Across the Extremes. Notes on the late period of Beethoven

7/28/2019 Across the Extremes. Notes on the late period of Beethoven

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A C R O S S T H E E X T R E M E SThe late period of Beethoven

This text is dedicated to Miguel Copn

INTRODUCTIONWhoever walks in darkness is less lonely if they sing.

The challenge is not how ones own life becomes paradoxical but how ones own contradictions are the

gears of a machine appealing enough to still producing harmonic resonances

We usually read about Beethovens deafness but its not so common to read that Beethoven was

speechless. Silence is the language that corresponds to the tragic hero.What does it mean?

Dont throw away the ladder.

If talking about music is already a difficult task, what makes this task even more difficult in Beethovens

late period?

In 1770 Beethoven, Hegel and Hlderlin were born.

Is it that art is a way of being insilence? Is music a way of silence? Is it that silence is the language of the

artist? Tractatus 7: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darber muss man schweigen.But what does

Wittgenstein understand bysagenandsprechen?Was Wittgenstein a frustrated musician?Schumann

asking himself:Should I become a poet or a musician?

Tractatus 6.522There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest.

They are what is mystical.

Robert S.Kahn on his book about theGrosse Fuge op. 133askswhat in Gods name is going on here? Whywould anyone write something like this?He collects adjectives that have been given to the Grosse Fuge


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since it was compossed: atonishing, incomprensible, abstruse, bizarre, unharmonious, extravagant,

inconsequential, unplayable, surpasses the bounds of musical performance, tiresome, waste of sound,

impracticable, cerebral, repellent, unintelligible, impenetrable, pathological eccentricity.

The Grosse Fuge received only three public performances in the seventy five years after it was written.

Adorno perfectly knew that the late period of Beethoven does not permit itself to be spoken about so

easily, there is an unusual difficulty in saying precisely what is all about. Beethoven moved house 27

times.

The music of the Beethovens late period inhabitates the limits of the world. He not only drew the

limits of the language of tonal music but also pushed them and expanded them without going beyondthem, without being atonal, This is an example how a musician can undermine a system from inside the

system, using tactics, not strategies. Not to suppress tonality but to turn it loose.

Wittgenstein knew that to define the limits of the language is a difficult task, however, this task should

be perform from inside the language, never from outside, basically because the outside means the

nonsense and only in case you have a ladder. What we cannot speak about, must we play music?

When Beethoven stopped playing on the piano, someone asked him about the meaning of what he had

played. Beethovens answer was to play again on the piano the same music. Words are only mediations.

Stendhal on his book about Rossini wrote:the domain of music begins when we are not able to speak. Is

music the limit of language? But which language? which music? Glenn Gould is dancing.

The late string quartets are no longer a dialogue between two reasonable people but rather an internal

dialogism. Beethoven translates a microcosm.

To talk about the late period on Beethoven demands to bring into play the solipsism.Tractactus 5. The

limits of the language means the limits of my world.5.62.For what the solipsist means is quite correct;

only it cannot be said , but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that

the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. 5.621

The world and life are one. 5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.) Some of the last compositions of

Beethoven are still considered as solipsim.


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The question of the late period of Beethoven is the question about the limits of the world. Its all about

limits, how the limits are drawn. When somebody says:I dont understand this, means that there is a

incompatibility between the limits of this persons world/language and the limits of what is to be

understood. Being more precise, is not about expanding, the limits were already there, but rather

lighting a little further. In this sense music can be a mirror if there is symmetry in the limits but much

more better if music is rather a lamp that irritates your retina and demands a dilatation of ones own

limits.

They are well known the Joseph de Marliaves words referring to theGrosse Fuge:the attitude of mind in

which people listen to chamber music must undergo a radical change.Indeed, Beethoven is demanding

from the audience another attitude, as Immanuel Kant and theSapere aude(Dare to know), BeethovensaysExaudio aude(Dare to listen) and therefore to know.

Nietzsche and Adorno were musicians. Can we philosophize without words? Can music be philosophy?

But how do we understand music? in the same way as when we say the propositionIts raining?Music is

not true or false, music can not lie. If I say: Its rainingwhile I see the rain out of the window, someone

could say: thats true! But if I go out and immediately I step on the street and a cold drip drills my head

before I can say that it rains I will know because my body feels the thrill of raining on my head. I think

music is like this, music is much more precise than verbal thought. We can understand music without

being able to talk about music.

Nietzsche:the ear is the organ of fear. Beethoven wasnt afraid at all.

Beethoven was a survivor. The audacity to deepen ones own spirit, the introspective journey, the inner

wealth. Philosopher and musician share the same solitude and both can not integrate in a social

environment. Owns body becomes battlefield and space for research. The artist is the one who

experiences dangers, risks.

Art affects us as life affects us.

Art intensifies our experience. Art teaches us, makes us see what before we didnt notice that was


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already there producing effects. Art is a tool to approach reality and get certain knowledge reaching

parts of the experience that without art we could never reach.


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1.- SUSPENDED TIME: THE ZOOM IN:Beethoven and Scelsi.In 1825 the String Quartet op. 132 was composed. During sketching this piece, Beethoven was stricken

with an intestinal inflammation, big pain. This body process of illness and recovery affected directly the

composition of this quartet. The core of this piece is the third movement, the Adagio. Beethoven wrote

a header for it:Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart, or in english

A convalescents Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode.

This Adagio represents Beethovens labor of minimizing the musical expression to its essence; it

contains only two melodic ideas. He makes us see the structure, is the opposite of using ornaments,

music is bare. Beethoven makes zoom in in music. The music leaves the striated space of the form to

explore with the microscope the pure duration of time.

Giacinto Scelsi, another solitary man, didnt suffer from intestinal inflammation but he got into a deep

depression after his wife left him. As a therapy for this breakdown, and following neurotic patterns that

remind us of Hlderlin, he spent his days with the simple task of playing the same note on the piano.

Yes: the same note over and over again. This mystical trance, listening obsessively to the same note

brought him to experience that sound is spherical. In just one single sound is the entire cosmos. Scelsi

brought into his music the last quartest of Beethoven and if we listen to the Adagio we find the door

that Scelsi went through: to reduce music into its most minimal essence.

But what happen exactly on this Adagio?

First of all, Beethoven makes unrecognizable the melody. How? The melody almost doesnt exist

because the tempo is extremely SLOW. The length of every single note is dilated, it makes us feel the

duration of time sacrificing the melody. Scelsi will take this to the extreme: maintaining the same note

all the time.

Indeed, what Beethoven makes in this Adagio is a reduction process, The phrase is being reduced three

times. First from 8 notes into 5. Then from 5 into 3 and finally 3 into 2. Time has no direction

anymore, there is no past resent and future, its like pure time or pure duration. Music stops, exists as a

sphere, there is no where to go.


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Beethoven, on this quartet makes a special use of the semitone (also on the first movement of the op

132, and 131 and the Grosse Fuge), or half note what makes the four lines of the four instruments

independent but together. A semitone is the smallest musical interval commonly used in tonal music

and its consider the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. Semitones are in Scelsi the main

motif of his microtonality. Suspended time of the most painful illness but also characteristic of the

neurotic behaviour. In 1944 Scelsis first quartet represents the beginning of the so called Scelsis

second period. Its interesting to mention that Beethovens Grosse Fuge appears in a highly disguised

form in the first and last movement of his this Quartet. Beethovens use of the semitone appears mostly

on his Grosse Fuge, this is one of the reason of its dissonance, but also in theHeiliges Dankgesang. If we

listen to the 4th movement of First Quartet of Scelsi we can listen to the adagios of the late Quartets ofBeethoven:

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/scelsi-string-quartet-i

And now lets listen to a loop made out of the first notes of the 2ndmovement op.127:

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/loop-op-127-2nd-mov

Beethoven was a freelance musician and wrote three of his late Quartets, asked by Prinz Nikolas

Galitzin, for 50 dukats each. On the contrary Scelsi belonged to an aristocratic family and freed him

from financial worries. This makes a big difference also in a compossitional level. For

instance,Beethovens Grosse Fuge wasnt accepted by his publisher and he had to write a new finale for

the op. 130. The chance to experiment wasnt so big in the case of Beethoven and this is why his mostradical proposals can be found as moments inside his compostions or isolated movements surrounded

by more tradicional ones. For instance, the 4th movement "alla marcia" that follows theHeiliges

Dankgesang, or simply the finale that replaced the Grosse Fuge, music compossed to content audiences

and not to satisfy experimentation. Regarding his op 95 Quartetto Serioso, he declared thatis written

for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.This Quartet came to early. Exciting

that Mahler had arranged it for use by string orchestra.
https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/scelsi-string-quartet-ihttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/loop-op-127-2nd-movhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/scelsi-string-quartet-ihttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/loop-op-127-2nd-mov


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2.- WAVES OF TIME:Beethoven and Debussy.Of course this ideas about suspended time demand to make a connection between the spheres of Scelsi

and the bubbles of Pierre Boulez (See the text I wrote in 2003 aboutMemory and Perception in Pierre

Boulez) Beethoven introduces in music the suspended present and years later a tradition in french music

will constittude a thread: Debussy-Messian-Boulez.

The problem of music from Bethoven becomes the problem of memory.

Beethoven late period went beyond romanticism. Beethoven has been considered the most crucial figure

in the transition from classical to romantic, but in fact his music went far beyond that. There is an

indubitable bridge between Beethovens late period and anti romantic movements of the end of the

XIX century. Beethoven draws the end of modernity.

Beethovens late period critizies Beethoven second period. Beethoven was aware that classicism became

fictitius and artificial, too ornamental. That was the indecorum of Beethoven.

The late period is not about memory but about perception and liberating the imagination, not about

depicting a story but producing suggestions, atmospheres rather than linear progressions, music doesnt

move but spins around itself. Time, like ocean waves, doesnt go anywhere, but it moves, it oscilates

rejoicing the tension of the non resolution. What later in the music of Schumann it has been called

suspended present, probably the musician that most hated the develops in music.

Beethoven and Debussy, time seems to be suspended, the ambiguity of Debussy and his floating chords,

the so calledemancipation of sound,Beethoven drew already the possibility of music to become

transformation, to emancipate from the sonata form.

Waves of time, the music becomes myterious oscillation, is not static like in the op. 132, music moves,

not as an sphere but as waves of sound. Here Beethoven foreshadows Debussy:

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movement


http://www.diegoagullo.com/2009/06/perception-and-memory-approach-to.htmlhttp://www.diegoagullo.com/2009/06/perception-and-memory-approach-to.htmlhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-31-op-110-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-31-op-110-last-movementhttp://www.diegoagullo.com/2009/06/perception-and-memory-approach-to.htmlhttp://www.diegoagullo.com/2009/06/perception-and-memory-approach-to.html


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Beethoven foreshadows Mahler dissolving already the Tonality. Beethoven and Bartk, Beethoven and

Shostakovich and, why not, Beethoven and Messiaen (specially from the attack of the piano and how

music becomes a machine with gears), Beethoven and Scelsi. Beethoven against the ability to memorize.


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3.- MUSIC ALWAYS WINSETHICS in Beethoven.: It must be!

Beethoven had a very specific aim to communicate a certain Ideas throught his music. Ideas that

philosophical as Adorno perfectly understood bringing in Hegels philosophy, but also ideas that express

a certain Ethics. That means that in Beethovens music, and specificaly in some compositions, there is a

message that must be heard. Beethoven believed in the power of music to communicate ethics.

The reminders

TheO Freunde nicht diese Tne, (Oh friends, not these tones!)fromOde to Joy(Schiller) of the 9thSymphony represents the most clear sign of the ethical reminders in Beethoven. In this case using text,

but this is an exception.O Freunde nicht diese Tneis being expressed throught all Beethovens music in

many different ways, and specially in the late period is a strong ethical statement towards alogic of

Stimmungenwhich implies variations in affects, temperament, motivation, optimism, fear, illness,

weakness, existencial despair, depression, creativity, etc.

Reminders are just a characteristic of Beethovens self consciousness. His music is self aware, music

speaks to itself.The reminder plays the rol of bringing awareness about theStimmungthat has beendominating so far and brings the possibility for a shift, not only in compositional terms but with a clear

ethical intencion: we can decide the mood, we can shift theStimmung,we can encourage our selves.

The motivation depends directly from thislogic of Stimmungen.

Oh friends, not these tones! Rather let us raise our voices in more pleasing and more joyful sounds! Joy! Joy!

Reminders:we shouldnt forget.The bass section of the orchestra (cellos and basses) are the narrators at

the introduction of the Finale of the 9th Symphony. They not only have the task of narrating the

summary but also to bring the new section Ode to Joy. We shouldnt forget that the role of theground

BassorBasso Ostinatowas to keep persistently the main idea in order to remember. From Beethoven the

problem of music will be the problem of memory.


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The bipolarityI will not enter into the discussion if Beethoven suffered from manic depression. He had, indeed, many

reasons for it, mainly the fact of becoming deaf being a musician. The interesting thing is how on his

music this bipolarity exists as a clear choice and not only as an unconscious result of an hypotheticalillness.

Bipolarity means contrast. Being across the extremes. Euphoria to depression, melancholia to joy,

weakness to Will to power, death to life. But also oscillations: JUMPING from one extreme to the

other, without transitions, directly to the other side. A sudden leap, a shift in the mood can come out of

a conscious decision, but not always. Beethovens late period abandones the tirany of the form to lead

his music trought a kind of logic of affects. The transitions or the developments in the late Beethoven

are no longer important. Brilliant is the case of the Adagio of op 132,The Heilige Dankgesang: Illness,

proximity to death vs. life and Will to Power (creativity). On this Adagio, considered a big prayer but

also a sublime meditation, the bipolar phenomenon is bring into play creating a strong contrast

between the first section, that represent the illness and proximity of death, and the second section called

by BeethovenNeue Kraft fhlend(with renewed strength). For future texts to explore the relation

Beethoven-Nietzsche.

On his letter to his doctor Beethoven wrote at the end:notes will help who ever is needed.It was the need

to create what saved him from the illness, the triumph of joy over pain. Here the dialectical lesson of

Beethoven: illness exists as the power to recovery exists.

So in fact, the bipolarity is not only dialectical but simultaneous, on this Adagio the extremes are

happening at the same time, are combined, crosslinked,illness and inner wealth are now one same single

thing. The figure of speech of Oxymoroncan be a representation of Beethovens bipolarity on itssimultaneous fashion.

TheHeiliger Dankgesangwas actually born within theMolto Adagioof Rasumovsky n.2. This sound

track presents both movements one after the other:

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-59-op-132

Bipolarity might be also understood as a sudden astonishing change of mood. Going back to the so
https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-59-op-132https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-59-op-132


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called early phase, the op. 18 number 6s last movement, also calledLa Malinconia, shows already thechoice of creating a new type of formal structure mixing and contrasting two opposite kind of materials.

This will be repeated later at the end ofEgmont Overture, the coda of the Quartett serioso and in the

Op. 135, 4th movement. Bipolarityis already expressed by the header of the movement: Grave-Allegro-

Grave-Allegro.Perfect example of the contrast or opposition or inner struggle between despair and joy,this movement is calledThe Difficult Resolution. Under the introductory slow chords Beethoven wrote

in the manuscriptMu es sein?(Must it be?) to which he responds, with the faster main theme of the

movement,Es mu sein!(It must be!) This is definitely a big ethic statement for the sake of affirmativeWill and self-suggestion. After presenting the darkness Beethoven brings abruptly a fast unexpected

refrain, it sounds even too naive, but it plays the role of calm and stability, center, in the heart of chaos;

the identity is assured. But slowly the forces of chaos are finding holes where they can enter. The refrainbecomes fragile and unstable until it happen again, the darkness is back, the fear comes in.Jumping

from chaos to the beginning of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart in any moment (Of the

Refrain)

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-135-last-movement

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/bipolar2
http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/2008/11/la-malincolia-joseph-kerman-referred-to.htmlhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-135-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-135-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/bipolar2http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/2008/11/la-malincolia-joseph-kerman-referred-to.htmlhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-135-last-movementhttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/bipolar2


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4.- GROSSE FUGESometimes free, sometimes strictDuring the last decade, Beethoven showed a new interest in the discipline of thefugemotivated by acontrapuntal obssesion and a turn towards Baroque music (Haendel and Bach)

1920s: first performance after Beethovens death (1827) of the op 130 with the Grosse Fuge as final

movement.

Seemingly unrelated outbursts. Assertive,sforzando. The cello trills. Zig Zag. Vigour. Excess of tension.

Fortissimo. Frenzy. Bustle. Hurried development:

Beethoven creates parallel centers of gravity, intensities, disjointed play of forces. The Grosse Fuge is a

big question mark. The Doubt is brought in: music is folded, between two, a critical junction, the

themes are broken into pieces. Beethoven opens all the possibilities of certainty.

We should consider the Fuge in its organic articulation as a texture in uncessant transformation of

shapes. Is there a thread?

PARTS OF THE GROSSE FUGE:

-Overture: presentation of the 2 main themes: Theme 1 (unison fortissimofollowed by a variationinlegato=Theme 1a), Theme 2Meno mosso e moderatofollowed by a variation of the Theme 1, Theme

1b.

- PART 1Fuge: presentation of the 3rd main theme (counter subject) + variation of Theme 1b assubject. Development, fragmentation and manipulation of subject and counter subject.

- PART 2Meno mosso e moderato: as a counter subject + Theme 1 as subject-Allegro molto e con brio: Theme 1a, scherzo- PART 3Double Fuge: develop of the Theme 1. Develop of the Theme 3 + Theme 1 + Meno mosso emoderato. End: odd progression of chords

-Allegro molto e con brio+ fake end-Summary:recapitulation + Allegro finale of the Theme 3.
http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-post.htmlhttp://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-post.html


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The fuge as dance. There is something that plays the a constant rol: the rhythm, even if its cross-

rhythm or syncopated, we still recognize perfectly the determination: thefortissimoandsforzando. Its a

static maniacal dance, an inner violent hurried dance. What creates a certain thread are no longer thesubjects or counter subjects, niether the thems or melodies but rather a specific determination on the

music, a Will to Power.

Beethovens biggest experiment: he burst the conventions of clasical music proposing new statements

that will not be followed by the next generation, they will not be social accepted until the XX century.

The difficulty of the Grosse Fuge is just a matter of time: it requires time beyond any superficial

approach. Beethoven is pointing the conventions to make us realize that its all about re-organizing the

limits of our perception, taste, comprehension. It demands time to get access, requires an effort. It is a

process of knowing each other and Beethoven is demanding again an effort from the audience to

redefine the limits of what we call perception or understanding.

I dont think the clue to approach the Grosse Fuge is to decipher the form or structure but rather tofocus on three concepts: Simultaneity, Fragmentation and Dissonances.

The Grosse Fuge brings in the following idea: simultaneity of subjects in continuous variation and

fragmentation without harmonic requirements.

The simultaneity can be understood as a competition or an inner struggle between non complementary

elements that Beethoven brings them together. But also as a co-existence of the differences. This

differences or contrast create the appearance of chaos but it doesnt, its just a complex world.

The Themes are not only transformed and disguised under multitude of different appearances creating a

kind of perspectivism but also undergoing a process of fragmentation. Melodies become paintbrushes,

no longer recognizable as a line, they are cut and delocalized.

Beethoven opens the doors to the dissonances as Samuel Beckett will allow chaos to enterbecause is the


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truth.Beethovens music becomes less accesible and is not anymore music to please the ears but rather

to challenge them. Within tonality, without abandon tonality he expands the limits of understanding

music. Its not that dissonances can also be music but rather there is no music without dissonaces.

Semitones: harmonic and melodic tension

The message in the finale of the ninth Symphony, composed one year before said:lets put aside the

dissonances and lets be friends:agreement and concord.But the Grosse Fuge proposes a different

message:lets integrate dissonances because they are the truth.The consequences of questioning the

harmony are not to have anymore the impression of an agreement.Andsometimesthere will be

moments of comming together in a certain concord: the unison passage ofmeno mosso a moderatoorAdagio con brio.In Beethoven theWeltanschauung(World view) is actually dictated by a logic of

Stimmungen,a logic of affects.

How to understand community accepting dissonances and differences?

The gentle and soft sectionmeno mosso e moderato(lyrical section) brings a peaceful mood, because

there is no longer a competition and brings some relief after the long Fuge .

But is later when themeno mosso e moderatois introduced inside the Fuge, simulatneously with the main

theme, with the instructionsforte, the gentle becomes assertive and loud because this time there is a

competition on going.

After the meno mosso e moderato part suddenly we arrive in a series of odd progression of chords, eachfollowed by a moment of silence: Uncertainty, expecting the resolution which is abruptly interrupted by

theAllegro con brio.

Beethoven brings together the opposition death-life, depression-will of power, yes, dialectical but he

brings them simultaneously, showing that one need the other to exist. And the Grosse Fuge is the

expression of that simultaneity (to relate with theHeiliges Dankgesang)

TheAllegro molto e con brioat the ent after the trilling section of the end of the moso e moderato:


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Negociating moods, bipolarity.

Disonances (existencial despair) against triumph of joy. The Grosse Fuge doesnt express the disonances

of the world (war, illness, proximity of death, depression) but the possibility of the Will to exist inside

these dissonances. The Grosse Fuge is a fight.

What is the difference between a string quartet and and string orchestra? 4 musicians or 12, 21, 60.

Its interesting to listen to the orchestral version of the Grosse Fuge, how the music becomes crowd and

to realize how the music becomes more accessible in its orchestral dimension. There is a difference if we

isolate 4 single elements than 4 groups of elements.

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-orchestra

But if we put the two long fuges sections parallel we find a perfect symmetry in terms of length . This

track brings both sections together:

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-x2

Why have I done something like this? If we double the fuge, if we bend the fuge is not only to find asymmetry but to get a certain experience of how a crowd in fuge would sound like. This case is very

different from the string orchestra. Now we have 8 instruments, actually 2 groups of singular elements

in fuge. The result is the opposite than with the orchestra. An orchestration of the Grosse Fuge makes

the fuge more accesible because each line becomes a choreography for many instruments that repeat the

same line. This makes easier to identify and recognize every single line because it has been

multiplicated. Its easier to identify ten pepole moving exactly in the same way than one single person

moving on its own way. But the fuge folded on itself makes the chaos bigger and reproduces accurately

how a crowd in fuge would sound like. And not only that, if I have increased the chaos was to make

more visible that still the fuge keeps an amazing unity. Of course the number of dissonaces are bigger

but doesnt make the whole more dissonant.
https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-orchestrahttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-orchestrahttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-x2https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-orchestrahttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-x2


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5.- SOLITUDERilke onLetters to a young poetdescribessolitudein the following terms:

There is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear.

What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude.

To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain.

To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with

matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't

understand a thing about what they were doing.

As Maynard Solomon has pointed out,in 1814 Beethovens artistic career reached its lowest point withpatriotic works such asWellingtons SiegorDer glorreiche Augenblick. On words of Solomon,these works,

filled with bombastic rhetoric and patriotic excesses, mark the nadir of Beethovens career. In them his heroic

style is revived, but as parody and farce. Rather than moving forward to his late style, he regressed to a

pastiche of his heroic manner.

On the contrary, in this year Beethoven reached the highest point of popularity and social connections.

It shouldn't be a surprise that at the same time he ended in conformity.

But later on thelate period,the situation was very different. When Beethoven was isolated from the

society, considered as a madman, and not anymore into the musical trends of that moment, he would

bring music into a level never known before. Again Solomon pointed out rightly:his music would be

created out of the composers imagination and intellect rather than through a combination and amplification

of of existent musical trends. In Beethovens late style an apparently unprecedented style comes into being, one

whose tendencies and formative materials are not readily identifiable in the music of his contemporaries or

immediate predecessors.

The space where Beethovens late style was generated had nothing to do with success, fame, personal

situation within a social power relations or being supported by patrons. I think his late style was

possible because his solitude was vaster than ever. His isolation from society implied an inner trip, a

taking care of the world that he carried inside of him. Rilke continues: the world that you carry inside

you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning

toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above


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everything you perceive around you. In this sense we must understand Beethovens choice. He didnt

bet for success or fame because actually that implied that his music becameshabby and his vocation

petrified and no longer connected with life. In order to stay alive, and in this sense I call him survivor,

he kept alive his artistic career because he placed his solitude above everything else and this is the way

the late period should be also understood, as the artistic choice of taking the risk of being beyond social

and contemporary world propelled by a self confident impulse from the very deep heavy vast solitude.

And here is where Beethoven showed his freedom, freedom of following own artistic needs, freedom of

placing ones own solitude above everything else.

As Fernando Pessoa would say:to be a poet is not my ambition, its my way of being alone.


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6.- MUSIC HAS HOLESThe center is abandoned, the action is moved to the periphery, a hole appears across the extremes

Adorno and Deleuze together?

Its usual to read about the differences between Deleuze and Adorno: for Adorno, reality is necessarily

dialectical and irresolvable contradictions, while Deleuze denies the notion of a correct rendering of

objective reality and introduces the notion of univicity of being , no dialectical but rather an absolute

leap of perception. But is it possible to find a common denominator for both philosophers?. First of all,

they both invoke the kind of art which resists or defies representation. But going further I will try to

show how to apply in the late Beethoven the Deleuze and Guattaris ideas about music and to connectthem with Adornos ideas about the late Beethoven.

-ImproprietyAdorno talks about impropriety and unsuitability: what appears in the late period isnt simply what

appears to be. Adorno means appearance of the non appearance:either because its curious inauthenticity

or because excessive simplicity, the themes and melodies no longer appear as themselves but as signs of

something else. They are cut, disturbed, they are only sketches, possiblities. Understanding themes as

subjectivities, in the late period the themes are disturbed, they are in inmanent distant respect

themselves.

Beethoven becomes fragile

Tonality is withheld and at the same time broken.

Alienation and schizofrenia.

The deterritorialization of the refrain (Ritournello) happens for the first time not in Schumann but in

the late Beethoven

To relate with the the concept of Inadequacy in Deleuze (chapter 8 ofLogic of sense), about the floating

signifier in Levi-Strauss. Deleuze describes this Antinomia: having two series which are related to each

other in continuos imbalance or distance, that implies continuos readjustments.

This continuos imbalance or distance is represented by the idea of Asymptote.


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-Disaggregationof the central principle. Disintegration, dissociation and dissolution of the form. Theclassicalburst into fragments, says Adorno. Actually Beckett used also the same image of somethingthatburst outto refer to Beethovens Ghost trio: a hitherto unkown art of dissonances, a weavering, a

hiatus, a punctuation of dehiscence,a stress given by what opens, slips away and disappears, a gap that

punctuates nothing but the silence of a final ending

What doesburstmean? Dehiscence, premature open of a wound or a plant to release its contents.

The voices are wrapped around each other.

Harmony becomes a forgotten convention because it produces the ilussion of unity.

Deleuze and Guattari inThousand Plateaus, Postulates of Linguistics,in opposition to the arborescent

type, Beethovenprepares the disaggregation of the central principle, replacing the centers forms of continuous

development with a form that constantly dissolves and transform itself. When development suburdinates form

and spans the whole, variation begins to free itself and becomes identified with creation.(...)

Beethoven introducing variations without center in music approach the idea of rhizome that Pierre

Boulez will bring into the limits,making audible nonsonorous forcesthrough placing all sound

components in continuous variation.

1819-23 Diabelli Variations op. 120

Instead by Form, the matter is organized by forces, intensities, the center is disseminated in a net or

weave of forces:

https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/132-allegro

-Univocity

Against decoration and ornamentation, the late period is excessive simplicity, bare. There is not
https://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/132-allegrohttps://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/132-allegro


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anymore question and answer, is just one single thing but displaced from itself. Its not anymore

important to exhaust fully the themes. This is what Adorno callesPrinciple of condensation, forms are

rarely consumed, its enough to mention/enunciate to exhaust.

-Holes

Beethoven turns out the hollow space of the sonata form, concave becomes convex.

Adorno also talks about interruptions, hiatus, silences, ruptures, pure tension between the extremes.

The technique, instead harmonic transitions, is to JUMP. There are no mediations, only, like in Hegel,

through extremes. Music has holes.

Deleuze inCritical and Clinicaldescribes Beethovens Ghost trio:there is a kind of central erosion that

first arises as a threat among the bass parts and is expressed in the trill of wavering of the piano, as if one key

were about to be abandoned for another, or for nothing, hollowing out the surface, plunging into a ghostly

dimension where dissonances would appear only to punctuate the silence.

On the other hand, the floating signifier needs emptiness to emerge.

If now we visit Deleuze and Guattari about Holey space inTreatise on Nomadology:The war machine,we

are tempted to think that Beethoven was a smith, inventing a holey space within the striated space of

the sonata form. Beethoven produces the emergency of the rhizome in the striated space of the

classicism.

-PolarizationBeethoven wasnt atonal but polarizes the tonality. Dissociation into two extremes: monody and

poliphony, with the exception of the fuges.

Deleuze Guattari: Refrain:Not to supress tonality but to turn it loose.

-TransversalityAdorno means pure tensionacross extremes,when unity is just an illusion and the whole a selfdeception.


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Deluze about Proust will demand to have the right to incompliteness and to patches: the fragmentation

means to exclude the logic unity and organic totality, there is no previous unity but they are an

EFFECT, they come afterwards, a posteriori: but the unity appears as a fragment (paintbrush) inside the

sistem. Transversality is what makes that allows each part to keep its difference and at the same time to

be connected and to communicate.

- Adorno:the late period speaks about the language of the archaic, of children of savages and God.Deleuze:

only children artists and schizofrenics can inhabitate the inadequacy because there are displaced towards

themselves.


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CODABeethoven remains.

This text is dedicated to Miguel Copn.

Special thanks to Jorge Ruiz Abnades.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aristoteles:Potica

Adorno: Beethoven

Proust: la Recherche du temps perdu

Benjamin: Literarische und sthetische Essays

Wittgenstein: Tractatus,

Deleuze and Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schyzophrenia

Deleuze: Proust and the signs

Deleuze: Critical and Clinical

Deleuze: Spinoza, Practical Philosophy

Deleuze: Cinema 2. The time image

Nietzsche: The Gay Science

Leonard B.Meyer: Emotion and meaning in music

Anthony Storr: Music and the MindRobert S.Kahn: Beethoven and the Grosse Fuge

Michael Schneider: Musiques du nuit

Peter Kivy: New Essays on musical understanding

Antoine Hennion: La passion musicale

Max Steinitzer: Beethoven

E. Fubini: El Romanticismo: entre Musica y Filosofia

Robert P. Morgan:Twentieth Century Music Patrick Donnelly:Grosse FugeJim Merod:Andante ma non


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troppo e molto cantabile:Audio (Il)literacy, or Beethovens Triumphant DespairMaynard

Solomon:Beethoven

Beethovens letters,with explanatory notes by Dr. A.C. Kalischer.

Across the Extremes. Notes on the late period of Beethoven

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Transcript of Across the Extremes. Notes on the late period of Beethoven