Review of Pieter Bergé ed., Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata: Perspectives of Analysis and Performance (Peeters, 2009)

Abstract

[1] A spirit of international cooperation pervades this welcome set of essays devoted to Tempest Sonata. Belgian scholars Pieter Berge, Jeroen D'hoe, and Steven Vande Moortele set this undertaking in motion with contributions on motivic structure and formal ambiguities, inviting an impressive roster of scholars from Britain (Kenneth Hamilton on performance traditions) and North America (Scott Burnham on extra-musical meaning, L. Poundie Burstein on Schenkerian approaches, William E. Caplin on formal functions, Robert Hatten on semiotics, James Hepokoski on Sonata Theory, William Kinderman on generative processes, William Rothstein on metric organization, and Douglass Seaton on narrativity) to join them in exploring a work that, though already well studied, remains perpetually challenging. In particular, how the various regions within the first movement's exposition correlate with the form's characteristic events is a matter of lingering disagreement. A frustration in reading the essays is that their authors proceed seemingly unaware of the book's remaining contents. Just as one presumes to have achieved an understanding on some matter, another author comes along and muddies the water all over again. (Hasn't he been paying attention to what analyst x just presented? What is his rebuttal to what analyst y contends?) The book would have benefitted from a format that fosters interactions among its authors. Several of the essays offer critiques of analyses already in print, but little attempt was made to draw connections among those included in the collected work. At the least, one wishes the editor had included a user-friendly chart that breaks down the sonata's three movements into meaningful sections, indicating which authors had discussed each section and where.[2] Laudably, the book emphasizes the relationship between analysis and performance. Each author incorporates several pages of practical suggestions within his contribution. Yet the anticipated breadth of the book's readership sometimes gets in the way of analytical potency. Imagine how Schenker might have proceeded in writing a contribution titled Beethoven's Tempest Sonata: A Schenkerian Approach. Burstein eschews a more comprehensive Schenkerian approach, focusing instead on the linear construction of a few shorter passages.[3] The lack of agreement on issues relating to form will be obvious to even the casual reader. In contrast, it may seem that the field has achieved a consensus regarding harmony, an assumption that may result from the fact that few of the contributors address harmony in detail, and consequently conflicting viewpoints are not as evident within the book. Since the authors had no forum for commenting on one another's analyses, it falls upon reviewers to raise concerns. In this brief review I will restrict my comments to two passages from the first movement's exposition.[4] Berge and D'hoe propose dividing the ascending ninth that connects I (measure 21) and II (or V in the key of the dominant, measure 41) into two perfect fifths: D(1) I propose that this progression is instead a stretched version of the one that opens the movement, which I interpret as I IV5-6 V. (The structural tonic emerges in measure 3, following the Largo arpeggiation of its dominant.) This progression accommodates several conventional enhancements:1. the opening tonic is extended by an ascending-third bass (to F in measures 3-4 and 9);2. I IV becomes I[arrow right]IV, in which a dominant-emulating tonic(2) is achieved via a raised third and added minor seventh (measures 4 and 9); and3. the 6 phase of IV5-6 (G-B-E) asserts itself as II, represented by either an augmented-sixth enhanced II[implies] (measure 5) or a dominant-emulating II[arrow right] (measure 12). …