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‘Labyrinthine Pathways and Bright Rings of Light’: Hoffmann's Aesthetics of Music in Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 May 2012

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson*
Affiliation:
Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University, UK
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

E.T.A. Hoffmann's discussions of performance, largely ignored in the current literature, proclaim a key aspect of his aesthetics: performance should transport its listeners to that ‘other world’ of the music itself. To underline the point, Hoffmann resorts to elaborate metaphor, most strikingly in the essay on Beethoven's Piano Trios op. 70.

In seeking to understand this aspect of Hoffmann's aesthetics, I briefly situate his ideas in the context of early nineteenth-century aesthetics. However, his accounts of transcendent listening correlate with modern theories of absorbed attention and, more generally, inform current debates concerning the relationships between performance, listening, and the secondary discourses of musical exegesis. Does knowledge about music always or necessarily promote deep listening? In considering such questions, I turn to the philosophical accounts of audiencing in Gadamer and Adorno. Adorno in particular is aware of the limits of conceptualisation and the need to acknowledge the power of music to transcend what we can say about it.

There are many problems with Hoffmann's aesthetics, but I argue that these do not invalidate his central argument, which is also Adorno's: that the finest music is not a discourse wholly accessible to conceptualization, for the latter may at times detract from the deeper listening experience. I illustrate the point by considering the pre-war recording of Beethoven's op. 135 quartet by the Busch Quartet, arguing that this recording achieves its longevity not by complying with Beethoven's score but by adopting strategies that draw its listeners into its own magical arena.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 9 , Issue 1: Theoretical and Critical Contexts in Nineteenth-Century Performance Practice , June 2012 , pp. 75 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

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