Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-7drxs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T06:33:23.994Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - “The sense of an ending”: goal-directedness in Beethoven's music

from Part II - Style and structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2011

Glenn Stanley
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Get access

Summary

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

(t. s. eliot, four quartets , “little gidding,” v, 1–3)

Why does a piece of music end? Or rather, why does it end where it does? Webern, during the composition of his Six Bagatelles for string quartet op. 9, felt driven to a particularly uncompromising answer: “Here I had the feeling, ‘When all twelve notes have gone by, the piece is over.’” He was, admittedly, recalling his path to twelve-note composition; yet Heinrich Schenker, concerned exclusively with the structure of tonal music – to him, Webern's was a “path” that led away from music altogether – was equally clear about endings. In Free Composition he claimed that “with the arrival of Î the work is at an end. Whatever follows this can only be a reinforcement of the close – a coda – no matter what its extent or purpose may be.” There will be more to say about codas in due course; but we need immediately to distinguish Schenker's construal of “coda” from the conventional one whereby, for example, the section of music that follows the end of a sonata-form recapitulation is denominated the “coda.” A particularly clear Beethoven example is the coda to the finale of the “Appassionata” Sonata, beginning at m. 308: the double bar and new tempo indication articulate this coda especially strongly.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×