Journal ArticleDOI
Beethoven's Sketches and the Thematic Process
TLDR
For instance, the authors argues that Tovey's contribution to tonal analysis and theory is inseparable from Beethoven's contribution in the musical repertory; but the association is equally valid for the contributions of many theorists of the past hundred years, including Heinrich Schenker, whose work on the Piano Sonata op. 111 I shall be reviewing shortly, and Rudolph Reti, who invented the phrase "thematic process" to describe a method of analysis by which an entire composition can be reduced to one or a few prime cells.Abstract:
THEORISTS, analysts and popular writers continue to look more closely at Beethoven's music and at more of it than at that of any other composer; and it is his music, more often than not, that lies at the basis of theoretical formulations that are the most significant for our time. So, for instance, we agree with Joseph Kerman when he asserts that Tovey's contribution to tonal analysis and theory is inseparable from Beethoven's contribution to the musical repertory;' but the association is equally valid for the contributions of many theorists of the past hundred years, including Heinrich Schenker, whose work on the Piano Sonata op. 111 I shall be reviewing shortly, and Rudolph Reti, who invented the phrase 'thematic process' to describe a method of analysis by which an entire composition can be reduced to one or a few 'prime cells'. In the first of Reti's two books on the subject, the Ninth Symphony is made the lead batsman in an impressive line-up of musical masterpieces from the sixteenth century to the twentieth; the second of his books is devoted entirely to the piano sonatas of Beethoven.2read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven's Sketches
TL;DR: The special Beethoven issues and the congresses are the serum injected every fifty years to keep an aging discipline healthy; the life-giving fluids produce some unexpected adverse side effects: skepticism and rejection.