T561 Spring 2005

Interpreting Late Beethoven

Instructor: Robert Hatten
11:15-12:30 TR, MA404

The seminar will explore expressive motivations behind formal and structural innovations in Beethoven’s late styles: the op. 102 cello sonatas, the op. 96 violin sonata, the last five piano sonatas, the late bagatelles, the Diabelli Variations, the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the late string quartets. Close analysis will be enhanced by interpretation of musical meaning, drawing on theoretical and hermeneutic work by musicologists and theorists such as Charles Rosen, Leo Treitler, William Kinderman, Joseph Kerman, Scott Burnham, and myself. Issues to be explored include the development and contextual use of gestures, topics, expressive genres, thematic dissociation and integration, troping (including musical metaphor and irony), agency and subjectivity, self-reflexivity, shifts in level of discourse, narrativity, temporality, and intertextuality.

A highlight of the seminar will be the visit in mid-January of Charles Rosen as distinguished Patten lecturer at Indiana University. He will share with the class on Tuesday and Thursday, Jan. 17 and 19, and offer free lectures at 8:00 p.m. those evenings on “The Representation of Sentiment in Music” (Auer Hall). He will also perform the last three Beethoven piano sonatas 8:00 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18, in a free recital (Musical Arts Center).

Optional texts (both available in paperback)

1. Hatten, Robert. Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
2. Kinderman, William. Beethoven. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Required scores (a course pack will be provided for other works):

1. Beethoven, Piano Sonatas, vol. 2, Dover, 0-486-23135-6
2. Beethoven, Diabelli Variations, Henle.
3. Beethoven, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. Dover 0-486-23380-4
4. Beethoven, Complete String Quartets, Dover 0-486-22361-2
5. Beethoven, Missa Solemnis, Dover 0-386-26894-2