'The Classical Style' reading group, week eleven

 

Fortepiano by Johann Andreas Stein (Augsburg, 1775) – Berlin Musical Instrument Museum.
Creative Commons photo by Gérard Janot. Source. 

V  MOZART 

 1. The Concerto 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

On page 251 Rosen begins discussing K. 503, Concerto No. 25, my favorite. Joseph Kerman edited the Norton critical score of this concerto. I saw that book in a Tower Records in the 1990's, but I couldn't afford it. I later got the book from the library and loved it, and I have a special affection for that concerto.  

The footnote on page 255 deals with changes in pianos over time. When Mozart composed this concerto the piano had fewer keys than the standard 88 key piano of the last two hundred years. Pianists sometimes ask what they think Mozart would have wanted to hear on the longer keyboard. Would he have wanted to hear notes not possible to play on the keyboard for which he originally conceived the piece? 

These last eleven piano concertos, number 17 to 27, seem to me among the greatest creations of humanity. If you find yourself struggling with Rosen's analysis in this book, I recommend just putting the book aside and listening to the music. I think this marks my sixth time reading this book. It covers so much music, I get lost sometimes, but I feel grateful that I get to return to the music, and I feel grateful that you have chosen to join me on this voyage. 

In 1985 I went to London for the first time. Most nights I went to a play, but the theaters closed on Sundays, so I went to hear a concert with Andre Previn playing and conducting a Mozart concerto (I don't remember which one) and conducting the Brahms Requiem. I had read articles condemning pianists conducting from the keyboard, so I found myself most looking forward to the Brahms, but the Mozart performance ended up blowing me away. A few weeks later I found myself in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, on July 23 where I heard the original German version of Falco's song "Amadeus" in a nightclub called Wonderland. The next night in Munich I saw Berman's film of The Magic Flute. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week ten

Ludwig van Beethoven, about the time the Hammerklavier was written. (Source). 

Part IV  SERIOUS OPERA 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

On page 180 Rosen writes, “Tovey has remarked that Beethoven was not insufficiently dramatic but rather too dramatic for the stage: his music compresses into ten minutes the complexity of a three-act opera." This reminds of the equation Pound quotes “Dictung = condensare”, which Basil Bunting found in a German/Italian dictionary, poetry = condensation. Pound thought a short poem could compress the action of a novel. One can see this in something like Robert Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”.  

I find it interesting that The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute have remained in the repertoire continuously since their premieres, never needed to get revived. Some of Shakespeare’s contemporaries criticized his blending of genres: his comedies contained serious depths and his tragedies contained farcical humor. I found it odd that the 2006 Will Ferrell film Stranger than Fiction insisted on a rather narrow separation of tragedy from comedy. I like how Rosen shows how Mozart took elements of opera seria and incorporated them into the opera buffa traditions to create his masterpieces.  

This chapter serves as a transition from the world of Haydn to the world of Mozart, with a preview of the world of Beethoven. Rosen sees them all working within the world of the classical style, with Beethoven stretching that style into undreamt of territories. In some ways I see this study group as part of our upcoming Schroedinger’s Cat study group. A character in that novel invites a number of concert pianists to a party so she can talk with them about Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. I like to think of Charles Rosen attending that party and sharing some of the ideas in this book with the host and the other guests, listening the other pianists' notions about the Hammerklavier and having spirited discussions with them.

'The Classical Style' reading group, week eight

 

Joseph Haydn around 1770 (source). 

Part III 

HAYDN FROM 1770 TO THE DEATH OF MOZART 

1  String Quartet 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Mozart died December 5, 1791, age 35. 

On pg. 118, Rosen says of Haydn’s Op. 33 string quartets, “Transitional figures and phrases are almost completely eliminated.” I find this interesting because when Ezra Pound edited T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, he mostly eliminated transitional material, seeing it as unnecessary. Before Pound and Eliot, the notion of the three unities of time, place, and action played a big role in Western literature even though writers like Shakespeare rarely followed the unities. Shakespeare’s The Tempest provides a rare exception: the play takes place in one location on one afternoon. Robert Anton Wilson noticed that films prepared audiences for radical jumps in space and time. D. W. Griffith influenced both Pound and Joyce. Later films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Fifth Element would jump thousands of years from one scene to the next. James Bond films would jump all over the world from scene to scene.  

Literature before Pound and Eliot tended to have transitional material. Pound used radical jump cuts across space and time in The Cantos, and he encouraged Eliot to abandon transitional material in The Waste Land. Rosen illustrates a similar process in Haydn.  

I love Rosen’s writing, but one sentence on page 140 bothers me: “Op. 64 no. 3 in B flat major is one of the great comic masterpieces: the listener who can hear the last movement without laughing aloud knows nothing of Haydn.” I don’t like how he puts the reader on the spot here. The first time I listened to this movement in response to this passage, I did laugh aloud, but I wondered if I found myself nervously laughing because of my fear Rosen would think I knew “nothing of Haydn.” I just listened to it again, and I had a similar experience, laughing insecurely but enjoying the music nonetheless. Cannabis users might experiment with this movement and the quartet as a whole.

'The Classical Style' reading group, Week Five

 Domenico Scarlatti

 3. The Origins of the Style 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Pg. 47 –  Johann Sebastian Bach: born March 31, 1685, died July 28, 1750.  

George Frideric Handel: born March 5, 1685, died April 13, 1759.  

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti: born October 26, 1685, died July 23, 1757. 

Haydn composed his Op. 33 String Quartets in 1781.  

This chapter outlines the musical world of Robert Anton Wilson’s The Earth Will Shake and The Widow’s Son: continuing influence of Scarlatti, Bach, and Handel; a very young Mozart; and Haydn toiling away in relative obscurity in Esterhazy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  

Rosen writes: 

The idea of a Form striving to define itself, to become flesh in all these different ways, is attractive, but even as a metaphor it sets a trap. It leads one to assume that there was such a thing as ‘sonata form’ in the late eighteenth century, and that the composers knew what it was, whereas  nothing we know about the situation would lead us to suppose anything of the kind. The feeling for any form, even the minuet, was much more fluid. 

                                                - pg. 52 

This passage helps to address Oz Fritz’s comment, “I don't know why Rosen calls the sonata a texture and not a form. Perhaps he will explain that as we move along.” 

(It does bother me that Rosen always uses male pronouns when refering to generic composers or artists.) 

    In Sonata Forms Rosen writes: 

    In the eighteenth century, consequently, there was no notion of an isolated  sonata form as such: all that existed was a gradually evolving conception of     the composition of instrumental music – a pure instrumental style untroubled  by the exigencies of concerto, dance music, or opera overture, unhampered  by the old-fashioned procedures of fugue and variations. It is significant that     eighteenth-century accounts of sonata form are all description of     instrumental compostion in general. 

- pg. 14-15 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week four

 Frédéric Chopin

2. Theories of Form 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

This parenthetical passage on page 34 really intrigued me when I first read The Classical Style in 1991:  

 (The greater the composer, the larger the terms of his control over the significance of his ideas, even when the range of his conception is deliberately narrowed: that is why Chopin must be considered in the company of the greatest in spite of the limitations of genre and medium that he imposed upon  himself.) 

I started playing string bass in fourth grade, and I tended to value composers who composed orchestral music since I got to play their music in orchestras. I started playing piano in third grade, but bass quickly became my main instrument, and I never played any Chopin on piano. 

In 1995 Charles Rosen’s The Romantic Generation came out, and it floored me. I remember that one sentence from The Classical Style, and roughly one third of Rosen’s large new book made clear why he considered Chopin “in the company of the greatest.” Since 1995 I have learned to love Chopin’s music, and I have come to completely agree with Mr. Rosen. 

Rosen frequently mentions Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940) and Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935). I had heard music major friends mention Schenker in the 1980’s, but I don’t think I heard of Tovey until I read Kerman’s The Beethoven Quartets. Kerman and Rosen both had a ton of respect for Tovey’s writings on music. Kerman wrote a wonderful tribute “Tovey’s Beethoven” available in Kerman’s Write All These Down. Tovey has become less popular with younger musicologists. As Rosen mentions in this chapter, the arguments can get very nasty. Ethan Iverson quoted Sayre’s Law that “"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." Despite Kerman’s love of Tovey’s writing, he included a famous nasty attack on Tovey in his Norton Critical Score of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503 (#25) along with a famous Tovey essay on that concerto. 

I enjoyed Jan Swafford biography of Beethoven, but something seemed missing to me. About halfway through I noticed that, although he frequently mentioned Kerman and Rosen, Tovey did not appear in the bibliography or the index. Swafford only mentions Tovey once in a dismissive footnote. The decline in Tovey’s reputation seems to have happened because post-Rosen musicologists tend to overemphasize the similarities between different motives in a piece of music (in my opinion). Tovey emphasized caution in this regard (as do Rosen and Kerman). In Tovey’s long analysis of the Hammerklavier Piano Sonata, he writes: 

The movements of this Sonata, and of Op. 110, show a subtle and elusive relation in their main themes. Such subtleties ought not to be imputed to classical sonatas without very cogent evidence; when people see more than is there they will be very unlikely to see all that is there. But the evidence, both         internal and external, is quite adequate here. 

                    - A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, pg. 221 

'The Classical Style' reading group, Week Two

 

Week 2: Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples. 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. I laughed out loud on pg. xviii when Rosen wrote, “But we know that performers of weak moral principles did not observe all written repeats.”  

Some of you have expressed concerns about not understanding this text. I hope you will enjoy the book anyway. I don’t understand everything that Rosen writes, but I think I understand some of it, and I enjoy it immensely. It seems to me that playing the music provides the greatest tool for understanding it. I don’t play piano much anymore, and I never played that well. I feel lucky that I got to play Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven works while playing bass in student orchestras. However, I disagree with Rosen sometimes, and with other musicians who can actually play this music. We all experience the music in our own way.  

Listening to the music provides the second best way to experience and learn about this music. Hearing it live seems a wonderful tool, but listening to records or watching recordings also help us understand the music. Reading about it also helps. I remember hearing Andre Previn talk about the privilege of conducting music “that is greater than we are”. Now, spiritually, I don’t know if I fully agree with this, but I love the line from the Upanishads Bob Wilson quoted in Masks of the Illuminati, ”Remove infinity from it and infinity still remains.” I keep coming back to late Beethoven, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, and it keeps bringing new delights. 

This brings up the question of opera. Some people go to the opera regularly. James Joyce, Charles Rosen, and Stendhal went to opera regularly, and this experience seems central to understanding their works. I have not attended an opera in person since hearing Die Fledermaus in Vienna in 1985 from the highest, cheapest seats. (Or did I stand? I think I sat. Memory fails me.) Mozart’s great operas play a significant role in this book. I highly recommend Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute. Because of watching that film over and over again over the past 41 years, as well as listening to various recordings and getting to teach that film in various classes, I know that opera pretty well. In the mid-1980s I expressed my yearning to own more opera cd’s to a friend who kindly said they would pay for half of a three cd opera recording for me if I would pay the balance, so I got Solti’s recording of The Marriage of Figaro which I have listened to a ton over the decades. I feel familiar with the music of that opera, but I don’t understand the plot very well. I have started watching a YouTube recording of the opera, but I don’t have much appetite for watching opera on TV, alas. 

New reading group begins! 'The Classical Style' [Updated]

The Classical Style by Charles Rosen 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Week 1: Overture 

Schedule: 

5/25/2026 Overture 

6/1 Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples. 

I   INTRODUCTION 

6/8 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century 

6/15 2. Theories of Form 

6/22 3. The Origins of the Style 

II   THE CLASSICAL STYLE 

6/29 1. The Coherence of the Musical Language 

7/6 2. Structure and Ornament 

III   HAYDN FROM 1770 TO THE DEATH OF MOZART 

7/13 1. String Quartet 

7/20 2. Symphonies 

7/27  

IV   SERIOUS OPERA 

V   MOZART 

8/3 1. The Concerto 

8/10 2. String Quintet 

8/17 3. Comic Opera 

VI   HAYDN AFTER THE DEATH OF MOZART 

8/24 1. The Popular Style 

8/31 2. Piano Trio (Doomed Music) 

9/7 3. Church Music 

VII   BEETHOVEN 

9/14 1. Beethoven 

9/21 2. Beethoven’s Later Years and the Conventions of His Childhood 

9/28 Epilogue 

At the end of first grade they put some of the first graders in the second grade classroom for the last few weeks of school. One day the second grade teacher told us about Franz Joseph Haydn. She said he had become famous, but then, as now, some people fell asleep at the concerts, so he wrote a special piece for them, and she played us the second movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLy6JxEDLw&list=RDVOLy6JxEDLw&start_radio=1 

This utterly delighted my first grade mind. I could think of nothing cooler. I went home and told my mom about it, and she got me an LP of Haydn’s Surprise and Clock Symphonies that Christmas. I listened to them over and over again over the decades. 

Around December 1990 I read Joseph Kerman’s The Beethoven Quartets which blew me away, and in 1991 I read a bunch of other Kerman books. In Kerman’s Contemplating Music he raved about Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style, so it read it that summer, and I’ve read it over and over again over the past 25 years, along with all of Rosen’s other books. I also love Rosen’s piano playing. I love the synergetic experience of reading him and then listening to his recordings and trying to grok the music. Thank you for joining me on this voyage to Esterhazy, Salzburg, Vienna, and beyond. 

UPDATE: Given that there is interest in Sonny Rollins in the comments, I thought some of you might want to read the New  York Times obituary (gift link). 

One more reminder: New reading group starts on May 25

 One more reminder that a new reading group begins on May 25, lead by Eric Wagner:  Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. 

More details at a previous post.  Here again is Eric's statement: ""It pleases me to announce that we will begin a reading group on Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. This book provides a great analysis of music dear to Bob Wilson, especially Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Many people, including me, consider this book one of the best books on music ever written. We will begin on Monday, May 25. I recommend using the Expanded Edition of the text, but you may use the original edition if you would like to. I really look forward to this study group!"

I got my good condition used copy for less than $10 at BookFinder.com. 

As per usual, the way it works is that Eric writes a blog post and everyone else weighs in with comments. 

Here are Robert Anton Wilson's desert island recordings list, you'll see plenty from the guys Rosen writes about. 

The surprise in RAW's list is the one rock group, Iron Butterfly. My younger readers actually may not remember "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." 

I mostly listen to classical music these days. but just for fun, here are 10 of my favorite rock music albums. I could have listed a few others, and I'm sure as soon as I hit "Publish," I'll think of something I wish I had included. 

Revolver, the Beatles.
Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones.
Out of Time, REM.
Speaking in Tongues, Talking Heads.
New Miserable Experience, the Gin Blossoms.
At Budokan, Cheap Trick.
Copper Blue, Sugar.
Aurora Gory Alice, Letters to Cleo.
Armed Forces, Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
Shake It Up, the Cars. 

New online reading group for Rosen's 'Classical Style'

 

Eric Wagner has asked to lead a new online reading group for The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven by Charles Rosen and I have agreed, note that Eric recommends the expanded edition. We start in May with the usual format, i.e. Eric will write a blog post and anyone who wants to take part will be invited to weigh in with the comments.

Here is Eric's statement:

"It pleases me to announce that we will begin a reading group on Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. This book provides a great analysis of music dear to Bob Wilson, especially Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Many people, including me, consider this book one of the best books on music ever written. We will begin on Monday, May 25. I recommend using the Expanded Edition of the text, but you may use the original edition if you would like to. I really look forward to this study group!"

I can't resist adding a couple of points. This book won the National Book Award, so Eric is not alone in his opinion.

I recently ran across a Tyler Cowen podcast that discussed music, and Tyler said that he believes the top three composers are Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. This is the received opinion, but I agree with it. Haydn also is considered an important composer; Sviatoslav Richter, my favorite piano player, once said that Haydn is better than Mozart. So if you are a music fanatic, this is a good opportunity to learn something.

Eric has more musicological  knowledge than I do. I told Eric I was worried I would not be able to follow Rosen's points, and he assured me, "Yes, he has technical stuff, but he also has tons of entertaining nontechnical stuff." So apparently if you are as ignorant as me, you can still learn something.

If you are searching for a cheap used copy, it might help to know that the ISBN for the expanded edition is 9780393317121. Bookfinder.com is a good search engine for finding used books and I found a copy for less than $10.

Charles Rosen was a noted piano player as well as a scholar, as the Wikipedia bio explains. Eric has been bending my ear about him for years. 

I am currently listening to all of Beethoven's 32 sonatas, concentrating on a particular sonata each week (I am at number 18, about to start on number 19). Eric currently has a similar Beethoven listening project, tying it to a re-read of Timothy Leary's The Game of Life.