Landscape as Music, Landscape as Truth: Schubert and the Burden of Repetition

Author(s): Scott Burnham

Source: 19th-Century Music , Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 031-041
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncm.2005.29.1.31

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 SCOTT
BURNHAM
Landscape
as Music

Landscape as Music, Landscape as Truth:

Schubert and the Burden of Repetition
SCOTT BURNHAM

Can Schubert handle large instrumental forms?
Mainstream music critics raise this question
again and again in the face of Schubert’s ten-
dency to repeat extended stretches of music in
development sections or second-theme groups.1
For these are precisely the stations in the musi-
cal process where it would be more normative
to avoid such repetition.
Example 1 presents the initial iteration of
the second theme, in D major, from the first
movement of Schubert’s G-Major String Quar-
tet, op. 161 (the theme begins in m. 64). This
already lengthy theme will in fact repeat four
times; it will be taken up by the first violin,
1
See, for example, Donald Francis Tovey’s essay “Franz
Schubert” (1927), rpt. in The Mainstream of Music (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1949), esp. pp. 118–27. James
Webster explores Tovey’s questioning of Schubertian so-
nata form in a classic series of articles: Webster, “Schubert’s
Sonata Form and Brahms’s First Maturity,” this journal 2
(1978), 18–35; 3 (1979), 52–71.
then the second violin, then the cello, and fi-
nally by the viola.
Since we mean to engage Theodor W.
Adorno’s 1928 essay on Schubert, let’s ask him
what to make of this ritual of repetition, in
which each player repeats the same lengthy
text verbatim.2 The first thing we notice is that
Adorno does not question whether Schubert
can handle large forms, but rather contemplates
the nature of Schubert’s forms and the artistic
purpose of their characteristic repetitions. Here
are some things he says about repetition and
form in Schubert: “[Schubert’s] themes occur
as truth-characters, and his artistic remit is to
restate their image passionately, again and
again, once this image has appeared. . . .
Schubert’s forms are forms of invocation of
2
The image of a social ritual in connection with Schubert’s
fourfold presentation of this theme was suggested to me
by Fred Maus.

19th-Century Music, XXIX/1, pp. 31–41. ISSN: 0148-2076, electronic ISSN 1533-8606. © 2005 by the Regents of the University 31
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19 TH
     
                   
59

          
CENTURY
MUSIC
     
 ffz  
 cresc.

    
                         

         
  ffz  
      cresc.

                                 

 
 

cresc.
ffz
                     
          
   
 cresc. ffz 


66


                                         
  



                                     

                                        
  
  
         

                   
        


                      
               
73

            

      
cresc.  
 decresc.

                                
decresc.
   
cresc.
           
 
  
                          
  

 cresc.  
decresc.
      
            
  

           
 

decresc. cresc. 

Example 1: Quartet in G Major, Allegro molto moderato, mm. 59–78.

what has already appeared; they are not trans- harmonic shocks, like changes in lighting, that
formations of something that had been in- lead us into a new realm, a new landscape, one
vented” [27]. that knows as little evolution as the one that
For Adorno, a Schubertian theme is an appa- preceded it” [27; trans. altered].
rition, an Erscheinung, a characteristic truth; it So what makes Schubert’s themes sound to
is not an invention in need of a formal process Adorno like timeless landscapes that know no
of destiny. Such a theme can only be invoked evolution, know no history? What makes
through repetition, not transformed through Schubert’s themes step out of time and into
development. Adorno goes on to say: “Thus truth, as Adorno’s “truth-characters”?
instead of developmental transitions, there are Let’s return to ex. 1. Perhaps the first thing

32

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we take in is a “harmonic shock”: we cross the
dramatic caesura in m. 64 not from the domi-
nant of the dominant into the dominant key,
but from the mediant of the dominant into the
dominant key.3 Moreover, the compressed tex-
ture and reduced loudness of the D-major theme
after the outspoken clamor of F  makes this
theme sound like a different order of thought, a
more inward, private realm not located in the
declamatory public space of the music that im-
mediately precedes it.
By entering into the key of D through the
portal of its mediant, this expected key (as domi-
nant of the home key G) is made strange. In
fact, each of the four iterations of the theme
begins through a mediant: the first, second, and
fourth iteration, all in D major, are preceded by
a strong F -major sonority, and the third itera-
tion, in B  major, is preceded by a strong D-
major sonority. (That the second-theme area
thus completes a tonal cycle of major thirds—
F , D, B , F , D—is a circumstance that will
occupy us somewhat later.) There are “devel-
opmental transitions” between the iterations
of this theme, but because they move not di-
rectly to the theme but rather to its mediant,
Schubert can create the effect of “harmonic
shock” again and again.
And it is not just the nondominant entryway
that defamiliarizes the key of D, for Schubert’s
D major continues to list toward its mediant,
toward that F -major sonority (see the arrows
in ex. 1). D major cannot find its own dominant
except through that F  sonority. The F  sonor-
ity thus takes on an intriguing aura within the
precincts of this theme. It is not about to re-
solve to B minor—instead it enjoys an almost
nonfunctional presence; it glows with a differ-
ent kind of energy. Hearing D major as if from
the oblique perspective of its mediant keeps D
major alive in our ears in a way that a more
conventional tonal grounding would not, for
the key sounds both illusory and intimately
real, like an everyday word or object that sud-
denly becomes opaque and strange. The melody
itself, which is decidedly not lyrical in any
3
The F  sonority stands as a V/vi in relation to D major.
This is a fairly common place from which to launch a
retransition in the Viennese Classical style, but as a tran-
sition to a second-theme group it is downright unusual.
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conventional sense, worries the pitches G and SCOTT
F  and sits athwart the tonality (sung by itself, BURNHAM
Landscape
it sounds as though it were in E minor). This as Music
melody, its harmonic setting, and the lulling
quasi-dance rhythm of the entire texture to-
gether create a rare and beautiful kind of charged
stasis. There is a sense of singularity here, a
kind of self-sufficiency, an intensive coherence
that does not necessarily point beyond itself.
What to do with such a singularity? Repeat it.
The subsequent variations in the texture that
accompany each large-scale iteration of this
theme are like the changes in lighting Adorno
speaks of. We may liken this process to experi-
encing the same landscape at different times of
day. As Adorno says elsewhere in the essay:
“Atmosphere is what changes around things
that remain timelessly the same” [26].
The trio section of the quartet’s scherzo
movement offers another example of repeated
thematic sections initiated through mediant
relationships. The B-minor scherzo modulates
by common tone to G major, and this in turn
modulates to B major and then returns to G,
which of course ultimately returns back to B
minor (ex. 2).
In a 1965 lecture entitled “Schöne Stellen,”
Adorno talked specifically about this trio and
its modulation: “B major surprisingly follows
G major and places the texture of [instrumen-
tal] voices onto a different, brightly illuminated
plane.”4 He notices the identical key relation
in Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s poem “Der
Musensohn,” whose verses shift between G
major and B major. Tying both examples to-
gether, Adorno goes on to say that “what is
intended here is that element which distances
itself from mere existence and enchants the
spirit, that element which, as in Goethe’s poem,
defines art itself.”5 Here Adorno characterizes
the harmonic shift by mediant as a move to a
4
“Überraschend H-Dur auf G-Dur folgt und das
Stimmgewebe auf eine andere, hell belichtete Ebene
versetzt” (Theodor W. Adorno, “Schöne Stellen,” in
Musikalische Schriften, vol. V [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984],
p. 710). My thanks to Reinhold Brinkmann for acquainting
me with Adorno’s lecture, which was originally conceived
for a radio broadcast.
5
“Gemeint ist jenes Element des von dem blossen Dasein
sich Entfernenden, den Geist Verzaubernden, welches, wie
in dem Goetheschen Gedicht, Kunst selber definiert” (ibid).
33
 19 TH Trio
CENTURY 147
 3Allegretto    
    
MUSIC
  

4

3    
4        

                

3        
4 

          
 34    
 
 decresc.

   
155
         


       

                   
              
  
    
  


          
      


162
   1. 2.

           


 cresc.
      
     

                         
     
  
        
         cresc.
         
  
 
 cresc.

  
       
168
       

     
  
            

   

            
                       
  
  
      

Example 2: Quartet in G Major, trio section.

34

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174
           
        
SCOTT
BURNHAM

Landscape
as Music
decresc.

  

           
      decresc.

  
 
  
 
           
     
 
decresc.

        
    
   decresc.

 
          
180
     


    

         
 
 
 
   
    
     
       
        
   
  
  
     

  
  
1. 2.
186
         

 
       
decresc.

           
                       
     decresc.

 
      
 decresc.
      
       
 
 
decresc.

 ritard   
192
    
 

  


 
                        
  


           

   
    
     

   
         
    

Scherzo da Capo

Example 2 (continued)

35

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 19 TH different plateau, a different space, one that is
CENTURY
MUSIC brightly illuminated, enchanting, and set apart
from “mere existence.”
And indeed, as we move through this trio,
each successive tonal station seems more
enchantingly exquisite than the last. After the
transformation of the pitch B in the cello from
a tonic to a mediant, the ensuing G major hov-
ers over its dominant, touching ground only
briefly at the end of each phrase. Thus it sus-
tains an illusory effect, as a not fully grounded
key center. The B major that follows is tonic-
grounded, and thus locally more stable—but
when approached in this way it now sounds
doubly remote from the scherzo’s B minor; it is
made to sound like a rare and secret occur-
rence, like the midnight bloom of some noctur-
nal flower. The use of B major also enables
Schubert to return to G in the same manner he
arrived there at the outset of the trio but now
in the more luminous upper register.
Schubert takes advantage of the formally con-
tained, formally framed trio section to help
encourage this effect of framing a space marked
as exotic, ephemeral, dreamlike. The modula-
tions by mediant are crucial to the effect of
entering such a space. By foregoing the usual
modulatory engineering of arriving at the domi-
nant of the new key, modulation by mediant
can give us the sense of being instantly trans-
ported to another realm. These sections seem
to appear rather than to be the result of a pro-
cess of directed motion. As a listener, I haven’t
been moved anywhere; instead, the scene has
changed around me. This is a different way of
negotiating a landscape.
Adorno attempts to characterize the relation
between wanderer and landscape in Schubert’s
music by visualizing what he calls the ex-cen-
tric landscape:
The ex-centric construction of that landscape, in
which every point is equally close to the center,
reveals itself to the wanderer walking round it with
no actual progress: . . . the first step is as close to
death as the last, and the scattered features of the
landscape are scanned in rotation by the wanderer,
who cannot let go of them [25].
An extraordinary passage in the slow move-
ment of the G-Major Quartet offers a fairly
direct musical analogue to Adorno’s ex-centric
36
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landscape. The second iteration of this passage
is shown in ex. 3. Here a background dimin-
ished-seventh chord enables a kind of ex-cen-
tric wandering, where every step is as close to
the center as the last. We cycle through keys a
minor third apart, enunciated with 64 to 53 half
cadences: after three measures of D minor, we
hear G  minor, then F minor, and then D again,
now in major. These keys are related to each
other as stations along the diminished-seventh
sonority that is being unfolded in alternate mea-
sures of the cello part, third by third, through-
out mm. 132–36 (B–A –G ; A–G–F; F–E–D). The
repetition of the static minor-third motive in
the first violin is a reminder of this central
sonority as well as the index of the cyclical
mechanism. Each cadential station in this pas-
sage presents a key center explicitly staged as
an illusion.
The spectacular passage near the very end of
the quartet’s finale offers a more compressed
cycle of minor thirds (ex. 4). Here Schubert
achieves an almost psychedelic effect of mo-
tion without progress, of tonal gravity sus-
pended within a burgeoning sense of infinite
inward space. He can do this because he now
accelerates his third cycle into a tight, and po-
tentially infinite, circle (see the reduction of
outer voices in ex. 5). Versions of this passage
that happened earlier in the finale, though suc-
cessively expanding, did not thus close the
circle. In so doing, this passage sounds as a
dizzying review and culmination of all the simi-
lar passages in the finale, as well as of all the
other third-cycles throughout the quartet, both
major third and minor third.
It is as if Schubert, in the final moments of
the entire quartet, fully surrenders to the illu-
sory experience that unsettles all his musical
landscapes. The effect I mentioned earlier, of
the scene rapidly changing around a stationary
central subject, finds its maximum intensity
here. And this in turn provokes a strong sense
of the perceived landscape as virtual, as the
projection of subjectivity.
How does the notion of a virtual, illusory
landscape comport with the “truth-character”
of Schubert’s themes, as Adorno describes them?
To bring these two notions together is to hear
Schubert’s imaginary landscapes as the inward
landscapes of a nascent existential conscious-
     
       
129 SCOTT
           BURNHAM
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ff& ff  ff decresc.


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Example 3: Quartet in G Major, Andante, mm. 129–39.

ness, one that recognizes subjectivity as all there
is, one that recognizes subjectivity as the ulti-
mate imaginary landscape—and also as the only
knowable truth. And this truth bears repeating,
in the double sense that it can be repeated and
it must be repeated. The repetition of Schubert’s
illusory landscapes can thus be understood as
an existential act.
Repetition runs deep in Schubert’s G-Major
Quartet, as it does in much of his later instru-
mental music. Melodies repeat in second-theme
areas; whole patches of music repeat in devel-
opments, with only a shift in transposition.
And there is much repetition in Schubert’s
themes themselves, and in his accompaniments.
The sheer quantity of repeated notes in the
quartet is remarkable, as in the theme from the
scherzo (ex. 6a); or the main theme of the fi-
nale, whose minor-mode descent and major-
mode ascent are both bounded by repeated notes
(ex. 6b); or the second theme of the finale, with
its repeating-note accompaniment (ex. 6c); or,
finally, the tight iterations of the tremolo from
the opening movement, which register as a kind
of psychic atmosphere (ex. 6d).
Repetition is like a holographic presence in
this quartet; it is there at all levels, heard from
every angle. Such repetition is not the make-
shift device of a composer incapable of control-
ling large forms; it is rather the very condition
of his expression, the very condition of a sub-
jectivity staking everything on the surface ma-
teriality of the musical medium.6 In the quiver-
ing repetitions of Schubert’s later instrumental
music, we do not hear the progress of an ideal-
istic World Soul filling the void left by Kant’s
transcendental analytic; we hear the gathering
of subjectivity facing that void with the soli-
tary truth of its inwardness.
“Repetition,” says Gilles Deleuze, referring
to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (those other
6
For another expression of this notion, see my essay
“Schubert and the Sound of Memory,” Musical Quarterly
84 (2000), 655–63.

37

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19 TH 
CENTURY
652
                  
MUSIC

cresc.

             
                            


cresc.
                       
               
  
cresc.
          
              
            

 


cresc.

          
                
     
659
        


poco a poco
      
                         

       


poco a poco
        
            

 

 

 

 

 

 
  
poco a poco

                           
            
  
poco a poco

                     
       
            
666

'
                
                
        


'
                                          
'
              
                            
'
                                    
673
   



                                     
 

   

         
                                

               
                         

Example 4: Quartet in G Major, finale, mm. 652–85.

38

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SCOTT
680
 

            BURNHAM
Landscape
as Music
      
        

    
  
             
  

    
 
                     
         

                  
      

Example 4 (continued)
    
     (((     
( (

    
( (
( (
( ( (
( ( (
( ( (
     (
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(
(
(
(
(  (   
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(
(
(
(
(
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Example 5: The infinite cycle: outer-voice reduction, Quartet in G, finale, mm. 660–71.

a. Quartet in G Major, theme from scherzo, mm. 1–8.


Scherzo
       
  3Allegro vivace         
         

4 
        
 3  

         

4       

  3                
4            


  34  
      
         
         


b. Quartet in G Major, theme from finale, mm. 1–5.

Allegro assai
 6                 

8    
     
 $  
6   

8           

         
 $
6    
8
 
                    

$ 
  
 68                     
 
$ 
Example 6

39

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 19 TH c. Quartet in G Major, second theme from finale, mm. 91–99.
CENTURY
            
       
MUSIC 91
            

 
  

                             

    
 
 
                                                     


                            
       


d. Quartet in G Major, theme from Allegro molto moderato, mm. 15–24.


                       
15
          

&

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&
& & & & & & & & & & &

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 &  & & & & &  &
     & &

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  &  & &    
  & & & & & & &

Example 6 (continued)

protoexistentialists), “appears as the logos of Abstract.

the solitary and the singular.”7
This is the burden of repetition in Schubert,
who composed under the sign of the Romantic
wanderer, housed only in his subjectivity, the
wanderer who, in Winterreise, is arguably bur-
ied alive in that subjectivity.
This is why Adorno says that “[Schubert’s
music is] so deeply steeped in death that death
[holds] no fears for it” [24].
This is the burden of repetition.
Repetition knows no origin, no end—
just this: again and again.
7
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 6–7.
Adorno’s essay on Schubert opens by invoking a
fraught move across the threshold that separates the
death of Beethoven from the death of Schubert. He
goes on to read Schubert’s music through a series of
dichotomies whose opposite terms are distinctly
Beethovenian: Schubert’s themes are self-possessed
apparitions of truth rather than inchoate ideas that
require temporal evolution; his repetitive, fragmen-
tary forms are inorganic rather than organic, crystal-
line rather than plantlike. Above all, Adorno devel-
ops the idea that Schubert’s music offers the repeat-
l able truth of a landscape rather than the processive
trajectory of a teleological history. Schubert’s themes,
like landscapes, are forms of permanence that can-
not be fundamentally altered but can only be revis-
ited.

40

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 With special emphasis on Schubert’s G-Major
String Quartet, this article inflects Adorno’s view of
Schubert’s landscapes by considering how these
“truths” also present themselves as illusory and in-
ward (e.g., how some of Schubert’s thematic areas
can be heard to project a visionary interior space in
the way that they suddenly introduce a markedly
different realm or the way that they obliquely in- SCOTT
habit their tonal centers). It is then argued that BURNHAM
Landscape
Schubert’s music is thus steeped in an existential as Music
consciousness for which subjectivity is the only
knowable truth. And this truth bears repeating, in
the double sense that it can be repeated and it must
be repeated.

IN OUR NEXT ISSUE (FALL 2005)

ARTICLES Lee A. Rothfarb: August Halm on Body and Spirit in Music

Sylvia Kahan: “Rien de la tonalité usuelle”: Edmond de Polignac

and the Octatonic Scale in Nineteenth-Century France

William Kinderman: The Third-Act Prelude of Wagner’s Parsifal:

Genesis, Form, and Dramatic Meaning

Raymond Knapp: “Selbst dann bin ich die Welt”: On the

Subjective-Musical Basis of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwelt

REVIEW By RICHARD TARUSKIN

41

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