Society for Music Theory

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Beethoven Hero by Scott Burnham
Review by: Brian Hyer
Source: Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 121-136
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Music Theory
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/746159
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Reviews There is also a consensus among listeners that this music
is Heroic. While the Eroica's critics have at one time or an-
other centered their dramatic narratives around the exploit
Scott Burnham. Beethoven Hero. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
of protagonists as various as Napoleon, Beethoven,
versity Press, 1995.
Prometheus, and Man, among others, the plot invariably re-
Reviewed by Brian Hyer mains the same-the names have been changed, as it were,
to protect the innocent. This plot conforms.to the main phases
Beethoven Hero begins, mightily, with an ingenious dis- of classical tragedy. It begins with a hero who strides out into
cussion of the first movement of the Eroica. In Chapter One, the world (pathos), where he encounters conflict and resis-
"Beethoven's Hero," Scott Burnham deliberates on mo- tance (agon). His struggle against fate continues and inten-
ments in the music that resist critical efforts to be explained sifies until the conflict reaches a crisis (sparagmos), a moment
in narrative terms: the opening theme with its tremulous C#, in which the outcome is uncertain, and in which his life hangs
the entrance of a new theme in E minor mid-stride in the in the balance. From there, the action moves toward reso-
development, the ominous horn call that announces the re- lution (anagnorisis). In the first movement of the Eroica,
prise, and the massive coda that brings the movement to a these phases conform more or less to the tonic music, where
close. These and a number of other moments, Burnham im- we are introduced to the hero, the non-tonic music, where
plies, well out of the music and register on our pulses. In the he (and there can be no doubt that Beethoven's heroes are
consistent historical reception of the Eroica, these events masculine) first experiences strife, the development, where a
have forced writers from Marx and Wagner to Schering and musical crisis ensues and threatens him with disaster, and the
Schenker to pause in their commentaries on the music and reprise, in which the hero overcomes all resistance, an en-
bend their critical narratives in order to account for them ascounter with destiny that leaves him renewed. This moment
twists and turns in a musical plot. Behind the different the- of heroic overcoming, which often coincides with a powerful
oretical and cultural commitments of these writers, there has cadential resolution to the tonic, is one of intense personal
been calm agreement on what the musical facts of the matter identification with the music, the completion of a musical
are, even when there is dissension about what those facts process that encourages us to equate our own subjective ex-
might mean. Such caesuras in the narrative progress of their periences of the music with those of the hero. Beethoven thus
commentaries attest to the common-sense notion that these intimates the universal: his music both models and enacts
moments are embedded in the music: however constructed moral notions of freedom and self-determination, notions
our descriptions of the Eroica, these moments are in some use to lend purpose and coherence to our lives. For Burnh
sense true of the music-we all hear them. And because we the persistent urge to translate the Eroica into a dram
all hear them, narrative accounts of this music-whatever program "signals a need to characterize the process of
their actual contents-all tend to have the same basic struc-
movement in terms more universal and fundamentally me
ture. The invariance of these stories over the better part of
ingful than those of musical syntax or morphology" (18). T
two centuries is, as Burnham points out, no less than re- need can be understood as a mimetic response to the mus
markable: few listeners, it seems, have ever been able to which at times-and particularly in the codas-can be he
resist the urge to hear the Eroica as a metaphorical drama. to narrate, to relate the process of its own becomin

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122 Music Theory Spectrum

Beethoven's heroic music, that is, prefigures the efforts of its ing internal necessity. Above all, the heroic music o
listeners, past and present, to verbalize the music in the form Beethoven is urgent, weighed down with purpose and int
of dramatic narratives. Music proves, as if proof were needed, tion, and it is this "telling presence," its "almost coer
that we are homo narratans, tellers of tales. immediacy," that elicits our visceral involvement, so mu
Chapter Two, on "Musical Values," gives this musical so that we sometimes even confuse its moment-to-moment
heroism a "phenomenological basis." In further discussions emergence with the temporal coherence of our own self-
of the Eroica and a number of other works, Burnham grounds consciousness.
the heroism of this music in its inexorable drive toward a Chapter Three, "Institutional Values," examines the
strenuous efforts of music theorists-Marx, Riemann, Reti
predestined cadential goal. He argues that the powerful telos
of the heroic music is a consequence of the tension between and Schenker among them-to convert the phenomenolo
its tremendous orchestral mass and its aggressive thematicical basis of the heroic music into more general criteria of
surge. In its implacable motion toward completion, the musicmusical coherence. As Burnham notes, the music of
Beethoven has served for two centuries as a "breeding
forms and reforms its motivic material into irregular periodic
structures, musical sentences that conflate a confident expo-
ground" for new theories of music, theories that in turn for
sitional declamation with a much more nervous develop- the main discursive means "through which we continue
mental kinesis. It uses huge monolithic harmonies to exert construe musical coherence and process" (68). Marx, to begin
pressure on the motivic repetition, generating a harmonic with, hears Beethoven as a restless dialectic of motion (Gan
undertow that destabilizes the music and sets it in motion. and closure (Satz), a process in which a poetic Idee adjus
Once in gear, the music reins the thematic process into tense
and coordinates thematic content to the changing require-
ments of an emerging whole. He conceives this malleab
"cycles of action and reaction" that unwind into musical para-
graphs of immense length, a dialectic in which each musical content, moreover, in organic terms, in terms of seeds tha
wave both opposes and completes the last but also renews grow and determine the form of the whole. As such, musica
tensions for the next wave to consume. Hence the music urgesform "is the life process of thematic content, and themati
the listener to anticipate cadences far in advance of their content lives the life of a dramatic protagonist: the musica
arrivals, to imagine a musical future fraught with promisework becomes a subject" (72). For Riemann, in contrast,
and peril. The tremendous accumulation of tension serves musical form accrues from an accumulation of motives, whi
to monumentalize these cadences, which become dramatic are heard against a fixed and determined metrical grid
events: the music's fierce insistence on these moments of upbeats and downbeats. Riemann places the stress, that i
fulfillment and completion represents, as Burnham points "on the cognitive basis of musical understanding, on the way
out, an extreme overreaction to normal musical demands the for listener processes musical information" (86). He no
longer imagines music as a whole that emerges over tim
closure. In its motion through time, the heroic music defines
a process in which moments of arrival (and the reprise in
according to a dramatic narrative or poetic Idee, as Mar
particular) are made to seem self-willed and inevitable, thedid, but rather in terms of its motivic coherence. Reti, wh
outcome of agonistic struggle. To our ears, the music seems understudies here for Schoenberg, goes further than either
to work itself out in obedience to causal forces, a genetic Marx or Riemann to describe motivic coherence in
process that reaches its conclusion in response to some press-
Beethoven in terms of mitosis, a process of cell div

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 Reviews 123

replicates the same genetic information-the same the ideal

basicmerge" (110). In large part because of these the
strands of motivic DNA-within each cell of the musical ories, the heroism of his music has been inscribed in th
organism. In his genetic accounts of musical coherence, the cognitive reflexes of "our collective musical conscious."
concern is less with the surface appearance of the music than Beethoven has, over time, become the measure of music.
with the natural laws that control and regulate its growth. For If Chapter Three is the musical heart of Beethoven Hero,
Reti, the inner entelechy of the music has an allegorical di- Chapter Four-which muses on "Cultural Values"-is its cul
mension in which "structure emerges from a process of mo- tural soul. Here Burnham unearths the historical roots of our
tivic transformation and becomes a spiritual phenomenon" prepossession with the heroic music of Beethoven in a moral
(106). And then there is Schenker, whose own heroic en- and ethical notion of the self that germinated in the fertile
counters with Beethoven articulate decisive moments in the soil of German romanticism. Despite their overt appeals to
development of his theories. Schenker conceptualizes music different epistemologies (Marx to dialectical idealism, Rie-
in terms of melodic motion toward a predetermined goal: mann to positivism, Schenker to historicism, Reti to psy-
the melodic twists and turns of the music en route to its chobabble), Burnham argues that the writers he singles out
completion-its hesitations, digressions, elaborations, and for attention in Chapter Three all subscribe to the same basic
circumlocutions-constitute "a dramatic course of events."' image of the subject, allowing him to merge their divergent
Yet however intricate or convoluted a given melodic con- intellectual postures into a single ideological stance. Goethe
tinuation, the Urlinie exerts tremendous pressure on it to and his contemporaries, to be more specific, envisioned a
descend to its ultimate destination. Schenker, Burnham ar- self-conscious, integrated, and autonomous subject, a rap-
gues, borrows the relentless descent of the Urlinie toward turous notion of human being that glorifies Promethean strug-
termination from the powerful forward momentum of the gle as a means of self-determination and transcendence. In
heroic Beethoven. the historical reception of Beethoven, this idealized image of
the self translates easily into the music's motivic coherence,
Burnham demonstrates, persuasively, that each of these
its purposive telos, and the narrative identification of a theme
theorists appropriates Beethoven for his own musical pur-
poses. Marx, Riemann, Reti, and Schenker all coordinatewith a dramatic protagonist. As a subject, the theme "appears
to create its own objective world (its form)," which "no
what they hear in the heroic music with the musical phe-
nomena their theories were meant to isolate and describe. longer serves to present prestabilized thematic material but
There has, in other words, been a dramatic convergence rather becomes a necessary process in the life of a theme"
between the music of Beethoven and the theories we use (120). Burnham hears the musical apotheosis of this height-
to make sense of tonal music in general: "the musical values ened sense of individualism in the heroic coda, which, poised
of the heroic style-thematic/motivic development, end-between enactment and narration, both closes and comments
orientation and unequivocal closure, form as process, and the on the act of closure (141). As a narrative presence, and a
inexorable presence of line-are preserved in the axioms ofmusical appendix, the coda seems to exist outside and above
the leading theoretical models of the last two centuries."the musical process while nevertheless remaining within it. In
Beethoven's music thus becomes "a place where the real and this sense, the music becomes self-conscious, aware of its own
status as a narrating subject, "a voice that speaks from out-
1Heinrich Schenker, Der freie Satz (Vienna: Universal, 1935), 18. side the music."

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124 Music Theory Spectrum

Burnham devotes two dozen pages in this connection to resonance might have for current critical practice. Our use ot
a fascinating excursus on the overture and incidental music Beethoven "to configure musical coherence," as Burnham
to Egmont. In the final scene of the Trauerspiel, Egmont points out (on p. 152), is double-edged. It provides us with
awakens in his prison cell from dreams of revolution and a larger-than-life sense of our musical selves on the one hand,
freedom to the ominous sound of drum rolls: but also tempts us to dismiss divergent forms of musical
expression-music that fails to live up to the heroism of
Man hort ganz von weitem eine Kriegrische Musik von Trommeln
Beethoven-on the other. This covert commitment to
und Pfeifen .... Trommeln ndher .... Trommeln .... Trommeln ....
Beethoven leads us, without our necessarily being consci
Moments later, these drums march Egmont to his execution:of it, to assign less Olympian music to lower rungs o
canonic ladder, or even to exclude it from cultural notice
he dies believing that, as a result of his sacrifice, he will have
incited his compatriots to rise up in arms and throw off the altogether. We tend to privilege music and attendant forms
yoke of foreign oppression. Goethe calls for a Siegessym- of cognition that conform to the heroic narratives we asso-
phonie to memorialize the occasion, a request Beethoven metciate with middle-period Beethoven, and because of this, we
with the coda from the overture, detached from the rest of hear other music negatively, in terms of what the heroic music
the piece and made to occur alone at the end of the drama. is not. Beethoven thus "dictates the shape of alterity" (155).
Within this dramatic context, the coda acts as "a disembodied Our concern with musical process, Burnham argues, encour-
telos, as free-floating closure, waiting for the something toages us to overintegrate our accounts of music, to hear within
close" (126). As Burnham hears it, the music manages what it a relational self-sufficiency that determines its structure
no drama ever could, the realization of a utopian future
down to the last musical iota. Under these conditions, the
within the present moment. In its triumphant turn from amusic becomes autonomous and hermetic, a self-contained
and unchanging object sealed against the contingencies of
betriibte F minor to the grell F major of the coda, the overture
makes its claims on the transcendent and universal. Yet, interpretation, one that no longer requires the presence of an
for Burnham, the coda rings hollow. In its final moments, the attentive listener to lend it meaning. This compulsion to at-
overture monumentalizes the musically trivial and mundane: tribute wholeness to music transforms pieces into commod-
"the banal is raised, indeed apotheosized" (141). It is the ities, rendering both the music and ourselves inviolate and
squealing of the fifes over the martial bombast of the final impermeable, deaf to what our accounts of the music have
measures that gives the lie to the "enforced bluster" of the difficulty putting into words. In straining to hear the reso-
coda. Such crass gestures-and the overture's close abounds nance of our own musical and cultural convictions in what we
in them-are evidence of a divided, ironic consciousness, listen to, interpretation becomes self-confirming: our desper-
one that registers the difference between the act of closure ate need for reassurance overrides our involvement with-
and "the narrative assertion of culmination." Burnham goes our sense of being in-the music.
so far as to suggest (on p. 146) that all self-consciousness
(all awareness-of, hence all narration-which would include Beethoven Hero is a glorious book whose central (and mo
Beethoven Hero) is ironic. insistent) insight-that the heroic music of Beethoven u
And so it is. Chapter Five, "Beethoven Hero," reconsiders derwrites cultural notions of what music is or can be-has
the moral force of this music and the implications its ethical urgent implications for our activities as historians, theorists,

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 Reviews 125

onstrates
and critics of music. In bringing to our attention the enormoushow this resonance is woven into our discourse
discursive presence this music has in our criticalabout
and (and
theo-
thus into our experience of) music, it does not
retical consciousness, Burnham underscores, with afor the most
rigor and part, question the notion of musical heroism
elegance rare among us, something we have always itself.known,

but have never really faced up to.2 As he explains near If some

thereaders detect in this a note of caution or reser-
end of the preface, Beethoven Hero has a "fundamentally vation, let me stress in no uncertain terms that Beethoven
ethical crux," one that concerns first of all the music, which
Hero is a remarkable, even singular achievement, and that
conflates certain musical processes and a more abstract sense
its merits are not for a moment to be gainsaid. Beethoven
of presence with contingent notions of the self, but Hero is a the
also book to be read and reread, one that urges its
larger question of "what we want from music and what readers to reassess their own attitudes (as I have) about
music
does for us." Burnham writes that the time has come not to Beethoven, about music, and about ourselves as listeners.
disown this music or the values it promotes, "but to discern For music theorists in particular, Beethoven Hero represents
the ways in which we have become invested in defending both a challenge and a promise. It challenges us, rather like
them, to discover the cost of such defense mechanisms on the the horn call in the Eroica, to renew our discourse and to raise
well-being of our musical ecology" (xix). our intellectual ambitions, and not a moment too late. And
Yet for all his concern with ethics, Beethoven Hero remains as an alternative to the recurrent (and often regressive)
a largely affirmative account of the presence of Beethoven in technological obsessions of music theory, Beethoven Hero--
our musical lives. With a number of crucial qualifications to in its humane integration of musical and cultural concerns--
which I will return below, Burnham reifies the heroism of this promises us a better future.
music. He encounters little resistance to his own interpretive It will, moreover, become clear in what follows that I agree
reconstructions of its heroism: the evidence, whether musical with Burnham about the music and its role in the cultural
or cultural, always supports his argument, his analyses always imagination. It is in furtherance of a dialogue, then, that I
work out. But then, how could it be otherwise if, as Burnham comment on Beethoven Hero, an aim consistent with Burn-
so convincingly demonstrates, the music of Beethoven con- ham's plea, in the last few pages of the book, that we remain
ditions the conceptual vocabularies and critical routines we "permeable," open to the music, of course, but also to the
use to understand music in general? In his concern to drive ideas of others. It seems to me that the best and most original
the point home, however, he often appears to embrace theresearch is that which gives rise to the most interesting con-
music's heroism and the concomitant notions of self it em- versations, and it would not be going out on a limb to predict
bodies. While Beethoven Hero is critical in the best sense in
that Beethoven Hero will engage us productively for a long
that it hears an ideological resonance in the music and dem-time to come.
What real tension there is in Burnham's encounters with
the music derives, for the most part, from the music itself.
2As Burnham notes, other writers have made the same observations be-
One measure of his extraordinary abilities as a writer is the
fore. Burnham mentions Dahlhaus (on p. 181), who notes the prominence extent to which his writing takes on the qualities he attributes
to
of Beethoven in the methods of Marx, Riemann, Schenker, and Reti, the four Beethoven's music. Burnham's prose is gorgeous, blessed
writers discussed in Chapter Three. with a clear-headedness that, like the music, seems to mimic

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126 Music Theory Spectrum
our own consciousness: we almost sense as we turn the page -
and the pages turn easily-that we are hearing ourselves
think. And while one might be more inclined to associate the
lyrical bloom of his writing with the non-heroic music of
Beethoven (about which we hear little), the liveliness of his
prose borrows its charisma from the heroic music's inexorable
drive toward completion. Beethoven Hero generates its mo-
mentum from the repetition of a limited number of motives
and themes, which almost translate into Morse code: . . --,
... .-. Not that we ever mind, for each time a motive returns
(there's a continual sense of deja lu in the later chapters), it
seems even more precise, even more poetic, than the time
before. As in the thematic process of the heroic music, these
motives mold themselves to the immediate narrative require-
ments of the argument and are revoiced to bring out new
ideas, or to fit different discursive contexts. In a sense, all the
repetition goes to prove one of Burnham's main contentions,
which is that the heroic Beethoven leans on its listeners to
tell and retell the same basic stories about the music, an
inclination Beethoven Hero (not to mention this review,
which begins with a going over of the book's contents) in-
dulges. Finally, there is a dramatic shift in Chapter Five from
the third person to a seid umschlungen "we," from a more
or less anonymous narrator to the first-person plural, a dis-
cursive apotheosis that mirrors the heroic identification of the
listener with the collective in the music. Even the title of the
last chapter, "Beethoven Hero," evokes the universal, co-
inciding as it does with the title of the entire book.
Chapter Five thus forms a coda to Beethoven Hero, not
merely because it comes last and concludes, but also
because-like the heroic coda-it is ironic: Burnham uses the
occasion to express his ambivalence about the critical appa-
ratus that sustained him through the first four chapters. And
because this last chapter is ironic, the overall organization of
Beethoven Hero reproduces the same large-scale downbeat /
upbeat / downbeat / upbeat / downbeat pattern he ascribes
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(on p. 54) to heroic pieces such as the first movement of the
Eroica and the Egmont Overture. The odd-numbered chap-
ters, that is, correspond to the downbeats (which in the music
demarcate the exposition, the reprise, and the coda), while
the even-numbered chapters correspond to the upbeats
(which characterize the so-called second theme in both the
exposition and reprise-a design that appears, curiously,
to leave out the development). In this un-Riemannian,
downbeat-oriented scheme, each even-numbered chapter
forms both an antecrusis (a further reflection) to the last and
an anacrusis (an impetus to further discussion) to the next.
The large-scale throbs of Beethoven Hero are those of the
music.
Burnham closes his scores in this last chapter to wonder,
ironically, whether our tremendous investment in this music
is altogether in our best musical interests. And while his will-
ingness to reconsider the ethical import of our commitment
to the heroic Beethoven is courageous, and to be applauded,
his immediate concerns about the music are less with causes
than effects, less with the conflicted nature of the music's
heroism than with the way it continues to condition our mu-
sical and discursive behavior. Burnham does not, for the most
part, integrate the critical animus of the final chapter into his
prior discussions of the music, discussions which, though
never free from misgivings about the music, tend to affirm
its heroic power and attest to the summons it has on the
cultural imagination. He does, of course, adduce the ironic
separation of narration from enactment in the codas as ev-
idence of a critical self-consciousness within the music, a con-
sciousness that doubles back on itself and becomes aware of
its own nature. But while I readily grant what he says about
the codas, it also seems to me crucial to stress that the codas,
qua codas, still lie outside the formal process of the music,
which thus remains autonomous and self-sufficient, immune
to the reflective censure of the codas. In the Egmont Over-
ture, moreover, the coda falls short of the performative con-
 Reviews 127

tradiction Burnham seems to attribute to it. In its overin- tonic and thus levels the essential tension that underlies the
sistence on closure, I hear less the forced smile of the ironicmusic. In some cases, the non-tonic music must be rearranged
than a moment of bad faith, an overinflated sense of self. Itsand reworked in the reprise in order to assimilate it to the
heaviness sounds defensive: the coda belabors the obvious, tonic, a process that impairs the non-tonic music and some-
refusing to admit the violence that underwrites its gestures times even introduces discontinuities into the reprise. In this
of musical triumph. sense, the apparent reconciliation of tonic and non-tonic mu-
The aggressiveness of the reprise was, for Adorno, the sic in the reprise is an illusion, a moment of false conscious-
crucial aesthetic moment in the heroic music of Beethoven.
ness: Adorno heard the exaggerated self-assurance of the
As Adorno understood it, the- sonata actualizes a process
reprise in the heroic music as an authoritarian gesture, a force
in which the music emerges in response to its own inner of "crushing repression."3 And in its return to the tonic in
necessities and thus forms a musical analog to the free and the reprise, moreover, the sonata sentences the music to lit-
autonomous subject. It promises a harmonious reconciliationeral repetition, to the regressive recurrence of the same. In
of musical tensions, an integration and consolidation of this connection, the reprise becomes a musical cipher for "the
disparate musical materials into a more extensive whole that senselessness of a merely self-reproducing totality," which
nevertheless manages to preserve the uniqueness of the attempts to rationalize the reprise as the inevitable outcome
particular. At the same time, however-and in a dialectical of its own internal development.4
inversion-the sonata also operates to eliminate difference, By and large, Beethoven maintains a tight rein over these
tensions in the heroic music, but there are occasions on which
to assimilate the non-identical to the identical. In the pressure
it exerts on the music to cohere, the sonata tends to reducetensions surface in the form of musical resistances, negative
thematic material to equivalence. It wears the thematic ma-
terial down until its motives coincide with the raw material 3Theodor W. Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music [1962], trans.
(the constitutive melodic gestures-neighbor notes, passingE. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 210.
4While I find Adorno's discussion of formal process in Beethoven com-
notes, and arpeggiations) of tonal music, a process of musical
pelling, I can imagine another, more generous account of the reprise. We can
erosion that renders them amenable to rational control and
imagine the sonata, for instance, as a process of recontextualization that
makes them easier to integrate into the whole. In this way, renews earlier music and creates opportunities for the introduction of new
the whole preforms the motivic material to meet its own ideas. In this sense, the reprise transposes the non-tonic into the tonic, of
musical requirements. It enforces a repressive sameness on
course, but also into new registers, where it assumes an altogether different

the music, a sameness reflected in Schoenberg's derivations mass-sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter-than before. In general, the
non-tonic music takes on new expressive hues in the reprise: the transposition
of entire movements from a single Grundgestalt, or Schen-of the non-tonic music into the tonic enables the reprise to resolve melodic
ker's attempts (see pp. 9-13) to hear the E minor theme in
tensions from earlier in the music, but also to introduce new ones, to be dealt
the Eroica as a mere chromatic upper neighbor and so towith later. Moreover, in order to connect the tonic with the now-transposed
non-tonic music, the sonata allows for (and often even necessitates) the in-
integrate it into the rest of the movement. Hence the sonata's
troduction of new material, transitional music that sometimes overwhelms and
promise of freedom and reconciliation veers over into its
displaces the recurrence of earlier material in musical significance. I have
opposite. In its efforts to mediate tensions and resolve con-
drawn on Adorno not because I advocate his approach to this music, won-
tradictions, the sonata damages the particular: the reprise
derful as it is, but because his numerous discussions of Beethoven both an-
subjects the non-tonic music to the musical control of the ticipate and challenge the descriptions of musical heroism in Beethoven Hero.

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128 Music Theory Spectrum
moments-the massive cadences in the coda to the Egmont
Overture, for instance--that attest to the contradictions in-
herent in the musical process. For Adorno, the heroic music
maintains a balance between freedom and constraint, but
only barely. When left unchecked, constraint degenerates
into coercion, as in the almost uncontrolled rage of the first
movement of the opus 95 string quartet.
Few listeners are as sensitive to the coercive pressures
within this music as Burnham is, even if he tends to recover
them for a more uplifting image of the self. He does write,
though, of the "fierce joy" of the heroic music and notes how
it manages both to consolidate the self and awaken within it
"the awe due to the sublime" (150), the fear of its imminent
dissolution into the overwhelming (and in this case overbear-
ing) onrush of phenomenal experience. His unease about the
negative imprint of the music's heroism leads him in the con-
cluding "Epilogue and Prolegomena" to plead for a critical
practice that gives more stress to presence than to process.
Our almost exclusive preoccupation with musical process,
Burnham argues, encourages us to marginalize or even den-
igrate music we perceive to be "process-minus," but also
removes us from the temporal flow of the music in order to
monitor and control its progress. It enforces an interpretive
closure on musical experience, a fixed hermeneutic horizon
in which we verbalize our experiences of the music over and
over in terms of the same narrow range of narrative strat-
egies. Process, he insists, should not be "the exclusive at-
traction of music, not its ontological bottom line" (166). As
an antidote to our totalizing obsessions with musical process,
Burnham suggests that we pay greater heed to the subjective
presence that animates and enlivens the music. For Burnham,
presence in music is "prior to our sense of process" and
remains with us after we have taken its processive measure
(163). It arises from the music's "combination of narration
and enactment," a combination that models self-conscious-
ness, both ours and of others, and thus resonates within the
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warm-blooded sentience of its listeners. It mediates our in-
volvement with the music, our absorptive identification wit
its narrative progress. We both hear ourselves in the musi
and feel its presence within us: the presence within this mus
in other words, is ours.
We should not conclude that the sense of presence I have be
arguing for is an essential, unchanging part of a piece of mus
independent of the listener. It should go without saying that su
presence depends on our presence, and is not the same for everyon
it is profoundly individual yet not hermetically so, otherwise w
would not be able to communicate with one another about it. Its
integrity as an experience that appears to stay nearly the same,
after time, is due to the integrity of our own selves. And its c
municability is contingent upon the fact that as citizens of the s
era and tradition, we are not so different from one another as w
might imagine. This is how music can tell us about ourselves wit
convincing us to make ourselves impermeable ... (165)
Burnham advocates abandoning a critical practice that
duces music to abstract knowledge for one that encourag
us to empathize with what we hear, to model our experie
of music on the basis of our interactions with other perso
a recommendation that deserves serious consideration. At
the same time, Burnham recognizes that the notion of mu
presence remains tentative and undertheorized in Beethov
Hero; this is altogether appropriate, since he raises the is
after all, as a "Prolegomena" to future practice, not
summation. Besides, the best moment to engage in this s
of imaginative speculation is in a conclusion, after an int
immersion in the empirical details, and not before. His im
mediate aim is, of course, to reform practice, to use
notion of musical presence as a corrective. But because
discussions of musical presence tend to dissolve into tempo
(and therefore processive) concerns, it seems improbable t
a greater concern from musical presence alone will be enou
to attenuate our reliance on musical process. As Burn
describes it, the abiding sense of presence in Beethoven ar
 Reviews 129

from-not in addition to-the processes that underlie the down into disconnected, non-processive debris-
break music
music. Presence concerns our engagement in thechords, motives, themes, formal segments, etc.-and then
narrative
arrange
course of the music, its motion through time: "it has them into static representations of pieces. In view of
to do
what seems to me the status quo, a concern for musical pro-
with a sustained line heard to be both weighty and inexorable,
initiated with an exhortation, continued with wavelike
cess ismo-
both therapeutic and progressive. It constitutes an
mentum, and concluded with monumental asseveration"active commitment to resist the atomization of music into
merepres-
(149). It would be hard, in other words, to disentangle phenomena.
ence from process. Nor does Burnham oppose them: rather, However hesitant Burnham is to essentialize presence, h
he means to use the former to balance what he does perceives
associate it with fullness and plenitude, a notion that h
to be an excessive interest in the latter. Yet if we come to come under aggressive assault over the last three decades. I
understand musical presence as we have musical process in western metaphysics, or so deconstruction has insisted, ther
terms of the heroic Beethoven-and Beethoven Hero makes has been a persistent cultural initiative to equate presen
gigantic, if unintentional strides in that direction-then we with positivity (being) and absence with negativity (no
are back where we started, which is the use of Beethoven to being). Presence, in other words, is positioned over an
determine the normative conditions of music, in this case of above absence and then used to authenticate contingent his
its presence, an attitude that leads us unawares to assess other torical practices (certain forms of behavior, social organiza
music according to the extent to which it conforms to the tion, discursive practices, cognition, and cultural expressio
narrative cast of the heroic music. And if, moreover, we are lending them an air of naturalness or truth. On closer scr
to hear the narrative presence in this music in terms of its tiny, however, the relation between presence and absence
"authority," as Burnham apparently does (see pp. 165-166), never stable: what one imagines to be a moment of presen
it becomes even harder to imagine how a more solicitous (or an origin) turns out to depend on some prior asserti
concern for musical presence could be used to ameliorate our of an absence. In other words, moments of presence, musi
critical urge to control the music. It would be the source of or otherwise, are never self-sufficient or identical to them-
that control, not a means to resist it.5 selves.

Perhaps the problem, then, is not so much the notion of For Burnham, the most affirmative moments in Beethoven
musical process, but how it is understood and the critical uses -the moments of greatest musical presence -are the massive
to which it is put. Nor am I convinced that the concern with cadential resolutions to the tonic that initiate the reprise and
musical process is as common or as ingrained a musical at- the coda. He writes, trumpets ablaze, that in fact "we could
titude as Burnham believes. He underestimates the regres- even argue that there is no closure in any other art form-or
siveness of normative pedagogical practice and the modes of any other form of human activity-that satisfies quite like a
cognition it promotes, a practice that encourages listeners to final cadence in tonal music" (128). The dominant-to-tonic
cadence that separates the reprise from the development, in
5It seems to me that there is good reason to be concerned that the notion
particular, forms a musical completion, the hard won attain-
of musical presence-however subtle and sophisticated in Beethoven Hero-
will be misunderstood, that in the hands of less imaginative listeners it will ment of a goal, a moment of closure that ensures wholeness
degenerate into a naive intentionalism that equates presence with the con- and enlists the listener in the collective universal. Burnham's
scious intentions of the composer. remarks on the Ganzschluf3 occur within a discursive traditio

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130 Music Theory Spectrum

that imagines the tonic as a locus of musical presence (sat- freie Satz, he describes the inevitable melodic descent of the
isfaction, ganzness), as a "home," "center," "axis," and so Urlinie-now generalized as a passing motion and contex-
on. Within this tradition, however, there has always been an tualized within the Ursatz-as a Lebenstrieb, an "image of
anxious discursive murmur that associates the tonic with an our life motion."7 In this sense, the Urlinie descends to i in
absence, with non-being.6 For instance, the strong association full consciousness of its own mortality, and the tonic-which
of the cadential tonic with death underwrites one of the con- determines the melodic extension of the Urlinie and ensures
stitutive narrative conventions of operatic music, a conven- its coherence-is present at its death. As its point of depar-
tion that also structures programmatic interpretations of the ture and ultimate destination, the tonic thus assumes an ironic
heroic music in which the final tonic coincides, as Burnham resonance. It designates both a musical birth (an origin) and
notes, with the death of the protagonist. If one conceives of a musical death (a terminus), both a presence and an absence.
music in terms of cadences "writ large, closing off large sec- If the gloomy metaphysics of the cadence (and the Ursatz)
tions of music" (67), then the import of this association of seem overly abstract, far removed from the sober use of the
musical closure with death becomes enormous: the long- tonic to bring a piece to its conclusion, it would be well to
range motion to the tonic, that is-the harmonic, melodic, remember the furious insistence on the tonic in the heroic
and metrical convergence of the music on its moment of codas. I would argue that the obsessive recurrence of th
closure-embodies a musical death-drive, a merger of telos tonic in the heroic codas is a tacit recognition of this musica
with thanatos. It is no coincidence that "cadence" derivesabsence: the complete saturation of the music with the ton
from the Latin cadere, which means "to fall," a word that also
betrays a certain defensiveness, a terrified attempt to cove
serves as the root form of "cadaver." over and disavow a musical absence-to fit the Emperor, a
This same musical death-instinct also looms over the me- it were, with new clothes. In the Egmont Overture, more-
lodic process. To mention one case from the book, Burnham over, the monumental arrival on the tonic in the coda is
observes that Schenker (in his 1920 Erliuterungsausgabe ofdoubly ironic, since it enacts the death of Egmont, but also
the Piano Sonata in A major, op. 101) compares the melodic enunciates his heroic transcendence. Here the final cadence
arc of the Urlinie to a motion - a life process - from the cradle marks the ultimate completion, an apotheosis, of the musi
to the grave. Hence "the Urlinie," writes Burnham, "is thesubject, giving musical expression to the ironic stirb u
spark of life, that which is born at the outset of the work and werde idealism of German romanticism (see p. 115). Yet th
dies only at the very end" (101). Schenker continues to imag- equation of the final cadential resolution to the tonic with
ine the Urlinie as a life process in his later theories, where death and transcendence is one more reason to distrust the
the Urlinie assumes a more definite melodic contour. In Der heroism of this music, an association all the more worriso
(at least for music theorists) when we realize that Schenk
6Rameau thus imagines the tonic as the one term in the constellation ofheard the cradle-to-grave motion of Urlinie as the music
tonic, dominant, and subdominant harmonies that occurs without a disso-
nance: what differentiates the tonic from the dominant and subdominant is
an absence. Rameau and Schenker, of course, came from different cultural 7Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition, trans. Ernst Oster (New Y
traditions, as Schenker was so anxious to point out, but music theorists within Longman, 1979), 5. I am uncertain of the provenance of this remark, wh
the more immediate discursive orbit around Beethoven had similar difficulties while consistent with other of Schenker's comments on the Urlinie, app
conceptualizing the tonic as a musical presence. in neither the 1935 nor the 1956 editions of Der freie Satz.

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 Reviews 131

a cadential
actualization of a world-historical process. Prophecies, after tonic at m. 107, where the second begins. Some-
all, tend to be self-fulfilling. what more turbulent and storm-tossed, this second wave
crests at m. 123 onto the most memorable melodic riff in the
If Burnham is reluctant to probe the darker underside entire mass,
of the four-measure a capella theme.9 After this
the heroic music, Beethoven, in his later music, wastenuous not. Late
moment of affirmation, the music moves spontane-
Beethoven is riven with what Adorno describes as "tears and ously from the in-itself of the tonic D major to the for-itself
fissures," aporias that attest to the ultimate failure of the of the dominant A major at m. 131. Here the non-tonic music
heroic middle-period music to deliver on its promise of free- begins, at times rougher and more assertive that the tonic
dom and reconciliation.8 For Adorno, these fractures were music, a continuation that culminates in a matched pair of
the outward appearance of a musical "alienation," the most assertive cadential gestures on "pacem," the first of which is
searing expression of which was the Missa solemnis, op. 123. inconclusive, while the second closes with considerable self-
Here the relevant passages are the horrific intrusions of war assurance on the local tonic at m. 156.
music into the Dona nobis pacem, the "plea for inner and After eight sustained measures of A major, the chorus f
outer peace"-Bitte um innere und aussern Frieden-with silent. In the sudden, charged stillness, we hear, beginnin
which the Agnus Dei and thus the entire mass closes. These at m. 164, the distant and intermittent tread of the timpa
intrusions are reminiscent of the Kriegrische Musik that con- whose Ft negates the more optimistic Ft$ of the Dona nob
cludes the dramatic action in Egmont: the trumpets and pacem. Soon the strings enter (at m. 168) in a rush o
drums that wreak havoc and despair on the Dona nobis adrenaline, swirling through the intervals of a dominant ni
pacem invert the fifes and side-drums (with their strains of (with a Gb) above the ominous F. The accelerated heart
heroic transcendence) that usher in the victorious coda that of their noumenal interjection registers fear and voices a s
closes both the overture and incidental music to the earlier aration of narration from enactment far more intense and
drama. radical than the musical swagger of the Egmont Overture.
a mimetic evocation of spatial distance-what Adorno c
In the peroration to the Agnus Dei, the first intimations
of violence break into music that emerges as a sonata dia- the phantasmagorical "image of loudness from afar"-t
lectic. In the Dona nobis pacem proper, the tonic music thus strings are heard front and center against the far-off drum
unloosens in two large musical waves, both of which well out which move nearer and nearer to us in the course of this
of the same gently imitative counterpoint. The first wave music.10 Panic rises when trumpets join the timpani in m.
begins in m. 96 and gathers momentum until it washes onto to sound the advance. Throats tighten and hearts begi
pound as lone individuals raise their voices in prayer (r
8Theodor W. Adorno, "Late Style in Beethoven" [1937] trans. Susan tative). First the alto, who enters (timidamente, angstlich
Gillespie, Raritan 13/1 (1993): 105. It is, of course, possible to critique the
music of Beethoven from a number of other positions. Feminists, in partic- 9I borrow the label from William Drabkin, who is the main advocate
ular, have voiced their extreme discomfort with the heroic masculinity and the sonata-form interpretation of the Dona nobis pacem. See William
moments of coercive violence in this music. The touchstone for some of these kin, Beethoven: Missa solemnis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr
discussions has been Adrienne Rich's "The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven 1991), 87-95.
Understood at Last as a Sexual Message," in Diving into the Wreck (New lOTheodor W. Adorno, Versuch iiber Wagner [1938] (Frankfurt-am-M
York: Norton, 1993), 205-206. Suhrkamp, 1952), 90.

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132 Music Theory Spectrum

C over the inarticulate orchestral tremolo in m. 175 with the
first line of supplication: "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata
mundi"-she hears the sins of the world in the awful gait of
the drums. The tenor renews her plea on Eb and continues
with the next line of the prayer: "Agnus Dei, miserere no-
bis." As the threat of war becomes ever more present, the
tenor begins to pray faster and faster, rising to a fortissimo
Gb at m. 184 as the chorus enters on "miserere nobis" (add-
threat of war. But despite the large-scale transposition
non-tonic material into the tonic, that effort fails, miserably
The reprise, such as it is, refuses reconciliation: rather tha
neutralize or overcome the threat of aggression, the music
represses it. After the trumpets and drums of the Kriegrisc
Musik, the Dona nobis pacem remains apprehensive an
wary: the once serene a capella theme now sounds a note of
false consolation.

ing an anxious exclamation point) below. Yet despite their In contrast to the military din of the coda to the Egmon
frightened appeal, the trumpets and drums come nearer still Overture, the music of the Dona nobis pacem is antiheroic:
at m. 186, where the dominant above F moves with brutal the weary negation of its drum-rolls stands the phenomeno
force-but without resolution-to the tonic in Bb major, a logical basis of the heroic music-with its attendant, over
tonic far removed, however near and present its danger, inflated image of the self-on its head. All the elements o
from the calmer D major of the Dona nobis pacem. After a musical heroism are present, but in a configuration tha
choking silence, the soprano enters on a high (and dissonant) obscures the logic that once connected them. In the Don
Ab in m. 187 to beg for mercy: "Agnus Dei, dona ...." She nobis pacem, musical materials no longer harmonize or work
breaks off, that is, with a desperate, imperative "dona"- together toward a common goal, but have rather been
give. Her entreaties summon back the gentle melodic imi- transformed-in an act of disillusionment-into the negative
tation on "dona," now wistful, with which the movement imprint of the heroic music. Hence the intricate melodi
began. weave of its imitative texture inhibits (if not prevents) our
As the soprano lowers her voice and recovers her com- identification of a thematic subject with a dramatic persona
posure, the Kriegrische Musik dissolves into the comparative not to mention our hearing within it the musical hum of our
calm of the Dona nobis pacem: the music becomes quieter, own self-consciousness. With the one brief (and now equiv-
more rational, less anxious. It reprises a fair amount of music ocal) exception of the a capella theme, there are no sustaine
from earlier in the movement, but that music now has a more lines in this music, almost no memorable melodies to latch
transitional cast. It is some time before it eases back into D onto. As Adorno realizes, moreover, the contrapuntal imi-
major, and the repetition of earlier material does not become tation is inauthentic: it elaborates (rather than generates) a
literal until the a capella theme recurs at m. 223, where thepriori successions of harmonies and fails to mediate the al-
initial G resolves the soprano's shrill Ab from m. 187: this most random sequence of musical segments from which this
time the a capella theme is assigned to the four soloists, al- music is put together, brief "inserts" that neither "stand on
lowing the soprano to resolve her own dissonance. After an their own" nor "converge into the whole."'t In this sense, the
austere fugato, a much longer stretch of non-tonic music from Dona nobis pacem replaces the purposive telos of the heroic
the exposition returns in the tonic (all the music from m. 241
on), a passage that concludes with the huge cadential ex-
clamations on "pacem," now in D major. The sonata process llTheodor W. Adorno, "Alienated Masterpiece: the Missa solemnis"
thus attempts to disarm and contain (if not to assimilate) the[1959], trans. Duncan Smith, Telos 28 (1976): 121.

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 Reviews 133

music with aimless succession, schlechte unendlichkeit.'2 It

major as a target, the moment the music moves to and closes
on. Nor
never surges forward toward completion, but instead does the motivic material adapt and mold itself to
stalls
out each time the threat of war becomes real, a threat that pull of the music, but rather remains rigid and
the forward
cancels all sense of goal-directed motion. In the unpliable
Dona nobisthroughout-there is no real forward pull in these
pacem, there is an absence of what Burnham calls measures.
the "hu-Terse commands from the horns (first at m. 284,
man element," an absence that can be heard in the then four
first fewtimes over between m. 296 and m. 299) remind us
moments of the reprise, where the downbeat that of the bugle calls in the earlier martial episode and urge us
announces
the return to earlier music fails to materialize. In these mea-
to hear battle preparations in this music: its regimental busy-
sures, the Kriegrische Musik slides back into the melodic ness choreographs the arrangement of battalions and bat-
imitation of the Dona nobis pacem without ever arriving at teries before us. And because it falls outside the sonata di-
a cadence and thus elides the crucial musical event in the alectic of the Dona nobis pacem-it is in-between music that
sonata process, the ictus that articulates the triumphant re- comes, somehow, afterwards-the orchestral interlude ne-
turn to the tonic. In its return to earlier music, the Dona nobis gates not so much the sonata process (which the reprise ef-
pacem revokes the decisive moment in the heroic transcen- fectively abrogates and renders asunder) as all sense of formal
dence of the musical subject, the moment in which the lis- coherence whatsoever. It forces us to abandon the threadbare
tener identifies with the collective universal: there is no ges- strategies we have used to negotiate the music up to this
ture of affirmation, no heroic overcoming, in this music. What point-strategies the Dona nobis pacem both compels and
fills its place is dissolution. We hear the re-emergence of refuses-but at the same time leaves us without the means

earlier music within the reprise, but that music recurs without to reconstruct an alternative account of the music: we are too

reconciliation, without Aufhebung: there is no synthetic in- far into the music to begin pursuing other formal or generic
and-for-itself in the eventual return to D major. possibilities. We are thrown, rather, much like the choral
Later on, the Dona nobis pacem regresses even deeper populace, at the mercy of the music and are given no choice
into mimesis when the war music returns full force. This but to wait for it to run its ruinous course. And we will have

second interruption follows a grim orchestral interlude that to run that course alone, without the crutches of formal con-
strong-arms its way into the music at the precise moment (m. vention to lean on.
266) the "pacem" cadence was due to arrive at the final tonic. Canon fire announces the actual onset of hostilities (and
Even though it derives from the flowing motive with which the return of Bb major) at m. 326. The chorus responds with
the Dona nobis pacem began, the contrapuntal imitation in a desperate "Agnus Dei" at m. 329, but the barrage of trum-
the orchestral interlude is stiff and severe. Harmonically, this pets and drums drowns them out. As the conflict continues
music is goalless: it moves overall from D major to Bb major, to escalate, the chorus scatters in all directions. In the ensuing
but its final destination is unforehearable -we never hear Bb confusion, the soprano screams "Dona pacem" out above the
vox humana, first at m. 346 and then again-with even greater
12In comparison with the heroic music, the sense of goal-directedness in
terror-at m. 350, a blood-curdling Schrei that culminates
the Dona nobis pacem has been attenuated in even more immediate contexts.
Note, for instance, how the B in the bass on the downbeat of m. 126 mediates
with another four-plus measures of dissonant, fortissimo Ab .
the cadential motion from dominant to tonic that rounds off the a capella In a gesture of bodily mimesis worthy of bourgeois melo-
theme. drama, she faints onto a D in m. 354 as the orchestral warfare

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134 Music Theory Spectrum

subsides underneath. Once again, the flowing imitation of one last iteration of the a capella theme at m. 425, the Agnus
the Dona nobis pacem rises up from below, this time out of Dei comes to a close without the musical cooperation of
the rubble, and the music grows calmer-albeit even more the chorus, which, having been forced to give its assent, now
dejected-than before. As it regains momentum, it becomes chooses to remain silent. The perfunctory horn and trumpet
clear that the music has been reorganized and reworked in blasts that confirm the arrival of the music on the final tonic
an attempt to bring the Agnus Dei to a close: the order in are ironic: in their brassy jubilation we hear the brutal op-
which the a capella theme and "pacem" cadence occur has pression of the victorious.
been changed so that the a capella theme (albeit the less If the collective has been diminished, so, too, have its
conclusive of the two) comes last. As before, the soprano's individual members, who suffer from the degradation of the
agonized Ab resolves to the ethereal G that begins the a whole. In lieu of an authentic basis for the association of free
capella theme at m. 402. Yet the mood here is no longer one individuals, it is the fear of social oppression that brings them
of affirmation or even false consolation, but of acceptance together, for their needs are no longer compatible. "In a
and resignation: the acrid smell of gunpowder lingers in the world where individual and social interests are irreconcil-
air. Hereafter and forevermore, the chorus will have to live able," writes Rose Rosengard Subotnik, "and where general
under the threat of aggression. From now on, hope for peace harmony can be obtained only at the expense of individual
will be interwoven with the fear of violence and death. True, freedom, the subject dares not risk any sort of direct con-
the chorus comes together to sing the a capella theme, but frontation with"-or for that matter assimilation into-
there is the barest comfort in its bereaved harmonies. In these "society." For this reason, the subject withdraws from th
four measures, their voices unite in a collective, but one that collective, a dissociation that "hollows out any universality
has been debased, a collective based on fear rather than free- from the individual and reduces the latter to [the] narrow
dom.13 personal."14 Adorno heard this retreat of the subject in th
It is the irrational and violent that endures in this music, cancellation of goal-directed motion in late Beethoven, in
not the rational and peaceful: the Kriegrische Musik does not substitution of static repetition and additive arrangements
so much subside as recede into the distance, where hostilities musical material for genuine development, and in its ruin
continue on unabated as we stand at an unsafe remove-the formal correspondences. To use language Burnham prefers
danger of oppression remains untransmutable. In the musical the music no longer models a coherent self-consciousness.
sequel, we continue to hear the distant thunder of artillery the Missa solemnis, the subject disappears from the music
(on Bb, at m. 406 and then again at m. 412) in between the which uses an archaic musical rhetoric-neutral thematic ma-
broken sobs of the choir: "pacem . . . , pacem. ..." After
terial, pseudo-imitative counterpoint, conventional formulae
borrowed from the renaissance and baroque-to cover its
absence, a rhetoric that litters the music with historical debris.
13Daniel K. L. Chua makes the same point in Making Music Absolute
However sincere and heartfelt- Vom Herzen, moge es wieder
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Chua figures the
absence of the subject in the Dona nobis pacem as a death-or rather,14Rose
a Rosengard Subotnik, "Adorno's Diagnosis of Beethoven's Late
suicide. I am indebted to Dr. Chua for allowing me to read the manuscript
Style: an Early Symptom of a Fatal Condition" [1976], in Developing Vari-
and for a memorable conversation about the Missa solemnis over dinner in ations: Style and Ideology in Western Music (Minneapolis: University of Min-
Baltimore. nesota Press, 1991), 25.

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 Reviews 135

zu Herzen gehen!-the archaism of the music is inauthentic.

however, is never assured or permanent. As for Adorno, it
It serves, rather, to fracture the musical surface, which, as
can be withdrawn or canceled out, and often is in the art of
our own time. Where this sense of absence differs from the
Subotnik notes, interferes with the perception of naturalness
and coherence-a perception the heroic music cultivates-
image of soulless alienation in Adorno is in the nature of the
and thus lodges its vain protest against the commoditization
canceled presence, which, for Steiner, has a theological di-
and rationalization of musical expression. mension, one appropriate to a discussion of the Missa solem-
In contrast to the presence Burnham hears in the heroic
nis. All genuine artistic expression, Steiner believes, attests
music, what lies at the heart of the Agnus Dei is an absence.
either to the perceived fullness of God's presence, or to the
I have drawn the point not to disprove Burnham, or estranged
even to emptiness of God's absence. Steiner's argument
disagree with his take on the heroic music, but rather to
thus accommodates and makes allowances for both the rev-
strengthen and reinforce his basic thesis, and to deepen erential
theawe of an earlier historical consciousness and the
note of irony on which Beethoven Hero ends. For as communal
Subotnik unbelief of our own time: our own agnosticism,
points out (ibid., 27), the subject does not disappear from this constitutes a negative theism, a belief in absence,
he argues,
music without a trace. It remains a perceived absence, but a belief-and a devout one-nonetheless.
a pres-
ence that was once there. We can hear tell-tale evidence of If the incursion of God into this discussion makes the
its departure in the gaps that open up in the music, in thereader uncomfortable, the argument can be weighed in nar-
vacant spaces it leaves: the large swaths of music that seemrower aesthetic terms. For Steiner, the aesthetic attests to th
to fill time rather than organize it, the austere harmonies and
presence of the world, to the existence of material realities
bare sonorities (note the angular, circuitous inner voices inprior to our own. "The inception of human consciousness, the
the pacem cadence) that characterize its most expressive mo- genesis of awareness, must have entailed prolonged 'con-
ments, its violent disruptions and discontinuities, its awkward
densations' around intractable nodes of wonder and of terror
silences. at the discriminations to be made between self and other
In a sense, the alienation Adorno hears in late Beethoven between being and non-being . . ." (ibid., 181). Steiner be
complements the immediacy Burnham perceives in the heroic lieves that art, and above all music, rehearses our immersion
music. What underlies the musical agon of Beethoven is thus in the phenomenal universe and confronts us, again an
either the immanent presence of the subject or the absence again, with "the irreducible weight of otherness." We hear
of that presence, its disappearance-whether forced or music as a form of direct address, an "ingression" from with
voluntary-from the music. When stated in these either/or out that comes to us unbidden and reminds us of our own
terms (there being no existential alternative), the argument temporal situatedness, our radical finitude. It enters con-
parallels the main thesis of George Steiner's Real Presences, sciousness through a crease in time, "a momentary super-
which can be heard as an absent presence in Beethoven position of past and present" (180) in which cognition gives
Hero. 15 For Steiner, as for Burnham, an irreducible otherness rise to remembrance. In what Steiner describes as the "pres-
-a presence-underlies all artistic utterance. This presence, entness of the present," the "thereness" of music merges with
the "aboutness" of our own miraculous sentience.
'5George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, For Burnham, too, "music performs this merger of sub-
1989). jective presence and objective presence like nothing else"

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136 Music Theory Spectrum

(165). In the presence of music, both the listener and the
music become permeable: music structures our attention and
gives consciousness a continuous stream of phenomena
around which to coalesce, but it also undergoes a transfor-
mation in response to our involvement-to our interpretive
intervention-in its emergence. Presence thus involves a mo-
ment of re-cognition in which we hear ourselves within the
music and the music within us, a process of mediation in
external to internal" results from "an engaged connection
with the present moment," a musical now of indefinite du-
ration in which listeners can sometimes transcend the bound-
edness of human awareness. In the utopian fanfare that con-
cludes Beethoven Hero, Burnham thus argues for a sort of
cognitive transcendence, a heroic overcoming reminiscent, it
seems to me, of Egmont: in a moment of heroic apotheosis,
the music of Beethoven allows us-even commands us-to

which "an authoritative presence . . . becomes an internal rise above ourselves.

voice" (166). Buirnham believes that "this transformation of I wonder.

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