Musical Meaning in Beethoven

Offers a fresh approach to the problem of expressive meaning in music. Beginning with an analysis of the slow movement of the Hammerklavier piano sonata, this book examines the roles of markedness, Classical topics, expressive genres, and musical tropes in fostering expressive interpretation at various levels of structure.

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"Musical Meaning in Beethoven" offers a fresh approach to the problem of expressive meaning in music. Beginning with a provocative analysis of the slow movement of the Hammerklavier piano sonata, Robert S. Hatten examines the roles of markedness, Classical topics, expressive genres, and musical tropes in fostering expressive interpretation at all levels of structure. Close readings of movements from Beethoven's late piano sonatas and string quartets highlight less-obvious expressive meanings and explain how more-familiar general meanings are consistently cued from one work to the next. Hatten's model of musical meaning is grounded in the semiotic principles of Charles Sanders Pierce, Umberto Eco, and Michael Shapiro, and in the theoretical and historical contributions of Leonard B. Meyer, Charles Rosen, and Leonard Ratner. Radically departing from the nineteenth-century Formalist aesthetics of Eduard Hanslick and Formalist theories underlying twentieth-century tonal analysis, the author argues that expressive meaning is not extramusical but fundamental to the reconstruction of compositional practice and stylistic understanding, even for the "absolute" works of Beethoven.