Musical Influence

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Towards a New Poetics of Musical InfluenceAuthor(s): Kevin KorsynSource: Music Analysis, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (Mar. - Jul., 1991), pp. 3-72Published by: Wiley

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KEVIN KORSYN

TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

This article

omplements

nd

extends ecent esearch hat

has

appeared

in

Music

Analysis.

In

particular,

it

attempts

o

answer some

questions

raised

by

Alan

Street

in

'Superior Myths,

Dogmatic

Allegories:

The

Resistance to

Musical

Unity' (Vol.

8,

Nos

1-2),

in

which

Street,

nspired y

the

deconstructive

ethod

of

Paul

de

Man,

questioned

the

notion

of organic

unity

in

music.

Street's

conclusions

might

eem to lead

music

theory

o an

impasse:

how can

one

analyse

music

if

one

rejects

he

idea

of

autonomous,

self-contained

ompositions?

he

following rticle roposes solution, nalysingpiecesas 'relational vents'rather

than

as 'closed and

static

entities'.

By

borrowing

he idea

of

conceptual

pace

from

Harold

Bloom's

theoryof

poetic

influence,

he

author

explores

a

new

method

f

analysis,

one

that

ntegrates

heory,

istory

nd

criticism.

The

Editor

welcomes

urther

ontributions

o

this

debate.

I

These

pagesunfold theory f ntertextualitynmusic,proposing modelfor

mapping

influence,

which,

by

usurping

conceptual

space

from

the

literary

riticism

f

Harold

Bloom,

also

swerves

owards

new

rhetorical

poetics

of

music.*

Naked

abstractions

eed

the

clothing

f

particularity,

o

I

will

use works

of

Chopin

and

Brahms

to

exemplify

his

model.

But

I

intend

he

model

to

have a

very

wide

range

of

application.

No

musical

subject

seems

to

me

more

mperfectly

nderstood

yet

more

potentially

entral

han

intertextuality,

nd

nothing

o

urgently

emands

strong

ritical

aradigms.

Consider

an

example

that

seems

to

encapsulate

*

An earlierversionof thisstudywas presented t Queens College, New York, on 19 November 1987, and at

Columbia

University

n

20

November

1987.

I

am

grateful

o

Joseph

Straus of

Queens

College

for

rrangingmy

lecture

here,

nd to

John

Murphy

nd

Janna

aslow for

nviting

me to

speak

at

Columbia.

After

this

article

was

completed,

Joseph

Straus

published

Remaking

he

Past:

Tradition

nd

Influence

n

Twentieth-Century

usic

Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

University

ress,

1990),

which

lso tries

o

capture

Bloom for

music.

am

grateful

o

Professor

traus

for

iting

everalof

my

unpublished

apers

on

Bloom. It

should

be

obvious,

however,

ven to

the

casual

reader,

hat

Straus nd I

appropriate

loom's

thought

or

astly

ifferent

urposes.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

3







TOWARDS

A NEW

POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

Ex. 3

Brahms,

cherzo,

Op.

4,

bs 329-32

(with

upbeat)

TIr

Ex. 4 Chopin,WaltzOp. 64,No. 2, bs 1-4

Tempo giusto

V 1

4

1 1 04

Only

a

theory

f

intertextuality

n

music can

resolve

these

questions.

Conceptual

clarity

becomes

even

more

imperative

f

we consider

the

historical

nature

of

intertextuality.

n

any

intertextual

ncounter,

we

construct historical arrative

y positing

relation etween n earlier nd

a latertext.

Understanding

hat

history

nvolvesmore than

assembling

n

aggregate

f facts.Here I

quote

Michel

de Certeau:

Everyhistoricalact'results rom praxis, ecause t is alreadyhe

sign

of an

act

and

therefore statementf

meaning.

t results rom

procedures

which

have allowed a

mode of

comprehension

o be

articulated

s a discourse f facts.' ..

In

history,

s

in the

otality

f

thehuman

ciences,

what

Levi-Strauss

alledthe

testing

f models'

replaces

heformer ethods f

observation;

eterminationf

types

f

analysis

wins over

determination

f

the means or

places

of

information.3

Therefore it is not enough merelyto accumulate data by observing

similarities

mong

pieces;

we need

models to

explain

which

imilaritiesre

significant,

hile also

accounting

or

differences

mong

works.Models tell

us

where

o

look,

what to

observe,

what counts

as a fact.This

is

not to

say

that the

selectionof

models

precedes

observation;

ather heremust be

a

reciprocity

etween

empirical

data

and the models

through

which

we

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

5







KEVIN KORSYN

interpret

hosedata.

Intertextualityoses

strenuous

hallenges

for

anymodel.

As we

have

seen,

the model must include

history.

Yet it must also accommodate

originality;

e need

a model

that

explains

both tradition nd

uniqueness,

that

explains

how a work

becomes

originalby struggling gainst

other

texts.The model should

also leave room for the

imagination,

o that we

remain rtists ven

n

our

model-building.

t should

ntegrate nowing

with

feeling,

est

our

complex

modes of

analysis

lienate

us frommusic.

Musicians have not

neglected ntertextuality.

obert

Schumann,

for

example,

in

his critical

writings, requently

oted allusions and

echoes,4

and recent

scholarship

has

continued to

map

intertextual

pace.

In

addition to Rosen's article alreadycited, one could mentionvaluable

studies

by

James

Webster,

Christopher

Reynolds,

Constantin

Floros,

J.

Peter Burkholder

nd

David

Brodbeck,

all

concerning

rahms

and

his

precursors;

Edward

T. Cone

traced

Beethoven's

presence

in

Schubert;

Elwood Derr's

work

also

deserves

attention;

Ernst

Oster

devoted

some

profound

speculations

to Beethoven's

influenceon

Chopin's

Fantasie-

Impromptu.5

hese studies

focus on

relatively

concrete

intertextual

phenomena:

quotation,

borrowings,

compositional

modelling.

Other

studies cast

a wider

net,

discussinggenre

or

the use

of conventions.

All

thesewritersely n models,howevermplicitlyrunconsciously.None

of

them,

however,

espitefrequently

ubtle

nsights,

ffersmodels

sufficiently

strong;

none has

meditated

ong enough

on the

necessity

f

paradigms.

Therefore

have

turned

to

literary

riticism nd

the

writings

f Harold

Bloom.

II

In 1973 Bloom

published

The

Anxiety

f nfluence.

here

he

proposed

that

poetichistorys 'indistinguishablerom oetic nfluence,incestrong oets

make

that

history

y

misreading

ne

another,

o

as

to clear

imaginative

space

for

hemselves'.6

e

gradually

laborated

his

nsight

n

a

formidable

series

of

books,

including

A

Map of

Misreading,

oetry

nd

Repression,

Kabbalah

and

Criticism,

gon

and

The

Breaking

f

the

Vessels.

Although

Bloom's

influence

has extended

far

beyond

literary

riticism,

musicians

have

been

slow

to

assimilate

is

deas,

a

neglect

shall

try

o

reverse.7

Our

appropriation

f

Bloom

willnot be

aided,

however,

y

his

disregard

for

the

reader's

comfort.

ven

a

sympathetic

ritic ike

John

Hollander

admitsthatBloom tendsto 'eschew explanation', ubstitutingpothegm

for

rgument

while

nventing

ccentric

erminology.8

his

difficulty,

ow-

ever,

s not

perverse;

ather

t

reflects

loom's

quest

for sublime

heory

f

poetry,

theory

meant

to

mirror he

aboursof

reading

trong

oems.

Although

theory

o ambitious

resists

eduction,

he

potential

gain

for

musical

criticism

ompels

me

to summarize

Bloom.

This

survey

must

not

6

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW POETICS

OF

MUSICAL INFLUENCE

only

ntroduce

loom to an

audience

argely

nfamiliar

ith

his

thought,

t

must

also establish

his

originality, istinguishing

is

approach

from

ts

rivals,

to show that Bloom offers

unique insights

nto the creative

imagination,

nsights

trong

nough

to survivewhen

transplanted

rom

he

poetic

to

the musical realm.

All

this

demands

a

long

detour,

so we

will

return o music

by

circuitous

aths.

Perhaps

the best

place

to

begin

is

with the

question

to which

Bloom

returns lmost

obsessively

n

his

writing:

he

question

of

poetic origins.

How does

one become a

poet?

Bloom's

answer,

which s

simple,

s

that

he

poet

discovershis

vocation

through

he

poetry

f his

precursors;

t is

love

of

poetry

hatfounds

poet.

This

is not to

deny

the

poet's

relationship

o

life, oreality utside iterature. ut themodernpoetisnot Adam inEden,

naming

hings

or

he first

ime;

that

magical

mmediacy

etween

anguage

and

experience

s lost. As

H61lderlin

ealized,

the

primitive

quilibrium

attained

betweenthe first

rtist

nd his world

no

longer

holds'.9

The

later

one arrives n

poetic

history,

he

more

conscious

one becomes of

other

texts,

because

experience

s

already

structured

y textuality.

ence the

poet

discovers

oetry

with

sense of

belatedness,

with

feelings

f

guilt

nd

indebtedness

owardshis

predecessors.

ove for

nterior

oetry

the ove

that

awakened

his

poetic

calling

soon

turns

mbivalent. he

poet

finds

himself n

what

Paul

Ricoeur called

'the

mediate,the alreadyexpressed',

wondering

fhe has arrived oo

late,

f

perhaps verything

as

already

been

said.

That is

the

anxiety

f

nfluence.

Bloom's

originality,

he

imaginative

eap

that

naugurates

is

theory,

s

to

proclaim

hat

the

anxiety

f

nfluence s

the

true

subject

matter

f

post-

Enlightenment

poetry.1o

This

insight

radically

differentiates

loom's

approach

to

intertextuality

rom

hat of

traditional

ource

study.

Unlike a

traditional

ource

critic,

Bloom is

not

interested

n

the

transmission

f

discursive

deas,

in

tracing

he

borrowing

f

external

ubject

matter

mong

poems."

This is

because,

according

o

Bloom,

the

best

post-Enlightenment

poetryn English internalized tssubjectmatter, articularlyn themode

of

Wordsworth

fter

798.

Wordsworth

ad

no

true

ubject

xcept

his own

subjective

nature,

and

very

nearly

all

significant

modern

poetry

since

Wordsworth,

ven

by

American

poets,

has

repeated

Wordsworth's

nner

turning'.1

Hence 'modern

poets intend some

merely

external

subject

matter

..

but find

their

rue

subject

n

the

anxiety

f

influence'."

Thus

Bloom

dissolves

the

external

ubject

matter

of

poetry;

for

Bloom

as

for

Wallace

Stevens,

poetry

s

the

subject

of

the

poem.

Why

s

this

nner

urning,

his

nternalizationf

subject

matter,

turn

o

theanxiety f nfluence? ecause thepoet'spreoccupationwith elfhoodsthe

anxiety

hathis

precursors

ave not

left

him

room

to

become

a

self,

o

speak

withhis

own

poetic

voice.

Self-consciousness

manifests

tself

s text-

consciousness,

because

'the

poet's

conception

of

himself

ecessarily

s his

poem's

conception

of

itself'.14

he

poet

seeks

to

'name

something

orthe

first

ime',

yet

cannot

completely

ilence

the

voices

of

his

precursors,

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991

7







KEVIN

KORSYN

because

writing poem

takes

the

poet

back 'to

the

decisive initial

encounter nd responsethatbegan him', to 'what a poem firstwasfor

him'.'5

hus the

poet's

identification ithhis

precursors

s

ambivalent:

Insofar

s a

poet

uthentically

s and remains

poet,

he

must xclude

and

negate

ther

oets.

Yet he

must

egin y ncluding

nd

affirming

a

precursoroet

or

poets,

or here s no

other

way

o

become

poet.

We can

say

then hat

poet

is known

s a

poet

onlyby

a

wholly

contradictory

ncluding/excluding,

egating/affirming

..16

To

capture

this

paradoxical

'including/excluding'

movement,

Bloom

replacesthe mimeticview of influencewith a new notion of antithetical

influence',

onceiving

nfluence s 'discontinuous elationsbetween

past

and

present

iterary

exts'."

Influencebecomes

something

oets

actively

resist,

ather

han

something hey

passively

eceive,

nd

poetry

ecomes

a

psychic

battlefield,

n

Oedipal

struggle gainst

one's

poetic

fathers,

n

which

poems

seek to

repress

nd exclude other

poems.

Bloom's

enterprise

here

changes

the

very

function

f

poetry:

t becomes a

mode of

psychic

defence,

s

the belated

poet's

quest

to defend

himself

gainst

anteriority

becomes a

model for he

reader's

quest

for elfhood:

What

poetry

onstructsan be a

healthy

efense

gainst

he

real

dangers

f

both

he

nner nd

outer

ife.'8

We read

(reread)

he

poems

that

keep

our discourse

with urselves

going.

Strong

oems strengthen

s

by

teaching

s how to talk

to

ourselves.'9

Through poetry

he

imagination

earns

to resist

the

preemptive

orce

of

another

magination'.20

hus Bloom

propounds

a

theory

of

poetry

s

a

theory f ife.

This internalization

f

subject

matter

as

provoked

Bloom's

critics,

who

complain

that

he

forgets

what

poems

are 'about'.

Yet

Bloom does

not

wholly

xclude

such

subjects

-

and

here

one

begins

to see

his

dialectical

subtlety

instead

he believes

that

subject

matter

s mediated

through

he

anxiety

f

nfluence,

hrough

ther

oems:

A

poem

can

be about

xperience

r

emotion

r whatever

nlyby

initially

ncountering

nother

oem,

which

s

to

say

a

poem

must

handle xperiencendemotions if heylready ere ival

oems.21

There is no unmediated

vision,

but

only

mediated

revision,

nother

nameforwhich

s

anxiety.22

Since

poems

'are neither

about

"subjects"

nor about "themselves"

,

but

8

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW POETICS

OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

'about other

oems',23

exts

ecome

relations,

atherhan entities:

There

are

no texts,onlyrelations between

exts'.24

ntertextuality,ar frombeing a

mere branch of

criticism,

s it

is in

traditional

ource

study,

becomes

central: Criticism s the art of

knowing

he

hidden

roads

that

go

from

poem

to

poem.'25

(Bloom

would insist

that

intratextuality'

s an

equally

appropriate

term,

since

'

inside" and "outside"

are

wholly

figurative

notions

n

poems'.26")

Bloom's

theory,

hen,

s one

of

poetic reception,

theory

f

how

poets

read their

precursors.

History

becomes

part

of the

poem,

not

something

added on

by

historians. ut

'nothing

s

got

for

nothing',

s

Emerson

said;

'Bloom

restores o

poetic

objects

their

defining

lurality',27

ut

only

at

the

price of autonomy. Just as Nietzsche deconstructs the self into a

'rendezvous of

persons',

Bloom

dissolves the

individual

poem

into

a

'rendezvousof

poems'.

This move

provokes

he

greatest

esistance

mong

Bloom's detractors.

We tend

to

believethat

poems

are

self-contained

nits

of

meaning,

but Bloom

urges

us to

abandon such

notions.Here

is

a

cento

of

relevant

exts:

Few

notions re

more

ifficulto

dispel

han he

commonsensical'

ne

that

poetic

ext s

self-contained,

hat t

has an

ascertainable

eaning

or meaningswithout eferenceo other oetictexts. omethingn

nearly

very

eader

wantsto

say:

Here s a

text nd

theres a

meaning,

and I

am

reasonably

ertain hat

he

two can

be

brought

ogether.'

Unfortunately,

oems

are

not

things

ut

only

wordsthat

refer o

other

words,

and

so

on,

into the

densely

overpopulated

world of

literary

language.

Any

poem

is

an

inter-poem,

nd

any

reading

f

a

poem

is an

inter-reading.

poem

is

not

writing,

ut

rewriting,

nd

though

strong

poem

is a

fresh

tart,

uch a start

s a

starting-again.28

We

need

to

stop

hinking

f

any

poet

s an

autonomous

go,

however

solipsistic hestrongestfpoetsmaybe. Everypoet is a beingcaught

up

in

a

dialectical

relationship

(transference,

epetition,

error,

communication)

with

nother

oet

or

poets.29

Just

s

we

can

never

embrace

sexually

or

otherwise)

single

person,

but

embrace

the

whole of

his

or

her

family

omance,

o we

can

never

read

a

poet

without

eading

he

whole of his

or

her

family

omance

as

poet.30

Bloomdivides oets nto wocategories:trongndweak. trong oetsachieve

trength

y

confronting

he

anxiety

f

nfluence,

ywrestling

ith

their

great

precursors.

his

preoccupation

with

strong

poets

has

fostered

charges

of

elitism

(charges

Bloom

cheerfully

ccepts).

Yet

Bloom

eloquently

efends

his

obsession

with

poetic

strength:

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

9







KEVIN

KORSYN

Freedom,

n a

poem,

mustmean

freedom

f

meaning,

hefreedomf

having meaningf

one's

own.Suchfreedomswhollyllusorynlessit s achieved

gainst prior lenitude

f

meaning,

hichs

tradition,

and so

also

against anguage

...

What s

weak

s

forgettable

nd will

be

forgotten.

nly

trength

s

memorable;

nly

he

apacity

o

wound

gives

he

healing apacity

he chance o

endure,

nd so to be

heard.

Freedom

of

meaning

s

wrested

y

combat,

of

meaning gainst

meaning."3

A

strongprecursor

here is Kant. Kant

distinguishes

enius

from mere

imitation,

rguing

that the

primary

roperty

f

genius

is

originality.

e

goes on, however, o add something uiteparadoxical:there s an original

kind

of

imitation;

one

genius

can liberate the

originality

f

another,

providing

model

for

riginality.32

his

paradox

of an

original

mitation,

f

one

genius iberating

he

originality

f

another,

s an

ancestor

of Bloom's

strong

poets

influencing

trongpoets,

but

without

he anxious

tone that

permeates

Bloom's

writings.

For

Bloom,

everypoem

is a

misreading

r

misprision

f a

precursor

poem

or

poems.

The

parent

poem may

be

composite,

t

may

be

partly

imaginary,

t

may

even be

one of the

poet's

own

poems

(the

poet

may

attempt o become his own precursor). Misreading' is not a pejorative

term

forBloom.

Misreading

can be

strong

r

weak,

but

it is

inescapable.

There is

an

extreme

mbivalence,

atred s well

as

love,

n

a

poet's

stance

towards

anteriority.

he

strong poet

cannot

afford

to be

merely

an

accurate

reader,

because

he must

open prior

exts

o

his own

imaginative

needs. We

tend

to idealize

influence,

o

think that

intertextual

choes

signal

homage,

reverence,

mulation.

Bloom

replaces

this dealization

with

his

description

of influence

as

misreading,

misprision,

perversion,

distortion:

Poets

become

strong

y

mis-taking

ll

texts

nterior

o

them'."

This insistence

on

misreading sharply

differentiates

loom's

approach

from ne thatviews nfluence s benign ransmission.

Bloom

identifies

six modes

of

misreading

the

precursor,

six

interpretations

f

influence,

which

he calls

revisionary

atios.These

ratios

describe

both

the

poet's

internalizing

f

tradition,

nd

the

dynamics

of

reading.

Here I

quote

Louis

A.

Renza's

lucid

commentary:

A

post-Enlightenment

oem

or

nterpretation

eploys

discrete

eries

of

tropological

trategies

o

sustain

ts writer's

aradoxically

nabling

act

of

repressing-alias-misreading

is

precursor

...

As

'revisionary

ratios' ntendedo measure he relationshipetween woor more

texts,'

ach

ratio

nterchangeably

ignifies

oth a

psychic

efense

against

and a formal

mode of

reading

the

precursor

ext

so as

to

facilitate

he

poet's

illusion

of

naming

his

something'

s iffor he

first

time.34

10

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NEW POETICS OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

The

ratios

are not reductive

ntities,

ince Bloom

wants

to read

through

the

ratios,

not

into

them'.3

In The

Anxiety of Influence (1973), he

introduced he ratios s

phases

in the

ife-cycle

f the

poet-as-poet.

By

the

time of

A

Map

of Misreading 1975),

he

realized that

the ratios

tend

to

function

n

dialectical

pairs;

he further

ecognized

hat ll

three

pairs

could

operate

within

singlepoem, although hey

need

not. This

was

a

logical

development

f

Bloom's

theory:

t s as ifa

poet's

whole

ife-cycle

ould

be

recapitulated

n

a

singlepoem.

Bloom

recognizes

many

variants

f

the

six-

ratio

pattern

f

misprision,

nd even in

his

latest

writings

ill

sometimes

read

an entire

poem

through

single predominant

atio.

The

ratios

are

both

nter-

nd

intra-textual:

hey

describe

how a

poet

revises arlier

exts,

both hisown and those ofother oets.

I

shall

postpone

a

detailed

discussionof

each

ratio;

they

remain

lusive

until

seen at work n

specific

exts,

nd I

prefer

o

keep

this

ntroduction

general.

Yet a

few

words about

Bloom's

map

of

misreading

re

needed.

Bloom

coordinates each

ratio with a

particular

hetorical

rope.

Unlike

Vico

and

Kenneth

Burke,

who

reduce all

tropes

to

four

master

tropes,

Bloom

uses six:

irony, ynecdoche,

metonymy,

yperbole,

metaphor

nd

metalepsis also

called

transumption).

trope

s

any

word

or

phrase

that

departs

from

iteral

meaning,

but

Bloom

extends the

concept

of

trope

('troping

the

concept

of

trope itself, as Hollander

says36)

to map

relationships

etweentexts.Consider an

example:

irony

s

the

trope

that

says

one

thing

ut

means

another;

Bloom

extends

rony

o

become a

trope

for

nfluence:

If

we

consider

influence's the

rope

f

rhetorical

rony

hat

onnects

an

earlier

o

a later

oet 'irony'

s

figure

f

speech,

ot

as

figure

f

thought),

hen

nfluence

s a

relation

hat

means

ne

thing

bout he

intra-poetic

ituation

hile

aying

nother.

.. We

might

hrase

his s

a

conscious

tate f

rhetoricity,

he

poem's

opening

wareness

hat t

must emis-readecause tssignificationas wandered lready.An

intolerable

resencethe

precursor's

oem)

has been

voided,

nd

the

new

poem

starts

n

the

llusio

hat

his

bsence

an

deceiveus

into

accepting

new

presence.37

Each

ratio/trope

s

also

linked

o

one or

more

of

Freud's

psychic

defences.

Why

invoke

the

Freudian

defences?

First,

Freud's

defences are

already

tropological,

s

many

of

Freud's

readers

have

realized;

indeed,

Freud

himself

aid that

the

poets

were

there

before

him.

If,

as

Jacques

Lacan

often

aid, theunconscious s structuredikea language', t is a languageof

tropes.

Reaction-formation,

or

xample,

s

allied to

irony:

Just

as

rhetorical

rony

or

illusio

Quintilian's

name

for

t)

says

one

thing

nd

means

another,

o

a

reaction-formation

pposes

itself o a

repressed

esire

by

manifesting

he

opposite

of

the

desire.38

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

11







KEVIN

KORSYN

As

we

have

seen,

poems

defend

themselves

gainst

other

poems, just

as

psyches

defend

themselves

gainst

other

psyches.Just

as

the

defences

permit

he

continuity

fone's interior iscourse

by warding

ff hreats o

the

psyche, tropes, by

turning

from literal

meaning, keep

the

poet's

discourse

going

n

his

agon

with

nteriority.

One

can

object,

of

course,

thatBloom is

arguing

y

analogy;

Freud has

been criticized

n

similar

rounds.

Freud's

analogical

method,

however,

is

consistent

with

he

analogical

natureof his

data,

forhis data are

all

images,

starting

ith he self.39 loom

argues

that he substitution f

analogues'

is

'one with

the

poetic process

itself',40

nd he

urges

that 'a

trope

is a

concealed

defense,

defense s a concealed

trope

.. this sort

of conceal-

ment is

poetry'.41

Bloom extends his analogicalmethodto connect the

entire

rray

f defences

o the

system

f

tropes.

This

appropriation

f Freud is

part

of

a

brilliantly erverse

trategy

f

reading:

Bloom

interprets

exts

by

Kierkegaard,

Nietzsche,

Freud and

others as

if

they

concerned

poems

instead

of

people;

through

such

subversive

transpositions

he

gains

powerful

new models

for

literary

criticism.

Can

we

perform

he same kind

of deliberate

misreading

on

Bloom,

reading

him as

if he were

talking

bout

music

nstead

of

poetry?

think

hatwithin

ertain

imitswe

can.

If we musicianscan usurpBloom's stance,it is primarily

ecause

of

Bloom's

relation

to his

precursor

Walter

Pater. Pater

urged

that all art

constantlyspires

owards

he

condition

f

music'.42

What Pater

admired

n

music was

its

power

to overcome

any

tension between

the medium

and

subjects

xternal

o

it:

It

is the

rt fmusic

which

most

ompletely

ealizes his

rtistic

deal,

this

perfect

dentification

f matter

nd form.

n its consummate

moments,

he end

is

not distinct

rom he

means,

he

form

rom he

matter,

he

ubject

rom he

xpression;

hey

nhere

n and

completely

saturateachother;ndtoit, herefore,otheconditionf tsperfect

moments,

ll the

rts

may

be

supposed

onstantly

o tend

nd

aspire.

In

music, hen,

ather

han

n

poetry,

s to be

found

he

true

ype

r

measure

f

perfected

rt.43

As we

have

seen,

the

anxiety

f

nfluence

urns

poetry

nto ts

own

subject

matter,

rasing

he

ine

between

poetic anguage

nd

subjects

xternal

o

it.

Thus

post-Enlightenment

oetry,

s

Bloom

conceives

t,

aspires

towards

the

condition

f music.

For the same

reason,

music

can

aspire

towards

he

conditionof Bloomianpoetics:without educingmusic

to

poetry,

without

violating

he

integrity

f

music,

one can

imagine

a

purely

musical

anxiety

of

influence;

one can

envisage

an intertextual

heory

n which

music

becomes

its

own

subject

matter.

his is a

crucial

point.

am not

the

first

musician

to

learn

from

Bloom,

but

I

am

the

first o realize that

his

internalization

f

subject

matter

rings

music

and

poetry

loser

together,

12

MUSIC ANALYSIS

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1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS OF MUSICAL INFLUENCE

allowing

fullermusical

appropriation

f Bloom

thanhas

previously

een

attempted.

Even

David Lewin

weakly

misreads

Bloom on

this

point.

In

a

recent

article,

ewin

quotes

Bloom's

apothegm

the

meaning

of

a

poem

can

only

be a

poem,

but

another

oem,

a

poem

not

tself'.

Lewin claims that

Bloom's

'idea

as it

stands does not

transfer

asily

to

music,

but

that is

largely

because of the

problems attaching

hemselves

o

the word

'meaning'

in

Bloom's

text'.44

Lewin thus seems to

interpret

Bloom's

enterprise

s

reducing

wo

poems

to a common

meaning,

r to a

common

subject.

That

approach

might

haracterize

raditional ource

study,

ut,

as we have

seen,

nothing

ould be

more antithetical o

Bloom's

project.

Bloom's

statement

must be read in light of his later self-commentaryn Kabbalah and

Criticism:

I

recall

enturing

he

pothegm

hat he

meaning

f

poem

could

only

be

another

oem.

Not,

point

ut,

he

meaning

f

another

oem,

but

the ther

oem

tself,

ndeed he

therness

f he

ther

oem.45

This

concept

of

otherness'

aturates

Bloom's

theory.

ust

s

Hegel,

in

the

Phenomenologyf

Spirit,

hows

how

consciousness

omes to

know

tself,

becomes self-consciousness,yencounteringtherness, loom showshow

poems

become

unique

by

encountering

ther

poems.

This

encounter

with

otherness

nvolves a

discontinuity

etween

texts,

an

'awareness not

so

much of

presences

as

of

absences,

of

what is

missing

n

the

poem

because it

had to

be

excluded'.46

These

notions of

'absence

and

otherness'

are

refractory

ndeed,

but

they may

seem

less alien if

we

reconstruct he

questions

to

which

they

are a

response.

Bloom

is

struggling

ere to

reconcile the

competing

laims of

originality

nd

tradition.

Conventional

source

study

tends to

dissolve

a

poem

into

its

alleged

sources,

without

explaining

what

constitutes

poem's

unique

claim

on

our

attention.

Formalistcriticism reatspoems as autonomousentities, eavingpoems

unconnected o

history. y

showing

how

poems

repress

nd

exclude

other

poems,

Bloom

can

show

how

poems

become

unique,

yet

relate to

tradition,

y

defending

hemselves

gainst

nfluence.An

example

should

clarify

his

point.

In

Poetry

nd

Repression,

loom

does

an

inter-reading

f

Tennyson's

Marianna,

a

poem

whose

ostensible

subject

matter s

erotic

repression.

Unlike a

traditional

source

critic,

however,

Bloom

does

not

relate

Marianna to

other

poems

about erotic

repression,

or

does he

trace

any

'meaning'oranydiscursivedea from hepoembackto itsallegedsources.

Instead

he

asks:

'What

does this

erotic

repression

tself

repress?'47

e

answers

hat

such

repression

s

often a

mask

for

nfluence-anxiety',48

nd

declares

that 'a

profound

ambivalence

toward

Keats's

influence is

the

true

subject

of

Tennyson's

poem'.49

Keats's

influence is

felt

not so

much in

the

presence

of

allusions 'but

in the

precise

figurations

of

its

absence'.50

Bloom

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

13







KEVIN

KORSYN

does

not

reduce

Tennyson

and Keats to a common

meaning.

nstead,

he

showshowTennyson's poembecomesunique byrepressing eats,who is

the

otherness

gainst

which

Tennyson

contends.

Despite

Lewin's

reservations,hen,

here s

no

difficulty

ssociated with

'meaning'.5'

The

difficulty

s to

specify

otherness',

to render absence

palpable

and

precise,

to

show how

pieces

struggle

o

repress

nd exclude

other

pieces.

I

recognize

he

dangers

of

maginative

ildness

here,

and

will

avoid

them. But

in

art the issue

is how to

channel,

nd thus to

enhance,

the

imagination.

Too

many

recent modes of music

analysis repress

the

imagination,

leeing

from rt towards an

illusory

bjectivity.

aced

with

this

mechanization,

prefer

Bloom's view that a

theory

f

poetry

must

belongtopoetry,must bepoetry efore t can be ofanyuse in interpreting

poems'.52

(Or, as Schenker insisted, music is always an art, in its

composition,

ts

performance,

ven

n

its

history'."3)

We

musicians

ught

o

believe

that

music and

the

magination

re

one.

Let

us

boldly

ranspose

Bloom, then,

nto

musicalterms:

The

meaning

f

a

composition

an

only

be

another

omposition,

composition

ot

tself,

nd

not

he

meaning

f

he

other

iece,

but

the

otherness

ftheother

iece,

manifested

ot

only

hrough

he

presence

of theprecursor-piece,utalso throughheprecise igurationsf ts

absence.

This

statement,

n

its

vagueness,

till nvites

cepticism.

eginning

n Part

IV,

however,

shall

prove,

not its

truth,

ut its

usefulness s

a

starting-

point

for

understanding

musical

nfluence.

Any

usurper

f Bloom must

earn

the

necessity

f

misprision.

here

can

be

no

merely

iteral,

ccurate

reading

of Bloom

here,

because

his theories

concern

poetry,

ot

music.

To

appropriate

loom,

we must

misread

him,

becoming

Bloomian

revisionists;

e must

productively

misread

him

as we

figurativelyxtendhis ideas. Hence thisarticle xemplifiesheprocessof

misreading

hat t

describes.

We

must also

reinterpret

xisting

music

theory

f

we are to

synthesize

Bloom's

intertextualmodel

with models

of musical

structure.

Bloom

attempts

o

enrich

rhetorical

riticism,

y using

an

extended

concept

of

trope.

As we

have

seen,

each of the

revisionary

atios s

harnessed

to

a

particular

trope;

if

we

are to

apply

these

ratios

to

explain

musical

relationships

etween

musical

texts,

we

must find musical

analogies

for

these

tropes,

thus

continuing

he

analogical

method

by

which

Bloom

linkedthetropesto the Freudiandefences.Anymeaningfulppropriation

of

Bloom,

then,

will

have

to revive he

long (but

now

almost

forgotten)

tradition

f musical rhetoric.

This

revival, owever,

must

not be naive

or

literal;

mere

repetition

f

Burmeister

will

not

satisfy

contemporary

sensibilities.

Historical

understanding,

s

Hans-Georg

Gadamer

has

shown,

must

not aim at

mere

14

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

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1991







TOWARDS

A NEW POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

reconstruction;

here

s

always

a 'fusion of horizons'

between

past

and

presentconcerns.54We can see such a fusion n effortsy recentcritics

such

as

Bloom,

Paul

de

Man,

Roland Barthes and other

to rethink

he

foundations of

rhetoric.

Barthes,

for

example, attempts

to 'fuse

the

conceptual

terminology

f

structural

inguistics

with

traditional erms

of

rhetoric'."We

must

reimagine

musical

rhetoric,

sing

t

to

reinvigorate

ur

analytical

methods,

so

that we can move

beyond

a

purely

neutral

description

of

structure,

o

explain why particular

tructures

re

used

rather han

other,

qually logical'

possibilities.

Since Bloom

also links

he

tropes

of rhetoric o

the Freudian

defences,

we shall

also have to

show

these

defences at

work in

music. To

view

musical compositionsas defendingthemselvesagainst anterioritymay

challenge

our

ideas

about the

function f music.

Yet

wrestling

with

this

problem

may

also

enable us to

pose

the

question

of

how music

exemplifies

statesof

consciousness.

When

applied

by

the

capable imagination,

loom's

ideas

may

relieve he

discontent

elt

y

so

many

musicians

oday,

who find

much

contemporary

nalysis

ahistorical

and

sterile.

As

Leo

Treitler

recently

wrote,

we want

analytical

methodologies

hat

concern

hemselves

not

with

structures

lone,

but

with the

relations of

structure

and

meaning'."

Bloom's theory,then, will give us an intertextual hetoric,while

providing

model for

analysing

ompositions

s

relational

vents rather

than as

closed and

static

entities and thus

integrating

eep

structural

analysis

with

history.

n

what

follows,

shall

nvoke

pproaches

as

diverse

as

those of

Schoenberg,

Schenker,

Tovey,

Eugene

Narmour,

David

B.

Greene

and

others,

using

them

within

the

context of

an

intertextual

mapping

of

influence.

Any

theory

that

claims

so

apparently

trange

a

composite

precursor

as

Bloom-Schoenberg,

or

Bloom-Schenker,

will

almost

involuntarily

ecome

original.

Whether

that

originality

will

be

productive,

r

merely

ccentric,

emains o

be seen.

Certainly

t

will

enable

us to addressmusicaltextswithfresh uestions.

III

To

exemplifymy

appropriation

f

Bloom's

model,

I

have chosen

to

map

Brahms's

misprision

of

Chopin.

Brahms

is a

logical

candidate for

influence-anxiety;

ertainly

he

many

recent

intertextual

tudies

of his

music

are

not

serendipitous.

His

conscious

sense of

belatedness

s

amply

documented.Recall, for nstance,his confession o Clara Schumann: In

everything

. .

I

try

my

hand

at,

I

tread on

the

heels of

my

predecessors,

whom

feel n

my

way.'57

n

another

ccasion

he

complained:

You

have

no

idea how

the

likes of

us

feel to

hear

the

tramp

of a

giant

like that

[Beethoven]

ehindus.'5"

This

anxiety

was

not

merely

personal;

t also

reflected he

heightened

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

15







KEVIN

KORSYN

historical

onsciousnessof

the nineteenth

entury.

Nietzsche's

essay

On

the

Uses

and

Disadvantages

of

History

for

Life' is

perhaps

the most

memorable

diagnosis

of the

preoccupation

with the

past,

but other

examples

readily

ome to mind.

Hegel's prophecies

f the

death

of art and

the end of

history, lthoughwidely

misunderstood,

ertainly

ontributed o

the

atmosphere

of

belatedness. Emerson declared

that

'our

age

is

retrospective.

t

builds the

sepulchres

f

the

fathers.'5"

In

music the burden

of

traditionwas increasednot

onlyby

a

recovery

f

lost

masterpieces

(one

thinks

of

the Bach

revival)

but also

by

the

phenomenon

of

Beethoven.

As Nietzsche

said,

otherartists

must

pay

the

price

for too

great

an

artist.

Beethoven became

for

nineteenth-century

musicwhatMilton was forEnglish poets: 'theirgoad, their orment, et

also

their

tarting-point,

heir

nspiration'.60

Brahms is remarkable

for

the number

of

his

precursors,

for the

comprehensiveness

f his

agon

with

nteriority. hy

have

I

chosen

to

map

Brahms's

misreading

f

Chopin?

One

must

begin

somewhere,

nd

yet my

first

tep

is not

wholly rbitrary.

rahms

may

have felt

special

anxiety

towards

Chopin.

Remember

that two

prophecies

frame Robert

Schumann's

critical

areer:

his

1831 tribute

o

Chopin

('Hats

off,

entle-

men,

a

genius ')

and his

valedictory ssay

n

1854,

proclaiming

he

advent

of Brahms 'Like

Minerva

sprungfully-formed

rom he brow

of

Jove ').6'

Brahms admitted that Schumann's

prediction

made him

anxious;

this

pressure

ertainly

ontributed

o Brahms's

ncreasing

elf-criticism,

ntense

contrapuntal

tudies,

nd diminished

ate of

publication

n

the ate 1850s.

Chopin's

successful

fulfilment

f Schumann's

prophecy

may

have

challenged

Brahms,

making

him

feel

in

direct

competition

with

Chopin.

This

conclusion

s

speculative,

f

course,

but

Chopin

was

certainly,

mong

composers

in

the

generation

prior

to

Brahms,

an artist

of

uncanny

originality,

strong

recursor

with

whom Brahms

would have

to wrestle

o

achieve

strength.

Before applyBloom's model, must nterpolate historical igression

to

document

Brahms's

knowledge

f

Chopin's

music.

t was

the

composer

Joachim

Raffwho

first

inked

he names

of

Brahms

nd

Chopin.

That

was

in

1853,

when

Brahms,

then

only

twentyyears

old,

visited

Liszt

in

Weimar.

After

Liszt

sight-read

rahms's

Scherzo

Op.

4,

Raff

remarked

that

parts

of

the

piece

recalled

Chopin's

Scherzo

Op.

31.62 (These

are,

of

course,

the same

two

scherzos o

which

referred

arlier.)

Brahms's

reply

which

Bloom

would

interpret

s a manifestation

f

nfluence-anxiety

was

that

he

had

never

seen

or

heard

any

of

Chopin's

music.

Brahms

was

probably eingevasive:a glanceat Clara

Schumann's

recital

programs,

or

example,

will

ascertain hat she

played

Chopin's

music at

virtually

ll of

her

concerts

prior

to 1853

in Brahms's

native

city

of

Hamburg.

Her

first

Hamburg

appearance

on 14 March

1835

included

Chopin,

as

did

many

of

her

subsequent

performances

here

n

1837,

1840,

1842,

1850 and

later.63

By

1853,

then,

Chopin's

music had received considerable

exposure

in

16

MUSIC ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW POETICS

OF

MUSICAL INFLUENCE

Hamburg,

so

it is

likely

hatBrahms's

sweeping

denial

of

Chopin

was

the

defensivereply of a young man who felt his originality hreatened.

(Whether

Brahms knew

Chopin's

Op.

31

in

particular

s

early

as

1853,

however,

would be difficulto

establish.)

Following

his

visit o

Weimar,

Brahmswas able

to

extend

his

knowledge

of

Chopin:

A

reading-through

f

Brahms's

orrespondence

rom

eptember,

853

through

heend of

1855 reveals

hat hiswas a

period

f

astonishing

musical and

intellectual

iscovery

or

him

...

It

was

in

1855,

in

fact,

that rahms

aid

the

foundationsor is

remarkable

ibrary.

e

played,

heard, nd studied hescoresofa great arietyf works yBach,

Haydn,

Beethoven,

chubert,

chumann, endelssohn,

nd

Chopin,

among

thers.64

Brahms's

ibrary

ame

to

include the

complete

worksof

Chopin,

and he

also

acquired

manuscripts

f

Chopin's

A?

Prelude,

the

E

minor

Mazurka

Op.

41,

No.

1,

and

the

A

minor

Mazurka

Op.

67,

No.

4,

along

with a

Widmungsexemplar

f

the

Barcarolle,

Op.

60.65

Another

ign

of

Brahms's

attention o

Chopin

is

a

quotation

from

he

C?

minor

Mazurka

Op.

30,

No. 4 in Brahms'santhology ffifthsnd octaves.66 rahms also publicly

performed

works

by

Chopin;

on

30

September

1858,

for

instance,

he

played

the

E

minor

Concerto,

Op.

11,

at a

courtconcert t

Detmold.67

More

importantly,

n

1877 Brahms

became

an

editor

of

the

Breitkopf

and

Hdirtel

omplete

Chopin

edition.

He took his

editorial

esponsibilities

very

seriously,

onsulting

s

many

autographs

and

original

editions

as

possible.

Between

1877

and

1880,

Chopin's

name

appears

frequently

n

Brahms's

correspondence,

specially

n

letters o

Breitkopf

nd

Hairtel,

nd

to

his

co-editors

Ernst

Rudorff

nd

Woldemar

Bargiel.

Some of

these

letters

iscuss

textual

roblems

n

Chopin's

works n

great

detail.

Brahmsalso did a singletranscriptionf a piece byChopin: theEtude

in

F

minor,

Op.

25,

No. 2. This

transcription,

ade

after

utumn

1862,

was

published

n

1869;

its

first

ublic

performance,

y

Brahms

himself,

was in

1868.68

Brahms

dded

parallel

hirds

nd sixths

o

Chopin's

melody,

making

his

etude

even

more

technically

emanding.

What

has

rarely

een

noticed

before

s

that

Brahms's

version s

not a

strict

ranscription

t

all:

it

is

eighteen

bars

longer

than

Chopin's

original.69

Brahms

has

eighty-seven

bars,

Chopin

only

sixty-nine

Where did

Brahms

get

the

eighteen

additional

bars? I

suggest

hat

the

transcription

as a

covert

purpose,

n

additionto itsobviousfunctions a virtuoso echnical

xercise:

it is also a

compositional

study,

a

study

in

phrase

expansions.

Remember

that a

great

deal of

nineteenth-century

music was

tyrannized

by

phrases

of four

bars

or

eight

bars.

This

predictable

uniformity

eemed

almost

inescapable,

and

Brahms

struggled,

as

Tovey

and

Schoenberg

emphasized,

to

recapture

the

more

complex

phrasing

of

composers

such as

Haydn

and

Mozart.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

17







KEVIN KORSYN

AlthoughChopin's phrasing rewprogressively

ore subtle and fluid he

was also aware of what William Rothstein alled the rhythmroblem'v-

this etude

consists

mostly

f

eight-bar

hrases

mitigated y

a few

phrase

overlaps).

Brahms's

strategy,

n

his

transcription,

s to introduce nternal

expansions

nto some

of these

phrases;

he does

not

merely

ranscribe,

e

rethinks

hopin's piece.

In Ex.

5

I

have

vertically ligned

Brahms's bs

60-70 with the

corres-

ponding

bars

in

Chopin's

original,

s

51-8. In

Chopin's piece,

this

phrase

is heard

literally

wice before

bs

1-8,

20-7).

On

these first wo

appear-

ances,

Brahms alters

details but not the

length

of the

phrase;

he

merely

adds

thirds

and sixths

below

Chopin's

melody,

and these

necessitate

changes n thevoice leadingand registerf theaccompaniment,specially

in

the

bass.

These earlier

appearances

form the metrical

prototype

or

Brahms's

expansion.71

In

bs

60-4,

Brahms

reproduces

Chopin's

first

ive

bars,

but

then

repeats

bars

four

and

five;

such

repetition

s a

common

technique

n

phrase

expansions.

Then Brahms

goes

on to

Chopin's

sixth

and

seventh

bars,

followed

by

another

expansion

before

concluding

with

Chopin's

eighth

bar,

which

s now the eleventh

bar

of

Brahms's

phrase.

Several

other

passages

in Brahms's

transcription

nterpolate

similar

expansions.

The freedomof transcriptions especially trikingfone compares t

with

Brahms's

reverent

daptation

of Bach's Chaconne.

Had

Brahms

published

blatant

ecomposition

f

Chopin's

piece,

t

would

have seemed

an

arrogant

gesture.

Essentially,

however,

that

is

what

he

has

done,

smuggling

t

n under

the

camouflage

f a

virtuoso

tudy.72

All this

historical

vidence,

hen,

uggests

hat he

mature

Brahms

knew

Chopin's

music

intimately.

uch

familiarity,

f

course,

is

a

minimal

precondition

or

stablishing

nfluence.

IV

To test

Bloom's

model,

I will

do

an

inter-reading

f Brahms's

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5 and

what

I consider

ts

central

precursor-text,

hopin's

Berceuse,

Op.

57.73

This

relationship

has not

escaped

detection:

Paul

Badura-Skoda

called

the

middle

section

of

the

Romanze

'a

Brahmsian

elaboration

of

the

Berceuse',"

while

Michael

Musgrave

remarked

that

'perhaps

the

Berceuse

was

not

farfrom

Brahms's]

mind

n this

section'."

Some

earlier

isteners,

ithout

mentioning

hopin,

considered

he

Romanze

a cradle-song, lacing it in the same genreas the Berceuse. Thus both

Eduard

Hanslick'6

nd

Max

Kalbeck

described

t

as

'ein

Wiegenlied',

nd

Kalbeck

also

called

it

'eine

wiegenliedartige

Barkarolle'.77

No one has

yet

realized,

however,

how

deep

a

misprision

of the Berceuse

the Romanze

is.

Obviously

the

Berceuse

is not

the

only precursor

to the Romanze.

Karl

Geiringer,

for

example,

heard

Brahms's

'characteristic

leaning

...

to

18

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW POETICS OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

Ex. 5

Chopin,

Etude

Op.

25,

No.

2,

bs

51-8,

and

Brahms's

transcription,

bs 60-70

Chopin

51

52

53

v

ia

p.

.

. .

sempre

iano

Brahms4

4 4

1(

1

7,77?7

Chopin

54

-55

or

w

Brahms

4

3

-

4

3

43

65

3

5

2

2

jpa

_,

2

4 1

I

I

I 4

?I-miI,3

2

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

19







KEVIN KORSYN

Ex. 5

cont.

Chopin

56

57

S'

Brahms

8va

66

67 1

2

1 681 2

1

5

32

Chopin

58

&I

I

Brahms

69

-

70

5

43

41

1

4 5

S12

12

20

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW POETICS OF MUSICAL INFLUENCE

preclassical

art' in the ostinato

figure

of the

middle

section,78

and

Constantin loros related hemiddlesectionto thepastoraleormusette.79

The title Romanze'

-

apparently

n

afterthoughty

Brahms,

who

first

called

it an Intermezzo

suggests

ther

precedents,

nd

one could

study

the use of

this

designation by

Mozart,

Chopin,

Schumann,

Brahms

himself"8

nd other

composers

to

investigate

what

Jeffrey

allberg

called

'the rhetoric f

genre'.8'

The

Berceuse also has

its own

precursors,

nd

Brahms

may

be

wrestling

with

them,

as

mediated

through

he

Berceuse.

Nor can we

exclude the

possibility

hat

Brahms s

struggling

ere with

his

earlier

self,

an

encounter

frequent

n

his

works,

ince he

often

reshaped

compositions

ven

after

ecades.

Without disregarding hese other sources, I will offer sustained

meditation on

the

Romanze

and

the

Berceuse,

because

I

think

the

Berceuse s

the

central

resence

and

absence)

in

the

Romanze,

the

crucial

precursor

hat

Brahms

invokes,

while also

working

o resist

and

subvert

Chopin's

influence,

resting

meaning

f

his

own.

Restricting

he

study

f

intertextuality

o an

interplay

etween

wo

texts s not

an

innocent

trategy,

as

Jonathan

uller

warned.82

evertheless,

f

the

texts

re

carefully

hosen,

it can

be a

productive

actic,

because

influence

n

art s

always

personal:

'the

human

writes,

the

human

thinks,

nd

always

following

fter

and

defending gainstanotherhuman'.83 his stance explicitly ejectsrecent

French

criticism

hat

ascribes the

production

of

worksto an

impersonal

text-machine,

hile

proclaiming

he

death

of

the

author.

share

Bloom's

belief that

artists

confront

not

only

tradition n

general,

but

specific

precursors

nd

particular

works.

To

uncover

Brahms's

misprision

of

Chopin

we

must ask:

What

is

original

bout

the

Berceuse,

what

enables t

to

become

an

origin?

n

Kant's

terms,

what

empowers

he

Berceuse to

liberate

Brahms's

originality,

r in

Bloom's

rather

more

negative

terms,

what

is it

about

the

Berceuse

that

makes

Brahms

anxious

-

what

makes it a

strong

omposition

with

which

Brahmsmustwrestle o attainhis own strength?art oftheanswer s that

the

Berceuse

poses

a

radical

and

perhaps

unique

solution

to

the

central

problem

of

variations:

How

can

one

overcome

the

sectional

divisionsof

this

form?A

variation

heme

generally

nscribes

n

independent

ircle

of

meaning,

resembling

n

autonomous

composition

with

complete

melodic

and

harmonic

losure.

Hence

variation

movements,

s

they

eproduce

he

structure f

the

theme,

may

disintegrate

nto

separate

ections,

ather

ike

Aristotle's

description

of

an

'episodic'

plot:

'one in

which

there

is no

probability

r

necessity

for

the

order in

which

the

episodes

follow

one

another'.84he problem,then, s how to givethe sequence of variations

some

compelling

ogic

and

unity.

In

the

Berceuse,

which

s a

strict et of

variations,85

hopin's

solution

s

profoundly

maginative.

First

he

writesa

one-bar

ostinato

pattern

that

pervades

he

whole

piece,

pushing

he

additive

endency

o

far

hat

t

turns

into

its

opposite,

providing

unifying

exture

ather

han

fragmenting

he

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

21







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS

OF MUSICAL INFLUENCE

Ex.

7

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs 17-20

Allegretto grazioso

5 4

~

S3

I

41

,0

.

.

.

....

1

r

i

"t

mottoe

dolceesemp

e

,. c?. . ad. Ii.

tr

C

id

quotation

from the Berceuse

in

the

Romanze.

Brahms's initial motive

echoes Chopin's theme (Ex. 8). The other allusions to the Berceuse

confirm

he

origin

of this

borrowing

the

one-bar

ostinato,

he four-bar

theme,

he use of strict ariation

orm,

he

avoidance

of

closure).

Without

this clusterof

associations,

he

relationship

f Brahms's

fivenotes to the

Berceuse

would

remain

mbiguous.

Ex.

8

Chopin,

Berceuse,

Op.

57,

bs

3-4,

and

Brahms,Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

b.17

(:hopiii

-

&'u

I-7

-

Bralinis

jjj:

Significantly,

hese five notes

belong

to

what

one

might,

following

Schoenberg, all theGrundgestaltftheRomanze. Two interlockingorms

of the motive

appear

in

the

opening

bars

(Ex.

9).

Thus

the entire

Romanze,

not

just

its middle

part,

invokes

the Berceuse.

(I

will

later

pursue

the

mplications

f

this.)

But the connection

goes

much

deeper

than those five

notes.

Chopin

MUSIC ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

23







KEVIN

KORSYN

Ex. 9

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

Grundgestalt

melodic

aspect)

I

I

AK---6-.5

Z<-,

J

J

Jdo

composes

out

thismotive

by

embedding

he

foreground

igure

f bs 3-4

in

a

larger

tatement

f the

same motive.

Example

10

shows

this relation-

ship.86

The

motive

is a

descending arpeggiation

with

a

passing

note

(aV2-f2-e

d12); the f2 n b.4 is an incompleteneighbourprolonging he

preceding

V2.

have

bracketed

he

foreground

tatement

n

my graph,

nd

beamed

together

he notes

of the motivic

nlargement.

Ex. -10

Chopin,

Berceuse,

Op.

57,

bs

3-6,

voice-leading

nalysis

3

(N)

-I

(N)

3

(N)

Or

(3-prg)

I

(3-prg)

*

j

(etc.)

24

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW POETICS

OF

MUSICAL INFLUENCE

Brahmsdoes

not

merely ppropriate hopin's

five-note

motive:

he

also

takes overthe

organic xpansion

of

the

motive,

s

shown n

Ex. 11. The

a2

(5)

inb.17 connectswith hef inb.19,

e2

inb.20 and

d2

inb.21, creating

a

large descending

rpeggiation

with a

passing

note.

I

have beamed these

notes

together

n

my graph,

and

bracketed the

same notes

at

the

foreground

evel

in

b.17.

The details

of

voice

leading

must be

carefully

examined,

to see how Brahms makes

the

composing-out

f

the motive

audible.

Ex. 11

Brahms, Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs

17-20,

voice-leading

analysis

(N)

A

(N)

(arp.)=(N)

-_ -

...

6 -

-

6-5

6

--5 ?4

TI

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

25







KEVIN KORSYN

In

b.17,

a2

is

first

rolonged

by

a

descending

rpeggiation

2-f42-e

d

;

this is the foreground ersion of the motivethatBrahms will eventually

expand.

The second

f

in

b.

17 is

an

incomplete

neighbour

o the

previous

e2. There

is also

a

descending

registral

ransfer

rom

a2

to

a',

thus

prolonging

he

primary

ote

in

the

lower

register.

n bs

18-19,

neighbour

notes b' and

g'

embellish

'.

Then an

ascending rpeggiation

eads

from

'

to d2

and

finally

o

f#2,

hus

bringing

n

the second

note of

the

enlarged

motive.

Why

do

I stress

f in

b.19

in

my

sketch?

After

ll,

it is

only

an

unaccented

quaver.)

The reason s thatbs

18 and 19

are

identical

with he

exception

of their last

notes;

such

similarity

ends

to

emphasize

any

differences.hus bothbarsfeature eighbouringmotion rounda', butin

b.18 this eads

to

d2,

while

in

the next bar

it leads

to

f#2,

ompleting

n

ascending rpeggiation

'-d2-f#2.

n the next

bar,

one

might

wonder

why

include

e2

in the

arge

motive,

when

t

is

merely

semiquaver

n

the

piece.

After

he

rather

triking

eventh-leap,

owever,

rom

f#2

own to

g1',

f#2

s

mentally

retained;

it

lingers psychologically,

nd we

expect

a

stepwise

continuation.

Stepwise

motion

fills the

gap,

concealing

the

connection

between

f#2

nd

e2,

but

we hear

it nevertheless.

rahmsthen

resolves

2 to

d2

n

b.21,

completing

he

motivic

xpansion.

Of Bloom's revisionary atios, it is the second, tessera, hat best

describes

the

relationship

etween

Chopin's

variation

heme and

that

of

the

Romanze.

Bloom borrows

his

term

from ncient

mystery

ults,

where

it

signified

token

of

recognition,

ragments

f

pottery

hat

would

fit

together

o

reconstitute

whole.

Here

is Bloom's definition

f

tessera,

r

antithetical

ompletion:

A

poet

antithetically

completes'

is

precursor,

y

so

reading

he

parent-poem

s to

retaints

erms,

ut o

mean

hem

n

another

ense,

as

if

the

precursor

has failed

to

go

far

enough....

In the

tessera,

he

later oetprovides hathis maginationellshimwould ompletehe

otherwise

truncated'

recursor

oem

and

poet....

the tessera

epre-

sents

ny

ater

poet's

attempt

o

persuade

imself

and

us)

that

he

precursor's

Word

would

be worn

out

if

not

redeemed

s

a

newly

fulfilled

nd

enlarged

Word

f he

phebe.87

Brahms's

quotation

from he

Berceuse

does

not

signal

homage;

rather

t

is a

tessera,

n

antithetical

ompletion

hat

aims

to convert he

Berceuse

into

a

commentary

n the

Romanze.

Brahms

retains

his

precursor's

erms,

butuses them n a differentense.Not onlydoes Brahms nlargeChopin's

motive,

s we

saw,

to cover

the entire

heme,

he

also

extends

t to

overlap

with the

first

ariation.

As d2

completes

the

large

motive n

b.21,

a2,

the

primary

ote,

comes

in above

it,

beginning

he first

ariation

nd with

t

a

new statement

f the motive.

Example

11 shows

this n

detail,

while

Fig.

1

clarifies

he

process

schematically.)

hus Brahms

uses

Chopin's

motive

o

26

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

linktheme

and

variation

n a

very

ntimate

way,

as ifhis

precursor

ad

not

gonefar nough.

Fig.

1

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

motivic

inkage echnique

Theme Var.

1

Var. 2

I

I

I

I I

A-

F#-E-D

A-F#-E-D

(etc.)

A

-F#-E-D

Brahms wants (consciouslyor unconsciously)to persuade us (and

himself)

that

his

discourse

is

more

whole,

more

complete,

than

the

'truncated' discourse of his

precursor.

To

do

this,

he

emphasizes

the

correspondence

f

part

and whole: his

motive s a

microcosm or

he

entire

theme;

since

variations,

s

Schoenberg

aid,

are

primarily

epetitions,88

he

theme

is

a

microcosm for

the whole

variation et.

Our

analysis

of

the

Berceuse

n Ex.

10

revealed similar

mphasis

n

part/whole

elationships.

The

ostinato

prefigures

he

F-Gb

neighbouring

motion on

which

the

Berceuse

theme is

built. This

rapport

of

structural

evels is

part

of

Chopin's attempt o imposehimself n tradition,ypersuading s that he

Berceuse is

more

whole,

more

organic

n

its solution

to

the

problems

of

variation

orm,

han

the

variations f his

precursors.

hus

Chopin's piece

is

itself n

antithetical

ompletion,

nd

Brahms's

piece

is

a tessera

f a

tessera.

Bloom

linkstessera

o the

trope

of

synecdoche,

efined

y Quintilian

s

'letting

s

understand

he

plural

from

he

singular,

he

whole from

part,

genus

from

the

species,

something

ollowing

rom

omething

receding;

and

vice

versa'.89

ynecdoche

works o

convinceus

that

nfluenceis a

part,

of

which

self-revisionism

nd

self-rebegetting

s

the

whole'.90

he

rapport

of structuralevels thatwe observedcreates a musical analogue forthe

part/whole

elationships

f

synecdoche.

One

might bject

that

Schenker's

analyses

often

reveal

such

a

process

of

hierarchical

reduplication.

Schenker's

system,

owever,

discloses

both

hierarchical

eduplication

nd

its

opposite,

showing

both

the

possibility

f a

rapport

between

evels,

as

when

the

same

motive

ppears

n

both

the

foreground

nd

middleground,

and a

tension

r

contradiction

etween

evels,

s

when a

dissonance

on

one

level

becomes

consonant t

the

next.As

Kenneth

Burkehas

remarked,

the

characteristic

nvitation

o

rhetoric' s

when

identification

nd

division'

re

put ambiguously ogether,o thatyou cannotknow for ertainustwhere

one

ends

and the

other

begins'."9

n

the

infinite

nterplay

between

identification

nd

opposition

of

structural

evels

that

Schenker's

theory

reveals,

see

powerful

possibilities

or

the

construction

f a

system

of

rhetoric,

ven

if

Schenker

seldom

explored

these

implications

of

his

method.92

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

27







KEVIN KORSYN

The relation between

the Berceuse

and

the Romanze extends

far

beyondtheir espective ariation hemes.Brahms'sentiremiddle section srather

losely

modelledon theBerceuse.

According

o Gustav

Jenner,

ho

studied

composition

with

Brahms,

Brahms advocated

the traditional

pedagogical

use

of

models,

encouraging

Jenner

o

study

movements

by

Mozart and

Beethoven,

nalysing

hem

n

minute

detail,

nd

to

recompose

them,

following

heir

proportions

nd modulations

while

inventing

ew

themes.93

ut

why

would a mature

omposer

ike

Brahms

resort o

models?

One

can

readily

ee

why

he would recommend

his

approach

to

a relative

beginner

ike

Jenner,

r

why

he

might

have

done

so

himself s

a

young

man,

but

why

would

he continue his

method

during

is ast decade?

Bloom can helpus here.According o Bloom,a poembecomescanonic

by

misreading

and

overcoming

other

strong

poems,

and

'builds

the

canonical

ambition,

process,

and

agon

directly

nto its

own

text'.94

Modelling

oneself

on another

piece

could

be

a

way

of

internalizing

he

canonic

ambition,

entering

the precursor's

work]

from

within,

writing

n

a

way

that

revises,

displaces,

and

recasts

the

precursor'.95

Unlike

the

pedagogical

use

of

models,

this

modelling-as-misreading

ims

at

subversion

and

distortion

rather

than emulation.

It is a

question

of

usurping

he

precursor's

uthority

ather

han

yielding

o

it.

Let us trace thismodellingprocess. Chopin's piece exemplifieswhat

Wagner

called

endlose

Melodie.

Endless

melody,

however,

does not

entail

amorphousness;

espite

ghostlier

emarcations

etween

phrases,

Chopin's

variations

ever

ose

their

ntegrity;

here

s

an

articulated

ontinuity.

s

my

analysis

n Ex. 10

confirms,

he

Berceuse

theme

prolongs

a

large

neigh-

bouring

motion

2

g

2.

Thus

whilethe

theme s

a

four-bar

nit,

he need

to

resolve

the

neighbour

note

GC

back

to F creates

a tension

hat

transcends

the

theme,

fostering

ontinuity;

ach

new variation

s also

the

completion

of

the

neighbour

motion

F-G-F:

Fig. 2 Chopin,Berceuse,Op. 57, neighbour-noteinkage

Theme

Var.

1

Var.

2

I

I

(etc.)

F G, F

G,

F

G

(etc.)

I

1

I

I

This articulated ontinuity as also a Brahmsian deal; once he praised

one

of

Bach's

suite

movements,

for

example,

as 'a

single

melody,

wonderfully

rticulated'.

Chopin's

endless

melody,

then,

may

have

been

another

reason

why

Brahms

admired

(and

envied)

the Berceuse.

Since

Brahms's

theme

s

modelled

on

Chopin's

he can

also achieve

a

continuous

melodic

unfolding.

rahms

lso uses

a

large

neighbour

motion,

xcept

hat

28

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

991







TOWARDS

A

NEW


it

is

a lower

neighbour:

A-G

-A.

As

my graph

n Ex. 11

shows,however,

Brahms's

expansion

of the

A-F?-E-D

motive

also

provides

another

ink

between each

phrase,

incethe

beginning

f each variation

imultaneously

completes

the

motive and

begins

it

again.

Thus Brahms's

antithetical

completion

of the Berceuse

theme

approaches

endless

melody by

two

different

outes,

oth the

neighbour

motion nd

the

motivic

xpansion:

Fig.

3

Brahms,Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

neighbour-noteinkage

Theme

Var.

1

Var.

2

A

I

I I

I

I

A G

A

G

A

G#

(etc.)

II

Chopin's

theme

has

a tenuous

dentity:

ince

it

lacks both

melodic and

harmonic

losure,

ts

ntegrity

s a

theme s

ambiguous.

How

can

Chopin

establish he

momentum

hat

Tovey

considered

haracteristic

f

variation

sets

-

the

momentum

chieved

by

the

repetition

f the

whole

period

of

the

theme?

Witha

theme

whose

dentity

s

as

fragile

s

that

of

the

Berceuse,

he

cannotrisk

ntroducing

laboratemelodicdiminutionsnhisfirst

ariation;

without

losure to

signal

the end

of the

theme,

we

might

not

realize

that

the

variation

process

has

already

started.

nstead,

his first

variation s

almost a

straightforward

epetition

f the

melody.

Of

course,

variation ets

tend

to

be

unadventurous n

their

nitial

variation,

but

Chopin's

first

variation

s

hardly

variation t

all. He

adds an

inner

voice

beneath

his

melody,

but the

melody

remains

almost

intact. This

confirms

he

dentity

of

the

theme

hrough epetition,

nd

establishes

the

momentum

of

the

variation

set,

ensuring

hat we will

hear

each

variation

n

a

bar-to-bar

correspondencewith hetheme.

Brahms

follows

Chopin

in

this

respect.

His

first

ariation

bs

21-4)

is

virtually

repetition

f bs

17-20;

the

real

process

of

adding

melodic

diminutions

egins

with

he

second

variation

bs

25-8).

This

repetition

as

seduced

at

least

one critic

nto

believing

Brahms's

theme

to

have

eight

measures.

Constantin

Floros wrote

that

the

theme

is

eight

bars

long,

followed

by

two

variations

f

eight

and

twelvebars

respectively.96

loros

would

have

been

suspicious

of

his

conclusions

had

he

remembered

Brahms's

deprecation

f

fantasia

ariations'."

Brahms's

variations

end

to

be

strict, ollowing

he

theme

n

a

bar-to-bar

elationship. loros shouldhave seen that

repetition,

s

Tovey

showed,

can establish he

momentum

of

a

variation

set."8

Even if

Floros

failed

to

realize

that lack

of

closure

compelled

Brahms's

repetition,

e

should

have

recognized

hat

he

changes

in

diminution

n

bs

25, 29,

33

and 37

indicate

that

these are

new

variations.

Only

Floros,

among

all

the

commentaries

have

read,

makes

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

29







KEVIN

KORSYN

thismistake.

Brahms's

modelling

does not extendto the same numberof variations.

The Berceusehas twelvevariations,he Romanze

only

five.One reason s

that

Brahms

s

writing

middle

section,

not

an

autonomous

piece,

so the

proportions

re

different.99

erhaps

another eason

s

that

Chopin's simple

tonic

and dominant

harmonies

ear more

repetition

han

the more unusual

VVN

that

Brahms

uses

in

every

ourth

ar. Both

Brahms nd

Chopin

tend

towards

increasing

rhythmic

nd melodic elaboration.

Since

this is

a

tendency

n

many

variation

ets, however,

t is not

necessarily

resultof

Brahms's

modelling

rocess.

Brahms's

coda

to his middle

section echoes

Chopin's.

Chopin's

coda

embellishes an underlying

1-

-6?4-8

motion over a pedal point, with the

harmonies

V'/IV-IV-V7-I.

This,

as Schenker

observed,

xpands

the

neighbourfigure

F-G?F

on a

very

arge

scale,

producing

a

wonderful

composed-out

ritardando

ppropriate

or a

coda,

since we

now

hear two

eight-bar

nits,

in contrast o

the four-bar

hrases

of the

variations.'00

Brahms

lso

concludes

his

middle

sectionwith

-

7

-

--8

over

a

tonic

pedal

point

with

the

harmonies

V7/IV-IV-V7-I.

Because

of

the

different

proportions

f

Brahms's

modelling,

is

coda

is

only

five

bars

long,

versus

Chopin's

sixteenbars.

Note that

Brahms's

overlaps

his last variation

by

one

bar,

since

b.40 simultaneously

oncludes

the

fifth ariation

and

initiates he coda.

(I

would

classify

s 45-7 as a transition ack to the

reprise,

ather

han

as

part

of the coda

to the

middle

section.)

See

Exs

12

and

13.)

This

V'/IV-IV-V7-I

progression

ver

a tonic

pedal

is a common

Baroque

idiom,

especially

for

beginning

or

ending

a

piece.

Many

Bach

preludes,

for

xample,

begin

or

end this

way

(Well-Tempered

lavier,

Book

I,

Prelude

I

ending,

Prelude

VII

beginning;

Book

II,

Prelude

beginning,

etc.).

It

is

possible,

therefore,

hat

Chopin

is

invoking

n earlier

practice,

and

his

ability

o

absorb

Baroque

influence

without

tylistic

egression

r

pastiche

may

have been

a source

of

Brahms's

nterest

n the Berceuse.

V

Now

consider

another

composition

hat

also wrestleswith

the

Berceuse:

the

last

piece

in

Max

Reger's

Trdume

m

Kamin,

Op.

143. Like

Chopin,

Reger

uses

a one-bar

ostinato

figure

hroughout.

n

metre,

harmony

nd

spacing,

Reger's

ostinato

hardly

differs

rom

Chopin's.

Even

Reger's

performance

irections

approximate

Chopin's:

Reger

indicates

p'

and

'espressivo

ma

dolce',

while

Chopin

writes

dolce'

and

'p';

both

place

a

legato

slur over each bar of their

respective

stinati.When

Reger

begins

with

his

unaccompanied

ostinato,

followed

by

an

increasingly

florid

melody

that

begins

on

3,

the association

with

the

Berceuse

is

difficult

o

resist

(Ex.

14). Many

later

details

also

belong

to the

realm

of

conspicuous

allusion.

Compare,

for

example,

the

rapidly

descending

trills,

culminating

30

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW

POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

Ex. 12

Chopin,

Berceuse,

Op.

57,

bs

55-70,

voice-leading

nalysis

3

iN)

A

S

7 6 7

8

-

b7

6

3 4

I

i---"----

--"--

"

t

I

---

A38

I

8

3

VI

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

31







KEVIN

KORSYN

Ex.

13

Brahms,Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs

40-4,

voice-leading

nalysis

(=g(

(3

-

prg)

s5 5

s)-----117--~-----------

-- 7 ---

(8) 7 6 7 8

3

4

3

Ex. 14

Reger,

Trdume

m

Kamin,

Op.

143,

No.

12,

bs

1-6

Larghetto

s.6o)

(Studie)

espressivo,

ma

dolce

p

pp

F-3

32

MusIc ANALYSIS

10:

1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

in

scales,

n

Reger's

bs

22

and

28

(Ex.

15)

with

Chopin's

similar

assage

at

b.43 (Ex. 16). Reger's coda, beginningwith C? in b.29, echoes the

analogous

moment

in

Chopin's

piece.

Note the identical

spacing

and

register

f

the final chord

in

both works.

Like Brahms

n

the

Romanze,

Reger

builds

his

canonic ambition

irectly

nto

his

piece,

placing

himself

n

direct

ompetition

with

Chopin.

Ex. 15

Reger,

Trdume m

Kamin,

Op.

143,

No.

12,

bs

24-9

dolcissirno

pp

-

-.-,

__

Ef Ft

dolcirsimo

espressiv

26

,

PP c

_t _) C RP

----

C- ~

dolci~simo

L

-

- -

dolclisimo

28

d

lijespressivo

pp

7D

ppmtooto

7-____IEEE______

IL

Ex.

16

Chopin,

Berceuse,

Op.

57,

bs

43-4

--------

-------

--

i

"i

4

6

#o,,kt

i- tro

leggieriss_

"

e

'.

.

..

-

:

"...

s.

.

-

I

.

..

.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

33







KEVIN KORSYN

This

juxtaposition

f

Chopin,

Brahms and

Reger

poses

some

of the

central aradoxesof ntertextuality.oth Brahmsand Reger clearlynvoke

a

strong recursor,

nternalizing

heir anonic ambitions. et while

Brahms

imposes

himself n the

canon,

I

suspect

most listeners

would

agree

that

Reger

does

not.

Brahms is

strong

here,

Reger

weak.

How does Brahms

become

original,

emaining

wholly

himself,

while

echoing

the Berceuse?

And

why

does

Reger, despite

the

undeniable charm

of his

piece,

fail to

wrest

meaning

f his

own?

These

questions

re

difficult,

ut

we

mustnot

evade

them,

because their

olution

will ead to a subtler

understanding

f

musical

nfluence

hanwe

have

yet

had.

Here

Bloom's

theory

an

provide

critical

touchstones

for

explaining

canon-formation.is insightnto themisprisionftheprecursorshrough

the

revisionary

atios

gives

us a measure

for

stimating

uccess

or failure

n

attaining

reative

trength.

his

is not to

deny

that

othershave

anticipated

Bloom's

approach;

many

critics ave

suggested

hatone work

of art

can be

an

interpretation

r

critique

f

another.

But Bloom's

imaginative

mapping

of these

revisionary

ovements

s unmatched.

We can

invoke

Bloom's

first

revisionary

atio,

clinamen,

o

explain

Brahms's

overcoming

f

the

Berceuse.

This

term

comes

from

Lucretius,

where

t describes

he swerve

of the atoms

that

makes

change possible

in

the universe.Clinamen s the poet's initial swervefromthe precursor;

Bloom

associates

this ratio

with

the

trope

of

irony

and the

Freudian

defence

f reaction-formation.

gain

quote

Louis

B.

Renza's

summary:

'Clinamen'

onstitutes

he

poet's

'reaction-formation'

gainst

and

misprision

f

the

precursor's

ext

hrough

he

trope

of

irony.

he

ephebe

writer

werves rom nd

attempts

o avoid

the earlier

ext's

'intolerable

resence'

by

exposing

ts

relatively

aive

visionary

limitations.

e fastens

n

the

text's

nability

o

comprehend

he

negation

f its

own

expressed

ision,

negation

which

his work

includesust s if tweremplicitlythere'nthe arlier

ork.0"'

How

can

we

usurp

this

ironizing

clinamen

for

music?

Can

music

metaphorically

xemplify

rony?

rony

is to

say

one

thing

and

mean

another;

t

nvolves

conflict

n

levels,

disparity

etween

urface

meaning

and

deeper

intention.

n

music,

we

have

a

theoretical

model

thathas

the

potential

o

reproduce

he

structure

f

rony,

lthough

doubt

anyone

has

so

read

it: Schenker's

theory

f structural

evels.

n a Schenkerian

oice-

leading

hierarchy,

issonance at

one level

can become

consonant

at

the

next;a passingnote,forexample,can be composed-out t the next evel,

becoming

a

local

consonance.

A

passage

can,

in

effect,

ay

one

thing

('consonance')

and mean

another

'dissonance').

We

are

seldom

aware

of

this

conflict

n

levels,

but

a

composer

can

exploit

this

mplicit

rony.'102

That is

what

Brahms

does

with the

Berceuse

reminiscence:

he ironizes

it,

by

framing

his D

major

variation

set between

two

F

major

sections

and

34

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW POETICS

OF MUSICAL INFLUENCE

thus

embedding

it within

a

larger

narrative.

Imagine

how

different

Brahms's

middle

section would

sound as an autonomous

movement

n D

major: suppose

it

began

in b.17 and substituted

perfect

adence in D

major,

perhaps

modelled

on

thatof

the

Berceuse,

for

he

transition ack

to

F

major

that starts n

b.45.)

The

framing

ction

is

Brahms's

ironizing

clinamen,

is

nitial werve rom

he

Berceuse.

This

subverts

Chopin's

whole

conception.

The

Berceuse has an

extra-

ordinary

diatonic

stability;

ts

harmonies are the

simplest

tonics

and

dominants,

with the

subdominant

appearing

only

in

the

coda;

its

chromaticism

s

entirely

ocal,

since

the ostinato

figure

larifies he

tonal

function

f

all the

melodic

figures.'01

Brahmsundermines hisstability. is middle section s locallystable,

but

globally

unstable,

because

F

major

is

the

ultimate

onic. f

irony

s

to

say

one

thing

and

mean

another,

Brahms

ironizes

the Berceuse as

he

invokes

it: his

middle section

says

'tonal

stability'

but means

'tonal

instability'.

voice-leading

raph

shows

this

conflict n

levels

between

he

D

major

foreground

f bs

17ff.

nd

its function

s

VI

in

a

larger

ontext

(see

Ex.

17).

My

own

swervefrom

Bloom is

to

identify

linamen

ot

merely

with

a

poem's

opening figurations,

s Bloom

usually

does,

but

to consider

the

entire

framing

ction

as the

initial

swervefrom

he

precursor.

his

is

a

necessary

revisionof Bloom because of the differences etween the

temporality

f

poems

and

thatof

compositions.

Although

oth

poems

and

compositions

re

what Bloom

calls

'fictions f

duration',

each

medium

tends

to

structure

ts

fictive ime

rather

ifferently.

n

particular,

he

arge-

scale

repetitions

n

music

have few

parallels

n

poetry,

espite

the

use

of

short

efrainsn

manypoems.

How

does

Brahms

make

us

aware of

the

simultaneous

onal

stability

and

instability?

ow

does he

make us

hear

the

conflict n

levels?

His

irony

involves

much

more than

the

traditional

xpectation

hat

piece

will

begin

and end in thesamekey.He also buildsthatexpectation irectlyntothe

piece.

Consider

how

Brahms

prepares

he

tonality

f his

middle

section.

The

Grundgestalt

resented

n

the

opening phrase

already

foreshadows

what

Schoenberg

would

call a

'problem',

that

s,

the

way

in

which

conflicting

forces

will

jeopardize

the

primacy

f

the

tonic.

Patricia

Carpenter

urged

thatthe

basic

shape

in

general

s

'neither

melody

nor

harmony

or

rhythm,

but a

concrete

entity

onsisting

of all

three'.'04

Melody,

harmony

and

rhythm

ll

conspire

here

to

emphasize

he D

minor

riad.As we

have

seen,

the

melodic

aspect

of the

Grundgestaltontainstwo interlockingorms fthe motive borrowed from the Berceuse.

One

form

of the

motive

arpeggiates

an F

major triad,

while

the other

arpeggiates

a D

minor

triad

(Ex.

18). Meanwhile,

the

firstD

minor

harmony appears

in

b.

1;

in

b.

3

the D minor

triad

receives

more

durational stress

Ex.

19).

The

second

phrase

begins

to realize

the

implications

of the

basic

shape.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991

35







KEVIN

KORSYN

Ex.

17

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

voice-leading nalysis

5--5

A

I

VI

V I V I vI v/Ill III

(=3;

_

(cover ones)

10-5,10 5,

10--5,10

--5, 10-5,10 5,

10

5,

B

.

--.--d

min:

V I V/V

V

I

(VI

IV

I)

VI V

I

III

V I

(VI

IV

I)

Al

5

-

5

A

10

-5,

10-5,

10

5,

10

-5,

10

5, 10-5,

10

10-10-10

(8-8-8 )

B

dmin:

VI IV

V I

III

V

I

(VI

IV

I)

VI

V I IIIV I VI

IV

36

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

Ex.

17

cont.

N

A

F: VI

(arp.)

S6

5

6 5

4

(The

variations

4

4--

3 2

reproduce

his

voice

eading)

D: I

B

A

H---

F: VI

V

4

(3rd

prog.)

N

N

(coda (transition)

B

to

B)

7

----6

--

#7

8

3

-

--4

3

6

D:

I

F:V

4

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

37







KEVIN

KORSYN

Ex.

17

cont.

3

2

1

A

I

V

I

2?(4-prg.)

(5

05

0-50

reprise

s

-4)8-51

(inrer voice

5-prg.)

reprise

=

bs

1-4)

(coda)

A2

. ...2-3 187

8

7I IV

I

VI

IV II

V

I

IV I

Ex. 18

Brahms,Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

Grundgestaltmelodic

aspect)

95

U

The first hromaticnote

in

the

piece

is

C#

n

b.6,

the

leading

note to D.

The

prevailing

iatonicism f

the

contextmakes thischromatic ote

all

the

more

conspicuous,

nd

it

ntroduces he

first

onicization

f

D

minor

n

the

piece.

This

growing

mphasis

on

D

minor

prepares

the middle

section,

with ts

tonicization f

D

major;

at

the same

time,

however,

he absence of

F#

n the first

ixteen

bars

allows

D

major

to enter

with a

wonderful

freshness. he hemiolasevery ourth ar (bs 4, 8, 12 and 16) prepare he

duple

metre

(()

of

the

middle

part

see

Ex.

20).

But

notice

what

happens

to

this

tonicization

f D

minor. When

we

reach its dominant

n

b.8,

Brahms

owersthe

leading

note from

C4

to

C?,

changing

he A

major

triadto

an A

minor

riadand

returning

o

F

major.

38

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW POETICS OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

Ex. 19

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs

1-4

Andante

sI re is

f

L

Sf

27V

-

sp

ess

v

.--

-

,

F

F

r

Ex. 20 Brahms,Romanze,Op. 118,No. 5, bs 5-8

ri

J

- 0 1

w

p.

Itt.

-

- -

--"

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

39







KEVIN

KORSYN

When

the second tonicization f D minor

rrives

n

bs 14-16 we are

subtly

conditioned ythe events fb.8 to regard hefollowingection nD majoras

something

hat cannot

last;

just

as b.8 melted back intoF

major,

we

expect

the music

following

.16

will

eventually

o the same.

In

this

way,

Brahms makes us hear the dual function f the middle section as

locally

stable

foreground ey

nd

globally

nstable

VI

in

F

major.

Without

similar

raming

ction,

Chopin's

structuring

f our

temporal

experience

n

the Berceuse

yields

to a

quite

different

xperience

f time's

passing.

f we reflect n that

difference,

e

may capture

omething

f the

uniqueness

of each

composition.

Here

I must

nsert

digression

n the

role

of

temporality

n

music,

with

thepromisethat tsrelevance o the Berceuse and the Romanze willsoon

become evident.

Every

mood or state

of

consciousness,

as

Heidegger

observed,'o5

has

a

particular

emporal

tructure,

characteristic

mode of

organizing

ur

experience

f time. Music also

structures ur

experience

f

time,

and

can do

so

in

various

ways.

Time, therefore,

an

become the

'third

thing'

(to

use a

Kantian

term)

that

mediates between

musical

structure nd

statesof

consciousness,

much

as Kant's

transcendental

ime-

determinations

mediate between

the

categories

and

the

appearances.

Music can

metaphorically

xemplify106

oods

by paralleling

heir

emporal

structure.n thistheory,music neitherdirectly epresents eeling, or is

music

totally

abstract

and

devoid of

emotion;

rather,

expression

is

mediated

hrough

emporality,

s shown

n the

following

chematic:

Fig.

4

musical

structure

states

of consciousness

common

temporal

tructure

David

B.

Greene,

in his

books

Temporal

rocesses

n Beethoven's

Music

and

Mahler,

Consciousness

nd

Temporality,

as

perhaps

the first o

pursue

such

an

analysis

f

temporality

n

music,

arguing

hatmusic creates

aural

imagesof

time'.'o'

If he was notuniformlyonvincing,t was throughack

of

rigorous

methods

for he

analysis

f musical

structure.'10

e can

extend

Greene's

provocative

pproach

by

investigating

he

temporal

mplications

of our theoretical

ystems.

Although

the

completion

of such

a

project

exceeds

the

scope

of

this

paper,

et us

explore

he

temporal

tructure

f

the

Berceuse.

40

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS OF

MUSICAL INFLUENCE

The

rhythm

f

Chopin's

ostinato

is what

Eugene

Narmour

calls

'cumulative',

since the

figure

ends with

a slower

rhythm.

Narmour

maintainsthat each musical

parameter

carries with it its own internal

means

of

closure'.109

ere the cumulative

rhythm

nduces

closure

by

moving

from

relatively

horter o

a

longer

duration.

The harmonic

nd

rhythmicparameters

here,

however,

are

noncongruent,

because

the

dominant-seventh

armony

n the ostinato

createsharmonic

nonclosure.

Invoking

Greene's

concepts,

we could

say

that

the

harmony

s

future-

oriented,

ecause

the

dominant eventh

oints

head to its resolution.

he

rhythmic

arameter,

owever,

s

past-oriented,

ecause closure nduces

a

retrospective ecognition

hat a

pattern

has been

completed.

This tension

betweenrhythmiclosure and harmonicnonclosuregivesthe ostinato a

unique

temporal

structure:

memory

and

anticipation,

nteriority

nd

futurity,

re

in

equilibrium see

Ex.

21).

Ex.

21

Chopin,

Berceuse,

Op.

57,

analysis

f

ostinato

igure

Andante

Parameters:

rhythm

harmony

past-oriented future-oriented

cumulative

closed)

(open)

i

V7

Meanwhile

the

constant

repetition

f

the

ostinato

makes

the

temporal

structure

more

complex.

The

pattern

s

one

bar

long,

and

we

perceive

he

tonic

harmony

n

each

downbeat as

the

beginning

f the

pattern.

As

we

have seen, however,the voice leading of the ostinato reiterates he

neighbour

motion

F-Gt-F.

Since

the

tonic

harmony

s

the

resolution

f

the

neighbour

ote

G6,

each

downbeat

imultaneously

ecomes

the

completion

of

the

neighbour

motion

and thus an

ending see

Ex.

22).

Each

beginning

is

future-oriented,

ince

we

anticipate

he

completion

of

the

pattern;yet

since each

beginning

s

also an

ending,

t is

also

past-oriented,

ecause

we

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

41







KEVIN

KORSYN

Ex. 22

Chopin,

Berceuse,

Op.

57,

analysis

f

ostinato

igure

1

I

I

F

G6

F

G6

F

beginning ending

beginning

ending

beginning

ending

ending

(etc.)

recall the

pattern

hat s

reaching

losure.

This

dual

interpretation

f

the

pattern xtends o the variations s well,because, as we have seen,as each

variation

begins,

t

simultaneously

ompletes

the

large

neighbour

motion

F-G?-F.

Once

again

the

Berceuse balances

memory

nd

anticipation.

This

equilibrium

etween

past

and future ocuses

our awareness

on an

intensified

resent.

What

state

of consciousness

does

this

temporality

evoke?

To live

wholly

n the

present

would

be to have

an

undivided

consciousness.

Memory

and

anticipation

onstantly

ivide

our

attention,

destroying

he

mmediacy

f

the moment.

The Berceuse

refreshes

ur

lives

by

granting

s the

temporal

xperience

of a unified

onsciousness.

f,

as

Kierkegaard

said,

'the

present

s the

true

eternity',

here

is

something

infiniten this uminousmelody.

The title

of the

piece,

which

means

'cradle-song'

or

'lullaby',

s thus

quite

suggestive,

ot for

any

literal

mages

of

rocking

radles,

but

for

ts

associations

with

childhood.

Childhood

is

the time of

undivided

consciousness,

nd

a

frequent

heme of

Romantic

iterature

s

what Hart

Crane

called

'an

improved

nfancy',

return

o

innocence,

a

recovery

f

origins,

ut

on a

higher

evel.

To

this

temporal

theory

et

me add another

theory

of

expression,

derived

from

Bloom.

As we have

seen,

Bloom

insists

that

poetry

is

mediatedexpression:

There

s,

despite

much

ontemporary

riticism,

referential

spect

o

a

poem,

which

eeps

t

from

oming

nto

eing nly

s a

text,

rrather

keeps

text

rom

eing

merely

text. ut

this

eferential

spect

s both

masked

and

mediated,

nd

the

agent

of concealment

nd

of

42

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS

OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

relationship

s

always

nother

oem.110

Textsdon't

have

meanings,

xcept

n

their elationso

other

exts,

o

that

here s

somethingneasily

ialectical

bout

iterary

eaning.

single

ext

has

only

part

f a

meaning;

t is itself

synecdoche

or

larger

hole

ncluding

ther exts. text

s a

relational

vent,

nd not

a

substance

o be

analyzed.

ut

of

course,

o are

we

relational

vents

or

dialectical

ntities,

atherhan

ree-standing

nits."111

Whatever esistance his

provokes

s

literary

riticism,

suggest

hat t

s

very

ttractives an

account of musical

expression.

oems,

we

want

to

say,

are about life, bout thepoet's relationshipo theworld;sincewordscan

refer

o

objects

n

the

world,

we will

not

easily

urrender ur belief

hat he

poet's

relationship

o life

s

direct,

mmediate.

n

music,

however,

where

notes do not

name

particular hings

or

feelings, xpression

nd

meaning

become

notoriously

roblematic.

ven in

the

case of

programme

music,

t

is

difficulto

bridge

he

gap

between

the

vagueness

of

programmatic

itles

and the

intricate

xactitude of

a

composition.

f

musical

expression

s

mediated

through

he

compositions

f one's

precursors,

e

can find

way

to

locate musical

meaning

as

arising

from

relationships

mong

com-

positions, n a stance towards a precursor'spiece. We can avoid the

reductiveness f

translating

music

into words

by

finding

new

locus for

musical

meaning:

n

intertextual

pace.

If

this

intertextual

heory

f

musical

expression

s

combined

with

the

temporal

theory

discussed

earlier,

we

may

understand

what

Brahms

communicates

n

the

Romanze.

Whatever

Brahms

expresses

here,

it is

mediated

through

is

experience

f the

Berceuse.

f

the

Berceuse

evokes a

stateof

undivided

onsciousness,

f

t

contains he

promise

f an

improved

infancy',

hen

what I

have

called

Brahms's

'ironizing'

of

the

Berceuse

suggests

hat a return

o

innocence is

irretrievable.

t

assumes

more the

characterof a memorythan of an immediatepresence.The historical

reference o

Chopin

is

consubstantialwith

Brahms's

expressive

ntent:he

evokes a

recollection

f

personal

originsby

recalling

strongprecursor

whose

influence

was a

crucial

artistic

rigin. The

preclassical

llusionswe

have

noted

in

both

pieces

may

further

nhance a

sense of a

return

o

origins.)

Brahms's

ronizing

f the

Berceuse

suggests,

think,

dualism,

n

acknowledgement

hat

a

return

o

origins

annot be

achieved.

As

Paul

de

Man

observed,

rony

lways

nvolves

splitting

f the

self:

The nature fthisduplications essential or n understandingf

irony.

t is

a

relationship,

ithin

onsciousness,

etween

wo

selves,

yet

it is not an

intersubjective

elationship

...

the two

selves,

the

empirical

s

well as

the

ironic,

re

simultaneously

resent,

uxtaposed

within the same

moment

but as two

irreconcilable

nd

disjointed

beings

....

In

this

respect,

rony

omes closer

to the

pattern

f

factual

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991

43







KEVIN KORSYN

experience

nd

recaptures

ome of the factitiousness

f human

existence

s

a

succession

f solatedmoments

ived

y

divided elf.112

Thus

Brahms

'exposes

the

relatively

aive

visionary

imitations'

as

Renza

put

it)

of the

Berceuse;

n

ironizing

t,

he shows

or aspires

o

show)

that

Chopin

'could

not

comprehend

he

negation

of his own

vision'.

We

can

now

better

understandwhat

I

previously

alled

Brahms's

tessera,

is

antithetical

ompletion

f the

Berceuse,

but must

quote

Renza

again:

'Tessera'

llows he

ephebe

o

go beyond

his

precursor's

truncated'

because

overidealized

ision

s disclosed

y

his

nitial

se ofclinamen.

In a 'restitutingovement,'eproceedsorecoverhe ranscendental

implications

fthe arlier ext's

ision

hatwere

hwarted

y

tselided

negation,

ts

lack

of

irony,

ts inauthentic

dealization,

o that

this

vision

now becomes

a

'part'

of his work.

His

work,

hat

s,

here

becomes

a

'whole'

version

r 'belated

completion'

f the

earlier

work.

3

Having

ironized

he Berceuse

reminiscence

with

his

clinamen,

rahms

can

then

offer

is

middle

section

as

a

restituting

ovement,

s

if to

present

both

the

negation

of

Chopin's

vision

and

the vision

tself.

One

might aythatthemiddlesection nand

for tself

s theantithetical

ompletion

fthe

Berceuse,

while

the

middle section

as framed

nd ironized

by

its

tonal

context

s the

clinamen

f

the

Berceuse.

All this

is

part

of the

way

that

Brahms

revises

his

precursor,

ecomes

original

n

subverting

he

Berceuse

and

imposes

himself

n the

canon.

Our

hearing

of the Berceuse

changes,

and

that

s the

measure

of

his

strength.

This

is

not to

say

that

the

Berceuse

s

'really'

naive

or overidealized.

o

open

a

space

for

himself,

rahms

must

misread

his

precursor;

hence

the

precursor

s

partly

maginary,

artly

antasized.

ince

the Berceuse

invites

so many nterpretations,tengenders ther trong ompositions,ncluding

the

Romanze,

and

proves

ts

own

strength.

Our

analysis

has

not

reduced

Brahms

and

Chopin

to

a

common

meaning.

On the

contrary,

e have

shown

how

Brahms

attains

meaning

of

his

own,

a

meaning

antithetical

o

the

Berceuse.

Yet

Brahms's

uniqueness

can

best

be

revealed

by opposition

to

Chopin,

who

is

the

otherness

rahms

confronts.

A difficult

uestion

remains,

nd

I

have

suppressed

t

until

now:

How

does

Brahms's

text

manifest

psychic

defences

in

resisting

Chopin's

influence?

Here

we

enter

controversial

ealms.

Few

precedents

an

guideus in

creating

a

psychoanalytical

musical criticism.

Psychoanalytically-

oriented

biographies

f

composers

have

certainly

een

written,

ut

these

concern

personalities,

not

compositions.

The reductive

nterpretations

produced

by

so-called

Freudian

literary

riticism

ffer

s

poor

models.

PeterBrooks

diagnosed

the

problems

hat fflict

uch

criticism:

44

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS

OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

The first

roblem,

nd the most

basic,

may

be

that

psychoanalysis

n

literary tudy

has over and

over

again

mistaken

he

object

of

analysis,

withthe result hat whatever

nsight

t has

produced

tells

us

precious

little about the structure

nd

rhetoric

f

literary

exts. Traditional

psychoanalytical

riticism ends to

fall

into three

general

categories,

depending

on

the

object

of

analysis:

the

author,

the

reader,

or

the

fictive

ersons

of the

text."114

Bloom, however,

avoids

these

problems

by treating

the text

tself

s the

object

of

analysis,

discussing

'texts

as

if

they

were

psyches'."115

e

does

not

offer

eductive

readings

that treat texts as

symptoms

of

neurotic conflicts

n

the author's personal life. His concern is with how textsrepressothertexts:

When

I

speak

of

repression,

n

a

text,

do

not

mean

the accumulation

or

aggregation

f an

unconscious.

I

mean

that

I

can

observe and

frequentlydentify atterns

f

orgetting

n a

poem,

and that

these tend

to be

rathermore

important

han the

poem's

allusions,

even when

those allusions

are

patterned.

What makes a

poem

strongest

s

how

t

excludes

what

is

almost

present

n

it,

or

nearest to

the

presence

n

it.... the

critic

discoverswhat

t

is

thatthe

poem

represses

n

order

o

have

persuaded

us of

the illusion of

its own closure.That what s, in

the

first

lace,

necessarily

nother

oem.116

Since

repression

involves

processes

as

basic as

forgetting

and

remembering,

we

can

transfer

Bloom's

concept

of

textual

repression

to

music

without

reducing

music

to

words,

by

seeking

patterns

of

forgetting

in

compositions.

What

impresses

me

here with

Bloom's

theory

is

the

paradox

that

concepts

imported

from

literary

criticism

can

enable

us to

preserve

the

integrity

of

music:

rather than

introducing

extramusical

elements,

we are

investigating

the

psychic

life

of

tones,

that

is,

how

compositions repress other compositions. Here I am tempted to parody

Bloom

himself,

by

avowing

that

Bloom

thought

he

was

theorizing

about

poetry,

but was

really

unconsciously

theorizing

about

music.

Nevertheless

the

reader

may

wish

to

regard

the

following

two

paragraphs

as

speculation.

As

I

mentioned in

Part

II,

Bloom

associates

the

revisionary

ratio

clinamen

with the

trope

of

irony

and

the

Freudian

defence

of

reaction-

formation.

Just

as

a

reaction-formation

opposes

itself o a

repressed

desire

by

manifesting

the

opposite

of the

desire',

a

poem's

clinamen

masks

its

concern

with

a

precursor

text or

texts

by

saying

the

opposite

of

what

it

means:

A

poem begins

because there

s an

absence. An

image

must be

given,

for

beginning,

nd

so

that bsence

ironically

s called a

presence.

Or,

a

poem begins

because

there s

too

strong

presence,

which

needs to

be

imaged

as an

absence,

f

here s

to be

any

maging

t

all."'

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

45







KEVIN

KORSYN

The

repressed

oncern

n

the

Romanze,

as we have

seen,

is the

Berceuse.

In the

opening

of

the

Romanze,

the Berceuse

functionsmore as absence

than as

presence;

the melodic aspect of the Grundgestalts the only

memory-trace

f

the

Berceuse

that s

present

n

the

first ixteen

ars of the

Romanze.

The

origin

of

the

Grundgestalt

ecomes clear

only

nachtrdglich,

only

in

retrospect,

when

the basic

shape

is

transformed,

n the middle

section,

nto an overt

llusion

to the Berceuse.

In this

sense,

the

opening

music could

be

viewed

as

a

reaction-formation,

s

if

the

too-strong

presence

of the Berceuse

must

be

imagined

as an

absence

for Brahms's

piece

to

get

started.

The

repressed

concern

with the

precursor

piece

becomes

evident,

s with o

many

defence-structures,

nly

after

he

event,

onlywhenthe defence reaksdown.

Tesseralsynecdoche

ubsumes

two

defences:

turning gainst

the self

and/or

reversal

nto

the

opposite.

In Brahms's

tessera,

eversal

nto the

opposite

s the active

defence,

a

fantasy

n which

the

situation

f

reality

s

reversed

o

as to sustain

negation

r denial

from

ny

outward verthrow'."'

After

he

reaction-formation

f bs

1-16,

Brahms

reverses

ntothe

opposite,

identifying

iththe

Berceuse

rather han

denying

t,

since the

revisionary

ratio

of tessera

ulfils

nd

completes

he

precursor.

We

began

this section

with

Reger,

and

return o

him now.

To be

sure,

Reger

also

swerves

fromthe

Berceuse.

Captivatedby Chopin's

endless

melody,

he

aspires,

think,

owardseven

greater

ontinuity,

o create a

single,

uninterrupted

melodic

span.

Hence

he

rejects Chopin's

variation

process,

with

its

four-bar

egments.

He failed

to

hear

that

Chopin's

continuity

exists

in a

dialectical

tension with

his four-bar

groups:

continuity

rises

from

overcoming

he sectional

divisions.

Without

this

resistance,

nly

amorphousness

esults.

A

certain

ack of resistance

itiates

Reger's

arabesques;

compared

to

Chopin's,

Reger's

figurations

eem

flaccid,

meandering,

irectionless.

onsequently,

lthough

Reger's

piece

is

not

without

harm,

t

is weak.

While

agree

with

Walter

Frisch

that

Reger

was no mediocreepigone,119ere, at least, he failsto attainsublimity.

According

o

Angus

Fletcher,

he

sublime

aims

to

destroy

he

'slavery

f

pleasure',120

reparing

s for

atisfactions

ore

strenuous.

he

pleasures

of

Reger's

Op.

143

are of

a lesser

order.

Reger's

piece

fails

on its

own

terms;

he

wrestles

nsuccessfully

ith

he

Berceuse,

and

weakly

misreads

and

reduces

Chopin.

There

is

a certain

poignancy

n

Reger's

attempt

o

choose

Chopin

as

his

ancestor,

ut,

unlike

Brahms,

Reger

cannot

affect

ur

hearing

of

the

Berceuse.

Reger

remains,

alas,

a

secondary

man.

VI

We

have

finished

with

Reger,

but not with the

Romanze

and the

Berceuse.

46

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW


Bloom

has six

revisionary

atios,

nd at the risk

of

becoming

n

extremist

in an exercise, wantto use all six tomapBrahms'scomplexmisprisionf

Chopin.

The third

atio s

kenosis,

term

aken

from t

Paul,

who uses it

to

describe Christ's

humbling

of

himself,

is

emptying-out

f

his

divinity.

Kenosis

s

the 'movement

owards

discontinuity

ith

the

precursor',

n

'emptying-out

f

a

prior

ullness f

anguage'.12

Here we see how

radically

Bloom transcends

traditionalnotions of

influence s

continuity,

mitation

r

passive reception.

Kenosis

relates

to

othertexts

ntithetically;

t is a

reaction

gainst

the

precursor,

counter-

movement. We can

locate this

counter-movement

uite exactly,

and,

although

t

eludes the

unimaginative

mind,

t is not an

arbitrary

ode

of

relatingworks.But withthisoppositionbetweentextswe collide withthe

paradox

that

one work is more

absent

than

present

n

the

other.

This

concept

of

absence,

as

I

stressed n

Part

II,

makes

Bloom's

thought

esist

easy

assimilation;

ence

there s a

danger

of

reductively

isreading

loom,

classifying

im

as

merely

nother

traditional

ource critic.

When I

have

given

ectures n

the

anxiety

f

nfluence ver

the

years,

oth n

the

United

States

and

abroad,

segments

f

my

audience have

seemed

to

embracethis

weak

reduction of

Bloom,

so I

once

more warn

against

this

mis-

interpretation.

The revisionary atios, as noted earlier,are both intratextual nd

intertextual.n

kenosis,

or

xample,

the

poet

moves

towards

discontinuity

with

the

precursor,

ut

this

movement

nevitably

roduces

discontinuity

withhis

own

text.

This

intratextual

spect

of

the ratios

calls for

reflection.

Bloom's

theory

maps

not

only

relationships

owards

prior

texts,

but

also

the

poet's

stance

towards

his own

text,

what

Valery

alled

the

nfluence f

a

mind on

itself

nd of

a work

on

its author'.

Paul de

Man

observed

his

wider

mplication

f

Bloom's model:

If

we admit

hat he

erm

influence'

s a

metaphor

hat

dramatizes

linguistictructurento a diachronic arrative,hen t followshat

Bloom's

categories

f

misreading

ot

only

perate

etween

uthors,

but

lso

between

arious

exts f

single

uthor

r,

within

given

ext,

between

ifferent

arts,

ownto

each

particular

hapter,

aragraph,

sentence,

nd,

finally,

own to

the

interplay

etween

iteral

nd

figurative

eaning

ithin

single

word r

grammatical

ign.122

Once

again

we

see

Bloom's

complete

reformulation

f

the

entire

oncept

of

influence. n

my

mapping

of

the

later

ratios,

their

double

function

s

intra- nd intertextualventswillbecomeclear.

There

is

a

certain

rhythm

in

the

succession

of

the

ratios,

as 'each

encounters

its own

limits,

and

so

gives

way

to

the next'.123

his

explains

why

so

many

poems

(though

not

all)

seem to

follow

the

precise

sequence

of

Bloom's

six

tropes.

To

locate

Brahms's

kenosis,

we will

have

to

reconsider his

tessera,

to

ask

why

his

antithetical

'completion'

ultimately

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

47







KEVIN

KORSYN

fails

o

complete

his

piece

and

yields

to

another

atio.The middle section

of

the

Romanze was a fulfilmentnd continuation f the

precursor,

ven

f

it tried o

persuade

us that

Chopin

had not

gone

far

nough.124

As we have

seen,

Brahms's reminiscence f the Berceuse

was more a

memory

han

an

actual

presence.

Brahms cannot

rest

n

this

vision,

and so moves

towards

discontinuity

with

Chopin,

and with his

own

text,

in

bs

45-7,

the

transition

ack to the

reprise

Ex. 23).

Ex. 23

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs 45-7

(

I

I.

pp

dim

tr

"

tr?

;r-

'to

7-

.

OR

-l

)-Lr-

H

Discontinuity

ere means

curtailing

he

modellingprocess

that

Brahms

had followed.Whilethemiddlesection, s we saw,echoes Chopin's coda,

Brahms

does

not emulate

Chopin's

last two

bars,

which

provide

complete

melodic

and

harmonic

closure.

As

Ex.

17

shows,

the

end

of

Brahms's

middle

section

traces

a

third-progression

rom

2 down

to

f

,

concluding

this

motion

n

b.44.

By

contrast,

he middle

sections

f

many

other

ernary

piano

pieces

by

Brahms

do reach

melodic

and

harmonic

closure.125

Discontinuity

akes

other

forms

here:

in

b.45,

Brahms

abandons

the

ostinato

rhythm

which

he had

maintained

n

every

bar since

b.17;

the

metre

hanges

from

C to

4;

the

bass,

which

had

remained

tationary

n

a

D

pedal

point

since

b.17,

finally

moves,

in

b.47,

to

C.

(This

transition

seems shorter o the eye than to the ear. Althoughperformersften

misinterpret

is

directions,

Brahms

wants

crotchets

n

the

transition

o

equal

the

minims

of his

previous

tempo,

so that

bs 45-7

take as

long

as

nine bars

of

the

Allegretto.126

till,

the

fragmentation

f

kenosis

ends

towards

brevity,

nd

Brahms's

transition

s shorter

than

his

middle

section.)

Bloom

associates

kenosis

with

the

trope

of

metonymy.

Metonymy

substitutes

n

aspect

or attribute

or

the

thing

tself

'White

House'

for

'president',

Crown'

for

'king').

Metonymy

and

synecdoche

are

easily

confused,but KennethBurkehas usefully istinguishedhe two,noting

that

he

part/whole

elationship

f

synecdoche

works

both from

microcosm

to

macrocosm

and

in

reverse,

while

the

part/whole

elationship

of

metonymy

orks

n

one direction

nly,

from

whole

to

part.127

Metonymy

s

thus

a

reductive

rope,

which

s

why

Bloom

links

t to

kenosis,

he ratio

that

reduces

a

prior

text.

Remember,

however,

that Bloom

gives

traditional

48

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

991







TOWARDS

A NEW

POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

tropes

n extended

meaning,

o that

n kenosis n entire

ext

metonymically

reduces another ext.

In

a

poem,

kenosis

ould be marked

by

images

of

reduction,

requently

from ullness o

emptiness',"28

ut we cannottransferuch

verbal

mages

to

music. In

our

quest

to reinvent

musical

rhetoric,

an we find a

musical

analogue

for

metonymical

eduction?

Bloom's extended

concept

of

trope

gives

us a clue. One

could

hardly

speak

of a

musical

passage

as

a

metonymy

n

itself.

When heard as a

revision of another

musical

text,

however,

one

passage

could

metonymize

nother

by

substituting

ome

aspect

of that

passage

for the

whole,

hence

reducing

t.

Schoenberg's

concept

of

iquidation,

or

xample,posits

uch a

metonymical

elationship

betweenone passageand

another."29

Brahms's

transition hus

metonymizes

is earlier

ext.

He

reduces the

intricate

oice-leading

nd

elaboratemotivic

elationships

hown n

Ex.

11,

until two

single

elementsremain:

the

trill,

nd

the

descending tepwise

motions

n

the

upper

voice.

The

trill,

which had

been

part

of the

theme

and of

every

variation,

ubstitutes

orthe

whole,

thus

reducingChopin's

piece.

The

descending tepwise

motions

n

bs 45 and 46

allude

primarily

to

the

opening

of

the

Romanze,

and

they

function oth as

a

reduction f

that

opening

nd as a

preparation

or

he

reprise.

Bloom linkskenosis o a triad of relateddefences: solation,undoing,

regression.

ike

metonymy,

solation

destroys

ontext:

Isolation

egregates

houghts

r

acts

o as to

break

p

their

onnecting

linkswith

ll

other

houghts

r

acts,

usually y

breaking

p temporal

sequence.130

Undoing

nullifies

ast

actions

by

repeating

hem in

a

magically

pposite

way'.

Regression

is a

reversion

o

earlier

phases

of

development,

re-

quently

manifested

hrough

xpressive

modes

less

complex

than

present

ones'.51

Consider how

these

psychic

defences

are

manifested n

Brahms's

kenosis,

he

metonymical

eduction

f

bs

45-7.

Brahms's

ubstitutionf

the

trill

or

he

entire

heme

solates,

nd

thus

destroys,

he

original

ontext f

the

trill,

breaking up

the

temporal

sequence

in

which

the

trill

had

previously

igured.

he

transition

undoes'

the

middle section

by

repeating

in

reverse

'in

a

magically

opposite

way')

the

process

by

which we

had

reached D

major.

Brahms

originally

went

from

F

major

to

D

minor

bs

14-16),

and

thence to

the D

major

of

the

middle

section.

The

transition

moves fromD major (b.45) to D minor b.46) and back to F major in

b.47.

After

he

complex

melodic

diminutions

f

Brahms's

middle

section,

the

transition

egresses

y

reverting

o

simpler igurations.

If

Brahms's

transition

yields

to a

description

n

terms

of

rhetorical

tropes

and

psychicdefences,

his s

perhaps

because

Bloom's

theory

as a

validity

hat

applies

to

symbolic

action in

general,

and

not

merely

to

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

49







KEVIN

KORSYN

poetry.132

hese

tropes

and

defences

enable us to transcend

a neutral

inventory

f

structure,

o

interpret

he

meaning,

use and functions

f

structure,

o discover how structure

perates,

ndwhat t

signifies'.133

ur

analyses,

however,

must

start

rom he

structure,

must

nclude the

deepest

insights

f our

analytical

ystems,

ven if

those

systems

urn

out to

be

merely

he first

ung

on

an

interpretative

adder. We must avoid

both the

sterility

f a

purely

tructural

nalysis

nd the

mpotence

f

mpressionistic

criticism hat

fails o hear structure.

VII

After

his

kenosis,

his

metonymical ndoing,

Brahms's

reprise

makes

the

revisionary esture

of

daemonization,

the movement

towards a

person-

alized

counter-Sublime,

n

reaction to the

precursor's

Sublime'.134

We

previously

dentified

he

framing

ction

of the

F

major

music as

Brahms's

clinamen.

ut the

reprise

has another

function,

o that

t

simultaneously

exemplifies

wo

revisionary

atios.

Like

most of

Brahms's

reprises,

hat

n

the Romanze

is

farfrom

literal

epetition.

While

the

framing

ction

alone

serves

o

create an

ironizing

linamen,

he revision

f the

opening

material

leadsto daemonization.

Daemonization,

n Bloom's

map

of

misprision,

ubsumesthe

trope

of

hyperbole

and the

Freudian defence

of

repression.

Why

does

Bloom

connect

hyperbole

to

repression?

Their

relationship

is dialectical:

hyperbole

xaggerates,

nd so

produces

a climax

through

ntensification;

repression

makes

this

climax

possible,

through

an

'unconsciously

purposeful

forgetting'

f

prior

texts.

n

applying

his ratio

Bloom

asks:

'What

s

being

reshly

epressed?

hat

has been

forgotten,

n

purpose,

n the

depths,

so

as to

make

possible

this

sudden elevation

to

the

heights?'135

Clinamen

was

already

repression

f a

precursor's

ext,

but

daemonization

marks poem's strongestmoment frepression.

If we

try

o

understand

rahms's

changes

n

his

reprise

ccording

o this

model

of

hyperbole/repression,

e can move

beyond

merely

observing

structural

hanges

in

this

section towards

understanding

he

motivations

for

hose

changes.

We

can also

reject

this

model,

but 'to refuse

models

is

only

o

accept

other

models,

however

nknowingly'.136

Which

part

of

Brahms's

prior

text

does he

repress

upon

restatement,

and

what

hyperbole,

which

I translate

as

intensification,

oes

this

repression

make

possible?

What does the

piece

remember,

nd whatdoes

it

forget,when it revisits,

nd

revises,

ts

opening?First,

the

reprise

is

drastically

ondensed. The

A,

sectionwas a

leisurely

nd

symmetrical

process,

with

four

phrases,

each

four

bars

long.

But the

entire

eprise

has

only

ten

bars;

if we consider

the last four

bars

a

coda,

then

the

reprise

proper

has a

mere sixbars

(Ex. 24).

How

does

Brahms condense

sixteen

bars

to

six,

and

why?

50

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW

POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

Ex.

24

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs

48-57

Tempo 1.

r-

\tL-

.t~

~~--

.....

----

---=

__Lo

..

".

~-----~Ffitit;

7 -

T------1-

dim..

Brahmsexcludes

all trace

of the

D minormodulations

hathad been

so

prominent

n

bs

1-16.

Naturally,

rahmshad

to

recompose

the

A,

section

so

that

t would end

in F

major,

rather

han

eading

to

the middle

section

again,

so he deletedthe second tonicization fD minor.Yet Brahms ould

have

recapitulated

is

first

ight

bars,

with

heir onicization

f

D minor

n

bs

6-7,

followed

by

bs

52-7,

and stillhad

a

satisfactory,

nd

condensed,

reprise.

nstead,

he chooses

even

greater

revity:

e

repeats only

his

first

fourbars intact

bs

1-4

= bs

48-51),

followed

by

a two-bar

phrase

which

ends on

the

downbeat

of

b.54,

overlapping

with a four-bar oda.

The

reprise

represses

ll

traces

of

D

minor;

n

particular,

ts

leading

note

C#,

which

had been

so

conspicuous

n the

first

art,

s

entirely

xcluded

n

the

reprise.

Brahms

represses

his

part

of his

earlier

ext;

since these

D

minor

modulationshad preparedand introducedBrahms's middlesection,with

its antithetical

ompletion

of

the

Berceuse,

the

reprise

s

indirectly

repression

f

the

precursor

although

he

revisionary

atioshere tell

us

at

least as much about Brahms's

changing

elationship

o

his

own

text s

they

do about

his

misprision

f

Chopin).

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

51







KEVIN

KORSYN

Instead

of

C?,

the

reprise

nd coda introduce

D#

b.53)

and

Et

(b.55).

Significantly,? was the first hromaticnote in thepiece, DW/E?he last;

the

descending

movementfromEt to D in

b.55 seems

to

balance and

revoke

the

prior emphasis

on

C#-D. This is

part

of Brahms's solution

to

the tonal

problem

of

the

piece,

the

emphasis

on

D

minor which the

Grundgestalt

ad

already

oreshadowed.137

he

reprise

nd

coda also stress

supertonic

nd subdominant

harmonies.

These had functioned s

pivot

chords to

D

minor

n

b.14.

The

reprise

larifies heir onal functions

n F

major,

especially

n

b.53,

where

a

G minor

chord

prepares

the authentic

cadence

in

F

major

and

the

plagal

cadence of bs 55-6.

The

repression

f

D minor

makes

possible

Brahms's

ntensification

f

his earliermusic to a rhetoricallimax nbs 52-4. Manyfactors ontribute

to this

limax:the

melody,

whichBrahmshad

always

doubled

in

octaves,

s

now voiced

in

triple

ctaves;

a

high

note,

c3,

not

heard

n

the

A,

section,

s

now

introduced;

he

melody

s

rhythmically

ntensified,

roducing

greater

urgency,

o that

there re

now twelve uccessive

uavers

n the

melody

in

the

A,

section,

uch

continuous

quaver

motion had

appeared

only

n

the

accompaniment).

Most

important

or his sublime

climax,

however,

s

the

compression

n

bs

52-4,

and

the

attainment

f harmonic and

melodic

closure

for he

only

time

n

the

piece.

In

contrast

o the

phrases

of the

A,

section,whichhad all been fourbarslong,bs 52-3 form two-bar hrase,

extended

o

overlap

with

the

phrase

that

begins

on the

downbeat

of b.54.

In bs

53-4,

the

Fundamental

Line descends

(see

Ex.

17),

producing

he

only perfect

adence

in F

major

in the

piece.

The

A1

section

did not

contain

an

F

major

cadence.

Some

analystsmight

hear

closure

from he

dominant

eventh

n

b.4

to the tonic triad

n

b.5,

but here

we

should

recall

Schenker's

oncept

of a divider. ince

b.4

is

the

end of one

phrase

and

b.5

the

beginning

f

another,

he

dominant

s

a divider

nd

not a cadential

dominant,

o

we feel

closure neither

ere

nor

in

the

analogous passage

in

bs

12

and

13. It is as

if

the

piece

could

only

reach

closure,

fter uch a

long

delay,by repressingll tracesofD minor.This surmisegainscredibilityf

we

recall

that

while the

sixth nd seventh

ars

of the

A,

section

ntroduce

the

first

onicization

f

D

minor,

he sixth nd

seventh ars

of the

reprise

cadence

in

F

major.

Thus the

cadence

represses

he

expected

modulation

to

D minor.

VIII

Askesis,hefifthatio, s a movement fself-curtailment,nwhichthepoet

'yields

up

part

of

his own

human and

imaginative

ndowment,

o

as

to

separate

himself

from

others,

including

the

precursor'.138

Bloom

takes

this

term

from Walter

Pater,

who took

it from

pre-Socratic

usage.

The

psychic

defence

here is

sublimation,

the

transfer

of desire

to a

substitute

gratification.

loom

links this defence

analogically

to the

trope

of

52

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

metaphor:

As

a

trope

or

nfluence,

etaphor

ransfershe

name f nfluenceo

a

series

f

napplicable

bjects,

n an

askesis

r work f sublimation

hat

is itself substitute

ratification.

. a substitute

imor

object eplaces

the

original mpulse,

n a basis of selective

imilarity

...

Even

as

metaphor

ondenses

through

esemblance,

o

sublimation

lso

transfers

r

carries

name o

an

napplicable

bject.'39

Bloom maintains that 'the

strongest

modern

poetry

is

created

by

askesis'."4?

f

this s

true,

perhaps

this

results

rom he historical lement

n

modern art. Historicalconsciousness, s Gadamer insisted, nvolvesnot

only relationship

o the

past

but also a

recognition

f the otherness f the

past,

its difference

rom he

present.141'

s

art

grows

more

conscious

of its

history,

t encounters

his

otherness,

his

distance

from he

past.

Rather

than

trying

o elide the

gap

between

themselves

nd

prior

traditions,

modern artists

may

acknowledge

his

gap

as an

askesis,

self-conscious

estrangement

from

the

precursors.

This

self-consciousness

heightens

rhetoricity,

hich

n

poetry

means

word-consciousness,

a

questioning

n

the

poem's part

of

its

place

in

literaryanguage,

that

s,

the

poem's

own

subversion f its own closure, ts illusory tatus as independent

oem'.142

Through

this

rhetoricity,

he

poet's

relation

o his own

medium becomes

more

dialectical;

by comparison

o

the

more

mmediate reative

leasures

his

precursorsmight

have

enjoyed,

one could call this oss of

mmediacy

sublimation

r

substitute

ratification.

Brahms's

preoccupation

with

the

past

-

his

quotations,

his

use of

compositional

models,

his

adaptations

f earlier

enres

nd

forms

was no

mere

nostalgia;

t

was not an

attempt

o

make the

past

return,

or

he

past

cannot

return;

t

was not a

recovery

f lost

origins,

or

origins

annot be

recovered. t

was an

askesis,

self-conscious

ecognition

f

his

separation

from his precursors nd the othernessof the past, for the difference

between

past

and

present

s never

more evident

han when

prior

raditions

are

invoked within

a

stratified

iscourse.143

Brahms chose

a severe

self-

discipline,

imposing

on

himself a more

dialectical

relationship

o his

medium

than he

might

have

ascribed

to

his

precursors.

The

frequent

intertextual

eferences

n

his

music work o

enhance

rhetoricity,

reating

musical

equivalent

for

a

poem's

word-consciousness. is

pieces

become

self-deconstructing,

uestioning

heir own

closure,

subverting

heir own

status

s

independent

works

y constantly

nvoking

ther exts.This

askesis

is a source of Brahms's astonishingmodernism, modernismthat so

impressed

choenberg

nd,

more

recently, .

Peter

Burkholder.'44

My

interpretation

f

Brahms's

intertextual eferences

cknowledges

both his

place

in

tradition nd his exile from

t. As Paul de

Man

warned,

we

must resistthe

urge

to

privilege

ontinuity

ver

discontinuity

n our

historical

schemes.'" It

may

be

more

comforting

o view

Brahms as

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991

53







KEVIN KORSYN

connecting

himself

to

tradition

by

an

umbilical

cord

of

intertextual

references,

ut

the truth

s

more

complex.In the

Romanze,

then,

locateBrahms'saskesisn the

piece

as a whole,

rather han

n

any separate

ection;

t is

the

predominant

evisionary

atio

of the

piece.

We

have

charted

Brahms's

changing

nd

ambivalent tances

towards

the

Berceuse,

which are also stances

towards his

own text:

ironically negating

the

Berceuse;

antithetically

ompleting

it;

meto-

nymically

undoing

Chopin,

to isolate the

precursor

from

his

context;

repressing

he

Berceuse to attain

a

sublime climax.

All

of these

positions

are

compatible

with

a

larger

askesis,

separation

from the

precursor.

Brahms

uses the

Berceuse,

I

suggest,

s

a

metaphor

for this

separation

from heprecursor,s a metaphor or heotherness f thepast.To call this

otherness

Chopin'

is to

give

otherness

proper

name.

This

Chopin,

of

course,

is a

partly

fantasized

precursor,

a

necessary

misreading

that

coincides

only

partially

with the

historical

Chopin.

Nevertheless,

his

personification

f

anteriority

s

so central o

Brahms's

text that an

inter-

reading

f the

Romanze

must,

think,

egin

with

he

Berceuse.

Brahms's

askesis

might

eem an

acceptance

of

his

belatedness,

nd

so

a

defeat,

a

yielding

o the

anxiety

of

influence.

There

is

another

side

to

askesis,

however,

for it

can

puncture

the

precursor

as

well.

Brahms's

heightened rhetoricity,

his

text-consciousness,

can

make

us hear

differently.

is more dialectical

relationship

o his artcan deconstructhe

works

of

his

precursors,

o that

the

closure of

their exts an

be called

into

question.

If the

Berceuse can

be

quoted, paraphrased,

ironized

and

otherwise

onverted

nto

part

of another

discourse,

hen

the closure

of

the

Berceuse,

ts status

as

an

independent

tterance,

s

undermined,

owever

subtly.

If Brahms

is

self-limited,

hen

the

precursor

s also

limited,

preparing

he

way

for 'final

return

f

lost voices

and

almost

abandoned

meanings'.14

IX

Bloom

calls

his last

ratio

apophrades,

aking

this term from

the

days

in

ancient

Athens

when

the dead

returned

o inhabit their

former

ouses.

Apophrades,

r the

return

f

the

dead,

is a

poem's

final

defence

gainst

he

anxiety

f

influence,

ts ultimate

nternalization

f

tradition,

eversing

he

precursor's

tropes

through

the

trope

of

metalepsis

(also

called

transumption).

Hollander'sdiscussion f this rope

s the

most

comprehensive:

We

deal

with iachronic

rope

ll

the

ime,

nd

yet

we

haveno

name

for

t as

a class

....

I

propose

that

we

apply

the name

of the

classical

rhetoricians'

rope

of

transumption

or metalepsis,

n itsGreek

form)

o

these

iachronic,

llusive

igures.

uintilian

dentified

ransumption

s

54

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS

OF

MUSICAL INFLUENCE

a

movement

rom

ne

trope

o

another,

hich

perates

hrough

ne

or

moremiddle erms f

figuration

....

there

s a

general

ense

hat

t

s

a

kind fmeta-trope,rfiguref inkageetweenigures,ndthat here

will

be

one

or

more

unstatedmiddle ermswhich

re

leapt

over,

r

alluded

o,

by

he

figure.147

In

Bloom's

complex

use

of

the

term,

transumption lways

describes

a

revisionary

ct,

through

which

prior tropes

are raised to

a

higher

evel.

Transumptive

llusion

characterizes

pophrades;

trong

poems

frequently

end

with

chemes

of

metaleptic

eversals,

roping pon

prior

ropes,

both

the

poet's

own

and

those

of

the

precursor.

Transumption/apophradesubsumes two related psychic defences:

introjection

nd

projection.

The

analogical

ink

here is

that

transumption

is

the

trope-reversing

rope,

while

introjection

nd

projection

defend

against

other

defences.

Introjection

s

an

internalization r

imaginative

identification,

'fantasy

ransposition

f

otherness

o

the

self,'48

while

projection

s

a

distancing

r

casting-out

hat

seeks to

expel

from

he

self

everything

hat he self

cannot

bear to

acknowledge

s

being

ts

own'.'49

n

apophrades,

he

poet

most

often

ntrojects

uturity,

dentifying

ith the

future,

while

projecting

nteriority,

hrough

he

substitution f

early

words

for

ate

in

prior

ropes.

This

can

effect

n

upwards

revision

f

the

tropes,redeeming poet'sbelatedness y dentifyingith arliness.

Brahms's

coda

(bs

54-7,

Ex.

25)

negotiates

the

apophrades

hrough

what

one

might

call

a

metaleptic

eversal

f

bs 40-4

(Ex.

26).

His

final

bars

allude

to

his

middle

section,

not

overtly as,

say,

the

reprise

vertly

revises

he

opening

of

the

piece),

but

transumptively,

eaping

over

unstated

middle

termswhich

might

onnect

the two

through

graduated

eries

of

transformations.

he

coda

does not

invoke

the

foreground

motivesof

bs

40-4,

the

trills

nd

scales

that

would

unambiguously

ecall

the

middle

section.

Nevertheless,

e

recognize

he

affinity

f the

two

passages

through

commongestures nd functions. oth use a

V7/IV

to IV progressionhat

Ex.

25

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs 54-7

dz'm.--

---

zt..-

I

N

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

55







KEVIN

KORSYN

Ex.

26

Brahms,

Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5,

bs 40-4

o

dim.

\pi

o0

occurs

nowhere

lse

in

the

piece.

The relative

tructural

osition

f the two

reinforces

he

connection,

ince both

are

concluding

motions,

ne

ending

the

middle

section,

the other the entire

piece.

In

alluding

to the

middle

section,

which

was so

closely

modelled

on the

Berceuse,

Brahms

also

indirectly

lludes

to the Berceuse.

But

why

call this

a

transumption?

s we

have

seen,

Bloom's use

of this

term

always

implies

an

upwards

revision

of a

prior

trope.

How

does

Brahms,

in

alluding

to

his middle

section,

raise it

to a

higher

evel?

Remember

hat

the

framing

ction

of the

F

major

section

undermines

he

stabilityf themiddlesection.Absorbing he final adentialgesture fthe

middle

section

ntothe conclusion

ofthe whole

piece

raisesthe

gesture

o

a

higher

evel

(both figuratively

nd

in

a Schenkerian

ense),

giving

t a

stability

hat t

formerly

acked.

The

F

major

music

also

gains

from

his

transumption,

ince

only

n the coda

does the

F

major

triad

gain

some

of

the durational

weight

hathad

previously

een

associated

with

he

D

major

triad.

The

initial

onictriad

n the

piece,

for

xample,

s a mere

crotchet.

Does

Brahms's

coda

identify

rimarily

ith he future

r

with

he

past?

What

does

it

introject

r

project?

n

a

poem,

these

questions

would be

decided bythe substitutionfearlywordsfor ate in prior ropes,or late

words

for

early.

We

cannot transfer

uch verbal

mages

to

music,

but

we

can

frame

these

questions

in terms

of Greene's

study

of

temporality

n

music.

Brahms's

coda,

I

think,

s

primarily

uture-oriented;

t

has

an

open-

ended

quality,

pointing,

s it

were,

to

a

future

eyond

the

piece.

Various

structural

spects

of the

piece support

hisconclusion.

The last two

bars,

56

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW


for

example,

ntroducenew

registers:

'

in

b.56,

and

f3

n

b.57,

are

the

registral xtremes of the piece. By leavingthese registers nexplored,Brahms

suggests

new

possibilities

or

continuation.

n

Schenkerian

erms,

the

leading

linear

progression

n the

coda

(see

Ex.

17)

composes-out

a

fourth rom

2

down to

c2;

a more

conclusive inearmotion

would

prolong

I

by

an

octave

progression."'0

eonard B.

Meyer

and

Eugene

Narmour

might

observe that the

ascending

arpeggiation

n the final

bars

creates

implications

eft

nrealized,

aps

thatwill never

be

filled.

erhaps

the

most

significant

factor

in

enhancing

a

future-oriented haracter

here is

asymmetry.

he

phrases

n

bs 1-16

balanced

each

other n

pairs,

so

that

each

phrase

seemed

to

respond

to the

previous

one. In

the

reprise

nd

coda, as we have seen,thissymmetrys overturned,making ventsseem

less

predictable;

future

s

called forth

hat eems

new,

rather han

being

a

response

o the

past.

This

open-endedness

s a

quality

he

Romanze

shares

with

many

Romantic

pieces.

More than one

critic

has

noted

that

many

nineteenth-century

orks

eem

less

closed,

less

self-contained,

han

works

of

the

classical

period.

In

the

context of Bloom's

theory,

we

could

reinterpret

his

open-endedness

s

an

introjection

f

futurity."'

Consider

what this

transumption

ignifies

or he

Romanze

as

a

whole.

The

Berceuse

presented

world

n

whichdesire and

gratification

oincide

(figurativelyxemplified y the immediateresolutionof each dominant

seventh).

There is

an

enchantment

o this

world,

the

enchantment f

origins.

Brahms

ncorporates

Chopin's

text nto his

own,

but

recognizes

that

origins

an

never

be made

present;

his

middle

section s

a

necessary

stage

in

the

growth

of

consciousness,

but

has

more the

characterof a

memory

han

of

actuality.

He then

breaks with

Chopin's

text,

resisting

influence,

hoosing

himself

ather han

the

precursor.

Relying

n

his

own

imaginative

power,

he

achieves a

deeper

repression

of

the

Berceuse,

making

a

sublime climax

possible.

Having

wrestled

successfully

with

Chopin,

Brahms

wins

strength

nd

can end

by

identifying

ith

futurity.

The effect s analogous to some ofWordsworth's ransumptions, here

'experiential

oss

becomes

rhetorical

gain',52

and

we

conclude

with

intimations f a

possible

sublimity.

Table

1,

modelled on

Bloom's

map

of

misprision,53

briefly

ecapitulates

my

inter-reading,

ncluding

the

six

revisionary

ratios

with

their

corresponding

ropes

nd

psychic

efences.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

57







KEVIN KORSYN

Table

1

Summary

f

Inter-reading

f

Brahms,Romanze,

Op.

118,

No.

5

and Chopin,Berceuse,Op. 57

REVISIONARY

RHETORICAL PSYCHIC

RATIO

TROPE DEFENCE

Clinamen

Irony

Reaction-Formation

(initial

werve

rom he

The

framing

ctionofthe

F The Berceusemustbe

precursor)

major

music ironizes' he

imagined

s an absence for

Berceusereminiscence f Brahms's

piece

to

get

themiddle ection, o that t started;herepressed

says

one

thing 'tonal

concernwith

he

precursor

stability')

nd means

text

ecomes evident

nly

n

another

'tonal

nstability'). retrospect. lthough

he

In contrast o the

present-

melodic

spect

of

the

oriented

emporality

fthe

Grundgestalt

choes

the

Berceuse,

Brahms's

framing

Berceuse,

ts

origin

ecomes

action

gives

he middle

clear

only

whenthe

defence

section

morethe character

f

breaks

down,

when

the

a

memory.

Grundgestalt

s

transformed

into hepatternedllusions

to the Berceuse n

the

middle ection.

Tessera

Synecdoche

Reversal

nto he

pposite

(antithetical

ompletion)

Bs

17-44 modelled

on the

After he

reaction-formation

Berceuse.

Emphasis

on the

of

bs

1-16,

which

masked

correspondence

f

part

nd

the concernwith

he

whole to convince s that precursor,

rahms everses

Brahms's

discourse

s more

into he

opposite,

complete

hat

he truncated

identifying

ith

he

discourse

f the

precursor.

Berceuse

rather

han

Composing-out

fthe

denying

t.

Berceuse

motive

o

link

theme

nd variations

together.

Kenosis

Metonymy

Isolation,

ndoing,

Regression

(movement

f

Bs 45-7

reduce

the

prior

Isolation

of

thetrill

estroys

discontinuity

ith

he

text

y

breaking

t

up

into

the

contextn which t

had

precursor)

discontinuous

ragments,

functioned;

ransition

isolating

he

precursor

rom

'undoes'

middle

ection

by

58

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW

POETICS OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

his

context,

urtailing

he

reversing

he

processby

modelling rocess

Brahms which

we had reached

D

had followed,

mptying

ut

major;

regression y

the fullness fthe

preceding

reverting

o

simpler

section.

figurations.

Daemonization

Hyperbole

Repression

(movement

owards

Repression

f

D

minor

The

repriseforgets'

ll

personalized

ounter-

makesan intensifiedlimax

traces f theD

minor

Sublime,

n

reaction o

possible

n

the

reprise,

tonicizations

fthe

Al

precursor'sublime) includingheclosure fthe section;EWD/nstead f

Fundamental

ine

in

bs

53-

C#;

major

cadence

4.

represses

xpected

modulation o D minor n

bs

53-4.

Askesis

Metaphor

Sublimation

(self-curtailment,

eparation

The

Romanzeuses the Brahms

pursues

more

from he

precursor)

Berceuse s a

metaphor

or

dialectical elation o his

theothernessf thepast,for medium han hemore

the

redominant

atio

f

he

estrangement

rom

rigins,

immediate reative

leasures

Romanze

manifesteds

estrangement

thathe

may

have

ascribed o

from he

precursor.

his

precursors, greater

self-consciousness,

manifesteds

text-

consciousness;

his

ould be

called a sublimation r

substitute

ratification.

Apophrades Metalepsis

Transumption)

Introjection,rojection

(return

f

the

dead)

Bs

54-7

transumptively Introjection

f

futurity,

allude

to bs

40-4,

and

projection

f

anteriority,

indirectly

o the

Berceuse.

because

of

the

open-ended

Absorbing

he final

adential

quality;

he timeless

gesture

fthe

middle ection

presence

f the

Berceuse

into he

coda raises

hat

cannotbe

made

actual,

but

gesture

o a

higher

evel,

there s

strength

n

givingt a stabilitythad acknowledginghis; future

lacked.

is

summoned

hat eems

new,

rather

han heresult

of the

past,

nd we

end

with

intimations

f a

possible

sublimity.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

59







KEVIN KORSYN

X

If

my

appropriation

f Bloom has

been

strong

nough,

his

study

ould be

the

nitial

werve owards new

poetics

of music. Of

course,

a

single

nter-

reading

uch

as I have

done

here,

no matter ow

elaborate,

annot

satisfy

all

questions

about

the model.

Condensing

Bloom's

tropes,

nd

my

tropes

on

Bloom,

into one article

nevitably

eaves much unsaid.

Many

other

analyses

will

be

needed to test the

model,

to refine t and to

ascertain

he

limits f

its

application.

This I have

begun

to do elsewhere.'54Here

space

remains

nly

to sketch

ossible

avenues

of

extension;

hese offermore as

speculation

han as

systematic

rgument,

o

encourage

others o continue

these abours, o discover hestrenuous leasuresof thismode of istening.

To

test this model

in other

compositions,

ne

might

begin

with other

apparent

intertextual

choes,

to ask

if

these

testify

o

deeper pre-

occupations

with

precursor

ieces.

We could

revisit,

or

example,

Rosen's

comparison

f the

Brahmsand

Chopin

scherzos.

Do the

revisionary

atios

intervene

between Brahms's

Op.

4

and

Chopin's Op.

31? Or

does

Brahms's

youthful

work

belong

to what Bloom would

call his 'flooded

apprenticeship',

efore

he ratiosbecome

operative?

In

applying

he

ratios,

the entire scheme of six

tropes

need not be

present.Shortpieces mightmanifest nlya singleratioor pair of ratios.

Since the ratios re

both

ntra-

nd

intertextual,

e could use

them o

map

the

composer's

stance

towards

his own

text,

o

see how a

piece

revises ts

own

prior

figurations

r

how

a

composer

revises

his

earlier

style.

For

instance,

Mahler's

obsessive

self-quotations

nd

self-parodies,

o

often

observed,

could

finally

e understood.

Contemplating

music

in termsof

textual

repression,

metaleptic

reversals and

metonymicundoings

will

certainly

hatter

he frozen urface

f the

familiar,

llowing

us

to

address

pieces

withfresh

uestions.

The

stereotyped

orld,

he world

of

congealed

habits

hat

Walter

Pater so

deplored,

willnot be our

world.

This model holds special promiseforexplainingmusical text-setting.

The internalization

f

subject

matter

n

post-Enlightenment

oetry,

by

which

poetry spired

o the

condition f

music,

also made

possible,

think,

the intimatealliance

of

poetry

and

music

in the Romantic

Lied.

The

anxiety

f nfluence hat

his nternalization

ignals

n

poetry

s

matched

by

the

precursor-anxieties

f music.

By

mapping

he

revisionary

atios n

both

text

and

musical

setting,

we could

betterunderstand

he

relationship

f

words

nd

music.155

The model could

also become a

vehicle

for

understanding

musical

style,

sincea composer's tancetowards nterioritys a measureofstyle. erhaps

-

and

I am

only peculating

the

unity

f

nineteenth-century

usic

s

best

described

by

itsanxious stance

towards ts

precursors.

ach,

for

example,

swallows

up

his

precursors,

sometimes

almost

literally,

as in his

transcriptions

f

Vivaldi,

but one feels no

anxiety

n his stance

towards

tradition.

We

might

also find

unexpected

affinities

etween

nineteenth-

60

MUSIC

ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW

POETICS

OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

and

twentieth-century

usic,

since the influence-anxieties

e found

in

Brahms

ertainly

ontinue n our

time.

My

discourseherealso has

implications

or

poetics

ofmusic

analysis,

because

of our relations o our

interpretative

odels.The

piece

itself

s

an

'unknown=X'

(to

use Kantian

language),

a

transcendental

bject

which

conditionsour

perceptions,

ffering

ertain

resistances

gainst

which

we

can testour

models;

but

we

must

alwaysrely

upon paradigms,

whether

we

invent ur own

or use someone else's.

As

analysts,

herefore,

e

confront

not

onlycompositions,

ut

also the

prior nterpretative

odels,

theoretical,

historical nd

critical,

hrough

which

we

perceive

hose

compositions

nd

thus

encounterour own

anxiety

f

influence.

A

listenerwho

desires an

original elationshipomusicmaywellfeel nxious nusingsomeoneelse's

models;

he

may

feel hathis

response

has

been

predicted,

hat

he is

moving

in an

interpretative

pace mapped

out

by

others,

hathe is

merely

ealizing

the

implications

f

someone else's

method. This

anxiety

f

interpretation

can

only

ncrease s

reflection

pon

art

becomes

more

self-conscious.

hus

theoriesof art

can

also be

attempts

o

clear

imaginative

pace,

to

resist

influence,

o

subvert ne's

precursors,

nd

the

history

f

music

analysis

could

be read

through

loom's

dialectics

f

revisionism.

We

need not

wholly

ndenture

urselves o

Bloom;

not

all

his

ideas will

transfer o music,nor will his model tell us all we want to knowabout

pieces.

It should not be a

resting-place

n

our

search for

models.

My

appropriation

f

Bloom

does,

however,

fulfil

many

needs: it

integrates

musicology, heory

nd

criticism,

iving

s a

methodof

critical

valuation

that is both

historical

nd

analytical;

t

accommodates the

paradoxes

of

influence,

howing

originality

nd

tradition,

ontinuity

nd

change

in

dialectical

relation.

Even if

one

rejects

the

idea of an

organic

work

(as

deconstruction

dvocates),

t

provides

model for

nalysing ompositions

as

relational

vents

ather han

as

closed

and static

ntities.

Perhaps

the

model's

greatest

trength

s

the

space

it

carves

for

the

imagination,llowingmusicanalysis o recover heelement ffantasyhat

is

as

necessary

to

theorizing

bout art

as it is

to

artistic

reation,

as

Schenker

hinted

by

calling

his

main

work

New

Musical

Theories nd

Fantasies.With

the

Romanze

and the

Berceuse,

we

have seen

the

role these

works

play

n

our

inner

ives,

why

we

return

o them

again

and

again,

why

they

are so

unforgettable.

heir

creative

trength

ddresses

our

need to

clear our

own

imaginative

pace,

to

become

strong; hey

oin

an

interior

dialogue

in

the

self's

search for

authenticity,

iding

our

inner

discourse,

giving

s

back

to

ourselves.

That is their laimonus.

NOTES

1.

Charles

Rosen,

'Influence:

Plagiarism

nd

Inspiration',

19th-Century

usic,

Vol.

4,

No. 2

(1980),

p.94.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

61







KEVIN KORSYN

2. Brahms

himself

humorously

noted the

ambiguities

f

intertextuality.

n

a

review-essay ublished

n

the

Allgemeine

musikalische

eitung

n

1869,

Adolf

Schubring,

critic nd a friend f

Brahms,

argued

that transformationsf

three

motives

unify

the third movement of the German

Requiem.

Such

ingenuities

roused the

sceptic

n

Brahms.

He

replied

o

Schubring, bserving

that he

third

ar

of the

Requiem happens

to coincidewith

he first ournotes

of the

Austriannational

hymn,

nd

sarcastically

sked:

'Shouldn't

you

have

discovered

the

political

allusions

in

my Requiem?

(Brahms,

etter o Adolf

Schubring,

6

February

1869.)

Schubring's

eview-essay

nd Brahms's

etter

are

both discussed

in

Walter

Frisch,

Brahms nd the

Principle

f Developing

Variation

Berkeley:

University

f

California

ress,

1984),

pp.30-2.

3. Michel de Certeau, The WritingfHistory,rans.Tom Conley (New York:

Columbia

University

ress,

1988),

pp.30,

49n.

4. Leon

B.

Plantinga,

n Schumann s

Critic

New

Haven: Yale

University

ress,

1967),

observed that

'Schumann's

very

active

musical

memory'

often

produced

sensations

f

ddjd

ntendu'

p.

194).

5.

James

Webster,

Schubert'sSonata

Form and Brahms's

First

Maturity',

9th-

Century

usic,

Vol.

2,

No.

1

(1978),

pp.

18-35,

and Vol.

3,

No.

1

(1979), pp.

52-71;

Christopher

Reynolds,

'A

Choral

Symphony

by

Brahms?',

19th-

Century

usic,

Vol.

9,

No.

1

(1985),

pp.3-25;

Constantin

loros,

Brahms

nd

Bruckner:

Studien zur musikalischen

xegetik Wiesbaden: Breitkopf

und

Hdirtel,

980)

(see

especiallypp.115-54);

J.

Peter

Burkholder,

Brahms and

Twentieth-Century

lassical

Music',

19th-Century

usic,

Vol.

8,

No.

1

(1984), pp.75-84;

David

Brodbeck,

Primo

Schubert,

Secondo

Schumann:

Brahms's

Four-Hand

Waltzes,

Op.

39',

Journal

f

Musicology,

ol.

7,

No.

1

(1989),

pp.55-80;

Edward

T.

Cone,

'Schubert's

Beethoven',

Musical

Quarterly,

ol. 56

(1970),

pp.779-93;

Elwood

Derr,

A

Deeper

Examination

of

Mozart's

1i43

Theme and Its

Strategic

eployment',

n

Theory

nly,

Vol.

8,

Nos

4-5

(1985),

pp.5-44,

and

'Beethoven's

Long-Term

Memory

of C.

P.

E. Bach's

Rondo

in E

flat,

W. 61/1

1787),

Manifest

n

the

Variations

n

E

flat

forPiano, Opus 35 (1802)', Musical Quarterly, ol. 70 (1984), pp.45-76;

Ernst

Oster,

The

Fantasie-Impromptu:

Tribute to

Beethoven',

Musicology,

Vol.

1,

No.

4

(1947),

pp.407-29;

repr.

n

Aspects

f

Schenkerian

heory,

d.

David

Beach

(New

Haven:

Yale

University

Press,

1983),

pp.189-207.

Naturally,

many

other

tudies

of

musical

ntertextuality

ouldbe

cited.

6. Harold

Bloom,

The

Anxiety f

nfluence:

Theory

f Poetry

London:

OUP,

1973),

p.5.

7.

John

Hollander,

the

poet

and

critic,

was

perhaps

the

first o

relate

Bloomian

notions

of

poetic

nfluence

o

music.

n The

Figure

f

Echo:

A Mode

of

Allusion

in

Milton nd

AfterBerkeley:University

f

California

ress,1981),

he

briefly

discusses

Benjamin

Britten's

erenade,

Op.

24,

showing

howBritten'smusic

responds

o and intensifies

ntertextual

choes

in

poems

by

Tennyson,

Keats

and

Blake

(see

pp.130-2).

David Lewin

cites

Bloom

in

'Music

Theory,

Phenomenology,

nd

Modes

of

Perception',

Music

Perception,

ol.

3,

No.

4

(1986),

pp.381-2.

John

Daverio

read a

paper

at a

meeting

of the

New

62

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW

POETICS OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

England Chapter

of the American

Musicological

Society

on 6

February

1988

called

'Brahms,Mozart, and theAnxiety f Influence'.JosephStrausread a

paper

at the

national

meeting

f

the

Society

forMusic

Theory

on 27

October

1989 called 'The

"Anxiety

f Influence" n

Early

20th-Century

Music';

his

book,

Remaking

he Past:

Tradition

nd

Influence

n

Twentieth-Century

usic

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

University

ress,

1990),

also invokes

Bloom.

Bloom's name has

appeared

in

passing

references

y

several other

musical

scholars.

As

far as I

know, however,

no one has

yet attempted

what

I

here

undertake:

ransferring

loom's

revisionary

atios,

with

their

corresponding

tropes

nd

psychic

efences,

o

map

influence elations

etweenmusical

exts.

8.

John

Hollander,

Introduction',

n

Harold

Bloom,

Poetics

f nfluenceNew

Haven: Schwab,1988), p.xxviii.

9.

Quoted

in

Bloom,

'The

Breaking

of

Form',

in

Deconstructionnd

Criticism

(New

York:

Continuum,

1979),

p.

18.

10.

In

The

Anxiety f nfluence,

loom

considered

belatedness

xclusively post-

Enlightenment

henomenon.

He soon

recanted his

view,

however,

eclaring

belatedness

'a recurrent

malaise

of

Western

consciousness' and

finding

influence-anxietiesven

in

Euripedes.

A

Map of Misreading

Oxford: OUP,

1975), p.77.

He

would

still

nsist,

however,

hat

post-Enlightenment

oetry

foregrounds

his

nxiety.

11. In A

Map ofMisreading,loomagainstresses hatmymotive s to distinguish

once

and for ll what

call

"poetic

nfluence" rom

raditional

source

study"'

(p.116).

12.

Bloom,

Agon:

Towards

Theory f

Revisionism

Oxford:

OUP,

1982),

p.287.

13. A

Map of

Misreading,

.18.

14.

'The

Breaking

f

Form',

p.3.

15. A

Map of

Misreading,

.18.

16.

Ibid.,

p.121.

Bloom's

characterization f

poetic

influence s

a

paradoxical

'including/excluding'

movement

may

remind

some

readers of

a

similar

statement

y

Julia

Kristeva

n

Semiotike

Paris:

Seuil,

1969):

'the

poetic

text s

produced in the complex movementof a simultaneousaffirmationnd

negation

of

another ext'

(p.162).

So

far as

I

know,

however,

Bloom

never

mentions

Kristeva,

nd seems

to

have

developed

his

ideas

independently

f

hers.

Kristeva,

of

course,

is

usually

considered the

originator

f

the

term

'intertextuality'.

17.

See

Louis A.

Renza,

Influence',

n

Critical

erms

or

Literary

tudy,

d.

Frank

Lentricchia nd

Thomas

McLaughlin

(Chicago:

University

f

Chicago

Press,

1989),

p.

187.

18.

Bloom,

Poetry

nd

Repression:

evisionism

rom

lake

to

Stevens

New

Haven:

Yale Universityress,1976), p.133.

19.

Bloom,

Wallace

Stevens:

The

Poems

of

Our

Climate

(Ithaca:

Cornell

University

ress,

1977),

p.387.

20. A

Map

of

Misreading,

.69.

21.

'The

Breaking

f

Form',

p.

18.

22.

Agon,

p.17.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

63







KEVIN KORSYN

23.

A

Map ofMisreading, .18.

24.

Ibid.,p.3.

25. The

Anxiety f nfluence,.96.

26.

Agon,p.46.

27. See Thomas

McFarland,

Originality

nd

Imagination

Baltimore:

Johns

Hopkins

University

ress,

1985),

p.42.

28.

Poetry

nd

Repression,

.2.

29.

The

Anxiety f

nfluence,

.91.

30.

Ibid.,

p.94.

31.

'The

Breaking

f

Form',

pp.

3-5.

32.

For

a

stimulating

rticle on

this

aspect

of

Kant's

theory

of

genius,

see

TimothyGould, 'The Audience ofOriginality: ant and Wordsworthn the

Reception

of

Genius',

in

Essays

n

Kant's

Aesthetics,

d.

Ted

Cohen

and Paul

Guyer

Chicago:

University

f

Chicago

Press,

1982),

pp.179-93.

33.

Agon,

.

117.

34.

Renza,

pp.188-9.

35.

'The

Breaking

f

Form',

p.21.

36.

Hollander,

Introduction',

.xxxi.

37.

A

Map of

Misreading, .71.

38.

Ibid.,

p.97.

39. Ibid.,p.89.

40.

Ibid.,

p.89.

41.

Ibid.,

p.179.

42. Walter

Pater,

The Renaissance:

tudies n

Art

and

Poetry

Chicago:

Pandora

Books,

1977),

p.135;

Pater's

emphasis.

43.

Ibid.,

pp.138-9.

44.

Lewin,

'Music

Theory,

Phenomenology,

nd

Modes of

Perception',

p.381;

Lewin's

emphasis.

45.

Bloom,

Kabbalah

and Criticism

New

York:

Continuum,

1975),

p.108.

46.

'The

Breaking

f

Form',

p.15.

47. PoetryndRepression,.147.

48.

Ibid.,

p.151.

49.

Ibid.,

p.149.

50.

Agon,p.237.

51.

Despite

my

disagreement

ith

Lewin on this

point,

welcome

his

recognition

of

the

need

for studies

n the

oetics

f nalysis'

Lewin,

p.382).

52.

Kabbalah

and

Criticism,

.

109.

53.

Heinrich

Schenker,

ree

Composition,

d. and trans.

Ernst Oster

(New

York:

Longman,

1979),

p.xxiii.

54. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth nd Method (New York: Crossroad, 1975),

p.273.

55.

See

Paul

de

Man,

Blindness nd

Insight: ssays

n the

Rhetoric

f

Contemporary

Criticism,

nd edn

(Minneapolis:

University

f

Minnesota

Press,

1983),

p.187.

56.

Leo

Treitler,

Music andthe

Historical

magination

Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

64

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







KEVIN KORSYN

first

mentioned

n

a letterto

A.

Franchomme

on 1

and

2

August

1844.

Frederic

Chopin. Thematisch-Bibliographisches

erkverzeichnis,

d.

Krystyna

Kobylanska

(Munich:

Henle,

1979),

p.123.

The Romanze was

probably

composed

at

Ischl

in Summer

1893

(McCorkle,

Brahms

Werkverzeichnis,

p.472).

Kalbeck

suspected

that some of Brahms's ate

piano

pieces

had been

sketched

arlier,

ut

had

no

evidence

for

his

claim

(Johannes

rahms,

Vol.

4,

pp.169,

277,

290).

From this

chronology

t

is obvious that

Brahms would

have

known the Berceuse

when he

composed

the

Romanze,

since

it was

written

fter

is

work n the

Chopin

edition.

74. Paul

Badura-Skoda,

Chopin's

Influence',

n

The

ChopinCompanion:

rofiles

of

heMan

and

Musician,

d. Alan Walker

New

York:

Norton,

1966),

p.262.

75. Michael Musgrave, The Music ofBrahms London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul,

1985),

p.262.

76. Eduard

Hanslick,

FiinfJahre

usik

1891-1895)

(Berlin,

1896),

p.258.

77.

Kalbeck,

Johannes

rahms,

ol.

4,

pp.298-9.

78. Karl

Geiringer,

Brahms:

His

Life

and Work

New

York:

Da

Capo,

1982),

pp.220-1.

79.

Floros,

'Studien

zu

Brahms'

Klaviermusik',

Brahms-Studien,

ol.

5

(Ham-

burg:

Karl

Dieter

Wagner,

1983),

p.53.

80. Brahms

crossed

out the

word

Intermezzo'

n

the

manuscript

f

Op.

118,

No.

5,

and

added

the

present

title

McCorkle,

Brahms

Werkverzeichnis,

.473).

Why

did Brahmscall it a Romanze?

Although

his s his

only piano

piece

in

this

genre,

he

often

uses

the term

n

vocal

music:

various

collections

of

his

songs

are

called

'Lieder und Romanzen'

Op.

14,

Op.

44,

Op.

93a),

'Romanzen

und

Lieder'

(Op.

84)

or

Balladen

und

Romanzen'

(Op.

75),

and

Op.

33

consists

f

15 Romanzen

aus

L. Tiecks

Magelone'.

John

Daverio

recently

addressed

the

question

of

genre

in

Op.

33

('Brahms's

Magelone

Romanzen

nd the

"Romantic

mperative"',

Journal

f

Musicology,

ol.

7,

No.

3

[1989],

pp.343-65).

He

argued

that

the

Romanze

genre

obeys

Friedrich

chlegel's

romantic

mperative'

o

fuse different

oetic

types, and he traced literaryprecedentsfor Brahms's approach to the

Magelone

ongs:

Just

s

Tieck's

Mdrchen

ies

midway

between

the

lyric

ycle

and

the

Roman,

or

novel,

so Brahms's

musical

setting

ombines

elements

f

the

traditional

ong cycle

a group

of musical

yrics)

nd

the

Romantische

per

(the

musical

equivalent

f the

Roman)' (p.345).

Op.

118,

No.

5

may

have

some

generic

affinities

ith

Brahms's

vocal

Romanzen;

in

particular,

t

also

exemplifies

he

fusion

of

genres

hat

Daverio

finds

n

Op.

33. It

is

significant,

or

xample,

hat

Brahms

notates

most of

his

intermezzi

n a

uniform

empo

(all

the

intermezzi

n

Op.

118 are

good

examples

of

this),or,

f here

s a

change

of

tempo

for

he

middle

section,

s

in

Op.

119,

No.

2,

there s no

change

ofmetre.

Op.

116,

No. 2 does

change

metre,

but

at

least

both

sections

remain

n

a

triple

metre,

being

in

4

and

8

respectively.)

The contrasts

of metre

and

tempo

in

Op.

118,

No.

5

(Andante

versus

Allegretto razioso,

versus

0)

are more

extreme

han

those

in

Brahms's

ntermezzi.

he use of variation

orm

or

he

middle

section

lso

66

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A

NEW


creates

fusion

f

variation

orm

with

ernary

orm.

There

are

precedents,

f

course,

for he use

of variation orm

n the

nstrumental

omance:

one

thinks,for

xample,

of Clara Schumann'sRomance

aride,

p.

3.)

The

narrative

ualities

of the vocal Romanze

may

also

have

coloured

Brahms's

conception

of

the

instrumental

omanze.

Here we can

extend

Daverio's

insights

nto

the

literary ackground

of the Romanze

genre by

reading

Bloom's

essay

The Internalization f

Quest

Romance'

(in

Poetics

f

Influence,

p.17-42).

Although

Bloom's

predominant

oncernhere s with

he

English

Romantics,

his

analysis

lso illuminates he

German

iterary

raditions

with

which Brahms would have been most

familiar,

ecause

there were

intimate

inksbetween

English

nd German

Romanticism.

Bloom believesthatRomanticismwas a revival ftheromancegenre, nd

particularly

f the

quest

romance. This

revival,however,

reatly

nternalized

the

patterns

f

quest

romance,

o that t became an

inner

ourney,

quest

for

authentic elfhood.The hero of this

quest

is

'the

poet

himself,

he

antagonists

of

quest

are

everything

n

the self that blocks

imaginative

work

...

The

creative

process

is

the hero of

Romantic

poetry'

(p.24).

This

quest

for

authentic selfhood is

always

mediated

through

the

anxiety

of

influence,

because

as we

have

seen,

self-consciousness anifests

tself

n

poems

as text-

consciousness.The

power

that

blocks the

poet's

individuation s

that of his

precursors.Because of the

anxiety

f

nfluence,

he

structure f this

nternalized

uest

can be

transferred

o

music;

the

external

ubject

matter f

poetry,

which

ould

not be

represented

n

music,

s

not Bloom's

concern.

My

reading

f Brahms's

Romanze, then,

will

follow

the structure f

an

internalized

uest

romance.

Brahms must

choose between

relying

pon

his own

imaginative

ower

and

yielding

o

the

preemptive

orce f a

strong

recursor,

hopin.

This

choice

is

really

one between

authentic and

inauthentic

elfhood.

I

would

suggest,

however,

that

such

a decision

can

be

represented

n

music

only

if

it is

mediated

through

he

anxiety

f

influence,

hat

s,

only

f

the

music of

other

composers s used inone's ownpiecetorepresenthreatso theself.

By

now

the

reader can see

my

own

quest.

I

want to find

ways

to

discuss

musical

meaning

without

mposing

meanings

external to

music;

musical

structures

re

vehicles hat

onvey

n

intrinsic ind

of

musical

content,

eeling

and

poetry.

The

fact

that Brahms

called

his

piece

a

Romanze does

not,

of

course,

signify

hat

he

consciously

ntended t to

be a

Bloomian

internalized

quest

romance.

Nevertheless,

my

interpretation

s

consistent with

the

Romantic

revival f

romancewith

which

Brahms

would

have

been

familiar.)

81.

Jeffrey

allberg,

The

Rhetoric

of

Genre:

Chopin's

Nocturne

n

G

minor',

19th-Centuryusic,

Vol.

11,No. 3 (1989), pp.238-61.

82.

Jonathan Culler,

The

Pursuit

of Signs:

Semiotics,

Literature,

Deconstruction

(Ithaca:

Cornell

University

ress,

1981),

p.

105.

83. A

Map of

Misreading,

p.60.

84.

Aristotle,

oetics,

rans.

Gerald F. Else

(Ann

Arbor:

University

f

Michigan

Press, 1967),

p.52a.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

67







KEVIN KORSYN

85.

Although

hopin

does not mark

he Berceuse s

a

set

of

variations,

e

originally

alled t

Variantes';

sketch or he

piece

was

arranged

n

four-bar

segments,

ith hevariations umbered nd

verticallyligned

eneath he

theme,

howing

ow

strictly

hopin

onceived ach

variation

n a bar-to-bar

correspondence

ith

he theme.

See

Wojciech

Nowik,

Fryderykhopin's

Op.

57

-

FromVariantes

o

Berceuse',

n

Chopin

tudies,

p.25-39.)

86.

My graph

s similar o Schenker's

nalysis

n Das Meisterwerk

n

der

Musik,

vols

Munich:

rei

Masken

Verlag,

925-30),

Vol.

2,

p.

13.

87.

The

Anxietyf

nfluence,p.

14,

66-7.

88.

Arnold

choenberg,

undamentals

f

Musical

Composition,

d. Gerald

Strang

and Leonard

tein

New

York: t. Martin's

ress,

967),

p.167.

89. Quintilian, he Institutesf Oratory,rans.H. E. Butler London:Loeb

Classics,

953),

Book

VIII,

Chapter

i,

Section

9.

90.

A

Map of

Misreading,

.72.

91.

Quoted

n

Poetry

nd

Repression,

.9.

92.

Conventional

pinion

still classifies

chenker

s

an austere

formalist,

interested

nly

n autonomoustructure.

t

may

urprise

ome

readers,

hen,

to see

me elicit

rom chenker

he nitial

werve

owards

musical

hetoric.

Historical

eflection,owever,

akes

my

laims

eem

ess

startling.

chenker

often

ompared

music

o

language,

s

in Free

Composition,

here

e

wrote:

'music s never omparableo mathematics

r to

architecture,

ut

only

o

language,

kind of tonal

language'

p.5).

This themeremains onstant

throughout

chenker's

areer;

n his

Erlduterungsausgaben

er etzten

iinf

Sonaten

eethovens.

pus

109

Vienna:

Universal,

913;

rev.

dn,

ed.

Oswald

Jonas

Vienna:

Universal,

971]),

he wrote:

musical

anguage

as

a

syntax

precisely

nalogous

o that

f

spoken

anguage',

nd even

nvoked

hetorical

terms

uch

as

aposiopesisp.33).

His

writings

requently

raise

composer's

musical

hetoric.

See,

for

xample,

he

essay

on

Haydn's

E

flat onata

n

Tonwille

Vienna:

lbert

.

Gutmann,

921-4],

Vol.

3,

pp.3-21.)

There

s also

a

long

ssociation

etween

ierarchical

heories

f musical

structurendmusical hetoric. henChristophernhardntroduced hat

we

now call

structural

evels

o describe

he

relation

etween

n

underlying

simple

attern

nd

tsfree

laboration,

e

naturally

nvoked

hetorical

erms,

because

rhetorical

igures

lways

nvolve

difference

etween

roper

nd

figurative

eaning.

nd

whenSchenker

adically

eformulated

he

concept

of structural

evels,

residuum

emained

f the

older,

rhetorical

tyle

f

thinking

bout

structural

evels.

Although

chenker

id

not

elaborate

n

explicit

theory

of

musical

rhetoric,

his

system

invites

rhetorical

interpretation,

nd

one can

elicit

eep

nsights

nto

musical

hetoric

rom

is

texts.

In a

profound

nalysis

of hiddenrelations etweenClassical and

Renaissance

hetoric,eventeenth-century

nd

eighteenth-century

ssociation-

of-ideas

sychology,

omantic

oetry

nd

psychoanalysis,

loom

has shown

that

rhetoric

s

a

repressed

oncern

of

many

modes

of

thought.

he

associationists,

or

example,

wished

to

usurp

the

place

and

function

f

68

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS

A NEW POETICS OF

MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

rhetoric',

o

they

ounded

heir

sychology

perhaps

unconsciously 'upon

thetopicsor commonplacesof rhetoric'WallaceStevens:The Poems fOur

Climate,

.389).

Bolder

critics han

might

be

tempted

o

extend

Bloom's

argument

o music

analysis,

o disclose

a

covert

eturn f

musical

rhetoric

n

the

writings

f

many

theorists,

ncluding

chenker,

ut a

rhetoric

requently

masked

by

a

foreground

hat

may

even disavow

rhetoric.

uch

an

enterprise

would

require

volumes,

and would

demand

great

subtlety

n

textual

interpretation.

93.

Gustav

Jenner,

ohannes

rahms

ls

Mensch,

Lehrer,

nd

Kiinstler,

nd

edn

(Marburg:

N.

G. Elwert'sche

Verlagsbuchhandlung,930),

p.57.

94.

Agon,

p.284.

95. See TerryEagleton,Literary heory: n IntroductionMinneapolis:University

of

Minnesota

Press,

1983),

p.

183.

96.

Floros,

Studien

zu

Brahms'

Klaviermusik',

.53.

97.

For

Brahms's

distinction etween

trict

ariations nd

fantasia

ariations,

ee

his letter

o

Heinrich

nd

Elisabet

von

Herzogenberg,

0

August

1876,

and

his

letter

o

Schubring

ited

n

note 2

above.

98.

Donald

Francis

Tovey,

Beethoven

London: OUP,

1944),

p.130.

Tovey

cites

Beethoven's

Seventh

ymphony,

econd

movement,

o

demonstrate

hat

the

essential

umulative

ffect f

a set

of

variations

an

be

maintained

y

sheer

repetition

ithout

arying

he

theme t all'.

99. Another

result

of

the

different

roportions

s that

Chopin's

first

hree

variationshold

very

closely

to

the

melody

of

the

theme,

while

Brahms,

having

fewer

ariations,

lready egins

the

process

of

melodic

embellishment

in

Variation

.

100.

Schenker,

Meisterwerk,

ol.

2,

pp.13-14.

101.

Renza,

p.189.

102.

Although

chenker

did not

explicitly

ormulate

his

notion

of

simulating

he

structure

f

rhetorical

rony

hrough

conflict

etween

tructural

evels,

t is

not

difficult

o

elicit it

from

his

texts. In

Free

Composition,

or

example,

Schenkerdiscusses the beginning f Beethoven'sThird LeonoreOverture.

Towards

the

beginning

f

the

piece

there s a

quotation,

n

At,

major,

from

Florestan's aria.

This

section

functions

s

a

chromatic

assing

note within

larger

arpeggiation

f

the

dominant-seventh

hord

of C

major.

Schenker

comments:

Beethoven

achieved

the

effect

f

the

vision

in

the

Adagio

by

placing

t in

a

passing

tone of

chromatic

rigin,

which

s

more

remote han

the

diatonic

a?.

t is

thiswhich

makes

the

vision

more

distant,

more

visionary'

(p.64).

Thus

Schenker's

nalysis

perfectly

aptures

he

rony

f

this

allusion

to

Florestan's

aria:

however

eal

the vision

may

appear

from

he

perspective

of

Atmajor,

t

must

yield othe reality' fC major.103.

Chopin's

innovative

chromaticism

has

always

been

recognized,

but

his

mastery

of

diatonic

writing,

n

the

Berceuse

and

elsewhere,

was

equally

uncanny.

104.

Patricia

Carpenter,

Aspects

of

Musical

Space',

in

Explorations

n

Music,

the

Arts,

and

Ideas,

ed.

Eugene

Narmour

and

Ruth

A.

Solie

(Stuyvesant:

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:

1-2,

1991

69







KEVIN

KORSYN

Pendragon),

p.354.

105.

Martin

Heidegger, Being

and

Time,

trans.

John

Macquarrie

and Edward

Robinson New York:

Harper

andRow,

1962),

pp.389-400.

106.

I

appropriate

the notion of

'metaphorical

exemplification'

rom Nelson

Goodman,

Languages

f

Art

Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill,

968).

107. David B.

Greene,

Temporal

Processes n

Beethoven'sMusic

(New

York:

Gordon

and

Breach,

1982),

and

Mahler,

Consciousness

nd

Temporality

New

York:

Gordon and

Breach,

1984).

108. Fred Everett

Maus,

in

a

perceptive ritique

of

Greene,

also

acknowledges

that Greene's

limitations s an

analyst

are

frequently

vident'

('Tempus

Imperfectum',

9th-Century

usic,

Vol.

9,

No. 3

[1986],

p.244).

109. EugeneNarmour,On theRelationship fAnalytical heoryto Performance

and

Interpretation',

n

Explorations

n

Music,

the

Arts,

nd

Ideas,

p.326.

110.

Agon,

p.viii.

111. Kabbalah

and

Criticism,

.106.

112. Blindness

nd

Insight,

p.212,

226.

113.

Renza,

p.189.

114.

Peter

Brooks,

'The Idea of

a

Psychoanalytic

iterary

Criticism',

Critical

Inquiry,

ol.

13,

No.

2

(1987),

p.334.

115.

Poetry

nd

Repression,

.245.

116.

Agon,pp.236-7.117. Wallace tevens:ThePoems

f

Our

Climate,

.375.

118.

A

Map

of

Misreading,

.72.

119. Walter

Frisch,

The

"Brahms

Fog":

On

Tracing

Brahmsian

nfluences',

The

American

rahms

ociety

ewsletter,

ol.

7,

No.

1

(1989),

p.3.

120.

Angus

Fletcher,

Allegory:

he

Theory f

a

Symbolic

Mode

(Ithaca:

Cornell

University

ress,

1964),

p.247.

121. The

Anxiety

f nfluence,.

14;

A

Map

ofMisreading,

.72.

122. De

Man,

review

f The

Anxiety

f nfluence,eprinted

n Blindness

nd

Insight,

Appendix

A,

p.276.

123. Renza,p.191.

124. Of

course,

it is

only

a fiction hat

one text

can fulfil

r

complete

another.

Bloom

discusses

this

point

n Ruin

the

Sacred

Truths:

oetry

nd

Belief

rom

the

Bibleto

the

resent

Cambridge:

Harvard

University

ress,

1989),

p.43.

125. In the

Intermezzo

Op.

119,

No.

2,

for

example,

the

middle

section

reaches

complete

melodic

closure

n

b.67.

126. Textual

ambiguities

urround

his

tempo

equivalence.

As

Camilla

Cai

has

observed,

Brahms

originally

marked

his

tempo equivalence

as minim

quals

crotchet,

ather

hen crotchet

quals

minim,

s

it now

appears

in

published

editions.

She

believes

that Brahms

may

have

mispositioned

the

tempo

equivalence,

and

may

have wanted it in b.17: 'Both metre

changes

coincidentally

egin

a

new

page

in the

autograph,

nd

might,

n a

quick

glance

that searched

only

for

the

beginning

of

something,

have

been

mistaken

or

one another.'

'Was

Brahms

a Reliable

Editor?

Changes

made

in

Opuses

116, 117, 118,

and

119',

Acta

Musicologica,

ol.

61,

No. 1

[1989],

70

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991







TOWARDS A

NEW POETICS

OF

MUSICAL INFLUENCE

pp.90-1.)

127.

Kenneth

Burke,

Four Master

Tropes',

in

A

Grammar

f

Motives

Berkeley:

University

f California

ress,

1945),

p.509.

128.

A

Map of

Misreading,

.98.

129.

Fundamentals

f

Musical

Composition,.58.

130.

A

Map of

Misreading,

.99.

131.

Ibid.,

p.99.

132.

Examples

of the

extension

of rhetorical

igures

eyond

the

linguistic

ealm

abound.

Angus

Fletcher,

for

example,

has shown

how

allegoricalpaintings

create

effects

omparable

to

synecdoche

nd

metonymy

hrough

the

use

of

encapsulated

visual

units within

larger

frame o as to

produce

a

studied

discontinuityith hewhole' (Allegory,.369).

133.

Rose

Rosengard

Subotnik,

Towards a

Deconstruction f

Structural isten-

ing:

A

Critique

of

Schoenberg,

Adorno,

and

Stravinsky',

n

Explorations

n

Music,

the

Arts,

nd

Ideas,

p.

121.

134. The

Anxiety f nfluence,

.

15.

135.

Poetry

nd

Repression,

.236.

136.

Ibid.,

p.14.

137.

Notice

that

Schoenberg's

underlying

model

for the

process

of

creating

musical

unity

s

rhetoric s a

system

f

persuasion.

The

composer's

ask

s to

persuade

us that

his

piece

is

monotonal, espite ny

elements hat

eopardizethe

primacy

f thetonic.

Rhetoric,

s Aristotle

aid,

proves

opposites',

and

the

reconciliation

f

contraries

roves

the

composer's

skill. On

one

hand,

a

piece

is in

one

key

throughout;

n the

other,

the

tonality

must be

placed

in

danger' (Theory f

Harmony,

rans.

Roy

E.

Carter

[Berkeley:University

f

California

ress,

1978],

p.151).

138.

The

Anxiety

f

nfluence,

.

15.

139. A

Map of

Misreading,

p.72,

101.

140.

The

Anxiety

f

nfluence,

p.

135-36.

141.

Truth nd

Method,

.273.

142. Wallace tevens:ThePoems fOurClimate, .386.

143.

I

take

the term

stratified iscourse'

from e

Certeau

The

Writingf

History,

p.94).

According

o

de

Certeau,

historiographical

iscourse s

constructed

s

a

knowledge f

the

other',

reating

split

discourse,

in

which

'quotation

introduces

necessary

uter

textwithin

he text'.

suggest

hat

as art

grows

more

conscious of

its

history,

t

may

assume

something

f

the

character

f

historiographical

iscourse,

becoming

stratified,

s

quotation

of

prior

art

introduces

ubtextswithin

he

text.

144.

Schoenberg,

Brahms the

Progressive',

n

Style

nd

Idea,

ed.

Leonard Stein

(Berkeley:University

f

California

ress, 1984), pp.398-441. (Burkholder'sarticlewas cited nnote5

above.)

145.

Blindness

nd

nsight,

p.

171-86.

146. A

Map of

Misreading,

.97.

147.

The

Figure f

Echo,

p.

114.

148. A

Map of

Misreading,

.

102.

MUSIC

ANALYSIS

10:1-2,

1991

71







KEVIN

KORSYN

149.

Ibid.,

p.102.

150. Schenker's

analyses

often

reveal

such

descending

octave

progressions

n

codas.

See,

for

xample,

his

reading

of the

coda of

Chopin's

Etude,

Op.

10,

No.

8

in

Five

Graphic

Musical

Analyses,

d. Felix Salzer

(New

York:

Dover,

1969).

151. There

are

other,

erhaps

more radical

ways

n

whichRomantic

pieces might

figurativelyxemplify

future-oriented

uality.

Directional

tonality,

for

example,

n which

pieces begin

and end in different

eys,

has an inherent

tendency

o

introject uturity

y

moving

owards new tonal

future.

152.

Agon,

p.225

153.

Bloom's

map appears

n

A

Map of

Misreading, .84.

154. For example, at the Conference Alternatives o Monotonality'at the

University

f

Victoria,

I

read

a

paper

called 'Directional

Tonality

and

Intertextuality:

Comparison

of the Second Movement

of

Brahms's

Quintet

Op.

88

with

Chopin's

Ballade

Op.

38'. There

I

proposed

that

Chopin's

Ballade

is the central

precursor-text

n Brahms's slow

movement.

am also

writing

book

which

will address hese ssuesmore

fully.

155.

A

good place

to

begin

such an

investigation

f

text-setting

might

be

Beethoven's

song

cycle

An die

ferne

Geliebte,

p.

98.

The six

poems

by

Jeitteles

ccommodate

themselves

to Bloom's

six

revisionary

atios.

In

Bloom's map of misreading, he ratios,tropes and psychicdefencesare

manifested

n

particular

ypes

of

poetic

imagery.

My

inter-reading

f the

Romanze

and the

Berceuse

naturally

id not

nclude such

verbal

mages,

but

analyses

f

song

textswould

followBloom's

complete

map.

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