Quality Assurance

Author(s): William Drabkin

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 136, No. 1830 (Aug., 1995), pp. 427-429
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
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 QUALITY ASSURANCE
William Drabkin assesses some recent writings on Beethoven
To begin with,
Education FundingICouncil
wishfor England
to express
for time offmy
to gratitude to the Higher
write this review. Having spent most of 1994-95 preparing for a
university teaching quality assessment, I find myself with just
enough time to read and comment on three recent quality contri-
butions to Beethoven scholarshipl before my department prepares
itself for the forthcoming Research Assessment Exercise.
Events like the RAE prompt one to reflect on what motivates
scholars to write yet more books on as well-worn a subject as
Beethoven. Is it that they, like the composer whose music they so
admire, feel compelled from within to put pen to paper in their
areas of specialisation? Or are they also perhaps driven by exter-
nal pressures? Two of my authors freely admit that their books
are extensions or revisions of earlier projects, a Beethoven hand-
book, and a doctoral thesis: could it be that one or the other was
whipped into shape with RAE Year 1996 in mind? The third vol-
ume, the one with which I shall begin my review, belongs to that
currently fashionable genre called the 'edited book'; in this
theme-park of scholarship, the person who gets most of the credit
is more an entrepreneur than an editor, commissioning others to
write most of the text themselves and justifying the result in a
smartly worded preface. (Contributors to such publications might
consider putting themselves down as 'co-authors of books' when
filing future RAE returns.)
From its title, and that of the series to which it belongs, one
could reasonably expect that Performing Beethoven offered a cer-
tain amount of guidance on how to play Beethoven's music. In
fact most of this book is taken up by textual and historical matters.
Of the ten essays gathered here, one surveys the history of rescor-
ing Beethoven's symphonies, another the early traditions of
Beethoven interpretation on record. A pair of essays are devoted
largely to the question 'What notes should the pianist play in the
concertos?': one provides transcription and commentary on a set
of autograph variants to the solo part of the Fourth Concerto, the
other addresses the evidence regarding figured bass notations.
The two longest essays are concerned with editions of violin
music: an appreciation of the violinist Ferdinand David's
Beethoven editions, and a survey of editions of the Violin
Concerto. Both offer fascinating glimpses into the relationship of
19th-century violin technique (especially bowing and fingering) to
the interpretation of the classical repertory.
August 1995 The
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This leaves four of the shorter pieces that are actually con-
cerned with matters of interpretation, understood in the narrower
sense of how Beethoven's music was played in his own time and
how we might play it today. David Rowland's study of pedalling
technique and Martin Hughes' essay on general problems of
piano interpretation underscore the importance of looking at
Beethoven's piano music alongside that of lesser contemporaries
like Clementi and Dussek, rather than comparing it to his worthi-
er predecessors Mozart and Haydn. David Watkin has prepared a
thoughtful study of Beethoven's cello music viewed from the per-
spective of contemporary cello pedagogy, with an emphasis on
the op.5 sonatas and Jean-Louis Duport's Essai sur le doigtd du
violoncelle of c. 1806; Watkin thus amplifies Lewis Lockwood's
earlier study of the same repertory against the same background,
though, surprisingly, he doesn't cite it.2 In the single essay on
wind instruments (the voice does not figure in this volume), Colin
Lawson aptly reminds us how much we can learn about playing
techniques by looking at the actual wind parts in his orchestral
and ensemble music; he stresses that, however difficult
Beethoven's wind writing may have seemed to his contempo-
raries, it did not actually transcend the boundaries of what was
thought possible at the time. Lawson spends more time on the
clarinet than on any other instrument: this may be justified in
view of its ascendancy in 19th-century orchestral and chamber
music generally, a trend to which Beethoven himself made an
important contribution.
It is hard to judge where Performing Beethoven is aimed. It is
so heavily weighted towards the preservation of the relics of
Romantic Beethovenism that the reader who expects the question
'But how should I play the music?' to be addressed comprehen-
sively may well feel disappointed. On the other hand, the notion
of 'authenticity' has been radically rethought by scholars in
recent years; and a growing awareness that performance tradi-
tions of works belong to their 'reception' history will make it
more difficult to ignore the question 'How was this music played
by our teachers, by our teachers' teachers?' when we reassess our
priorities as modem-day executants.
The book is attractively printed and generously provided with
music examples; a few facsimile pages of representative manu-
scripts would have enhanced the commentary, e.g. on Barry
Cooper"s alternative readings in the Fourth Concerto (since so
Musical Times 427
many have to be partly reconstructed, can Beethoven really have 3 3 3 5 4 3
intended them as equally viable?). The text of all the essays is
lucid, but the index gave me difficulty when I looked (in vain) for
commentary on my favourite performance indication, nach und
Cf. Ex. 3. 26 Cf. Ex. 6. 21 Cf. Ex. 8. 14
nach mehrere Saiten ('gradually increase the number of strings')
at the end of the una corda slow movement of op.101: of four
page references to op. 101 in the index, only two are actually con-
cerned with this sonata.
I V I

Nicholas Marston's monograph on the late E major sonata

First Second Third
belongs to a venerable tradition of English-language dissertations movement movement movement

on sketch interpretation dating from the 1960s, of which three Ex.2

have now appeared in Oxford's 'Studies in Musical Genesis and

Structure'. Marston's is the first in the series to use Schenkerian the sketches, it is also essential to analyse them as pieces in their
own right, pieces that did not survive the selection process how-
methodology and will make for interesting comparison with the
'Appassionata' Sonata and the Diabelli variations. Schenker's ever much they may have contributed to it. As someone with
own study of sketches supported his theories about considerable sympathy for both Schenkerian analysis and sketch
Auskomponierung, the continuous derivation of complex musicalstudy, I am uneasy about Marston's position which accepts the
phenomena from conceptually prior, simpler constructions: principles of the analytical method while repudiating their ulti-
mate source, namely the compositional process itself.
Anyone who has seen sketches of the great masters must have encoun- In one other respect this study exceeds the limits of a
tered voice-leading progressions that... present goals and paths towards Schenkerian brief, namely in its approach to a cyclical work as a
them in a manner accorded only to the far-flung inspiration of a genius. cycle. By way of summarising the structure of the piece,
Such a vision... can create a purely musical coherence even in flight.3 Marston offers the following analytical reduction (ex.2):
Though Schenker's analyses allude to the open-endedness of
In other words, the sketches show us a composer's 'work insome works, he never went so far as to suggest that a voice-
progress' in the literal sense of aiming towards the perfection of theleading graph with a single fundamental structure (Ursatz),
final version, rather than trying out a number of alternatives in thehowever unconventional in design, might embrace a multi-
hope of coming to a clear decision as to which of these is the best. movement work. Even in extended analyses of classical varia-
In so far as he condemns the traditional view that sketches be tion sets his graphs never embrace more than one variation at a
read as 'failed attempts to write down the "correct answer" time ', (or the theme). And if a sonata movement were to be
Marston is true to Schenker's line; but by viewing them asdeemed incomplete, he would have shown this as open-ended
'potential compositions among which composer must ultimatelyforeground graph controlled from above by a fully formed,
choose' he appears to reject that quintessentially Schenkerianclosed-up background.
view of sketches as representing the paths to the goal, more ser- What I admire about Marston's study is his insistence that
vants of than alternatives to the final version, hence genetically
Beethoven's sketches had a specific meaning for the composer,
analogous to the structural levels arrived at by the analytical and that this meaning can be revealed to us only by making
process. Thus for Marston it is not only important to transcribe absolute musical sense of the sketch transcriptions; his tran-
scriptions are informed by a thorough understanding of
Beethoven's style and the genius that shines through the
sketches themselves. Moreover, the cardinal qualities of a
musicologist which Schenker himself lacked - good eyesight,
and the patience to place the manuscript sources of a composi-
tion into proper context - are more than made up for here: in
I_ the chapter on the history of op.109 and the chronology of its
sources, Marston proves himself a musicologist erster
, I
rt
'- Ordnung. With unfailing analytical vision, he has produced a
superb collection of sketch interpretations; they will stimulate
us to think afresh about a work whose genesis will undoubtedly
1.21
fascinate us for a long time to come.
If sketches are seen as private documents, brought to light by
curious (or nosey) scholars, then Cooper's book seems all the
more extraordinary for bringing to light - or, rather, into the
limelight - nearly two hundred neglected works of Beethoven's
Pi?
authorship: the arrangements of folk tunes and patriotic songs
from the British Isles and from other nations, written mainly for
Ex. 1: DESK the Edinburgh
SKETCHES publisher George
FOR OP. Thomson and commonly
109, known
THIR
(FROM as his 'folksong
MARSTON: settings'.
BEETHOVEN'S PiANo

428 The Musical Times August 1995

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 Cooper has examined the manuscript and Maestoso con molto spirito.

printed sources against the background of Vioulio.

Beethoven's voluminous correspondence with

Violoncello.
Thomson, and then related his findings to
Beethoven's other compositional activities.
The results of his research, which are present- Ilianoforte.

ed in a number of tables and summarised in a

'Chronological overview', throws an entirely

new light on the genesis of the songs. Cooper
has been able to determine, usually to within a
few weeks, just when Beethoven wrote each
of the songs, and also how he intended to
group them.
In these days of quality assurance in teaching
and research, we are constantly reminded of the
need to establish objective criteria for assessing
excellence (indeed, one of the subheadings in
Cooper's final chapter, 'Beethoven's aims and
achievement', might easily have come from a
HEFCE Quality Assessment paper). The princi-
pal objective of this book is to establish the facts fmod veour
G.ildave our Lord
Lord theiip Lon Long
theKingI! li4- our1
live our gi'a - _o nKiniu.gK!
concerning the composition and publication his-
tory of the folksong settings, but a secondary
purpose lies quite close to the surface at all
times: to urge the reader to have faith in
Thomson's judgement of Beethoven's settings
and to appreciate their - well, quality. Though
about half the book is devoted to their musical

characteristics, only one song, 'O sanctissima' (1817), is subject-whom I have known... and [who] have shown far greater musical
ed to anything like a harmonic and motivic analysis. It is a goodskill than their nineteenth-century predecessors'. Aberdeen,
choice, but two quotations from 'Oh was not I' (1817) would sug-along with several other British music departments, was closed
gest that there is a good deal more to investigate there, anddown some years ago by the same people who are now wringing
Beethoven's professed fondness for the tune 'God save the King'Quality Assurance out of those that remain. This act of impover-
- mentioned in a diary entry that Cooper, curiously, does not cite4ishing academic and cultural life at the geographical fringes of
- would have made this setting an appropriate choice for extend-Britain may one day be seen as comparable to the folly of the
ed study (ex.3). Cooper stops just short of a full critical evalua-amateur pianists of 19th-century Scotland who voted with their
tion of these songs, and the only connections he draws betweenfingers, instead of their heads, when they rejected these state-of-
them and other works of the late period are a handful of melodic the-art miniatures from Europe's greatest symphonist.
coincidences.

We have lived with a musical 'canon' for some time, and toNotes
1. Robin Stowell, ed.: Performing Beethoven (Cambridge Studies in
change its make-up or undermine it altogether is a difficult task.
Beethoven's songs have never figured prominently in it, despite Performance Practice 4). Cambridge UP (Cambridge, 1994); xiv, 246pp;
periodic attempts to elevate An die ferne Geliebte to the status ?37.50.
of ISBN 0 521 41644 2. Nicholas Marston: Beethoven's Piano Sonata

a masterpiece. The folksong settings have played no role what-

in E, op. 109 (Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure). Clarendon Press
(Oxford, 1995), xix, 267pp; ?35. ISBN 0 19 31533 7. Barry Cooper:
ever in Beethoven criticism, indeed their very existence is usual-
ly attributed to the composer's inability to grapple effectively
Beethoven's folksong settings: chronology, sources, style. Clarendon Press
with larger, more serious musical issues between about 1813 (Oxford,
and 1994) xi, 270 pp; ?30. ISBN 0 19 816283 9. 2. Lewis Lockwood:
1818. (It is little appreciated, for instance, that Thomson and
'Beethoven's early works for violoncello and contemporary violoncello
Beethoven were in touch as early as 1803, and that Beethoven technique', in Rudolf Klein, ed.: Beethoven Kolloquium 1977:
agreed in principle to set folksong melodies in 1806, the annus
Dokumentation und Auffiihrungspraxis (Kassel, 1978), pp.174-82. 3.
mirabilis that produced the 'Razumovsky' Quartets, the FourthHeinrich Schenker: Der freie Satz, revised 2nd edition ed. Oswald Jonas
Symphony and two great concertos.) (Vienna, 1956), p.32; English translation as Free composition, ed. and
trans. Ernst Oster (New York, 1979), p.7 (translation modified). 4.
If Cooper seems in this work to be plus &cossais que, in cham-
pioning the work Beethoven produced for Thomson, it may well
Tagebuch, entry no.16: 'I have to show the English a little of what a bless-
ing "God save the King" is'. See Maynard Solomon: 'Beethoven's
be because he spent many happy and profitable years as a lectur-
Tagebuch of 1812-1818, in Beethoven studies 3, ed. Alan Tyson
e.r at the University of Aberdeen; so much is hinted at by the
dedication of the book 'to all those young Scottish musicians
(Cambridge, 1982), p.221.

August 1995 The Musical Times 429

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