Le 28 juin 2017
de 16h30 à 17h00
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
amphithéâtre 5
Séance - The Second Viennese School (I): Berg, Organicism, and the Teleology of Form
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Matthew Arndt
Much analytical and critical commentary on Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, op. 1, has viewed the piece through an organicist lens, arguing that the piece enacts some sort of becoming. This tendency holds even for Theodor W. Adorno’s analysis, which Adorno himself criticizes as inadequate to his insight that Berg’s music instead accomplishes a “permanent re-absorption back into itself,” which “comprises its true modernity.” Vasili Byros attempts to build on Adorno’s insights but does not critique Adorno’s analysis. My aim is to revise Adorno’s analysis of Berg’s Sonata so as to accord with his own insights and with Arnold Schoenberg’s little heeded principle that development often proceeds backwards. In other words, the introduction of a contrast signifies a leap in development, which is generally followed by back-formations that fill in the gap so as to make the coherence of the contrasting parts comprehensible. What is characteristic of Berg’s music is that backwards development is exhaustive—not, as in more common, merely suggestive—re-absorbing both the components and the products of a Grundgestalt or basic shape into an even more elementary motive. The use of Schoenberg’s theories is apropos as Berg composes the Sonata under Schoenberg’s instruction. Permanent re-absorption, or what I call reverse organicism, is particularly prominent in the Sonata, which famously begins as if it were ending. This study expands possibilities for analysis, substantiates and refines Adorno’s criticism, and shines a new light on Berg’s accomplishments.
