Leitfigur Beethoven: Thoughts on the Development of German Musicology in Light of the 1968 Movement

Abstract

Overburdening music with philosophy is a very special phenomenon that has much to do with German history. The Enlightenment in the 18th century became the basis of the forthcoming bourgeois society, music was promoted to the status of a religion and took over all their ideals, this became known as modernity. So what we call serious music is the art as religion of modernity. How different directions of this movement are based on the same principles and how it tried to survive even when it came to an end, I’ll show in the example of German musicology after the Second World War. In 1970, the International Musicological Congress in Bonn was hosted by the Gesellschaft fur Musikforschung on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. The University of Bonn’s Institute of Musicology intended to contribute to the world-wide commemoration from the composer’s birthplace. It was to be a memorable year indeed—in the history of Beethoven reception, it marked the imminent end of the composer’s status as an undisputed Leitfigur of society. In his TV production Ludwig van, Mauricio Kagel provoked a scandal, while Karlheinz Stockhausen snarkily combined Beethoven recordings with short waves. In doing so, both composers abstracted Beethoven’s compositions in ways that would have been considered malicious and offensive at the time when faithfulness to the original work was the highest aim. During that time, art music in the emphatic sense rose to a societal position of art-as-religion in Modernity. In a thus unfinished chapter of music historiography, the academic study of art in the emphatic sense was assigned the role of protector of the truth that was to make decisions about good and evil, that is a congregation of faith.