J. w. N.

Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang:

Questions ofMeaning in Late Beethoven

Kevin Korsyn

ven the positivist ideal of research, with its cult of objectivity and
its demand for intellectual detachment, could not annihilate questions about the meaning of music. Banished to our private moments, such questions persisted, sustained by the expressive urgency of our
musical experience. Today, the search for meaning has reclaimed its place
in discourse about music; there is a movement to integrate the results of
historical musicology and structural analysis with a new hermeneutics. By
acknowledging subjectivity, we join a larger humanistic project for which
Paul Ricoeur speaks: "After the silence and forgetfulness made widespread
by the manipulation of empty signs and the construction of formalized
languages, the modern concern for symbols expresses a new desire to
be addressed."^ Thus we return to Aristotle's question: "How is it that
rhythms and melodies, although only sound, resemble states ofthe soul?"^
With this revival of hermeneutics, the work of J. W. N. Sullivan compels renewed attention. Beethoven: His Spiritual Development is Sullivan's
classic study of meaning in Beethoven's music. Since its publication in
1927, his book has appeared in many editions and continues to find new

I am grateful to my former student Wayne Petty for his comments on my voice-leading

sketch of mm.I31 ofthe Heiliger Dankgesang (ex.9).
1. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay in Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1970), p.31.
2. Aristotle, Problemata, p.920a.

134

KEVIN

KORSYN

readers. His attempt to articulate the "spiritual content" of Beethoven's

works marks an important stage in the reception of this music. Of many
similar studies of Beethoven's import, Sullivan's is perhaps the most acute.
Despite its brevity, it shows a subtle grasp of the difficulties that any
hermeneutic theory of music must confront. I wish, therefore, to reexamine Sullivan's critical goals and methods, to see what he can contribute
to the current debate about musical meaning.
One's fmal judgment of SuUivan's book will probably rest on the persuasiveness of his analyses of individual works. To investigate his approach, I will consider the third movement of Beethoven's String Quartet,
op. 132, the Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit in der lydischen

Tonart (Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the deity in the

Lydian mode). I choose this piece for two reasons. First, Sullivan's intense
involvement with the late string quartets lends special urgency to his
remarks; a sympathetic account of Sullivan should start from his strongest
insights. Second, Beethoven's title certainly invites the listener to contemplate something more than autonomous structure; clearly he wanted to
communicate something, so the piece seems open to a hermeneutic approach like Sullivan's. Our interpretation will not reinstate the literal
program of illness and recovery that A. B. Marx heard in this quartet.
Nevertheless, Sullivan was right to warn that "the critic who should deny
any spiritual content whatever to the A-minor Quartet . . . would fail even
more signally than Marx."^
My meditation on the Heiliger Dankgesang will foster a dialogue between
Sullivan's methods and those of contemporary musical research. In this
process, hermeneutics, structural analysis, and historical musicology will
interrogate each other, as each corrects and completes, questions and fulfills, the other. A larger hermeneutic field permits this convergence of
disciplines since both musical meaning and structure are products of interpretation in a process that is always historically conditioned.
Before this dialogue can begin, however, we must unfold the implicit
questions to which SuUivan's text responds so that his unspoken questions
will animate our reading. Through historical investigation, we must reconstruct an interpretive context. Parallels between criticism today and
that of Sullivan's time make this recovery of context especially urgent; our
3.J. W. N. Sullivan, Beethoven: His Spiritual Development {igir^ipi. New York: Vintage,
i960), p. 59.

135 f.W.N.

Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

heightened receptivity to hermeneutics today may reflect conditions similar to those that shaped Sullivan's project. Understanding Sullivan's history may compel us to acknowledge the contingency of our own position.
Thus I share Hans-Georg Gadamer's belief that we must revisit the past in
the light of present concerns, achieving a fusion of horizons.'^ To transpose
a remark from Ricoeur's exegesis of Freud, although I want to understand
Sullivan, I also want to understand myselj'm reading him.^ Approaching
Sullivan with enhanced awareness may enable us to appropriate his insights
while escaping an unconscious repetition of his limitations.

II
A brief review of Sullivan's career will suggest new perspectives on him.
Although he was best known as an explicator of modern science, science
was only part of his varied career. From 1919 to 1921, he was an assistant
editor ofthe Athenaeum, a weekly "Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music and the Drama." The Athenaeum was
edited by Sullivan's close friend, the critic John Middleton Murry. Financial difficulties forced the Athenaeum to merge with the Nation in 1921; two
years later, Murry founded another journal and, at Sullivan's suggestion,
named it the Adelphi.^' Sullivan's numerous contributions to both journals
reveal the impressive range of his mind. Although science remained a
frequent theme, he also addressed issues in philosophy, literature, and
criticism.
Murry assembled an extraordinary group of writers for the Athenaeum;
according to Frank Swinnerton, "nobody . . . had a comparable galaxy of
contributors at his call."^ Sullivan's contact with these authors was not
hmited to the pages of the journal; many became his friends. Aldous
Huxley, the other assistant editor ofthe Athenaeum, was a devoted friend;
during Sullivan's long fmal illness, Huxley raised money for him.** Sul4. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Crundzge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr, i960), p.344.
5. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, p.473.
6. F. A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Muny (New York: Oxford UP, i960), p. 105.
7. Frank Swinnerton, Figures in the Foreground: Literary Reminiscences, 917-1^40 (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), p.66.
8. Aldous Huxley, Letters ofAldous Huxley, ed. Grover Smith (New York: Harper and
Row, 1969), pp.386-87.

136

KEVIN KORSYN

livan's other Uterary acquaintances included T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence,

Katherine Mansfield, James Stephens, Virginia Woolf, and many others.
Even in these circles, his writing v^^on respect. James Joyce, for example,
wanted SuUivan to write a preface to Tales Told of Shem and Shaun.'^
(Sullivan declined.) In a letter written from Florence in 1924, Huxley
sketched an incisive portrait of Sullivan:
We have staying with us now a most interesting man, J. W. N.
Sullivan (whom I think you have met, by the way, in connection with
articles about the Einstein theory for Comhill). He has a very clear,
hard and acute intelligence, not merely on his own subjectsmathematics, physics, and astronomybut on literature and particularly
music. A stimulating companion. He was brought up at Maynooth
under the Jesuits; they intended him to be a controversial apologist,
and seeing the bent of his mind, trained him on Thomas Aquinasa
good basis for a mathematician. But after he had been with them for a
year or two they turned him outthough at that time he was still a
firm believertelling him that they could see that with his mind he
would inevitably become a skeptic. Which he didthree years later!
Fairly acute psychological insight on the part of the reverend fathersfor whose intelligence, indeed, he retains the highest respect. '"
This summary of Sullivan's career suggests a new context for reading
him. He wrote during a crucial period in the development of modern
literary criticism. With his literary friendships and his editorial position at
the Athenaeum, he was well placed to observe the critical controversies of
his day. Indeed, the Athenaeum was a leading forum for innovative criticism. I. A. Richards, for example, perhaps the most influential EngUsh
critic of this century, published his first three articles therein 1919. (Significantly, one of the few sources that Sullivan acknowledges in Beethoven is
Richard's Principles of Literary Criticism, first published in 1924.) It is in this
context, then, that I wish to station Sullivan. His vision of musical criticism in Beethoven was modeled on postwar literary criticism; he shared
many of the aims and ideals of critics like Richards and his friend Murry,
and his implicit ideology will emerge if it is read against this background.
9. Richard E\\m3nn. James Joyce {rev. edn. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982), p.614.
10. Huxley, Letters, p.227.

137 J W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

A reaction against aestheticism united many otherwise diverse critics.
The aestheticists had postulated a unique "aesthetic faculty" receptive to a
special "aesthetic emotion." Although the resulting formalism did not
wholly exclude feeling, it valorized isolated ecstasies, seeking what Nabokov later called "the telltale tingle between the shoulder blades." Clive
Bell, for example, a leading aestheticist critic, celebrated the "austere and
thrilling raptures of those who have chmbed the cold, white peaks of art."
Art and life were insulated from one another: "The contemplation of pure
form leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete detachment
from the concerns of iife.""
Opposing these views, Richards attacked the votaries of I'art pour l'art in
Principles of Literary Criticism. The idea of a unique aesthetic faculty or
emotion seemed as useless to him as theories of the ether had become since
Einstein. He insisted that art and life are continuous, deploring the "phantom problem of the aesthetic mode" and the "false theory of the severance
and the disconnection between 'aesthetic' and ordinary experience."^^ In a
chapter called "The Impasse of Musical Theory," he extended his attack to
include the "musical faculty" that had been postulated by Edmund Gurney
in The Power of Sound.
Sullivan shared these views. In Beethoven, he summarizes Gurney's
position and demolishes it point by point. Gurney had advanced a theory
that "music is meaningless . . . that it is a form of Ideal Motion, and that it
is apprehended by a special and isolated Music Faculty." Sullivan concedes
the appeal of this idea and admits that its persuasiveness lies in our inability
to give names to our musical states; he then turns this argument against
Gurney:
The argument for the unique character of musical experiences will
equally demonstrate the unique character of poetic experiences. . . .
Poetry, no more than music, can be paraphrased, but that fact does not
testify to the existence of a unique and isolated poetic faculty. Poetic
experiences are not isolated and without reference to anything else in
the poet's spiritual make-up. On the contrary, they may be the synthetic, quintessential expressions of his whole nature and experience.
11. Clive Bell, Art (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1913), pp.13, 68.
12. i. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism {2nd edn. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1926), pp.11, 231.

138

KEVIN KORSYN

In the same way, music may be expressive, and what it expresses is its
meaning.
This exclusion of meaning turns the pure aesthete into a "comparative
imbecile."''
The First World War certainly influenced this widespread rejection of
aestheticism, as a sense of moral crisis led critics to seek more urgent
connections between art and life. The effects of the war can be seen in
Sullivan's tone of moral earnestness. As Pamela McCallum has shown,
critics like Richards and Eliot in the 1920s sought to recover the moral
dimension of literature that had been sacrificed by the amoral aesthetes.'^
This meant reclaiming the critical legacy of Matthew Arnold, for whom
poetry was a "criticism of life" and who wanted culture to provide the
values once supplied by religion. One can see these trends in Murry's
criticism. In a prospectus for the Adelphi, he wrote, "We are bored to death
by modern dilettantism. We are sick of Art. Inspired by no hving purpose,
it has brought us nowhere. If modern hterature is to be anything better than
a pastime for railway journeys or a parlour game for effete intellectuals, it
must be built upon some active conviction."'^ Rejecting Bell's doctrine of
"significant form," Murry proposed a new criterion: "significance for life."
"Life" becomes a central preoccupation in Sullivan's book. Beethoven's
music expresses a "vision for life," "attitudes towards life." These phrases
seem to echo both Arnold's "criticism of hfe" and Murry's "significance for
life." Sullivan also shares Murry's active ethical stance: the claim that music
is expressive and meaningful is, for Sulhvan, a claim about the moral value
of music: "That Beethoven's music is more beautiful than any other music
we are not inclined to assert; that it is greater than any other music has
been, on the whole, the general opinion ever since it appeared. Its greatness
depends on what we have called its spiritual content. . . . Beethoven's
work will live because ofthe permanent value, to the human race, ofthe
experiences it communicates.""' This insistence on moral value is a paramount concern in the criticism of Richards, who demanded "a general

13. Sullivan, Beethoven, pp.33, 40-41, 24.

14. Pamela McCallum, Literature and Method: Towards a Critique of I. A. Richards, T. S.
Eliot, and F. R. Leavis (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983), p.213.
15. Quoted in Lea, Life of John Middleton Murry, p. 107.
16. Sullivan, Beethoven, p.243.

139 J- ^- N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

theory of value which will show the place and function of the arts in the
whole system of values."'''
SulHvan seems to have adopted much of his terminology from Richards.
For Richards, the power of the artist lies in synthesizing and controlling
experience: "The arts . . . spring from and perpetuate hours in the lives of
exceptional people, when their control and command of experience is at its
highest." Art consists of "ordinary experiences completed," "a resolution
of a welter of disconnected impulses into a single ordered response," and
gives us an "organization of experience."^** The following cento from
Sullivan shows his debt to Richards:
[Beethoven's] experience had, as we have seen, taken on a very high
degree of organization, and to these organic wholes, formed very
deep down in his consciousness, he had given expression again and
again. . . .
All art exists to communicate states of consciousness which are
higher synthetic wholes than those of ordinary experience. . . .
The greatest function of art is to present us with a higher organization of experience.'^
On the other hand, Sullivan rejects many of Richards's principles. In
particular, he endorses what Richards calls a "revelation theory" of art.
Richards had made a famous distinction between the referential and the
emotive uses of language, a distinction that effectively denies any cognitive
value to art.^" Sullivan argues, contra Richards, that art does convey
knowledge about reality and blames scientific materialism for distorting
our perceptions: "It is true, as Mr. Richards insists, that the artist gives us a
superior organization of experience. But that experience includes perceptions which, although there is no place for them in the scientific scheme.

17. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism, p.36.

18. Ibid., pp.32, 233, 245.
19. Sullivan, Beethoven, pp.220, 225, 243.
20. McCallum believes tbat this "emotive theory" of poetry contradicts Richard's
intention to close the gap between poetry and normal experience: "When Richards wishes
to introduce the value-efFective quality of language he is forced to create a division between
symbolic and evocative language. Sucb an antinomy would apparently contradict the
organizing principle of his next project, that is, the assertion in Principles that reception to art
is basically similar to any other activity in consciousness" (Literature and Method, p.214).

140

KEVIN KORSYN

need none the less be perceptions of factors in reality. Therefore a work of

art may communicate knowledge. It may indeed be a'revelation.' . . .The
highest art has a transcendental function, as science has.""^

m
After this defense of musical expression, Sullivan presents an account of
Beethoven's life and works. Although 1 have invoked parallels from literary criticism to enhance our reading of Sullivan, penetrating his reconstruction of Beethoven's life and character requires other models. The
ghost of religion haunts Sullivan's texts; this covert religious impulse
affiliates him with literary traditions that M. H. Abrams has analyzed
extensively. As Abrams has shown, many Romantic authors songht to
reconstitute Christian experience, trying to save certain religious values
while rethinking them in forms acceptable to the secular mind. This secularization of devotional experience was pursued, often quite consciously
and systematically, by authors as diverse as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, and Hlderlin. Even in twentieth-century literature,
Abrams believes that this transformation of sacred thought persists in
works by Joyce, Eliot, and Lawrence, among others.^^
Several genres described by Abrams seem relevant to Sullivan's book.
According to Abrams, many authors have transferred the Christian drama
of suffering and redemption into a secular Bildungs^eschichte:
The mind of man, whether generic or individual, is represented
as disciplined by the suffering which it experiences as it develops
through successive stages of division, conflict, and reconciliation,
toward the culminating stage at which, all oppositions having been
overcome, it will achieve a full and triumphant awareness of its
identity, ofthe significance of its past, and of its accomplished destiny.
The course of human life . . . is no longer a Heilsgeschichte but a

21. Sullivan, Beethoven, pp.30-31.

22. It may seem surprising to find Eliot's name on this list; after all, his aversion to
Romanticism is well known. According to Christopher Norris, however, "Eliot's avowed
antipathy to Romanticism goes along with a covert adherence to its whole working system
of evaluative terms and categories" (Paul de Man: Deconstruction and the Critique of Aesthetic
Ideology INew York: Routledge, 1988]. p.36).

J- W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

Bildungsgeschichte; or more precisely, it is a Heilsgeschichte translated

into the secular mode of a Bildungsgeschichte. ^^
The genre of the Bildungsgeschichte often overlaps with that of the "secular
theodicy," as many authors sought to translate the Christian theodicy into
personal, secular terms.
Sullivan's narrative of Beethoven's spiritual development conforms to
these paradigms. Like the hero in a Bildungsgeschichte, Beethoven is educated by suffering in a life punctuated by crisis. As in many Romantic
works, a conflict of opposites organizes the story. Sullivan places Beethoven at the intersection of two opposing drives: the "capacity for suffering"
and "the power of self-assertion."^'* In this polarity, this tension between
opposites, SuUivan finds the energy that fueled Beethoven's development.
The culmination of Beethoven's spiritual journey is a reconcihation
of opposites, a synthesis of conflicting elements, much like that which
Abrams finds in the Romantic Bildungsgeschichte: "The life in the last string
quartets is as full, varied and intense as anywhere in Beethoven's music.
But those aspects of life that Beethoven formerly presented as contrasted
he now presents as harmoniously flowering from a single stem. Life's
experiences are still presented in all their diversity, but no longer as conflicting." In this final state of illumination, Beethoven's suffering is justified, exactly as in the "secular theodicy":
Beethoven had come to realize that his creative energy, which he at
one time opposed to his destiny, in reality owed its very life to that
destiny. It is not merely that he believed that the price was worth
paying; he came to see it as necessary that a price should be paid. To be
willing to sufFer in order to create is one thing; to realize that one's
creation necessitates one's suffering, that suffering is one of God's
greatest gifts, is almost to reach a mystical solution to the problem of

Many Romantic works share these paradigms and could have served as
conscious or unconscious models for Sullivan. One book, however, seems
23. M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernatural ism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971), p.i88.
24. Sullivan, Beethoven, pp.69-70.
25. Ibid., pp.73, 229.

142

KEVIN KORSYN

especially close: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (i 807). Hegel chronicles the

stages in the evolution of consciousness, from immediate sense certainty
to self-consciousness. Sullivan narrates the development of Beethoven's
"states of consciousness," moving through ever higher levels of awareness,
until Beethoven is described as "exploring new regions of consciousness."
The end of Sullivan's book shows the appositeness of this comparison with
Hegel. The highest stage of consciousness for Hegel is Absolute Spirit,
where all oppositions are overcome. As we have seen, Sullivan's book
reaches a similar reconcihation, "in which the apparently opposing elements of life are seen as necessary and no longer in opposition. "^"^
Sullivan's quasi-religious plot, his movement toward a secularized redemption, gives his book its compeUing narrative structure, its satisfying
sense of closure. On the other hand, it also opens his text to deconstruction. Some readers will recall T. E. Hulme's aperu about Romanticism:
"spilt religion."2^ A critic like Paul de Man would certainly consider Sulhvan the victim of Romantic ideology. To what extent this ideology colors
Sullivan's understanding of Beethoven is an issue I will address in my
conclusion.
It would be wrong, however, to assume that Sullivan was unaware of
the dangers of idealization; he was neither naive nor unreflective. In 1920,
seven years before Beethoven was published, Sullivan wrote what I am
tempted to call a proleptic critique of his own book. The occasion for his
remarks was a review of Paul Valry's Introduction la mthode de Lonard de
Vinci. I quote this review here because it shows Sullivan's insight into his
own project:
The attempt to penetrate a first-class mind, to represent to oneself the
extent and balance of its activities, to perceive and to maintain in
perception an imputed attitude or center of being which shall make
these attitudes natural, is one of the most fascinating and deceptive of
enterprises. Fascinating, because each discovery of this kind, since it is
made by us, may be applied in a measure to ourselves, and deceptive,
probably, since it is only as they may be applied to ourselves that such

26. Ibid., p.229.

27. T. E. Hulme, Speculations, ed. Herbert Read (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,
1936), p. 118.

143 J- ^- ^- Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

discoveries are possible. . . . The attempt to "penetrate" Leonardo
now serves as a point of departure which leads to a very general result.
It is well to start with Leonardo, even if we are now more fully
conscious that we are probably creating him. Our interest is not now
to reconstruct the historical Leonardo, but to make, with increasing
frankness, a discovery about ourselves.^
Sullivan's desire for a reconciliation of opposites, for organic continuity,
determines every aspect of his approach. He demands an almost perfect
fusion between Beethoven's hfe and art. The Romantic Bildungsgeschichte
becomes a vehicle for moving between biography and music: the same
poetic models that underlie SulHvan's interpretation of Beethoven's life are
appropriated to describe the spiritual content of his music. Only detailed
analysis will tell whether this generates authentic insights into the music.
Therefore I turn now to the Heiliger Dankgesang.

TV
SulHvan's account ofthe String Quartet, op. 132, exempHfies all the redemptive possibilities that he hears in Beethoven: the convergence of Hfe
and art in a work that expresses "attitudes towards life"; the harmonization
of remote areas of experience; the conquest of opposites; the attainment of
a spiritual insight through which suffering is justified and comprehended.
Although the Heiliger Dankgesang most concerns me here, Sullivan's remarks on the entire quartet demand attention, especially since he insists
that the movements in the late quartets "radiate, as it were, from a central
experience." Sullivan hears "two main experiences" in the quartet: "exhaustion and defeat" and "the new life bestowed as an act of grace from on
high." In the first two movements, the negative attitudes predominate:
"The yearning and pain ofthe first movement (which ends, as only Beethoven would end, with what sounds like a startling and celestial trumpet
call) is but little lightened in the second where there reigns a spiritual
weariness which is quite unmistakable." The sense of spiritual crisis continues elsewhere in the quartet; Sullivan describes the fourth movement as
"marching to no victory," and he finds anguish and a "struggle against

28. Sullivan, "The Irreducible Element," Athenaeum, 27 August 1920, pp.28s-86.

144

KEVN

KORSYN

despair" in much of the finale. In all, he considers this "the least mystical"
of the late quartets and "the most full of human pain."^'^
Opposing this pain, however, is the possibility of "new life," which
enters the work at m. 120 in the second movement:
But again there comes that intimation of something celestial in an
alternativo (that some writers find "curious" and others "humorous"!)
where the first violin soars high over a pedal, and then comes the first
moment of joy, real joy without any arrire-pense, in the whole
quartet. The first part is then repeated; the dominant mood is reestablished. From this matrix arises the slow movement, the most
heart-felt prayer from the most manly soul that has expressed itself in
music.

30

Table i: Beethoven, Op.132/111: Formal Plan

A'
m.l

Lydian mode
cantus firmus

B'1
m .31
D major

A2

m.85
Lydian mode
cantus firmus
(variation)

B=
m .115
D major

A^

m.l68
Lydian mode
{not a strict
variation)

At the center of the quartet stands the Heiliger Dankgesang. As Table i

indicates, this movement has five parts, with two alternating themes, one
in the Lydian mode, the other in D major (exs. i and 2). These contrasting
themes embody the conflicting experiences of the quartet. The Lydian
chorale that opens the movement still reflects the "spiritual weariness" of
the previous movement. Sullivan associates "new life" with the passage in
D major that begins inm.31: "From this pure and sincere communion with
his God there comes a quickened life, a rush of celestialjoy, in the passage
marked 'Neue Kraft fhlend.' The psychological resemblance between this
transition and that in the second movement is obvious. Relief from pain, in
this most pessimistic of Beethoven's quartets, comes only from above."-^^
29. Sullivan, Beethoven, pp.227, 241, 242, 241, 239.
30. Ibid., pp.240-41.
31. Ibid., p.241.

145

- Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Goltheit. in der lydischen Tonart.
l(Miiz<ma i ri/igrazimiicnlo iiffcrla alla diriiul a im gttarilo. in imido Udico.)
Moito adagio ^

Example i:
Op.132/111: mm.1-6.

Neue Kraft fhlend

iSciitenJo miova forza) JL _,
Andante

Example 2:
Op.i32/ni: mm.31-34.

^ ^ = ^

These opposing experiences appear to reach some sort of reconciliation

because Sullivan refers to "the still more indescribable synthesis expressed
in the Heiliger Dankgesang." He is somewhat vague about this synthesis,
but his other remarks on late Beethoven help amplify his meaning. As we
have seen, Sullivan believes that Beethoven achieved "a final synthesis . . .
between the primary elements of his experience," in which "suffering is
accepted as a necessary condition of life, as an illuminating power." I
assnme, therefore, that the primary experiences ofthe quartet"exhaustion and defeat" and "the new life bestowed as an act of grace from on

146

KEVIN KORSYN

high"must somehow interpenetrate each other, reaching a coalescence in

which the opposing attitudes are finally recognized "as harmoniously flowering from a single stem."^^ At least this explanation seems consistent with
Sullivan's thinking elsewhere. Later, I will suggest where we might find
this synthesis in the music.
This interpretation of the quartet closely parallels a poetic genre that
Abrams, in a seminal essay, called "the greater Romantic lyric."'^ This
genre thematizes a persistent concern of Romantic thought: the alienation
of consciousness from itself, the painful yet necessary ontological gap that
develops between the self and its objects. These poems are secularized
versions of the Fall of Man, converting the loss of Eden into a process of
evolving consciousness. Hence these poems contrast recollections of a
prior grace and innocent joy with a present state of estrangement from
nature. One finds this pattern in poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge
"that look back regretfully to a period in childhood when the visionary
sense of communion with nature was as yet untouched by the dislocating,
alien effects of self-consciousness and adult knowledge."-*"* In philosophy,
Hegel's Phenomenology shares this pattern; as de Man suggests, "Hegel can
be invoked as the philosophical counterpart of what occurs with greater
delicacy in the figurai inventions of the poets."-'^
Moreover, these Romantic poems often echo earlier rehgious poetry,
and the devotional aspect may even become explicit:
The Romantic meditations, then, although secular meditations, often
turn on crisesalienation, dejection, the loss of a "celestial light" or
"glory" in experiencing the created worldwhich are closely akin to
the spiritual crises of the earlier religious poets. And at times the
Romantic lyric becomes overtly theological in expression. Some of
them include not only colloquies with a human auditor, real or imagined . . . but also with God or with a Spirit of Nature, in the mode of
a formal prayer. ^''
32. Ibid., pp.123, 73.
33. M. H. Abrams, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric," in From
Sensibility to Romanticism, cd. F. W. Hillis and Harold Bloom (New York; Oxford UP, 1965),
p.528.
34. Norris, Paul de Man, p.31.
35. Paul de Man, "Sign and Symbol in Hegel's Aesthetics," Critical Inquiry 8 (1982), 771.
36. Abrams, "Structure and Style," p.555.

147 J- H^ N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

Sullivan characterizes the two dominant experiences of the quartet in
terms that recall the contrasts of the greater Romantic lyric. His talk of
"exhaustion and defeat" and "spiritual weariness" parallels the spiritual
crises that the poems narrate. The language he invokes to characterize the
positive side of the quartet"new life," "grace from on high," "celestial
joy"suggests the "celestial light" or "glory" that Abrams mentions. His
description of the movement as "the most heart-felt prayer" and "pure and
sincere communion with his God" parallels the overtly theological tendencies of the Romantic meditations.
Sullivan's appropriation of these poetic traditions is still more complete.
According to Abrams, there is often a synthesis, a reconciliation of opposites in these poems. While these poems secularize the Fall of Man, they
also transform man's redemption into a rintgration of consciousness:
"But this sentiment of loss goes along with the faith that such communion
[with nature] can be restored, if only momentarily, by acts of creative
imagining that overcome the ontological and temporal void fixed between
subject and object, mind and nature. In fact it has been arguednotably by
M. H. Abramsthat this is precisely the organizing principle and characteristic form of the 'greater Romantic lyric'."-"
Thus Sullivan's pursuit of a reconciliation of opposites continues a long
tradition. While Sullivan tends to express this synthesis in mystical terms,
many earlier writers share his vision, with or without his mysticism.-***
Sullivan's quest for privileged moments, for moments of higher consciousness, affiliates him with that Romantic ideology so cogently analyzed by de
Man. One sees this same longing for transcendence, for example, in the
Romantic valorization of the tropes of metaphor and symbol:
Metaphor and symbol supposedly transcend the order of quotidian
language and perception. They give access to a realm of intuitive or

37. Norris, Paul de Man, p.3t.

38. Although mysticism is obvious enough in Beethoven, other works by Sullivan
display this tendency even more overtly. In Contemporary Mind: Some Modern Answers
{London: Humphrey Toulmin, 1934), Sullivan includes a chapter called "A Dissertation on
Beethoven" that recapitulates the fundamental arguments of the earlier book. He concludes
that "the history of Beethoven's spiritual development is, in essentials, similar to the history of their development which is given by the great mystics. . . . The importance of
[Beethoven's] art . . . is that it makes credible the possibility of the complete mystic vision"
(pp. 56-58).

148

KEVIN KORSYN

visionary insight w^here thought overcomes its enslavement to the

laws of time, contingency, and change. The true mark ofthe genius is
the power to create such moments out of time, moments when the
mind can contemplate nature and its own "inner" workings with a
sense of achieved harmony, a sense that such distinctions have fallen
away in the act of unified perception. ^^
Whether Sullivan's rhetoric of transcendence fully captures the complexity
ofthe music is an issue I will consider in my conclusion. First, however, I
want to explore the ramifications of SulHvan's position.
Sullivan's (largely unacknowledged) appropriation of these literary
models produces some suggestive results. Several of his insights capture
something ofthe piece, if only as a first approximation: the idea of suffering as an "illuminating power"; the D-major music as "grace from on
high"; the synthesis of conflicting elements of experience. How can music
reconcile us to suffering? How can music embody an attitude toward life
that accepts suffering without abandoning life? These are important questions, and I honor Sullivan for raising them.
Yet there are gaps in Sullivan's account. He offers no reasons, no process
by which he reached his insights, no method by w^hich one could critique,
test, confirm, extend, or dispute his findings. Once again, his 1920 review
of Valry provides a commentary on his own book:
He manifests an extraordinary delicacy of perception, a true subtlety
of attention. The objects thus discriminated are then placed before the
reader with all the persuasiveness that well-ordered imagery can bestow. To the consciousness made tremulous and sensitive in this way
M. Valry announces the result of his own intuition. Ifthe spark
passes, all is well. If the spark does not pass, M. Valry becomes
unintelligible. He can descend to no wider common ground; his
method is that of poetry, not that of ratiocination.*^
A mere repetition of Sullivan's intuitive methods would hardly satisfy us
today since unsympathetic readers will find him incoherent.^^ I believe.

39. Norris, Paul de Man, PP.2S-29.

40. Sullivan, "The Irreducible Element," p.285.
41. Sullivan's intuitive method was not adopted naively. He seems to have shared
Murry's hope that the postwar crisis would precipitate "a great, revolutionary change in

149 J- ^- ^- Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

however, that historical and structural analysis can compensate, to some
degree, for Sullivan's omissions, providing a common ground on which
his claims about Beethoven's music can at least be debated, even if we then
choose to reject them. In what follows I will offer an analysis of the
Heiliger Dankgesang that will explore Sullivan's perceptions of a conflict and
eventual synthesis of remote areas of experience. I wish first to enter
Sullivan's world as fully as possible, to understand why he heard this music
as he did. Later, I will sketch another reading of this movement. This
reading will not retract Sullivan's; rather, Sullivan's vision will be surpassed and retained, converted into a stageand a necessary onein a
larger dialectic. My models for this dialectical reading include Ricoeur's
exegesis of Freud and de Man's critique of aesthetic ideology. One should
read my analysis with the caution one reserves for the movement of a
dialectic; each stage of the analysis presents only a provisional truth.

The literature on op.132 certainly shares Sullivan's perception of a conflict

of opposites. Joseph Kerman, for example, believes that the Heiliger Dankgesang "forces contrast more profoundly than any previous piece of music."
The partners in this collision are the Lydian hymn and the D-major theme
that begins in m.31: "The two do not mix, they do not understand one
another, and it is only by a sort of miracle that they do not wipe each other
out or simply collapse." The movement justifies such superlatives: the
Neue Kra overthrows everything that had characterized the Lydian music.
Andante con moto replaces Molto adagio; I meter replaces common time;
D major replaces the Lydian mode. In addition to these abrupt changes of
tempo, meter, and mode, other discontinuities pervade virtually every
parameter of the music. Kerman vividly captures these contrasts: "In
one massive contradiction, all the asceticisms of scale, melody, harmony,
rhythm, and texture disappear . . . the vague untonal mysteries of the
hymn give way to lucid, even simple-minded tonal progressions freely

consciousness," inaugurating an era of buman brotherbood. This Utopian vision made

Murry try to "bypass tbe intelligentsia" and "reacb the man in the street" with tbe Adelphi
(Lea, Life of John Middleton Murry, pp.110, 112). Hence, Sullivan aims bis book at tbe
layman, not the expert; he writes with the conviction tbat Beetboven's meaning is accessible
to all and hopes that Beethoven's example will educate the buman race.

150

KEVIN KORSYN

indulging the two common chords denied to the Lydian mode, the subdominant and the dominant-7th." As Kerman admits, however, the dichotomy is more extreme than any enumeration of details might suggest:
"It has to do with the total quality ofthe form, something about the set of
the contrasting sections."''^ It is necessary, therefore, to express this "total
quality ofthe form" more precisely.
Radical differences in melodic construction characterize the two themes.
The Lydian cantus firmus is remarkable for its lack of melodic parallelisms.
This is not to deny certain similarities among its phrases; indeed, we shall
later discover significant motivic relationships in the theme. Compared,
however, with most of Beethoven's slow movements, repetition seems
minimized to an extraordinary degree. Only the imitative interludes between the phrases of the cantus firmus employ conspicuous repetition.
These interludes feature only two motives, one beginning with a rising
sixth, the other with a descending fifth. The cantus itself, however, studiously avoids obvious repetitions such as sequences. Within Beethoven's
musical language, this absence of parallelisms is a highly deliberate renunciation of a stylistic norm. Indeed, after the second movement of the
quartet, which rigorously investigates the melodic possibilities of its opening motives, the construction ofthe cantus firmus seems especially striking. This lack of parallelisms certainly enhances the archaic quality ofthe
Lydian music. Along with the chorale texture and the use ofthe Lydian
mode, the lack of parallelisms contributes to the effect of re-creating an
earlier sacred style. These elements confirm Sullivan's description of the
section as "pure and sincere communion with his God."
Sieghard Brandenburg, in an otherwise illuminating study ofthe Heiliger Dankgesang, fails to note this lack of parallelisms. This omission leads
him to argue too dogmatically his thesis that Beethoven "was bound to
contemporary thinking . . . even where he was apparently imitating earlier music in a historicizing way.""^^^ Doubtless Beethoven shared many of
the aims and ideals of contemporary church music. Nevertheless, his
interest in older music was not Umited to modality; he also seems to have
been seeking alternative types of melodic construction. The possibility of
creating highly organized melodies that are not based primarily on melodic
42. Kerman, Quartets, pp.253, 254, 256, 257.
43. Sieghard Brandenburg, "The Historical Background to the 'Heiliger Dankgesang' in
Beethoven's A-Minor Quartet Op. 132," BS i n , p.172.

J.W.N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

parallelisms may have attracted him to older music at least as much as its
modal harmony. The examples that Brandenburg cites as Beethoven's
ostensible models for the style of the Lydian theme all contain obvious
parallelisms.'*''

Example 3 :
Op.132/111: mm. 1-30,
durational reduction.

Along with this lack of parallelisms, the phrasing certainly violates

stylistic norms of Beethoven's music. The Lydian music alternates twomeasure interludes with the four-measure phrases of the cantus.^'' A durational reduction (ex.3), in which a quarter note represents one measure,
shows the rigid scheme that results.^^' The interludes seem like interpola44. See, e.g., the Knecht piece that Brandenburg cites on p.179. I am still persuaded,
therefore, by Kirkendalc's claim that Beethoven was reaching back to Gregorian models in
the Lydian cantus firmus, even if Kirkcndale goes too far in proposing specific chants
as models. See Warren Kirkendale, "Gregorianischer Stil in Beethoven's Streichquartett
Op.132," in Bericht ber den internationalen musikwissenschalichen Kongress, Berlin 1974, ed.
Hellmut Khn and Peter Nitsche (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1980), p.373.
45. Beethoven's deliberate use of an atypical phrasing scheme becomes clear if we recall
that many eighteenth-century theories of musical period structure considered the fourmeasure phrase a norm and stressed the tendency of phrase rhythm toward symmetry and
balance. Consider, e.g., the attitude expressed by Johann Philipp Kirnberger as he is quoted
in The Art of Strict Musical Composition, trans. David Beach and Jrgen Thym (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale UP, 1982), p.408.
46. My durational reductions rely on techniques pioneered by Carl Schachter in three
articles: "Rhythm and Linear Analysis: A Preliminary Study," Music Forum 4 (1976), 281334, "Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Durational Reduction," MHitcFrMm 5 (1980), 197-232,

152

KEVIN KORSYN

tions or parentheses that interrupt the hymn, frustrating any momentum

that might establish a regular hypermeter. This quality of the phrase
rhythm, along with the listlessness of the rhythmic surface, which eschews
any subdivision of the beat, is one structural counterpart of the "spiritual
weariness" that Sullivan heard here.
In striking opposition to the Lydian music, the Neue Kraft emphasizes
repetition on many levels, creating constant melodic parallelisms while
establishing a regular hypermeter. The form of this section has three parts;
varied repetitions follow both the first and the second phrases (Table 2).
Table 2: Beethoven, Op. 132/111: mm.31-85, Form
A

mm.31-38
(mm.39-46
varied repetition)

B
mm.47-56
(mm.56-67
varied repetition)

C
mm .68-82

transition
mm.82-85

Example 4 shows how the first part establishes a regular four-measure

hypermeter. After the rigid phrase structure of the Lydian music, the
D-major theme displays much more varied phrasing.'*^ While the first
phrase (mm.31-38, varied repetition mm.39-46) has eight measures, a

and "Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Aspects of Meter," Music Forum 6 (1987), 1-59. In
discussing hypermeter and phrase rhythm, I am indebted to William Rothstein's important
book Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer, 1989). Both Schachter and
Rothstein have clarified and extended Schenker's ideas about rhythm.
47. An important distinction between the Lydian and the D-major themes is that, while
the phrases of the Lydian cantus firmus lack any internal subdivisions, the phrases of the
Neue Kra are richly subdivided through motivic parallelisms. The absence of internal
articulations makes the phrases of the cantus seem lacking in forward momentum, while the
motivic parallelisms in the D-major section generate more expectations and propel us
tovi^ard the future. Here it is worth recalling Heinrich Christoph Koch's ideas concerning
the construction of melody (Introductory Essay on Composition, trans. Nancy KovalcfFBaker
[New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1983], pp. 1-59). Koch believed that an incise (Einschnitt),
which he defmes as a resting point in a complete phrase, fosters mobility because the ear
expects a complementary subphrase to balance and complete it. The lack of Einschnitte in the
cantus firmus thus contributes to the "spiritual weariness" that Sullivan heard.

153

- Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

Example 4:
Op.132/111: mm.31-38,
durational reduction.

h2

phrase expansion in the second (mm.47-56, varied repetition mm.57-66)

produces a ten-measure group. As Schenker realized, identifying such
expansions depends on the recognition of simpler underlying prototypes.
In this case, dominant prolongation produces the expansion; the dominant
seventh in m.52 is extended for two additional measures, heightening
tension on the way to the cadence (ex.5). The energy ofthe four-measure
hypermeter continues despite the expansion because mm. 51-56 expand an
underlying four-measure prototype. The four-measure hypermeter continues in the last section (ex.6). Phrase rhythm here is at least as important a
source of contrast as the increasing complexity of the rhythmic surface.
Rhythmic energy, freedom, and variety enter the piece in m.31, overcoming the restrictions of the Lydian theme, enhancing the sense of new life
that Sullivan felt.

Example 5:
Op.i32/in: mm.47-56,
durational reduction.

Example 6:
Op.i32/in: mm.67-82,
durational reduction.

154

KEVIN KORSYN

Register is another source of opposition; the two sections explore registral space in strikingly different ways. Although Beethoven uses the low C
of the cello almost from the beginning, he introduces higher registers very
gradually. The Lydian cantus firmus is restricted to the octave from d' to d^
(this emphasis on D prepares the tonality of the Neue Kra). The highest
note of the Lydian material is a^, which appears in mm. 6, 24, and 30. The
piece seems unable to overcome this registral limit; this constricted registral space contributes to the sense of spiritual exhaustion that Sullivan
heard.
Then suddenly, the Neue Kra, beginning on a-, appropriates an entire
octave in a single gesture, pushing to a-* in m.37 (ex.4 above). One can hear
this phrase as a conquest of registral space, enhancing the sense of new
strength. This pitch (a-') will play a special role in this movement. Elsewhere, I proposed the term "registral ceiling" for such structural high
points, choosing this term rather than "apex" or "high point" because
"ceiling" suggests an upper limit that for some reason cannot be exceeded.^^ Beethoven often creates such registral ceilings, not only within a
movement but even across several movements. Despite the availability of
higher notes on the violin and the use of higher notes in several other
movements of op. 132, Beethoven never goes above a-* in the Heiliger
Dankgesang. Emphasis on the registral ceiling becomes an important compositional resource in the movement.
The increased range of the Neue Kra allows a greater variety of spacings
than we find in the Lydian music, including widely spaced chords spanning
four and a half octaves. Perhaps even more striking than this aspect of
register, however, is the way in which the D-major section negotiates
enormous registral distances within a single phrase. Example 7 shows the
opening phrase of this section (mm.31-38), with the voice leading condensed into the smallest possible registral space. Comparing this reduction
to the piece to see what the reduction omits reveals Beethoven's registral
boldness; such a reduction is never an end in itself. The structural upper voice, accompanied largely by parallel tenths in the bass,"*^ descends
48. For further discussion of the registral ceiling in op. 132, see my Integration in Works of
Beethoven's Final Period (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1983), pp.151, 167-68, and esp.
pp. 122-48 regarding the double variation movement in the Ninth Symphony.
49. Another aspect of contrast between the two musics lies in the intervallic structure o
the outer voices. The extensive use of parallel tenths in the structural outer voices of the
Neue Kra is unlike anything in the Lydian theme, which uses more perfect consonances. It

155 J- W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

Example 7:
Op.i32/ni: mm.31-38,
metric and registral
reduction.

D:

QI1J-

J. , J -

I
i

Example 8:
Op.132/111: mm.31-81,

voice leading.

through an octave from fP to ftl'; the mental retention of Ftt through this
octave motion organizes the phrase, prolonging 3 as the local primary
tone, until 2 appears over the dominant harmony at the phrase ending.
Example 8 shows a transformation in which the stepwise motion of this
octave descent is twice broken up into different registers; ci^ moves up to

is a familiar precept of species counterpoint that imperfect intervals should predominate in

the middle of an exercise becanse they create more fluent motion. Thus the parallel tenths at
the beginning ofthe Neue Kra foster mobility, enhancing the sense of new life.

156

KEVIN KORSYN

b2, up a seventh instead of down a second; a^ moves up an octave to a^.

Meanwhile, register transfers occur in the bass as well. These local registral
discontinuities serve a larger registral connection: when the octave line
from ip is completed, the goal arrives an octave higher than it did in ex.7;
instead of a descending coupling, there is an ascending coupling from ftt^ to
f r . Thus 2 appears in a higher octave than expected. These registral
dislocations also heighten the sense of energy, as do the bold leaps of the
immediate foreground. The varied repetition of this phrase (mm. 39-46)
exhibits slightly different and even greater registral transfers. After the
relative flatness of the Lydian theme, this sudden registral mobility seems
like the introduction of a third dimension.
As if to balance the coupling of f^ to f|t-^ in the first phrase, the second
phrase introduces another coupling from e^ to e\ so that both 2 and arrive
in the higher octave. The bass, prolonging the dominant, has a descending
coupling from a to A (ex.8). We have already identified the phrase expansion here; how wonderfully the registra! couplings conspire with the
phrase expansion to produce a freedom utterly unknown to the Lydian
music. A comparison of the first violin parts in the Lydian and D-major
sections is very revealing: in mm. 1-30, the first violin is confined to a space
of less than two octaves from c' to a^; in the D-major theme, the instrument
explores a space of more than three octaves, from g to al
This discussion of register necessarily introduced voice leading since
registral couplings depend on a voice-leading hierarchy Further consideration of the voice leading reveals other sources of contrast between the two
sections. The movement has a connected melodic structure and can be
analyzed in Schenkerian terms as having one primary tone. A, which is
prolonged as 3 in the Lydian mode and 5 in D major. Within D major,
however, 5 is only a cover tone; the melodic organization, as noted above,
clearly pivots around 3 (Ftt) as the local primary tone. The Neue Kra is
relatively self-contained as it reaches complete melodic and harmonic closure (ex.8). This gives the section a certain autonomy, sealing it ofFfrom
what follows. The rests during the transition in mm.82-84the first
silences in the movementalso further isolate the Neue Krafi.
The Lydian cantus firmus, on the other hand, does not reach closure; the
D-major modulation is an integral part of the theme. While the fourth
phrase of the chorale does attain closure, the fifth phrase revokes it; it starts
by repeating the previous phrase, but fails to cadence and modulates
instead (ex.9). I read this phrase as a descending fifth progression from a^ to

157 f-^- N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

(Bar lines indicate phrases)
(3)
(C.I.)

Example 9:
Op.132/111: mm.T-31,

voice leading.

r
(4 - pros,)

Lydian:

I.

(IV) V

VI

(cl.)
IN
-*-r

ii~T

(4 prog.)

ZTT
VI

(IV
Lydian:

V I

d'; this voice-leading motion concludes in m.31, overlapping with the new
linear progression that begins on fP in the same measure. When the cantus
firmus is repeated in mm. 85-114, it will reproduce these events and restage
the failure to achieve closure. How the Lydian music will escape another
repetition of this situation becomes a central problem of the piece.

158

KEVIN KORSYN

The two sections also differ profoundly in their temporality, that is, in
the way they organize the experience of time. The use ofthe Lydian mode
has temporal implications. Several analysts have noted that they do not
hear the old church modes innocently; tonal effects constantly suggest
themselves, and that would certainly have been true for Beethoven's audiences. We tend, therefore, to hear a mixture of F major and C major in
mm. 1-30 rather than a pure Lydian mode. Daniel Mason, for example,
insists that "the crucial fourth phrase, structurally final despite its repetition
in the fifth one, reaches for us not the tonic of F, whatever the superscription may say, but the suhdominant ofC!"^*' Philip Radcliffe remarks that "the
Lydian tonahty is fascinatingly ambiguous, constantly veering towards C
yet restrained by a quietly persistent pull towards F."^'
One effect of this harmonic ambiguity is a curious temporal ambivalence. In the chord grammar of tonal music, a dominant triad is future
oriented: it points toward its eventual resolution to the tonic. Beethoven's ambiguous tonality, however, makes it difficult to tell whether the
C-major chord is functioning as a tonic or as a dominant. As its relative
tonal stability or instability becomes difficult to ascertain, its temporal
orientation becomes uncertain as well. Is the music tonally at rest or
moving forward? Is the music past oriented or future oriented? Do these
contradictory temporal implications neutralize each other, cancel each
other, producing a sense of stasis? Or are they copresent, creating a feeling
of restless oscillation? The Lydian music deconstructs the usual tonicdominant polarity of tonal music, placing in doubt the familiar opposition
of closure and nonclosure.
Again, the D-major section contrasts with the Lydian. The sense of
temporal rupture between the two themes is a radical discontinuity that
Jonathan Kramer calls "nonlinear time."^- At m.31 Beethoven creates a
new world in which the restoration of an unambiguous tonahty produces a
future-oriented quality, a sense of moving toward a clear tonal goal. The
silences that seal off this music also give it a certain remotenessas if it
were, perhaps, a projected future.

50. Daniel Gregory Mason, The Quartets of Beethoven {New York: Oxford UP, 1947),
p. 195.
51. Philip RadclifFe, Beethoven's String Quartets (London: Hutchinson University Library,
1965), p. 118.
52. Jonathan Kramer, "Multiple and Nonlinear Time in Beethoven's Opus 13$," Perspectives of New Music ii (1973), 122-45.

159 J- ^- N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

Table 3 summarizes all these contrasts. This table supports Sullivan's
insights into the radically remote areas of experience in late Beethoven.
The two sections seem more like two independent movements than anything that Beethoven had dared within a single design. In Beethoven's
earlier music, unity of tempo and meter would often rationahze even
Table 3: Summary of Contrasts
mode

Lydian

D major

tempo

Moito adagio

Andante con moto

meter

3
8

rhythm

* and j oniy rhythmic vaiues; no subdivision of beat; no syncopations

great variety of note vaiues and subdivision of beat; many syncopations

phrase rhythm

rigid alternation of two- and four-measure

phrases frustrates any hypermeter: imitative interiudes seem like interpolations
that interrupt the hymn

reguiar four-measure hypermeter; phrase

expansion in mm.47-56 and 57-66;
large-scale periodicities because of varied repetitions

register

restricted registrai space; high point a^;

range of cantus firmus d'-d^; first violin
part c'-a^

greater registral space; high point a^

(registral ceiling); more register transfers
and couplings; greater registral mobiiity;
range of first vioiin g-a^; more varied
spacings, induding wide spacings spanning four and one-half octaves

melody

cantus firmus avoids meiodic paraiielisms; stepwise motion predominates; few

ieaps in cantus

frequent meiodic paralieiisms; many

ieaps. induding leaps larger than an octave

dynamics

sotto voce and p prevalent dynamic

level; one forte

f and p alternation; sf and rf

harmony

avoids IV and V ; only one seventh

chord used (G')

emphasizes IV and V ; more seventh

ctiords, including diminished-seventh
pedai points and inverted pedis

texture

chorale aiternating with imitative interiudes

much greater variety of texture; instrumentai parts have much greater independence; obbligato counterpoints,
sprung basses; trills, scales, short rests,
repeated chords, etc.

voice leading

lacks melodic and harmonic closure; fifth

progression leads directly into Neue
Kraft

relatively self-contained; autonomous,

with compiete melodic and harmonic closure ( = 3 - 2 - 1 over I-V-I); emphasis on
parallei tenths in outer voices uniike anything in Lydian music

foitn

one-pari form (cantus firmus with five

phrases)

three sections

temporality

ambiguous temporal orientation because

of tonal ambiguities

compiete temporai rupture between the

two musics (nonlinear time); Neue Kratt
is future oriented

16o

KEVIN KOfiSYN

severe contrasts in other parameters; if the tempo and meter changed, at

least the tonality would remain constant. Perhaps the closest analogies to
the extreme contrasts ofthe Heiliger Dankgesang are cases where Beethoven
joins one movement to another (as in the connection ofthe slow movement
and finale in the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos, the Sonatas op.57 and
op. 81 a, and so on).
So radical are these contrasts, then, that the Heiliger Dankgesang almost
seems to have two beginnings." A beginning, according to Aristotle, is
"that which docs not necessarily follow on something else."^'' And that is
the case with the Neue Kra; nothing in the previous music seems to
motivate or prepare it; it seems to begin a new chain of causality, which is
how Kant defined freedom.''^ With the freedom of a new beginning,
unmerited, unearned, the D-major music steps forth, and this, I think, is
what Sullivan heard when he described it as "grace from on high."^^' The
53. Another movement forces contrast as much as the Heiliger Dankgesang: the finale of
the Piano Sonata, op. 110. Here the sense of two different beginnings is heightened by the
structure of the Arioso dolente, which is a relatively self-contained unit with complete
melodic and harmonic closure ( 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - over the bass arpeggiation I-V-I). The collision
ofthe Arioso and the fugue is so extreme that one wonders whether the dichotomy can ever
be overcome, whether the piece will remain two separate movements in the manner of a
prelude and fugue, or whether a single design can integrate these contrasts. For a full
analysis of this movement, see my Integration in Beethoven, pp. 73-121; and William Kinderman, "Integration and Narrative Design in Beethoven's Piano Sonata in Al- Major, Opus
n o , " Beethoven Forum r (1992), 111-45.
54. Aristotle, Poetics, p. 50b.
55. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St.
Martin's, 1965), pp.A 554/B 582.
56. Consider how sensitive performers might respond to and heighten these contrasts.
The Guarneri Quartet begins each phrase ofthe cantus firmus completely without vibrato,
gradually adding vibrato throughout the phrase. By contrast, the Neue Kra demands a
richer sound throughout. The Guarneri also recommend that intonation in mm. 1-30
should be "as neutral as possible: with no exaggerated leading tones, and fourths and fifths
that are as pure as can be, allowing the overtones to mingle with the least possible clash"
(The Guarneri Quartet and David Blum, The Art of Quartet Playing Ilthaea, N.Y.: Cornell
UP, 1986], pp.38, 31).
The contrast of tempo between the sections should be extreme; the Andante should not
drag. Perhaps it was a lugubrious performance ofthe Andante that led Maynard Solomon to
characterize this section as "attempting to dance" (Beethoven [New York: Schirmer, 1977],
p.322). The Andante also invites more delicate fluctuations of tempo than does the Adagio.
For example, the phrase expansion in mm.47-56 suggests a slight acceleration to under-

i6i J. W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

structures described here are compatible with the meaning he experienced.
While our analysis has gone beyond Sullivan in detail, it seems, so far at
least, the logical extension of his aesthetic.

VI
Can the piece recover from this collision? Can the Lydian music assimilate
the radical new beginning of the D-major section to achieve Sullivan's
synthesis of opposites? The third part of the movement (mm.84-113)
begins to consider these questions. This section should be heard not only as
part of a symmetrical design (A'-B'-A^-B^-A^) but also as a dynamic
event. It is not merely a variation on the Lydian cantus firmus; it also
responds to the experience of the D-major theme. After the Neue Kra,
with its explosion of energy, the Lydian hymn cannot simply be repeated;
it strives to assimilate the "grace from on high" that Sullivan heard.
The placement of the cantus firmus an octave higher can be felt as part of
this response. The Lydian music gains a new high point, d^; the registral
contrast that had obtained between the two themes is thereby mitigated, if
not yet overcome (ex. 10). Rhythmically, also, the Lydian section takes on

Example 10:
Op.132/111: mm.104-08.

score the tension of the dominant prolongation; a compensating ritardando should follow in
mm. 55-56. The dynamic contrasts hetween the two themes should be more extreme than
they look on paper. I interpret the forte in m. 18, e.g., as merely melodic, while those in the
Neue Kra are what Tovey used to call "percussive" or "orchestral"/orto.

16Z

KEVIN KORSYN

some of the freedom of the D-major material, as a greater variety of note

values appears. Syncopations, previously associated only with the Neue
Kra, soften the rhythmic austerity of the hymn. Similarly, the octave
leaps and greater mobility of the cello part here are elements introduced in
the D-major section.
Nevertheless, these changes still leave much untransformed; one cannot
yet speak of a real synthesis. In particular, the original rigidity of the
phrasing remains, along with the lack of parallelisms in the cantus firmus.
Not only is the cantus repeated intact, but the harmonies of mm. 1-30 are
reproduced almost exactly. Indeed, more than one commentator has noticed the exceptional strictness of this variation. The affirmation of a
Lydian cadence still eludes it, as if the grace, the new beginning, of the
D-major theme has not been assimilated. A way must be found to avoid
another repetitionhowever heightened or intensifiedof the Lydian
music.
The second appearance of the D-major section (mm. 115^) also changes,
responding to the Lydian theme. Some of these changes are local. Registral
disjunctions become even more prominent; the octave leap in the first
violin in m.31 becomes a leap of two octaves in m. 115, and similar registral
alterations occur elsewhere. Delicate variations of rhythmic and melodic
details appear, furthering the sense of new life, including the pizzicati in
mm. 141-44.
More significant than these local changes is our new perception of the
entire section. On first hearing, the Neue Kra is startling, explosive; its
second appearance, however, is expected since we reahze that the Lydian
theme is designed to lead into it. Instead of the temporal rupture felt in
m. 31, the music structures the experience of time in a fresh way; nonhnear
time changes to cyclic time as the two musics alternate in a cyclic recurrence. The first encounter with the two sections, therefore, focuses attention on differences; these differences must be lived through, experienced,
not flattened into uniformity. Later, hearing the Neue Kra again, we
recognize certain motivic similarities between it and the Lydian music.
As noted earlier, the cantus firmus suppresses parallelisms. It does,
however, repeat several figures at the exact pitch level, investing them with
motivic significance; indeed, given the general lack of parallehsms m the
cantus, these repeated figures stand out all the more (see ex. 11).
These repetitions are hardly accidental; they stress two motives that
become pivots in the structure, connecting the Lydian and D-major sec-

[63 J. W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

Example 11 :
Op.132/111: cantus firmus.

J Ij J

^J J u

^
tions at crucial transitions. The notes D-E-F appear in the first and fourth
phrases (see the brackets in ex. 11); this ascending third is the first linking
motive. The fourth phrase contains the other linking motive: D-G-A-D
(also bracketed in ex. 11). Since the fourth and fifth phrases both begin with
the notes C-C-D-G-A, Beethoven emphasizes three notes of this essential motive. (The repetition of C-C-D here creates another motive; although this motive plays a significant role, especially in the bass of the
Lydian theme, I consider it to be subordinate in function to the other two
motives.)
Having heard the D-G-A-D motive in the fourth phrase and the notes
D-G-A in the fifth phrase, the cello picks up the motive (mm.29-30),
joining the Lydian music to the Neue Kra (ex. 12). Since, heard alone, this
pair of fifths sounds like a cadential pattern in D major, it prepares and
foreshadows the key ofthe D-major section.^''

57. Prior to my dissertation, no one seems to have tioticed this essential motive (see
Integration in Beethoven, pp. 155-61). Obviously, the repetition of descending fifths in both
the cantus firmus and the imitative interludes has been noted. Analysts have been unaware,
however, ofthe functions of this pair of fifths, at this pitch level, in preparing the D-major
music and linking the sections ofthe movement. Regarding a similar linking motive in the
slow movement ofthe Ninth Symphony, see my Integration in Beethoven, pp.135-37.

KEVIN KORSYN
Neue Kraft fhlend

(Senhndo iiiiova forza)

Andante

Example 12;
Op.132/111; mm.27-31
(outer voices only).

, . M IJJ J hi J 1^ J IJ J J
V

This linking effect does not, however, exhaust the power of this motive.
As ex. 13 shows, Beethoven also composes it out, using it to span the bass
of the entire Neue Kraft. The hollow bass notes in my sketch represent the
expanded motive. The foreground, meanwhile, reminds us of the first
three pitches of the motive at their original pitch level (ex. 14); this rapport
between structural levels makes the motivic enlargement audible. A descending octave coupling from a to A expands the third note of the motive.
Harald Krebs observed the other motivic link. In mm.81-83 and 16567, D-E-F connects the D-major section back to the Lydian music. The
repetition of the cantus firmus that follows this reminds us of the origin of
this motive. Moreover, this motive is also composed-out, as Krebs recognized:
Beethoven also uses the progression I-VI-I in the slow movement
of the Quartet op. 132; in this movement, Vitt is never connected to V.

Example 13;
Op. 132/111; mm.31-82,

J \

voice leading.

Example 14;
Op.i32/in; mm.50-52,
cello part.

PP

I.S-6)
IV V

165 J- W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

The Vitt triad, prolonged in the episodes, moves smoothly to the
tonic of the Lydian sections through V^,. . . . This V,, triad is not of
sufficient structural weight to be considered as the V of a Vtt-V
progression; it is merely a connective chord between VI and I. Note
that the bass motion F - D - F that underlies the I-VI-I progression is
an expansion of the melodic span on which the first phrase of the
hymn is based. ^^
In terms of Sullivan's hermeneutics, one could say that these motivic
relationships point to the possibility of a reconciliation of opposites. Despite the profound contrasts ofthe Lydian and D-major sections, common
motives connect them; the two experiences, remote as they seem, may
possess some deep underlying affinity. Yet these motivic links, vital as they
are, do not yet provide the synthesis of which Sullivan speaks. While they
indicate a possible resolution of conflict, it is one that must be seized and
acknowledged.

VII
If there is a synthesis in the Heiliger Dankgesang, it occurs in the final Lydian
section (mm. 169-211). In the effective history of this piece, this section has
proved the most difficult to assimilate. It resists comprehension; even
otherwise astute analysts seem unconvincing when they discuss it; among
all the commentaries this section has inspired, no really compelling analysis
exists. Before we look for Sullivan's synthesis, a review ofthe literature
concerning this section will be helpful, not for what it tells us, but for what
it omits. The failures of insight may provide clues to this piece, pointing to
questions that have not been asked, issues that have been evaded.
Analyses of this section offer the most diverse accounts of its form. It has
been called a final variation of the Lydian theme, a chorale fugue, a coda.
Let us consider each of these descriptions in turn. Clearly, this section is
not a strict variation. As Tovey insisted, Beethoven's variations are based
on "the momentum set up by the recurring period of the theme as a
whole."^^ Such momentum demands a measure-to-measure correspon-

58. Harald Krebs, Third-Relation and Dominant in Late 18th- and Early ith-Century Music
(Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1980), p. ioi.
59. Donald Francis Tovey, Beethoven (London: Oxford UP, 1944), p. 125.

166

KEVIN KORSYN

dence between each variation and the theme since Classical variations are
essentially embellished repetitions. Shght exceptions to this principle, such
as adding or subtracting a measure or two, will not frustrate this momentum. The final Lydian section, however, clearly exceeds this freedom since
it is fourteen measures longer than the cantus firmus. As Kerman points
out, Beethoven uses only the first phrase of the cantus here.''" In the absence
of the complete cantus, no other structural basis from the theme survives
that might form the basis of a strict variation; Beethoven retains neither the
bass of mm. 1-30, nor the phrase rhythm, nor the harmonies. There is no
possibility, then, of hearing the final section as a strict variation of thirty
measures followed by a fourteen-measure coda. Nor can it be considered a
systematic expansion of the original theme; it is clearly not analogous to
cases where composers have reproduced the events of a complete theme
while altering its proportions through the use of phrase expansions or
contractions.
Warren Kirkendale and Ludwig Misch have called this section a chorale
fugue.'^' Brandenburg, however, considers this description inadequate,
noting that this section "falls only incompletely into the category of a
chorale fugue. . . . That term can be applied only to the first section." He
further observes:
The term "chorale fugue" is a general description for fugues of various types, none of them characterized at all exactly. The sole criterion
is the use of thematic material from the chorale melody. So there is
httle point in measuring the chorale fugue in the coda of the "Dankgesang" against one of the examples given by the theoretical writers,
in order to establish departures from a norm of some sort. Even
Albrechtsberger's definition is by no means as strict as Kirkendale
declares.**^
Moreover, to cite Tovey again, fugue is a texture or process rather than a
form. To describe this section as having fugal aspects, while correct, still
60. Kerman, Quartets, p.258.
61. Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato in Rococco and Classical Chamber Music, trans. Margaret
Bent and Kirkendale (Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 1979), p.254; Ludwig Misch, "Fuge und
Fugato in Beethovens Variationsform," in Neue Beethoven-Studien und andere Themen (Bonn:
Beethovenhaus, 1967), p.72.
62. Brandenburg, "The Historical Background to the 'Heiliger Dankgesang'," pp.191,
190.

107 _/. W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

tells us nothing about formal shape, proportions, phrase rhythm, voice
leading, rhetoric, and so on. To Brandenburg, Radcliffe, and others, the
final section is a coda.*^^ Again, this term is neither completely inaccurate
nor wholly satisfactory. While this section certainly shares some of the
features encountered in Beethoven's codas, it clearly has other functions as
well. Brandenburg also compares this section to the organist's chorale
postlude, but admits that this comparison "does not lead to any especially
illuminating conclusions."'''*
The inadequacy of these descriptions, of course, testifies to Beethoven's
fusion of various categories, a fusion that resists our conventional terminology. Beyond this, however, the complacency of these analyses is disturbing. These terms are offered as a solution when they really leave the
critical questions unasked and unanswered. Such a failure of interpretation
is a clue to the difficulty of this music; it is an index of Beethoven's radical
originality, an originality that w^e still seem unable to assimilate. We still do
not know how to hear this music.

Our inability to articulate our hearing of this music stems from our
failure to grasp how Beethoven organizes the music after m.169, in the
absence of the complete cantus firmus. What motivates the events, the
phrase rhythm, voice leading, registral treatment, rhetoric, mood, and so
on? Sullivan's synthesis of opposites provides one answer. The Lydian
material is reshaped, revised, in light of its experience of the D-major
sections; the restrictions of the cantus firmus, with its confming phrasing,
its registral flatness, its rigidity, are finally overthrown. In their place, the
phrasing, registral freedom, and dynamics of the D-major theme take
over, creating Sullivan's synthesis of contraries. The Lydian music finally
responds fully to the grace, the new beginning of the D-major section. All
the contrasting elements now work to reconcile opposites; sources of
tension are converted into means of reconciliation, to signify that once
remote areas of experience are now harmonized.
Register, for example, had worked to set the D-major music apart; in
particular, a^, the registral ceiling of the movement, sounded repeatedly in
the D-major sections, exploiting a brilliant register unavailable to the
Lydian theme. Now the Lydian music finally assimilates this registral
ceiling as the first violin, playing the first phrase of the cantus in the octave
63. Ibid., p. 190; RadcIifFe, Beethoven's String Quartets, p. 116.
64. Brandenburg, "The Historical Background 10 the 'Heiliger Dankgesang'," p. 191.

l68

KEVIN KORSYN

Example 15:
Op.132/111: mm.189-93,
first vioHn part.

off, reaches a^ in m. 192 (ex.15). At the very end of the movement, a^ again
appears within the Lydian material. Notice how the registral ceiling now
helps organize the whole piece: a^ is heard repeatedly in various contexts,
shining forth as a point of reference, giving diverse sections a common
apex. If this registral connection has remained unobserved until now, it is
perhaps because musical analysis too often ignores the function of register.
With this conquest of the highest register, the Lydian music can now
embrace the broad spacings of the D-major sections, spacings that had
spanned four and a half octaves. More register transfers and couplings also
characterize this final section, as the voice-leading sketch in ex.16 confirms. This greater registral mobility is another aspect of the D-major
theme that the Lydian music now^ assimilates. Compare, for example, the
range ofthe first violin parts in the two D-major sections with that in the
final Lydian section. In both cases, the violin explores the same range, from
g to a^^; the registral boldness and freedom of the Neue Kra now appear
within the Lydian material. The individual voices now acquire some ofthe
registral mobility ofthe D-major music, using larger leaps than they had
dared in mm. 1-30. The viola, for instance, plays an eleventh in m.185, a
thirteenth in m.187, and jumps two octaves in mm. 195-96.
Parallelisms, as we have seen, were a crucial source of contrast since the
cantus firmus had so conspicuously avoided them. When the complete
cantus firmus is abandoned in favor of a sustained meditation on its first
phrase, parallelisms begin to saturate the Lydian music. Moreover, without the cantus firmus to shape the phrase structure ofthe music, the rigid
phrasing of mm. 1-30 is finally overcome. Instead ofthe halting, constantly interrupted motion of the cantus, one begins to feel a greater
rhythmic flow, as the subject-answer pairs of mm. 171-78 establish a regular hypermeter. A durational reduction (ex. 17) clarifies this situation. Since
such metric patterns, once established, can persist without constant reinforcement, I suggest that this hypermeter continues until m. 184. Thus the
phrasing of this section approaches that of the Neue Kra, which had
featured a regular four-measure hypermeter.
Beginning in m.185, the phrasing grows more complex. Up to this

109 j . W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

(S prop.)
) A

--

Example i6;
Op.132/111; mm.192-211,

voice leading.

8 7^- 8
56 5
34 i

IV

.1

(g)
(C.I.i

10

Lydjan:

10

6
4

5
3

(V!) V

point, Beethoven had used only the first five notes of the Lydian hymn,
resulting in a series of two-measure phrases, each with an upbeat. Beginning in the second half of m. 184, however, the cello plays the entire first
phrase of the cantus, creating a four-measure unit. Before the cello can
finish, the violin repeats this phrase four octaves higher, causing a phrase
overlap in m.i88. (Example 17 shows these mounting rhythmic intensities.) Since the cello plays the phrase again, the conflicting rhythmic accents of the outer voices continue, considerably enhancing the powerful
climax in mm. 192-93. What the listener feels in this complex phrasing is
primarily a sense of rhythmic release and power, and the agency of this energythe only precedent for it in the movementis the D-major section.
Instead of the rigid alteration of two- and four-measure phrases that had
characterized mm. 1-30, Beethoven moves from short to longer phrases,
with a sense of increasing urgency.

170

KEVIN KORSYN

Example 17:

^6

Op.i32/[n: mm.i8-2ii,

durational reduction.

i
r r r

las

Silence also plays a role in this fusion of opposites. Silence had marked
the boundary between the two themes; rests in mm. 82-84 ^nd 165-67 had
isolated the D-major theme from the Lydian, as if to create a barrier
between them. Now silence appears within the Lydian music, as if to
suggest that those barriers have been dissolved (m.182). Because ofthe
extremely slow tempo, this silence, although only of an eighth note in
duration, is not at all insignificant in time value. This silence follows a

J- W. N. SuUivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

cadence on D minor (with empty fifth), which some have heard as an

allusion to the Neue Kra.
Previously, closure had been associated only with the D-major theme.
Finally, however, closure of the fundamental line appears within the Lydian
music (ex. i6). One can hear this as something wrested from the D-major
sections, as if the healing power of the cadence can now be appropriated for
the Lydian mode, as if the Lydian material could cadence only when the
opposition between it and the D-major theme has been overcome.
Kerman has remarked on the power the Lydian music now achieves:
"Beside this strength the Neue Kraft pales."'''' But this is only because the
strength of the D-major section has been assimilated, mastered, as the two
musics interpenetrate each other. In Sullivan's terms, one could say that
this synthesis reveals that the two ideas had somehow always belonged
together. Initially presented as opposites, the two remote areas of experience are confronted until they coalesce, as if their mutual interdependence
were finally acknowledged. The suffering of the quartet indeed becomes an
illuminating power, as the two experiences come together. The "celestial
joy" of the Neue Kra and the "spiritual weariness" of the beginning of the
movement are no longer conflicting; each is seen as a necessary condition of
the other. Ricoeur, in his discussion of "the path of non-narcissistic reconciliation," expressed the attitude toward life that Sullivan, at least, heard in
this music: "I give up my point of view, I love the whole."^ Having
surrendered a partial, limited perspective to embrace the whole, one's own
suffering no longer seems opposed to celestial joy.
Intuition and ratiocination have so far been partners; Sullivan's vision of
Beethoven's fmal reconciliation of opposites guided our search for a corresponding structural synthesis; analysis, in turn, supported his quest for
meaning.
VIII
Unlike Sullivan, however, I cannot end with this reconciliation of opposites. While certain aspects of the piece reinforce his organic reading,
others resist it and call it into question. This resistance must be confronted
and explored. Although Sullivan's persuasiveness lies in his appropriation
65. Kerman, Quartets, p.2o.
66. Rieoeur, Freud and Philosophy, p. 549.

172

KEVIN KORSYN

of literary models to explain musical meaning, those models are vulnerable

to deconstruction. De Man, for example, has shown how texts often
subvert any convergence of opposites of the sort celebrated by Sullivan.
Heidegger's exegeses of Hlderlin provide a good target for such criticism. According to Heidegger, Hlderlin's poetry reconciles opposites,
bridging the ontological gap between language and Being by stating the
absolute presence of Being. De Man, however, suggests another possibility: Hlderlin does not synthesize opposites; rather than healing the
division, his poetry merely names it; it can only state the conflict, not
resolve it:
As soon as the word is uttered, it destroys the immediate and discovers that instead of stating Being, it can only state mediation. For
man the presence of Being is always becoming, and Being necessarily
appears under a non-simple form. In its moment of highest achievement, language manages to mediate between the two dimensions we
distinguish in Being. It does this by attempting to grasp and to
arbitrate their difference and their opposition. But it cannot reunite
them. Their unity is ineffable and cannot be said, because it is language itself that introduces the distinction. . . . The poet may have
varied in his way of naming the two dimensions of Being, which he
has designed by several pairs of terms: nature and art; chaotic and
organic; divine and human; heaven and earth; but at no point has he
wavered with respect to its necessarily antithetical structure. ^^
It is logical to ask whether Sullivan's interpretation of late Beethoven can
withstand a similar critique. In the case of the Heiliger Dankgesang, does the
assimilation of aspects of the Neue Kra bring these contraries together, or
does the attempt to do so make us more aware of their incompatibility?
Does Beethoven fuse opposites or simply narrate the impossibihty of their
convergence?
More analysis will not answer these questions; answers depend, rather,
on how we choose to interpret our analytical observations. Consider, for
example, the integrative power that we ascribed to the registral ceiling.
When a^ appears in the final Lydian section, w^e can choose to hear this as a
result of the use of this register in the Neue Kra, or not. The decision to
67. De Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism {2nd edn.
Minneapolis: u of Minnesota p, 1983), pp.259-61.

173 J- ^- N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang

hear one event as the consequence of another, to hear cause and effect in
music, cannot be coerced.^'^ Like David Hume, we can be skeptics about
causality. As Hume would insist, there is no necessary connection between
the two events; we can observe sequence, but not consequence. The organic view is only one way of inflecting structure, one path to meaning.
Such skepticism could corrode our whole analysis. We could counter
our first reading with a second, demystifying reading (taking this term
from de Man) that calls the synthesis into question. Instead of a coalescence, we could have a mere coexistence of opposites. This dmystification
does not retract SulHvan's vision; instead, it depends on his interpretation;
we could not question the synthesis unless we had first posited it. Nor are
these two readings simple alternatives because there may be no criteria for
deciding between them.
Here I find de Man's discussion of Rilke's Duino Elegies quite suggestive.
De Man shows that the traditional understanding ofthe Elegies as messianic
poems is vulnerable to deconstruction. He insists, however, that a demystifying approach does not negate the messianic one: "The messianic
reading of Rilke is an integral part of a w^ork that could not exist without it.
The full complexity of this poetry can only appear in the juxtaposition of
two readings in which the first forgets and the second acknowledges the
linguistic structure that makes it come into being."^'^ In the same way,
Sullivan's messianic interpretation of late Beethoven is no aberration; he is
indeed responding to something in the music. Ifthe music, however, both
invites and resists such responses, if the music refuses to choose between
synthesis and its opposite, if, in short, the meaning ofthe music is indeterminate, then SulHvan's vision is only one moment in a larger dialectic.
Indeterminacy is not the same as meaninglessness; it is more adequately
described by Harold Bloom as "an achieved dearth of meaning." Embracing indeterminacy, therefore, would not return us to a sterile formalism.. It
would, however, frustrate Sullivan's attempt to arrest the movement of

68. My argument here is deliberately phrased to recall Schenker's early arguments

against musical causality. See my "Schenker and Kantian Epistemology," Theoria 3 (1988),
1-58.
69. De Man, Allegories of Reading: Figurai Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and
Proust {New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1979), p.Si.
70. Harold Bloom, "The Breaking of Form," in Deconstruction and Criticism {New York:
Continuum, 1979), p. 12.

174

KEVIN KORSYN

meaning in Beethoven. The indeterminacy of musical meaning was already recognized in late eighteenth-century writing about instrumentai
music, as Kevin Barry recently demonstrated.''^ But while Sullivan admits
that words fail to capture musical meaning, he cannot accommodate the
possibility that meaning itself might be unstable. Like Richards, he has "a
substantialist notion of meaning."'^
Perhaps this is why Huxley reacted negatively to Sullivan's book. Writing to Paul Valry in 1930, he expressed his reservations:
The Mass in D, the Quartet in A minor, the Sonata Opus i i i , are
profound philosophic works, subtle and by all the evidence true. But
in what does the truth consist? One does not know how to put it. It is
in trying to define it verbally that "musicologists"and I am thinking especially of our friend Sullivan, who has written a book on
Beethoven that is very intelligent but in the last analysis not very
satisfactoryare led astray. ^^
Huxley's remarks should serve as a warning. Like SuUivan, many musicians today hunger for meaning. Literary criticism has become a path in
this quest for meaning, as we, like Sullivan, seek models that approximate
our musical experience. An irony confronts us here: turning to literary
criticism for inspiration, we find that, for critics like dc Man, literary
meaning has become more elusive, more unstable, more indeterminate,
moremusical. If we are to avoid an unconscious repetition of Sullivan's
limitations, we must confront these new complexities.^''

71. Kevin Barry, Language, Music, and the Sign: A Study in Aesthetics, Poetics and Poetic
Practice from Collins to Coleridge (Cambridge; Cambridge UP, 1987).
72. McCallum, Literature and Method, p.63.
73. Huxley, Letters, p.323n.
74. For a study that confronts these new complexities, see my "Towards a New Poetics
of Musical Influence," Music Analysis 10 (1991), 3-72.

Copyright of Beethoven Forum (University of Nebraska Press) is the property of University

of Nebraska Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a
listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for individual use.