Beethoven's Sketches and the Thematic Process

Abstract

Theorists, analysts and popular writers continue to look more closely at Beethoven's music – and at more of it – than at that of any other composer; and it is his music, more often than not, that lies at the basis of theoretical formulations that are the most significant for our time. So, for instance, we agree with Joseph Kerman when he asserts that Tovey's contribution to tonal analysis and theory is inseparable from Beethoven's contribution to the musical repertory; but the association is equally valid for the contributions of many theorists of the past hundred years, including Heinrich Schenker, whose work on the Piano Sonata op. 111 shall be reviewing shortly, and Rudolph Reti, who invented the phrase ‘thematic process’ to describe a method of analysis by which an entire composition can be reduced to one or a few ‘prime cells’. In the first of Reti's two books on the subject, the Ninth Symphony is made the lead batsman in an impressive line-up of musical masterpieces from the sixteenth century to the twentieth; the second of his books is devoted entirely to the piano sonatas of Beethoven.