Ornament and Structure in Beethoven

Author(s): Charles Rosen

Source: The Musical Times , Dec., 1970, Vol. 111, No. 1534, Beethoven Bicentenary Issue
(Dec., 1970), pp. 1198-1199+1201
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/955820

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Ah, vous dirai-je, maman (a theme on which Tomagek Although in both cases these might be presumed to
heard Beethoven improvise in 1798). Here the be drafts with an intended destination, they never
element of conjecture is considerable, for the most seem to have reached it, and the suspicion grows
we really know is that these are sketches for move- that they served another function: that they were
ments apparently involving piano, bassoon and 'improvisations on paper', used by Beethoven to
'ho I.' (hohe Instrumente, or, as I read it, 'B. I.', keep his hand in even if he had nothing definite in
Blasende Instrumente). mind. The accurate transcription of such doodles
can scarcely be done by anyone who is less than
I have left myself little space to discuss other dedicated. I might add: less than courageous, for
sketches. But two particular types, singled out by Kerman must have required a good measure of
Kerman, call for comment. 'Kafka' contains a courage in order to press on with this great enterprise
profusion of short fragments consisting of no more when so often faced not only with the indecipherable
than a few bars of music in piano score, as well asbut a with the unintelligible, the inconsequential and
the trivial.
very large number of briefly notated dance melodies.

Ornament and Structure in Beethoven

Charles Rosen

identical. The basic ornament, from the 17th

In all the arts, the taste for ornamentation changed
century to our day, is the appoggiatura; to this may
radically during the last half of the 18th century.
The solid body of aesthetic doctrine which con- be added the trill, which was originally an extended
demned ornament as immoral dominated the appoggiatura. Yet the appoggiatura is perhaps the
period, and there were few pockets of resistance. fundamental expressive device for a good part of
To equate the practice of Mozart and Haydn the three
aftercenturies of music from 1600 to 1900. It
1780 with that of Bach, or even C.P.E. Bach, is even the traditional way of indicating sobs in
is to
ignore one of history's most sweeping revolutions opera. Ifin decoration is therefore both necessary,
taste. The musical ornamentation of the first half and even somehow central, to the musical composi-
of the 18th century is an essential element in the tion, how is one to distinguish it from structure?
achievement of continuity. Decoration not only Indeed, why bother? With a work like the slow
covers the underlying musical structure but keeps movement it of the Italian Concerto, would it not be
always flowing. The High Baroque in music hassimpler a to abandon the distinction and to declare
horror of the void, and the agrements fill what empty the decorative arabesque to be structure rather than
space has been left. In the opening bars of the ornament ?
Goldberg Variations, for example, the ornaments The opposition of structure and ornament, it
completely disguise the structure. The first two bars seems to me, must be maintained, but not if the
are melodically almost identical with the third and idea of ornament is considered either inessential or
fourth; with the ornamentation added, it is almost inexpressive. In music, the idea of structure and
impossible to realize this. The decoration of the ornament is a metaphor derived from architecture.
classical style, on the other hand, articulates struc- There, the distinction presents no problem: the
ture. The chief ornament retained from the baroque structural elements of the building are those which
is significantly the final cadential trill. Other make it stand up, that attack the force of gravity;
ornaments are used more rarely, and are almost the decorative elements are all the rest, and they are
always fully written out-necessarily so, as they as essential as the structural elements when the
have become thematic. This development in orna- purpose of the building is symbolic or expressive, as
mentation was carried by Beethoven as far as it it so often is. It is also clear that the structural
could go. In his later music, the trill has entirely lost elements can at times be themselves expressive or
its decorative status; it is no longer an ornament, symbolic. The force in music analogous to the
but either an essential motive, as in the Archduke force of gravity in architecture is the irreversible
Trio, or a suspension of rhythm, a way of turning a direction of time. The structural elements of music
long sustained note into an indistinct vibration are those which regulate the movement of a work in
which creates an intense and inward stillness. time and which make it coherent. In spite of the
It is often assumed that the decorative and the fact that no part of a work can take place in per-
expressive elements of a work are separable. This formance at the same time as another, that which
view is an inheritance from the neo-classical feeling gives the work an ideal existence as a simultaneous
that decoration is immoral, a view that has never whole may be called its structure. The rest is
died out and which we can still see today in decoration.
some architecture and in minimal art. The logic goes But if we must abandon the pejorative implica-
like this: art is essentially expressive; decoration istions of decoration, we ought not to forget that these
by definition that which is inessential; therefore theimplications held sway in the latter part of the 18th
expression and the decoration cannot be the same. century and that they are still valid for Beethoven.
In reality, the decorative and the expressive are oftenThere are, for example, arguments raging about
1198

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whether or not we should add ornaments to Mozart to the principles which Haydn and Mozart had
and, if so, where and how much; about Beethoven, worked with, developing and expanding them
there is no question that he wanted nothing addedbeyond anything that could have been predicted.
and made violent scenes when someone attemptedWhether
it. this withdrawal had anything to do with
We know what he thought of performers who added his increased suffering from his growing deafness can
anything to his music from his explosion when only be surmised. In any case, the removal of the
decorative Andante Favori from the Waldstein and
Czerny did so, and his subsequent letter of apology:
'you must pardon a composer who would have the substitution of the much more severe slow
preferred to hear his work exactly as he wrote it, no introduction to the finale that we now find there is
matter how beautifully you played in general'. an important step that marks the change in attitude.
Czerny had only done what we are told every The movement of a baroque piece is regulated by
pianist of the time did, added a few trills and used a harmonic sequence, and while the sequence re-
few octave doublings. mained indispensable later, it lost its central place in
What happened in the last quarter of the 18th the music of the later 18th century, to regain it only
century is that composers began to make structure with Schumann and Chopin. What replaced it were
take over the expressive function of ornament. The two musical devices-thematic development (or
tension of a work, its dramatic interest, came less diminution technique) and modulation. Both had
and less from its decorative element and more from existed before, but neither had been so used to
its shape and from its proportions and their weight. regulate the proportions as well as the flow of a
This is the reason for the down-grading of decora- work of music. The movement on a small scale was
tion, even when it retains part of its expressivedetermined in Haydn and Mozart by thematic
importance. In this tradition, Beethoven stands development and to a lesser extent by thematic
ambiguously at first, and with good reason. Around contrast. On the large scale, the sense of time and
1800, there was a fashionable revival of decoration the significant tempo, weight and mass of a work
inspired by Italian opera-it is clear in the works was of directed by modulation, no longer a gradual
Hummel, and it was eventually to lead to Chopin, drift in or a chromatic colouring as it has been earlier
whose music the expression is once again carriedin the century, but an articulated and dramatic
chiefly by the ornamental detail as it was in so much series of actions. Haydn and Mozart had used
of Bach, whom Chopin idolized. ornaments to emphasize this change in procedure-
Beethoven, as we are acutely aware this year, was to outline it and set it in relief. But Beethoven's use
born in 1770 in a town somewhat outside the main- was even more radical. As in Haydn and Mozart,
stream of musical development. We are accustomed his ornaments became thematic. The turn in the
to think of him as part of the generation that minuet of the E flat Sonata op 31 no 3 (ex 1) is still
followed Mozart, but we forget the geographical Ex 1

displacement which closes part of the gap. He was,

it is true, almost a generation younger than Mozart,
but the small musical world of Bonn was not as
quickly aware of international changes in style as
an expressive decoration, but the same turn in the
main theme of the Emperor Concerto (ex 2) has
was Mozart, who had been a traveller to the principal
musical centres from a very early age. At least
Bonn did not react as fast as Vienna did. The Ex 2

sonatas that Beethoven wrote when he was 13 in

1783 are very like the works that Haydn had com-
posed 10 to 15 years before, and they show no now become purely thematic and non-decorative.
knowledge of more recent developments-while One may even say that it has lost its expressive
Mozart in 1773 was already imitating Haydn's quality to become more neutral. Above all, the
op 20 quartets which had appeared only one year turn is a source of motion, charged with energy as
before. In other words, when we think in terms of at the opening of the cadenza that Beethoven wrote
stylistic development, we must close the gap between as an integral part of the first movement.
Beethoven and Mozart by ten years. Beethoven was Beethoven's trills are as thematic as his turns.
in fact closer to Mozart than Mozart was to Haydn. The opening of the Violin Sonata in G, op 96 (ex 3)
Nevertheless, as a young man of 21 arriving in Ex 3
Vienna (after one short previous visit when he had
been 16), he was at first swept off his feet by some of
the new modes of musical thought. There are
experiments in lavish operatic ornamentation that treats the trill as neither ornamental nor particularly
far exceed anything that Mozart had ever attempted, expressive. It is almost truly thematic here, expres-
even in the ornamental concert arias. The luxuriance
sive only in its establishment of the lyrical and
of the slow movement of the Sonata in G, op 31delicate character of the work, but it is not an
no 1, is a good example of Beethoven's interest affective
in nuance or an enlargement of the basic
this operatic ornamentation; the slow movement motive.
of The two fugues in Beethoven's late piano
the Piano Concerto in C minor is even more sonatas-the finale of the Hammerklavier and the
fantastically decorated, and far more dramatic in its
development section of the finale of op 101-both
intention.
use the trill in the way that deprives it of all orna-
With the Waldstein Sonata, Beethoven began to mental significance. The trill in op 101 comically
turn his back on this fashionable style and returned loses all decorative quality by having its end
1199

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 The slow movement of the last sonata, op 111,
combines at its climax a series of trills with the
only modulation in the movement. Once again it
is the return of the theme that is being prepared.
chopped off (ex 4), and nothing better enforces its And once again the illusion of motion is achieved,
non-ornamental function than this surgery. A trill an illusion that creates a spectacular dramatic
of this kind is generally meant to ornament a tension while never weakening the stability that
cadence: to cut off the last note of the cadential lies at the centre of the form. What Beethoven does
phrase is entirely to change the sense of it. The trill
is to expand the cadential trill before the return. The
in the theme of the Hammerklavier finale is even immense passage that opens with the trill and
more firmly motivated in that it is derived from the its expansion and finishes with the return of the
opening of the first movement (ex 5). If we remember theme is a withholding of the resolution of the
Ex 5
trill by a sequence-a circular sequence that appears
(finale) (first movernetit
to progress but in fact only revolves. This passage
occurs towards the end of the movement, after
almost a quarter of an hour of the purest C major.
that a trill is an extended appoggiatura, the we
And when deriva-
reach the trill we must remember the
tion is a simple one.
temporal weight and mass of the preceding C
Later in the movement the trill is even separated
major in order to understand what follows.
from everything else in the theme except the opening
The trill
leap, and used for an extensive thematic is the culminating point in the rhythmic
develop-
scheme of the movement. The variation-set which
ment at the end of the augmentation of the theme.
proceeds by
But in this powerful and terrifying passage gradual
the use acceleration-in which each
successive variation is faster than the last-is
of the trill goes beyond the thematic and starts to
common
have a fundamental effect on the larger enough
sense ofsince the 16th century, but in no
work as
movement, on the way in which the piece before op 111 are the gradations so carefully
a whole
worked
fills time. It represents the creation out. The sequence may be represented by
of a tension
the basic rhythm of each unit as shown in ex 6.
unresolved until the cessation of the trill. In this
role it is analogous to the use of modulation in a
classical work, and Beethoven indeed uses it to Ex 6
Theme 1 I1 Id"iV
create the tension that a modulation to a foreign
key can induce at moments when such harmonic
movement is not possible. This is the reason that
the long trills in some of Beethoven's later works The fourth variation reaches almost undifferentiated
create a sense both of stillness and of excitement. pulsation, enforced by the continuous pianissimo
The most striking examples of long trills in and by the omission of the melody note from the
Beethoven are found within variation form. As its opening of every beat. The trill represents the com-
name indicates this is basically an ornamental form, plete dissolution of even this rhythmic articulation:
like the fugue an inheritance from an earlier period. the movement reaches the extremes of rapidity and
The transformation of the variation was one of of immobility. Its importance in the rhythmic
Beethoven's most considerable achievements. It is structure of the movement as a whole accounts for
easy to see in what way the trill was useful to Beet- the length of the trill and for its sonorous transfor-
hoven for his variation sets. A long trill creates anmation into a triple trill. The trill returns on the
insistent tension while remaining completely static;last page, and the rhythm here is a synthesis of all
it helped Beethoven both to accept the static formthat went before: the rhythmic accompaniment of
of the variation set and to transcend it. For most of Variation IV (the fastest measured motion) and the
the time the trill retains its essential function as a theme in its original form (the slowest) are both
cadence. That is, even when it is combined with suspended under the unmeasured stillness of the
other simultaneous musical activity, it nullifies the trill. It is in this way that the most typical ornamen-
dynamic effect of these other motions. For example, tal device is turned into an essential element of
at the end of Mozart's own cadenza to his F major large-scale structure.
concerto, K459, the theme is played under a length-
ened final trill, and the trill in the right hand tells us
that the changes of harmony below cannot lead
anywhere. In the same way the trill of the
last variation of Beethoven's Sonata in E, op 109, on
a much larger scale, implies that the work is aboutThayer's Life of Beethoven, edited by Elliot Forbes, has been
to come to an end. The acceleration of the trill is reissued as a paperback (Princeton/Oxford, 60s): for Alan
Tyson's review, see 'Thayer-Deiters-Riemann-Krehbiel-Forbes',
carefully calculated from the slowest possible
MT March 1965, p.192, and for corrections see MT July 1965,
opening on single beats; and its immense growth isp.525.
accentuated by transferring it into different registers.
The Musical Times 1844-1969 is available on microfilm front
This trill charges a static moment with the fullWorld Microfilms, 62 Queen's
for complete set, ?510.
Grove, London NW8. Price

dynamic force; a dynamism that could be achieved

otherwise only by the kind of successive modulationsMusicology is the title of a first microfilm catalogue devoted to
musical books and periodicals available from Inter Documenta-
that Beethoven attempted in the F major variationstion Co AG, Poststrasse 4, Zug, Switzerland.
op 34. After the trill, the simple lyricism of theBlackwell's new music shop was opened by Sir Adrian Boult on
theme returns, as if after an enormous modulation.Nov 9; it is at 38 Holywell, Oxford.
1201

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