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Hoffmann’s paradoxical path
With Hoffmann’s complex review placed in the Early Romantic mirror-world of paradoxes, irony and infinitude, which was such an important point of departure for him, I also choose to conclude in the spirit of the paradox. According to Ian Bent, Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is ”[…] arguably the most celebrated document in the history of music criticism," and the referential literature commenting on this text is overwhelming. To try to grasp it all would certainly be a sublime experience! My contribution has fulfilled its purpose if it has suggested the fruitfulness of the paradoxical coexistence of metaphorical and analytical language in Hoffmann’s Beethoven criticism. In the present situation, Hoffmann paradoxical example shows a path ahead, when the impossibility of a purely objective language about music is an insight musicology cannot ignore, just as the private subjectivity of taste dominates the public discourse about music. The subjective and the objective cannot exist as isolated categories in music perception, but like Hoffmann implies, we can still gain valuable understanding by letting them play roles in a hermeneutic circle. We experience that the musical work is speaking to us through its unique form, which we can approach by trying to identify and contextualize what we hear. On the other hand, musical meaning only exists in and through the subjective aesthetic sensibility of the listener.
In my opinion, it is also fruitful to let music criticism by inspired by Marion Guck’s idea that all language about music, including the analytical, can be conceived as a story of involvement. As we have seen, Guck’s theory allows for inconsistency in the analytical language, as a consequence of the intangible nature of music perception. For example, Hoffmann never decides whether to depict the crucial idea of the unity of the work as a compositional structure which can be analyzed, or as a sublime experience which language cannot capture. In the opening words of his review, it is almost as if Hoffmann warns the reader about his own intoxication with the work he is about to evaluate: ”The reviewer […] is utterly permeated by the subject of the present review, and may nobody take it amiss if he exceeds the limits of conventional appraisals and strives to put in to words all the profound sensations that this composition has given rise to in him."
Is not this a hopelessly Romantic and dated position today? Personally, I do not think so. Not if you love music, without being able to explain why in a fully understandable way. Let us be inspired by Hoffmann to call criticism into play as music plays, and to appreciate the paradoxes that spring from the attempt at describing the overwhelming and enigmatic experience of music.
With Hoffmann’s complex review placed in the Early Romantic mirror-world of paradoxes, irony and infinitude, which was such an important point of departure for him, I also choose to conclude in the spirit of the paradox. According to Ian Bent, Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is ”[…] arguably the most celebrated document in the history of music criticism," and the referential literature commenting on this text is overwhelming. To try to grasp it all would certainly be a sublime experience! My contribution has fulfilled its purpose if it has suggested the fruitfulness of the paradoxical coexistence of metaphorical and analytical language in Hoffmann’s Beethoven criticism. In the present situation, Hoffmann paradoxical example shows a path ahead, when the impossibility of a purely objective language about music is an insight musicology cannot ignore, just as the private subjectivity of taste dominates the public discourse about music. The subjective and the objective cannot exist as isolated categories in music perception, but like Hoffmann implies, we can still gain valuable understanding by letting them play roles in a hermeneutic circle. We experience that the musical work is speaking to us through its unique form, which we can approach by trying to identify and contextualize what we hear. On the other hand, musical meaning only exists in and through the subjective aesthetic sensibility of the listener.
In my opinion, it is also fruitful to let music criticism by inspired by Marion Guck’s idea that all language about music, including the analytical, can be conceived as a story of involvement. As we have seen, Guck’s theory allows for inconsistency in the analytical language, as a consequence of the intangible nature of music perception. For example, Hoffmann never decides whether to depict the crucial idea of the unity of the work as a compositional structure which can be analyzed, or as a sublime experience which language cannot capture. In the opening words of his review, it is almost as if Hoffmann warns the reader about his own intoxication with the work he is about to evaluate: ”The reviewer […] is utterly permeated by the subject of the present review, and may nobody take it amiss if he exceeds the limits of conventional appraisals and strives to put in to words all the profound sensations that this composition has given rise to in him."
Is not this a hopelessly Romantic and dated position today? Personally, I do not think so. Not if you love music, without being able to explain why in a fully understandable way. Let us be inspired by Hoffmann to call criticism into play as music plays, and to appreciate the paradoxes that spring from the attempt at describing the overwhelming and enigmatic experience of music.
