Abstract
This PhD develops an analytical method for determining how certain “archetypal” processes play out in the works from Beethoven’s late period, music that continues to speak powerfully to listeners and performers after two centuries. Literature, religious ideas and philosophical conceptions from ancient Greece, India and Egypt flowed, by way of traditions such as Freemasonry, into the world of Beethoven and his contemporaries. Accordingly, ancient mythic and initiation-like ideas deeply informed how Beethoven thought about music, thereby becoming a priori symbols according to which many of his compositions are constructed. By taking a detour through Carl Jung’s conception of the “collective unconscious,” I explore a certain core set of “archetypes” that were pervasive in the culture of early nineteenth century Europe, and in connection with which Beethoven makes constant reference in his own quotations of literature, his letters, and his notes to himself from his diary (his Tagebuch).
The Jungian and psychological aspect shows the degree to which these procedures can take place “unconsciously” to listeners; the goal of analysis is to raise such aspects of the music into consciousness by forming the appropriate concepts. To do this we look at a significant earlier work, the Third Symphony (the Eroica), which overtly expresses and embodies the structure of the hero myth, in order to gain methodological principles that then help us to understand the subtler, more philosophically multi-layered late works. In doing so I formulate a number of concepts relating to the temporal processes in Beethoven’s music drawing upon ideas of organicism, of Carl Dahlhaus’ “subthematicism,” and other sources. In short, Beethoven can rally any aspects of compositional method, or syntax, and make it “thematic,” insofar as it takes part in, and actuates, the transformative, “alchemical,” methods underlying a work.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of principles that will be developed over the course of the thesis, including some brief analysis of works by Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart, while chapter 2 delves into the background for the archetypal and mythic framework to be explored analytically in the remaining chapters. Chapter 3 approaches the Eroica itself before chapters 4-6 consider the last piano sonatas (Opp. 109-11, chapter 4), the Galitzin quartets (Opp. 127, 132, 130, and the latter’s initial finale, the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133, chapter 5), and the Missa Solemnis plus Ninth Symphony (chapter 6).