seems to be at stake. Kerman is forthright in his challenge of the Schlußduett: “By any criterion, I think, it is the poorest thing in the opera. Was it for this minimal level of consciousness that we have to suffer the Marschallin’s self-pity and to sacrifice Ochs? For this, the silver rose and the white suit, the Three Noble Orphans and four hours of finicky leitmotivs, modulations, and program-musical wit?”28 Indeed, the “dream come true” vocal finale comes across as rather trite following the musically and emotionally climactic trio. What is not recognized in the critiques of Kerman and Adorno, and emerges as a significant element in Strauss’s aesthetic shift, is the intentionality of triteness precisely at moments where emotive genuineness and effusiveness and gestures toward profundity are expected. What is distinctive about Der Rosenkavalier, in comparison with Strauss’s earlier operas, is the conscious shaping of musical-dramatic units whose crux lies in the juxtaposition of the profound and the trivial within a heavily self-conscious context. The Schlußduett is hardly a discrete unit, as is typically experienced in performance; as we have seen, Strauss created it with close attention to the handling of the presentation scene. While the “curb appeal” of the presentation scene remains strong for some, there is much behind the sparkling facade for both critics and enthusiasts. Strauss developed its musical themes and their associative tonalities across the entire opera, and the maturation of such central ideas at very early stages in the compositional process is striking. The subtle reworking of these materials, with their multiple allusions to other operas, composers, and eras supports a nuanced interpretation of Der Rosenkavalier that moves beyond the notion of a regressive or periodically hollow style. In his revised 1988 edition of Opera as Drama, Kerman accounted for economic inflation by raising the metaphorical value of the presentation scene to a dollarfifty valentine.29 A broader and stronger musical-dramatic lens reveals the genuine value of this justly famous passage, as is further reinforced by the opera’s richly ambiguous ending. When the young couple finally leaves the stage and the Marschallin’s page boy rushes on during the orchestral postlude to retrieve Sophie’s dropped handkerchief, Strauss takes us back to the appearance of the servant in Act I and the score’s first musical allusion to the late eighteenth century.30 Commentators usually delight in this episode’s charming and lighthearted character. Coexistant, however, is the serious suggestion that Sophie will someday be like the Marschallin, open to dalliances that make her acutely aware of time as she tries to ignore it. Buried within the eighteenth-century frame and brought into play in all relevant allusions to it is the very instability of meaning beneath the charming surface. Viewed through this broader lens, meaning from the past is accessed as it is relived in the dramatic present, bearing implications for the future. Strauss’s compositional sources show that these issues were at play in his mind from the earliest stages of the opera’s genesis.

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Notes 1. Originating from somewhat overzealous efforts to come to terms with the Wagnerian Grundthema or Leitmotiv, the early twentieth century saw the widespread publication of motivic guides that labeled themes and traced their development across the span of a work. Such guides for Der Rosenkavalier appeared already in the year of its premiere with some identifying more than 100 musical themes. Examples include Max Chop, Richard Strauß: Der Rosenkavalier: Komödie für Musik in drei Aufzügen: geschichtlich, szenisch und musikalisch analyziert (Leipzig: Reclam, 1911) and Alfred Schattmann, Rosenkavalier von Richard Strauss: Ein Führer Durch das Werk (Berlin: Adolf Fürstner, 1911). Alan Jefferson began to investigate the possibility of a “scheme of tonality” or preconceived tonal plan, but his work offers only an introduction to some of the opera’s harmonic connections. See his article “Tonality of the Rose,” Richard Strauss-Blätter 25 (June 1991): 26–43. 2. Lotte Lehmann, Five Operas and Richard Strauss, trans. Ernst Pawel (New York: Da Capo Press, 1982), 60. Lehmann first performed the role of Sophie in 1914 and sang Octavian numerous times in the succeeding decade. Her premiere as the Marschallin came on May 21, 1924, under the baton of Bruno Walter at Covent Garden. 3. Norman Del Mar, Richard Strauss: A Critical Commentary on His Life and Works, vol. 1 (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1962), 380. 4. Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (New York: Knopf, 1956), 260. 5. Theodor Adorno, “Richard Strauss. Part II,” trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber, Perspectives of New Music 4, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 1996): 121, 128. 6. Lewis Lockwood observes that Strauss “deliberately cultivates the Viennese waltz as a type of ‘character piece’ . . . endowing the opera with the one symbolic musical element that clearly evoked nostalgia in his audiences for the Vienna of the 1860s and 1870s.” See his chapter “The Element of Time in Der Rosenkavalier,” in Richard Strauss: New Perspectives on the Composer and His Work, ed. Bryan Gilliam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 251. 7. Kevin Korsyn, Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), and Eugene Narmour, The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic Structure: The Implication-Realization Model (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 8. Korsyn, Decentering Music, 16. 9. Work on Strauss’s compositional sources lags behind his contemporaries such as Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, who already have critical editions of their scores in print. Moreover, comprehensive editions of Strauss’s correspondence with his colleagues and family also remain incomplete. The compositional process described here is most applicable to Strauss’s large-scale works from the 1890s onward. 10. According to Günther Brosche, Strauss initially gave these pages to his biographer Willi Schuh as a gift, and after Schuh’s death, they were sold at an auction. Today, they are held in private ownership in northern Germany. See his article “‘Öl und Butterschmalz’: Beobachtungen zur Arbeitsweise von Richard Strauss anhand seiner ersten Skizzen im Rosenkavalier-Text,” Richard Strauss-Blätter 35 (June 1996): 25–35. A reproduction of the first four extant pages appears in Willi Schuh’s Hugo von Hofmannsthal und Richard Strauss: Legende und Wirklichkeit (Munich: C. Hanser, 1964), and for a complete transcription, see Bernd Edelmann, “Tonart als Impuls Strauss’schen Komponierens,” in Musik und Theater im “Rosenkavalier” von Richard Strauss, ed. Reinhold Schötterer (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985), 61–98.

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11. Bryan Gilliam, “Strauss’s Preliminary Opera Sketches: Thematic Fragments and Symphonic Continuity,” 19th-Century Music 9, no. 3 (Spring 1986): 177. 12. According to Reinhold Schlötterer, these books also served on occasion as a private journal for Strauss. See his chapter “Zum Schaffensprozeß bei Richard Strauss: Ausgehend von autographen Dokumenten in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek,” in Richard Strauss: Autographen, Porträts, Bühnenbilder: Ausstellung zum 50. Todestag, ed. Hartmut Schaefer (Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 1999), 23–37. 13. The New York Times piece was excerpted from a letter that was published later in its entirety in a collection edited by David Ewen titled The Book of Modern Composers (New York: Knopf, 1943), 54–55. 14. An overview of the contents of the 144 sketchbooks held by the Strauss family in Garmisch-Partenkirchen appears in Franz Trenner’s catalogue Die Skizzenbücher von Richard Strauss aus dem Richard-Strauss-Archiv in Garmisch (Tützing: Schneider, 1977). These sketchbooks are now available as digital scans at the Richard-Strauss-Institut; grateful acknowledgment is made to Christian Wolf and Jürgen May at the Richard-Strauss-Institut for their assistance with the Rosenkavalier materials. Hereafter, the Garmisch sketchbooks are referred to by the catalogue number assigned by Trenner (e.g., Tr.22). 15. The energetic commencement of Act II sets the stage for the Faninals’ nervous preparations for the arrival of Octavian and his presentation of the silver rose to Sophie on behalf of Baron Ochs. 16. Hereafter, measures in the score are referenced by the last printed rehearsal number followed by a slash to indicate the number of measures after the rehearsal number. For example, 33/2 would correspond to the second measure that follows rehearsal number 33. 17. Hugh MacDonald describes a penchant by nineteenth-century composers for “extreme keys” to capture moods of “mysterious ecstasy” or “heavenly enchantment.” See his article “[G-Flat Major Key Signature],” 19th-Century Music 11, no. 3 (Spring 1988): 221–37. 18. A variant of the theme appears shortly before the Act III trio in fragmented form, and more generally, the intervallic pattern of a rising minor second followed by a minor third is characteristic of other principle melodies including the Baron’s “Lerchenauisch’ Glück” waltz. 19. Alternatively, one might agree with Alan Jefferson’s interpretation that E major functions as another allusion to the Marschallin and her indirect influence over the ceremonious event; though she does not physically appear in Act II, her presence is felt here and elsewhere through both tonal and motivic association (see Jefferson, “Tonality of the Rose,” 34). Like assigning descriptive labels to melodic themes, however, it seems overly limiting to ascribe particular keys to a single character—after all, the brass simultaneously sound Octavian’s “heroic” theme from the opening of the Act I Einleitung and the first sketches for the opera. 20. On page 23 of Tr.17, one of the first sketches for Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss outlines in ink at least a share of the orchestral forces he planned for the opera. Included in his list are the celesta, harp, and flutes, offering evidence that Strauss imagined some of these special orchestral timbres at a very early stage in the opera’s genesis. 21. His use of thematic material is both economical and dramatically apt; the loquacious Sophie commands the scene while Octavian finds himself somewhat tongue-tied. 22. Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, The Correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ed. Franz Strauss and Alice Schuh, trans. Hanns Hammelmann and Ewald Osers (London: William Collins Sons, 1961), 35–36. The original

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German reads: “Für den Schluß des dritten Aktes, das ausklingende Duett von Sophie und Octavian, habe ich eine sehr hübsche Melodie. Wäre es Ihnen möglich, mir etwa 12 bis 16 Verse zu schreiben in folgendem Rhythmus. Mir fällt gerade nichts Besseres ein, handelt sich nur um den Rhythmus. So ein recht populäres Vaudeville-Gedicht: etwa 3 Strophen, 12 Verse. Nach obigem Schema!” 23. Ibid., 57–58. 24. Lewis Lockwood, “The Element of Time in Der Rosenkavalier,” 252. 25. See David Murray, “Der Rosenkavalier,” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, vol. 3, ed. S. Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 43–47. 26. Del Mar, Richard Strauss: A Critical Commentary on His Life and Works, 410–11. 27. This quotation was also conceived of at an early stage in the opera’s genesis. In his draft for this passage on page 51 of Tr.23, Strauss specifically references the “Abschiedsthema des I. Aktes” (Farewell theme of Act I) in the margin of the sketch. 28. Kerman, Opera as Drama, 258. 29. The fiftieth anniversary publication in 2005 ignored the higher cost of living in the twenty-first century; by Kerman’s estimation, the presentation scene should be valued at no less than $3.50. 30. The pro and contra Wagner milieu of the opera’s opening scene is broken by the page boy’s untimely interruption of the Marschallin and Octavian. As they share breakfast, Strauss rapidly slides through musical history. Starting with a lead in to what could be a later nineteenth-century waltz, we find ourselves in the rarified space of a Mozart minuet, with a precious woodwind texture profiling a clarinet. As the exchange of proper names yields to more intimate ones, we are soon back in the later Romantic space that almost knows no shame.

Additional Sources Bottenberg, Joanna. Shared Creation: Words and Music in the Hofmannsthal-Strauss Operas. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1996. Gilliam, Bryan. “Richard Strauss’s ‘Daphne’: Opera and Symphonic Continuity.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1984. Hoffmann, Dirk O., and Willi Schuh, eds. Operndichtungen, I. Der Rosenkavalier. Vol. 23, Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Ausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1986. Jackson, Timothy L. “The Metamorphosis of the ‘Metamorphosen’: New Analytical and Source-Critical Discoveries.” In Richard Strauss: New Perspectives on the Composer and His Work, ed.Bryan Gilliam, 193–242. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. Jefferson, Alan. Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Okada, Akeo. “Vorgeschichte des Octavian-Motivs: Eine Untersuchung der Skizzenbücher von Richard Strauss zum Rosenkavalier.” In Musik als Text: Bericht über den Internationalen Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993. Vol. 2, ed. Hermann Danuser and Tobias Plebuch, 476–79. Kassel, Germany: Barenreiter, 1998. Schuh, Willi. Der Rosenkavalier: Vier Studien. Olten: Oltner Liebhaber Drucke, 1968.

Chapter Eleven

Genetic Criticism and Cognitive Anthropology: A Reconstruction of Philippe Leroux’s Compositional Process for Voi(rex) Nicolas Donin Motivations for Detailed Study of a Recent Compositional Process It is a truism that sketch studies would not exist without archives dedicated to the creative processes of great artists of the past. Be it in the fields of literature, music, or any other art, sketch studies would be inconceivable were it not for the careful preservation of the artists’ working materials, which presupposes that they kept the documents in the first place, and that authoritative people regarded these artists as sufficiently significant to have the documents archived. In view of this situation, the sketch study of a very recent musical work might seem hazardous or even irrelevant to musicology. On the one hand, the future integration of a work into any kind of canon is a gambit; can one justify the need for such a time-consuming study of one particular work over another? On the other hand, once such a study is undertaken, one definitively destroys the autonomy expected from a researcher with regard to his object of inquiry. Not only does one actively contribute thereby to the dissemination of the piece (at least within the academy), but one also accepts that the composer will influence the analysis, since he will be able to select which data are accessible and will provide the researcher with some insight into his creative process. Even if the composer’s account is embellished or simply inaccurate, it will unavoidably influence our understanding of the work. Nevertheless, this chain of serious obstacles arises only if one embraces a restrictive view of sketch studies, a view linked to a particular (if widespread) aim—that of understanding the achievement of the final work, adding one’s own

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response to previous engagements with the work in question. As soon as one changes or simply extends this agenda, both the method and the outcome of a sketch study may change. For example, the history of recent literate musical cultures should encourage elucidation of the incorporated skills and everyday practice of some contemporary composers, preferably those who are widely available in concert or on commercial recordings, and who have had a significant impact on younger composers—whatever legacy they may leave for posterity. Alternatively, a sociology of composers’ public discourse might include the collection of oral and written information from artists about their own music, even if it becomes impossible to match up each of their statements with all the relevant data that may (or may not) support them. Such concerns are not mentioned here just in passing. Although they were not the initial impetus for embarking on the study, they emerged only later as promising ways to analyze the data of my reconstruction of the genesis of a recent piece by a contemporary composer. Initially I felt some dissatisfaction with the state of knowledge on current compositional processes. It goes without saying that no twentieth-century scholar would complain about the lack of sketch studies on masterpieces of serialism,1 but rarely do such studies link creative processes to a more general consideration of compositional practice as something partly shared and partly personal, partly supporting the particular process under study and partly fed by it. Nor do such studies connect strongly to the results of preexisting scholarship, whether by comparing compositional techniques or by exploring how similar material might give rise to different creative strategies.2 A genetic analysis presupposes a model of the artist’s stream of thought during the writing of his sketches and score; hence, each genetic analysis involves implicit assumptions about human cognition, which can more or less consciously guide the research process.3 Why not make the model more explicit by examining both the material and intellectual sides of a recent compositional process? Selecting an influential contemporary compositional practice could make the study a relevant basis for future comparison with other practices. If that musical work were to remain a subject of interest in the future, this genetic study would have the potential to provide future scholars and listeners with a unique understanding supported by rich documentation. The present study, which emerged from this ambitious premise, does not convey the full scope of the research, the results of which are available mainly in French-language publications. The aim of the following account is to introduce some of the epistemological and methodological issues addressed in the research as well as to assess the potential results of this kind of project. A comprehensive overview would exceed the size of a book chapter and would cover the cognitive and technological aspects in the same proportion as the musicological ones.4 The focus here is mainly musicological, although other dimensions will be touched upon through references to corresponding publications.

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Reconstructing the Creative Process with the Help of the Composer The creative process at issue is that of the French composer Philippe Leroux and his piece entitled Voi(rex)5 for a singer (usually a soprano), six instrumentalists, and live electronics. It was composed in 2002 and premiered the following year, and has since been performed regularly in Europe as well as in North America.6 The study, which I led in collaboration with cognitive anthropologist Jacques Theureau (Centre national de la recherche scientifique [CNRS]/Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique [IRCAM]), was conducted largely between 2004 and 2005.

Constraints upon a Genetic Critical Approach to Voi(rex) Broadly considered, the questions addressed by this research are identical to those that underlie “genetic criticism” in music, notably: • •

•

What chains of compositional operations gave rise to the work as we know it today? What type of singular musical logic can be reconstructed on this basis, without simply presenting the chronology of the creative process or analyses oriented toward structural listening? How can our knowledge of the genesis of the work modify our perception of it?

Despite these crucial shared issues, our object and method of research are different from what one normally encounters in the study of musical sketches. There are at least three reasons for this. First, the researchers belonged to the same milieu as the composer, Philippe Leroux, who was present in our immediate environment.7 When we began our study of his recently completed work, he was both a composer programmed in Parisian concerts and an instructor in computer-assisted composition. Prior to beginning the long-term collaboration, we had been in the audience at the IRCAM concert in which Voi(rex) was premiered. Given these circumstances, it was legitimate to envisage a direct collaboration with the composer that would allow him to respond directly to our questions about his creative process. Second, the work we examined is not fully determined by a traditional score, since Voi(rex) has a live electronics component with sounds that are broadcast or modified in real time during the performance of the piece. The composition also involves precompositional work using a software sequencer (ProTools) and a program for computer-assisted composition (OpenMusic). Third, when we devised this research project with the composer, he was already thinking about

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a new work that would exploit possibilities not utilized in Voi(rex). Leroux therefore took an interest in the genetic reconstruction of Voi(rex), not only for its value in producing knowledge about his compositional process, but also as a resource that he could make use of in his future artistic activities. Leroux was sufficiently intrigued by this possibility to lend us his sketches for several months so that we could study them independently, and also digitize them. Due to Leroux’s long-term interest in learning more about his own ways of working,8 our collaboration offered benefits for both parties while preserving the integrity of the reconstructive project on the part of the composer and the autonomy of the artistic project from the perspective of the researchers.

The Need for Cognitive Anthropology Contemplation of these three points suggested a hybrid methodology that mixes a genetic approach with an anthropological one in which the composer would be our informant, offering firsthand knowledge about the process of composition. More precisely, this approach involves the branch of cultural anthropology known as cognitive anthropology, which is interested in human cognition (defined as the manifestation and production of knowledge) in individuals who are participants in a given culture. A seminal definition of culture from this cognition-oriented point of view is offered by Ward Goodenough, for whom culture is “whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its member.”9 While this definition applies well to ethnographic research on the level of a society or a social group, it applies less convincingly to the activities of a composer within the tradition of so-called new music where technical transcendence (on the part of both the composer and performer) and stylistic innovation regarding a current state of the art are highly valued. Moreover, focusing on a creative activity such as the preparation and writing of a new musical work demands an epistemology of cultural dynamics. One is compelled, therefore, to endorse Edwin Hutchins’s criticism of Goodenough’s claim: Culture is not any collection of things, whether tangible or abstract. Rather, it is a process. It is a human cognitive process that takes place both inside and outside the minds of people. . . . I am proposing an integrated view of human cognition in which a major component of culture is a cognitive process . . . and cognition is a cultural process.10

According to this perspective, Philippe Leroux’s activity of composition performs a musical culture; that is, Leroux manifests learned skills and shared patterns of composition while at the same time generating new musical ideas and configurations that henceforth are made available to his listeners as well as to other composers.

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According to Theureau’s work in cognitive anthropology,11 composers’ cognition must then be considered as situated in a strong sense. At any given moment, the activity of the composer takes place at a particular point within an individual and collective life, in a particular place, with particular resources at hand including tools (pencils, erasers, paper, computer with specific software, etc.) and personal work materials (books, CDs, various scores, “Post-Its” with organological facts, manuscripts of past works, etc.). Previously prepared materials are embedded constantly in this dynamic situation, either in and of themselves, or as signposts for future use. Thus, there are multiple ways of understanding each single trace of compositional activity, and a complex relationship exists within the composer’s workshop between recent and old documents, between edited documents and others provisionally set aside, and between the intentions of the composer and the content of the preexisting materials. Such a complex relationship characterizes the situatedness of the activity under scrutiny, and an appropriate methodology is required to grasp its evolution over time.

The Method of Data Collection This need for a methodological hybridization produced a specific framework for data collection in which knowledge of sketches and their relationships was built up principally through knowledge about the cognition of the composer. A preliminary study was undertaken that aimed to determine the basis for the collaboration, exploring the available documentation of the composer’s activity and defining a methodology. The composer brought to our office all the sketches and drafts he had archived as well as the manuscript score and a selection of computer data (notably sound files used for the composition of the electronic component). Theureau and I asked him to comment freely on various sketches so that we could become more familiar with his approach and evaluate the accuracy of his memory of past actions. We asked him to outline the chronological genesis of Voi(rex) with the support of his compositional documents and his personal calendar, and then asked him to date approximately each of the documents at hand. Several periods of composition were differentiated as a result of this preliminary study: 1. Earliest beginnings (1993–2001): after writing various pieces for voice and/or choir, Leroux felt the desire to write a voice-centered seminal piece; he met with poet and photographer Lin Delpierre (Villa Medici, 1994) and collected sketches for “sonic ideas” and “structural ideas.” 2. Preparation (September 2001–April 2002): he sampled vocal experiments with the singer; gathered up sketches, compiled lists of materials to use, and put them into separate files (“Electronics,” “Sonic Ideas,” etc.). On April 18, a recording session took place with the musical ensemble playing the notated sketches in different styles.

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3. Score Writing (February 2002–December 2002): Introduction and first movement from February to April; second movement in April/May; third movement in July/August; fourth movement in October/November; fifth movement in November/December; movement-by-movement computer editing by the copyist; then proof reading, end of 2002. 4. Adjustments: during the rehearsal of the premiere in January 2003, technical tests and compositional improvements ensued with these adjustments subsequently incorporated into the manuscript and the printed score. We chose to focus on the third stage since the composer’s recollection regarding that period was especially precise. This period was recorded chronologically by the composer with the guidance of a method tested and validated by the three of us working together. Data were collected over the course of eleven interviews, each approximately three hours in duration, and conducted over a period of six months. The interviews took place in a room where Leroux’s personal computer, his sketches, and the other aforementioned documents were placed on a table to simulate his familiar working space. Our chronological reconstruction of this activity followed its own segmentation into five phases of writing (corresponding to the five movements of the work), with approximately two interviews per movement. For each interview, we proceeded in three steps. First was the selection of the materials needed for the reconstruction of each movement’s genesis. Often Leroux himself executed this first step without direct discussion, though some snatches of verbal expression accompanied his gestures. The next step was a reconstruction of the composer’s anticipations, plans, and expectations at a particular moment within the period of compositional process that was under scrutiny, for example, in relation to the beginning of a movement or a significant passage within it. Finally, and most importantly, the composer reenacted the course of score writing, through a verbal and gestural expression of simulated past situations. During this crucial third phase of each interview, we employed various tactics to contradict or support Leroux’s reconstruction of his own activity and to help him trigger his memory, directing his attention away from his present situation as a composer involved with other compositional problems, not to mention the distractions of his teaching composition classes and giving interviews to music journals. Throughout the interview process, I maintained a critical eye toward the precision and probability of the composer’s discourse by assessing the documents at hand while relying on the knowledge and experience gained from earlier interviews that dealt with previously written sections of the score.12 Every interview was recorded on video and then transcribed, including hesitations when significant, and gestures when indexing precise parts of scores and sketches. This type of interview is described as a “situation simulation interview based on documentation.”13

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Selected Results of the Study This section presents a few examples of the kinds of data and typical issues that arose during our investigation. Isolated examples drawn from a “course-ofaction”-oriented study would not provide the reader with a faithful perspective. While this summary is highly cursory when compared to the level of detail made possible through the combination of sketches and the content of the situation simulation of the composition, it is nevertheless the best way to show the sheer variety of issues that arose.

A “Nonsketch” Study? Unlike the more familiar models of genetic studies of music, the jottings, sketches, and preparatory notes of Philippe Leroux contain little in the way of musical notes or thematic fragments, nor do they abound in curves mapped on graph paper and matrices in the manner of works of the European avant-garde of the 1950s, or suggest the manner of recent working documents published by the American composer Roger Reynolds.14 Not that Leroux dispenses with the craft of motivic development, modernistic combinatorics, or the transposition of extramusical models. On the contrary, his musical training and his aesthetic outlook make him a worthy inheritor of the twentieth-century European art music tradition, from Pierre Schaeffer through François-Bernard Mâche to Gérard Grisey. But the familiar forms of modernist precompositional material (matrices and graphs) as well as premodernist material (thematic development and motivic sketches) are both notably absent from Leroux’s sketches. In our interviews with Leroux, we realized that his work on the “sketches” for Voi(rex) took place during two distinct and successive periods. The definition of sonic and musical figures occurred before the writing of the score through a back-and-forth movement between auditory imagination and quickly drawn schemas of “sound ideas of all kinds” (idées sonores en tous genres, which is also the title of a folder containing Leroux’s pencil drawings on bits of paper that he had jotted down at the earliest stages of the creative process, sometimes even years before envisioning a piece for voice, instruments, and electronics; see fig. 11.1). The writing of the score then consisted of “realizing” these figures in traditional musical notation, a process that involved several stages of revisions before he inserted the chosen version into its particular context in the score. In other words, Leroux writes a score from the first to the last page, erasing as he moves through all the previous versions toward the definitive form of a passage. Nearly all the “sketches” that a future genetic analyst of Leroux’s music might hope to find here no longer exist, even if they appeared provisionally during the writing of the work.

Figure 11.1. Three sketches from the folder “idées sonores en tous genres” for Voi(rex). © Philippe Leroux.

Figure 11.2. “Plan général” of Voi(rex), left side. © Philippe Leroux.

Figure 11.2. (concluded) “Plan général” of Voi(rex), right side. © Philippe Leroux.

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On the Importance of Oral/Aural Aspects of a Highly Literate Activity Another apparent paradox concerns the “general plan” of Voi(rex), which is considerably different from the structure of the work in its final form; for example, the work has five movements, whereas the general plan featured eight movements (see fig. 11.2). And yet it is this general plan that the composer had in front of his eyes in his studio while he wrote the score, and he never replaced it with a newer, updated version that would have reflected the evolution of his formal conception. This evidence from the genesis of Voi(rex) is not useful for retracing its major compositional steps (since what was modified was not the plan as such), but points to how Leroux read the plan. It would be tempting to presume that some intermediate versions of the plan were lost—in particular versions that would have arisen after his decision to reduce the number of movements from eight to five. But the composer’s testimony allows us to discredit this hypothesis; instead, we gain insight into Leroux’s use of “general plans” and other working documents. For this composer, an obsolete plan preserving earlier ideas for the project proved more valuable than a series of revisions to the plan that would respond to each new stage of his work, since the latter would effectively cut off the composer from the genealogy of his own original idea. Furthermore, Leroux would rather retain access to his unused ideas (through their survival in an outdated plan), than risk losing the possibility of recycling them in a later, yet unenvisioned, compositional situation. Composing (for Leroux at least) involves the preparation and exploitation of music-writing situations.15 During the preparatory phase, Leroux avoids conventional music notation and instead uses personal notation (mixing verbs, nouns, schematas, and fragments of music notation, as in the samples shown in fig. 11.1) on circumstantial mediums (concert tickets, bits of a paper tablecloth, etc.) with the goal of capturing “sound ideas” in order to preserve their singularity and plasticity for future use. Once he becomes fully involved in the compositional process, Leroux creates lists of such ideas by recopying them onto more conventional mediums such as blank paper. Then he assesses the lists and connects various aspects of the ideas, sometimes through the addition of new annotations. As soon as the high-level form of the piece has been defined and inscribed onto what will become the “general plan,” the process of mutual determination between the “ideas” is reiterated. The outcome is a series of “sheets of ideas” (Leroux’s term) in which each sheet—that is, one per movement named on the “general plan”—synthesizes all the elements that might be present in the corresponding movements, or at least that will be on hand when he sets about writing them (see fig. 11.3). New connections between ideas may also emerge during the writing of a movement, triggering in turn minor or even substantial changes (sometimes retroactive revisions to sections already composed). This essential phase of the compositional process is underrepresented in genetic

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studies since it leaves no direct traces: what is involved is an intensive inner listening and rereading of the pages of the autograph score just written. This daily activity includes rough sketching and annotation in the margins of the score, immediately preceding the writing-out of the corresponding measures. As soon as the passage is realized satisfactorily for Leroux, he erases the marginal annotations. Nevertheless, verbal annotations may be added later beneath the lower staff, serving as reminders of the main compositional operation involved in the passage. Although such annotations remain in the autograph, it is self-evident that the copyist will not integrate them into the typeset score in preparation for its publication.

“The Undertermined” as a “Horizon Within Perception” Analysis of the compositional process makes explicit the actual and potential compositional implications of the “ideas” (Leroux’s word) at stake, and it also sheds light on evolving connections between multiple ideas, even those that are rejected or set aside for another project. Such analysis seeks to explain which aspects of an evolving idea are left open at a precise moment while also exploring how conflicting features, unnoticed during the preparatory period, might cause unexpected ramifications once they are eventually rendered in musical notation. This point has been illustrated in a study16 focusing on Leroux’s notion of “nested form” (blocs gigogne), a juxtaposition of sections of equal length containing more and more complex material, and conveying a sense that one would hear the content of a newer, shorter Russian matryoshka doll inserted within the former one. This formal idea was initially jotted down as a plan consisting of seven blocks, involving a progressive fulfillment of the initial complex in the fourth block, and then the gradual return to the first block through a similar step-by-step hollowing-out. From this seminal idea, one might expect a strictly symmetrical musical form. What happened in practice, however, is something quite different. As Leroux answered our questions about this scheme, he expressed his disdain for symmetry in general. From an early stage, he regarded the “nested form” as a provisional entity that would be revised and altered during its realization. In the end, although the movement does in fact consist of blocks of equal length, there are six of them (not seven or nine as successively planned), with the most complex “central block” (the heart of the initial sevenblock schema) followed by units in which the hollowing-out procedure has been modified. Materials that were secondary in the first half of the movement assume greatest importance in the two last sections. Considering that the different types of materials are varied at each new appearance, it is evident that the final outcome of the compositional process could hardly be identified as “nested” by a listener, or even by a music analyst. Only a genetic analysis uncovers such tensional inconsistencies. An approach narrowly concentrating on sketches, without any

Figure 11.3. One of the “sheets of ideas” for the first movement of Voi(rex). © Philippe Leroux.

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kind of ethnographic/cognitive data collection method, might have interpreted these inconsistencies as deviations from preexisting plans. Actually, these inconsistencies represent a positive process of concretization involving numerous manifestations of the idea, manifestations that were embodied only partly in the provisional plans and sketches. Such an emphasis on “ideas” demands levels of observation that go beyond that of an individual work.17 Many ideas emerge at unexpected places and times in the life of a composer and these are not necessarily tied to any single planned project. Distinctive ideas influence both the preparation and writing of a work, and may themselves be shaped by this process through a strong contextualization in one or several passages of the piece. Sometimes such ideas do outlive their intensive exploitation in a single composition of a movement or a piece. For example, Leroux was so excited by the “idea of letters” that emerged during the final preparatory phase for the second movement (it also appears in the fifth), that he chose to employ it again in future pieces. The musical idea must then be defined primarily with respect to the power of indetermination, as in the commentary on Kantian reason by Deleuze: “The undetermined is not a simple imperfection in our knowledge or a lack in the object: it is a perfectly positive, objective structure which acts as a focus or horizon within perception.”18

From the Composer’s Discourse to Its Musicological Reconstitution Additional points remain concerning the compositional process of Voi(rex) that call into question the involvement of both the composer and the researcher in the production of a discourse about the musical work. First, composition involves a verbal discourse about music. A composer not only uses written expressions in order to describe his new work in concert program notes, but also makes use of analytical terminology when explaining his work to others. And how could he remain indifferent to critics who describe and evaluate his music through words disseminated in a public space? Still more interesting is the role of verbal discourse in relation to the compositional process. The composer may regard some of his compositional techniques in terms of historical concepts (such as “musique concrète” or “plainchant”) or distinctive oppositions derived from music history (such as structure versus perception, which in Leroux’s way of thinking is akin to “using a row” versus “using spectralist techniques”). This historical context can influence compositional choices, for example, as the use of a given technique is balanced against techniques supposedly associated with an alternative aesthetic trend. The activity of composition must be seen as producing both the work and the discourse about it. The “ideas” mentioned by Leroux exemplify this dual aspect of composition. Does such an idea become embodied in the work, or does it serve mainly as a starting point, generating interesting

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features or stimulating problems in the preparatory phase? Either way, it is likely that the composer will make this “idea” public at some point if it has been a vital component of the work from its inception. At the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned the aim of “adding one’s own response to previous engagements with a work,” as we seek new ways of enjoying a piece. One of the starting points of the collaboration involved the composer in a simultaneous project that dealt with prototyping tools and interfaces for computer-aided listening. Multimedia listening guides for several sections of Voi(rex) were developed by going back and forth between the genetic study and the technological project.19 The guides included recordings of the movements, scanned manuscript sketches, annotations on the score, sound files, and simplified simulations of a few of Leroux’s computer tools. Some explanations were provided, though such information was purposefully limited with the intent of providing the listener with various active ways of exploring the work while avoiding a merely prescriptive path. Particularly representative is the multimedia introduction to the third movement. During our interviews with Leroux, the second-by-second comparison of the recording and the most complete ProTools session had provided us with an especially revealing window into the construction of this movement. Accompanied by the composer’s commentaries, the session allowed us to see and to hear its genesis in a more immediately sonic way than traditional sketches or drafts usually provide. Hence the multimedia listening guide had to enable the reader/listener to explore the movement in an analogous manner. We then designed a reconstitution of this ProTools session with remixing features: the sound-processing techniques used by Leroux as well as his initial pool of audio files that generated all of the sonic material for the movement were made available in a sampler-like interface whereby each track was labeled according to the main type of compositional work.

An Empirical Musicology of Contemporary Creative Processes In search of Data-Relevant Replication Criteria The multimedia listening guides aside, the Voi(rex) project was not oriented toward a kind of specialized music appreciation. As far as the methodological framework was concerned, such a project had less to do with “music criticism” in Joseph Kerman’s sense than with the current trend toward an interdisciplinary approach to music as a cultural practice,20 for which musicology could become— as Eric Clarke and Nicholas Cook put it—an “empirically-based knowledge” that would incorporate “observation within patterns of investigation involving generalization and explanation.”21 In defining empirical musicology, Clarke and Cook have written that:

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What we generally think of as empirically based knowledge—as science—. . . also depends on the more fundamental criterion of replication: if an observation is to be regarded as trustworthy, it should be possible to make it on different occasions, and it should be possible for different people to make it.22

Their remarks should not be construed as a claim for some kind of an experimental musicology that deals only with laboratory-like reproducibility, inspired more by cognitive psychology than by historical musicology. In any case, it would be incorrect to assume a strong opposition between the two trends, since as the authors point out, the most personal musicological discourse can become intersubjective and grounded in human experience.23 Moreover, if “empirical musicology” aims at transforming music scholarship into “a significantly ‘data richer’ field than we generally give it credit for,”24 sketch studies promise to play a role in this development, adding the dimension of empirical “replication” to triedand-true (philological) methods. In keeping with the tradition of cultural anthropology, we have attempted to make our data available to other scholars in order to provide the research community with a means of verification and the possibility to replicate the way we have analyzed the data. This should allow for future comparisons with new data on contemporary compositional processes collected along lines comparable to our own. This consideration encouraged us to seek a “replication-oriented” approach for editing “irreproducibility-oriented” data, which is not an easy path considering the historically rooted opposition between “empirical approaches” and “fieldwork with the idea of participant observation” in ethnomusicology, as mentioned elsewhere by Cook.25 Specific software has been devised with this aim in mind. To conclude, I offer some brief comments on this topic to illustrate the need to develop not only new methods for empirical sketch studies, but also new tools congruent with these methods.

Design of a Tool for Exploring Music-Genetic Data While working with the Voi(rex) sketches and interviewing Leroux, Theureau and I felt that we needed a means of archiving (at least for ourselves) the hundreds of documents that supported our study as well as those our study produced. It was vital that we could add our own personal annotations to these documents over the course of our study. Moreover, such a specific database would need to allow us to connect the temporality of the musical work (that is, of the written score and the sound recording) to the compositional sketches and to the chronology of the compositional genesis as these were reconstructed over the course of the composition-simulation interviews. It was desirable that this computer tool be used not only for our analyses, but also for their dissemination with the publication of online analyses and navigable repertoires that contain all

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relevant genetic documents linked together. A prototype was developed, during and after the period of data collection, through a collaborative design process26 involving Samuel Goldszmidt (multimedia engineer), Florine Chamey-Davignon (Web designer), Theureau, and me. The particularity of the interface lies in its capacities for navigation through the sound recording of the piece and through the score, which are synchronized. The limited dimensions of computer screens imposed a choice between the legibility of the score and the ability to view the compositional documents at a reasonable size. Consequently, two modes of navigation are offered: the listening mode, which is centered on the score (fig. 11.4a), and the documentary mode, in which documents relevant at a given moment are made accessible (fig. 11.4b). The former allows for access to all of the data on the genesis of Voi(rex) through a compression of the space occupied by the two pages of the score. The user navigates the composer’s working documents and the transcriptions of interviews, both of which are indexed according to the audio playing time and measure numbers in the score. When the user selects one of these documents, the annotations displayed depend on the position in the score as well. Three kinds of shaded annotations are used (see fig. 11.5): elements linked to the passage being heard are dark-shaded; elements linked to passages already heard are light-shaded; and elements not yet used (or that will never be used) remain without annotation. The zones that surround the score in figure 11.4b contain various elements such as texts, sounds, sketches, and drafts. The documents stored in the database are divided into five categories: 1. Interviews, located in the top-left corner; this zone contains excerpts of transcriptions of interviews sorted thematically (this zone can also hold analytical notes made by the users); 2. Compositional documents of Voi(rex), located in the top center; this zone contains the working documents Leroux used during the entire period of composition. For example, these folders contain sheets of harmonies, notes on the voice, or other issues central to the piece; 3. Global elements, located in the middle on the left; this zone contains working documents that Leroux used consistently during the composition of this movement (such as the plan général); 4. Local elements, located in the bottom left of the screen; this zone contains documents used by Leroux while composing the measure of music being considered; 5. Voi(rex) elements, in the top right of the score; this zone contains other documents concerning the work, such as the materials for lectures that Leroux gave on Voi(rex) both during and after the composition of the piece.

Figure 11.4a. Two navigation modes in the genetic exploration tool. Listening mode (centered on the score). © Analyse des pratiques musicales, Ircam.

Figure 11.4b. Two navigation modes in the genetic exploration tool. Documentary mode (access to the database). © Analyse des pratiques musicales, Ircam.

Figure 11.5. Display of a document from the database (cf. fig. 3) with color annotations and hyperlinks. © Analyse des pratiques musicales, Ircam.

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The zone “Interviews” (entretiens) differs from the other four zones in that it consists almost exclusively of text, and this text describes the relationships between elements that are accessible from other zones. As was mentioned earlier, the interview method involved the reconstruction of the manuscript for every measure of the piece and commentary for each measure or feature of the sketches and technical resources necessary for its composition. As a result, the discourse employed by the composer in collaboration with the researchers acquired an overreaching metadimension with respect to the documents collected at the same time. This framework made possible the classification of these documents as a function of the precise measures of music for which they were used. It is this aspect of the interface that allows the user of the tool, whose research interests may be quite independent, to assess critically the compositional process and potentially to challenge certain analytical assumptions made by the researcher team. While the application allows new documents to be added to the database, it allows above all for new commentaries to be created about the documents;27 in other words, it allows for the creation of an autonomous discourse in relation to that of the composer. The principles of this interface are not entirely determined by the particular study that prompted its development and are potentially adaptable to many other genetic studies of music, theater, or any art in which the final product is a temporal work whose genesis is documented by materials that can be visually and/or textually annotated. As a first step toward such a generalization of the interface, a newer version currently under development will allow users to enter any score (printed or manuscript) along with evidence of the creative process so long as it is structured by measures and systems. For such a future tool, will it be useful to have an “Interviews” section if the data-collection method does not involve interviews? One of the distinctive characteristics of our study was the use of the composer’s own words as a principal means of accessing the creative process. Yet the overriding function of this zone could be perfectly captured from the beginning of a research project by having the researcher note his or her hypotheses on virtual “Post-Its” linked to relevant documents. Alternatively, the researcher could reference, in these Post-It notes, analyses by other scholars who preceded him in the study of the documents, and these could serve to place into perspective the genesis of his own analytical attitudes and assertions.

Notes 1. For a reliable overview of this field, see especially Patricia Hall and Friedemann Sallis, A Handbook to Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 2. One exception is François Delalande, “Towards an Analysis of Compositional Strategies,” Circuit: Musiques contemporaines 17, no. 1 (2007): 11–26 (original French publication dates from 1988).

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3. As Almuth Grésillon puts it, “the most complete transmission [of the written traces of a genetic process] provides us with just the visible part of a cognitive process that is a thousand times more complex” [my translation]. See her Éléments de critique génétique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 25. 4. Such a survey would need to be written in collaboration with my colleagues Jacques Theureau and Samuel Goldszmidt with whom the research has been undertaken. The name of the research team is: Analysis of Musical Practices (Analyse des pratiques musicales). See http://apm.ircam.fr. 5. That is, [Voi]r / Voie / [Voi]x, following the title page of the score. “Voir” (to see) refers to the visual/graphic dimension, which is preeminent in the piece, “voix” refers to the voice, explored in various dimensions and facets, and “voie” (way, path) is meant to indicate how the composer saw this piece as seminal, opening to him a rich, new way of developing his musical thought. 6. A CD recording of recent work of Leroux, including Voi(rex), was released in 2004. See Phillipe Leroux, Voi(rex) / Plus loin / M (Paris, Nocturne, ref. NTCD358). 7. Under one roof, IRCAM houses a research institute, a place of musical creation, and a pedagogical center. 8. Since the period of the research, Leroux has written a theoretical essay on the relationship between composition and analysis, including reflections resulting from our collaboration. See Philippe Leroux, “De Voi(rex) à Apocalypsis: essai sur les interactions entre composition et analyse,” L’inouï, revue de l’Ircam 2 (2006): 43–61. 9. Ward H. Goodenough, “Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics,” in Report of the Seventh Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Study, ed. Paul L. Garvin, Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics 9 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1957), 167–73. 10. Edwin Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). 11. Jacques Theureau, Le cours d’action: Méthode développée (Toulouse: Octares, 2006). For an English-language introduction, see Theureau’s “Course-of-Action Analysis & Course-of-Action Centered Design,” in Handbook of Cognitive Task Design, ed. Erik Hollnagel (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003), 55–81. For the seminal definition of “situated action” and a vigorous claim for the need for considering the situatedness of many human activities, see Lucy Suchman, Plans and Situated Actions. The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, rev. ed., 2006). 12. This kind of “real-time” interpretation of primary sources did not preclude the solitary reading and analysis of archival documents (as in a library) more familiar to musicological research methods, here particularly useful as a means of preparing oneself to keep a critical distance during the interviews. 13. The method and its epistemological as well as practical implications are discussed in Jacques Theureau and Nicolas Donin, “Comprendre une activité de composition musicale: les relations entre sujet, activité créatrice, environnement et conscience préréflexive,” in Sujets, activités, environnements: Approches transverses, ed. Jean-Marie Barbier and Marc Durand (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006), 221–51. 14. Roger Reynolds, Form and Method: Composing Music. The Rothschild Essays, ed. Stephen McAdams (New York: Routledge, 2002). 15. This point is developed in Nicolas Donin and Jacques Theureau, “L’activité de composition musicale comme exploitation/construction de situations. Anthropologie cognitive de la composition d’une œuvre musicale par Philippe Leroux,” Intellectica 48, nos. 1–2 (2005): 175–205.

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16. For a discussion devoted to a genetic analysis of the fourth movement of Voi(rex), which resulted from that specific idea, see Nicolas Donin and Jacques Theureau, “La composition d’un mouvement de Voi(rex), de son idée formelle à sa structure,” L’inouï, revue de l’Ircam 2 (2006): 62–85. 17. This point is developed through analyses of various “ideas” in Nicolas Donin and Jacques Theureau, “Theoretical and Methodological Issues Related to Long Term Creative Cognition: The Case of Musical Composition,” Cognition Technology & Work 9, no. 4 (2007): 233–51. 18. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 169 (original French publication dates from 1967). Additional commentary appears in Donin and Theureau, “Theoretical and Methodological Issues.” 19. For a presentation of the framework, see my article “Towards Organised Listening: Some Aspects of the ‘Signed Listening’ Project, IRCAM,” Organised Sound 9, no. 1 (2004): 99–108. For an account of the participative design of the Voi(rex) listening guides, see my “Pour une ‘écoute informée’ de la musique contemporaine: quelques travaux récents,” Circuit: Musiques contemporaines 16, no. 3 (2006): 51–64. A review of the guides is offered by Paul Théberge in his article “Exploring the Creative Process: Hypermedia Tools for Understanding Contemporary Composition,” Circuit: Musiques contemporaines 18, no. 2 (2008): 75–83. 20. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, eds., The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (New York and London: Routledge, 2003). See also Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). 21. Nicholas Cook and Eric Clarke, “Introduction: What Is Empirical Musicology?” in Empirical Musicology: Aims, Methods, Prospects, ed. Clarke and Cook (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 3–14. 22. Ibid., 3–4. 23. Clarke and Cook comment on a “(thought) experiment” by Marion A. Guck as follows: “If Guck’s frankly fictive account of the immigrant C flat articulates a way of hearing the music that other people can share, then it can be regarded as a discovery procedure resulting in a replication of experience, and hence in a measure of intersubjective agreement. And indeed to resort to measures which are replicable but not necessarily definable in objective terms is quite normal in musicology” (ibid., 5). 24. Ibid., 4. 25. Nicholas Cook, “Border Crossings: A Commentary on Henkjan Honing’s ‘On the Growing Role of Observation, Formalization and Experimental Method in Musicology,’” Empirical Musicology Review 1, no. 1 (January 2006): 7–11. 26. This process as well as a detailed technical description of the tool may be found in Samuel Goldszmidt, Jacques Theureau, and Nicolas Donin, “Navigation génétique dans une œuvre musicale,” Proceedings of IHM 2007 (Paris: ACM Press, 2007), 159–66. Figures 11.4 and 11.5 are borrowed from this paper. 27. A feature of the interface allows the user to create his or her own path through the documents presented in the database. By completing a form, an analytical text can be added and the user can both connect this text to the documents in the database and target on the score a group of measures and staves.

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Additional Sources Collins, David. “A Synthesis Process Model of Creative Thinking in Music Composition.” Psychology of Music 33, no. 2 (2005): 193–216. Donin, Nicolas and Jacques Theureau, eds. “La fabrique des oeuvres.” Special issue, Circuit: Musiques contemporaines 18, no. 1 (2008). Marmaras, Nikolas. “Identification des contraintes pragmatiques rencontrées lors de la conception assistée par ordinateur: une approche méthodologique.” PhD diss., CNAM-Université Paris 13, 1984. McAdams, Stephen. “Problem-Solving Strategies in Music Composition.” Music Perception 21, no. 3 (2004): 391–429. Mion, Philippe, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, and Jean-Christophe Thomas. L’envers d’une œuvre: “De natura sonorum” de Bernard Parmegiani. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1982. Sloboda, John. “Do Psychologists Have Anything Useful to Say About Composition?” In Analyse et création musicales, Actes du Troisième Congrès Européen d’Analyse Musicale, Montpellier, 1995, 69–78. Paris: L’Harmattan/SFAM, 2001.

Afterword I had the great pleasure of participating in the conference, organized under the direction of the indefatigable William Kinderman, that led to the present book. That my own essay on Verdi’s La forza del destino does not appear is simply a matter of timing: although I offered some preliminary thoughts about Forza at the conference, I still have not completed my investigation of the wonderful manuscripts pertaining to the opera that have been part of the collection of the Mariinsky Theater since 1862, when Verdi directed there the world premiere of the first version of his opera. Though, of course, as genetic criticism has taught us, it is treacherous to speak of a “first version” or a “second version,” and so on, no matter how convenient such categories may be for those who make and use critical editions. And nowhere is this lesson more profoundly to be learned in the study of Italian opera than with La forza del destino. From the first moment that Verdi began to think seriously about his opera during the Summer of 1861 until he completed a final revision (how falsely “definitive” this formulation sounds) for Milan in 1869, he never seems to have left the work alone. Yet if we wish to know this score it is insufficient to look at the officially sanctioned texts. If we did not follow every aspect of its genesis, how could we fully appreciate from whence the problems in the dramaturgy of Act III derive and how we might try to solve them in performance? We would never know that the prayer in the Scena dell’Osteria was written without the winds sustaining the voices and that Verdi apparently added those sustaining wind parts to keep insufficiently able singers in tune. We would not have access to the coaching he did for individual performers in 1862, remnants of which are to be found in the original performing materials in St. Petersburg. We would not understand why he felt compelled to remove from his score sections that may have seemed “old-fashioned” to a composer of the mid1860s but which no longer bear that stigma. The turn away from “new critical” thinking, which treasured and analyzed the art-work as if it were born and completed in a vacuum, came in literary studies more than forty years ago. Music studies, as always, lagged so far behind that a distinguished scholar who has devoted himself to the physical description of the Beethoven sketches could—in the late 1970s—attack the entire enterprise of interpretative study of sketches by claiming that one couldn’t learn anything about the music from them: only a Schenkerian analysis of the independent and complete art-work could provide analytical insight. What a narrow definition of “analytical insight”! Fortunately this perspective was subsequently attacked from

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two directions. The first viewpoint, often referred to as the “new musicology,” was concerned largely with the cultural conditions of composition. It suddenly seemed to matter that the composer was female/male, gay/straight, Norwegian/American, young/old, or that he or she worked with certain institutions at certain moments in history. And in order to open the enterprise in ways that were not available to our great-grandparents, literary historians talked about the “new historicism.” (I will refrain from commenting on the apparently essential requirement that we justify our chosen activities by employing the loaded language of “new” and “old,” with its implications of “new-fangled” and “old-fashioned” or that we set generations against one another as if pendulum swings weren’t the rule.) The second viewpoint built on techniques that had been developed, often in English-speaking countries, in studies of what was referred to as “compositional process,” but which can trace their proud line of descent from mid-nineteenth century Germany. Thanks largely to our French and German colleagues, studies of “compositional process” were broadened to develop into what the French have called la critique génétique, a term now circulating in English—as this book demonstrates—as “genetic criticism.” Let us be clear about the difference between specific studies that are concerned with particular aspects of the genesis of a work of art and a full-fledged genetic study of such a work, one that would try globally to encompass everything we know about its genesis. This book has much of the former, but none of the latter. Perhaps that is the nature of the beast, for while we can learn an enormous amount from individual studies, the task of assembling the entire genetic history of any given “work” (ah! those scare-quotes, where would we be without them?) may be beyond us. I know how much I have learned about La forza del destino by investigating elements of its genesis, but could I ever produce a complete genetic critique of the opera? And if I did, would anyone read it? In our critical editions of the works of Rossini and Verdi we consider it necessary to detail, to the extent possible, modifications the composers made in their autograph manuscripts—when these exist. That is part of the genetic history of the work. Yet we have been criticized for offering information that few really care about. We are convinced, instead, that such documentation serves multiple goals. Tracing the genesis of specific passages through multiple layers often allows us to understand the history in ways that influence our decisions about which readings to privilege in the text that will reach performers. Understanding changes made by the composer in the act of writing a score can also offer major insights into the composer’s attitude toward contrapuntal practices, doublings within chords, matters of orchestration, or the uses of ornamentation. And scholars who pore over these manuscripts for months are probably better suited to sort out such details than someone who examines a source more cursorily. I do not want to imagine what a full genetic study of Waiting for Godot or Le plaisir du texte might be like. But after reading in the present volume the genetic essays about these works I will never experience them in the same way. The roots

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of Vladimir and Estragon in Laurel and Hardy are so precise and so beautifully demonstrated that Beckett’s clowns must be seen as part of an important tradition. And Barthes’ ruthless excisions from his texts demonstrate unequivocally that less is not necessarily more, at least where comprehensibility is at issue. I had reason to cite that essay recently when a friend and film critic informed me that her editor had requested that she halve the number of words in her book manuscript, insisting that “less is more.” Well it isn’t: not when the argument is complex. Genetic criticism has made that clear. Studies of compositional process in music may be harder for laymen, in particular, to gauge: all those musical examples; all those incomprehensible chicken scratches that we call Beethoven sketches, with all the uncertainties as to how they should be transcribed. And, yes, I too have sat through innumerable papers in which the compositional history of a passage was deciphered with painstaking precision to no ostensible end. “Why should I care?” is the perfectly appropriate response of nonbelievers, and there are many occasions in which one can hardly fail to sympathize with them. In the context of the full genetic study of a musical composition (should such a study of a musical work ever be possible), each detail may prove to have its place. In an essay on a particular aspect of the genetic history of that composition, however, we are not wrong in demanding that a point be made. The musical essays in this volume show what it means to have a point. It is also helpful that these essays involve Beethoven, Mahler, Strauss, and a contemporary French composer (Leroux). There is relatively little written documentation to provide significant genetic criticism before the eighteenth century (Robert Marshall has already shown how much can be learned about the music of Bach from examination of his manuscirpts and Alan Tyson and Robert Levin have done important work on Mozart), but the written documentation increases markedly with the nineteenth century and, until the electronic age descended upon us, the twentieth century proved no less fecund. Nicolas Donin, however, has demonstrated—with his work on Leroux—just how much we can learn from the electronic remains of the genesis of a work, when such analysis is joined to extensive communication with the composer. When we ask questions that pertain to the compositional “invariants” in sketches for the Eroica symphony or “framing” elements in a late-Beethoven quartet, when we are concerned with sections of Der Rosenkavalier whose musical language might be described as “kitsch,” when we ask about the peculiar structure of Mahler’s compositional activities (he normally composed only during summers), we are asking questions that encourage a genetic response. Analysis can go only so far in helping us to comprehend such problems, whereas a composer’s sketches, an analysis of his life and activities in a given period, his own descriptions of his work in letters to friends or publishers, all these elements and so many more can help us to explore the individual works in much greater depth. Call it biography, if you insist, but it is musical biography, and perhaps that is not so far removed from genetic criticism.

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Questions of this kind have direct implications for the production of new musical editions. A generation or two ago it was assumed that a Chopin edition would produce the score of each work, through a conflation of different authorial readings. Hoping to give their author a status that until then he had seemed to lack, editors of a Liszt edition that got under way in the 1970s insisted that they would give only one version of each piece. Those dreams of the work of art as a “museum piece” have dissolved. The computer has helped. We can now post multiple versions of the works of Chopin, providing accurate textual material and leaving it up to the individual performer to pick and choose or conflate as seems most appropriate to the performer. In publishing the critical edition of Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle, we are offering quite independently the two known authorial versions of the composition for two pianos and harmonium, while providing some guidelines for how performers might consider conflating these versions. This may be outside the realm of edition-making, but it is not outside the realm of how musical editions are used. Similar issues have been faced in literary editions since the mid-1980s, and—whatever may be done in the theater—conflation has seemed much less appropriate in written texts than it once appeared to editors of the works of Shakespeare, Middleton, or Theodore Dreiser. Through all of this, the French school of critique génétique has provided invaluable models for future developments. That coordinated projects among scholars in different disciplines and from different countries are spreading this gospel can only be received with wonder and delight. The insights into musical and literary works that result are bearing immediate fruit and will continue to prove useful to future generations of humanistic scholars. —Philip Gossett

Contributors Nicolas Donin pursues research in musicology and analysis. His work focuses on contemporary musical practices, particularly composition and performance, as well as on the history and practices of music analysis and listening from the end of the nineteenth century. Since 2003, he has been head of the Analysis of Musical Practices team, a joint research group of IRCAM and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He co-edited with Rémy Campos L’analyse musicale, une pratique et son histoire (Geneva, Droz: Conservatoire de Genève, 2009). His recent work has been published in Acta Musicologica, Circuit: Musiques contemporaines, Music Theory Online, and the Revue de Synthèse. Daniel Ferrer is director of research at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes (CNRS-ENS) in Paris and editor of the journal Genesis. His books include Post-structuralist Joyce; L’écriture et ses doubles: genèse et variation textuelle; Virginia Woolf and the Madness of Language; Ulysse à l’article: Joyce aux marges du roman; Genèses du roman contemporain: Incipit et entrée en écriture; Writing its Own Wrunes For Ever: Essays in Joycean Genetics; Pourquoi la critique génétique? Méthodes, théories, Bibliothèques d’écrivains; Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-texte; and La Textologie russe. With Vincent Deane and Geert Lernout, Ferrer currently edits the series The Finnegans Wake Notebooks. Alan Gosman is assistant professor of music theory at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Currently he and Lewis Lockwood are working on a critical edition with commentary of Beethoven’s “Eroica” sketchbook. Gosman has published articles in the Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Spectrum, and Theory and Practice. His interests include sketchbook studies, the history of music theory, contrapuntal techniques, and the relationship between the performance and the analysis of music. Philip Gossett is the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in Music at the College at the University of Chicago and professor of music at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” He is the general editor of The Works of Giuseppé Verdi and The Critical Edition of the Works of Gioachino Rossini. In 2004 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation. His book Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera received the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society in 2007.

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Robert B. Graves is dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and professor of theater at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His publications include articles and chapters on early modern and Irish theater and books on avant-garde Asian drama and Shakespearean stagecraft. His study, Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, won the 2001 Sohmer-Hall Prize from the International Shakespeare Globe Center in London for the best book that year on Elizabethan theater. His anthology of avant-garde Korean plays, The Metacultural Theater of Oh T’ae-sok, won the 2002 Korean Literature Translation Award. He serves on the architectural advisory boards of both Shakespeare’s Globe in London and the planned reconstruction of the second Globe playhouse in Staunton, Virginia. Joseph E. Jones received his PhD in musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. His interests include German art songs, opera, choral literature, and aesthetic trends of the early twentieth century, and he has recently presented papers at international conferences in England and Switzerland. Jones’s work on Richard Strauss’s creative process and the sketches for Der Rosenkavalier has received support from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst and the Presser Foundation. William Kinderman has written several books about Beethoven, and as pianist he has recorded Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and last sonatas. He is editor of the Beethoven Sketchbook Series published by the University of Illinois Press. His book Mozart’s Piano Music and a new edition of his comprehensive study Beethoven appeared recently from Oxford University Press. He is professor at the University of Illinois and recently taught as DAAD guest professor at the University of Munich. In 2009 he received a Research Prize for lifetime achievement from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Jean-Louis Lebrave is director of research at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. His research interests center on written text production, both from the linguistic point of view of verbal production and from the more philological and literary perspective of genetic criticism. Early in his career, Lebrave conducted extensive research on Heinrich Heine’s drafts for Lutezia. Later, he worked on manuscripts by French novelists and authors, including Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, and Roland Barthes. He is currently investigating the creative process in science through research on Claude Bernard’s laboratory notebooks, and is pursuing an exploration of the status of performance (theatrical and musical) within genetic criticism. Geert Lernout is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Antwerp, where he is director of the James Joyce Center. Apart from books and articles on James Joyce, he has published books on Friedrich Hölderlin, Bach’s

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Goldberg Variations, and the Bible. With Daniel Ferrer and Vincent Deane he is editor of the series The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo, of which to date twelve volumes have appeared. He is a member of the Academia Europaea. Lewis Lockwood is Fanny Peabody Research Professor of Music at Harvard University. Lockwood has served as president of the American Musicological Society. His books include Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process and Beethoven: The Music and the Life. He is currently working with Alan Gosman on an edition of Beethoven’s “Eroica” sketchbook, which will appear with the University of Illinois Press. Peter McCallum is associate professor of musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. His PhD dissertation explored the sketches for Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 135, from the perspective of musical analysis. He has also published on the music of Boulez and is chief music critic for the Sydney Morning Herald. Currently, he is preparing an edition of Beethoven’s Kullak sketchbook. Armine Kotin Mortimer is professor of French literature and of criticism and interpretive theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She works particularly on Balzac, Barthes, and Sollers. Mortimer is the author of six books, including Writing Realism: Representations in French Fiction (Hopkins, 2000) and a book-length study on Sollers’s Paradis published in L’Infini no. 89 in 2004. Her numerous articles have appeared in journals including Romanic Review, Les Temps modernes, L’Esprit Créateur, Genesis, and the Journal of Modern Literature. James L. Zychowicz is a musicologist whose specialization is nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music, especially the works of Gustav Mahler. His publications include a book on Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, in the series of Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure published by the Oxford University Press, and an edited volume on Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, as well as a chapter on the songs of Mahler and Strauss in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, edited by James Parsons, and an essay on Mahler’s manuscripts as part of Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, edited by Jeremy Barham. He is also editor of the two-volume critical edition of Mahler’s completion of Weber’s opera Die drei Pintos.

Index Adorno, Theodor W., 10, 171, 188 Agee, James, 86 Akhenaten, Pharaoh Amenophis IV, 3 Al-Azami, Muhammad Mustafa, 25–28 anxiety of influence, 2, 5 Arendt, Hannah, 109 Aristotle, 30, 33 Arnheim, Rudolf, 118–19, 122 Artaud, Antonin, 53–55 artistic self-determination, 5–6 Assmann, Jan, 3 Augustine, Saint, 23 avant-texte(s) (“pre-text(s)”), 3, 5, 6, 9, 48, 80 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 8, 128, 131, 131, 133, 219 Bair, Deidre, 81 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 47, 97, 98, 106 Barthes, Roland, 9, 47, 51–66, 218–19; Le Plaisir du texte, 51–66, 218; Roland Barthes, 52; Sade, Fourier, Loyola, 51 Bauer-Lechner, Nathalie, 151–53, 156, 162, 163, 165 Bayreuth, 4–5 Beethoven-Haus (Bonn), 7, 10 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 2, 3, 4, 6–8, 10–12, 95–150, 152, 163, 218, 219 Andante favori, WoO 57, 105, 117 canon, Es muß sein (It must be), WoO 196, 143–44 Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 102 no. 1, 123, 138 Diabelli Variations, Op. 120, 7–8, 10 “Eroica” Symphony, Op. 55, 110–19, 219

Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue), Op., 125–27, 128, 131–33, 137–39 Overture on BACH (sketches), 128, 131, 133 Piano Concerto in C Minor, Op. 37, 11 Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101, 123, 138 Piano Sonata in B Flat Major, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”), 123 Piano Sonata in C Major, Op. 53 (“Waldstein”), 12, 95–106, 117 sketches, 109–10 String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, 123, 133–37 String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130, 131, 136, 137–40 String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131, 140–42 String Quartet in E Flat, Op. 127, 124–33, 137, 141 String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135, 131, 139, 140, 141, 143–46 Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 (“Eroica”), 110–20, 219 Symphony No. 8 in F Major, 124 Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, 123, 133–35, 136–39, 145 theme planned for Ninth Symphony used in Quartet Op. 132, 136–37 Vestas Feuer (fragment of an opera), 96–98 Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 30 No. 1, 117 Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47 (“Kreutzer”), 117

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Beethoven, Ludwig van, manuscripts: Artaria 201 Sketchbook, 133 Artaria 206 Miscellany, 124 Autograph 9/2 Sketchbook, 138–39 Autograph 9/4 Sketchbook, 141 Autograph 11/2 Sketchbook, 124–25, 126, 130–33 Autograph 19b (Quartet Op. 135), 145 De Roda Sketchbook, 133–36 Egerton Sketchbook, 137 Grasnick 4 Sketchbook, 124–25, 127, 131 Kullak Sketchbook, 11–12, 138–44 Landsberg 6 (“Eroica”) Sketchbook, 11, 95–106, 110–17 Mh 99 Leaf, 125–26 Moscow Sketchbook, 136–37 Paris 62/66 Sketchbook, 139–40 “Wittgenstein” Sketchbook, 7 Beckett, Samuel, 9, 81–91, 218–19; Endgame, 83, 85; Happy Days, 83, 85, 87; Mercier and Camier, 81; The Unnamable, 81; Waiting for Godot, 81–84, 87, 90, 218; Watt, 81 Bensmaïa, Réda, 52–53 Bentley, Richard, 21 Bergman, Igmar, 78; Sawdust and Tinsel, 78 Bethge, Hans, 158 Biblical exegesis, 21–24, 27–30, 33 Blin, Roger, 81 Bloom, Harold , 2, 5 Bloom, Leopold, 31 Böhm, Joseph Daniel, 109 Bollmann, Horst, 91 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 110 Born, Ignaz von, 3 Brahms, Johannes, 5, 119 Brandenburg, Sieghard, 124, 125, 131, 133 Breuning, Gerhard von, 108 Brinkmann, Reinhold, 109 Broadwood, John, 108 Brosche, Günther, 172 Canfora, Luciano, 20

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 37 Cerquiglini, Bernard, 4 Cervantes, Miguel de, 91 Chamey-Davignon, Florine, 208 Chaplin, Charlie, 81, 90 Chopin, Frédéric, 220 Chrétien de Troyes, 4, 5 Churchill, Charles, 39–44; Epistle to Hogarth, 39, 44 Cixous, Hélene, 20 Clarke, Eric, 206 cognitive anthropology, 193–86 Cohn, Ruby, 82, 85, 90 Cook, Nicholas, 206 Cooper, Barry, 95–96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 137 Copfermann, Emile, 78 counterstatement, 47–48 cultural studies, 8, 19, 197 Czerny, Carl, 117 Dante Alighieri, 123 Darwin, Charles, 28 database (for compositional genesis of Leroux’s Voi(rex)), 207–12 Dembscher, Ignaz, 143 Del Mar, Norman, 171, 183 Deleuze, Gilles, 205 Delpierre, Lin, 196 Derrida, Jacques, 145 Desbordes, Françoise, 79 Deschevaux-Dumesnil, Suzanne, 81 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 8 Donin, Nicolas, 12–13, 219 Dreiser, Theodore, 220 Duckworth, Colin, 81 Edelmann, Bernd, 172 Elisha, Ishmael ben, 22 Erasmus, Desiderius, 33 Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 4, 5 Ferrer, Daniel, 5, 9 film, 13, 78, 81–92 Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich, 57 Flaubert, Gustave, 72, 78 Fonda, Jane, 10

index Forte, Allen, 6 Freemasonry, 3, 117 Freud, Anna, 109 Freud, Sigmund, 3, 47 Gabler, Hans Walter, 9, 19, 20 Gilliam, Bryan , 171, 172 Gillies, Malcolm, 11 Goehr, Lydia, 4 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 4 Goldszmidt, Samuel, 208 Goodenough, Ward, 195 Goodman, Nelson, 35–37, 47–48 Gosman, Alan, 11 Grafton, Anthony, 20 Grésillon, Almuth, 8, 65 Grail myth, 4 Graves, Robert B., 9 Grisey, Gérard, 198 Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, 8, 10 Gurd, Sean Alexander, 21 Handel, Georg Friedrich, 8 Hanslick, Eduard, 5 Hay, Louis, 19 Haydn, Joseph, 3 Hayman, David, 19 Heine, Heinrich, 9 Heinz, Richard, 69 Hippocrates, 4 Hitchcock, H. Wiley, 158 Hoechle, Johann Nepomuk, 108 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 119–20, 172, 174, 177, 183, 187 Hogarth, William, 39–44, 47; The Bruiser/Gulielmus Hogarth, 39–44, 47 Holy Books, 2, 22–29 Holz, Karl, 11, 136 Homer, 21; Iliad, 21 Hort, Fenton John Anthony, 29 Humperdinck, Engelbert, 183 Hutchins, Edwin, 195 idées sonores (sonorous ideas), 198–99, 202, 205–7 improvisational character, 10–12, 108, 123–25



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incompatibility of genetic criticism with dogmatism, 6, 32–33 indetermination, 205 integration of source studies and analysis, 1, 7, 8, 9 integration of textual study, 21 intellectual property, 4 intentional fallacy, 1, 8 intertextuality, 5, 6–7, 51, 68–72, 137–38, 183–85 invariant aspects of creativity, 117–19, 219 Ives, Charles, 158 Jander, Owen, 117 Jerome, Saint, 23, 30–31 Johnson, Douglas, 6, 125 Jones, Joseph E., 12 Joyce, James, 9, 19, 21, 29, 31–33, 36, 37, 46; Finnegans Wake, 20, 31–32, 46; Ulysses, 31, 32, 36–37, 39, 46 Kama Sutra, 65 Kant, Immanuel, 2, 205 Kaufman, Moisés, 10, 13 Keaton, Buster , 81, 90 Kenner, Hugh, 82 Kerman, Joseph, 171, 188, 206 keyboard improvisation, 10–11, 108 keyboard patterns, 12, 95–99 Kilgore, Al, 82, 90 Kinderman, William, 7–8, 217 kitsch, 219 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 156 Knaben Wunderhorn, Des, 156–58 Knowlson, James, 87, 91 Koestenbaum, Wayne, 171–72 Korsyn, Kevin, 6, 171–72 Lachmann, Karl, 21 Laurel and Hardy, 9, 81–92, 219; BlockHeads, 83–86; Flying Deuces, 88–89; Laughing Gravy, 90; Liberty, 91; Night Owls, 82; Pardon Us, 82; Perfect Day, 91; Their First Mistake, 87; Thicker Than Water, 91; Way Out West, 82 Lebrave, Jean-Louis, 9

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index

Lehmann, Lotte, 170–71 Leonardo da Vinci, 37–39, 48; The Last Supper, 37–38, 48 Lernout, Geert, 2, 6 Leroux, Philippe, 13, 194–212, 219; Voi(rex), 194–212 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 21 Lester, Toby, 25 Levin, Robert, 219 Liszt, Franz, 5, 220 Litz, A. Walton, 19 Lloyd, Harold, 81 Lockwood, Lewis, 11, 12, 183, 187 Mâche, François-Bernard, 198 Mahler, Gustav, 12, 145, 151–69, 219; Das Lied von der Erde, 158; Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 156; similarity to Charles Ives in his treatment of texts, 158; sketches and drafts, 158–64; Symphony No. 3, 155, 156; Symphony No. 4, 152–53, 155–56, 160–64; Symphony No. 7, 159; Symphony No. 9, 162; Symphony No. 10, 152–53, 162; use of texts from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 156–58; “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?,” 157–58 Mann, Thomas, 3 Marceau, Marcel, 90 Marshall, Robert, 219 Marx Brothers, 81–82; Duck Soup, 82 Mazon, Paul, 68–71 McCabe, John, 82, 90 McCallum, Peter, 11–12 McGann, Jerome J., 9 Melville, Herman, 22 Metzger, Bruce, 22, 26 Middleton, Thomas, 220 Milton, John, 21; Paradise Lost, 21 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 20 Mortimer, Armine Kotin, 9 Moses, 3, 28, 31–32 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 3, 8, 12, 97, 183–84, 187, 219; Die Zauberflöte, 3, 183–84, 187 Murray, David, 183

Narmour, Eugene, 171–72 new musicology, 218 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 158 Nottebohm, Gustav, 6, 11, 95, 98, 104, 152 Panzéra, Charles, 57 Parker, David, 24 Pascal, Blaise, 47 Pasquali, Giorgio, 20 performance, 10–11, 68–80, 91, 180, 194–96, 217 Pfeiffer, Rudolf, 20 Philo of Alexandria, 29–30 Picasso, Pablo, 37 Pignarre, Robert, 68–70 Plato, 30 Plutarch, 3 Pound, Ezra, 31 Proust, Marcel, 9, 37, 46; Swann’s Way, 46 pseudocouples, 9, 81, 83, 85, 86, 90, 91 Qur’an, 24–28 radical philology, 2, 21, 32 Reinhold, Karl Leonhard, 2–3 Rembrandt von Rijn, 37–39, 45, 48; Last Supper, 37–39, 45, 48 Reynolds, Christopher, 144–46 Reynolds, Roger, 198 Ries, Ferdinand, 116 Rochlitz, Friedrich, 97 Rosen, Charles, 102 Rossini, Gioachino, 218, 220; Petite Messe solennelle, 220 Rückert, Friedrich, 97, 158 Rudolph, Archduke, 108 Rushdie, Salman, 33; The Satanic Verses, 33 Salzedo, Michel, 51 Sarduy, Severo, 63–64 Schaeffer, Pierre, 198 Schenker, Heinrich, 5, 6, 12, 217 Schering, Arnold, 117

index Schikaneder, Emanuel, 97–98 Schiller, Friedrich, 2, 5, 9–10 Schindler, Anton, 117 Schoenberg, Arnold, 109, 119, 139, 143–44 Schubert, Franz, 183–84 Schuppanzigh, Ignaz, 143 self-referentiality, 11–12, 124, 145–47 Sessions, Roger, 117 Seyfried, Ignaz von, 10–11 Shakespeare, William, 117, 220; Romeo and Juliet, 117; The Tempest, 117 Sollers, Philippe, 54–55, 63–64 Solomon, Maynard, 141 Sophocles, 68, 77 Spender, Stephen, 116 Spinoza, Baruch, 33 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 193 Strauss-Archiv (Garmisch-Partenkirchen), 173 Strauss, Richard, 12, 119–20, 170–91, 219; Also sprach Zarathustra, 171; Don Juan, 171; Elektra, 171; Der Rosenkavalier, 12, 119–20, 170–91, 219; Salome, 171; sketches for Der Rosenkavalier, 173–79 Stravinsky, Igor, 193 subtraction (in creative process), 51–52, 56–64 Syer, Katherine, 10, 95, 96–97 Tanselle, Thomas, 21 Theureau, Jacques, 12, 194, 196, 207, 208



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translation, 2, 29–31, 68–73 Tyson, Alan, 125, 219 Urtext (original text), 4–5 Valla, Lorenzo , 33 variations, 7–8, 10, 35–48 variant(s), 26, 35–48, 53, 59 Velasquez, Diego, 37 Vendler, Helen, 163 Verdi, Giuseppe, 217, 218; La forza del destino, 217, 218 Vinci, Leonardo da, 37–39 Vitez, Antoine, 68–81 Wagner, Cosima, 4–5 Wagner, Richard, 4–5, 10, 119, 187; Parsifal, 4–5; Tristan und Isolde, 5, 179, 187 Westcott, Brooke Foss, 29 Weyl, Hermann, 119 Wigger, Stefan, 91 Wilamonwitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von, 20 Winter, Robert, 125, 140 Woolf, Virginia, 35–36, 47; Mrs. Dalloway, 35–36, 47 work-concept, 1, 4, 6, 9 Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, 109–10 Youmans, Charles, 171 Zola, Emile, 64 Zychowicz, James, 12