Scherzo and the unheimlich: the construct of genre and feeling in the long 19th century

Abstract

The psychological concept of the uncanny (“das Unheimliche”) has been established in studies by E. Jentsch (1906) and S. Freud (1919). On the grounds of cultural and textual references, which can be found in these studies, one might regard the uncanny as a discourse construct contained in various literary, evaluative, and visual texts stretching from the late 18th century to the First World War. In my paper, I wish to discuss the assumption that the scherzo genre, commonly seen as founded on Haydn’s opus 33 string quartets and coming to a first fruition in various Beethoven cycles shows a particular propensity to act as the musical vehicle for an uncanny quality. The closer scrutiny of two “programmatic” scherzi (those are the 3rd movement of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony and L’Apprenti sorcier by Dukas) might shed light on the advantages of a genre-oriented approach when musical meaning is concerned.