Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence

Author(s): Kevin Korsyn

Source: Music Analysis, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (Mar. - Jul., 1991), pp. 3-72
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KEVIN KORSYN

TOWARDS A NEW POETICS OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

This articlecomplements
and extendsrecentresearchthat has appeared in Music
Analysis. In particular, it attemptsto answer some questionsraised by Alan
Street in 'Superior Myths, Dogmatic Allegories: The Resistance to Musical
method
Unity' (Vol. 8, Nos 1-2), in whichStreet,inspiredby thedeconstructive
of Paul de Man, questioned the notion of organic unity in music. Street's
conclusionsmightseem to lead music theoryto an impasse: how can one analyse
music if one rejectsthe idea of autonomous, self-containedcompositions?The
followingarticleproposesa solution,analysingpieces as 'relationalevents' rather
than as 'closed and static entities'.By borrowingthe idea of conceptualspace
from Harold Bloom's theoryof poetic influence,the author explores a new
methodofanalysis, one thatintegratestheory,historyand criticism.
The Editor welcomesfurthercontributions
to thisdebate.

I
These pages unfolda theoryof intertextuality
in music,proposinga model
for mapping influence,which, by usurping conceptual space from the
literarycriticismof Harold Bloom, also swervestowardsa new rhetorical
so
poetics of music.* Naked abstractionsneed the clothingofparticularity,
I will use works of Chopin and Brahms to exemplifythis model. But I
intendthemodel to have a verywide rangeof application.
No musical subjectseems to me more imperfectly
understoodyetmore
and nothingso urgentlydemands
potentiallycentralthan intertextuality,
[Link] an example that seems to encapsulate
* An earlierversionof this
studywas presentedat Queens College, New York, on 19 November 1987, and at
Columbia Universityon 20 November 1987. I am gratefulto JosephStraus of Queens College forarrangingmy
lecturethere,and to JohnMurphyand JannaSaslow forinvitingme to speak at Columbia.
After this article was completed, Joseph Straus published Remakingthe Past: Traditionand Influencein
Music (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity
Twentieth-Century
Press, 1990), whichalso triesto captureBloom for
music. I am gratefulto ProfessorStrausforcitingseveralof myunpublishedpapers on Bloom. It should be obvious,
even
to
the
casual
reader,thatStrausand I appropriateBloom's thoughtforvastlydifferent
however,
purposes.

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KORSYN

the problematicsof [Link] his article 'Influence: Plagiarism and

Inspiration',Charles Rosen suggestsvarious relationshipsbetween two
scherzos,one by Brahms,Op. 4, the otherby Chopin, Op. 31. CitingEx. 1
fromBrahms,Rosen statesthat'it is derivedfairlydirectly'fromChopin's
idea shownin Ex. 2.' I have reproducedEx. 1 exactlyas Rosen presentsit,
to show how he unconsciouslydistortsBrahms's theme. Of course, any
quotation violates its source by destroyingcontext,but Rosen has done
somethingto the melodythatreallyaltersits character:he has eliminated
the upbeat. The returnof the repressedupbeat, shown in Ex. 3, might
perhapsinvokeanotherpiece by Chopin, one Rosen did not mention:the
familiarWaltz Op. 64, No. 2 in C? minor(Ex. 4).
These similarities
inspirea litanyof [Link] Brahmshere quotinga
Is
scherzo?
he
quoting a Chopin waltz?Or is he quotingboth, is
Chopin
his idea a conflationof the two?These [Link] these
deliberate allusions or accidental resemblances?Are both composers
alludingto common sources?(Perhaps folksongs or populartunes?)More
what role should these relationshipsplay in our encounter
importantly,
witha piece? Findingsuch relationshipsis not difficult;
everyexperienced
echoes to some degree. But what
listenerprobablyhears such intertextual
meaningshould we ascribeto them?Should we amplifythesewhispers,or
ignorethem?Are theytoo obvious forcomment?(As Brahms once said,
'Any ass can see that!') Or are they screens concealing some deeper
relationship?2

Ex. 1 Brahms,Scherzo,Op. 4, bs 329-32 (as quoted by Rosen)

4f/f

....

vol
Ped.
Ex. 2 Chopin, Scherzo Op. 31, bs 65-8
(a tempo)

(p)

conanima

(cresc.)

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INFLUENCE

Ex. 3 Brahms,Scherzo,Op. 4, bs 329-32 (withupbeat)

TIr

Ex. 4 Chopin,Waltz Op. 64, No. 2, bs 1-4

Tempo giusto

14

1 04

in music can resolve these questions.

Only a theoryof intertextuality
Conceptual claritybecomes even more imperativeif we consider the
In any intertextualencounter, we
historical nature of intertextuality.
constructa historicalnarrativeby positinga relationbetweenan earlierand
a [Link] than assemblingan
[Link] I quote Michel de Certeau:
fact'resultsfroma praxis,becauseit is alreadythe
Every'historical
a statement
of [Link] resultsfrom
signof an act and therefore
which
have
allowed
a mode of comprehension
to be
procedures
articulated
as a discourseof 'facts.'... In history,
of
as in thetotality
thehumansciences,whatLevi-Strauss
calledthe 'testingof models'
methodsofobservation;
determination
oftypesof
replacestheformer
wins
over
of
determination
the
means
or
analysis
places of
information.3
Therefore it is not enough merely to accumulate data by observing
similaritiesamong pieces; we need models to explainwhichsimilarities
are
whilealso accountingfordifferences
works.
Models
tell
significant,
among
us whereto look, whatto observe,whatcountsas a [Link] is not to say
that the selectionof models precedes observation;rathertheremust be a
reciprocitybetween empirical data and the models throughwhich we
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KEVIN

KORSYN

thosedata.
interpret
Intertextuality
poses strenuouschallengesfor any model. As we have
seen, the model must include [Link] it must also accommodate
we need a model that explainsboth traditionand uniqueness,
originality;
that explains how a work becomes originalby strugglingagainst other
[Link] model should also leave room forthe imagination,so that we
remainartistseven in our [Link] should integrateknowingwith
feeling,lestour complexmodes of analysisalienateus frommusic.
Musicians have not neglected intertextuality.
Robert Schumann, for
in
his
critical
noted
allusions and echoes,4
example,
writings,frequently
and recent scholarship has continued to map intertextualspace. In
addition to Rosen's article already cited, one could mention valuable
studies by James Webster, ChristopherReynolds, Constantin Floros,
J. Peter Burkholderand David Brodbeck,all concerningBrahms and his
precursors;Edward T. Cone traced Beethoven's presence in Schubert;
Elwood Derr's work also deserves attention;Ernst Oster devoted some
profound speculations to Beethoven's influenceon Chopin's FantasieImpromptu.5These studies focus on relatively concrete intertextual
phenomena: quotation, borrowings, compositional modelling. Other
studies cast a wider net, discussinggenre or the use of [Link]
or [Link] of
thesewritersrelyon models,howeverimplicitly
subtleinsights,offersmodels sufficiently
them,however,despitefrequently
strong;none has meditatedlong enough on the necessityof paradigms.
ThereforeI have turnedto literarycriticismand the writingsof Harold
Bloom.

II
There he proposed that
In 1973 Bloom published TheAnxietyofInfluence.
from
is
poetic influence,since strongpoets
poetic history 'indistinguishable
one
make that historyby misreading
another,so as to clear imaginative
thisinsightin a formidable
elaborated
He
for
space
themselves'.6 gradually
series of books, includingA Map of Misreading,Poetryand Repression,
Kabbalah and Criticism,
Agon and The Breakingof the [Link]
Bloom's influencehas extended far beyond literarycriticism,musicians
have been slow to assimilatehis ideas, a neglectI shalltryto reverse.7
Our appropriationof Bloom willnot be aided, however,by his disregard
for the reader's [Link] a sympatheticcriticlike John Hollander
admits that Bloom tends to 'eschew explanation',substitutingapothegm
howThis difficulty,
forargumentwhile inventingeccentricterminology.8
ever,is not perverse;ratherit reflectsBloom's quest fora sublimetheoryof
poetry,a theorymeantto mirrorthe laboursofreadingstrongpoems.
Althougha theoryso ambitiousresistsreduction,the potentialgain for
musical criticismcompels me to summarizeBloom. This surveymust not
6

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INFLUENCE

onlyintroduceBloom to an audience largelyunfamiliarwithhis thought,it

must also establishhis originality,distinguishinghis approach fromits
rivals, to show that Bloom offersunique insights into the creative
imagination,insightsstrongenoughto survivewhen transplantedfromthe
poetic to the musical realm. All this demands a long detour,so we will
returnto musicby circuitouspaths.
Perhaps the best place to begin is withthe question to which Bloom
returnsalmost obsessivelyin his writing:the question of poetic origins.
How does one become a poet?Bloom's answer,whichis simple,is thatthe
poet discovershis vocationthroughthe poetryof his precursors;it is love
of poetrythatfoundsa poet. This is not to denythe poet's relationshipto
life,to [Link] the modernpoet is not Adam in Eden,
namingthingsforthe firsttime;thatmagicalimmediacybetweenlanguage
and experienceis lost. As H61lderlinrealized, 'the primitiveequilibrium
attainedbetweenthe firstartistand his worldno longerholds'.9 The later
one arrivesin poetic history,the more conscious one becomes of other
texts,because experienceis already structuredby [Link] the
poet discoverspoetrywitha sense of belatedness,withfeelingsof guiltand
indebtednesstowardshis [Link] foranteriorpoetry- the love
that awakened his poetic calling- soon [Link] poet finds
himselfin what Paul Ricoeur called 'the mediate,the alreadyexpressed',
has alreadybeen
wonderingifhe has arrivedtoo late, ifperhapseverything
said. That is the anxietyofinfluence.
Bloom's originality,
the imaginativeleap thatinaugurateshis theory,is
to proclaimthatthe anxietyof influenceis the truesubjectmatterof postEnlightenmentpoetry.1o This insight radically differentiatesBloom's
fromthatof traditionalsource [Link] a
approach to intertextuality
traditionalsource critic,Bloom is not interestedin the transmissionof
discursiveideas, in tracingthe borrowingof externalsubjectmatteramong
poems." This is because, accordingto Bloom, thebest post-Enlightenment
in the mode
poetryin English 'internalizedits subject matter,particularly
ofWordsworthafter1798. Wordsworthhad no truesubjectexcepthis own
subjective nature, and very nearly all significantmodern poetry since
Wordsworth,even by Americanpoets, has repeated Wordsworth'sinner
turning'.1 Hence 'modern poets intend some merely external subject
matter... but findtheirtrue subject in the anxietyof influence'."Thus
Bloom dissolves the externalsubject matterof poetry;for Bloom as for
Wallace Stevens,poetryis the subjectofthepoem.
ofsubjectmatter,a turnto
Whyis thisinnerturning,thisinternalization
the anxietyof influence?Because the poet's preoccupationwithselfhoodis
the anxietythathis precursorshave not lefthim room to become a self,to
speak withhis own poetic voice. Self-consciousnessmanifestsitselfas textconsciousness,because 'the poet's conceptionof himselfnecessarilyis his
The poet seeks to 'name somethingforthe
poem's conceptionof itself'.14
firsttime', yet cannot completelysilence the voices of his precursors,
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KEVIN

KORSYN

because writinga poem takes the poet back 'to the decisive initial
encounterand response that began him', to 'what a poem firstwas for
withhis precursorsis ambivalent:
him'.'5Thus thepoet's identification
Insofaras a poetauthentically
is and remainsa poet,he mustexclude
and [Link] he mustbeginbyincluding
and affirming
a precursor
poetor poets,forthereis no otherwayto becomea poet.
We can say thenthata poet is knownas a poet onlyby a wholly
contradictory
including/excluding,
negating/affirming
...16
To capture this paradoxical 'including/excluding'movement, Bloom
replaces the mimeticview of influencewith a new notion of 'antithetical
influence',conceivinginfluenceas 'discontinuousrelationsbetween past
and presentliterarytexts'." Influencebecomes somethingpoets actively
resist,ratherthan somethingtheypassivelyreceive,and poetrybecomes a
psychic battlefield,an Oedipal struggleagainst one's poetic fathers,in
whichpoems seek to repressand exclude otherpoems. Bloom's enterprise
here changes the veryfunctionof poetry:it becomes a mode of psychic
defence,as the belated poet's quest to defendhimselfagainst anteriority
becomes a model forthereader'squest forselfhood:
can be a healthydefenseagainstthe real
What poetryconstructs
inner
and
of
the
outerlife.'8
both
dangers
We read (reread)the poemsthatkeep our discoursewithourselves
us by teachingus how to talk to
[Link] strengthen
ourselves.'9

Through poetrythe imaginationlearns to resist'the preemptiveforceof

Thus Bloom propounds a theoryof poetryas a
another imagination'.20
theoryoflife.
of subjectmatterhas provokedBloom's critics,who
This internalization
complain that he forgetswhat poems are 'about'. Yet Bloom does not
whollyexclude such subjects- and here one begins to see his dialectical
subtlety- insteadhe believes that subject matteris mediatedthroughthe
anxietyof influence,throughotherpoems:
A poem can be aboutexperienceor emotionor whateveronlyby
anotherpoem, whichis to say a poem must
encountering
initially
and emotionas iftheyalreadywererivalpoems.21
handleexperience
There is no unmediatedvision, but only mediated revision,another
name forwhichis anxiety.22
Since poems 'are neither about "subjects" nor about "themselves" ', but

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TOWARDS

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INFLUENCE

'about other
poems',23textsbecome relations,ratherthanentities:'There are
no texts,only relationsbetweentexts'.24Intertextuality,
far frombeing a
mere branch of criticism,as it is in traditionalsource study,becomes
central: 'Criticismis the art of knowingthe hidden roads that go from
is an equally
poem to poem.'25 (Bloom would insistthat 'intratextuality'
appropriateterm, since ' inside" and "outside" are wholly figurative
notionsin poems'.26")
Bloom's theory,then,is one of poetic reception,a theoryof how poets
read [Link] part of the poem, not something
added on by [Link] 'nothingis got fornothing',as Emerson said;
'Bloom restoresto poetic objects theirdefiningplurality',27
but onlyat the
price of autonomy. Just as Nietzsche deconstructs the self into a
'rendezvous of persons', Bloom dissolves the individual poem into a
'rendezvousof poems'. This move provokesthe greatestresistanceamong
Bloom's [Link] tend to believethatpoems are self-contained
units
of meaning,but Bloom urgesus to abandon such [Link] is a cento
ofrelevanttexts:
Few notionsaremoredifficult
to dispelthanthe'commonsensical'
one
thata poetictextis self-contained,
thatithas an ascertainable
meaning
or meaningswithoutreference
to [Link]

nearlyeveryreaderwantsto say: 'Here is a textand thereis a meaning,

and I am reasonably
certainthatthe two can be broughttogether.'

Unfortunately,
poems are not thingsbut onlywordsthatreferto other
words, and so on, into the densely overpopulatedworld of literary
[Link] is an inter-poem,and anyreadingof a poem is an
A poem is not writing,but rewriting,
and thougha strong
inter-reading.
poem is a freshstart,such a startis a starting-again.28

We needto stopthinking
ofanypoetas an autonomous
ego,however
solipsisticthe strongestof poets may be. Everypoet is a being caught
up in a dialectical relationship (transference,repetition, error,
communication)withanotherpoet or poets.29

Justas we can neverembrace (sexuallyor otherwise)a singleperson,

but embracethe whole of his or her familyromance,so we can never
read a poet withoutreadingthe whole of his or her familyromanceas
poet.30

Bloomdividespoetsintotwocategories:
strongand [Link]
achievestrength
the
ofinfluence,
by confronting anxiety
with
bywrestling

[Link] preoccupationwith strongpoets has fostered

charges of elitism (charges Bloom cheerfullyaccepts). Yet Bloom
eloquentlydefendshis obsessionwithpoetic strength:

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ofmeaning,
thefreedom
of
Freedom,in a poem,mustmeanfreedom
is whollyillusory
unless
havinga meaningofone'[Link]
it is achievedagainsta priorplenitudeofmeaning,
whichis tradition,
and will
and so also againstlanguage.... Whatis weakis forgettable
is memorable;
be forgotten.
Onlystrength
onlythecapacityto wound
givesthehealingcapacitythechanceto endure,and so to be heard.
Freedom of meaningis wrestedby combat,of meaningagainst
meaning."3

A strongprecursorhere is Kant. Kant distinguishesgenius frommere

imitation,arguingthat the primarypropertyof genius is [Link]
goes on, however,to add somethingquite paradoxical:thereis an original
kind of imitation; one genius can liberate the originalityof another,
This paradox of an originalimitation,of
providinga model fororiginality.32
of another,is an ancestorof Bloom's
one genius liberatingthe originality
strongpoets influencingstrongpoets, but withoutthe anxious tone that
permeatesBloom's writings.
For Bloom, everypoem is a misreadingor misprisionof a precursor
poem or poems. The parent poem may be composite,it may be partly
imaginary,it may even be one of the poet's own poems (the poet may
attemptto become his own precursor). 'Misreading' is not a pejorative
termforBloom. Misreadingcan be strongor weak, but it is inescapable.
There is an extremeambivalence,hatredas well as love, in a poet's stance
towards [Link] strong poet cannot affordto be merely an
accurate reader,because he must open priortextsto his own imaginative
needs. We tend to idealize influence,to thinkthat intertextualechoes
signalhomage, reverence,[Link] replacesthisidealizationwith
his description of influence as misreading, misprision, perversion,
distortion:'Poets become strongby mis-takingall textsanteriorto them'."
Bloom's approach
This insistence on misreadingsharplydifferentiates
fromone thatviewsinfluenceas benigntransmission.
Bloom identifies six modes of misreading the precursor, six
[Link] ratios
of influence,whichhe calls revisionary
interpretations
the dynamicsof
and
of
describe both the poet's internalizing tradition,
lucid
Renza's
commentary:
[Link] I quote Louis A.
A post-Enlightenment
deploysa discreteseries
poemor interpretation
its
writer's
sustain
to
of tropological
enabling
paradoxically
strategies
his precursor
act of repressing-alias-misreading
.... As 'revisionary
betweentwo or more
ratios'intendedto measurethe 'relationship
a psychicdefense
both
ratio
each
signifies
interchangeably
texts,'
against and a formalmode of reading the precursortext so as to
facilitatethe poet's illusionof naminghis 'something'as ifforthe first
time.34

10

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INFLUENCE

The ratios are not reductiveentities,since Bloom wants 'to read through
the ratios, not into them'.3

In The Anxiety of Influence (1973),

he

introducedthe ratiosas phases in the life-cycleof the [Link] the

time of A Map of Misreading(1975), he realized that the ratios tend to
functionin dialecticalpairs;he further
recognizedthatall threepairs could
within
a
operate
singlepoem, althoughtheyneed not. This was a logical
of
Bloom's
development
theory:it is as ifa poet's whole life-cyclecould be
in
a
recapitulated
singlepoem. Bloom recognizesmanyvariantsof the sixratio patternof misprision,and even in his latestwritingswill sometimes
read an entirepoem througha single predominantratio. The ratios are
both inter-and intra-textual:
theydescribehow a poet revisesearliertexts,
both his own and thoseof otherpoets.
I shall postpone a detaileddiscussionof each ratio;theyremainelusive
until seen at workin specifictexts,and I preferto keep this introduction
[Link] a few words about Bloom's map of misreadingare needed.
Bloom coordinateseach ratio with a particularrhetoricaltrope. Unlike
Vico and Kenneth Burke, who reduce all tropes to four mastertropes,
Bloom uses six: irony,synecdoche,metonymy,
hyperbole,metaphorand
metalepsis(also called transumption).A trope is any word or phrase that
departs fromliteral meaning, but Bloom extends the concept of trope
('troping the concept of trope itself, as Hollander says36) to map
relationshipsbetween [Link] an example: ironyis the trope that
says one thingbut means another;Bloom extendsironyto become a trope
forinfluence:
Ifwe consider'influence'
as thetropeofrhetorical
ironythatconnects
an earlierto a laterpoet ('irony'as figureof speech,not as figureof
theninfluence
is a relationthatmeansone thingaboutthe
thought),
situation
while
... We mightphrasethisas
intra-poetic
sayinganother.
a consciousstateofrhetoricity,
thepoem'sopeningawarenessthatit
mustbe mis-read
because its signification
has [Link]
intolerable
presence(theprecursor's
poem) has beenvoided,and the
new poem startsin the illusiothatthisabsencecan deceiveus into
a newpresence.37
accepting
Each ratio/trope
is also linkedto one or more of Freud's psychicdefences.
Why invoke the Freudian defences?First, Freud's defences are already
tropological,as many of Freud's readers have realized; indeed, Freud
himselfsaid that the poets were there beforehim. If, as Jacques Lacan
oftensaid, 'the unconscious is structuredlike a language',it is a language
[Link]-formation,
forexample,is allied to irony:
Justas rhetoricalironyor illusio(Quintilian's name for it) says one
thingand means another,so a reaction-formation
opposes itselfto a
the oppositeofthe desire.38
represseddesireby manifesting
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As we have seen, poems defendthemselvesagainst otherpoems, just as

psyches defend themselvesagainst other psyches. Just as the defences
permitthe continuityof one's interiordiscourseby wardingoffthreatsto
the psyche, tropes, by turningfrom literal meaning, keep the poet's
discoursegoingin his agon withanteriority.
One can object, of course,thatBloom is arguingby analogy;Freud has
been criticizedon [Link]'s analogicalmethod,however,'is
consistentwiththe analogicalnatureofhis data, forhis data are all images,
startingwiththe self.39Bloom arguesthatthe 'substitutionof analogues' is
'one with the poetic process itself',40and he urges that 'a trope is a
concealed defense,a defenseis a concealed trope ... this sortof concealment is poetry'.41Bloom extends his analogical method to connect the
entirearrayofdefencesto the systemoftropes.
This appropriationof Freud is part of a brilliantly
perversestrategyof
Freud and
texts
Bloom
Nietzsche,
Kierkegaard,
interprets
by
reading:
others as if they concerned poems instead of people; through such
subversive transpositionshe gains powerful new models for literary
[Link] we performthe same kind of deliberate misreadingon
Bloom,readinghim as if he were talkingabout musicinstead of poetry?I
thinkthatwithincertainlimitswe can.
If we musicians can usurp Bloom's stance, it is primarilybecause of
Bloom's relationto his precursorWalter Pater. Pater urged that 'all art
What Pater admired in
constantly
aspirestowardstheconditionof music'.42
music was its power to overcome any tensionbetween the medium and
subjectsexternalto it:
realizesthisartistic
It is theartofmusicwhichmostcompletely
ideal,
In its consummate
and
form.
of
matter
this perfectidentification
fromthemeans,theformfromthe
theend is not distinct
moments,
from
the
thesubject
theyinherein and completely
matter,
expression;
ofitsperfect
to thecondition
to
and
each
saturate
it,therefore,
other;
and aspire.
to
tend
arts
be
all
the
moments,
may supposedconstantly
is to be foundthetruetypeor
In music,then,ratherthanin poetry,
art.43
measureofperfected
As we have seen, the anxietyof influenceturnspoetryinto its own subject
matter,erasingthe line betweenpoetic languageand subjectsexternalto it.
Thus post-Enlightenment
poetry,as Bloom conceives it, aspires towards
the conditionof music. For the same reason,music can aspiretowardsthe
conditionof Bloomian poetics: withoutreducingmusic to poetry,without
of music, one can imaginea purelymusical anxiety
violatingthe integrity
of influence; one can envisage an intertextualtheoryin which music
becomes its own [Link] is a crucialpoint. I am not the first
musician to learn from Bloom, but I am the firstto realize that his
internalizationof subject matterbringsmusic and poetrycloser together,
12

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allowinga fullermusical appropriationof Bloom than has previouslybeen

attempted.
Even David Lewin weaklymisreads Bloom on this point. In a recent
article,Lewin quotes Bloom's apothegm'the meaningof a poem can only

be a poem, but anotherpoem, a poem not itself'.Lewin claims that Bloom's

'idea as it stands does not transfereasily to music, but that is largely

because of the problems attachingthemselvesto the word 'meaning' in
Bloom's text'.44 Lewin thus seems to interpretBloom's enterpriseas
reducingtwo poems to a commonmeaning,or to a [Link]
approachmightcharacterizetraditionalsource study,but, as we have seen,
nothingcould be more antitheticalto Bloom's [Link]'s statement
must be read in light of his later self-commentary
in Kabbalah and
Criticism:

I recallventuring
theapothegm
thatthemeaningofa poemcouldonly
be [Link],I pointout,themeaning
ofanotherpoem,but
theotherpoemitself,
indeedtheotherness
oftheotherpoem.45
This concept of 'otherness'saturatesBloom's [Link] Hegel, in
the Phenomenology
ofSpirit,showshow consciousnesscomes to knowitself,
becomes self-consciousness,
by encounteringotherness,Bloom showshow
become
poems
unique by encounteringotherpoems. This encounterwith
othernessinvolves a discontinuitybetween texts, an 'awareness not so

much of presences as of absences, of what is missingin thepoem because it

had to be excluded'.46 These notions of 'absence and otherness' are

indeed, but they may seem less alien if we reconstructthe

refractory
questions to which they are a response. Bloom is strugglinghere to
reconcilethe competingclaims of originality
and [Link]
source study tends to dissolve a poem into its alleged sources, without
explaining what constitutesa poem's unique claim on our attention.
Formalist criticismtreatspoems as autonomous entities,leaving poems
unconnectedto [Link] showinghow poems repressand exclude other
poems, Bloom can show how poems become unique, yet relate to
tradition,by defendingthemselvesagainst [Link] example should
clarifythispoint.
In Poetryand Repression,
Bloom does an inter-readingof Tennyson's
Marianna, a poem whose ostensible subject matteris erotic repression.
Unlike a traditional source critic, however, Bloom does not relate
Marianna to otherpoems about eroticrepression,nor does he trace any
'meaning'or any discursiveidea fromthe poem back to its alleged sources.
Instead he asks: 'What does this erotic repressionitselfrepress?'47He
answersthat such repressionis often'a mask forinfluence-anxiety',48and
declares that 'a profound ambivalence toward Keats's influence is the true
subject of Tennyson's poem'.49 Keats's influence is feltnot so much in the
presence of allusions 'but in the precise figurationsof its absence'.50 Bloom
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does not reduce Tennyson and Keats to a common [Link], he

shows how Tennyson'spoem becomes unique by repressingKeats, who is
the othernessagainstwhichTennysoncontends.
associatedwith
then,thereis no difficulty
Despite Lewin's reservations,
is to specify'otherness',to render absence
'meaning'.5' The difficulty
palpable and precise,to show how pieces struggleto repressand exclude
otherpieces. I recognizethe dangersof imaginativewildnesshere,and will
avoid them. But in art the issue is how to channel,and thus to enhance,
the [Link] many recent modes of music analysisrepressthe
imagination,fleeingfromart towards an [Link] with
this mechanization,I preferBloom's view that 'a theoryof poetrymust
belong topoetry,must be poetrybeforeit can be of any use in interpreting
poems'.52 (Or, as Schenker insisted, 'music is always an art, in its
even in itshistory'."3)We musiciansoughtto
composition,itsperformance,
believethatmusic and the imaginationare one.
Let us boldlytransposeBloom, then,intomusicalterms:
a
can onlybe anothercomposition,
The meaningof a composition
the
of
other
but
not
and
the
the
not
piece,
meaning
composition itself,
notonlythrough
thepresence
oftheotherpiece,manifested
otherness
of its
theprecisefigurations
but also through
of theprecursor-piece,
absence.
This statement,in its vagueness,[Link] Part
IV, however,I shall prove, not its truth,but its usefulnessas a startingmusicalinfluence.
pointforunderstanding
Anyusurperof Bloom mustlearnthe necessityof [Link] can
be no merelyliteral,accuratereadingof Bloom here,because his theories
concernpoetry,not music. To appropriateBloom, we must misreadhim,
misreadhim as we
becomingBloomian revisionists;we must productively
extendhis ideas. Hence this articleexemplifiesthe process of
figuratively
misreadingthatit describes.
We must also reinterpret
existingmusic theoryif we are to synthesize
Bloom's intertextualmodel with models of musical [Link]
attemptsto enrichrhetoricalcriticism,by using an extended concept of
trope. As we have seen, each of the revisionaryratios is harnessed to a
particular trope; if we are to apply these ratios to explain musical
relationshipsbetween musical texts,we must find musical analogies for
these tropes, thus continuingthe analogical method by which Bloom
linkedthe tropesto the Freudian [Link] meaningfulappropriation
of Bloom, then, will have to revivethe long (but now almost forgotten)
traditionofmusicalrhetoric.
This revival,however,mustnot be naive or literal;a mere repetitionof
Burmeister will not satisfy contemporary sensibilities. Historical
as Hans-Georg Gadamer has shown,mustnot aim at mere
understanding,
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reconstruction;there is always a 'fusion of horizons' between past and

We can see such a fusionin effortsby recent critics
presentconcerns.54
such as Bloom, Paul de Man, Roland Barthes and otherto rethinkthe
foundations of rhetoric. Barthes, for example, attempts to 'fuse the
conceptual terminologyof structurallinguisticswith traditionaltermsof
rhetoric'."We mustreimaginemusicalrhetoric,usingit to reinvigorate
our
analytical methods, so that we can move beyond a purely neutral
descriptionof structure,to explain why particularstructuresare used
ratherthanother,equally 'logical' possibilities.
Since Bloom also linksthe tropesof rhetoricto the Freudian defences,
we shall also have to show these defences at work in music. To view
musical compositions as defendingthemselvesagainst anterioritymay
challenge our ideas about the functionof music. Yet wrestlingwith this
problemmay also enable us to pose the questionof how music exemplifies
statesof [Link] applied by the capable imagination,Bloom's
ideas mayrelievethe discontentfeltby so manymusicianstoday,who find
much contemporaryanalysis ahistorical and sterile. As Leo Treitler
recentlywrote,'we want analyticalmethodologiesthatconcernthemselves
not with structuresalone, but with the relations of structureand
meaning'."
Bloom's theory,then, will give us an intertextualrhetoric,while
providinga model for analysingcompositionsas relationalevents rather
than as closed and static entitiesand thus integratingdeep structural
[Link] what follows,I shall invokeapproachesas diverse
as those of Schoenberg, Schenker,Tovey, Eugene Narmour, David B.
Greene and others, using them within the context of an intertextual
mapping of [Link] theorythat claims so apparentlystrangea
composite precursor as Bloom-Schoenberg, or Bloom-Schenker,will
almost involuntarilybecome original. Whether that originalitywill be
productive,or merelyeccentric,remainsto be seen. Certainlyit willenable
us to addressmusicaltextswithfreshquestions.

III
To exemplifymy appropriationof Bloom's model, I have chosen to map
Brahms's misprision of Chopin. Brahms is a logical candidate for
influence-anxiety;
certainlythe many recent intertextualstudies of his
music are not [Link] conscious sense of belatednessis amply
documented. Recall, forinstance,his confessionto Clara Schumann: 'In
.. . I trymy hand at, I tread on the heels of my predecessors,
everything
whom I feelin my way.'57On anotheroccasion he complained:'You have
no idea how the likes of us feel to hear the tramp of a giant like that
[Beethoven]behindus.'5"
This anxietywas not merelypersonal; it also reflectedthe heightened
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historicalconsciousnessof the [Link]'s essay 'On

the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life' is perhaps the most
memorable diagnosis of the preoccupation with the past, but other
examplesreadilycome to mind. Hegel's propheciesof the death of artand
the end ofhistory,althoughwidelymisunderstood,certainlycontributedto
the atmosphere of belatedness. Emerson declared that 'our age is
It builds the sepulchresofthe fathers.'5"
retrospective.
In music the burdenof traditionwas increasednot onlyby a recoveryof
lost masterpieces (one thinks of the Bach revival) but also by the
phenomenonof [Link] Nietzsche said, otherartistsmust pay the
price for too great an [Link] became for nineteenth-century
music what Milton was forEnglish poets: 'theirgoad, theirtorment,yet
theirinspiration'.60
also theirstarting-point,
Brahms is remarkable for the number of his precursors,for the
of his agon withanteriority.
Whyhave I chosen to map
comprehensiveness
Brahms's misreadingof Chopin? One must begin somewhere,and yetmy
firststep is not [Link] may have felta special anxiety
towards Chopin. Remember that two prophecies frame Robert
Schumann's criticalcareer:his 1831 tributeto Chopin ('Hats off,gentlemen, a genius!') and his valedictoryessay in 1854, proclaimingthe advent
fromthe brow of Jove!').6'
of Brahms ('Like Minerva sprungfully-formed
Brahms admitted that Schumann's predictionmade him anxious; this
intense
pressurecertainlycontributedto Brahms'sincreasingself-criticism,
in
the
late
1850s.
contrapuntalstudies,and diminishedrate of publication
of
Schumann's
prophecy may have
Chopin's successful fulfilment
in
him
direct
feel
competitionwith Chopin.
challengedBrahms,making
of
but
is
This conclusion speculative, course,
Chopin was certainly,among
to
in
the
Brahms, an artist of uncanny
generation prior
composers
would have to wrestleto
whom
Brahms
with
a
originality, strongprecursor
achievestrength.
BeforeI applyBloom's model, I mustinterpolatea historicaldigression
to documentBrahms'sknowledgeof Chopin's music. It was the composer
JoachimRaffwho firstlinkedthe names of Brahmsand Chopin. That was
in 1853, when Brahms, then only twentyyears old, visited Liszt in
Weimar. AfterLiszt sight-readBrahms's Scherzo Op. 4, Raffremarked
thatpartsof the piece recalled Chopin's Scherzo Op. 31.62 (These are, of
earlier.)Brahms'sreplycourse,the same two scherzosto whichI referred
- was
of influence-anxiety
as a manifestation
whichBloom would interpret
that he had never seen or heard any of Chopin's music. Brahms was
probablybeing evasive:a glance at Clara Schumann'srecitalprograms,for
example, will ascertainthat she played Chopin's music at virtuallyall of
her concertspriorto 1853 in Brahms's nativecityof Hamburg. Her first
Hamburg appearance on 14 March 1835 included Chopin, as did manyof
therein 1837, 1840, 1842, 1850 and later.63
her subsequentperformances
By 1853, then, Chopin's music had received considerable exposure in
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Hamburg, so it is likelythatBrahms's sweepingdenial of Chopin was the

defensive reply of a young man who felt his originalitythreatened.
(WhetherBrahms knew Chopin's Op. 31 in particularas earlyas 1853,
to establish.)
however,would be difficult
Followinghis visitto Weimar,Brahmswas able to extendhis knowledge
of Chopin:
A reading-through
ofBrahms'scorrespondence
fromSeptember,
1853
theend of 1855 revealsthatthiswas a periodof astonishing
through
musical and intellectualdiscoveryforhim .... It was in 1855, in fact,

thatBrahmslaidthefoundations
forhisremarkable
He played,
library.
heard,and studiedthe scoresof a greatvarietyof worksby Bach,
and Chopin,
Schubert,
Haydn,Beethoven,
Schumann,Mendelssohn,
amongothers.64
Brahms's librarycame to include the completeworksof Chopin, and he
also acquired manuscriptsof Chopin's A? Prelude, the E minorMazurka
Op. 41, No. 1, and the A minorMazurka Op. 67, No. 4, along with a
of the Barcarolle,Op. 60.65 Anothersign of Brahms's
Widmungsexemplar
attentionto Chopin is a quotation fromthe C? minorMazurka Op. 30,
No. 4 in Brahms's anthologyof fifthsand octaves.66Brahms also publicly
performedworks by Chopin; on 30 September 1858, for instance, he
playedtheE minorConcerto,Op. 11, at a courtconcertat Detmold.67
More importantly,
in 1877 Brahmsbecame an editorof the Breitkopf
and HdirtelcompleteChopin [Link] took his editorialresponsibilities
very seriously,consultingas many autographsand original editions as
possible. Between 1877 and 1880, Chopin's name appears frequentlyin
Brahms'scorrespondence,especiallyin lettersto Breitkopfand Hairtel,and
to his co-editorsErnst Rudorffand Woldemar Bargiel. Some of these
lettersdiscusstextualproblemsin Chopin's worksin greatdetail.
Brahmsalso did a singletranscription
of a piece by Chopin: the Etude
in F minor,Op. 25, No. 2. This transcription,
made afterautumn 1862,
was published in 1869; its firstpublic performance,by Brahms himself,
was in 1868.68 Brahmsadded parallelthirdsand sixthsto Chopin's melody,
makingthisetude even more [Link] has rarelybeen
noticedbeforeis thatBrahms'sversionis not a stricttranscription
at all: it
is eighteenbars longerthan Chopin's original.69Brahms has eighty-seven
bars, Chopin only sixty-nine!Where did Brahms get the eighteen
additionalbars? I suggestthat the transcription
has a covertpurpose, in
additionto its obvious functionas a virtuosotechnicalexercise: it is also a

compositional study, a study in phrase expansions. Remember that a great

deal of nineteenth-centurymusic was tyrannized by phrases of four bars
or eight bars. This predictable uniformityseemed almost inescapable, and
Brahms struggled, as Tovey and Schoenberg emphasized, to recapture
the more complex phrasing of composers such as Haydn and Mozart.
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more subtleand fluid- he

AlthoughChopin's phrasinggrewprogressively
was also aware of what William Rothsteincalled the 'rhythmproblem'vthis etude consistsmostlyof eight-barphrases (mitigatedby a fewphrase
is to introduceinternal
overlaps). Brahms's strategy,in his transcription,
not
of
these
he
does
into
some
merelytranscribe,he
phrases;
expansions
rethinks
Chopin's piece.
In Ex. 5 I have verticallyaligned Brahms's bs 60-70 with the correspondingbars in Chopin's original,bs 51-8. In Chopin's piece, thisphrase
is heard literallytwice before (bs 1-8, 20-7). On these firsttwo appearances, Brahms altersdetails but not the lengthof the phrase; he merely
adds thirds and sixths below Chopin's melody, and these necessitate
changesin the voice leadingand registerof the accompaniment,especially
in the bass. These earlier appearances formthe metricalprototypefor
Brahms's expansion.71 In bs 60-4, Brahms reproducesChopin's firstfive
bars, but then repeats bars four and five; such repetitionis a common
technique in phrase [Link] Brahms goes on to Chopin's sixth
and seventhbars, followedby anotherexpansionbeforeconcludingwith
Chopin's eighthbar, which is now the eleventhbar of Brahms's phrase.
Several other passages in Brahms's transcriptioninterpolate similar
expansions.
is especiallystrikingif one compares it
The freedomof transcription
with Brahms's reverentadaptation of Bach's Chaconne. Had Brahms
publisheda blatantrecompositionof Chopin's piece, it would have seemed
an arrogantgesture. Essentially,however, that is what he has done,
smugglingit in underthe camouflageof a virtuosostudy.72
All thishistoricalevidence,then,suggeststhatthe matureBrahmsknew
Chopin's music [Link] familiarity,of course, is a minimal
preconditionforestablishinginfluence.

IV
of Brahms's Romanze,
To test Bloom's model, I will do an inter-reading
Chopin's
Op. 118, No. 5 and what I considerits centralprecursor-text,
Berceuse, Op. 57.73 This relationshiphas not escaped detection: Paul
Badura-Skoda called the middle section of the Romanze 'a Brahmsian
elaboration of the Berceuse'," while Michael Musgrave remarkedthat
'perhapsthe Berceuse was not farfrom[Brahms's]mind in this section'."
withoutmentioningChopin,consideredthe Romanze
Some earlierlisteners,
a cradle-song,placing it in the same genre as the Berceuse. Thus both
Eduard Hanslick'6and Max Kalbeck describedit as 'ein Wiegenlied',and
Kalbeck also called it 'eine wiegenliedartige Barkarolle'.77No one has yet
realized, however, how deep a misprision of the Berceuse the Romanze is.
Obviously the Berceuse is not the only precursor to the Romanze. Karl
Geiringer, for example, heard Brahms's 'characteristic leaning ... to

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Ex. 5 Chopin, Etude Op. 25, No. 2, bs 51-8, and Brahms's transcription,
bs 60-70
Chopin
53

52

51

piano
sempre
v ia

1(

Brahms4

. . .

p.

1
77,77?7

41

Chopin
54

-55

orpw

6342

Brahms

I I

3S2

5 44

jp

32I2
43 2165 ~a _,

4 ?I-miI,3 2

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Ex. 5 cont.
Chopin
56

S'

57

Brahms

8va

66

67
A32

681

Chopin
58

&I
II

Brahms
69

20

S12
5 43

70

41

1 4

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preclassical art' in the ostinato figure of the middle section,78 and

ConstantinFloros relatedthe middle sectionto the pastoraleor musette.79
The title 'Romanze' - apparentlyan afterthought
by Brahms, who first
called it an Intermezzo- suggestsotherprecedents,and one could study
the use of this designation by Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms
and other composersto investigatewhat Jeffrey
himself"8
Kallberg called
'the rhetoricof genre'.8'The Berceuse also has its own precursors,and
Brahms may be wrestlingwith them,as mediated throughthe Berceuse.
Nor can we exclude the possibilitythatBrahmsis struggling
here withhis
earlierself,an encounterfrequentin his works,since he oftenreshaped
compositionseven afterdecades.
Without disregardingthese other sources, I will offera sustained
meditation on the Romanze and the Berceuse, because I think the
Berceuse is the centralpresence(and absence) in the Romanze, the crucial
precursorthat Brahms invokes,while also workingto resistand subvert
the studyof
Chopin's influence,wrestinga meaningofhis own. Restricting
to an interplaybetweentwo textsis not an innocentstrategy,
intertextuality
as JonathanCuller warned.82
Nevertheless,ifthe textsare carefullychosen,
it can be a productivetactic,because influencein art is alwayspersonal:
'the human writes,the human thinks,and always followingafterand
defendingagainst anotherhuman'.83This stance explicitlyrejectsrecent
French criticismthat ascribes the productionof worksto an impersonal
text-machine,while proclaimingthe death of the author.I share Bloom's
belief that artists confrontnot only traditionin general, but specific
precursorsand particularworks.
To uncover Brahms's misprisionof Chopin we must ask: What is
originalabout the Berceuse,whatenables it to become an origin?In Kant's
or in
terms,what empowersthe Berceuse to liberateBrahms's originality,
Bloom's rathermore negativeterms,what is it about the Berceuse that
makes Brahms anxious - what makes it a strongcompositionwithwhich
Brahmsmustwrestleto attainhis own strength?
Part of the answeris that
the Berceuse poses a radical and perhaps unique solutionto the central
problem of variations:How can one overcomethe sectional divisionsof
this form?A variationtheme generallyinscribesan independentcircle of
meaning,resemblingan autonomous compositionwithcompletemelodic
and harmonicclosure. Hence variationmovements,as theyreproducethe
structureof the theme,may disintegrateinto separatesections,ratherlike
Aristotle'sdescriptionof an 'episodic' plot: 'one in which there is no
probabilityor necessityfor the order in which the episodes follow one
another'.84The problem,then, is how to give the sequence of variations
some compellinglogic and unity.
In the Berceuse,whichis a strictset of variations,85
Chopin's solutionis
[Link] he writes a one-bar ostinato patternthat
pervadesthe whole piece, pushingthe additivetendencyso farthatit turns
into its opposite,providinga unifyingtextureratherthan fragmenting
the
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piece into [Link] his themeis onlyfourbars long, fartoo

shortto be takenfora completepiece. Most radicallyof all, he deprivesthe
theme of any melodic or harmonicclosure,so that it ends on 2 over the
dominant seventh. The theme ends 'in mid-air', and each variation
reproducesthisfeature(Ex. 6).
Ex. 6 Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, bs 1-6
Andante

..dole.
-.,

~.
6

I"2L

"-

;-hL
!F

32

-"
aTe

'*t

i,, r

,
L_.00

Brahms appropriates all these ideas in the middle section of the

Romanze, whichis also a set of [Link] also has a one-barostinato
(although he changes it slightlyevery fourth bar). His theme, like
Chopin's, is onlyfourbars long (see Ex. 7). He also avoids both melodic
and harmonicclosureat the end of the theme:his fourthbar leads directly
into the firstvariation,and all the variationsdo the same. Even Brahms's
performanceindicationsreinforcethe connectionto the Berceuse: Brahms
writes'moltopiano e dolce sempre',whileChopin markshis theme'p' and
'dolce'. Both slur theirostinatiwith one-bar slurs. All these connections
are obvious, and I thinktheyare meant to be heard; thereis a veryselfconscious sort of allusion here. Althoughneitherwas specific,I suspect
these were the featuresBadura-Skoda and Musgrave intendedwhen they
observeda connectionbetweenthe two pieces.
We have not yetinvokedBloom's revisionary
ratios,because we are still
exploringthe level of conspicuous allusion,I thinkwe must begin at this
level,and then ask if these surfaceallusionssignala deeper preoccupation
with a [Link] cannot preciselydraw the boundary
betweenconscious and subliminalallusion,Brahmsmighthave been aware
of some connectionsto the Berceuse and not of others.
Let us explore these deeper [Link] seems to be a literal

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Ex. 7 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 17-20

Allegretto grazioso

41

..
,0
"t

pe
motto

,.

S3

~
r i

. ....
dolceesemp
re

trrC

c?.

ad.

Ii.

id
quotation from the Berceuse in the Romanze. Brahms's initial motive
echoes Chopin's theme (Ex. 8). The other allusions to the Berceuse
confirmthe originof this borrowing(the one-bar ostinato,the four-bar
theme,the use of strictvariationform,the avoidance of closure). Without
this clusterof associations,the relationshipof Brahms's fivenotes to the
Berceuse would remainambiguous.
Ex. 8 Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, bs 3-4, and Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118,
No. 5, b.17
-

(:hopiii

&'u I-7

jjj:

Bralinis

Significantly,these five notes belong to what one might,following

of the Romanze. Two interlocking
forms
Schoenberg,call the Grundgestalt
of the motive appear in the opening bars (Ex. 9). Thus the entire
Romanze, not just its middle part, invokes the Berceuse. (I will later
pursuethe implicationsofthis.)
But the connectiongoes much deeper than those five notes. Chopin
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Ex. 9 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, Grundgestalt

(melodicaspect)
I

E
AK---6-.5

J J J
Z<-,

Jdo

composes out thismotiveby embeddingthe foregroundfigureof bs 3-4 in

a largerstatementof the same motive. Example 10 shows this relationship.86The motive is a descending arpeggiationwith a passing note
(aV2-f2-e-d12); the f2in b.4 is an incompleteneighbourprolongingthe
precedingeV2.I have bracketedthe foregroundstatementin my graph,and
beamed togetherthe notes ofthemotivicenlargement.
Ex. -10Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, bs 3-6, voice-leadinganalysis
3

(N)

-I
(N)

Or
(3-prg)
*

24

/j

(etc.)

(N)

(3-prg)
I

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Brahmsdoes not merelyappropriateChopin's five-notemotive:he also

takes overthe organicexpansionof the motive,as shownin Ex. 11. The a2
2
(5) in b.17 connectswiththe f in b.19, e2 in b.20 and d2 in b.21, creating
a large descendingarpeggiationwitha passing note. I have beamed these
notes together in my graph, and bracketed the same notes at the
foregroundlevel in b.17. The details of voice leading must be carefully
examined, to see how Brahms makes the composing-outof the motive
audible.
Ex. 11 Brahms, Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 17-20, voice-leading
analysis
(N)

(N)

(arp.)=(N)
-_-

- ...

--

66-5

6 --5

?4

TI

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In b.17, a2 is firstprolongedby a descendingarpeggiationa2-f42-e-d ;

this is the foregroundversionof the motivethat Brahms will eventually
expand. The second f2 in b. 17 is an incompleteneighbourto the previous
e2. There is also a descending registraltransferfrom a2 to a', thus
prolongingthe primarynote in the [Link] bs 18-19, neighbour
notes b' and g' embellisha'. Then an ascendingarpeggiationleads froma'
thus bringingin the second note of the enlarged
to d2 and finallyto f#2,
motive.
Why do I stress f2 in b.19 in my sketch? (Afterall, it is only an
unaccentedquaver.) The reason is thatbs 18 and 19 are identicalwiththe
exception of their last notes; such similaritytends to emphasize any
Thus both bars featureneighbouringmotionaround a', but in
differences.
b.18 this leads to d2, while in the next bar it leads to f#2,
completingan
one
In the nextbar,
mightwonderwhyI
ascendingarpeggiationa'-d2-f#2.
a
it
include e2 in the largemotive,when is merely semiquaverin the piece.
Afterthe ratherstrikingseventh-leap,however,fromf#2down to g1',f#2is
mentallyretained; it lingerspsychologically,and we expect a stepwise
[Link] motion fills the gap, concealing the connection
betweenf#2and e2, but we hear it nevertheless.Brahmsthenresolvese2 to
d2in b.21, completingthe motivicexpansion.
Of Bloom's revisionaryratios, it is the second, tessera,that best
describesthe relationshipbetween Chopin's variationtheme and that of
the Romanze. Bloom borrowsthistermfromancientmystery
cults,where
it signifieda token of recognition,fragmentsof potterythat would fit
togetherto reconstitutea whole. Here is Bloom's definitionof tessera,or
antithetical
completion:
A poet antithetically
by so readingthe
'completes'his precursor,
butto meanthemin anothersense,
as to retainitsterms,
parent-poem
as if the precursorhas failedto go farenough.... In the tessera,the

tellshimwouldcompletethe
laterpoetprovideswhathisimagination
'truncated'
otherwise
reprepoem and poet.... the tessera
precursor
sentsanylaterpoet's attemptto persuadehimself(and us) thatthe
Word would be wornout if not redeemedas a newly
precursor's
Wordoftheephebe.87
andenlarged
fulfilled
Brahms'squotationfromthe Berceuse does not signalhomage; ratherit
is a tessera,an antitheticalcompletionthat aims to convertthe Berceuse
into a commentaryon the Romanze. Brahmsretainshis precursor'sterms,
sense. Not onlydoes BrahmsenlargeChopin's
but uses themin a different
the entiretheme,he also extendsit to overlap
to
cover
as
we
saw,
motive,
As
d2
variation.
withthe first
completesthe large motivein b.21, a2, the
in
above
it, beginningthe firstvariationand withit a
primarynote, comes
new statementofthe motive.(Example 11 showsthisin detail,whileFig. 1
clarifiesthe process schematically.)Thus Brahmsuses Chopin's motiveto
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linkthemeand variationin a veryintimateway,as ifhis precursorhad not

gone farenough.
Fig. 1 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, motiviclinkagetechnique
I

Theme

Var. 1
I

A- F#-E-D

Var. 2
I

A-F#-E-D

(etc.)

A
I -F#-E-D
Brahms wants (consciously or unconsciously) to persuade us (and
himself) that his discourse is more whole, more complete, than the
'truncated' discourse of his [Link] do this, he emphasizes the
correspondenceof partand whole: his motiveis a microcosmforthe entire
the
theme;since variations,as Schoenbergsaid, are primarily
repetitions,88
theme is a microcosm for the whole variationset. Our analysis of the
Berceuse in Ex. 10 revealeda similaremphasison part/whole
relationships.
The ostinato prefiguresthe F-Gb neighbouringmotion on which the
Berceuse theme is built. This rapport of structurallevels is part of
Chopin's attemptto impose himselfon tradition,by persuadingus thatthe
Berceuse is more whole, more organicin its solutionto the problemsof
variationform,than the variationsof his [Link] Chopin's piece
is itselfan antitheticalcompletion,and Brahms's piece is a tesseraof a
tessera.

Bloom linkstesserato the tropeof synecdoche,definedby Quintilianas

'lettingus understandthe pluralfromthe singular,thewhole froma part,a
genus fromthe species, somethingfollowingfromsomethingpreceding;
and viceversa'.89Synecdocheworksto convinceus thatinfluence'is a part,
of which self-revisionism
and self-rebegetting
is the whole'.90The rapport
of structurallevels that we observed creates a musical analogue for the
part/wholerelationshipsof [Link] mightobject that Schenker's
analyses often reveal such a process of hierarchical reduplication.
Schenker'ssystem,however,discloses bothhierarchicalreduplicationand
its opposite, showingboth the possibilityof a rapportbetween levels, as
when the same motiveappears in both the foregroundand middleground,
and a tensionor contradictionbetweenlevels,as when a dissonanceon one
levelbecomes consonantat the [Link] KennethBurkehas remarked,'the
characteristic
invitationto rhetoric'is when 'identification
and division'are
put 'ambiguouslytogether,so thatyou cannotknowforcertainjust where
one ends and the other begins'."9 In the infiniteinterplaybetween
identificationand opposition of structurallevels that Schenker's theory
reveals, I see powerfulpossibilitiesfor the constructionof a systemof
rhetoric,even if Schenker seldom explored these implicationsof his

method.92

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The relation between the Berceuse and the Romanze extends far
[Link]'sentiremiddle sectionis
rathercloselymodelled on the Berceuse. Accordingto GustavJenner,who
studied composition with Brahms, Brahms advocated the traditional
pedagogical use of models, encouragingJennerto study movementsby
Mozart and Beethoven,analysingthemin minutedetail,and to recompose
them, followingtheirproportionsand modulationswhile inventingnew
But whywould a maturecomposerlikeBrahmsresortto models?
themes.93
One can readilysee whyhe would recommendthis approach to a relative
beginnerlike Jenner,or why he mighthave done so himselfas a young
man, but whywould he continuethismethodduringhis last decade?
Bloom can help us [Link] Bloom, a poem becomes canonic
by misreading and overcoming other strong poems, and 'builds the
canonical ambition, process, and agon directlyinto its own text'.94
Modelling oneself on anotherpiece could be a way of internalizingthe
canonic ambition,'entering[theprecursor'swork]fromwithin,writingin
a way that revises, displaces, and recasts the precursor'.95 Unlike the
pedagogical use of models, this modelling-as-misreadingaims at
subversion and distortionrather than emulation. It is a question of
ratherthanyieldingto it.
usurpingtheprecursor'sauthority
Let us trace this modellingprocess. Chopin's piece exemplifieswhat
Wagner called [Link] melody,however,does not entail
amorphousness;despiteghostlierdemarcationsbetweenphrases,Chopin's
As my
thereis an articulated
variationsneverlose theirintegrity;
continuity.
a
theme
Berceuse
the
in
Ex.
10
neighlarge
confirms,
prolongs
analysis
bouringmotionf2 g 2. Thus whilethe themeis a four-barunit,the need to
resolvethe neighbournote GC back to F createsa tensionthattranscends
the theme,fosteringcontinuity;each new variationis also the completion
ofthe neighbourmotionF-G-F:
linkage
Fig. 2 Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, neighbour-note
Theme
I

Var. 2

Var. 1

G,

(etc.)

F
1

G,

F
I

(etc.)

was also a Brahmsianideal; once he praised

This articulatedcontinuity
one of Bach's suite movements, for example, as 'a single melody,
wonderfullyarticulated'.Chopin's endless melody,then, may have been
another reason why Brahms admired (and envied) the Berceuse. Since
Brahms'sthemeis modelled on Chopin's he can also achievea continuous
[Link] uses a largeneighbourmotion,exceptthat

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it is a lower neighbour:A-G -A. As my graphin Ex. 11 shows,however,

Brahms's expansion of the A-F?-E-D motive also providesanotherlink
betweeneach phrase,since the beginningof each variationsimultaneously
completes the motive and begins it again. Thus Brahms's antithetical
completion of the Berceuse theme approaches endless melody by two
different
routes,both the neighbourmotionand themotivicexpansion:
Fig. 3 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, neighbour-note
linkage
Theme
A

Var. 1
I

Var. 2

G#

(etc.)

II

Chopin's themehas a tenuous identity:since it lacks both melodic and

harmonicclosure,its integrity
as a themeis [Link] can Chopin
establishthe momentumthatTovey consideredcharacteristic
of variation
sets - the momentumachievedby the repetitionof the whole period of the
theme?Witha themewhose identityis as fragileas thatofthe Berceuse,he
cannotriskintroducingelaboratemelodicdiminutionsin his firstvariation;
withoutclosure to signal the end of the theme,we mightnot realize that
the variationprocess has already started. Instead, his firstvariationis
almosta straightforward
repetitionof the [Link] course,variationsets
tend to be unadventurousin their initial variation,but Chopin's first
variationis hardlya variationat all. He adds an innervoice beneath his
the identity
melody,but the melody remains almost intact. This confirms
the
theme
and
establishes
the
momentum
of the
of
throughrepetition,
variationset, ensuringthat we will hear each variationin a bar-to-bar
correspondencewiththe theme.
Brahms followsChopin in this [Link] firstvariation(bs 21-4) is
virtuallya repetitionof bs 17-20; the real process of adding melodic
diminutionsbeginswiththe second variation(bs 25-8). This repetitionhas
seduced at least one criticinto believingBrahms's theme to have eight
measures. Constantin Floros wrote that the theme is eight bars long,
followedby two variationsof eightand twelvebars respectively.96
Floros
would have been suspicious of his conclusions had he remembered
Brahms's deprecationof 'fantasiavariations'."Brahms'svariationstend to
be strict,followingthe theme in a [Link] should
have seen thatrepetition,as Tovey showed, can establishthe momentum
of a variationset."8Even if Floros failed to realize that lack of closure
he shouldhave recognizedthatthe changes
compelledBrahms'srepetition,
in diminutionin bs 25, 29, 33 and 37 indicate that these are new
[Link] Floros, among all the commentariesI have read, makes
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thismistake.
Brahms'smodellingdoes not extendto the same numberof variations.
The Berceuse has twelvevariations,the Romanze [Link] reason is
thatBrahmsis writinga middle section,not an autonomouspiece, so the
Perhaps anotherreason is thatChopin's simple
proportionsare different.99
tonicand dominantharmoniesbear morerepetitionthanthe moreunusual
VVN thatBrahmsuses in everyfourthbar. Both Brahmsand Chopin tend
towards increasingrhythmicand melodic elaboration. Since this is a
tendencyin many variationsets, however,it is not necessarilya resultof
Brahms'smodellingprocess.
Brahms's coda to his middle section echoes Chopin's. Chopin's coda
embellishes an underlying

1-

motion over a pedal point, with the

-6?4-8
as Schenkerobserved,expands the
harmoniesV'/[Link],

neighbourfigureF-G?F on a very large scale, producing a wonderful

composed-outritardandoappropriatefora coda, since we now hear two
eight-barunits, in contrastto the four-barphrases of the variations.'00
Brahmsalso concludeshis middlesectionwith8 - 7 - --8 over a tonic pedal
point with the harmonies V7/IV-IV-V7-I. Because of the different
proportionsof Brahms's modelling,his coda is onlyfivebars long, versus
Chopin's sixteenbars. Note that Brahms's overlapshis last variationby
one bar, since b.40 simultaneouslyconcludes the fifthvariation and
initiatesthe coda. (I would classifybs 45-7 as a transitionback to the
reprise,ratherthan as partof the coda to the middle section.) (See Exs 12
and 13.) This V'/IV-IV-V7-I progressionover a tonic pedal is a common
Baroque idiom, especiallyfor beginningor ending a piece. Many Bach
Clavier,Book
preludes,forexample,begin or end thisway (Well-Tempered
I beginning,
Prelude
Book
VII
Prelude
I
Prelude
II,
beginning;
I,
ending,
an
earlier
is
that
is
It
practice,
Chopin invoking
etc.).
possible, therefore,
and his abilityto absorb Baroque influencewithoutstylisticregressionor
pastichemayhave been a sourceofBrahms'sinterestin the Berceuse.

V
Now consideranothercompositionthat also wrestleswith the Berceuse:
the last piece in Max Reger's Trdumeam Kamin, Op. 143. Like Chopin,
Reger uses a one-bar [Link] metre,harmonyand
spacing, Reger's ostinato hardly differsfrom Chopin's. Even Reger's
performancedirectionsapproximateChopin's: Reger indicates 'p' and
'espressivoma dolce', while Chopin writes'dolce' and 'p'; both place a
legato slur over each bar of [Link] Reger begins
with his unaccompanied ostinato, followed by an increasingly florid
melody that begins on 3, the association with the Berceuse is difficultto
resist (Ex. 14). Many later details also belong to the realm of conspicuous
allusion. Compare, for example, the rapidly descending trills,culminating

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Ex. 12 Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, bs 55-70, voice-leadinganalysis

3

iN)

8 3

b7

6
4

i---"----

--"--

A38

---

"

3
VI

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Ex. 13 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 40-4, voice-leadinganalysis

(=g(
(3 - prg)

(8)

s5
T-6
-7
--(s)-----117--~----------7
7
5

8
3

Ex. 14 Reger,Trdumeam Kamin,Op. 143, No. 12, bs 1-6

Larghetto(s.6o) (Studie)

F-3

32

espressivo, ma dolce

pp

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in scales, in Reger'sbs 22 and 28 (Ex. 15) withChopin's similarpassage at

b.43 (Ex. 16). Reger's coda, beginning with C? in b.29, echoes the
analogous moment in Chopin's piece. Note the identical spacing and
registerof the finalchord in both [Link] Brahms in the Romanze,
Regerbuilds his canonic ambitiondirectlyintohis piece, placinghimselfin
directcompetitionwithChopin.
Ex. 15 Reger,Trdumeam Kamin,Op. 143, No. 12, bs 24-9
dolcissirno

m__SEffFt
- -.-,

pp

26

dolcirsimo

espressiv

PP

-L
dolci~simo

_t

_)

L---- C

RP

C-

- -

dolclisimo

d lijespressivo

28

pp

7D

ppmtooto
7-____IEEE______

IL

Ex. 16 Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, bs 43-4

-------4
4"i--------

6 j -i-

#o,,kt

e
s.
"
-leggieriss_

MUSIC ANALYSIS

'.

..

: "...

tro

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. ..

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KORSYN

This juxtapositionof Chopin, Brahms and Reger poses some of the

Both Brahmsand Reger clearlyinvoke
centralparadoxes of intertextuality.
theircanonic [Link] whileBrahms
a strongprecursor,internalizing
imposes himselfon the canon, I suspect most listenerswould agree that
Reger does not. Brahms is stronghere, Reger weak. How does Brahms
become original,remainingwhollyhimself,while echoing the Berceuse?
And why does Reger, despite the undeniable charm of his piece, fail to
but we mustnot
wresta meaningofhis own?These questionsare difficult,
evade them,because theirsolutionwill lead to a subtlerunderstandingof
musicalinfluencethanwe have yethad.
Here Bloom's theorycan provide criticaltouchstonesfor explaining
His insightinto the misprisionof the precursorsthrough
canon-formation.
ratios
the revisionary
givesus a measureforestimatingsuccess or failurein
creative
[Link] is not to denythatothershave anticipated
attaining
Bloom's approach;manycriticshave suggestedthatone workof artcan be
or critiqueof [Link] Bloom's imaginativemapping
an interpretation
movementsis unmatched.
oftheserevisionary
We can invoke Bloom's firstrevisionaryratio, clinamen,to explain
Brahms's overcomingof the Berceuse. This termcomes fromLucretius,
whereit describesthe swerveof the atoms thatmakes change possible in
the universe. Clinamenis the poet's initial swerve from the precursor;
Bloom associates this ratio with the trope of irony and the Freudian
defenceofreaction-formation.
AgainI quote Louis B. Renza's summary:
'Clinamen'constitutesthe poet's 'reaction-formation'
againstand
textthroughthe tropeof [Link]
of the precursor's
misprision
to avoid the earliertext's
ephebewriterswervesfromand attempts
'intolerablepresence' by exposingits relativelynaive visionary
He fastenson the text'sinabilityto comprehendthe
limitations.
negationof its own expressedvision,a negationwhichhis work
'there'intheearlierwork.0"'
includesjustas ifitwereimplicitly
How can we usurp this ironizing clinamenfor music? Can music
metaphoricallyexemplifyirony? Irony is to say one thing and mean
another;it involvesa conflictin levels,a disparitybetweensurfacemeaning
and deeper [Link] music, we have a theoreticalmodel thathas the
potentialto reproducethe structureof irony,althoughI doubt anyonehas
so read it: Schenker'stheoryof structurallevels. In a Schenkerianvoiceleading hierarchy,dissonance at one level can become consonant at the
next; a passing note, forexample,can be composed-outat the next level,
becoming a local consonance. A passage can, in effect,say one thing
('consonance') and mean another('dissonance'). We are seldom aware of
this conflictin levels, but a composer can exploit this implicit irony.'102
That is what Brahms does with the Berceuse reminiscence: he ironizes
it, by framinghis D major variation set between two F major sections and
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thus embedding it within a larger narrative. (Imagine how different

Brahms's middle sectionwould sound as an autonomousmovementin D
major: suppose it began in b.17 and substituteda perfectcadence in D
major,perhapsmodelled on thatof the Berceuse,forthe transitionback to
F major that startsin b.45.) The framingaction is Brahms's ironizing
his initialswervefromthe Berceuse.
clinamen,
This subvertsChopin's whole [Link] Berceuse has an extraordinarydiatonic stability;its harmonies are the simplest tonics and
dominants, with the subdominant appearing only in the coda; its
chromaticismis entirelylocal, since the ostinatofigureclarifiesthe tonal
functionof all the melodicfigures.'01
Brahms underminesthis [Link] middle section is locally stable,
but globallyunstable,because F major is the ultimatetonic. If ironyis to
say one thing and mean another,Brahms ironizes the Berceuse as he
invokes it: his middle section says 'tonal stability'but means 'tonal
instability'.A voice-leadinggraphshowsthisconflictin levelsbetweenthe
D major foregroundof bs [Link] its functionas VI in a largercontext
(see Ex. 17).
My own swervefromBloom is to identifyclinamennot merelywith a
poem's opening figurations,as Bloom usually does, but to considerthe
entireframingaction as the initialswervefromthe [Link] is a
necessary revision of Bloom because of the differencesbetween the
of poems and thatof [Link] poems and
temporality
compositionsare what Bloom calls 'fictionsof duration', each medium
tendsto structureits fictivetimeratherdifferently.
In particular,the largescale repetitionsin music have few parallelsin poetry,despite the use of
shortrefrainsin manypoems.
How does Brahms make us aware of the simultaneoustonal stability
and instability?
How does he make us hear the conflictin levels?His irony
involvesmuch more thanthe traditionalexpectationthata piece willbegin
and end in the same [Link] also builds thatexpectationdirectlyinto the
piece.
Consider how Brahmspreparesthe tonalityof his middle [Link]
Grundgestalt
presentedin the opening phrase already foreshadowswhat
Schoenbergwould call a 'problem', that is, the way in which conflicting
forceswill jeopardize the primacyof the tonic. Patricia Carpenterurged
thatthebasic shape in generalis 'neithermelodynor harmonynor rhythm,
but a concrete entityconsistingof all three'.'04Melody, harmonyand
rhythmall conspirehereto emphasizethe D [Link] we have seen,
the melodic aspect of the Grundgestalt
containstwo interlocking
formsof
the motive borrowed from the Berceuse. One form of the motive

arpeggiates an F major triad, while the other arpeggiates a D minor triad

(Ex. 18). Meanwhile, the firstD minor harmony appears in b. 1; in b. 3
the D minor triad receives more durational stress (Ex. 19).
The second phrase begins to realize the implications of the basic shape.
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Ex. 17 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, voice-leadinganalysis

5--5
A

VI

(=3;

vI

v/Ill

III

V/V

(covertones)

10-5,10 5,

I
Al

10-5,10 5,

10--5,10 --5,

5,

min: V

.
--.--d
VI
IV I)

(VI

10

I III V

(VI

IV

I)

10 -5, 10-5,

10-5,

10 5, 10-5,

10 -5,

10-10-10

10

(8-8-8!)

36

(VI

IV

I)

VI

I IIIV

dmin: VI
IV
VI

IV V

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Ex. 17 cont.
N

F: VI

(arp.)

S6
4

6
4-4

(Thevariations
this
reproduce
voiceleading)

4
2

D: I
B

H--V4

F: VI

(3rdprog.)

(coda

(transition)

to B)

7 ----6

3 D: I

--4

MUSIC ANALYSIS

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F:V 4

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Ex. 17 cont.

21

2?(4-prg.)

bs
=1-4)8-51
reprise
reprise
bs
= 1-4)

A2

10
(105
510-5

(inrer voice 5-prg.)

(coda)

. ...2-3
I

187
VI

IV

II V

87I
VI
IV

IV

Ex. 18 Brahms,Romanze,Op. 118, No. 5, Grundgestalt

(melodic aspect)

95

The firstchromaticnote in the piece is C#in b.6, the leading note to D.

The prevailingdiatonicismof the contextmakesthischromaticnote all the
more conspicuous,and it introducesthe firsttonicizationofD minorin the
piece. This growingemphasis on D minor preparesthe middle section,
withits tonicizationof D major; at the same time,however,the absence of
F#in the firstsixteen bars allows D major to enter with a wonderful
[Link] hemiolas everyfourthbar (bs 4, 8, 12 and 16) preparethe
duple metre(() ofthe middlepart (see Ex. 20).
But notice what happens to this tonicizationof D minor. When we
reach its dominantin b.8, Brahmslowersthe leadingnote fromC4 to C?,
to F major.
changingthe A major triadto an A minortriadand returning

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Ex. 19 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 1-4

Andante
L

o
iv
ress
esp

-27VSfsI

re is

.--

Ex. 20 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 5-8

-0

1 w

rItt.

7J

--"

p.

rit

- -

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When the second tonicizationof D minorarrivesin bs 14-16 we are subtly

conditionedby the eventsofb.8 to regardthe followingsectionin D major
as somethingthat cannot last; just as b.8 melted back into F major, we
expect the music followingb.16 will eventuallydo the same. In thisway,
Brahms makes us hear the dual functionof the middle section as locally
stableforegroundkeyand globallyunstableVI in F major.
of our temporal
Withouta similarframingaction,Chopin's structuring
experienceof time's
experiencein the Berceuse yieldsto a quite different
we may capturesomethingof the
passing. If we reflecton thatdifference,
of
each
uniqueness
composition.
in music,with
Here I mustinserta digressionon the role of temporality
the promisethatits relevanceto the Berceuse and the Romanze will soon
become evident. Every mood or state of consciousness, as Heidegger
mode of
observed,'o5 has a particulartemporalstructure,a characteristic
structures
our
of
time.
Music
also
our
experienceof
organizing experience
become the
in
can
so
various
can
do
and
time,
ways. Time, therefore,
'third thing' (to use a Kantian term) that mediates between musical
timestructureand statesof consciousness,much as Kant's transcendental
determinationsmediate between the categories and the appearances.
moods by parallelingtheirtemporal
Music can metaphorically
exemplify106
[Link] this theory,music neitherdirectlyrepresentsfeeling,nor is
music totally abstract and devoid of emotion; rather, expression is
as shownin the followingschematic:
mediatedthroughtemporality,
Fig. 4
musical structure

statesof consciousness

commontemporalstructure
David B. Greene, in his books TemporalProcessesin Beethoven'sMusic
was perhapsthe firstto pursue
and Temporality,
and Mahler,Consciousness
in music, arguingthatmusic creates'aural
such an analysisof temporality
convincing,it was throughlack
images of time'.'o' If he was not uniformly
We can extend
of rigorousmethodsforthe analysisof musical structure.'10
the temporalimplications
Greene's provocativeapproach by investigating
of our [Link] completion of such a project
exceeds the scope ofthispaper,let us explorethe temporalstructureofthe
Berceuse.

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The rhythmof Chopin's ostinato is what Eugene Narmour calls

'cumulative', since the figure ends with a slower [Link]
maintainsthat each musical parameter'carries with it its own internal
means of closure'.109Here the cumulative rhythminduces closure by
movingfroma relativelyshorterto a [Link] harmonicand
rhythmicparameters here, however, are noncongruent,because the
dominant-seventh
harmonyin the ostinatocreatesharmonicnonclosure.
Greene's
Invoking
concepts, we could say that the harmonyis futureoriented,because the dominantseventhpointsahead to its [Link]
rhythmicparameter,however,is past-oriented,because closure induces a
retrospective
recognitionthat a patternhas been [Link] tension
between rhythmicclosure and harmonicnonclosuregives the ostinato a
unique temporal structure:memory and anticipation,anteriorityand
are in equilibrium(see Ex. 21).
futurity,
Ex. 21 Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, analysisof ostinatofigure
Andante

Parameters:
rhythm
past-oriented
cumulative(closed)

harmony
future-oriented
(open)

V7

Meanwhile the constantrepetitionof the ostinatomakes the temporal

structuremore [Link] patternis one bar long, and we perceivethe
tonic harmonyon each downbeat as the beginningof the [Link] we
have seen, however, the voice leading of the ostinato reiteratesthe
neighbourmotionF-Gt-F. Since thetonicharmonyis theresolutionofthe
becomes the completion
neighbournote G6, each downbeatsimultaneously
of the neighbourmotionand thus an ending(see Ex. 22). Each beginning
is future-oriented,
since we anticipatethe completionof the pattern;yet
since each beginningis also an ending,it is also past-oriented,
because we
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Ex. 22 Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57, analysisof ostinatofigure

II

!1

G6

G6

beginning

ending

beginning

ending

beginning

ending

ending

(etc.)

of the
recall the patternthat is reachingclosure. This dual interpretation
patternextendsto the variationsas well,because, as we have seen, as each
variationbegins, it simultaneouslycompletesthe large neighbourmotion
F-G?-F. Once again theBerceusebalances memoryand anticipation.
This equilibriumbetweenpast and futurefocusesour awarenesson an
intensifiedpresent. What state of consciousness does this temporality
evoke? To live wholly in the present would be to have an undivided
[Link] and anticipationconstantlydivide our attention,
the immediacyof the [Link] Berceuse refreshesour lives
destroying
by grantingus the temporalexperienceof a [Link], as
Kierkegaardsaid, 'the present is the true eternity',there is something
infinitein thisluminousmelody.
The title of the piece, which means 'cradle-song'or 'lullaby', is thus
quite suggestive,not for any literalimages of rockingcradles,but forits
associations with childhood. Childhood is the time of undivided
consciousness,and a frequenttheme of Romanticliteratureis what Hart
Crane called 'an improvedinfancy',a returnto innocence,a recoveryof
origins,but on a higherlevel.
To this temporal theorylet me add another theory of expression,
derived from Bloom. As we have seen, Bloom insists that poetry is
mediatedexpression:
a referential
Thereis, despitemuchcontemporary
criticism,
aspectto
a poem,whichkeepsitfromcomingintobeingonlyas a text,orrather
a [Link]
aspectis both
keepsa textfrombeingmerely
masked and mediated,and the agent of concealmentand of

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relationshipis alwaysanotherpoem.110

to othertexts,so
Textsdon'thavemeanings,
exceptin theirrelations
thatthereis something
uneasilydialecticalaboutliterary
meaning.A
fora
singletexthas onlypartof a meaning;it is itselfa synecdoche
othertexts.A textis a relational
event,and not
largerwholeincluding
a substanceto be [Link] ofcourse,so arewe relational
events
ordialectical
rather
thanfree-standing
entities,
units."111
Whateverresistancethisprovokesas literary
I suggestthatit is
criticism,
attractive
as
an
account
of
musical
very
[Link], we wantto say,
are about life,about the poet's relationshipto the world; since words can
referto objectsin the world,we willnot easilysurrenderour beliefthatthe
poet's relationshipto lifeis direct,[Link] music, however,where
notes do not name particularthingsor feelings,expressionand meaning
become [Link] in the case of programmemusic,it
is difficult
to bridgethe gap betweenthe vaguenessof programmatic
titles
and the intricateexactitudeof a [Link] musical expressionis
mediatedthroughthe compositionsof one's precursors,we can finda way
to locate musical meaning as arising from relationshipsamong compositions, in a stance towards a precursor'spiece. We can avoid the
reductivenessof translatingmusic into words by findinga new locus for
musicalmeaning:an intertextual
space.
If this intertextual
theoryof musical expressionis combined with the
temporal theory discussed earlier, we may understand what Brahms
communicatesin the Romanze. WhateverBrahms expresseshere, it is
mediatedthroughhis experienceof the Berceuse. If the Berceuse evokesa
stateofundividedconsciousness,ifit containsthepromiseof 'an improved
infancy',then what I have called Brahms's 'ironizing'of the Berceuse
It assumes more the
suggeststhat a returnto innocence is irretrievable.
characterof a memorythan of an immediatepresence. The historical
referenceto Chopin is consubstantialwithBrahms's expressiveintent:he
evokes a recollectionof personal originsby recallinga strongprecursor
whose influencewas a crucialartisticorigin.(The preclassicalallusionswe
have noted in both pieces may furtherenhance a sense of a returnto
origins.)Brahms'sironizingofthe Berceuse suggests,I think,a dualism,an
acknowledgementthat a returnto originscannot be [Link] Paul de
Man observed,ironyalwaysinvolvesa splittingofthe self:
The natureof thisduplicationis essentialforan understanding
of
withinconsciousness,
betweentwo selves,
[Link] is a relationship,

yet it is not an intersubjectiverelationship.... the two selves, the

empiricalas well as the ironic,are simultaneously
present,juxtaposed
within the same moment but as two irreconcilableand disjointed
beings .... In thisrespect,ironycomes closerto the patternof factual
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of human
experienceand recapturessome of the factitiousness
livedbya dividedself.112
as a successionofisolatedmoments
existence
Thus Brahms 'exposes the relativelynaive visionarylimitations'(as
Renza put it) of the Berceuse; in ironizingit,he shows (or aspiresto show)
that Chopin 'could not comprehendthe negationof his own vision'. We
can now betterunderstandwhat I previouslycalled Brahms's tessera,his
antithetical
completionofthe Berceuse,but I mustquote Renza again:
'truncated'
'Tessera'allowsthe ephebeto go beyondhis precursor's
visionas disclosedbyhisinitialuse ofclinamen.
becauseoveridealized
he proceedsto recoverthetranscendental
In a 'restituting
movement,'
oftheearliertext'svisionthatwerethwarted
byitselided
implications
so thatthis
idealization,
negation,its lack of irony,its inauthentic
visionnow becomesa 'part' of his [Link] work,thatis, here
becomes a 'whole' versionor 'belated completion'of the earlier
work.
"3
Having ironizedthe Berceuse reminiscencewithhis clinamen,Brahmscan
then offerhis middle section as a restituting
movement,as if to present
both the negationof Chopin's vision and the vision [Link] mightsay
is the antitheticalcompletionof the
thatthe middle sectionin andforitself
Berceuse, while the middle section as framedand ironized by its tonal
contextis the clinamenof the Berceuse. All this is part of the way that
Brahmsreviseshis precursor,becomes originalin subvertingthe Berceuse
and imposes himselfon the canon. Our hearingof the Berceuse changes,
and thatis themeasureofhis strength.
This is not to say thatthe Berceuse is 'really'naive or [Link]
open a space forhimself,Brahms must misreadhis precursor;hence the
precursoris partlyimaginary,[Link] the Berceuse invites
it engendersotherstrongcompositions,including
so manyinterpretations,
the Romanze,and provesitsown strength.
Our analysis has not reduced Brahms and Chopin to a common
we have shownhow Brahmsattainsa meaning
[Link] the contrary,
of his own, a meaning antitheticalto the Berceuse. Yet Brahms's
uniqueness can best be revealed by opposition to Chopin, who is the
othernessBrahmsconfronts.
A difficult
question remains,and I have suppressedit untilnow: How
does Brahms's text manifest psychic defences in resisting Chopin's
influence?Here we entercontroversialrealms. Few precedentscan guide
us in creating a psychoanalyticalmusical [Link] composershave certainlybeen written,but these
concern personalities,not compositions. The reductive interpretations
produced by so-called Freudian literarycriticismofferus poor models.
PeterBrooksdiagnosedtheproblemsthatafflictsuch criticism:
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The firstproblem,and the most basic, may be thatpsychoanalysisin

literarystudyhas over and over again mistakenthe object of analysis,
withthe resultthatwhateverinsightit has produced tells us precious
little about the structureand rhetoricof literarytexts. Traditional
psychoanalyticalcriticismtends to fall into three general categories,
depending on the object of analysis: the author,the reader, or the
fictivepersonsofthetext."114
Bloom, however, avoids these problems by treating the text itselfas the
He does not
object of analysis, discussing 'texts as if they were psyches'."115
offerreductive readings that treat texts as symptoms of neurotic conflictsin
the author's personal life. His concern is with how texts repress other texts:
When I speak of repression,in a text,I do not mean the accumulation
or aggregationof an unconscious. I mean that I can observe and
in a poem, and thatthese tend
frequently
identify
patternsofforgetting
to be rathermore importantthan the poem's allusions, even when
those allusions are [Link] makes a poem strongestis howit
excludes what is almost presentin it, or nearestto the presence in
it.... the criticdiscoverswhatit is thatthe poem represses
in orderto
have persuaded us of the illusionof its own [Link] whatis, in
the firstplace, necessarilyanotherpoem.116
Since repression involves processes as basic as forgetting and
remembering, we can transfer Bloom's concept of textual repression to
music without reducing music to words, by seeking patterns of forgetting
in compositions. What impresses me here with Bloom's theory is the
paradox that concepts imported from literarycriticism can enable us to
preserve the integrity of music: rather than introducing extramusical
elements, we are investigating the psychic life of tones, that is, how
compositions repress other compositions. Here I am tempted to parody
Bloom himself, by avowing that Bloom thought he was theorizing about
poetry, but was really unconsciously theorizing about music. Nevertheless
the reader may wish to regard the followingtwo paragraphs as speculation.
As I mentioned in Part II, Bloom associates the revisionary ratio
clinamen with the trope of irony and the Freudian defence of [Link] as a reaction-formation'opposes itselfto a repressed desire
by manifesting the opposite of the desire', a poem's clinamen masks its
concern with a precursor text or texts by saying the opposite of what it
means:
A poem beginsbecause thereis an absence. An image must be given,
fora beginning,and so thatabsence ironicallyis called a [Link],
a poem begins because thereis too stronga presence,whichneeds to
be imagedas an absence,ifthereis to be anyimagingat all."'
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The repressedconcernin the Romanze, as we have seen, is the Berceuse.

In the opening of the Romanze, the Berceuse functionsmore as absence
is the only
than as presence; the melodic aspect of the Grundgestalt
bars of the
in
first
sixteen
that
is
the
the
of
Berceuse
present
memory-trace
becomes clear only nachtrdglich,
Romanze. The originof the Grundgestalt
in the middle
only in retrospect,when the basic shape is transformed,
In
this
to
the
Berceuse.
allusion
into
an
overt
sense, the opening
section,
as if the too-strong
music could be viewed as a reaction-formation,
presence of the Berceuse must be imagined as an absence for Brahms's
piece to get started. The repressed concern with the precursorpiece
becomes evident,as withso manydefence-structures,
onlyafterthe event,
down.
breaks
the
defence
when
only
Tesseralsynecdochesubsumes two defences: turningagainst the self
and/orreversalinto the opposite. In Brahms's tessera,reversalinto the
oppositeis the activedefence,'a fantasyin whichthe situationof realityis
reversedso as to sustainnegationor denial fromanyoutwardoverthrow'."'
ofbs 1-16, Brahmsreversesintothe opposite,
Afterthe reaction-formation
withthe Berceuse ratherthan denyingit, since the revisionary
identifying
ratioof tesserafulfilsand completestheprecursor.
We began this sectionwithReger,and returnto him now. To be sure,
Reger also swervesfromthe Berceuse. Captivated by Chopin's endless
melody,he aspires,I think,towards even greatercontinuity,to create a
melodic span. Hence he rejects Chopin's variation
single,uninterrupted
process, with its four-barsegments. He failed to hear that Chopin's
continuityexists in a dialectical tension with his four-bar groups:
the sectional divisions. Without this
continuityarises from overcoming
A certainlack of resistancevitiates
results.
resistance,onlyamorphousness
to
Chopin's, Reger's figurationsseem
Reger's arabesques; compared
directionless.
Consequently,althoughReger's piece is
flaccid,meandering,
not withoutcharm,it is weak. While I agreewithWalterFrischthatReger
was no mediocre epigone,119
here, at least, he fails to attain sublimity.
to
According Angus Fletcher,the sublime aims to destroythe 'slaveryof
more [Link] pleasuresof
pleasure',120preparingus forsatisfactions
order.
a
lesser
are
of
143
Reger's Op.
withthe
Reger's piece failson its own terms;he wrestlesunsuccessfully
Berceuse, and weaklymisreads and reduces Chopin. There is a certain
poignancyin Reger's attemptto choose Chopin as his ancestor,but,unlike
Brahms,Reger cannot affectour hearingof the Berceuse. Reger remains,
alas, a secondaryman.

VI
We have finished with Reger, but not with the Romanze and the Berceuse.

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Bloom has six revisionary

ratios,and at the riskof becomingan extremist
in an exercise,I wantto use all six to map Brahms'scomplexmisprisionof
Chopin. The thirdratiois kenosis,a termtakenfromSt Paul, who uses it to
describe Christ's humblingof himself,his emptying-outof his divinity.
Kenosisis the 'movementtowards discontinuitywith the precursor',an
of a priorfullnessoflanguage'.12
'emptying-out
Here we see how radicallyBloom transcendstraditionalnotions of
influenceas continuity,imitationor passive [Link] to
othertextsantithetically;
it is a reactionagainstthe precursor,a countermovement. We can locate this counter-movementquite exactly, and,
mode of
althoughit eludes the unimaginativemind, it is not an arbitrary
[Link] withthisoppositionbetweentextswe collide withthe
paradox that one work is more absent than presentin the other. This
concept of absence, as I stressedin Part II, makes Bloom's thoughtresist
easy assimilation;hence thereis a dangerof reductively
misreadingBloom,
classifyinghim as merelyanothertraditionalsource [Link] I have
givenlectureson the anxietyofinfluenceovertheyears,bothin the United
States and abroad, segmentsof my audience have seemed to embracethis
weak reduction of Bloom, so I once more warn against this misinterpretation.
The revisionaryratios, as noted earlier, are both intratextualand
intertextual.
In kenosis,forexample,the poet moves towardsdiscontinuity
with the precursor,but this movementinevitablyproduces discontinuity
withhis own [Link] intratextual
aspect of the ratioscalls forreflection.
Bloom's theorymaps not only relationshipstowardspriortexts,but also
the poet's stancetowardshis own text,whatValerycalled 'the influenceof
a mind on itselfand of a workon its author'. Paul de Man observedthis
widerimplicationof Bloom's model:
If we admitthattheterm'influence'
is a metaphor
thatdramatizes
a
structure
into a diachronicnarrative,
thenit followsthat
linguistic
Bloom's categoriesof misreading
not onlyoperatebetweenauthors,
butalsobetweenvarioustextsofa singleauthoror,withina giventext,
betweendifferent
parts,downto each particular
chapter,paragraph,
betweenliteraland
sentence,and, finally,down to the interplay
within
a singlewordorgrammatical
figurative
meaning
sign.122
Once again we see Bloom's completereformulation
of the entireconcept
of [Link] my mapping of the later ratios,theirdouble functionas
intra-and intertextual
eventswillbecome clear.

There is a certain rhythm in the succession of the ratios, as 'each

encounters its own limits, and so gives way to the next'.123This explains
why so many poems (though not all) seem to follow the precise sequence
of Bloom's six tropes. To locate Brahms's kenosis, we will have to
reconsider his tessera,to ask why his antithetical 'completion' ultimately
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failsto completehis piece and yieldsto [Link] middle section

of the Romanze was a fulfilment
and continuationof the precursor,even if
it triedto persuade us thatChopin had not gone farenough.124As we have
seen, Brahms'sreminiscenceof the Berceuse was more a memorythan an
actual [Link] cannot restin thisvision,and so moves towards
discontinuitywith Chopin, and with his own text, in bs 45-7, the
transitionback to the reprise(Ex. 23).
Ex. 23 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 45-7

tr

pp

?
;r-

FOR

A)-Lr--l

dim

'to

"
.

I.

tr?

7H

Discontinuityhere means curtailingthe modellingprocessthatBrahms

had [Link] the middle section,as we saw, echoes Chopin's coda,
Brahmsdoes not emulate Chopin's last two bars, whichprovidecomplete
melodic and harmonic closure. As Ex. 17 shows, the end of Brahms's
froma2 down to f2, concluding
middle section traces a third-progression
thismotionin b.44. By contrast,the middlesectionsof manyotherternary
piano pieces by Brahms do reach melodic and harmonic closure.125
Discontinuitytakes other forms here: in b.45, Brahms abandons the
ostinato rhythmwhich he had maintainedin everybar since b.17; the
metrechangesfromC to 4; the bass, whichhad remainedstationaryon a
D pedal point since b.17, finallymoves, in b.47, to C. (This transition
seems shorterto the eye than to the ear. Although performersoften
his directions,Brahms wants crotchetsin the transitionto
misinterpret
equal the minimsof his previoustempo, so that bs 45-7 take as long as
nine bars of the Allegretto.126Still, the fragmentationof kenosistends
towards brevity,and Brahms's transitionis shorter than his middle
section.)
Bloom associates kenosiswith the trope of [Link]
substitutesan aspect or attributefor the thingitself('White House' for
'president', 'Crown' for 'king'). Metonymyand synecdoche are easily
confused,but Kenneth Burke has usefullydistinguishedthe two, noting
thatthe part/whole
relationshipof synecdocheworksboth frommicrocosm
to macrocosm and in reverse, while the part/wholerelationship of
worksin one directiononly,fromwhole to part.127 Metonymyis
metonymy
thusa reductivetrope,whichis whyBloom linksit to kenosis,the ratiothat
reduces a prior text. Remember,however,that Bloom gives traditional

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tropesan extendedmeaning,so thatin kenosisan entiretextmetonymically

reducesanothertext.
In a poem, kenosiswould be markedby 'images of reduction,frequently
fromfullnessto emptiness',"28but we cannottransfer
such verbalimagesto
music. In our quest to reinventmusical rhetoric,can we finda musical
analogue formetonymicalreduction?Bloom's extendedconcept of trope
gives us a clue. One could hardly speak of a musical passage as a
metonymyin [Link] heard as a revision of another musical text,
however, one passage could metonymizeanother by substitutingsome
aspect of that passage for the whole, hence reducing it. Schoenberg's
conceptof liquidation,forexample,positssuch a metonymicalrelationship
betweenone passage and another."29
Brahms's transitionthus metonymizeshis earliertext. He reduces the
intricatevoice-leadingand elaboratemotivicrelationships
shownin Ex. 11,
until two single elementsremain: the trill,and the descendingstepwise
motionsin the upper voice. The trill,which had been part of the theme
and of everyvariation,substitutesforthe whole, thus reducingChopin's
piece. The descendingstepwisemotionsin bs 45 and 46 allude primarily
to the openingof the Romanze, and theyfunctionboth as a reductionof
thatopeningand as a preparationforthereprise.
Bloom links kenosisto a triad of related defences:isolation,undoing,
isolationdestroyscontext:
[Link] metonymy,
Isolationsegregates
or actsso as to breakup theirconnecting
thoughts
linkswithall otherthoughts
or acts,usuallybybreaking
up temporal
sequence.130

Undoing nullifiespast actions by repeatingthem 'in a magicallyopposite

way'. Regression 'is a reversionto earlier phases of development,frequentlymanifestedthroughexpressivemodes less complex than present
ones'.51

Consider how these psychic defences are manifestedin Brahms's

the metonymicalreductionofbs 45-7. Brahms'ssubstitution
ofthe
kenosis,
trillforthe entirethemeisolates,and thusdestroys,the originalcontextof
the trill, breaking up the temporal sequence in which the trill had
[Link] transition'undoes' the middle sectionby repeating
in reverse('in a magicallyopposite way') the process by which we had
reached D major. Brahms originallywent fromF major to D minor (bs
14-16), and thence to the D major of the middle [Link] transition
moves fromD major (b.45) to D minor (b.46) and back to F major in
b.47. Afterthe complex melodic diminutionsof Brahms'smiddle section,
the transitionregressesby reverting
to simplerfigurations.
If Brahms's transitionyields to a descriptionin terms of rhetorical
tropesand psychicdefences,thisis perhapsbecause Bloom's theoryhas a
validitythat applies to symbolic action in general, and not merelyto
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poetry.132These tropes and defences enable us to transcend a neutral

inventoryof structure,to interpretthe meaning, use and functionsof

to discover'how structureoperates,and whatit signifies'.133
Our
structure,
start
must
from
the
include
the
must
structure,
analyses,however,
deepest
insightsof our analyticalsystems,even if those systemsturn out to be
ladder. We must avoid both the
merelythe firstrung on an interpretative
structural
of
a
and
the impotenceof impressionistic
sterility purely
analysis
criticismthatfailsto hear structure.

VII
Afterthis kenosis,this metonymicalundoing,Brahms's reprisemakes the
revisionarygesture of daemonization,'the movementtowards a personalized counter-Sublime,in reaction to the precursor'sSublime'.134 We
previouslyidentifiedthe framingaction of the F major music as Brahms's
[Link] the reprisehas anotherfunction,so that it simultaneously
[Link] most of Brahms's reprises,thatin
exemplifiestwo revisionary
the Romanze is farfroma [Link] the framingactionalone
servesto create an ironizingclinamen,the revisionof the openingmaterial
leads to daemonization.
Daemonization,in Bloom's map of misprision,subsumes the trope of
hyperbole and the Freudian defence of [Link] does Bloom
connect hyperbole to repression? Their relationship is dialectical:
hyperboleexaggerates,and so produces a climax throughintensification;
repression makes this climax possible, through an 'unconsciously
purposefulforgetting'of prior texts. In applyingthis ratio Bloom asks:
on purpose,in the
What has been forgotten,
'What is beingfreshly
repressed?
to the heights?'135
sudden
elevation
make
this
as
to
so
possible
depths,
Clinamenwas alreadya repressionof a precursor'stext,but daemonization
marksa poem's strongestmomentofrepression.
If we tryto understandBrahms'schangesin his repriseaccordingto this
we can move beyond merelyobserving
model of hyperbole/repression,
structuralchanges in this section towardsunderstandingthe motivations
forthose [Link] can also rejectthismodel, but 'to refusemodels is
onlyto accept othermodels,howeverunknowingly'.136
Which part of Brahms's priortext does he repressupon restatement,
and what hyperbole, which I translate as intensification,does this
repressionmake possible?What does the piece remember,and whatdoes it
forget,when it revisits,and revises, its opening? First, the reprise is
drasticallycondensed. The A, section was a leisurelyand symmetrical
process,withfourphrases,each fourbars long. But the entirereprisehas
only ten bars; if we consider the last fourbars a coda, then the reprise
properhas a mere six bars (Ex. 24). How does Brahms condense sixteen
bars to six,and why?
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Ex. 24 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 48-57

Tempo 1.

.t~ ~~--

\tL-

r-

T------1-

---.....

---=

__Lo

..

".

~-----~Ffitit;

dim..

Brahmsexcludes all traceof the D minormodulationsthathad been so

prominentin bs 1-16. Naturally,Brahmshad to recomposethe A, section
so thatit would end in F major,ratherthan leadingto the middle section
again, so he deletedthe second tonicizationof D [Link] Brahmscould
have recapitulatedhis firsteightbars,withtheirtonicizationof D minorin
and condensed,
bs 6-7, followedby bs 52-7, and stillhad a satisfactory,
he
even
he
chooses
greaterbrevity: repeatsonly his first
[Link],
fourbars intact(bs 1-4 = bs 48-51), followedby a two-barphrasewhich
ends on the downbeat of b.54, overlappingwith a four-barcoda. The
repriserepressesall traces of D minor;in particular,its leading note C#,
whichhad been so conspicuousin the firstpart,is entirelyexcluded in the
[Link] of his earliertext;since these D minor
modulationshad preparedand introducedBrahms's middle section,with
its antitheticalcompletion of the Berceuse, the reprise is indirectlya
ratioshere tell us at
repressionof the precursor(althoughthe revisionary
least as much about Brahms'schangingrelationshipto his own textas they
do about his misprisionof Chopin).
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Instead of C?, the repriseand coda introduceD#(b.53) and Et (b.55).

the last;
Significantly,
C? was the firstchromaticnote in the piece, DW/E?
the descendingmovementfromEt to D in b.55 seems to balance and
revokethe prioremphasis on C#-D. This is part of Brahms's solutionto
the tonal problem of the piece, the emphasis on D minor which the
had alreadyforeshadowed.137The repriseand coda also stress
Grundgestalt
supertonicand [Link] had functionedas pivot
chordsto D minorin b.14. The repriseclarifiestheirtonal functionsin F
major, especiallyin b.53, where a G minorchord preparesthe authentic
cadence in F major and theplagal cadence ofbs 55-6.
of
The repressionof D minormakes possible Brahms's intensification
his earliermusic to a rhetoricalclimaxin bs 52-4. Many factorscontribute
to thisclimax:themelody,whichBrahmshad alwaysdoubled in octaves,is
now voiced in tripleoctaves; a highnote, c3, not heard in the A, section,is
now introduced;the melodyis rhythmically
intensified,
producinggreater
urgency,so thatthereare now twelvesuccessivequaversin the melody(in
the A, section,such continuousquaver motionhad appeared only in the
accompaniment).Most importantforthissublimeclimax,however,is the
compressionin bs 52-4, and the attainmentof harmonic and melodic
closure forthe onlytimein the piece. In contrastto the phrasesof the A,
section,whichhad all been fourbars long,bs 52-3 forma two-barphrase,
extendedto overlapwiththe phrase thatbegins on the downbeatof b.54.
In bs 53-4, the FundamentalLine descends (see Ex. 17), producingthe
only perfectcadence in F major in the piece. The A1 section did not
contain an F major cadence. Some analystsmighthear closure fromthe
dominantseventhin b.4 to the tonictriadin b.5, but herewe should recall
Schenker'sconceptof a [Link] b.4 is the end of one phraseand b.5
the beginningof another,the dominantis a dividerand not a cadential
dominant,so we feelclosure neitherhere nor in the analogous passage in
bs 12 and 13. It is as ifthepiece could onlyreach closure,aftersuch a long
if
delay,by repressingall tracesof D [Link] surmisegains credibility
we recall thatwhile the sixthand seventhbars of the A, sectionintroduce
the firsttonicizationof D minor,the sixthand seventhbars of the reprise
cadence in F major. Thus the cadence repressesthe expectedmodulation
to D minor.

VIII
in whichthe poet
ratio,is a movementof self-curtailment,
Askesis,the fifth
human
and
his
own
of
imaginativeendowment,so as to
'yields up part
separate himself from others, including the precursor'.138 Bloom takes this
term from Walter Pater, who took it from pre-Socratic usage. The psychic

defence here is sublimation, the transferof desire to a substitute

[Link] links this defence analogically to the trope of
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metaphor:
to a
transfers
thenameofinfluence
As a tropeforinfluence,
metaphor
seriesofinapplicable
that
objects,in an askesisor workofsublimation
aimor objectreplaces
. . . a substitute
is itselfa substitute
gratification.
the originalimpulse,on a basis of selectivesimilarity
.... Even as
metaphorcondenses throughresemblance,so sublimationalso
or carriesa nameto an inapplicable
transfers
object.'39
Bloom maintains that 'the strongestmodern poetry is created by
If thisis true,perhapsthisresultsfromthe historicalelementin
askesis'."4?
modern art. Historical consciousness,as Gadamer insisted,involvesnot
onlya relationshipto the past but also a recognitionof the othernessof the
fromthe present.141'
As art growsmore conscious of its
past, its difference
it
encounters
this
this
distance fromthe past. Rather
otherness,
history,
than tryingto elide the gap between themselvesand prior traditions,
modern artistsmay acknowledgethis gap as an askesis,a self-conscious
estrangementfrom the precursors. This self-consciousnessheightens
whichin poetrymeans word-consciousness,'a questioningon
rhetoricity,
the poem's part of its place in literarylanguage,that is, the poem's own
subversionof its own closure,its illusorystatusas independentpoem'.142
the poet's relationto his own medium becomes
Through this rhetoricity,
more dialectical;by comparisonto the more immediatecreativepleasures
his precursorsmighthave enjoyed,one could call thisloss of immediacya
sublimationor substitutegratification.
Brahms's preoccupation with the past - his quotations, his use of
compositionalmodels,his adaptationsof earliergenresand forms- was no
merenostalgia;it was not an attemptto make the past return,forthe past
cannot return;it was not a recoveryof lost origins,fororiginscannot be
[Link] was an askesis,a self-consciousrecognitionof his separation
from his precursorsand the othernessof the past, for the difference
betweenpast and presentis nevermore evidentthanwhen priortraditions
are invoked withina stratifieddiscourse.143Brahms chose a severe selfdiscipline, imposing on himself a more dialectical relationshipto his
medium than he might have ascribed to his [Link] frequent
intertextual
referencesin his music workto enhancerhetoricity,
creatinga
musical equivalentfor a poem's [Link] pieces become
self-deconstructing,
questioningtheirown closure, subvertingtheirown
statusas independentworksby [Link] askesis
is a source of Brahms's astonishingmodernism,a modernismthat so
impressedSchoenbergand, morerecently,
[Link].'44
My interpretationof Brahms's intertextualreferencesacknowledges
both his place in traditionand his exile fromit. As Paul de Man warned,
we must resistthe urge to privilegecontinuityover discontinuityin our
historical schemes.'" It may be more comfortingto view Brahms as
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connecting himself to traditionby an umbilical cord of intertextual

but thetruthis more complex.
references,
In the Romanze, then,I locate Brahms'saskesisin the piece as a whole,
ratio
ratherthan in any separatesection;it is the predominantrevisionary
of the piece. We have chartedBrahms's changingand ambivalentstances
towards the Berceuse, which are also stances towards his own text:
ironically negating the Berceuse; antitheticallycompleting it; metonymicallyundoing Chopin, to isolate the precursorfrom his context;
repressingthe Berceuse to attaina sublime climax. All of these positions
are compatible with a larger askesis,a separation from the precursor.
Brahms uses the Berceuse, I suggest,as a metaphorfor this separation
fromtheprecursor,as a metaphorforthe othernessof thepast. To call this
otherness'Chopin' is to give othernessa proper name. This Chopin, of
course, is a partly fantasized precursor,a necessary misreading that
coincides only partiallywith the historical Chopin. Nevertheless,this
is so centralto Brahms's textthat an interof anteriority
personification
readingofthe Romanze must,I think,beginwiththe Berceuse.
Brahms'saskesismightseem an acceptance of his belatedness,and so a
defeat, a yieldingto the anxietyof [Link] is another side to
askesis,however, for it can puncture the precursoras well. Brahms's
heightened rhetoricity,his text-consciousness,can make us hear
His more dialecticalrelationshipto his art can deconstructthe
differently.
worksof his precursors,so thatthe closureof theirtextscan be called into
question. If the Berceuse can be quoted, paraphrased, ironized and
otherwiseconvertedinto part of anotherdiscourse,thenthe closureof the
Berceuse, its statusas an independentutterance,is undermined,however
subtly. If Brahms is self-limited,then the precursor is also limited,
preparingthe way fora 'finalreturnof lost voices and almost abandoned
meanings'.14

IX
Bloom calls his last ratio apophrades,takingthis term fromthe days in
ancient Athens when the dead returnedto inhabittheirformerhouses.
or the returnof the dead, is a poem's finaldefenceagainstthe
Apophrades,
of tradition,reversingthe
its ultimateinternalization
of
influence,
anxiety
of
the
metalepsis (also called
trope
precursor's tropes through
transumption).
Hollander's discussionofthistropeis the mostcomprehensive:
We deal withdiachronic
tropeall thetime,and yetwe haveno name
forit as a class .... I propose thatwe apply the name of the classical
in its Greek form)to
rhetoricians'tropeof transumption
(or metalepsis,

as
identified
allusivefigures.
thesediachronic,
transumption
Quintilian
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a movement
fromone tropeto another,
whichoperatesthrough
one or
moremiddletermsoffiguration thereis a generalsensethatitis a
....
kindofmeta-trope,
orfigure
oflinkagebetweenfigures,
and thatthere
willbe one or moreunstatedmiddletermswhichare leaptover,or
alludedto,bythefigure.147
In Bloom's complex use of the term,transumptionalways describes a
revisionaryact, throughwhich prior tropes are raised to a higherlevel.
Transumptiveallusion characterizesapophrades;strongpoems frequently
end withschemes of metalepticreversals,tropingupon priortropes,both
thepoet's own and thoseoftheprecursor.
subsumes two related psychic defences:
Transumption/apophrades
introjectionand [Link] analogical linkhere is that transumption
is the trope-reversing
trope, while introjectionand projection defend
against other defences. Introjectionis an internalizationor imaginative
identification,a 'fantasytranspositionof othernessto the self,'48while
projectionis a distancingor casting-outthat 'seeks to expel fromthe self
thatthe selfcannotbear to acknowledgeas being its own'.'49In
everything
with the
apophrades,the poet most often introjectsfuturity,
identifying
future,whileprojectinganteriority,
throughthe substitutionof earlywords
forlate in [Link] can effectan upwardsrevisionof the tropes,
withearliness.
redeeminga poet's belatednessby identifying
Brahms's coda (bs 54-7, Ex. 25) negotiatesthe apophradesthrough
what one mightcall a metalepticreversalof bs 40-4 (Ex. 26). His final
bars allude to his middle section,not overtly(as, say, the repriseovertly
revisesthe openingof the piece), but transumptively,
leapingoverunstated
middle termswhichmightconnectthe two througha graduatedseries of
transformations.
The coda does not invokethe foregroundmotivesof bs
40-4, the trillsand scales that would unambiguouslyrecall the middle
[Link],we recognizethe affinity
of the two passages through
common gesturesand [Link] use a V7/IV to IV progressionthat
Ex. 25 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 54-7

dz'm.-zt..-

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Ex. 26 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, bs 40-4

dim.

\pi

o0

occursnowhereelse in thepiece. The relativestructural

positionof the two
reinforcesthe connection,since both are concludingmotions,one ending
the middle section,the otherthe entirepiece. In alludingto the middle
section, which was so closely modelled on the Berceuse, Brahms also
alludes to the Berceuse.
indirectly
As we have seen, Bloom's use of this
But whycall thisa transumption?
term always implies an upwards revision of a prior trope. How does
Brahms, in alluding to his middle section, raise it to a higher level?
Rememberthatthe framingaction of the F major sectionunderminesthe
stabilityof the middle [Link] finalcadentialgestureof the
middlesectionintothe conclusionofthe whole piece raisesthe gestureto a
and in a Schenkeriansense), givingit a
higherlevel (both figuratively
lacked. The F major music also gains fromthis
stabilitythat it formerly
since onlyin the coda does the F major triadgain some of
transumption,
the durationalweightthathad previouslybeen associatedwiththe D major
[Link] initialtonictriadin the piece, forexample,is a merecrotchet.
withthe futureor withthe past?
Does Brahms's coda identify
primarily
a
In
or
What does it introject project?
poem, these questions would be
decided by the substitutionof earlywords forlate in priortropes,or late
words [Link] cannot transfersuch verbal images to music, but we
can framethese questions in termsof Greene's study of temporalityin
it has an openmusic. Brahms'scoda, I think,is primarily
future-oriented;
ended quality,pointing,as it were,to a futurebeyond the piece. Various
structuralaspects of the piece supportthis [Link] last two bars,

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for example, introducenew registers:F' in b.56, and f3in b.57, are the
registralextremesof the piece. By leaving these registersunexplored,
Brahms suggestsnew [Link] Schenkerianterms,
the leading linear progressionin the coda (see Ex. 17) composes-outa
fourthfromf2 down to c2; a more conclusivelinearmotionwould prolong
I by an octave progression."'0
Leonard B. Meyer and Eugene Narmour
might observe that the ascending arpeggiationin the final bars creates
implicationsleftunrealized,gaps thatwillneverbe [Link] most
significantfactor in enhancing a future-orientedcharacter here is
The phrases in bs 1-16 balanced each otherin pairs,so that
asymmetry.
each phrase seemed to respond to the previous one. In the repriseand
is overturned,makingeventsseem
coda, as we have seen, this symmetry
less predictable;a futureis called forththatseems new, ratherthanbeing a
responseto the past. This open-endednessis a qualitythe Romanze shares
with many Romantic pieces. More than one critichas noted that many
worksseem less closed, less self-contained,
than works
nineteenth-century
of the classical period. In the context of Bloom's theory,we could
thisopen-endednessas an introjection
offuturity."'
reinterpret
Consider what thistransumptionsignifiesforthe Romanze as a whole.
The Berceuse presenteda worldin whichdesireand gratification
coincide
(figuratively
exemplifiedby the immediateresolutionof each dominant
seventh). There is an enchantmentto this world, the enchantmentof
[Link] incorporatesChopin's text into his own, but recognizes
that originscan neverbe made present;his middle sectionis a necessary
stage in the growthof consciousness,but has more the characterof a
memorythan of [Link] then breaks with Chopin's text, resisting
influence,choosinghimselfratherthan the [Link] his own
imaginativepower, he achieves a deeper repression of the Berceuse,
making a sublime climax possible. Having wrestled successfullywith
with futurity.
Chopin, Brahms wins strengthand can end by identifying
The effectis analogous to some of Wordsworth'stransumptions,
where
'experiential loss becomes rhetorical gain',52 and we conclude with
intimationsof a possiblesublimity.
Table 1, modelled on Bloom's map ofmisprision,53brieflyrecapitulates
my inter-reading,including the six revisionary ratios with their
corresponding
tropesand psychicdefences.

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Table 1 Summaryof Inter-readingof Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5

and Chopin, Berceuse,Op. 57
REVISIONARY
RATIO

RHETORICAL
TROPE

PSYCHIC
DEFENCE

Clinamen

Irony

Reaction-Formation

(initialswervefromthe
precursor)

The framingactionoftheF
majormusic 'ironizes'the
Berceusereminiscenceof
themiddlesection,so thatit
saysone thing('tonal
stability')and means
another('tonal instability').
In contrastto thepresentofthe
orientedtemporality
Brahms's
Berceuse,
framing
actiongivesthemiddle
sectionmorethe characterof
a memory.

The Berceusemustbe
imaginedas an absence for
Brahms'spiece to get
started;therepressed
concernwiththeprecursor
textbecomes evidentonlyin
retrospect.
Althoughthe
melodicaspectofthe
echoes the
Grundgestalt
Berceuse,its originbecomes
clearonlywhenthedefence
breaksdown,whenthe
is transformed
Grundgestalt
intothepatternedallusions
to theBerceusein the
middlesection.

Tessera

Synecdoche

Reversalintotheopposite

completion)
(antithetical

Bs 17-44 modelledon the

[Link] the
correspondenceofpartand
wholeto convinceus that
Brahms'sdiscourseis more
completethatthetruncated
discourseoftheprecursor.
Composing-outofthe
Berceusemotiveto link
themeand variations
together.

Afterthereaction-formation
ofbs 1-16, whichmasked
theconcernwiththe
precursor,Brahmsreverses
intothe opposite,
withthe
identifying
Berceuseratherthan
denyingit.

Kenosis

Metonymy

Isolation,Undoing,
Regression

(movementof
withthe
discontinuity
precursor)

Bs 45-7 reducetheprior
textbybreakingit up into
discontinuousfragments,
isolatingtheprecursorfrom

Isolationofthetrilldestroys
thecontextin whichit had
functioned;transition
'undoes' middlesectionby

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the
his context,curtailing
Brahms
modellingprocess
had followed,emptying
out
the fullnessofthepreceding
section.

theprocessby
reversing
whichwe had reachedD
major;regressionby
to simpler
reverting
figurations.

Daemonization

Hyperbole

Repression

(movementtowardsa
personalizedcounterSublime,in reactionto
precursor'sSublime)

RepressionofD minor
makesan intensified
climax
in
the
reprise,
possible
includingtheclosureofthe
FundamentalLine in bs 534.

The reprise'forgets'all
tracesoftheD minor
tonicizationsoftheAl
section;EWD/insteadof
C#;F majorcadence
repressesexpected
modulationto D minorin
bs 53-4.

Askesis

Metaphor

Sublimation

(self-curtailment,
separationThe Romanzeuses the
fromtheprecursor)
Berceuseas a metaphorfor
theothernessofthepast,for
thepredominant
ratioofthe estrangement
fromorigins,
Romanze
manifestedas estrangement
fromtheprecursor.

Brahmspursuesa more
dialecticalrelationto his
mediumthanthe more
immediatecreativepleasures
thathe mayhave ascribedto
his precursors,
a greater
self-consciousness,
manifestedas textconsciousness;thiscould be
called a sublimationor
substitutegratification.

Apophrades

Metalepsis(Transumption)

Introjection,
Projection

(returnofthe dead)

Bs 54-7 transumptively
allude to bs 40-4, and
to theBerceuse.
indirectly
Absorbingthefinalcadential
gestureofthemiddlesection
intothecoda raisesthat
gestureto a higherlevel,
ithad
givingit a stability
lacked.

Introjectionoffuturity,
projectionofanteriority,
because oftheopen-ended
quality;thetimeless
presenceoftheBerceuse
cannotbe made actual,but
thereis strength
in
this;a future
acknowledging
is summonedthatseems
new,ratherthantheresult
ofthepast,and we end with
intimations
of a possible
sublimity.

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X
If my appropriationof Bloom has been strongenough,thisstudycould be
the initialswervetowardsa new poeticsof music. Of course,a singleinterreadingsuch as I have done here,no matterhow elaborate,cannot satisfy
all questionsabout the model. CondensingBloom's tropes,and mytropes
on Bloom, into one article inevitablyleaves much unsaid. Many other
analyseswill be needed to testthe model, to refineit and to ascertainthe
limitsof its [Link] I have begun to do elsewhere.'54Here space
remainsonlyto sketchpossible avenues of extension;theseI offermore as
speculationthan as systematicargument,to encourageothersto continue
theselabours,to discoverthe strenuouspleasuresofthismode oflistening.
To test this model in othercompositions,one mightbegin withother
apparent intertextualechoes, to ask if these testifyto deeper preoccupationswithprecursorpieces. We could revisit,forexample,Rosen's
ratios
comparisonof the Brahmsand Chopin [Link] the revisionary
does
4
31?
Or
and
between
Brahms's
intervene
Chopin's Op.
Op.
Brahms's youthfulwork belong to what Bloom would call his 'flooded
beforetheratiosbecome operative?
apprenticeship',
In applyingthe ratios, the entire scheme of six tropes need not be
[Link] pieces mightmanifestonly a singleratio or pair of ratios.
we could use themto map
Since the ratiosare both intra-and intertextual,
the composer's stance towardshis own text,to see how a piece revisesits
own prior figurationsor how a composer revises his earlier style. For
instance, Mahler's obsessive self-quotationsand self-parodies,so often
observed,could finallybe [Link] in termsof
textual repression,metaleptic reversals and metonymicundoings will
certainlyshatterthe frozensurfaceof the familiar,allowingus to address
world,the worldof congealed
pieces [Link] stereotyped
habitsthatWalterPater so deplored,willnot be our world.
This model holds special promise for explainingmusical text-setting.
The internalizationof subject matterin post-Enlightenment
poetry,by
whichpoetryaspiredto the conditionofmusic,also made possible,I think,
the intimatealliance of poetry and music in the Romantic Lied. The
signalsin poetryis matchedby
anxietyof influencethatthisinternalization
ratiosin both
of music. By mappingthe revisionary
the precursor-anxieties
text and musical setting,we could betterunderstandthe relationshipof
wordsand music.155
musicalstyle,
The model could also become a vehicleforunderstanding
of
a
is
measure
since a composer'sstancetowardsanteriority
[Link]
music is best
- and I am onlyspeculating- theunityof nineteenth-century
describedby its anxious stance towardsits [Link], forexample,
swallows up his precursors, sometimes almost literally, as in his
of Vivaldi, but one feels no anxietyin his stance towards
transcriptions
between [Link] mightalso find unexpected affinities
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and twentieth-century
we found in
music, since the influence-anxieties
Brahmscertainlycontinuein our time.
My discoursehere also has implicationsfora poetics of music analysis,
because of our relationsto our interpretative
models. The piece itselfis an
'unknown=X' (to use Kantian language), a transcendentalobject which
conditionsour perceptions,offeringcertainresistancesagainstwhich we
can testour models; but we must alwaysrelyupon paradigms,whetherwe
inventour own or use someone else's. As analysts,therefore,
we confront
not onlycompositions,but also the priorinterpretative
models,theoretical,
historicaland critical,throughwhichwe perceivethose compositionsand
thus encounterour own anxietyof influence.A listenerwho desires an
originalrelationshipto music maywell feelanxiousin usingsomeoneelse's
models; he mayfeelthathis responsehas been predicted,thathe is moving
in an interpretative
space mapped out by others,thathe is merelyrealizing
the implicationsof someone else's [Link] anxietyof interpretation
can onlyincreaseas reflection
upon artbecomes more [Link]
theoriesof art can also be attemptsto clear imaginativespace, to resist
influence,to subvertone's precursors,and the historyof music analysis
could be read throughBloom's dialecticsofrevisionism.
We need not whollyindentureourselvesto Bloom; not all his ideas will
transferto music, nor will his model tell us all we want to know about
pieces. It should not be a resting-placein our search for models. My
appropriationof Bloom does, however,fulfilmany needs: it integrates
musicology,theoryand criticism,givingus a methodof criticalevaluation
that is both historicaland analytical;it accommodates the paradoxes of
influence,showing originalityand tradition,continuityand change in
dialectical [Link] if one rejects the idea of an organic work (as
deconstructionadvocates), it providesa model foranalysingcompositions
as relationaleventsratherthanas closed and staticentities.
Perhaps the model's greateststrengthis the space it carves for the
imagination,allowingmusic analysisto recoverthe elementof fantasythat
is as necessary to theorizingabout art as it is to artisticcreation, as
Schenker hinted by calling his main work New Musical Theoriesand
[Link] Romanze and theBerceuse,we have seen therole these
worksplay in our innerlives,whywe returnto themagain and again,why
Their creativestrengthaddresses our need to
they are so unforgettable.
clear our own imaginativespace, to become strong;theyjoin an interior
dialogue in the self's search for authenticity,
aiding our inner discourse,
givingus back to ourselves.
That is theirclaim on us.
NOTES
1. Charles Rosen, 'Influence:Plagiarismand Inspiration',19th-Century
Music,
Vol. 4, No. 2 (1980), p.94.
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In a
2. Brahms himselfhumorouslynoted the ambiguitiesof intertextuality.
in
in
the
musikalische
Adolf
review-essaypublished
Allgemeine
Zeitung 1869,
of
Schubring,a criticand a friendof Brahms, argued that transformations
three motives unifythe third movement of the German Requiem. Such
ingenuitiesaroused the scepticin [Link] repliedto Schubring,observing
thatthe thirdbar of the Requiem happens to coincidewiththe firstfournotes
of the Austriannational hymn,and sarcasticallyasked: 'Shouldn't you have
discoveredthe political allusions in my Requiem? (Brahms, letterto Adolf
Schubring,16 February1869.) Schubring'sreview-essayand Brahms's letter
are both discussed in Walter Frisch, Brahmsand thePrincipleof Developing
Variation(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1984), pp.30-2.
3. Michel de Certeau, The Writing
of History,[Link] Conley (New York:
Columbia University
Press, 1988), pp.30, 49n.
4. Leon B. Plantinga,in Schumannas Critic(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress,
1967), observed that 'Schumann's very active musical memory' often
produced 'sensationsof ddjdentendu'(p. 194).
5. JamesWebster,'Schubert'sSonata Form and Brahms'sFirstMaturity',19thMusic,Vol. 2, No. 1 (1978), pp. 18-35, and Vol. 3, No. 1 (1979), pp.
Century
52-71; ChristopherReynolds, 'A Choral Symphonyby Brahms?', 19thMusic,Vol. 9, No. 1 (1985), pp.3-25; ConstantinFloros,Brahmsund
Century
Bruckner:Studien zur musikalischenExegetik (Wiesbaden: Breitkopfund
Hdirtel,1980) (see especiallypp.115-54); J. Peter Burkholder,'Brahms and
Music, Vol. 8, No. 1
Twentieth-CenturyClassical Music', 19th-Century
David
Brodbeck, 'Primo Schubert, Secondo Schumann:
(1984), pp.75-84;
Vol. 7, No. 1
Four-Hand
Brahms's
Waltzes, Op. 39', JournalofMusicology,

(1989), pp.55-80; Edward T. Cone, 'Schubert'sBeethoven',Musical

Vol. 56 (1970), pp.779-93;ElwoodDerr,'A DeeperExamination
Quarterly,
of Mozart's 1i43 Theme and Its StrategicDeployment',In TheoryOnly,Vol.

8, Nos 4-5 (1985), pp.5-44, and 'Beethoven'sLong-TermMemoryof C. P.

E. Bach's Rondo in E flat,W. 61/1(1787), Manifestin theVariationsin E flat
Vol. 70 (1984), pp.45-76;
for Piano, Opus 35 (1802)', Musical Quarterly,
A Tribute to Beethoven',Musicology,
Ernst Oster, 'The Fantasie-Impromptu:
Vol. 1, No. 4 (1947), pp.407-29; repr. in Aspectsof SchenkerianTheory,ed.
David Beach (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1983), pp.189-207.
could be cited.
Naturally,manyotherstudiesof musicalintertextuality
A Theoryof Poetry(London: OUP,
6. Harold Bloom, The Anxietyof Influence:
1973), p.5.
7. JohnHollander, the poet and critic,was perhapsthe firstto relateBloomian
notionsof poetic influenceto music. In TheFigureofEcho: A Mode ofAllusion
in Miltonand After(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1981), he briefly
discussesBenjamin Britten'sSerenade, Op. 24, showinghow Britten'smusic
echoes in poems by Tennyson,Keats
intertextual
respondsto and intensifies
cites Bloom in 'Music Theory,
David
Lewin
and Blake (see pp.130-2).
Vol. 3, No. 4
of
Modes
and
Perception',Music Perception,
Phenomenology,
at
a
read
a
Daverio
meeting of the New
(1986), pp.381-2. John
paper

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England Chapterof the AmericanMusicological Societyon 6 February1988

called 'Brahms,Mozart, and the Anxietyof Influence'.JosephStraus read a
paper at the nationalmeetingof the SocietyforMusic Theoryon 27 October
1989 called 'The "Anxietyof Influence"in Early 20th-CenturyMusic'; his
Music
book, RemakingthePast: Traditionand Influencein Twentieth-Century
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1990), also invokes Bloom.
Bloom's name has appeared in passing referencesby several other musical
[Link] far as I know, however,no one has yet attemptedwhat I here
undertake:transferring
Bloom's revisionaryratios,with theircorresponding
and
tropes
psychicdefences,to map influencerelationsbetweenmusicaltexts.
8. JohnHollander, 'Introduction',in Harold Bloom, Poeticsof Influence(New
Haven: Schwab, 1988), [Link].
9. Quoted in Bloom, 'The Breakingof Form', in Deconstruction
and Criticism
York:
18.
Continuum,
(New
1979), p.
10. In TheAnxietyofInfluence,
Bloom consideredbelatednessexclusivelya postEnlightenment
[Link] soon recantedthisview,however,declaring
belatedness 'a recurrentmalaise of Western consciousness' and finding
influence-anxieties
even in Euripedes. A Map of Misreading(Oxford: OUP,
1975), p.77. He would stillinsist,however,that post-Enlightenment
poetry
thisanxiety.
foregrounds
11. In A Map ofMisreading,
Bloom again stressesthat'mymotiveis to distinguish
once and forall whatI call "poeticinfluence"fromtraditional"source study"'
(p.116).
12. Bloom, Agon: Towardsa TheoryofRevisionism
(Oxford:OUP, 1982), p.287.
13. A Map ofMisreading,
p.18.
14. 'The Breakingof Form', p.3.
15. A Map ofMisreading,
p.18.
16. Ibid., p.121. Bloom's characterizationof poetic influenceas a paradoxical
'including/excluding'movement may remind some readers of a similar
statementbyJuliaKristevain Semiotike(Paris: Seuil, 1969): 'the poetic textis
produced in the complex movement of a simultaneous affirmationand
negationof anothertext' (p.162). So far as I know, however,Bloom never
mentionsKristeva,and seems to have developed his ideas independentlyof
hers. Kristeva, of course, is usually considered the originatorof the term
'intertextuality'.
17. See Louis A. Renza, 'Influence',in CriticalTerms
forLiterary
Study,ed. Frank
Lentricchiaand Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press,
1989), p. 187.
18. Bloom, Poetryand Repression:
Revisionism
fromBlake to Stevens(New Haven:
Yale UniversityPress, 1976), p.133.
19. Bloom, Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate (Ithaca: Cornell
Press, 1977), p.387.
University
20. A Map ofMisreading,
p.69.
21. 'The Breakingof Form', p. 18.
22. Agon,p.17.
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23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.

33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.

64

KORSYN

A Map ofMisreading,
p.18.
Ibid.,p.3.
TheAnxietyofInfluence,
p.96.
Agon,p.46.
See Thomas McFarland, Originalityand Imagination (Baltimore: Johns
Press, 1985), p.42.
Hopkins University
Poetryand Repression,
p.2.
TheAnxietyoflnfluence,
p.91.
Ibid.,p.94.
'The Breakingof Form', pp. 3-5.
For a stimulatingarticle on this aspect of Kant's theoryof genius, see
TimothyGould, 'The Audience of Originality:Kant and Wordsworthon the
ed. Ted Cohen and Paul
Receptionof Genius', in Essaysin Kant's Aesthetics,
of
Press,
1982), pp.179-93.
Guyer(Chicago: University Chicago
Agon,p. 117.
Renza, pp.188-9.
'The Breakingof Form', p.21.
Hollander,'Introduction',[Link].
A Map ofMisreading,
p.71.
Ibid.,p.97.
Ibid.,p.89.
Ibid.,p.89.
Ibid.,p.179.
Walter Pater, The Renaissance:Studiesin Art and Poetry(Chicago: Pandora
Books, 1977), p.135; Pater's emphasis.
Ibid.,pp.138-9.
Lewin, 'Music Theory, Phenomenology,and Modes of Perception',p.381;
Lewin's emphasis.
Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism
(New York: Continuum,1975), p.108.
'The Breakingof Form', p.15.
p. 147.
Poetryand Repression,
Ibid.,p.151.
Ibid.,p.149.
Agon,p.237.
Despite mydisagreementwithLewin on thispoint,I welcomehis recognition
ofthe need for'studiesin thepoeticsofanalysis'(Lewin, p.382).
Kabbalah and Criticism,
p. 109.
ed. and [Link] Oster (New York:
HeinrichSchenker,Free Composition,
Longman, 1979), [Link].
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truthand Method (New York: Crossroad, 1975),
p.273.
See Paul de Man, Blindnessand Insight:Essaysin theRhetoric
ofContemporary
Criticism,2nd edn (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1983),
p.187.
Leo Treitler,Music and theHistoricalImagination(Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard
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UniversityPress, 1989), p.55.

57. Brahms,letterto Clara Schumann,March 1870.
58. Quoted in Max Kalbeck,JohannesBrahms,4 vols (Tutzing: Schneider,1976),
Vol. 1, p.165.
59. Ralph Waldo Emerson,Nature,in Nature,Addresses,
and Lectures,ed. Robert
E. Spillerand AlfredE. Ferguson(Cambridge:BelknapPress, 1979), p.7.
60. A Map ofMisreading,
p.127.
61. Robert Schumann, Schumannon Music: A Selectionfromthe Writings,
trans.
York:
Pleasants
199.
Dover, 1988), pp. 15,
(New
Henry
62. See William Mason, Memoriesof a Musical Life (New York: Century,1901),
p.129.
63. For informationon Clara Schumann's appearances in Hamburg, see Frank
Vol. 2
Munte, 'Robert und Clara Schumann in Hamburg', Brahms-Studien,
(Hamburg: Karl DieterWagner,1977), pp.7-46.
64. WilliamHorne, 'Brahms's DilsseldorfSuite Study and his Intermezzo,Opus
Vol. 73, No. 2 (1989), pp.260-1.
116, No. 2', Musical Quarterly,
65. Kurt Hoffmann,Die BibliothekvonJohannesBrahms(Hamburg: Karl Dieter
Wagner,1974), p.150.
66. Paul Mast, 'Brahms's Study, Octaven u. Quinten u. A., with Schenker's
CommentaryTranslated', Music Forum,Vol. 5, ed. Felix Salzer and Carl
Schachter(New York: Columbia University
Press, 1980), pp. 110-11.
67. Renate and Kurt Hoffmann,JohannesBrahms:Zeittafelzu Leben und Werk
(Tutzing: Schneider,1983), p.38.
68. Margit L. McCorkle, JohannesBrahms: Thematisch-Bibliographisches
Werkverzeichnis,
preparedfromworkinitiatedby Donald M. McCorkle, ed. Ernst
Herttrich(Munich: Henle, 1984), pp.616-17.
69. In a letterto Barthold Senff(20 January1869), Brahms mentionsthat his
is longerthanChopin's original.
transcription
70. WilliamRothstein,'Phrase Rhythmin Chopin's Nocturnesand Mazurkas', in
ChopinStudies,ed. JimSamson (Cambridge:CUP, 1988), p. 115.
71. See Schenker,Free Composition,
?297, for a discussion of expansionsbased
on metricprototypes.
72. Another motivationfor Brahms's expansions may have been the need to
relievethe ratherdense texturesof his [Link] added thirdsand
sixths,combined with a deeper bass, produce a somewhat claustrophobic
effect;his phrase expansionsallow him to exploremore brilliantregistersby
way ofcontrast.
Chopin himselfmay have also interpolateda phrase expansion into this
etude. In the Dubois score of the piece, the run in the antepenultimate
bar is
taken an octave higher,possiblyindicatinga phrase expansionin which this
bar would be played twice,firstan octave higher,then as [Link] JeanJacques Eigeldinger,Chopin:Pianistand Teacheras Seen byHis Pupils,trans.
Naomi Shoet, with Krysia Osostowicz and Roy Howat (Cambridge: CUP,
1986), p.125.
73. The Berceuse was probablycomposed in 1843 and revisedin 1844; it was
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74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.

KORSYN

firstmentioned in a letterto A. Franchomme on 1 and 2 August 1844.

ed. Krystyna
FredericChopin. Thematisch-Bibliographisches
Werkverzeichnis,
The
Romanze
was
probably
Kobylanska (Munich: Henle, 1979), p.123.
composed at Ischl in Summer 1893 (McCorkle, Brahms Werkverzeichnis,
p.472). Kalbeck suspectedthatsome of Brahms's late piano pieces had been
sketchedearlier,but had no evidenceforthisclaim (JohannesBrahms,Vol. 4,
pp.169, 277, 290). From this chronologyit is obvious that Brahms would
have known the Berceuse when he composed the Romanze, since it was
writtenafterhis workon the Chopin edition.
Paul Badura-Skoda, 'Chopin's Influence',in The ChopinCompanion:Profiles
oftheMan and Musician,ed. Alan Walker(New York: Norton,1966), p.262.
Michael Musgrave, The Music of Brahms (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1985), p.262.
Musik (1891-1895) (Berlin,1896), p.258.
Eduard Hanslick,FiinfJahre
Kalbeck,JohannesBrahms,Vol. 4, pp.298-9.
Karl Geiringer,Brahms:His Life and Work(New York: Da Capo, 1982),
pp.220-1.
Vol. 5 (HamFloros, 'Studien zu Brahms' Klaviermusik',Brahms-Studien,
burg:Karl Dieter Wagner,1983), p.53.
Brahmscrossed out the word 'Intermezzo'in the manuscriptof Op. 118, No.
p.473).
5, and added the presenttitle (McCorkle, Brahms Werkverzeichnis,
Why did Brahms call it a Romanze? Althoughthis is his onlypiano piece in
this genre,he oftenuses the termin vocal music: various collectionsof his

songs are called 'Lieder und Romanzen' (Op. 14, Op. 44, Op. 93a),

'Romanzen und Lieder' (Op. 84) or 'Balladen und Romanzen' (Op. 75), and
Op. 33 consistsof '15 Romanzenaus L. Tiecks Magelone'.
John Daverio recently addressed the question of genre in Op. 33
('Brahms's MageloneRomanzenand the "RomanticImperative"',Journalof
Vol. 7, No. 3 [1989], pp.343-65). He argued that the Romanze
Musicology,
poetic
genreobeys FriedrichSchlegel's 'romanticimperative'to fusedifferent
the
to
Brahms's
for
he
traced
and
approach
literaryprecedents
types,
the
between
lies
Mdrchen
Tieck's
as
cycle
lyric
midway
Magelonesongs: 'Just
and the Roman,or novel, so Brahms's musical settingcombines elementsof
the traditionalsong cycle(a groupofmusicallyrics)and the Romantische
Oper
of
the
musical
Roman)'
(p.345).
equivalent
(the
with Brahms's vocal
Op. 118, No. 5 may have some generic affinities
Romanzen; in particular,it also exemplifiesthe fusionof genresthatDaverio
forexample,thatBrahmsnotatesmost ofhis
findsin Op. 33. It is significant,
intermezziin a uniformtempo (all the intermezziin Op. 118 are good
examplesofthis),or, ifthereis a changeoftempoforthemiddlesection,as in
Op. 119, No. 2, thereis no change of metre. (Op. 116, No. 2 does change
metre,but at least both sections remain in a triplemetre,being in 4 and
and tempo in Op. 118, No. 5
8 respectively.)The contrastsof metre
versus
versus
4
0) are more extremethanthose
Allegrettograzioso,
(Andante
in Brahms'[Link] use of variationformforthe middle sectionalso

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createsa fusionofvariationformwithternaryform.(There are precedents,of

romance:one thinks,
course,forthe use of variationformin the instrumental
forexample,of Clara Schumann'sRomancevaride,Op. 3.)
The narrativequalities of the vocal Romanze may also have coloured
Brahms's conception of the instrumentalRomanze. Here we can extend
Daverio's insightsinto the literarybackgroundof the Romanze genre by
readingBloom's essay 'The Internalizationof Quest Romance' (in Poeticsof
Influence,
pp.17-42). AlthoughBloom's predominantconcernhere is withthe
his analysisalso illuminatesthe Germanliterary
traditions
Romantics,
English
with which Brahms would have been most familiar,because there were
intimatelinksbetweenEnglishand GermanRomanticism.
Bloom believesthatRomanticismwas a revivalof the romancegenre,and
particularlyof the quest romance. This revival,however,greatlyinternalized
the patternsof quest romance,so thatit became an innerjourney,a quest for
[Link] hero of thisquest is 'the poet himself,the antagonists
of quest are everythingin the self that blocks imaginativework .... The
creative process is the hero of Romantic poetry' (p.24). This quest for
authentic selfhood is always mediated throughthe anxiety of influence,
because as we have seen, self-consciousness
manifestsitselfin poems as [Link] power that blocks the poet's individuationis that of his
precursors.
Because of the anxietyof influence,the structureof thisinternalizedquest
can be transferred
to music; the externalsubjectmatterofpoetry,whichcould
not be representedin music,is not Bloom's [Link] readingof Brahms's
Romanze, then, will followthe structureof an internalizedquest romance.
Brahms must choose between relyingupon his own imaginativepower and
yieldingto the preemptiveforceof a strongprecursor,Chopin. This choice is
really one between authentic and inauthenticselfhood. I would suggest,
however, that such a decision can be representedin music only if it is
mediatedthroughthe anxietyof influence,thatis, only ifthe music of other
composersis used in one's own piece to representthreatsto the self.
By now the readercan see my own quest. I want to findwaysto discuss
musical meaning without imposing meanings external to music; musical
structuresare vehiclesthatconveyan intrinsickindofmusical content,feeling
and poetry.(The factthat Brahms called his piece a Romanze does not, of
course, signifythat he consciouslyintendedit to be a Bloomian internalized
quest romance. Nevertheless, my interpretationis consistent with the
RomanticrevivalofromancewithwhichBrahmswould have been familiar.)
81. Jeffrey
Kallberg, 'The Rhetoricof Genre: Chopin's Nocturne in G minor',
Music,Vol. 11, No. 3 (1989), pp.238-61.
19th-Century

82. Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction

(Ithaca: CornellUniversity
Press, 1981), p. 105.

83. A Map ofMisreading, p.60.

84. Aristotle,Poetics,trans. Gerald F. Else (Ann Arbor: Universityof Michigan

Press, 1967), p.52a.
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he
85. AlthoughChopin does not markthe Berceuseas a set of variations,
a sketchforthepiecewas arranged
in four-bar
calledit 'Variantes';
originally
numberedand vertically
withthe variations
alignedbeneaththe
segments,
in a bar-to-bar
theme,showinghowstrictly
Chopinconceivedeachvariation
the
theme.
with
Chopin's
(See WojciechNowik,'Fryderyk
correspondence
toBerceuse',
in ChopinStudies,
pp.25-39.)
Op. 57 - FromVariantes
in derMusik,3
86. My graphis similarto Schenker's
analysisin Das Meisterwerk
vols(Munich:DreiMaskenVerlag,1925-30),Vol. 2, p.13.
87. TheAnxiety
pp.14,66-7.
ofInfluence,
ed. GeraldStrang
Fundamentals
88. ArnoldSchoenberg,
ofMusicalComposition,
andLeonardStein(NewYork:St. Martin'sPress,1967),p.167.
trans.H. E. Butler(London: Loeb
89. Quintilian,The Institutes
of Oratory,
Book
VIII,
vi,
Classics,1953),
Chapter Section19.
90. A Map ofMisreading,
p.72.
andRepression,
91. QuotedinPoetry
p.9.
92. Conventionalopinion still classifiesSchenkeras an austere formalist,
somereaders,then,
It maysurprise
structure.
interested
onlyin autonomous
to see me elicitfromSchenkertheinitialswervetowardsa musicalrhetoric.
Schenker
makesmyclaimsseemless startling.
Historicalreflection,
however,
wherehe wrote:
oftencomparedmusicto language,as in FreeComposition,
but onlyto
or to architecture,
'musicis nevercomparableto mathematics
language,a kind of tonal language'(p.5). This themeremainsconstant
der letzten
Schenker'scareer;in his Erlduterungsausgaben
throughout
fiinf
SonatenBeethovens.
Opus109 (Vienna:Universal,1913; [Link],ed. Oswald
Jonas[Vienna:Universal,1971]), he wrote:'musicallanguagehas a syntax
analogousto thatof spokenlanguage',and eveninvokedrhetorical
precisely
termssuchas aposiopesis
praisea composer's
frequently
(p.33). His writings
on
the
musicalrhetoric.
(See, forexample, essay Haydn'sE flatSonata in
Albert
Tonwille
[Link],1921-4],Vol. 3, pp.3-21.)
[Vienna:
theoriesof musical
a
is
also
There
longassociationbetweenhierarchical
what
introduced
Bernhard
When
musical
rhetoric.
and
structure
Christoph
levelsto describetherelationbetweenan underlying
we now call structural
invokedrhetorical
he naturally
terms,
simplepatternand itsfreeelaboration,
between
a
difference
involve
because rhetorical
properand
figuresalways
the
reformulated
when
Schenker
And
concept
radically
meaning.
figurative
rhetorical
of
the
remained
a
residuum
of structural
older,
styleof
levels,
an
elaborate
not
did
Schenker
levels.
structural
about
Although
thinking
rhetorical
invites
his
musical
of
rhetoric,
system
explicit theory
fromhis
intomusicalrhetoric
and one can elicitdeep insights
interpretation,
texts.
In a profoundanalysisof hidden relationsbetween Classical and
associationand eighteenth-century
Renaissance
rhetoric,
seventeenth-century
Bloomhas shown
Romanticpoetryand psychoanalysis,
of-ideaspsychology,
that rhetoricis a repressedconcernof many modes of [Link]
for example,'wishedto usurp the placeand functionof
associationists,

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rhetoric',so theyfoundedtheirpsychology- perhapsunconsciously- 'upon

the topics or commonplacesof rhetoric'(Wallace Stevens:The Poemsof Our
Climate,p.389). Bolder criticsthan I mightbe temptedto extend Bloom's
argumentto music analysis,to disclose a covertreturnof musicalrhetoricin
the writingsof manytheorists,includingSchenker,but a rhetoricfrequently
masked by a foregroundthatmay even [Link] an enterprise
would require volumes, and would demand great subtlety in textual
interpretation.
93. Gustav Jenner,JohannesBrahmsals Mensch,Lehrer,und Kiinstler,
2nd edn
N.
G.
Elwert'sche
(Marburg:
Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1930), p.57.
94. Agon,p.284.
95. See TerryEagleton,LiteraryTheory:
An Introduction
(Minneapolis:University
of MinnesotaPress, 1983), p. 183.
96. Floros, 'Studienzu Brahms'Klaviermusik',p.53.
97. For Brahms'sdistinctionbetweenstrictvariationsand fantasiavariations,see
his letterto Heinrichand Elisabet von Herzogenberg,20 August 1876, and
his letterto Schubringcitedin note 2 above.
98. Donald FrancisTovey, Beethoven(London: OUP, 1944), p.130. Tovey cites
Beethoven'sSeventhSymphony,second movement,to demonstratethat'the
essentialcumulativeeffectof a set of variationscan be maintainedby sheer
repetitionwithoutvaryingthethemeat all'.
99. Another result of the differentproportionsis that Chopin's firstthree
variationshold very closely to the melody of the theme, while Brahms,
havingfewervariations,alreadybeginsthe processof melodicembellishment
in Variation2.
100. Schenker,Meisterwerk,
Vol. 2, pp.13-14.
101. Renza, p.189.
102. AlthoughSchenkerdid not explicitlyformulatethisnotion of simulatingthe
structureof rhetoricalironythrougha conflictbetweenstructurallevels,it is
not difficultto elicit it fromhis texts. In Free Composition,
for example,
Schenker discusses the beginningof Beethoven's Third LeonoreOverture.
Towards the beginningof the piece thereis a quotation,in At,major, from
Florestan'saria. This sectionfunctionsas a chromaticpassingnote withina
larger arpeggiationof the dominant-seventhchord of C major. Schenker
comments: 'Beethoven achieved the effectof the vision in the Adagio by
placing it in a passing tone of chromaticorigin,whichis more remotethan
the diatonica?. It is thiswhichmakesthevisionmoredistant,morevisionary'
(p.64). Thus Schenker'sanalysisperfectly
capturesthe ironyof thisallusion
to Florestan'saria: howeverreal the visionmay appear fromthe perspective
ofAt major,it mustyieldto the 'reality'of C major.
103. Chopin's innovative chromaticismhas always been recognized, but his
masteryof diatonic writing,in the Berceuse and elsewhere,was equally
uncanny.
104. PatriciaCarpenter,'Aspects of Musical Space', in Explorations
in Music, the
Arts, and Ideas, ed. Eugene Narmour and Ruth A. Solie (Stuyvesant:
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Pendragon),p.354.
105. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp.389-400.
106. I appropriatethe notion of 'metaphoricalexemplification'from Nelson
Goodman, LanguagesofArt(Indianapolis:Bobbs-Merrill,1968).
107. David B. Greene, TemporalProcessesin Beethoven'sMusic (New York:
and Temporality
Gordon and Breach, 1982), and Mahler,Consciousness
(New
York: Gordon and Breach, 1984).
108. Fred EverettMaus, in a perceptivecritiqueof Greene, also acknowledges
that 'Greene's limitationsas an analystare frequentlyevident' ('Tempus
Music,Vol. 9, No. 3 [1986], p.244).
Imperfectum',19th-Century
109. Eugene Narmour,'On the RelationshipofAnalyticalTheoryto Performance
in Explorations
in Music,theArts,and Ideas,p.326.
and Interpretation',
110. Agon,[Link].
111. Kabbalah and Criticism,
p.106.
112. Blindnessand Insight,
pp.212, 226.
113. Renza, p.189.
114. Peter Brooks, 'The Idea of a PsychoanalyticLiteraryCriticism',Critical
Inquiry,Vol. 13, No. 2 (1987), p.334.
115. Poetryand Repression,
p.245.
116. Agon,pp.236-7.
117. WallaceStevens:ThePoemsofOur Climate,p.375.
118. A Map ofMisreading,
p.72.
119. WalterFrisch,'The "BrahmsFog": On Tracing BrahmsianInfluences',The
Vol. 7, No. 1 (1989), p.3.
AmericanBrahmsSocietyNewsletter,
120. Angus Fletcher,Allegory:The Theoryof a SymbolicMode (Ithaca: Cornell
UniversityPress, 1964), p.247.
121. TheAnxietyofInfluence,
p.72.
p. 14; A Map ofMisreading,
122. De Man, reviewof TheAnxietyofInfluence,
reprintedin Blindnessand Insight,
AppendixA, p.276.
123. Renza, p.191.
124. Of course, it is only a fictionthat one text can fulfilor complete another.
Bloom discusses thispoint in Ruin theSacred Truths:Poetryand BeliefFrom
theBibletothePresent(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1989), p.43.
125. In the IntermezzoOp. 119, No. 2, forexample,the middle sectionreaches
completemelodic closurein b.67.
126. Textual ambiguitiessurroundthis tempo equivalence. As Camilla Cai has
observed,Brahmsoriginallymarkedthistempo equivalenceas minimequals
crotchet,ratherthen crotchetequals minim,as it now appears in published
editions. She believes that Brahms may have mispositionedthe tempo
equivalence, and may have wanted it in b.17: 'Both metre changes
coincidentallybegin a new page in the autograph,and might,in a quick
glance that searched only for the beginning of something,have been
mistakenforone another.' ('Was Brahms a Reliable Editor?Changes made
Vol. 61, No. 1 [1989],
in Opuses 116, 117, 118, and 119', Acta Musicologica,

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TOWARDS

A NEW

POETICS

OF MUSICAL

INFLUENCE

pp.90-1.)
127. Kenneth Burke, 'Four Master Tropes', in A GrammarofMotives(Berkeley:
Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1945), p.509.
128. A Map ofMisreading,
p.98.
129. Fundamentals
ofMusical Composition,
p.58.
130. A Map ofMisreading,
p.99.
131. Ibid.,p.99.
132. Examples of the extensionof rhetoricalfiguresbeyond the linguisticrealm
abound. Angus Fletcher,for example, has shown how allegoricalpaintings
create effectscomparableto synecdocheand metonymythrough'the use of
encapsulatedvisual units withina largerframeso as to produce a studied
withthewhole' (Allegory,
discontinuity
p.369).
133. Rose RosengardSubotnik,'Towards a Deconstructionof StructuralListenin
ing: A Critique of Schoenberg,Adorno, and Stravinsky',in Explorations
Music,theArts,and Ideas, p. 121.
134. TheAnxietyofInfluence,
p. 15.
135. Poetryand Repression,
p.236.
136. Ibid.,p.14.
137. Notice that Schoenberg's underlyingmodel for the process of creating
musicalunityis rhetoricas a systemof [Link] composer'staskis to
persuadeus thathis piece is monotonal,despiteany elementsthatjeopardize
the primacyof the tonic. Rhetoric,as Aristotlesaid, 'provesopposites',and
the reconciliationof contrariesprovesthe composer's [Link] one hand, a
piece is in one keythroughout;on the other,'the tonalitymustbe placed in
danger' (Theoryof Harmony,trans. Roy E. Carter [Berkeley:Universityof
CaliforniaPress, 1978], p.151).
138. TheAnxietyofInfluence,
p. 15.
139. A Map ofMisreading,
pp.72, 101.
140. TheAnxietyofInfluence,
pp. 135-36.
141. Truthand Method,p.273.
142. WallaceStevens:ThePoemsofOur Climate,p.386.
143. I take the term'stratified
discourse'fromde Certeau (The Writing
ofHistory,
discourseis 'constructedas
p.94). Accordingto de Certeau,historiographical
a knowledgeof the other',creatinga split discourse, in which 'quotation
introducesa necessaryoutertextwithinthe text'.I suggestthatas artgrows
more conscious of its history,it may assume somethingof the characterof
historiographicaldiscourse, becoming stratified,as quotation of prior art
introducessubtextswithinthetext.
144. Schoenberg,'Brahms the Progressive',in Styleand Idea, ed. Leonard Stein
(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1984), pp.398-441. (Burkholder's
articlewas citedin note 5 above.)
145. Blindnessand Insight,
pp. 171-86.
146. A Map ofMisreading,
p.97.
147. TheFigureofEcho,p. 114.
148. A Map ofMisreading,
p. 102.
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149. Ibid.,p.102.
150. Schenker's analyses often reveal such descending octave progressionsin
codas. See, forexample,his readingof the coda of Chopin's Etude, Op. 10,
No. 8 in Five GraphicMusicalAnalyses,ed. Felix Salzer (New York: Dover,
1969).
151. There are other,perhapsmoreradicalwaysin whichRomanticpieces might
figuratively
exemplifya future-oriented
quality. Directional tonality,for
keys,has an inherent
example, in which pieces begin and end in different
towards
a
new
tonalfuture.
by moving
tendencyto introjectfuturity
152. Agon,p.225
153. Bloom's map appearsin A Map ofMisreading,
p.84.
154. For example, at the Conference 'Alternativesto Monotonality' at the
Universityof Victoria, I read a paper called 'Directional Tonality and
A Comparisonof the Second Movementof Brahms'sQuintet
Intertextuality:
with
88
Chopin's Ballade Op. 38'. There I proposed that Chopin's
Op.
in Brahms's slow movement.I am also
Ballade is the centralprecursor-text
will
address
these
issues morefully.
which
a
book
writing
155. A good place to begin such an investigationof text-settingmight be
Beethoven's song cycle An die ferneGeliebte,Op. 98. The six poems by
Jeittelesaccommodate themselves to Bloom's six revisionaryratios. In
Bloom's map of misreading,the ratios, tropes and psychic defences are
manifestedin particulartypes of poetic [Link] inter-readingof the
Romanze and the Berceuse naturallydid not include such verbalimages,but
analysesof song textswould followBloom's completemap.

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