Harald Krebs

Alternatives to Monotonality in Early Nineteenth-Century Music

Nineteenth-century theorists generally regarded every modulation, however transient, as establishing a new key, and their analyses therefore came to look like bowls of alphabet soup. Heinrich Schenker, dissatisfied with the nineteenth-century view of tonality, set against it a stunningly original theory of tonal unity, or monotonality. He maintained that on the most fundamental level, a tonal work consists of two lines-an upper line that composes out one of the intervals of the tonic triad by means of a stepwise descent and a lower line that horizontalizes the tonic fifth in the form of the progression I-V-I. These two lines combine to create a horizontal statement of the tonic triad which spans the complete composition. Thus, a tonal work ultimately prolongs only one triad-its one and only tonic; all triads prolonged on a smaller scale within the work are prolongations of the scale steps of that tonic. Schenker applied his monotonal approach in all of his analyses of eighteenth and nineteenth-century music. He did so even in analyses of nineteenth-century works which at first glance appear to violate the theory of monotonality-works that apparently begin in one key and end in another. In his analysis of Chopins Scherzo, Opus 31, for example, he labelled the final Db triad as the tonic, and the initial Bb minor prolongation as the subsidiary harmony VI. He showed that the

The String Quartets of Béla Bartók: Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective

Composed between 1908 and 1939, the six string quartets of Béla Bartók constitute a monument in Western musical canon. As the Italian musicologist Massimo Mila affirmed in his 1960 lectures dedicated to the Hungarian composer at the University of Turin (published in 1995 as L’arte di Béla Bartók), “Bartók’s quartets occupy a prominent position both in his oeuvre and in twentieth-century chamber music. They span the arc of his stylistic development and appear almost like a jealous, lyrical diary to which the composer confides his highest and ultimate thoughts. His model is Beethoven, namely Beethoven’s third style, that of the last five string quartets and late piano sonatas.” Moreover, according to Elliott Antokoletz, Bartók’s quartets highlight the core of his poetics, that is “the evolution of [his] style towards increasing synthesis of divergent folk-music and art-music sources” (The Bartók Companion, ed. by M. Gillies, Faber and Faber, 1993, p. 257). Edited by Dániel Péter Biró and Harald Krebs, the collection of essays published in 2014 and entitled The Strings Quartets of Béla Bartók. Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective rounds up fourteen scholars in order to cope with the challenging issues raised by these twentieth-century landmarks. This essay collection investigates the role of European classical tradition in the quartets, i.e. the persistence of sonata form and Beethoven’s stylistic features; the deep integration of folk music elements, especially in regard to harmony and rhythm; the multifaceted and lasting legacy of the quartets for subsequent composers, listeners and performers. As suggested by its subtitle, the volume places particular emphasis on musical analysis, conceived in broad terms. Indeed, in spite of their pleas for interdisciplinarity, the assumption of the authors is that only music analysis, i.e. the most esoteric sub-discipline of musicology, is sufficiently robust for the string quartet, the most highbrow genre of the Western musical tradition. Since it is impossible to review the entire book in detail, I will mention its highlights. After an introduction by the editors, which is perhaps too brief, and an elegant essay by Paul Wilson, Jonathan W. Bernard (pp. 22–40) focuses on Bartók’s often-celebrated quest for symmetry and the formal tensions that this generates with classical structures, such as sonata form. The Fifth String Quartet composed in 1934 represents the best example in this sense. In this five-movement piece the largescale arch form constructed around the central Scherzo: alla bulgarese is echoed by the arch-like sonata form of the first movement. Following Lászlo Somfai, Bernard points out the formal contradiction consciously raised by Bartók between the teleological progression of the sonata form and the sense of eternal return evoked by the use of the palindromes. In the first movement, “the recapitulation of the first theme, transition, and second theme not only in inversion but in reverse order is a particularly daring graft of a palindromic structure onto a formal plan that, in its traditional manifestation, is not at all palindromic” (p. 35). Further into the text, the chapters of Daphne Leong (pp. 108–133) and Elliott Antokoletz (pp. 134–146) discuss the “synthesis of divergent folk-music and art-music sources” in Bartók’s output. On the one side, Leong analyses the rhythmic structure of the trio section of the Scherzo: alla bulgarese, the aforetaires : la première partie propose un cadre à tonalité philosophique et soulève des questions relatives au langage, au contexte historique voire à la biographie de Mallarmé. Dans la seconde partie, une approche de nature esthétique constitue le pan pour ainsi dire musical de la recherche, amenant, entre autre, à une perspective musicologique de la poésie mallarméenne. Cet ouvrage est donc une étude pluridisciplinaire qui relève avec élégance le défi collectif qu’elle se pose. Œuvre ouverte, ce livre dessine également les contours de la rencontre entre philosophie et esthétique, et ce de manière accessible et cependant savante. Que ce soit pour la philosophie de l’art et l’esthétique au sens large, mais également pour tout lecteur de Mallarmé, pour tout poète ou musicien intéressé par la ren contre entre les arts et la nature de l’expérience artistique, il ne fait aucun doute que ce travail constituera une excellente référence.

Meine Lieder sind mein Tagebuch

Josephine Lang, eine der produktivsten Liederkomponistinnen des 19. Jahrhunderts, wurde 1815 in Munchen geboren, wo sie schon in jungen Jahren fur ihre Lieder, und fur ihre Ausfuhrung derselben, Beruhmtheit erlangte. Im Jahre 1842 heiratete sie den Rechtsgelehrten und Poeten Reinhold Kostlin und folgte ihm nach Tubingen, wo er an der Universitat auserordentlicher, spater ordentlicher Professor der Rechte war. Als er 1856 starb, hinterlies er sie mit sechs Kindern, die sie hauptsachlich mit Gesang- und Klavierunterricht ernahrte. Sie versuchte zwar auch, sich wieder als Komponistin hervorzutun (wahrend ihren letzten Ehejahren hatte sie immer weniger Zeit zum Komponieren gehabt). Ihre Bestrebungen blieben fruchtlos, bis sie sich an zwei einflusreiche Freunde wandte, namlich Clara Schumann und Ferdinand Hiller, die ihr halfen, die harte[n] Verlegers Seele[n] zu erweichen.1 Hiller veroffentlichte auch einen biographischen Aufsatz uber Josephine Lang, der von vielen gelesen wurde und der Komponistin nicht nur das Interesse des Publikums, sondern auch finanzielle Unterstutzung von mitleidigen Lesern einbrachte.2 Sie starb 1880 in Tubingen. Ihr Sohn Heinrich Adolf Kostlin (der einzige ihrer vier Sohne, der sie uberlebte) setzte sich nach ihrem Tode fur ihr Werk ein. Er schrieb 1881 einen »Lebensabris«,3 und gab auch eine Auswahl ihrer Lieder heraus, die 1882 von Breitkopf & Hartel veroffentlicht wurde.4