"To Play as If from the Soul of the Composer": The Idea of the

Transcription

American Musicological Society
"To Play as If from the Soul of the Composer": The Idea of the Performer in Early Romantic
Aesthetics
Author(s): Mary Hunter
Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 357
-398
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
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"To Play as if from the Soul of the
Composer": The Idea of the Performer
in Early Romantic Aesthetics
MARY HUNTER
n modern considerationsof the aesthetic upheavalsof the late eighteenth
and earlynineteenth centuries,it is not unusual to find a more or less subsidiarycomment devoted to the change in the conception and role of performance in the projection of musical works; the new conception essentially
"demoted" the ideal of performanceto a position as mere vessel for the musical work, and suggested a smooth progression from the late eighteenth to the
mid-twentieth centuries.' There is significanthistoricalsupport for this view.
Hermann Danuser, for example, has shown how Beethoven's piano sonatas
were an essentialvehicle for the new understanding of the role of the composer, especially(though not exclusively)via the writings and editions of Carl
Czerny,who noted in the early 1840s: "In the performanceof [Beethoven's]
works (and generally for all classical composers) the performer should
throughout allow no alteration of the composition, no addition and no
abbreviation.... For one wants to hear the artworkin its originalform, as the
Portions of this essaywere given as papersat Princeton University,YaleUniversity,the Thirteenth
InternationalConference on Nineteenth-Century Music in Durham, UK, and at the 2004 meeting of the AmericanMusicologicalSociety.I am gratefulto these institutions for their invitations
to speak, and to the audience members who made helpful comments. Thanks also to Wye J.
Allanbrook, Mark Evan Bonds, MarshallBrown, Scott Burnham, Elisabeth Le Guin, Richard
Leppert,JamesParakilas,and John Spitzerfor encouragement and stimulatingquestions. Thanks
to Northwestern University Press for permission to quote from Pierre Baillot, TheArt of the
Violin,tr. Louise Goldberg (1991).
1. See, for example, Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works(Oxford:
ClarendonPress,and New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1992), 230-32, for a descriptionof the
idea of Werktreue
that stretchesfrom Beethoven via E. T. A. Hoffinann to George BernardShaw,
and links the idea of the proudly unplayablework to the decreasednecessity of the performerin
the idea of the work "itself."Rose Subotnik creditsBeethoven, Verdi, and Wagneras a single conceptual unit, on the one hand contributing to the triumph of individualismin Western culture,
but on the other, helping develop an ideology of merely obedient performance (Developing
Variations-Style and Ideologyin WesternMusic [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1991], 260).
Journalof theAmericanMusicological
Society,Vol. 58, Number 2, pp. 357-398, ISSN 0003-0139, electronicISSN
1547-3848. ? 2005 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website, at
www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
358
Journal of the American Musicological Society
Master thought and wrote it."2 As Danuser points out, Beethoven's sonatas
may have been the immediate reason for this kind of language, but Czerny
positivelyencouraged the disseminationof this attitude beyond this confined
repertory. Johann Heinrich Gottlieb Heusinger had already strongly expressed a similaropinion in his 1790 Handbuch der Aesthetik:"Whateveris
beautiful,brilliant,and well expressedin [a work] belongs to the composer, as
[it does to] the poet. The job of the virtuoso in his performanceis not to disfigure the work of the former; to present it as it is."3 This attitude, though
strongly promoted in Germanwritings about music, and strongly connected
to the notion of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as a canonic triad,was spread
beyond the German-speakingcountries by such authors as F.-J. FRtis,whose
famous piano tutor, the Mithode des mtthodesof 1840, written with Ignaz
Moscheles, tells students in the section on performance in general that the
fundamental aim of performance was to "render each work according to
the thought that created it" and that "the performer must contemplate the
composer's work, seize its spirit, and then content himself with rendering it
with all the facilityof which he is capable,with all the life and sensitivityhe can
muster, and with as much respect for the productions of others as he would
wish for his own."4
The notion of following the intentions of the composer was not, of course,
new at the turn of the nineteenth century.Francesco Geminiani,for example,
uses preciselythis phrase in his Treatiseof Good Tastein the Art of Music of
1749: "Playingin good taste doth not consist of frequent Passages,but in expressing with strength and delicacy the Intention of the Composer. This
Expressionis what everyone should endeavourto acquire,and it may be easily
obtained by any Person, who is not too fond of his own Opinion and doth
2. "Beim Vortrage seiner Werke, (und fiberhaupt bei alien kdassischenAutoren) darf der
Spieler sich durchaus keine Anderung der Composition, keinen Zusatz, keine Abkiirzung erlauben. ... Denn man will das Kunstwerkin seinerursprtinglichenGestalt horen, wie der Meister
es sich dachte und schrieb." Carl Czerny, Kunst des Vortragsder iiltern und neuen Claviercompositionenoder: Die Fortschrittebiszur neuestenZeit, Supplement [vol. 4] to the Vollstiindige
Pianoforte-Schule,Op. 500 (Vienna: Diabelli, n.d.), 34. Cited in Hermann
theoretisch-practische
Danuser, ed., MusikalischeInterpretation,Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft13 (Laaber:
Laaber-Verlag,1989), 302.
3. Johann Heinrich Gottlieb Heusinger, Handbuch der Aesthetik, oder Grundsaitzezur
Bearbeitung und Beurtheilung der Werkeeiner jeden schinen Kunst, als der Poesie, Malerei,
Bildhauerkunst,Musik,Mimik, Baukunst, Gartenkunstetc. etc. Fiir Kiinstler und Kunstliebhaber,
2 vols. (Gotha: J. Perthes, 1797); facsimile(Brussels:Culture et Civilisation,1970), 1:188: "Was
an derselben sch6nes, geistreichesund treffendesist, das geh6rt dem Componisten, so wie dem
Dichter, und die Sache des Virtuosen ist es, dass er in seinem Vortragedas Werkdes ersterennicht
verunstalte;dass er es geradeso gebe, wie es ist."
4. Frangois-Joseph Fbtis, with Ignaz Moscheles, Mdthodedes mithodes de piano (Paris:
Schlesinger,[1840]), 75: "rendrechaque oeuvreselon la pensie qui l'a crnie." "II'faut que l'exicutant midite l'ceuvredu compositeur,qu'il en saisissel'esprit,puis qu'il se borne la rendre avec
toute l'habilit6dont il est capable, avec toute la verve, toute la sensibilit6qui sont en lui, et avec
autantde respectpour les productions d'autresqu'il en voudraitpour les siennes."
The Idea of the Performer in Early Romantic Aesthetics
359
not obstinatelyresist the Force of true Evidence."5New in early- and protoRomantic admonitions to follow the intentions of the composer were the language about The Master,the increasingprevalenceof a hectoring tone about
fidelityto the score, and even the occasionalsense that the physicalperformer
was more often a hindrance than a help to the detailed comprehension of
great works, as Johann FriedrichReichardtsuggests in his 1782 essay on execution, from the Musikalisches
Kunstmagazin:
If [performance] were perfect or at least better than it is, one could hear the
works of great mastersperformed in their full spirit,and composition textbooks
... would be completely dispensable. True execution of these works would
affect ear and heart more fully and fruitfullythan all the intellectualized rules
and the guided--or misguided-glances at scores offered by such books. Now,
however, with performanceas bad as it is, score-readingis about the only aid to
the education of young composers.6
Some discourse about listening to music in these decades also seems quite
spectacularlyto occlude the presence of the performer.Listening experiences
were sometimes described in terms of the listener's imaginativeresponse to
the sounds themselves, which could be figured as revelationsof the divine or
emanationsfrom the spiritworld, and sometimes as an experienceof intersubjective exchange between the soul of the composer and that of the listener.
The famous story by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773-1798), "The
RemarkableLife of the MusicianJoseph Berglinger"(1797), includes descriptions of both kinds of experiences. As a youth, for example, Joseph would
attend oratorios:
Full of expectation, he awaited the first sound of the instruments:as this now
broke forth from out the muffled silence, long drawn and mighty as the sigh of
a wind from heaven, and as the full force of the sound swept by above his head,
it seemed to him as though his soul had all at once unfurled great wings--he
felt himself raised up above the barren heath, the dark cloud-curtain shutting
5. FrancescoGeminiani, Treatiseof GoodTastein theArt of Music (London: n.p., 1749); facsimile (Wyton, UK: King's Music, 1988), 2.
6. Johann FriedrichReichardt,"Uber die musikalischeAusfiihrung," in Briefe,die Musik betreffend:Berichte,Rezensionen,Essays,ed. Grita Herre and WaltherSiegmund Schultze, 144-45
(Leipzig:Reclam, 1976): "Wire [Ausftihrung]abervollkommen oder doch besser,h6rte man die
Werke grosse Meister ganz in ihrem Geiste ausgeffihrt, so wiren alle Lehrbiicherder Komposition, die doch immer nur die schon vorhandenen Meisterwerkekommentieren, oft falschkommentieren, fast entbehrlich. Die wahre Ausfiihrung dieser Werke auf Ohr und Herz weit
treffenderund fruchtbarerwirken als alle durch den VerstandgefassteRegeln und der durch diese
geleitet oder verleitete Blick in Partituren.Itzt, bei der gr6sstenteils so verkehrtenAusfiihrung,
bleibt das Partiturlesenfast das einzige Hilfsmittel zur Bildung junger Komponisten." J. A. P.
Schulz and Leopold Mozart both mention the possibilitythat a bad performancecould render a
work unrecognizeable (see below), but they do not go as far as Reichardtin condemning the vast
majorityof contemporaryperformancesor in suggesting that score readingcould take the place of
performance,at least for some purposes.
360
Journal of the AmericanMusicologicalSociety
out the mortal eye was drawn, and he soared up into the radiantsky. Then he
held his body still and motionless, fixing his gaze steadfastlyon the floor. The
present sank away before him; his being was cleansed of all the pettiness of this
world-veritable dust on the soul's luster;the music set his nerves tingling with
a gentle thrill, calling up changing images before him with its changes.7
As an adult professionalcomposer, however, he laments the philistinismof the
audience for his own music, and regrets in particularthe lack of communion
between creatorand listenerthat he had imagined in composing the work:
To think that I could have imagined that these listeners, parading in gold and
silk, had gathered to enjoy a work of art, to warm their hearts, to offer their
feelings to the artist!...
To be sure, there is a little consolation in the thought that perhaps-in some
obscure corner of Germany to which this or that work of mine may penetrate
some day, even though long after my death-there may be someone whom
Heaven has made so sympathetic to my soul that he will feel on hearing my
melodies what I felt in writing them and precisely what I sought to put in
them.8
In the first of these passages,the unmediatednessof the experienceis striking.
The sounds, though clearlyphysical,seem to be produced by no human labor,
to need no technique, and to be engaged in no interpretativeact.9Indeed, the
idea of listening here (as in other early Romantic descriptions) is clearly a
metaphor for idealized spiritualcommunion, the idea of harmony applying
both to the individualsoul and to a community of souls. In the second passage
7. Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder,"Das merkwtirdigemusikalischeLeben des Tonkiinstlers
eineskunstliebendenKlosterbruder,in Werkeund Briefe
Joseph Berglinger,"in Herzensergiessungen
von WilhelmHeinrich Wackenroder(Heidelberg: Schneider, 1967), 114; translationfrom Oliver
Strunk, SourceReadings in MusicHistory,rev. ed., Leo Treitler,general ed. (New York:Norton,
1998), 1063: "Erwartungsvollharrteer auf den ersten Ton der Instrumente;--und indem er nun
aus der dumpfen Stille, michtig und langgezogen, gleich dem Wehen eines Windes vom Himmel
hervorbrachund die ganze Gewalt der T6ne fiber seinem Haupte daherzog,--da war es ihm, als
wenn er von einer diirren Heide aufgehoben wuirde, der triibe Wolkenvorhang vor den
sterblichenAugen verschwinde, und er zum lichten Himmel emporschwebte. Dann hielt er sich
mit seinem K6rperstill und unbeweglich und heftete die Augen unverriicktauf den Boden. Die
Gegenwartversankvor ihm; sein Inneres war von allen irdischenKleinigkeiten,welche der wahre
Staub auf dem Glanze der Seele sind, gereinigt; die Musik durchdrang seine Nerven mit leisen
Schauernund liess wie sie wechselte, mannigfacheBildervor ihm aufsteigen."
8. Wackenroder,"Das merkwcirdigemusikalischenLeben ... Joseph Berglinger, 125-26;
translationfrom Strunk, SourceReadings, 1068-69: "Dass ich mir einbilden konnte, diese in
Gold und Seide stolzierende Zuh6rerschaftkime zusammen, um ein Kunstwerkzu geniessen,
um ihr Herz zu erwirmen, ihre Empfindung dem Kiinstlerdarzubringen!...
"Freilichist der Gedanke ein wenig tristend, dass vielleicht in irgendeinem kleinen Winkel
von Deutschland,wohin dies oder jenes von meiner Hand, wenn auch lange nach meinem Tode,
einmalhinkommt, ein oder der andereMensch lebt, in den der Himmel eine solche Sympathiezu
meine Seele gelegt hat, dass er aus meinen Melodien grade das herausfiihlt, was ich beim
Niederschreibenempfand und was ich so gem hineinlegen wollte."
9. Indeed, there is barelyeven a work there, let alone all the apparatusneeded to realizeit.
361
that spiritualcommunion is concretized by being located in two specificindividuals. In both cases, though, the model is a simple binary, relating pure
sound to imagination, or soul to soul. Neither model makes room for the
perception of the performer as an entity separablefrom the sound or from
the work.
Despite the abundanceof evidencefor the conceptual "disappearing"of the
performer,however, the view that submissiveobedience and self-obliterating
fidelity became during this period the only, or even the principal, desirable
model for interpretativeperformanceis one-sided. It has long been accepted
that performanceitselfwas freerthan the prescriptionsabout it; my point here
is that early Romantic thinking about performance was also more complex
and performer-centeredthan the above-describedmodel might suggest. The
too-narrow view of the subject results in part from the kinds of sources just
mentioned, in part from aestheticiansfailing to account for the actualitiesof
performance,which clearlyincluded more interpretativefreedom than a modernist model would allow,'0 but also from the continuing preoccupation of
scholarswith the status, meaning, and reception of works "themselves"rather
than with the process of conveying them to an audience." In this scholarly
context, the apparentlydiminishedrole of the performerin musical discourse
has typicallybeen a phenomenon to be noted and set aside rather than explored or interrogated in any detail. Once the new aesthetics of music at the
turn of the nineteenth century are considered from the perspectiveof performance, however-that is, partlyfrom the perspectiveof the performerhim- or
herself, and partlyfrom the perspectiveof writerswho gave some thought to
the role of the performerin the whole music-makingnexus-it emerges that
there was another kind of discourse about the act of bringing works to life,
one in which the performer'srole was considered to demand genius and in
which the performer-even, or especially,the interpretative(as opposed to the
improvisingvirtuoso) player-was regarded as a fuily fledged artist on a par
with the composer.12
10. Cf. Clive Brown's insistenceon the perpetuationof a traditionof ornamentionin the first
half of the nineteenth century, though his models are all vocal (Classical and Romantic Performing Practice,1750-1900 [Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1999], chap. 12).
11. Lydia Goehr (The Imaginary Museumof Musical Works,256-60, and TheQuestfor Voice
[Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1998], 145ff) pays more attention than most to the role
of the performer,but her concern is much more with the notion of the work. LawrenceKramer
("The Mysteriesof Animation: History, Analysisand Musical Subjectivity,"Musical Analysis20
[2001]: 153-78, which dealswith many of the same questions of subjectivityas this essay)locates
the "animation" of the music entirely in the listener's engaged response to it, and elides the
performerinto the listeneror the composer as necessary.
12. Obviously any given performercould be both an improvisingvirtuoso and an interpretative performer,devoted to conveying the content of apparentlyfully formed works. My concern
in this essay is with the act of interpretativeperformance rather than with virtuoso display;and
more importantly,with the rhetoric,ratherthan the actualpractice,of interpretation.
362
Performance Genius and Transparency: The Development
of an Idea
The discoursesof performativegenius and faithful obedience are not historically,socially,or aestheticallyseparatephenomena, however, though obviously
some sources stress one over the other. Rather, encouragements to creativity
sit cheek by jowl-often in the same sentence--with admonitions to fidelity.
That is, the performer is enjoined to be simultaneously transparentto the
work and vividlypresent to the audience on, so to speak,his own behalf.
One of the few philosophersin this period directlyto addressthe question
of musical performancewas Hegel, a passage from whose Aesthetics(181829) puts this apparentparadoxvery clearly.He describesthree differentkinds
of performance:the second refersto Italian opera, which clearlyfeaturesthe
singersin an unabashedlyand unproblematicallycreativerole, and the third is
a rather odd example of performance whose lowly means (especially unpromising instruments)can be transformedby virtuosityinto something compelling and magical.His firstcategory of performance,however, based on the
idea of the epic, is the one that most powerfullyarticulatesthe relationof total
fidelityto persuasiveself-expression.He writes:
If the compositionhas,asit were,objectivesolidityso thatthe composerhimselfhas put into notes only the subjectitselfor the sentimentthat completely
kind.The
suffusesit, then the reproductionmustbe of a similarmatter-of-fact
executantartistnot only need not, but mustnot, add anythingof his own, or
otherwisehe will spoilthe effect.He mustsubmithimselfentirelyto the characterof the workand intendonly to be an obedientinstrument.[Hegel then
warnsagainstthe dangersof purelymechanicalperformancein this model.]
If ... artis stillto be in question,the executanthas a duty,ratherthangiving
the impressionof an automaton... to give life and soul to the workin the
samesensethatthe composerdid.The virtuosity
of suchanimation,however,is
limitedto solvingcorrectlythe difficultproblemsof the compositionon its
of strugglingwith a
technicalsideandin thatprocessavoidinganyappearance
overcome
but
in
this
technical
elementwithcommoving
difficultylaboriously
pletefreedom.In the matternot of techniquebut of the spirit,geniuscanconsist solelyin actuallyreachingin the reproductionthe spiritualheight of the
composerandthenbringingit to life.13
13. Georg Wilhelm FriedrichHegel, "Die kiinstlerischeExecution," in Vorlesungeniiberdie
Asthetik,in vol. 3 of his Werke,ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurtam
Main: Suhrkamp, 1986) 219-20. Translationslightly adapted from Hegel, "The Execution of
Lectureson Fine Art, ed. T. M. Knox, 2 vols. (Oxford:
MusicalWorksof Art," in Hegel'sAesthetics:
Clarendon Press, 1975), 2:956: "Ist nimlich die Komposition von gleichsam objektiver
Gediegenheit, so dass der Komponist selbst nur die Sache oder die von ihr ganz ausgeftillte
Empfindung in Tone gesetzt hat, so wird auch die Reproduktion von so sachlicherArt sein
miissen. Der austibende Kiinstlerbrauchtnicht nur nichts von dem Seinigen hinzutun, sondern
er darf es sogar nicht, wenn nicht der Wirkung soll Abbruch geschehen. Er muss sich ganz dem
363
Hegel's distinction between technical virtuosity and spiritualgenius is an
opposition we will meet again, but most salientfor present purposes is his notion that self-expressionand fidelity to the work are not only not in conflict
with one another, but that they are two sides of the same coin; a result
achievedby the spiritualwork of the performer.
This passage of Hegel includes a number of separablebut interdependent
ideas: that a particularkind of musical work was essentiallycomplete on the
page, that it required total obedience on the part of the performer,that the
most desirableperformanceprojected the illusion of a single mind engaged in
the act of creating the work "anew,"that understandingthe work sufficiently
to project this illusion was a matter of the spirit,and that performativegenius
was necessaryto communicate this spiritualidentity with the composer to an
audience. This complex of ideas can be found piecemeal in a varietyof sources
for severaldecades preceding Hegel's formulation, and, of course, thereafter
as well, but Hegel's formulation of the issue seems to me to encapsulatethe
essence of a distinctlyearlyRomanticperformanceconcept.
An eighteenth-century source that seems to anticipate something of
Hegel's notion of spiritualcommunion between composer and performer is
Rousseau's entry "Ex6cution" in his 1768 Dictionnaire de Musique (which
clearlytargetedvocal ratherthan instrumentalperformance).He writes: "It is
not enough [C'estpeu] to read from the music; it is necessaryto enterinto all
the ideasof the composer,
tofeel and renderthefire of expression,to have above all
an accurate and attentive ear to listen and follow the ensemble" (emphasis
added).14Despite the apparentprescienceof the language about entering into
all the composer's ideas, and the proto-Romantic locution about the fire of
expression, there are some important differences between Rousseau's notion
of what the performeris representingand a more Romantic or Germanicidea
as representedby the Hegel excerpt. Rousseau's entry on expression, for example (which again is admittedlyabout vocal performanceratherthan instrumental), does not emphasize the illusion of the single mind in performance
Charakterdes Werksunterwerfenund nur ein gehorchendes Organ sein wollen. ... Soil ... noch
von Kunst die Rede sein, so hat der Kunstlerdie Pflicht, statt den Eindruckeines musikalischen
Automaten zu geben, ... das Werkim Sinne und Geist des Komponisten seelenvoll zu beleben.
Die Virtuositit solcher Beseelung beschrinkt sich jedoch darauf, die schweren Aufgaben der
Komposition nach der technischen Seite hin richtig zu 16sen und dabei nicht nur jeden Anschein
des Ringen mit einer miihsam iuberwundenen Schwierigkeit zu vermeiden, sondern sich in
diesem Elemente mit vollstindiger Freiheit zu bewegen, so wie in geistiger Riicksicht die
Genialitdit nur darin bestehen kann, die geistige Hohe des Komponisten wirklich in der
Reproduktionzu erreichenund ins Leben treten zu lassen."
14. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Expression," in his Dictionnaire de Musique (Paris: veuve
Duchesne, 1768); facsimile, ed. with preface by Jean-JacquesEigeldinger (Geneva: Minkoff,
1998), 209: "C'est peu de lire la Musique exactement sur la Note; il faut entrer dans toutes les
id&esdu Compositeur, sentir et rendre le feu de l'expression, avoir surtout l'oreille juste & toujours attentivepour ncouter & suivrel'ensemble."
364
but rathera loosely contrapuntalcirculationof musical "power,"in which the
listener appreciates,as both separableand combined, the distinct contributions of composer and performer(and poet, for that matter):
Everywhere that soberly handled ornaments bear witness to thefacility of the
singer, without covering up or disfiguring the song, expression will be sweet,
pleasant, and strong, the ear will be charmed and the heart moved; the physical
andthe moralwillcombineforthe pleasureof the listeners,andsucha concord
betweenwordsandmusicwillreignthatthe wholewillseem but a singledeli-
cious language that can say everything and alwayspleases."' [emphasisadded]
In contrast,two Germanwritersmore or less contemporarywith Rousseau
(and writing more explicitly about instrumental music, or at least allowing
room for it), make much more of the indistinuishabilityof composer and
performer.In one of the most extreme formulations of the entire literature,
for example, Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, who also described as
Schipferkraft(creativepower) the capacityfor bringing a work to life, notes:
"The solo performermust play either his own fantasiesor those of others. In
both cases, genius must be his. If I want to perform a sonata by Bach [C. P. E.
ratherthan J. S.], I have to sink myself so deeply in the spiritof this great man
that my ego disappearsand becomes Bach's idiom."'6 Johann Adam Peter
Schulz's article"Vortrag"in Sulzer'sAllgemeine Theorieder schiinenKiinsteof
1775/92 also anticipatesthe earlyRomantic emphasison the merging of two
souls, regardlessof whether the music is instrumentalor vocal:
[Expressiveperformance]consists in the complete representationof the character and expression of the work. Both the whole and every individualpart must
be played with the tone, spirit,Affekt, and chiaroscurothat the composer conceived or and put into the work. . . . Every good composition has its own character, and its own spirit and expression, which it broadcasts throughout; the
singer or playermust transmitthis so exactlyin his performancethat he playsas
iffrom thesoul of the composer.'7[emphasisadded]
15. Ibid., 215-16: "Partout oii les ornamens sobrement menages porteront t6moignage de
la facilit6du Chanteur, sans couvrir & defigurer le Chant, l'Expressionsera douce, agrnable &
'
forte, l'oreille seracharme & le Coeur emu; le physique & le moral concourront la fois au plaisir
des &coutans,& il regnera un tel Accord entre la parole & le Chant que tout semblera n'etre
qu'une langue dlicieuse qui fait tout dire & plait toujours."
16. ChristianFriedrichDaniel Schubart,Ideen zu einerAsthetikder Tonkunst[written 1784/
85] (Vienna: Degen, 1806); facsimile, ed. Fritz Kaiserand Margrit Kaiser (Hildesheim: Olms,
1990), 295: "Der Solospielermuss entweder seiner eignen oder fremde Phantasienvortragen. In
beyden FAllenmuss Genie sein Eigenthum seyn. Will ich eine Sonatavon Bachvortragen,so muss
ich mich so ganz in den Geist dieses grossen Mannes versenken, dass meine Ichheit
wegschwindet, und BachischesIdiom wird."
17. J. A. P. Schulz, "Vortrag,"in Sulzer,Allgemeine Theorieder SchiinenKiinste,enlargeded.,
5 vols. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1792); facsimile, ed. with pref. by Giorgio Tonelli (Hildesheim:
Olms, 1967), 4:706-7: "[Der Ausdruckim Vortrage] besteht in der vollkommenen Darstellung
des Charaktersund Ausdruksdes Stdiks.Sowol das Ganze als jeder Theil desselben, muss gerade
in dem Ton, in dem Geist, dem Affect und in demselben Schattenund Licht, worin der Tonsetzer
The Idea of the Performerin Early Romantic Aesthetics
365
Francesco Galeazzi's Elementi teorico-praticidi musica of 1791-96 seems
to continue the paradigmof the soul-merge requiredfor fully effectiveperformance. He describesthe need for the music to seem to "issue from a single
mind."18This idea, however, appearsat the end of a section on ornamentation, and Galeazzi'spoint is almost the reverse of Hegel's: whereas Galeazzi
asks that the performer'sadded ornamentation sound as though it were alreadywritten in the score, Hegel is askingthat the performerreproduce only
what the composer actuallywrote but make it sound as though he were creating it anew. These differencesstem in part from the change in the default notion of "the work" from (to put it crudely) unrealized template to complete
record of the composer's thought, but they also reflect the multilayeredways
in which the new concept of performancewas emerging.
Perhapsthe most strikingexampleof the complex layersof this paradigmand the practicalexample most obviously connected to the Germanic ideas
about the spiritualexercise involved in interpretativeperformance-is to be
found in the writingsof PierreBaillot:the 1803 Mdthodede violon,19 for which
he wrote all the prose (PierreRode and Rodolphe Kreutzersupplyingmost of
the exercises);and his own Art du violon(1835).20 In the latter he comments
on the changed relation of the performerto the emerging canon of German
instrumentalmusic and its ilk that Hegel may also have been describing:
An abundanceof signs [the need for whichis exemplifiedin the newly "dramatic"musicof Haydn,Mozart,Beethoven,andViotti] is favorableto music
in that it can prevent many false readings and can serve as a guide to those who
could not do without them, but it can end up extinguishing the genius of performance which delights in divining and creating its own way. The violinist can
avoid this unhappy effect by studying old music [which required improvised
ornamentation] and never losing sight of it; this alwaysleaves a wide field open
to his imagination.21
es gedachtund gesetzt hat, vorgetragenwerden.... Jedesgute Tonstiikhat seineneigenen
und seineneigenenGeistund Ausdruk,der sichaufalleTheiledesselbenverbreitet;
Charakter,
dasser gleichsamaus
diesemussderSAngeroderSpielerso genauin seinenVortragiibertragen,
derSeeledesTonsetzersspiele."
18. FrancescoGaleazzi,Elementiteorico-pratici
di musica(Rome:PilucciCracas,1791-96),
230: "comese fossepartodi unastessamente."
19. PierreBaillot,PierreRode,andRodolpheKreutzer,
Mithodedeviolon(Paris:
Au Magasin
de musique,1803);facsimile(Geneva:Minkoff,1974).
20. PierreBaillot,L'artdu violon(Paris:Imprimerie
du Conservatoire
de Musique,[1835]);
facsimile(Courlay,
France:Fuzeau,2001);trans.anded. LouiseGoldbergas TheArt oftheViolin
IL:Northwestern
Press,1991).
(Evanston,
University
21. Baillot,L'artdu violon,162. TheArt of the Violin,287: "L'abondance
des signesest
'
favorablela musiqueen ce qu'ellepeutemphcherbiendescontresenset servirde guideaceux
s'enpasser,maiselle pourraitfinirpareteindrele ginie d'exicutionqui se plait
qui ne sauraient
surtout' deviner,' crierasamaniure.
On iviteracet inconvenient
en etudiantla musiqeancienne
et en ne la perdantjamaisde vue: elle laisseratoujoursa l'imaginationun vastechamppour
s'exercer."
366
In this excerpt the idea of the "genius of performance" seems, as with
Galeazzi, to refer largely to note-adding embellishment and improvisation.
Indeed, the chapter in which this passage appears includes his own marvelously immoderate ornamentation of an Adagio by Viotti. But Baillot's
more extended ideas about the genius of performance,first articulatedin the
1803 Mithodede violon,make clearthat more is at stakethan the performer's
ornamentationalinventiveness.
This treatise was produced as the basic violin curriculum for the newly
founded (1795) Paris Conservatoire;22and as a whole it clearly feels the
weight of the occasion. The prose preceding and following the exerciseslays
out in unusuallydetailed and philosophical23terms the "meansof expression"
to be used by the performer.Tone, tempo, style, taste, and a steady sense of
rhythm are all included, of course, but the section ends with a long disquisition devoted to the genius of performance.24This passage exhorts the player
"by a sudden inspiration[to] identifyhimselfwith the genius of the composer,
follow him in all his intentions, and interpretthese intentions with both facility
and precision," and "to translateeverything, to bring everything to life, to
transmit to the soul of the listener the feeling that the composer had in his
soul."25But the genius of performancealso "allowsthe artistto imbue himself
22. The title page describes the [Citoyens] Baillot, Rode, and Kreutzer as "Membres du
Conservatoire de Musique," and the method as "Adoptae par le Conservatoire pour servir '
l'Etude dans cet 6tablissement."
23. Two English reviews of the 1823 translationof the Mithode-" 'The Violin, Method of
Instructionfor,' by Rode, Baillot and Kreutzer.. ." in the Harmonicon4, no. 19 (1826): 54-55,
and "Rode, Baillot and Kreutzer's Method of Instruction for the Violin" in the Quarterly
MusicalMagazine 6, no. 24 (1824): 527-31-mention the unusuallyphilosophicaltenor of this
work. The Quarterly,for example, notes: "[The Mithode] forms a part of the plan of the French
conservatory, to inculcate the philosophy of art, together with the practice, and though the
maxims introduced into their books are few, brief, and sketchy,yet they can hardlyfail to impel
the student to use his understandingas well as his fingers, and at the same time to form high and
honourablenotions."
24. To include a section on the more generalizedaspectsof performancetowardsthe end of a
performancetreatisewas not new or unusual:to take only the most celebratedeighteenth-century
treatises,such sections can be found in C. P. E. Bach's Versuchiiberdie wahreArt das Clavier zu
spielen,Part I (Berlin, 1753); Leopold Mozart, LeopoldMozart's.. .griindlichen Violinschule,3rd
ed. (Augsburg, 1787); Johann JoachimQuantz's VersucheinerAnweisung die Flite traversierezu
spielen(Berlin, 1752); and Daniel Gottlob Tiirk's Klavierschule(Leipzig and Halle, 1789). What
is new in Baillot'sversion of this trope is in part the prolixityof his prose on the subject, but more
importantly,the pervasivenessof his sense of performanceas a true higher calling, the need for
the performing artistto possess genius, and the notion of taste as being not an end in itself as it is
in the earliertreatises,but rathera check on the wild excesses of genius. (See Baillot, Mithodede
violon,2.)
25. Baillot, Mithodede violon, 163; L'art du violon,266; TheArt of the Violin,479: "parune
inspirationsoudaine, s'identifieavec le g6nie du compositeur, le suit dans toutes ses intentions et
les fait connaltre avec autant de facilit6 que de pr&cision.... Tout traduire, tout animer, faire
passerdans l'me de l'auditeurle sentiment que le compositeur avaitdans la sienne."
367
with the spiritof a piece to the point of lending it charmsnot indicated in the
music, to go as far as creatingthe effects that the composer often leaves to instinct."26 The entire "meansof expression"section from the 1803 treatisewas
reprintednearlywithout alterationin the 1835 Art du violon.It is evident that
the added "charms"mentioned above were not limited to ornamentation,but
also, or rather,involved more subtle interpretationsof the notes on the page;
this evidence can be seen both in the number of examples taken from the
increasinglysacrosanctchamber music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethovenwhere it is clearboth that no ornamentationwas to be added, and that the genius of performance needed to appear as vividly as in music where the
composer could invent more of his own notes-and in Baillot's own remarks
on the importanceof "nuance"in bringing a work to life.27
Although Baillot's formulations about the genius of performance may
allow the performer more freedom of invention than Hegel's admittedly
abstractnotions, in some ways Baillot'sideas come closer to Hegel's than do
those of the German writerswho might seem to anticipateHegel more exactly.I referparticularlyto Baillot'snotion that the performer'sapprehension
of the music's content comes "by a sudden inspiration,"which, in its abstraction from any technical or analyticalissues, seems to agree with Hegel's notions of a spiritualcommunion with the composer somehow separatefrom the
issues of playing notes themselves. This notion of the need for a sudden, or
more or less instinctive,graspof the expressiveor spiritualcontent of the music is not uncommon in nineteenth-century treatises. Johann Nepomuk
Hummel's 1838 Mithodecompletetheoriqueet pratiquepour le pianoforte,for
example, describesexpressionas
the abilityto grasp[saisir]whatthe composerhimselfhasfelt, expressingit in
his playing,andmakingit passinto the soulsof the listeners.This can be neithernotatednor indicated;it is morethanone can expectif [the teacher]can
give an idea [of the expressivecontent]with a few generaltermswith nothing
very definite[to them], and which,besides,are only usefulto those who alreadyhavea truefeelingformusic.28
26. Baillot, Mithode de violon, 163; L'art du violon, 266; TheArt of the Violin, 479: "se
penetrer du ginie d'un morceau jusqu'a lui preter des charmes que rien n'indique, aller mhme
'
jusqu'' crier des effets que l'auteur abandonne souvent l'instinct." The exhortation to add exthe
is
that
did
not
include
followed
composer
immediately(in the same sentence) by "to
pression
translateeverything,to bring everythingto life....
27. See below.
28. "la facult6de saisircc que le compositeur a senti lui-mime, de l'exprimerdans le jeu, et
de le fairepasserdans l'ime des auditeurs.Ceci ne peut itre ni note, ni indiqui; c'est tout-au plus
si l'on peut en donner une idie par quelques termes giniraux qui n'ont rien de positif, et qui
d'ailleurs, ne sont utiles qu'a ceux qui ont en eux le vrai sentiment de la musique." Johann
Nepomuk Hummel, Mithode complutethiorique et pratique pour le pianoforte (Paris: Farrenc,
[1838]); facsimile(Geneva:Minkoff, 1981), 438. The Hummel was originallypublished in 1828
by Haslingerin Vienna as Ausfihhrliche
theoretisch-practische
Anweisung zum Pianoforte-Spiel.
368
These ideas of an instinctivespiritualsympathyfor the music are interestingly
absent in, for example, the Schulz essay in Sulzer's encyclopedia,even though
his ideas about the single consciousness to be communicated through a performance seem close to Hegel's. Indeed, Schulz's sense of the way the performerachievesthat illusion of the single mind is essentiallythrough study and
habit. He notes that what the performerneeds beyond technical preparation
and the correct feeling for tempo is "a sufficient fluency in musical language,
indeed, that he can read easily not only notes, phrases,and periods, but can
understandthe sense of it, feel the expressionwithin it, and notice the connections of [these parts] to each other and to the whole; and that he can recognize the particularcharacterof the work from his own experience."29In other
words, for Schulz, as for most Enlightenment writerson music, musicalcharacterwas, or was supposed to be, readilylegible. As Leopold Mozart noted in
his treatise,the capacityto discern musical characterwas a function of "sound
judgment by means of long experience,"30and definitelynot of"sudden inspiration." The need to comprehend and communicate the general Affekt and
expressive genre of a piece-those features indicated by tempo, surface
rhythm, melody type, etc., does not by any means disappearin the nineteenth
century,31 but something less concrete and more individual is clearly the
object of "sudden inspiration," or "reaching the spiritual heights of the
composer."
Another difference between the early Romantic notion of the performer's
relation to the work and that found in the classic Enlightenment commentarieson the topic impinges on the ontology of the musicalwork. The earlier
commentariesquite routinely remarkthat performanceis the only way music
gets heard (that is, turns into music), and thus that the quality of the performance determines the perception of the quality of the work. Rousseau, for
example, writes (1768): "Since music is written to be heard, one can judge it
well only through performance."32 Schulz comments (ca. 1774): "Performance [Vortrag]is that which makes a composition audible. The good or
bad effect of a composition on the listener depends to a great extent on per29. "dass er ausserder Fertigkeitund einem richtigen Geffihl eine hinlangliche Geliufigkeit
in der musikalischen Sprache selbst habe, ndimlich,dass er nicht allein Noten, Phrasen und
Perioden fertig lese, sondern den Sinn derselbenverstehe, den Ausdruck,der in ihnen liegt, flihle,
ihre Beziehung auf einander und auf das Ganze bemerke; und dass der das eigenthtimliche des
Charaktersdes Tonsttiksschon aus der Erfahrungkenne" (J. A. P Schulz, "Vortrag,"707).
30. "gesunder Beurtheilungskraftdurch eine lange Erfahrung."Leopold Mozart, Leopold
Mozarts.. .griindliche Violinschule,3rd ed.; facsimileed. (Leipzig: VEB, 1978), 258; trans. and
ed. Editha Knocker as A Treatiseon the Fundamental Principlesof Violin Playing (Oxford and
New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1985). (The original edition of the GriindlicheViolinschule
was publishedin Augsburg by Lotter in 1756; the passageabove is on p. 253.)
31. Taste is, for example, included in the "means of expression"segment in both Baillot's
1803 Mdthodeand his 1835 Art du violon.
32. "Comme la Musique est faitpour etre entendue, on n'en peut bien juger que parl'ex&cution." Rousseau, "Ex&cution,"in his Dictionnaire de Musique.
369
formance.A mediocre piece can be greatly elevated by means of a good performance;on the other hand, a bad performancecan so deform an excellent
piece that it is unrecognizeable,even intolerable."33Leopold Mozart begins his
chapter "Of Reading Music Correctly,and in particular,of Good Execution"
with the same point, but with characteristicspecificityand acerbity:
Everythingdependson good execution.Thissayingis confirmedby dailyexperience. Many a would-be composer is thrilled with delight and plumes himself
anew when he hears his musical Galimatias["hodgepodge"] played by good
performerswho know how to produce the affect (of which he never dreamed)
in the right place; and how to vary the character(which never occurred to him)
as much as it is humanly possible to do so, and who therefore know how to
make the whole miserablescribblebearableto the ears of the listeners by means
of good performance.And to whom, on the other hand, is it not known that
the best composition is often played so wretchedly that the composer himself
has great difficultyin recognizing his own work?34
These comments differ from earlyRomantic notions about performancein a
couple of significantways. One is the sense that the production of musical
works occurs within a strongly social and directlysociable network:works are
written to be judged or to have an effect on a listener, or to be played in the
presence of the composer, who judges his work in part on the basisof the performers'contributionsto it.35The notion of the filly conceived and essentially
self-sufficientwork waiting to be rendered into sound through a communion
of souls is barelyevident in these earlierwritings. In addition, and not surprisingly, the conceptual boundariesbetween "the work" and its performanceare
more porous or fluid than they became with the earlyRomantic solidification
of the "imaginarymuseum" of works describedby Lydia Goehr and others.36
33. "Vortragist das, wodurch ein Tonstdikh6rbarwird. Von dem Vortrageh~ingtgr6sstentheils die gute oder schlechte Wtirkungab, die ein Stiik auf den Zuh6rer macht. Ein mittelmassiges Stdikkann durch einen guten Vortrag sehr erhoben werden; hingegen kann ein schlechter
Vortrag auch das vortrefflichsteStidkso verunstalten,dass es unkenntlich, ja unausstehlichwird"
(J. A. P. Schulz, "Vortrag,"700).
34. "An der gute Ausflihrungist allesgelegen. Diesen Satz bestittiget die tigliche Erfahrniss.
Mancher Halbcomponist ist vom Vergniigen entziicket, und hilt nun von neuem erst selbst recht
viel aufsich, wenn er seinen musikalischenGalimatiasvon guten Spielernvortragenh6ret, die den
Affect, an den er nicht einmal gedacht hat, am rechten Orte anzubringen,und die Charakters,die
ihm niemalseingefallensind, so viel es m6glich ist zu unterscheiden,und folglich die ganze elende
Schmiereren den Ohren der Zuh6rer durch einen guten Vortrag ertriglich zu machen wissen.
Und wem ist hingegen unbekannt,dass oft die beste Composition so elend ausgefiihretwird, dass
der Componist selbst Noth genug hat seine eigene Arbeit zu kennen?" Leopold Mozart,
GriindlicheViolinschule,3rd ed., 257; 1756 ed., 252; A Treatiseon the Fundamental Principles,
215.
35. Carl Dahlhaus, TheIdea of AbsoluteMusic, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989), 61.
36. Lydia Goehr, TheImaginary Museumof Musical Works.See also WilliamWeber, TheRise
of Musical Classicsin England:A Studyin Canon, Ritual, and Ideology(Oxford: ClarendonPress,
1992).
370
These Enlightenment writings conceive of the performer'sjob more as continuing than as re-creating the work of the composer, and thus fidelity and
self-expressiondo not form the apparentparadox of the sort evident in the
Hegel passage,or intimatedin the comments of Galeazziand Baillot.
Self- Transformation and Resolved Dualism: The Spiritual
and Structural Features of the Early Romantic Performance
Concept
Although the move towards a Hegelian formulation of the issue of performance was not uniform or simple, and although there is obviously considerable slippage between philosophical or literary ideals and the actuality of
performance,two elements characterizewhat I would call an early(or proto-)
Romantic conception of the performer,and distinguishthis conception from
Enlightenment ideas on the subject. The first is that, in contrast to an Enlightenment notion of "taste,"the Romantic sense of the "genius of performance" involvesthe performer'spsycho-spiritualcapacityto transformhimself
into an other. But not just any other: this capacitycreatesa miraculousmerging of his own self with that of the composer to representa new subjectivity.
The anonymous essay"On MusicalExpression"from TheHarmoniconof July
1824 expatiatesexplicitlyon the difficulty of this kind of self-transformation,
and implicitlyon the ideal blurringof boundariesbetween the creatorand the
re-creatorof the musicalwork (perhapsinadvertentlydescribing the productions of the performeras "hisworks"):
A brilliantandenergeticstyleof performance
is the triumphof art;it canbe attainedonlybe assiduousapplication.... But how manyqualitiesmusta musicianpossess... in orderto be masterof the true mannerof expression!He
musthavea mindsufficientlyacuteand extensiveto embraceand comparean
infinityof analogies,not apparentto ordinaryminds;an imaginationsuffifertileto representit
cientlyardentto seizefirmlyupon its subject,sufficiently
undereverykindof image;a soul sufficientlycapaciousto graspeveryobject,
andsufficientlyimpassionedto embraceallthosepointsthathaveanyanalogy
with it; but, aboveall,he musthavea hearttremblinglyaliveto allthe tenderness,aswell as allthe impetuosityof the passions;it is thusonlythathisworks
canbe informedwithnativefire,andbreathelifeandidentity.37
Reviews of performancesfrom the early nineteenth century also support
the idea that self-transformationwas seen as an essentialelement of performative genius. Baillot's own playing of canonical chamber music, for example,
was praisedin 1831 by music criticand lexicographerFrangoisFayolle in precisely the terms that Baillot had set up in his Mkthode:"He is of the firstrank,
as a virtuoso and as a teacher.He possesses the genius of performancebecause
37. "On MusicalExpression,"Harmonicon2, no. 19 (1824): 128-29.
371
he stripsawayhis ego [dipouilleson moi] to become, by turn, Haydn, Boccherini, Mozart and Beethoven" (emphasis only on "moi" in original).38One
could, of course, read this as simple subordinationof the self to the will of the
composer. But Fayolle'suse of the word "genius," and his evident fascination
with Baillot'scapacityto "become" four very differentcompositional personalitiesstrongly suggests that it was the process of transformation,or the sense
of a kind of doubleness between the now-egoless Baillot and the miraculously
absent yet reanimated spirit of the composer, that so fascinated him. That
Fayolle's comment was not simply a sop to Baillot's own formulation of the
problem is suggested by ChristianUrban's review of one of Baillot's German
counterparts,the violinist KarlM6ser, who led a long-running and prestigious
series of quartet concerts in Berlin in the 1820s:39 "Himself a genius performer [he] truly sympathized with Haydn's humor, Mozart's soul
[Gemtith], and Beethoven's sublime genius, and presented them clearlyto the
listener."40This is obviously a less extreme formulation, but like Fayolle,
Urban clearlyconnects the genius of the performerwith the capacityto enter
or to identifycompletelywith the spiritof the composer and bring it to life.
The second characteristicfeature of early and proto-Romantic discourse
about performanceis evident in the fact that the demand for this kind of selftransformationon the part of the performer sets performer and composer in
an oppositional relationshipbut also suggests a remarkableidentification between the two poles of the opposition. Indeed the simultaneousestablishment
and collapse of this dualisticrelation is a metonym for the broader discourse
of performance in early Romantic aesthetic thought. As we will see below,
performance as a concept tends to inhabit a field of dialecticaloppositions:
composer and performer,performerand listener,the I and not-I of performer
and music, the materialityof technique versus the ineffabilityof expression,
the emptiness of mere virtuosityversus the moral high ground of true musicmaking, among others. But equally strikingis the way performancewas conceived, both explicitly and implicitly, as a resolution, or occasion for the
collapse,of those oppositions.
These aspectsof earlyRomantic performancediscourse,especiallyits structural tendency towards collapsed or resolved dualisms, locate it firmlywithin
38. FrangoisFayolle, Paganini et Biriot, ou, Avis aux JeunesArtistes qui se destinenta [sic]
'
l'enseignementdu violon (Paris:Legouest, 1831), 41: "Quant Baillot, il s'est place au premier
et
le
de
virtuose
comme
comme
II
rang,
professeur. possede ginie
l'ex&cution,car il depouille son
moi, pour &tre,tour-i-tour, Haydn, Boccherini,Mozart et Beethoven."
39. It is not by chance that these reviews are about chamber music, since that seems to have
been the placewhere the interfacebetween virtuosityand subservienceto the composer was most
acutelyfelt. This is the topic for another essayaltogether.
40. "Haidn's [sic] Humor, Mozart's [sic] Gemiith und Beethovens hehre Genius wird von
dem selbst genialen Virtuosen wahr empfunden und klar dem Zuh6rer dargelegt" (Christian
Urban, "Korrespondenz,"BerlinerAllgemeine musikalischeZeitung 3, no. 47 [22 Nov. 1826]:
382).
372
the broaderintellectualcontext of the era. Dualism itself was, of course, not
unique to an early Romantic sensibility,but the persistent and pervasive attempt to resolve apparentlyintractableoppositions was. Meyer Abrams, for
example,writes of the
attempt [in earlyRomanticphilosophiesof nature,and in Britishwritings
aboutliteraturederivedfrom them] to revitalizethe materialand mechanical
universewhich had emergedfrom the philosophyof Descartesand Hobbes,
and which had been recentlydramatizedby the theoriesof Hartleyand the
Frenchmechanistsof the lattereighteenthcentury.It was ... an attemptto
overcomethe senseof man'salienationfromthe worldby healingthecleavage
betweensubjectand object,betweenthe vital,purposeful,value-fullworldof
privateexperienceand the dead,postulatedworldof extension,quantity,and
motion.41[emphasisadded]
Within the realm of philosophy more strictly defined, the German Idealists
reactingto Kantwere also devoted to the attempt to reconcile the Kantianopposition of understanding and sensibility,"the form and content of experience."42 As Frederick Beiser notes about Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of
Kant'searliestand most important interlocutors,"Somehow, he had to establish that understandingand sensibility... stem from a single source and unifying principle."Fichte's criticsin turn, according to Beiser, continued to face
the same demons of dualism:
On the one handit was necessaryfor them to overcomethe dualismbetween
the subjectiveand objective,the idealand the real,for therehad to be some
correspondenceand interactionbetween them to explainthe possibilityof
knowledge.On the otherhand,however,it wasalsonecessaryfor themto preservethat dualism,becausethis alonewould explainthe realityof an external
world.43
Severaldualismsin Romantic performancediscourseconnect it to its wider
culture. The Romantic idea of performanceas a kind of reorganizationof the
music, already suggested above, unites composer and performer, originator
and vessel, in an apparentlysingle creativeact. A similarideal also unites performerand listener,the proximategiver and receiverof the music, in an apparently single interpretativeact, which in itself combined both minute and literal
attention to the music with its apparent opposite: "imaginativereconstruction."44 In more abstractterms, the relation between the resolvable binary
41. H. Meyer Abrams, TheMirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theoryand the Critical Tradition (New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1953), 64-65.
42. FrederickBeiser, "The Enlightenment and Idealism,"in The CambridgeCompanion to
GermanIdealism,ed. KarlAmeriks(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2000), 29.
43. Ibid., 32.
44. The phrase is by Mark Evan Bonds, in "Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental
Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century,"thisJournal 50 (1997): 393-94.
373
structureof performancediscourse and Idealist epistemology suggests that in
some ways performance was conceived of as a kind of simulacrum of
Romantic subjectivity.And finally,on a more practicallevel, musicalpedagogy
at the turn of the nineteenth century also embodied this pervasivediscursive
structureof establishingor emphasizing, then mitigating or resolving, an opposition in the way it increasinglyseparatedtechnique from expression, but
then taught expressivegestures as if they comprised a branch of technique.
The multiple and various connections between the content and structureof
discourse about performance and the larger intellectual context it inhabited
suggest that far from being sidelined in the aesthetic debates of the time, the
idea of performancewas central to it, and in some respects may even have
served to model the possibilitythat intractableoppositions could be resolved.
The most salient intellectual contexts are those of German Romanticism
and Idealism, partly because the writersin these schools were particularlyinterested in the aesthetic and broaderphilosophicalstatus of music, partly because the music to which the new concept of the performer most clearly
attachesis German instrumentalmusic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and partly because the intellectualferment the Idealistsand
Romantic writers created was sufficientlypowerful to reach across both national and disciplinaryboundaries, such that Baillot's Mkthodecould on the
one hand be taken to be particularly"philosophical"by its English readers,45
and on the other be treated as an aesthetictext in its own right and be quoted
at length in a prototypicallyRomantic essay in the Berlinischemusikalische
Zeitung of 1805.46 My point here is not that there were no other ideas about
performancecurrent at the time, or even that there are no other ways to explain the changes in the discourse of performance, but merely that the
German Romantic and Idealist frameworkis both of sufficienthistoricalrelevance to the new concept of the performer,and sufficientlypervasive,to serve
as the main intellectual framework for this initial investigation of the early
Romantic idea of performance.
Dualisms in Performance Discourse
As the general summaryabove suggests, mapping the figure of the composer
onto that of the perfomer was among the most powerful ways performance
discoursefigured the act of performanceas both transparentto the work and
fully present. This idea obviously required the composer to be understood as
fully and finallyauthoritative,but it also relied on the idea that composition itself was a kind of identificationor tapping into something higher, so that the
45. See note 23 about the English reception of Baillot'sMithode.
46. "C. F.," "Uber die moralische Sphdiredes Tonkiinstlers," Berlinische musikalische
Zeitung 18 (1805): 69-70.
374
re-creationof thisfunctionby the performerwasat leastnotionallyplausible.
GustavSchilling'sdescription
of the compositional
impetusexemplifiesthis:
The creativemusician,the truetone-poet,experiences[thevividimpressionof
an object "of outstandingaestheticappeal"]in much the sameway as do all
thosein whomanykindof divinecreativefireis kindled,thatof the idealitself.
In his case,thisis whathe seeksto expressin termsof music.The moreclearly
he hasthisin the brightplaceof his mind,the moresun-likeit shinesin his soul,
the strongerits impressionon his sensibility,
the morehe will be throughlyinand
the
he
more
will
formulate
it.47[emphasisadded]
spiredby it,
clearly
JohannGottfriedHerderremarkssimilarly(1800), thoughwith Naturesubstituting for the Ideal:
Everything, therefore, that sounds in Nature is music; it contains all its own elements, and demands only a hand to tempt it out, an ear to hear it, and sympathy to perceive it. No artist ever invented a tone, or given it strength, that it did
not already have in Nature and her instrument. [The artist], however, found
the tone and coaxed it forth with sweet power. The composer has found series
of tones and has pushed them upon us with gentle force.48
47. "Beim schaffenden Tonkiinstler,dem eigentlich dichtenden, ist dieser Gegenstand das
gemeinsame Gut mit Allen, in denen eine g6ttliche Kraftzu irgend einer Bildung sich regt, das
Ideal selbst, das, was er in seinen Tongebilden darstellenwill; je deutlicher dasselbe seinem inneren Lichtblickevorschwebt,je sonnenheller es daliegt in seinem Inneren, desto krtftigerist der
Eindruckauf sein Empfindungsverm6gen,desto mehr wird er durch und flir dasselbe begeistert,
und desto klarerwird er es auch gestalten"(Gustav Schilling, "Begeisterung,"in Encycloptidieder
oder Universal-Lexikon
der Tonkunst,2nd ed. [Stuttgart:
gesammten musikalischenWissenschaften,
Kihler, 1840], 1:523; translationbased on that in Peter Le Huray and James Day, Music and
Aestheticsin theEighteenthand Early-NineteenthCenturies,abridgeded. [Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press, 1988], 317-18). Interestingly,Schilling contrasts the inspirationof the instrumental composer with that of the performeror the vocal composer (where composition is a kind
of performanceof a text), but in fact his description of the process of witnessing and absorbing
something and then creating a "clearimage" of it seems ratherthe same. "Hence the inspiration
of the virtuoso and the vocal composer, in contrastto that of the true composer or the composer
of pure instrumentalmusic, has its basis simply in a strong stimulus which quickly and strongly
seizes the powers of the imagination and has its origin solely in the greatness, the richness, or
above all, the beauty of the object at hand." ("Daher hat denn auch die Begeisterung des
Virtuosen und Vocalcomponisten,abweichendvon der des eigentlichen Tondichters oder reinen
Instrumentalcomponisten,ihren Grund nur allein in einem starkenReize, der jene Vorstellungskraft schnell und heftig angreift, und entsteht nur durch die Gr6sse, den Reichtum oder iiberhaupt die Schonheit eines schon vorhandenen Gegenstandes" [Schilling, "Begeisterung,"
1:524].)
48. Johann Gottfried Herder, "Von Musik," Part 4 of "Kalligone:Von Kunst und Kunstrichterei, Zweiter Theil, 1800," in Herder, Simmtliche Werke,ed. Bernhard Suphan, 33 vols.
(Berlin:Weidmann,vol. 22, 1880), 22:180: "Alles, also was in der Natur t6nt, ist Musik; es hat
ihre Elemente in sich; und verlangtnur ein Hand, die sic hervorlocke,ein Ohr, das sie hore, ein
Mitgefiihl, das sic vernehme. Kein Kiinstlererfand einen Ton, oder gab ihm eine Macht, die er in
der Natur und in seinem Instrumentnicht habe; er fand ihn aberund zwang ihn mit siisserMacht
hervor.Der Compositeurfand Gange der Tine, und zwingt sie uns mit sanfterGewalt auf."
375
Both of these passagesinvoke the familiarmodel of the composer as a kind
of acolyte of the Absolute, mediating for his audience the "spirit-realmof the
infinite,"49as Hoffmann famously described the ineffable (1814-15). This
model allows the performer to stand at the altar of the Ideal or Absolute
alongside the composer.We might then say that the composer establishesthe
frame through which the Ideal is to be glimpsed, but the experience of that
communion is authentic and original to the performer.Performancethus becomes an act of recomposition through reimaginingthe experienceor inspiration that stimulatedthe work, and transparencyis achieved by the performer's
ability to take the listener to the apparentsource of the composer's ideas, or
his capacityto make the same journey as the composer, and to return to the
audience, Orpheus-like,with the results of that journey.As Hoffmann writes
about the performanceof Beethoven:
The properperformance
of Beethoven'sworksdemandsnothinglessthanthat
one understand
him,andthatin the knowledgeof one'sown stateof graceone
venturesboldlyintothecircleof magicalbeingsthathisirresistible
spellsummons
forth.50[emphasisadded]
Hoffmann's idea that understandingBeethoven (i.e., devoting oneself to the
study of his music to gain insight into the man) literallyemboldens the performer to develop his own imaginationis a good example of the way in which
early Romantic performance discourse sets up an opposition-in this case
mighty composer and devout performer-and then promptly blurs or collapses it. The collapse here turns it into a paradox:submission to the master
magicallyproduces a kind of empowerment of the performer,and his imagination is as necessaryas that of the composer.
The sources for performance discourse in this period are quite explicit
about the way in which performancereenacts composition. They are less explicit about the relation between performanceand listening. Reichardt'scomment about the need for young composers to substitute score-reading for
performanceif they want to get to know the music is as close as I have seen to
a statement that a given listening occasion can be a kind of performance,and
the indications that the performance of canonic instrumentalmusic involves
the kind of interpretation increasingly expected of listeners are mostly
49. "das Geisterreichdes Unendlichen." E. T. A. Hoffmann, "Beethovens Instrumentalvol. 12, Die
Musik,"in E. T A. Hoffmann Dichtungen und Schriften,sowieBriefeund Tagebiicher,
Schriftenliber Musik (Weimar:Lichtenstein, 1924), 18; translationfrom "Beethoven's Instrumental Music," in E. T A. Hoffmann'sMusical Writings.Kreisleriana,ThePoet and the Composer,
Music Criticism,ed. David Charlton, tr. MartynClarke(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,
1989), 98.
50. Hoffmann, "Beethovens Instrumental-Musik,"24; "Beethoven's InstrumentalMusic,"
98: "So geh6rt zum richtigen, bequemen Vortrag Beethovenscher Kompositions nichts
Geringeres, als dass man ihn begreife, dass man tief in sein Wesen eindringe, dass man im
Bewusstseineigner Weihe es kiihn wage, in den Kreisder magischenErscheinungenzu treten, die
sein machtigerZauberhervorruft."
376
implicit.51Chambermusic (and especiallythe string quartet) is the one venue
where writersnot unusuallycomment on the need for performersto pay the
same kind of attention to the music "itself" as a seriouslistenermight. Baillot
and Galeazzi both compare the restraintand devotion to the processes of the
music needed by the chamberviolinist (and Baillot refersspecificallyto quartets) with the relativefreedom and self-promotion availablein the concerto,52
while ChristianUrban's overview of the work of the KarlM6ser quartet suggests a connection between Maser's long yearsof musicalstudy and the clarity
with which the four-partstructurecan be perceived:
This quartet has only been able indubitably to win such excellence because
Herr M6ser has such complete knowledge of quartet music, especiallythat of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, which could be gained only by many years of
study; also, then, because he is a highly skilled violinist, whose skill shines in
many quartets, particularlythose of Beethoven. [The other members of the
quartet are praised .... ] Listeners also perceive the high pleasure which this
quartet offers, which [perception] is to be noticed not only in the way they utter it publicly after every piece, but also, and principally,in the way they show
how attentivelythey follow the ideas of the composer. For all those who study
four-partvoice leading, or who want to recognize it in a more casualway, the
greatest profit is available,since they can here hear four-partwriting pure and
undisturbed, which is not often possible with larger ensembles because of the
instrumentation,nor with piano music.53
None of these passages, however, really makes the strongest comparison
possible between ideas of performanceand ideas about listening at the turn of
the nineteenth century,which is that both rely on the dualism of close attention, or "reverent contemplation," and "imaginative reconstruction."54
51. See note 6 above.
52. Baillot, Mithode de violon, 163-64; L'art du violon, 266-67; The Art of the Violin,
479-80; Galeazzi,Elementiteorico-pratici,231.
53. ChristianUrban, "Mtsers Quartetten,"BerlinerAllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung 2, no. 9
(12 Jan. 1825): 68-69: "Diese Auszeichnung haben diese Quartette unstreitig nur dadurch
gewinnen k6nnen, dass Herr M6ser eine vollkommene Kenntnissder Quartettmusikiiberhaupt,
besonders aber der Haidnschen, Mozart- und Beethovenschen besitzt, die durch vieljdhriges
Studium nur errungenwerden kann;dann aberauch dadurch,dass derselbeein h6chst gewandter
Violinspieler ist, welches Gewandtheit sich in manchen Quartetten, besonders den Beethovenschen, im grbssten Glanze zeigt.... Den hohen Genuss, den diese Quartette gewihren,
empfinden die Zuh6rernauch ganz; welches nicht allein daranzu merkenist, dass sie es 6ffentlich
sie
nachjedemMusikstiick
dadurchzeigen,wie aufmerksam
sondernhauptsichlich
aussprechen,
den Ideen des Komponistenfolgen. Fiir alle diejenigen,welche die Fiihrung der Stimmen im vierstimmigen Satze studieren, oder doch auch beiliufig erkennen wollen, findet sich bei diesen
Quartetten die gr6sste Ausbeute, denn sie k6nnen hier den vierstimmigen Satz rein und
ungest6rt h6ren, was weder bei grossen Musiken, der Instrumentierungwegen, noch auch bei
Klavierkompositionen,oft maglich ist."
54. See Bonds, "Idealismand the Aesthetics of InstrumentalMusic," for a full discussion of
these concepts in the context of German Idealism.
377
The relation of close attention to imaginativereconstructionin listening is
exemplifiedin E. T. A. Hoffmann's music criticism,which, as he himselfwrote
in 1820, was intended to trainbetter listeners.55Hoffinann essentiallyjustified
his close attention to the notes with the most fancifuldescriptions.In his 1813
evaluationof Beethoven's Opus 70 piano trios, for example, he writes on the
one hand, "Strangeshapes begin a merry dance, now converging into a single
point of light, now flying apartlike glittering sparks,now chasing each other
in infinitely varied clusters."56 On the other hand (and following this
metaphoricaldescription),he presentsa cool account of the musicalprocesses:
"The firstfour barscontain the main theme, and the seventh and eighth bars
in the cello part contain the secondary theme."57He connects his dancing
sparksto the blow-by-blow account of the themes as follows: "The reviewer
has found it necessaryto preface all these remarksto his appraisalof the individual trios in order to make it absolutely plain how incomparably great
Beethoven is in his piano works."58In other words, the notes would barelybe
worth the trouble of the account if they did not stimulatethis imaginativereconstruction, or, as Hoffinann says, "[conjure]forth an enchantedworld."59
Hoffmann here has explicitly acknowledged the different experiences of
close listening and imaginativereconstruction.Other commentators more actively collapse the opposition, and in this they come closer both to performance discourse and even to performanceitself. Johann Gottfried Herder's
"Von Musik,"for example, describesthe experienceof listening to polyphonic
choralmusic:
Indescribable
the charmof the voicesthataccompanyeachother;theyareone
andnot one;theyforsake,seek,pursue,contradict,quarrel,reinforce,andannihilateeach other,and awaken,and animateand comfortand flatterand embraceeachotheragain,untiltheyfinallydie awayin a singletone. Thereis no
of
sweeterpictureof seekingand finding,of friendlyspatsandreconciliations,
55. E. T. A. Hoffinann, "Zufillige Gedanken bei dem Erscheinendieser Blitter," in E. T A.
Hoffmann: Dichtungen und Schriften, 12:396; translation from "Casual Reflections on the
Appearanceof This Journal,"in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings,426: "Es ist gewiss, dass
Beurteilungender Art dazu fiihren konnen dass man gut hort." ("Whatis certainis that criticisms
of this sort can lead people to listenwell").
56. Hoffminann,
"Beethoven, Trios Op. 70," in E. T A. Hoffmann: Dichtungen und Schriften,
12:240; translationfrom "Reviewof Beethoven's Piano Trios, Op. 70, Nos. 1 and 2," in E. T. A.
Hoffmann'sMusical Writings,303-4: "SeltsameGestaltenbeginnen einen lustigen Tanz, indem
sie bald zu einem Lichtpunktverschweben, bald funkelnd und blitzend auseinanderfahrenund
sich in mannigfachenGruppenjagen und verfolgen."
57. Hoffinann, "Beethoven Trios," 240; "Review of Beethoven's Piano Trios," 304: "Die
erstenvierTaktenenthalten das Hauptthema, der siebente und achte Taktim Violoncell aber enthilt das Nebenthema."
58. Ibid.: "Rez. musste alles dieses der Beurteilung der einzelnen Trios vorauschicken,um es
recht ins Licht zu stellen, wie unnachahmlichgross Beethoven in seinen Flilgel-Kompositionen
ist."
59. Ibid.:"ereine Zauberweltentsteigen lisst."
378
lossandyearning,of doubtfulandcertainrecognition,[and]finallycompletely
sweetunificationand conjoining,as [in] these two-voiceandpolyphonicpassagesandmusicalstruggles,eitherwordlessor withwords.60
The fact that the object here is choral music seems to me not especiallyrelevant to the quality of the discourse, which addresses the purely musical
processes he hears ratherthan the qualitiesof the voices per se or the words.
(Indeed the quoted passage ends with a comment that the words are irrelevant to this kind of hearing.) One pertinent aspect of this passage for present
purposesis its strikinglyperformativecharacter;it displaysa kind of verbalvirtuosity reminiscentof musicalimprovisationor the compositional elaboration
of a theme. But even more salientlyin the present context, this passagerepresents a remarkablecollapse of the opposition between close attention and
imaginativereconstruction.At the same time as describing "objective"musical processes (imitation, fugue, homophony, consonance, dissonance, resolution), Herder has imaginatively reconstructed those processes as human
relationshipsin a way that both retains a foothold in the music "itself" and
makes it meaningful to himself (and presumablyto his readers)by invoking a
human affectivecontext that a listener could understandand endow with his
or her own particularemotional content. This kind of commentary maps remarkablywell onto Baillot's statement in his "genius of performance"paragraphs that the performershould be imbued with the spirit of the piece "to
the point of lending it charmsnot indicatedin the music."
Performancediscourse had of course alwaysstressed "close attention" to
the notes, whether or not that attention was paid in a reverentlycontemplative
fashion. And it had also always emphasized the need for imaginative reconstruction. But as "nuance"came to equal and even in some instances replace
ornamentationas the field ofperformative creativity,close attention and imaginativereconstructionwere increasinglyindistinguishable.
This process was not exclusivelytied to a Romantic or Idealistsensibilityor
agenda, and can be found in otherwise relatively "conservative" works.
Giuseppe Cambini's Nouvellemuthodethtoriqueet pratiquepour le violon (ca.
1800), for example, gives a fascinatingand historicallytransitionalexample of
this kind of interpretationin the context of performance.Noting the impossibility of devising signs to indicate all the possible expressiveuses of the bow,
and the likelyillegibilityof the page even if such signs as could be devised were
used, he describes in detail how the player should interpret two phrases of
60. Herder, "Von Musik," 182: "Unbeschreibbardie Anmuth der Stimmen, die einander
begleiten; sie sind Eins und nicht Eins; sie verlassen, suchen, verfolgen, widersprechen,
bekimpfen, verstirken,vernichteneinander,und erwecken und beleben und tr6sten und schmeicheln und umarmen einanderwieder, bis sie zuletzt in Einem Ton ersterben.Es giebt kein stisser
Bild des Suchens und Findens, des freundschaftlichenZwistes und der Vers6hnung, des Verlierens
und der Sehnsucht, der zweifelnden und ganzen Wiedererkennung, endlich der v6llig stissen
Vereinigung und Verschmelzung als diese zwei- und merhrstimmige Tongange, Tonkimpfe,
wortlos oder von Worten begleitet."
379
music, one by Boccheriniand one by Haydn (from the Andante of Symphony
No. 53), providingin stages fingerings,bowings, nuanced dynamics,and texts
(the one for the Haydn intended to recallRousseau's Le devin du village) expressing the general sentiment of the music, the thought of which was supposed to "electrify"the performer'sbow arm, and inspirehis left hand.61He
writes:
First, grasp the naive and tender sentiment that a pretty village girl, still a
maiden, feels in reproaching her lover for an infidelity that she so little deserved. Imagine her a charactereven more na•ve than Colette in the Devin du
village;she knows no spite, she listens only to her own tender feelings, and she
saysonly the following words:
What! you could be unfaithfulto me!
Who will love you more than I do?
If I seem less beautifulto you,
Is my heart nothing to you?
Or something similar, but better expressed. So, electrify your arm with a
sweeter and more ingratiating fire than that which served you for the
Boccherini, and recite with interest this third example with the fingering and
signs I have indicated .62
...
2 .33
1.2
443I
2 .
1.2. 4.4.3.3.
2. 1. 4.2. 2.2.3.3.
1F"
1.
I
F)27
1.3.2.2.
-
T__1
4.4.1.
Cambinihere builds on a close reading of--and, significantly,no ornamental
departuresfrom-the notes, imaginativelyto reconstruct the essence of the
61. Giuseppe Cambini, Nouvelle mithode thioriqueet pratique pour le violon (Paris:Nadermann, [ca. 1800]); facsimile(Geneva:Minkoff, 1974), 19: "L'archetpeut exprimerles affections
de l'ame: mais outre, qu'on manque de signes pour les indiquer;ces signes, quand meme on les
inventeroit, deviendroient si nombreux que la musique deja trop chargie de traitsindicatifsdeviendroitpour les yeux un amasinforme presque impossiblea dichiffrer."("The bow can express
the passionsof the soul; but besides the fact that we don't have signs to indicate them, such signs,
even if they were invented, would become so numerous that the music, alreadyfull of signs to indicate expression,would become a nearlyindecipherablemass for the eye.") Peter Wallsuses this
passage of Cambini to illustrate the relatively early use of portamento fingerings (History,
Imagination and thePerformanceofMusic [Woodbridge,UK: Boydell Press,2003], 91).
62. Ibid., 22: "PInitrez vous, d'abord, du sentiment naif et tendre, qu'une jolie villageoise,
encore vierge, eprouve, en reprochant a son amoureux l'infideliti qu'elle miritoit si peu.
Supposez lui un caractareencore plus naff que celui de Colette, dans le Devin du Village; elle ne
connoit pasle depit elle n'icoute que sa tendresseelle ne dit que les parolessuivantes.[']Quoi! tu
peux m'etre infidele!/ Qui t'aimeraplus que moi! / Si je te paroismoins belle, / Mon coeurn'est
il rien pour toi![']
"Ou quelque chose de semblable, mais mieux ixprimi. Alors l&ectrisez
v6tre bras d'un feu
plus doux, plus bienfaisantque celui dont vous vous ites servi pour la phrase de Boccherini, et
recitez avecinterhtce troisiime ixample. Avec le doigt6 et les signes que j'ai indique."
380
music as he understandsit.63The effects of the added "accent"are to link the
notes with a gentler phrasingthan the naked notation would suggest, to use
some dynamicvariation,and to finger the excerptwith two slides (from the C#
at the end of measure2 to the E at the beginning of measure 3, and from the
B at the end of measure4 to the D at the beginning of measure 5) and two
portamenti (the opening two notes, and the A to the E in measure 2). In
other words, even with a somewhat old-fashioned reliance on a rhetorical
model of musicalmeaning and a distinctlyold-fashionedtext (which is clearly
meant as a translationof the musicalmeaning and not as underlay),64Cambini
is here modeling the applicationof accentor nuance to the music, paying close
attention to the written page, but simultaneouslysuggesting an imaginative
reconstructionof the composer's expressiveintent.
A couple of decades after Cambini's treatise, August Leopold Crelle's
Einiges iiber musicalischenAusdruck und Vortragfiir Fortepiano-Spieler
(1823) laid similarstress on the importance of these unnotable interpretative
moves. But unlike Cambini, Crelle sets up a highly moralistic framework
about obedience to the composer before describing and recommending the
elements of what we might today callinterpretation:"It is in fact wickedlypresumptuous for a playerto alter a work of art according to his mood, since in
doing that he suggests that he understandsthe work better than the composer
who invented it."65 His overallprincipleof musicalexpressionis: "The means
of expressionin music are time and dynamics.If on the one hand rhythm is
neglected by omitting its expression, or on the other, the variety of notestrengths is ignored, what in the end remains of music but a meaningless
racket!"66His sense of what should motivate the applicationof expressionin a
performanceis ratherdifferent from Baillot's or Cambini's, having less to do
with the spirituallife of the composer himself and more to do with the formalistic propertiesof the music as written.67Just as earliertreatisesprovided tables
63. The texts do not work as underlay(though the one for the Haydn is pretty close); in that
sense they are closer to Apel's elucidation of the Idee in Mozart's K. 543 than Momigny's more
declamatoryverbalizationof K. 421. See LisaFishman, " 'To Tearthe Fetter of Every Other Art':
EarlyRomantic Criticismand the Fantasyof Empancipation,"19th-CenturyMusic25 (2001): 75.
64. Cambini clearlyfinds his exemplarphrasesmore affectivelylegible than most Romantic
critics found the music they described. But he also leaves conceptual space for something more
than or different from his particularreading; the "or something similar"suggests that there is
room for some range of interpretations.
65. August Leopold Crelle, EinigesiibermusicalischesAusdruck
und Vortrag:Fiir FortepianoSpieler,zum Theilauchfiir andere ausiibendeMusiker(Berlin:Maurer, 1823), 21: "Es ist in der
That selbst eine arge Anmassung, wenn der Spieler ein Kunstwerknach seiner Laune verindert,
denn er giebt dadurchzu erkennen,dass er besser den Sinn desselben zu verstehen glaubt, als der
Componist, der es erfand."
66. Ibid., 41: "Die Mittel des Ausdrucksin der Musik sind Zeit und StSrke.Wird einer Seite
der Rhythmus durch Unterlassungseines Ausdriiks[sic], auf der andern die Mannigfaltigkeitder
St?rkeder T6ne vernachlissiget,was bleibt am Ende von der Musik tibrig, als ein Bedeutungslose
Getbne!"
67. Indeed, he conspicuouslyavoidslocating meaning in the intentions of the composer himself, but ratherfinds it strictlyin the sense of the work as communicated on the page.
381
of divisionsto assistthe performerin the construction of his own passagesand
embellishments,Crelletries to provide both principlesfor and examplesof the
applicationof rhythmicand dynamic nuance in order for "music" to eventuate. One of his main precepts is that one should not hurry "important and
significant"moments,68 and he describes importance on many levels of the
music, including the most minute:
If, for example,a highernote sits next to a lowerone, the formeris naturally
owed greaterstrength,andthereforea moremoderatetempo,thanthe latter.
If the high note is also the firstnote of a phrase,a baror a motive,then its
weightis allthe greater.If, on the otherhand,the firstnote is lower,then the
two notesaremoreequalin weight.69
This level of analyticaldetail is worlds away from Baillot's or Cambini's effusions about performativegenius or electrifiedarms, but it rests on a similar
principleof making close attention to the notes result in a living re-creationof
the work; the listener'sattention would be drawn to the meaning of the work
itself, since the point of artfullymanipulatedtime and dynamicswas precisely
to articulatethe "sense of the piece in its particularcharacter;"70
at the same
time, the expressivenuances would draw attention to the inner life of the performance. Indeed, Baillot comments in L'art du violon that on occasion the
power of nuance is so great that "sometimes a single sound of artfiullydetermined loudness or softness is sufficientto produce as much of an effect as the
most beautifulharmonized passage."71Crelle's "imaginativereconstruction"
of the music is not fanciful,but his relianceon collapsingthe dualism of contemplation and imagination is no less profound, and the sense in which his
idea that transparencyis achieved by replicating(or anticipating)what a "serious" listenerwould in any case be doing is just as strong.
Crelle'ssense that the meaning of music can be read directlyoff the page is
in some ways continuous with Enlightenment notions of comprehensibility,
but his sense of what constitutes legibilityis distinctlyformalist,and thus relativelymodern for its time. At the same time as he attemptsto categorize all the
principlesof time and dynamics, however, he acknowledges the difficulty of
categorizing all their possible applications.At the end of the treatisehe notes
that advanced players will of course rely on instinct in manipulating these
68. Crelle, Einijes iibermusicalisches
Ausdruckund Vortrag,46: "Eine allgemeine Regel ...
ist ... dassdas Bedeutende und Wichtige nicht eilt."
69. Ibid., 65: "Steht z.B. ein h6her Ton neben einem niedrigen, so gebiihrt jenem von Natur
eine gr6ssereStirke, mithin eine missigere Bewegung, als diesem. Ist der hohe Ton zugleich eine
erste Note im Abschnitt; im Tacte oder in der Figur, so ist sein Gewicht um so mehr st'rker. Ist
dagegen die erste Note ein tieferTon, so gleicht sich das Gewicht der beiden T6ne mehr aus."
70. Ibid., 101: The purpose of a good performanceis to express"den Sinn des Tonsticks in
dem ihm eigenthuimlichenCharacter"("the meaning of the work in its particularcharacter").
71. Baillot, L'art du violon, 144; TheArt of the Violin, 254: "Leur puissance est si grande
qu'elle suppluentla musique meme et qu'il suffit quelqufois d'un seul son, d'un degr6 de force
ou de douceur d&termineavec art, pour produire autant d'effet que le plus beau passage
d'harmonie."
382
aspectsof the music, but that his efforts may be of some use to less advanced
players.
if they
One shouldnot objectthatallthe rulesof expressionandinterpretation,
reallyexist,arehardlypossibleto observe,as they areso manyand the exceptions and alterationscould be even more numerous.Since the rules do not
come fromoutside,andarenot arbitrary,
but lie in the innernatureof the object [the music],they arereallyjust thatwhichthe interpretercan observeby
himself,if he feelsthe meaningof the workfullyandcorrectly.It is thusnot at
all difficultto satsifythe rules;ratherthe advancedplayerwillnecessarily
come
upon them himself,withoutverbalizingthem.Theycould,however,be useful
to the beginner,sincetheygivehima dependablepointer.72
One of the interesting things about this comment is the way in which
Crelle assumes that the capacityinstinctively,perhaps, to "identify with the
genius of the composer," as Baillot said, can be trained by methods (and a
rhetoric) that seem in their ponderousness to squash all spontaneous musical
response out of the performer.Nevertheless, Crelle notes specificallythat one
of his main aims is to trainfeeling ("Geffihl"):"Thus teachersand instruction
books may not do well to stickonly to the mechanicalaspectsof the art and to
leave further study to the feelings of the student. Experiencehas shown that
feeling is too seldom sufficientlypresent for self-help. If it is lacking, then the
most essentialelement of instructionremainsincomplete."7"The general idea
that study hones (or, in some versions,creates)instinctis, of course, utterlybanal, and is in any case only rhetoricallyat odds with calls for "sudden inspirations" about the content of the music. A study-sharpenedinstinct is essentially
what Enlightenment writersreferredto when they said that taste could be acquired by "long experience"and "sound judgment" (see above, p. 368), and
it is certainlythe basis for most classicalmusic instruction today. But the particularityof the earlyRomantic version of this truism is that the instinct being
honed was conceived as not simply musical but spiritual,psychological, and
even moral. (Even in Crelle's dry account of the minute details of musicalin72. Crelle, Einiges iiber musicalisches
Ausdruck und Vortrag,103-4: "Man wende iibrigens
nicht ein, dass die Regeln des Ausdrucksund Vortrages,wenn sie wirklichexistiren,alle zugleich
kaum zu beobachten m6glich seyn wiirden, da ihrer so viele sind und der Ausnahmen und
Modificationennoch mehrere seyn k6nnen. Da die Regeln nicht von aussen kommen und nicht
willkiirlichsind, sondern in der innern Natur des Gegenstandesliegen, so sind sie eigentlich nichts
anders, als das was der Vortragendevon selbst beobachtet, wenn er ganz und richtig den Sinn
seines Gegenstandes empfindet. Es ist also auch keinesweges schwer, den Regeln zu geniigen,
vielmehr kommt der Geiibte nothwendig von selbst darauf, auch selbst ohne sich dieselbe in
Worten deutlich zu machen. Dem Ungeiibten aber kinnen sie niitzlich seyn, da sie ihm einen
Fingerzeigdessen geben, woraufes ankommt."
73. Ibid., 6-7: "Lehrerund Lehrbuicherthun also vielleichtnicht wohl, wenn sie mit ihrem
Unterricht nur mehr bei dem mechanischen Theile der Kunst stehen bleiben und die weitere
Lehre dem Geffihle des Lernenden tiberlassen.Diese Gefiihl ist, wie die Erfahrungzeigt, zu selten in einem zur Selbsthiilfezureichendem Maasse da. Wo es fehlt bleibt dann der Unterricht in
seinem wesentlichstenTheile unvollendet."
383
terpretationand the gradualtransformationof analysisinto instinct, the moral
frameworkof his prescriptions-namely that the performer should eschew
personal feeling and not wickedly presume to change what is in the scoresuggests that he consideredthe performer'ssoul to be in some way at stake in
the enterpriseof interpretation.)
The notion that the performer's soul was deeply involved in the act of
performancewas not simply a stick with which to enforce the notion of the
composer's supremacy. Rather, performance as a matter of spiritual selftransformationis an idea profoundly connected to Romantic notions of subjectivity.Indeed, I would suggest that interpretativeperformanceat this time
was in many quartersconsidered to be a public displayof preciselythat most
humanly and philosophicallycentral phenomenon. As with the relation between performanceand listening, however, the connection of the idea of performance to the construction of subjectivityis analogicaland implicit rather
than direct. I have found no source--either musical or philosophical-that
makesthis link explicitly.It is, however, quite unambiguouslynoted in the literaturethat subjectivitywas consideredto be both the true "content" and the
object of music. Hegel, for example, remarksabout music's content: "Music
... must limit itself to making apprehensibleto one's inner being the inwardness of the heart ... so that this subjectiveinwardnesseven becomes its proper
material."74And earlier,Wackenroderhad addressedthe issue from the point
of view of the listener:"In the mirrorof tones the human heartlearnsto know
itself;it is through them that we learnfeeling; they give living consciousnessto
[the] many dreaming spiritsin hidden corners of the soul, and enrich our inner lives with quite new magicalspiritsof feeling."75He suggests quite clearly
that the "human heart" involved here is that of each individuallistener, even
though the subjectivitycalledup by the music may be one new to that listener,
createdin part by the music. Hegel's formulation, on the other hand, is interesting because he does not specifywhose subjectivity,or which living subjectis
at issue; it is not clear whether it is the composer or some combination of
composer and performer,or, indeed, whether it is an identifiablesubject at all,
or rathersome more abstractidea of subjectivity.Neither writer addressesthe
particularquestion of how the performernegotiates the question of his own
subjectivityin relationto that of the composer, but the passagesI have already
74. Hegel, "Die kiinstlerische Exekution," 3:149: [Die Musik muss] "sich darauf
beschrdinken,die Innerlichkeitdem Inneren fassbarzu machen ... so dass ihr diese subjektive
Innigkeitselbst zu ihrem eigentlichen Gegenstandewird."
75. Wackenroder,"Das eigenttimliche innere Wesen der Tonkunst und die Seelenlehre der
heutigen Instrumentalmusik,"in Phantasien iiber die Kunst/zweiter Abschnitt, in Werkeund
Briefe von WilhelmHeinrich Wackenroder(Heidelberg: Schneider, 1967), 223-24: "In dem
Spiegel der Tone lernt das menschliche Herz sich selber kennen; sie sind es, wodurch wir das
Gefiihl fIihlenlernen;sie geben vielen in verborgenenWinkeln des Gemiits traumendenGeistern,
lebendes Bewusstsein.Und bereichernmit ganz neuen zauberischenGeistern des Gefiihis unser
Inneres."
384
cited about performanceas self-transformationsuggest quite strongly that the
job of the performerwas understood to be about developing and displayinga
unitary consciousness that merged his own subjectivitywith the composer's.
The idea of this formation of a single musico-spiritualconsciousnessfrom two
separateand in some respectsopposed ones mirrorsto a remarkableextent the
broader rhetoric about subjectivityespecially,though not exclusively,among
the GermanIdealists.
The Idealist interest in consciousnesswas spurred by Kant's epistemological undertakings (the three Critiques were published between 1761 and
1790). Historian of psychology David Leary writes that even during Kant's
lifetime "Karl Leonhard Reinhold argued persuasively that the Kantian
concern about the nature of the mind-or, as Reinhold preferredto call it,
"consciousness"-should be the fundamentalissue for philosophy,"and that
already before Kant's death in 1804, "Reinhold's pupils and colleagues,
including Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel--were already establishing the phenomenology of consciousness as the basic topic in German philosophy."76
Consciousness had long been understood as a complex combination of the
unmediated apprehension of sensations, which present themselves only in
fleeting and literallyincomprehensibleform, and the more intellectualattempt
to comprehend those sensations, which of course radicallyand irrevocably
changes them. David Hume, for example, wrote in his 1748 Treatise of
Human Nature: "I never can catch myselfat any time without a perception,
and never can observe anythingbut the perception."77And Kant, though disagreeingwith Hume about the value of the attempt to reconcileintuition with
understanding,wrote: "I ... have no cognition of myself as I am, but only as I
appearto myself."78And further:"I cognize myself not by being conscious of
myself as thinking, but only if I am conscious to myself of the intuition of myself as determinedin regardto the function of thought."79
As many commentators have noted, epistemology and aesthetics were
especially closely connected in early Romantic philosophy, in part through
questions of judgment and taste, which were considered crucialaspectsof the
more general relation of the knower to the known. The philosopher who
76. David Leary, "Kant and Modern Psychology,"in TheProblematicScience,Psychology
in
Nineteenth-CenturyThought,ed. WilliamR. Woodwardand Mitchell G. Ash (New York:Praeger,
1982), 31.
77. David Hume, Treatiseof Human Nature, Part 4, sect. 6, "On PersonalIdentity,"in The
PhilosophicalWorksofDavid Hume (Edinburgh:Blackand Tait, 1826), 1:321.
78. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft,in Immanuel Kants Werke,11 vols. (Berlin:
Cassirer,1922-29) 3:130. Translationfrom Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul
Geyer and Alan W. Wood (Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1998), 260: "Ich habe also
demnach keine Erkenntnissvon mir,wie ich bin, sondern bloss wie ich mir selbst erscheine."
79. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft,3:278; CritiqueofPure Reason,445: "Alsoerkenneich
mich nicht selbst dadurch, dass ich mich meiner als denkend bewusst bin, sondern wenn ich mir
die Anschauungmeiner selbst als in Ansehung der Funktion des Denkens bestimmt bewusst bin."
385
demonstrates this most clearlyand most relevantlyfor our present purposes
is Novalis, particularlyin his Fichte-Studien(1795-96), unpublishedresponses
a series of lectures in themto Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre,
selves a response to Kant. In the context of ruminations about the relation
between subject and object: ("What connects thoughts? /It is the same as
with everything-grounded either in the subject, or in the object/.")80
Novalis moves on to the idea of a book as an object of interest, and thence to
the function of the artworkin generalin stimulating,and helping to constitute
the subject:
The artwork ... acquires a free, independent, ideal character-an imposing
spirit-because it is the visibleproduct of an I . . . The object may only be the
kernel, the type, the fixed point--the formative power first creativelydevelops
the beautiful whole in and through it. Put differently,the objectshoulddetermine us, asproductof theI, and not as mereobject.8s [emphasisonly on "visible"
in original;other emphasisadded]
A second Novalis excerpt, from a fragmentarycomment in a collection of
aestheticwritings, representsa complementaryview:
The world must be romanticized. In this way one rediscovers the original
meaning. Romanticizing is nothing but a qualitativeraisingto a higher power.
Thelowerself becomesidentifiedwith a betterself. Just as we ourselvesare such a
qualitative series ofpotentializations.
This operation is still quite unknown. In
lending a higher sense to something commonplace, a mysteriousappearanceto
something unusual, an unknown value to something known, an infinite appearance to something finite, I romanticizeit-.82 [emphasisadded]
This passage,whose immediate topic is the making of poetry, deals more with
the relationof the poet to the world than with the relationof the readerto the
80. Novalis, Fichte-Studien, in Novalis, Schriften, vol. 2: Der philosophischeWerk,I, ed.
Richard Samuel with Hans-Joachim Mdihland Gerhard Schulz (Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft,1965), #630, 282. Translationfrom Novalis, FichteStudies,trans. and ed. Jane
Kneller(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 2003) 181: "WelcherZusammenhangist zwischen Gedanken?/Er ist wie alles-entw[eder] im Subject,oder im Object begrfindet/."
81. Novalis, Fichte-Studien,#633, 282; FichteStudies,181: "Dadurch erhilt das Kunstwerck
einen freyen, selbststaindigen,idealischen IKarakter--einenimposanten Geist--denn es ist sichtbaresProdukt eines Ich. ... Das Obj[ect] darfnur der Keim, der Typus seyn, der Vestpunct--die
bildende Kraftentwickeltan, in und durchihn erst sch6pferischdas sch6ne Gantze. Anders ausgedrtickt--das Object soll uns, als Produkt des Ich, bestimmen, nicht, als blosses Obj[ect]."
82. Novalis, "Logologische Fragmente,"in Novalis, Schriften,2:545. Quoted and translated
in Wm. ArctanderO'Brien, Novalis: Signs of Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1995), 139: "Die Welt muss romantisirt werden. So findet man den urspr[iinglichen] Sinn
wieder. Romantisiren ist nichts, als eine qualit[ative] Potenzirung. Das niedre Selbst wird mit
einem bessern Selbst in dieser Operation identificirt. So wie wir selbst eine solche qualit[ative]
Potenzenreihe sind. Diese Operation is noch ganz unbekannt. Indem ich dem Gemeinen einen
hohen Sinn, dem Gew6hnlichkeitenein geheimnissvollesAnsehn, dem Bekanntendie Wuirdedes
Unbekannten, dem Endlichen einen unendlichen Schein gebe so romantisireich es-."
386
text. It is the sharedelements of these passagesthat interest me, however.The
first of these is the applicabilityof both passages to any artistic activity or
medium. Even though they both have the proximate context of literature,
both also broaden out from "the book" or poetry to a broaderframeof reference, thus inviting their applicationto other arts. The second is the sense in
both passagesthat aestheticexperienceis cruciallya process of spiritualinteraction between the creativeself and a higher domain, and in particulara higher
domain that may represent or be the product of another self. Indeed in the
firstpassagein particularNovalis seems to be suggesting that artisticexperience
-because it relates one ego to another--can actuallyresolve the dualism of
consciousnessas the "object"is integratedinto the subject'ssense of itself.
Novalis's own descriptionof consciousness in the FichteStudiesreinforces
the relationshipof artisticexperienceto subjectivity:
Harmonyis the conditionof [the ego's] activity--of[its] oscillating,between
opposites.Being one with yourselfis thus the fundamentalconditionof the
highestend-to Be, or to be free.All being,being in general,is nothingbut
areto be unitedand
beingfree--oscillatingbetweenextremesthatnecessarily
areto be separated.83
necessarily
[emphasisin original]
Quite apartfrom the musicalmetaphorof harmony,which is highly suggestive
in this context, the interdependentopposites here could easily be understood
as the artisticproduct of a creator'sspiritversus the reader'sself from the first
passageI quoted, or as the lower versus the better selves of the romanticizing
processdescribedin the second passage.In the firstcase, observerand artwork
are both necessarilyunited and necessarilyseparate, and in the second, the
lower self identifieswith a better self: a process that inevitablyinvolves both a
kind of self-loss and a kind of self-discoveryas one reflects on the differences
between the lower and the higher.
Victor Cousin, a French student of Kant and author of a famous commentary on Locke's Essayon Human Understanding,which included a section on
"personalidentity,"also promulgatedthe idea that a sense of self is not a static
entity but the result of constant processing: "The personal existence, the self
that we are, does not fall under the eyes of consciousness and memory; and
nothing does, but the operationsby which this self is manifested.These operations are the proper objects of consciousnessand memory; personalidentity is
a conviction of the reason" (emphasisadded).84That is, empiricalexperience
83. Novalis, Fichte-Studien,#555, 266. Fichte Studies, 164: "Harmonie ist die Bedingung
ihrer Thitigkeit-des Schwebens,zwischen Entgegengesetzten. Sey einig mit dir selbst ist also
Bedingungsgrundsatzdes obersten Zwecks-zu Seyn oder Frey zu seyn. Alles Seyn, Seyn iiberhaupt ist nichts als Freyseyn-Schweben zwischen Extremen, die nothwendig zu vereinigen und
nothwendig zu trennen sind."
84. Victor Cousin, Coursde l'histoirede laphilosophiemoderne,series2, vol. 3, 2nd ed. (Paris:
Didier, Ladgrange, 1847), 140: "L'existencepersonelle, l'htre que nous sommes, ne tombe pas
387
with consciousnessand memory can lead one to reason, by virtue of the continuous operationof those faculties,that a personalidentity,or soul, exists, but
we cannot be directlyawareof it, either by bringing it to consciousness or by
remembering it. Consciousness and memory are one pole of the oscillation
process that forms a sense of self;reason is the other.
A blurrymutual constitutivenessconnects the two terms of all these oscillations; one cannot be entirelyclearwhere subject and object, or intuition and
reflection, begin and end, and in any case one mental state cannot exist without the other if a person is to have full human consciousness. This mutuality
between subject and object is also suggested in a wonderful passage of
Schleiermacher'sUberdie Religion of 1799-1800:
As the belovedandalwayssoughtafterimageformsitself,my soulflies to meet
it, andI embraceit not as a shadow,but as the holy beingitself.I lie in the bosom of the infiniteworld;I am in this momentits soul, for I feel allits powers
andits infinitelife as its own. It is in this momentmy body,for I penetrateits
musclesandlimbsasmy own andits innermostnervesmoveasmuchin accord
withmy meaningandintentionasdo my own.85 [emphasisadded]
In his book ImpossibleIndividuality, GeraldIzenberg points out that this is
not a descriptionof simple possession by the spirit, but rathera much more
reciprocalprocess: the soul starts out toward the beloved object rather than
waiting for it to move, the self penetratesthe muscles and limbs of the divine,
and the body moves it as if it were its own. For Schleiermacher(according to
Izenberg), this "systolicand diastolic"movement of simultaneousabsorption
and penetrationwas characteristicnot only of religious experience,but also of
"the human condition" more generally, as the individual seeks on the one
hand to proclaimhis individualityand expand it by absorbingelements of the
universal,and on the other to abandon his separatenessby dissolvinginto the
infinite. Moreover, Schleiermachersaw the mundane instantiationof reciprocal self-loss and self-realizationin any activityundertakenpurely and disinterestedly for its own sake.86Of which, of course, musical performancecould be
sous les yeux de la conscience et de la memoire; il n'y tombe que les operationspar lesquelles cet
&trese manifeste.Ces operationssont les objets propresde la conscience et de la memoire;I'identit6 personnelleest une conviction de la raison."
85. FriedrichSchleiermacher,Oberdie Religion:Reden an die Gebildetenunter ihren Verfichtern (Leipzig:Meiner, 1920), 48. Translationfrom GeraldIzenberg, ImpossibleIndividuality:Romanticism,Revolution and the Origins of Modern Selfhood(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1992), 20: "So wie sie sich formt, die geliebte und immer gesuchte Gestalt,flieht ihr meine
Seele entgegen, ich umfange sie nicht wie einen Schatten, sondern wie das heilige Wesen selbst.
Ich liege am Busen der unendlichenWelt:ich bin in diesem Augenblick ihre Seele, denn ich
alle ihre Krifte und ihr unendliches Leben, wie mein eigenes, sie ist in diesem Augenblicke ftihle
mein
Leib, denn ich durchdringeihre Muskeln und ihre Gliederwie meine eigenen, und ihre Innersten
Nerven bewegen sich nach meinem Sinn und meiner Ahndung wie die meinigen."
86. Izenberg, ImpossibleIndividuality,20.
388
an example. The parallelis strikinglyillustratedby a passagefrom the "Genius
of performance"section of Baillot's 1803 Mdthodede violon:
[The performer's]sensitivityprepareshim for all that he is going to play;
scarcelyhashe caughta glimpseof histhemewhen hissoulrisesto thelevelof the
[emphasisadded]
subject.87
If music, then, is considered the art most directlylinked to subjectivity,if artworks are considered to be objects to their receivers'subjects,and if subjectivity itself is conceived as a process of oscillation between the intuition of
something within and the objectifyingreflection on it, or between inner and
outer, then the process of musicalinterpretationis almost inescapablya simulacrum of this process.What is more, in mediating between the "extremes"of
dead object (the score) and pulsing but contentless performativelife, performance conceived in this way participatesboth discursivelyand experientiallyin
a centralintellectualdebate.
The idea that the earlyRomantic performanceconcept reflectsor even embodies the intellectualconcerns of its milieu, however, constructs both performance itself and performancediscourseessentiallyas recipientsor tracesof the
broader intellectual culture. One can also argue that performance discourse
also carriedout a more activerole in promulgatingthe structuresof thought I
have been describingto this point.
One of the most strikingthings about latereighteenth- and earlynineteenthcentury performancetreatisesin comparisonto earlierones is the systematization and advancementof purelytechnicalinstruction.As many before me have
noted, this period saw an unprecedentedexplosion of pedagogical materialfor
severalinstruments, piano and violin chief among them.88 Etudes and exercises were produced in increasingnumbers;the performing body was in many
ways turned into a machine, with rectilineargrids upon which posture was
mapped, and fiendish exercisesdevised to put the fingers in every conceivable
configuration.Of course the practiceof technique as a disciplineat least temporarilyseparatefrom "real"music was not new. Folke Augustini, for example, points out that until the early nineteenth century it was standard
pedagogical practicefor teachersto compose and compile their own exercises
and Handstiicken,89as Tartinidid in recommending bits of Corelli's sonatas
87. Baillot, Mithodede violon,163; L'art du violon,266; TheArt of the Violin,479: "Sasensibilit6le preparea tout ce qu'il va jouer:apeine a-t-il entrevule thime de ses accords,que son anme
se monte au niveau du sujet."
der Violinetuide(Munich: Fink,
88. DimitrisThemelis, Etude ou caprice:Entstehungsgeschichte
1967), for example, is a careful examination of the relation between nineteenth-century violin
etudes and their precursors.
89. Folke Augustini, Die Klavieretiideim 19.Jahrhundert:Studienzu ihrerEntwicklungund
Bedeutung(Duisburg: Gilles & Francke,1986), 6.
389
to his student Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen.90But more interesting than
the pre-nineteenth-century existence of opportunities for purely technical
practice--whether these were written especiallyfor the purpose, as were, for
example, Leopold Mozart's thirty-fourbowing variationson a scale9' or excerpted from well-known works, as was Tartini'sadvice--is the rhetoricabout
the separationof technique from expression, which was strikinglyand newly
emphaticat the turn of the century.
Pierre Baillot, for example, stressesthis separationin both the Mdthodede
violonand L'art du violon.In the latter he has a section entitled: TheDivision
WhichIs to Be PreservedbetweenTechniqueand Expression,which includes the
following: "From its inception the Conservatoire method was divided into
two parts:the first treated technique, the second treated style and expression.
This division must be preservedfor the reason we have given: we must concern ourselveswith only one thing at a time."92And in the thirdvolume of his
Pianoforte-Schule,entitled Vondem Vortrage
Vollstindigetheoretisch-practische
Carl
("On Performance"),
Czerny points out that this volume, which gives
extensive tips about musical interpretationand practicalhints about performance, comes only afterthe student has completed the previous two volumes,
which have taught clarity,exactitude,steady rhythm, quick and accuratereading, good tone, correct fingering, great agilityin both hands, and accuracyin
reproducing written expression marks.93Czerny also suggested a system for
90. Giuseppe Tartini, Lettera del defonto Signor GiuseppeTartini alla Signora Maddalena
Lombardini,inservientead una importantelezioneper i suonatoridi Violino(Venice, 1770; Udine:
Pizzicato, 1992), 3: "Per acquistarpoi questa leggerezza di polso, da cui viene la velociti dell'arco, sari cosa ottima, che suoni ogni giorno qualche fuga del Corelli tutta di semicrome, e
queste fughe sono tre nell'Opera quinta a Violino solo, anzi la prima e nella prima sonata per
Dlasolre"("To acquirethat lightness of the wrist which gives rise to bow speed, it would be best
to play every day some allegrosby Corelli all in sixteenth notes; there are three of these fugues in
the Opus 5 for solo violin, and the firstis in the firstsonata in D" [My translation]).
91. Leopold Mozart, A Treatiseon theFundamental Principlesof ViolinPlaying, 120-23.
92. Baillot, L'art du violon, 10. TheArt of the Violin, 16: "La mbthode du Conservatoirea
t~6divisbe,d&sl'origine, en deux parties;l'une, relativeau micanisme,l'autre appliquie au style et
cette divisiondoit &tremaintenue par la raison que nous avons donn e: qu'il ne faut
l'expression:
3
s'occuperque d'une seule chose ala fois."
93. Carl Czerny, Vondem Vortrage(1839), dritter Teil aus Vollstandigetheoretisch-practische
Pianoforte-Schule (Vienna: Diabelli, 1839); facsimile ed., with preface by Ulrich Mahlert
(Wiesbaden:Breitkopf & Hdrtel, 1991), 1: "In den zwei ersten Theilen dieses Lehrbuches sind
dem Schiiler alle Mittel angegeben worden, die mechanische Geschicklichkeit seiner Finger
auszubilden, und folgende, dem Pianisten unerlissliche Eigenschaften zu erwerben: a) Reinheit
und Genauigkeit des Spiels. b) Festes Takthalten, und genaue Eintheilung. c) Richtiges und
schnelles Notenlesen. d) Fester Anschlag der Tasten und sch6ner voller Ton. e) Richtiger
Fingersatz. f) Grosse Geliufigkeit und Leichtigkeit in beiden Hinden, selbst bei bedeutenden
Schwierigkeiten.g) Genaue Beobachtung der gew6hnlichen Vortragszeichen,insofern sie sich auf
den mechanisch zu erlernendenUnterschied zwischen Forteund Piano, so wie zwischen Legato
und Staccatobeziehen."
390
studying new pieces that kept technique and expression comparablyseparate;
his idea was first to achieve correctness,then get the piece up to tempo, and
only thereafterthink about interpretation.
Despite their thoroughness in teaching technique, however, Baillot and
Czerny both stress that technique, once mastered, should be "forgotten" in
the heat of performance.Baillotwrites:
One aspect of the means of expression ...
depends on skill; it concerns what
must be done to perform well, but genius of performanceleads to doing it better; when an artistis motivated by feeling, it is genius of performancethat takes
off in bold flight into the vast empire of expression in order to make new discoveries there. Here, no more thought, no more calculation; the artist gifted
with superior talent has made such a habit of subordinating his playing to the
rules of the art that he follows them without study or trouble; he has made
such a habit of it that far from putting a chill on his imagination, these rules
only serve to make his ideas bloom and instill themselves more deeply into
what he performs.94
In his predictablymore prosaicway, Czerny saysessentiallythe same thing:
All these particularities[exactitude, etc.] are only the means to the true goal
of the art, which is without doubt to put spirit and soul into performance, and
thus to affect the soul and the understanding of the listener.... Everything
about performance can be put into two divisions: exact attention to all the
performance indications that the composer himself already put in the piece,
and the expressionthat the playercan or should add to the piece from his own
feelings.95
The physicallabor of learningto play an instrument, then, like the intellectual
and spiritualwork of interpretation,also existed in a field of tension between
the disciplineof obedience and the ecstasyof self-expression;and the treatises'
rhetoricabout the separationof the two kinds of work stresseda kind of opposition between them, just as Novalis's discussionof "romanticizing"the world
emphasized the opposition between the lower and better selves, and just as
94. Baillot, Mithode de violon, 163; L'art du violon, 266, TheArt of the Violin, 479: "Une
... tient 5 l'art et indique ce qu'il faut pour bien faire, mais le
partie des moyens d'expression
'
genie d'execution conduit faire mieux: c'est lui qui, pousse par le sentiment, s'elance d'un vol
hardidans le vaste empire de l'expressionpour y fairede nouvelles decouvertes:ici, plus de reflex'
ion, plus de calcul,l'artistedoue d'un talent superieurest tellement habitue subordonnerson jeu
aux regles de Part,qu'il les suit sans etude comme sanspeine, et que loin de refroidirson imagina'
tion elles ne serventqu'a faireeclore ses id6es et le penetrer davantagede ce qu'il execute."
95. Czerny, Vondem Vortrage,1: "Aber alle diese Eigenschaften sind nur die Mittel zum
eigentlichen Ziele der Kunst, welches unbedingt darinbesteht, Geist und Seele in den Vortragzu
legen, und hiedurch auf das Gemiuth,und den Verstanddes H6rers zu wirken. . . . Man kann
alles,was auf den VortragBezug hat, in zwei Hauptabtheilungenabsondern,nimlich: itens: In die
genaue Beobachtung alle Vortragszeichen,welche der Autor selber schon seinem Sticke beisetzte, und 2tens: In denjenigen Ausdruck, welchen der Spieler aus eigenem Geftihl in das
Tonwerklegen kann oder soll."
391
discussions of the workings of the ego emphasized the opposition between
subject and object or intuition and reflection.
However, just as interpretativeperformancecould temporarilycollapse the
distinction between self and other, forging, so to speak, a complete self out of
the oscillation between them, so the new musical pedagogy also presented a
resolution of the opposition between the exactitude and finiteness of technique and the ineffabilityof expression.This resolution came in the exercises
and examples in the treatises themselves, which taught (essentially as techniques) expressivedevices and "effects"that could be applied to the music at
hand, as well as some ideas about how and where to apply them. As we have
seen in relation to August FriedrichCrelle's piano treatise, such effects could
often be categorized under the generalheadings of "time" and "strength,"or
dynamics,but they also included such effects as particulartone colors, and ornamentation. In his Art du violon, Baillot gives excerpts from the classical
chambermusic and solo violin literaturewith prose that suggests how the appropriatebow strokescontributeto the expressiveeffect of the music and how
fingerings color the individualnotes and shape the phrases. Czerny provides
large numbers of similarexamples,mostly written by himself, with extraordinarily detailed instructions about dynamics, rubato, the weight of the two
hands in relationto each other, and the technicalmeans of achievingthis.
Such examples,despite their sometimes obsessive attention to detailimplicitly, if counterintuitively,teach a kind of improvisationalmentality.To think of
these "effects"-the slow bow, the special fingering, the singing sound, the
lighter touch for ornamentation, the extra time for "important" notes-as
"riffs,"may clarifythe analogy to improvisation.The isolation of these riffs in
treatises,abstractedeither from "real"published music, or from their original
musical context, also contributesto the idea that certain kinds of bow strokes
or fingeringpatterns,or degrees of ritardando,could be practicedoutside the
context of particularmusicalworks. Thus abstractedand perfected, the effects
could be appliedas the spiritmoved the performer(pace Crelle), and not necessarilyat predeterminedplaces in any given piece. These kinds of effects, applied more or less improvisationally, thus bridge the opposition between
composer and performer, and make it possible to see how the music might
seem to issue "from a single mind," or "from the soul of the composer." By
the same token, this improvisationallyobedient approachin a medium understood to be about subjectivitycan also be understood to enact and displayperhaps even to model-the same resolution of oppositions for which the
Idealistphilosopherswere searchingin the domain of epistemology.
It should be remembered here that my argument makes not the musiccriticalpoint that applyingnuance without changing the notes gives life to an
otherwise obedient performance,but ratherthe historicalone that the pedagogical structuresthat taught this set of attitudes and practices absorbed, reflected, and then modeled and disseminated the discursivestructuresthat
configured performanceas a simultaneousabsence and presence, and, indeed,
392
the intellectualstructuresthat wove musicalperformanceand subjectivityinto
the same web.
The imperativeto transformoneself in the act of performancein the direction of a pre-ordainedlygreaterspirit,and further, to model the processes of
subjectivity,lends an essentiallymoral weight to the idea of performancethat
was not part of Enlightenment thinking on the topic.96 Indeed, both the
Harmonicon essay on expression, quoted above, and Baillot's Art du violon
discuss the moral preparation or organization necessary for good performance; and in an essay by "C. F." in the BerlinischemusikalischeZeitung of
1805, entitled "Ober die moralischeSphire des Tonkiinstlers,"which explicitly applies both to composers and performers(and which quotes the Baillot
Mdthodeat some length), the author describesthe musician'sresponsibilityto
awakenin the audiencethe highest kinds of feelings and yearnings:
Thushe alsoattemptsthroughhis artto awakenandgivelifeto the highersentimentsin the moralspherethatrequiresuchstimulation;
to raiseup, in league
withthe noblepoet, everytendencythatshouldbe partof the enchantingpictureof humanity;forcefullyto set the stringsvibratingthathavesoundedtoo
littlein the sensitivehumanheart,in orderto fillit with religiousthanks,with
the adorationof godliness,with heroismin life'sstruggle,with manlinessand
innocence,withholyintimationsandwiththe love of humanity.97
Combined with the increasinglymoralisticlanguage about adheringto the
composer'swishes, this kind of high-minded demand on the perfomercreated
a milieu in which music-makingwas a graveresponsibilityas well as a pleasure,
and in which the performerwas enjoined to mitigate the separationbetween
all selves and their others by modeling an exemplaryRomantic consciousness
of himself and the world.
Epilogue
Much of what I have outlined above will doubtless seem familiar-even second nature or crashinglyobvious-to many who have taken classicalmusic
96. Diderot's Le neveude Rameau, which is very much about the appearanceversusthe reality of performance,does surelyraisemoral questions, but these are essentiallyto do with the sincerityof the performervis-a-visthe emotion he is communicating;and moral concern of any sort
is explicitly or directly transmittedin none of the classic Enlightenment performance treatises,
beyond the common idea that virtuosic showing-off is less admirablethan plain and apparently
heartfeltperformance.
97. "C. F.," "Uber die moralischeSphdiredes Tonkiinstlers,"70: "So sucht er auch im sittlichen Gebiete durch seine Kunst die h6hern Empfindungen zu wecken und zu beleben, welche
dieserAufregung bedtirfen,im Bunde mit dem edlen Dichter jeden Zug, der in das begeisternde
Gemaildeder Humanitditgeh6rt, hervorzuheben, mit Kraftdie Saiten in Schwingung zu setzen,
die noch zu wenig ins flihlende Menschenherz ert6nten, um es mit religi6sem Dank, mit
Anbetung der Gottheit, mit Heroismus im Kampf des Lebens, mit Mannessinn und mit
Kindlichkeit,mit heiligen Ahnungen und mit Menschenliebe zu erfiillen."
393
lessons or participatedin classicalmusic performancein some way.The ideal of
a performancethat is clearlynot, but seems to be, created on the spot is still
with us, for example. Indeed, the memory of performancesthat achieved exactly that illusion animates CarolynAbbate's recent book In Searchof Opera.
She writes of the half-dozen such performanceslisted at the end of the book
that they "conveyed the impression that a work was being created at that
moment, 'before one's eyes,' never seeming to invite comparison between
what was being heard and some lurking double, some transcendentwork to
which they had to measureup."98 In the nonscholarlyworld of classicalmusic
performancealmost any random searchwill find the same the same qualities
valued. For example, a recent Yorkshire
Post review of pianist Noriko Ogawa
"She
a
rare
of
has
the
most meticulously preparedperfornotes,
gift making
mances appeartotally spontaneous, as if she is just discoveringthe music."99
The process on which this illusion depends is precisely the psychological
legerdemain by which the performersimultaneouslyabrogates and expresses
him- or herselfthat Baillot and others advocated at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that essentially all classical music teachers still teachhonor the composer; expressyourself;don't think of this as a contradiction.
In modern times, we have, I think, translatedwhat earlyRomantic writers
would have figured as a psychologicalor spiritualcapacityto identifywith the
genius or intentions of the composer into the catchalladjective"musical."But
that translationhas not released us from the moral obligations attendant on
the notion of identificationwith a genius with quasi-religiouspowers. In many
classicalmusic milieux, the idea of musicalityis about much more than music.
As Henry Kingsburyhas pointed out, to be designated musical carriesextraordinarypower-both moral and professional-in modern classicalmusic culture,100and to be designated unmusical or insufficientlymusical feels like a
negative comment on one's deepest character.
RichardTaruskinand others have establishedthe idea that "historicallyauthentic" performancesare nothing of the sort, but ratherperfect manifestations of modernist concerns and attitudesto music, in that they substitutethe
defensibilityof "objective"historicalresearchfor the nebulousness and indefensible "subjectivity"of a more "Romantic"classicalperformance.101
Whatever one thinks of historically informed performance, and however fair or
unfairone finds this kind of criticism,it is indubitablytrue that the "authenticity" movement reflects its historical moment. By the same token, it seems
to me worth pointing out the obvious: that what is now a series of default
98. CarolynAbbate, In Searchof Opera(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000),
xv-xvi.
99. David Denton, Review of recital by Noriko Ogawa, The YorkshirePost, 2 February
accessed 11 March2005.
2004, from http://www.norikoogawa.com/reviews/rev.html,
100. Henry Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance:A ConservatoryCultural System
(Philadelphia:Temple UniversityPress, 1988), passim.
101. RichardTaruskin, Textand Act: Essayson Music and Performance(New York:Oxford
UniversityPress, 1995), introduction.
394
attitudes and assumptions about classicalmusic performance (which, moreover, are largelyparticularto it) also have their roots in a particularand limited
milieu. In suggesting the historical intellectual underpinnings of these attitudes this essay probably raises more questions than it answers, particularly
with respectto the actualpracticeof performance.For example,what value do
these attitudes and assumptionshave in a world where classicalmusic has lost
its place as a generallyagreed-upon spiritualexperienceor as a way of expressing the philosophicaltruths that mere words cannot reach, or where reconciling dualismsis not at the center of intellectuallife?What does it mean when
we attach moral weight to "musicality"but do not look for the spiritualselftransformationvalued by the early romantics?What does it mean to honor
"the music"when we no longer believe that it is a reliableor close to complete
record of the composer's intentions, and when in any case we think of the attempt to recoverthose intentions as a "fallacy"?These questions obviously do
not have easy answers,if, indeed, they have answersat all;and it is not the purpose of this essayto propose them. My point is that to considerthe intellectual
backgroundof our own more or less unexamined assumptionsabout the value
of the illusion of the "single mind," and to realize its origin in particularhistorical circumstancesmay free us to think in new ways about the practice of
performance-ways that reflectthe particularitiesand complexitiesof our own
historicalmoment, much as the idea of the genius of performancedid at the
turn of the nineteenth century.
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Abstract
Performance discourse in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
(i.e., writing about interpretativeperformancein treatises,reviews, dictionaries, articles,and philosophicalworks) is distinct from that in both earlierand
later periods. Although a full early Romantic paradigm of interpretativeperformance, as articulatedin Hegel's Aesthetics,came about piecemeal and was
instantiatedin differentways in different kinds of sources, the texts examined
in this essaycommunicate two particularlysalientfeatures.These are, first,the
idea that interpretativeperformanceinvolves a profound spiritualtransformation on the part of the performer,requiringthe merging of his own soul with
that of the composer; and second, the idea that performanceboth establishes
and collapsesapparentlyintractabledualisms.This structuralfeatureof performance discourse, as well as its content, links the idea of performanceto contemporary discussions of consciousness in such a way that performance
emerges as a simulacrumof earlyRomantic subjectivity.At the same time, this
discursivestructurealso finds its way into the more mundane world of pedagogy. Performancethus emerges as more central to the intellectualmilieu of
Romanticism than has previously been recognized. The structures of discourse established at the turn of the nineteenth century persist in classical
music culturetoday, but devoid of their historicalunderpinnings.

"To Play as If from the Soul of the Composer": The Idea of the

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