Fiction as Musicology: Aesthetic Listening in E. M. Forster's Howards End

Abstract

Although Forster repeatedly considered the question of music in his writings, Howards End (1910) is his first sustained attempt to explore the issue of musical perception and the status of music. Significantly, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the site of contention. Through a disagreement between the Schlegel sisters over how one should listen to Beethoven's symphony, Forster dramatizes the musicological debate around aesthetic perception and the status of instrumental music. The novel, this article will argue, is no less a part of that cultural debate than professional musicology. Indeed, Forster's writing bears the influence of music critics before him and has inspired musicologists after him. Moreover, by giving voice to various aesthetic positions through his characters, Forster also explores the overlaps, ambiguities and uncertainties that are elided by the seemingly dispassionate and authoritative discourse of nineteenth-century musicology. At the same time, Forster reveals a human consequence that musicological debate neglects: the exclusion of Leonard Bast, and those like him, from aesthetic experiences.