Memory and rhetorical trope in Schoenberg's String Trio

Journal of the American Musicological Society

Volumn 51, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 559-602

  Cherlin, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61449158779     PISSN: 00030139     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/832039     Document Type: Review

References (66)

1. Walter B. Bailey, Programmatic Elements in the Works of Schoenberg, Studies in Musicology 74 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), 151-57
2. Although I use the word narrative loosely, my usage resonates nicely with some of Carolyn Abbate's observations concerning narrative in film: "In coping with a genre that plays through time, film theorists typically draw attention to narrative force as residing not in some realistic depiction of the phenomenal world (the profilmic object) but rather in inserts, cuts, montages, camera angles, manipulation of soundtrack - all the things that underline arbitrary juxtaposition, that create a distance between the unscrolling film and the events that it depicts" (Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991], 26)
3. Bailey, Programmatic Elements, 160
4. Carl Dahlhaus, "Schoenberg and Programme Music," in his Schoenberg and the New Music: Essays, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 103
5. Schoenberg's letter to Edgar Varèse, dated 23 October 1922, gives a good indication of his attitude toward rehearsals: "What offends me equally, however, is that without asking me whether you can and may do so you simply set a definitive date for my 'Pierrot lunaire.' But do you even know whether you can manage it? Have you already got a suitable speaker [Sprecherin]; a violinist, a pianist, a conductor ... etc.? How many rehearsals do you mean to hold, etc. ... etc.? In Vienna, with everyone starving and shivering, something like 100 rehearsals were held and an impeccable ensemble achieved with my collaboration. But you simply fix a date and drink that's all there is to it!" (Arnold Schoenberg Letters, selected and edited by Erwin Stein, translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965], 78-79)
6. The formulation "network of time spans, musical events, and their transformations" is indebted to the conceptual models developed by David Lewin in his Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)
7. My use of the word memorial is stimulated by Charles Rosen's comment that the Trio is "a memorial to [Schoenberg's] own momentary death." A memorial to someone's death is necessarily a remembering of his or her life. See Charles Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg (New York: Viking Press, 1975), 94
8. The role of tonal evocations in Schoenberg's twelve-tone music in general and in the Trio specifically are discussed by Silvina Milstein in her Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets, Forms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 162-72 and passim
9. Arnold Whittall, noting that "strong contrasts of mood, speed and texture play a peculiarly decisive part" in the Trio, places these elements in opposition to the unifying aspects of its twelve-tone technique. See Arnold Whittall, "Schoenberg and the 'True Tradition': Theme and Form in the String Trio," The Musical Times 115 (1974): 739-43, at 739
10. The mythical and ritualistic aspects of sparagmos are discussed in E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 155
11. David Lewin has suggested the applicability of sparagmos toward understanding the second part of Pierrot Lunaire. See his "Inversional Balance as an Organizing Force in Schoenberg's Music and Thought," Perspectives of New Music 6, no. 2 (1968): 6 n. 6. Schoenberg composes a vivid and literal depiction of sparagmos during the Golden Calf scene of Moses und Aron. In that context, of course, hopes of rebirth through death are delusional
12. The musical examples are taken from Arnold Schoenberg, Sämtliche Werke, Abteilung 6: Kammermusik, Reihe A, Band 21, ed. Christian Martin Schmidt (Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne, 1982), 127-51
13. The critical report for the edition, transcriptions of Schoenberg's sketches, and some commentary are in Sämtliche Werke, Abteilung 6: Kammermusik, Reihe B, Band 21, ed. Christian Martin Schmidt (Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne, 1984), 93-131
14. Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" (1874), in his Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 61
15. Arguments related to, but distinct from, the one I develop here inform some aspects of deconstructive literary criticism in the sense that interpretive meaning is infinitely deferred and thus lacks the possibility of closure. An interesting discussion of these matters forms the first chapter of J. Hillis Miller, The Linguistic Moment: From Wordsworth to Stevens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)
16. A penetrating analysis of pitch-class mappings in the opening bars of the Trio is found in David Lewin, "Generalized Interval Systems for Babbitt's Lists, and for Schoenberg's String Trio," Music Theory Spectrum 17 (1995): 81-118. The competing perspectives explored in Lewin's figures 16 through 21 resonate nicely with my own metaphorical reading of the passage. Lewin also explores ramifications of the opening transformational networks in the music of measures 148-54 from Part 2 of the Trio. The latter comprises one of the most sublime passages in the work, and its deep formal correlations with what is perhaps the most anguished passage show an astounding underlying conceptual unity beneath the disruptions of the musical surface
17. Schoenberg develops similar strategies in using the relative clarity or complexity of row presentations toward dramatic ends in Moses und Aron. One passage, stunning in this respect, comprises the Divine covenant in the second half of the first scene. There Moses is overwhelmed, obviously not able to take in the combined musical forces of speaking choir, singing choir, and orchestra, all in multiple levels of counterpoint. A similar strategy of "overwhelming" is operative at the outset of the Trio
18. David Lewin briefly discusses this passage in his groundbreaking paper "Inversional Balance as an Organizing Force" (p. 14), in which he studies the establishment, disruption, and reestablishment of inversional balances in Schoenberg's music. While he shows the abstract inversional balance of pitch classes in the opening of the Trio, my own understanding of the passage emphasizes the overwhelming of that "balance" by other, disruptive aspects of musical rhetoric. My study, "The Formal and Dramatic Organization of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1983), discusses similar processes in the context of Schoenberg's largest twelve-tone work
19. See also my "Dramaturgy and Mirror Imagery in Schoenberg's Moses und Aron: Two Paradigmatic Interval Palindromes," Perspectives of New Music 29, no. 2 (1991): 50-71
20. Severine Neff probingly discusses Schoenberg's concept of Grundgestalt in "Schoenberg and Goethe: Organicism and Analysis," in Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. Christopher Hatch and David W. Bernstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 409-33
21. See also Patricia Carpenter, "Grundgestalt as Tonal Function," Music Theory Spectrum 5 (1983): 15-38. Because the opening of the Trio is so fragmentary and chaotic, it can be argued that it does not function is the work's Grundgestalt. Along these lines we might argue that the emergent waltz and the subsequent dialectic between the opening and the waltz are a richer conceptualization of the Grundgestalt. On the other hand, it can be argued that the fragmented sense of the opening itself necessitates the counterforce of the waltz as well as other aspects of the piece
22. Emusic flat sign" (episode inversion Emusic flat sign), and their retrogrades
23. The mock heroics of the martellato are clearly a parody of heroic music normally associated with the nineteenth century. It is difficult to say whether or not the composer meant to invoke a specific precursor
24. Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music, 103-4
25. G: 〈Bmusic flat sign, Gmusic flat sign, B, F, C, A, D, Dmusic flat sign, E, G, Emusic flat sign, Amusic flat sign〉 〈G, Emusic flat sign, Amusic flat sign, D, A, Gmusic flat sign, B, Bmusic flat sign, Dmusic flat sign, E, C, F〉
26. The incorporation of the four movements of sonata form into a large-scale single sonata movement in the First Quartet is well known. For a recent treatment of this and the other multimovement/single-movement works mentioned by Dahlhaus, see Walter Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893-1908 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
27. See also my review of Frisch's book in 19th-century Music 18 (1994): 174-85
28. The inclusion of Verklärte Nacht is controversial because there is disagreement on its overall form. In his paper "1/XII/99: Tonal Relations in Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht," Richard Swift hears two sonata forms embedded in the work (19th-century Music 1 [1977]: 3-14)
29. Frisch contests this hearing in The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 114-16
30. The Phantasy, Op. 47, the next major work after the Trio, can also be heard to incorporate multiple movements into a single-movement design
31. Schoenberg discusses these influences in the essay "My Evolution" (1949), in his Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 80
32. Schoenberg's Fourth String Quartet, Op. 37, like the Trio, is a work with strong connections to Beethoven. Indeed, Silvina Milstein finds specific correlations between the Schoenberg quartet and the first Rasumovsky Quartet, Op. 59, no. 1. See her Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets, Forms, 98-118
33. H. H. Stuckenschmidt's commentary emphasizes the similar aspects; see Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg: His life, World and Work, trans. Humphrey Searle (New York: Schirmer, 1978), 481
34. Performers, recognizing the recapitulation, have a tendency to define clearly the beginning of measure 208. The effect of relapse, or of a painful memory slowly coming into consciousness, works better if Schoenberg's marking of pianissimo is exaggerated
35. Leo Treitler discusses Beethoven's opening strategies, in the context of his symphonies, in "History, Criticism and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony," in his Music and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 19-45
36. I develop ideas concerning the use of Freudian theory in my paper "Schoenberg and Das Unheimliche: Spectres of Tonality," The Journal of Musicology 11 (1993): 357-73
37. My understanding and adaptation of Freudian thought is influenced first and foremost by the various writings of Harold Bloom. Bloom's reading of Freud, in turn, integrates aspects of earlier scholarship, most significantly the work of Richard Wollheim, Philip Rieff, and Jacques Lacan. See especially Bloom's "Freud and the Sublime: A Catastrophe Theory of Creativity," chap. 4 of his Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 91-118
38. Walter Benjamin's essay "The Image of Proust" contains a beautiful discussion of Proust's mémoire involontaire. The essay is included in Benjamin's Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 201-15
39. Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg, 95
40. Silvina Milstein discusses the double stemming within the sketch and its relationship to passages in the Trio. She labels the double-stemmed notes a "secondary set" and shows how they emerge to form the Haupstimme at measures 12-17 and 135-41. Her book also includes photocopies of Schoenberg's sketches for the tone rows that generate the Trio. See her Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets, Forms, 163-64 and plates 19 and 20
41. As in sketch A1, sketch A13 - the row form used in the episodes of the Trio - emphasizes a partition into disjunct trichords, this time using bar lines to separate the trichords. In contrast to sketch A1, there are no double-stemmed notes. Unlike Parts 1, 2 and 3, the partition of outer dyad plus inner tetrachord plays only a minimum role in the episodes
42. Milstein's study of the Trio emphasizes the tonal implications of a number of passages where G and D initiate or terminate tonal motions (Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets, Forms, 164)
43. Schoenberg's substitution of an augmented sixth for a dominant is discussed by Frisch in The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg; see p. 135
44. In terms of motive, the reversal of the cello dyad in measure 270 (G-Amusic flat sign) makes it the retrograde of the violin Amusic flat sign-G in measure 272. This is analogous to the relationship of the cello in measure 267 to the violin in measure 269 (Emusic flat sign-E becomes E-Emusic flat sign). In a similar way, the viola reversal in measure 270 (B-C) makes it the retrograde of the cello C-B in measure 272. The two dyadic reversals combined with the normative Fmusic sharp sign-F in the violin produce a retrograde of the harmonies of measure 272. In the second part of the passage, the violin reversal C-B (m. 275) echoes the cello C-B of measure 274. Harmonically, the reversal allows measure 275 to end with a "B-minor triad." The next downbeat brings the fifth related E
45. The waltz fragment at measures 263-66 is an inversion of the antecedent phrase of the original waltz fragment (mm. 86-89)
46. Hans Keller, "Schoenberg's Return to Tonality," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Instituted (1981): 3
47. Keller, "Schoenberg's Return to Tonality," 16-18
48. The unheimlich emergence of tonality in works like the String Trio intersects with another issue in Schoenberg studies, the status of late works such as the Variations on a Recitative for Organ, Op. 40, and the Theme and Variations for Wind Band, Op. 43a, in which the composer explicitly returns to tonality. I am convinced that tonality in these works also functions as a locus of memory, as opposed to a simple and direct means of expression. It is ironic that the effects of tonal memory in these contexts are weakened by the absence of an active process of "forgetting."
49. Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, ed. Gerald Strang and Leonard Stein (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967)
50. Anton Webern, The Path to New Music, ed. Willi Reich, trans. Leo Black (Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Theodore Presser, 1963). Webern's discussions of musical phrase are found in the fifth, sixth, and seventh lectures of the "Path to New Music" series. See esp. p. 27
51. Milstein makes extensive use of Schoenberg's phrase models in her analyses of his music (Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets, Forms). Remarkably, her analysis of the Trio does not employ those models: "The abandonment of classical phrase-construction in the Trio and its replacement by a kind of 'musical prose,' reminiscent of that of the Expressionist period, have been viewed as the counterpart of a more autonomous type of twelve-tone syntax" (p. 157). Her discussion of the String Trio goes on to argue against the view of an "autonomous type of twelve-tone syntax" and in favor of understanding implicit or attenuated tonal functions. The assumption of "the abandonment of classical phrase construction" is not explicitly challenged, however. To be sure, there are passages in the Trio that cannot be explained in terms of periods and sentences. Yet the traditional period structure does play a central role, as my analysis shows
52. Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 391-92
53. The rhythm is derived specifically from measure 122, but related rhythms are pervasive in measures 86-89, 122-25, and 263-66. I will return to this below
54. Stuckenschmidt notes the emergence of "a slow waltz" at the beginning of Part 2 (Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work, 479). I place it some fifty bars earlier
55. The 12/8 setting, measures 184-87, is remarkable in that the principal voice exclusively comprises groupings of three dotted quarter notes prefaced by a dotted quarter rest. In the context of the passage, it sounds as though 9/8 (three threes) has been expanded to fill out 12/8, with the subsidiary voices being responsible, in each case, for the metric expansion
56. Deferrals of this sort are the central topic of Frank Kermode's important book The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (London: Oxford University Press, 1967)
57. The passage from Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" that I have in mind is the following: "It would be in contradiction to the conservative nature of the instincts if the goal of life were a state of things which had never yet been attained. On the contrary, it must be an old state of things, an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other departed and to which it is striving to return by the circuitous paths along which its development leads. If we are to take it as a truth that knows no exception that everything living dies for internal reasons - becomes inorganic once again - then we shall be compelled to say that 'the aim of all life is death' and, looking backwards, that 'inanimate things existed before living ones'" (Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," in The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay [New York: W. W. Norton, 1989], 613)
58. The idea of "troping tropes" is taken from the literary theories of Harold Bloom. John Hollander writes a succinct (and beautiful) explanation of the idea in his introduction to Harold Bloom, Poetics of Influence: New and Selected Criticism (New Haven, Conn.: Henry R. Schwab, 1988), xi-xlvi; see esp. pp. xxx-xxxix
59. Carl Schorske discusses Ravel's La valse as danse macabre in the opening chapter of his Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 3-22
60. It is odd that Schorske turns to Ravel for an example of the crisis in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Dances from Mahler, Schoenberg, or Berg would have made the point more vividly. The "intoxicating" quality of the waltz, and all that it repressed, is discussed by the art historian Alessandra Comini in her book The Fantastic Art of Vienna (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978); see esp. pp. 6-7
61. Moritz Hauptmann's Die Natur der Harmonik und der Metrik: Zur Theorie der Musik (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1853) contains an interesting discussion of triple meter. For Hauptmann, who bases his theory on ideas derived from Hegel, duple divisions of time express identity through an expression of self and self-reflection; triple divisions of time throw this rhythm of self-reflection into a state of imbalance
62. I discuss these matters in my paper "Hauptmann and Schenker: Two Adaptations of Hegelian Dialectics," Theory and Practice 13 (1988): 115-31
63. The story of Jacob and the Angel is a recurrent image in the literary theories of Harold Bloom. In his essay "Wrestling Sigmund," Bloom asks and then answers the following question: "Who is that 'man,' later called one of the Elohim, who wrestles with Jacob until dawn? And why should they wrestle anyway? Nothing in any tradition supports my surmise that this daemonic being is the Angel of Death, yet such I take him to be" (Poetics of Influence, 220-22)
64. Numerous aspects of Schoenberg's relation to Judaism are discussed in Alexander Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
65. See also Steven J. Cahn, "Variations in Manifold Time: Historical Consciousness in the Music and Writings of Arnold Schoenberg" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1966)
66. Ringer, Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 199