Musical Influence

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 Published by: Wiley Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853998 . Accessed: 02/10/2013 06:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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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, strongcriticalparadigms.Consider 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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the problematicsof influence.In 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 questions.Is Brahmshere quotinga Is scherzo? he quoting a Chopin waltz?Or is he quotingboth, is Chopin his idea a conflationof the two?These questionssuggestothers.Are 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)

4

conanima

(cresc.)

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

TIr

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

V

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1

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 latertext.Understandingthathistoryinvolvesmore than assemblingan aggregateoffacts.Here I quote Michel de Certeau: fact'resultsfroma praxis,becauseit is alreadythe Every'historical a statement of meaning.It 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 fact.This is not to say that the selectionof models precedes observation;rathertheremust be a reciprocitybetween empirical data and the models throughwhich we MUSIC ANALYSIS

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thosedata. interpret Intertextuality poses strenuouschallengesfor any model. As we have seen, the model must include history.Yet it must also accommodate we need a model that explainsboth traditionand uniqueness, originality; that explains how a work becomes originalby strugglingagainst other texts.The model should also leave room forthe imagination,so that we remainartistseven in our model-building.It 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 conventions.All or unconsciously.None 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 Vessels.Although 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 comfort.Even 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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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 realityoutsideliterature.But 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 textuality.Hence the poet discoverspoetrywitha sense of belatedness,withfeelingsof guiltand indebtednesstowardshis predecessors.Love foranteriorpoetry- the love that awakened his poetic calling- soon turnsambivalent.The 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 study.Unlike 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, MUSIC ANALYSIS

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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 negateotherpoets.Yet 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 going.Strongpoems 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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'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 theirprecursors.Historybecomes part of the poem, not something added on by historians.But '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 detractors.We tend to believethatpoems are self-contained units of meaning,but Bloom urgesus to abandon such notions.Here is a cento ofrelevanttexts: Few notionsaremoredifficult to dispelthanthe'commonsensical' one thata poetictextis self-contained, thatithas an ascertainable meaning or meaningswithoutreference to otherpoetictexts.Somethingin

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 language.Anypoem 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 weak.Strongpoets achievestrength the ofinfluence, by confronting anxiety with bywrestling

theirgreatprecursors.This 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'sown.Suchfreedom 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 originality.He 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 anteriority.The 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,emulation.Bloom 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 ratios.These ratios of influence,whichhe calls revisionary interpretations the dynamicsof and of describe both the poet's internalizing tradition, lucid Renza's commentary: reading.Here 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

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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 poet-as-poet.By 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 general.Yet 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 texts.Consider 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 wanderedalready.An 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 oftropes.Reaction-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 MUSIC

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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 similargrounds.Freud'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 criticism.Can 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 subjectmatter.This 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 commonsubject.That approachmightcharacterizetraditionalsource study,but, as we have seen, nothingcould be more antitheticalto Bloom's project.Bloom's statement must be read in light of his later self-commentary in Kabbalah and Criticism:

I recallventuring theapothegm thatthemeaningofa poemcouldonly be anotherpoem.Not,I pointout,themeaning ofanotherpoem,but theotherpoemitself, indeedtheotherness oftheotherpoem.45 This concept of 'otherness'saturatesBloom's theory.Justas 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 tradition.Conventional 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 history.By showinghow poems repressand exclude other poems, Bloom can show how poems become unique, yet relate to tradition,by defendingthemselvesagainst influence.An 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 MUSIC

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does not reduce Tennyson and Keats to a common meaning.Instead, 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 imagination.Too many recent modes of music analysisrepressthe imagination,fleeingfromart towards an illusoryobjectivity.Faced 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,stillinvitesscepticism.Beginningin Part IV, however,I shall prove, not its truth,but its usefulnessas a startingmusicalinfluence. pointforunderstanding Anyusurperof Bloom mustlearnthe necessityof misprision.There 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 structure.Bloom 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 defences.Any 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, 14

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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 consciousness.When 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 analysiswithhistory.In 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 influence.Any 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 serendipitous.His 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 MUSIC ANALYSIS

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historicalconsciousnessof the nineteenthcentury.Nietzsche'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 Beethoven.As Nietzsche said, otherartistsmust pay the price for too great an artist.Beethoven 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 whollyarbitrary.Brahms 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 16

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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 edition.He 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 technicallydemanding.What 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. MUSIC

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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 expansions.Then 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 intimately.Such 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

4

41

Chopin 54

-55

orpw

4

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

1

2

1

681

2

1

5

Chopin 58

&I II

Brahms 69

20

-

S12 5 43

70

41

1 4

5

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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 profoundlyimaginative.First he writes a one-bar ostinato patternthat pervadesthe whole piece, pushingthe additivetendencyso farthatit turns into its opposite,providinga unifyingtextureratherthan fragmenting the MUSIC

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piece into discretesections.Then 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 variations.He 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 precursor-piece.Althoughwe cannot preciselydraw the boundary betweenconscious and subliminalallusion,Brahmsmighthave been aware of some connectionsto the Berceuse and not of others. Let us explore these deeper relationships.There seems to be a literal

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

4

5

41

.. ,0 "t

.

I

pe motto

,.

S3

~ r i

1

. .... 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 MUSIC ANALYSIS 10:1-2,

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Ex. 9 Brahms,Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, Grundgestalt (melodicaspect) I

E AK---6-.5

J J J Z