Falk’s Reviews > The Age of Mozart and Beethoven > Status Update
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Falk
is on page 231 of 336
"For Beethoven, melody was no longer an unambiguous notion, but a spectrum of infinite shades.. (...) Beethoven's melody always has an instrumental root, even in passages of the most fluid cantabile style; his contemporaries became aware of this when (like Giuseppe Carpani) they recognized in him not singing but a 'desire interrupted by singing'..." (229)
— Jan 31, 2020 02:08PM
Falk
is on page 185 of 336
"At the beginning of 1790 a document entitled Suppression de toutes les académies appeared in circulation in Paris (it was even introduced into German universities and rejected there by indignant critics) which proposed, after the suppression of the clergy decreed by the National Assembly, the abolition of the academies, which were 'the clergy of sciences, literature and the arts'." (178)
— Jan 26, 2020 02:15PM
Falk
is on page 167 of 336
"Thus Mozart, who never consciously thought of reforming anything and whose character was the furthest imaginable from the statement of principles, had systematically developed all the musical genres of his time. His attitude was not far from that of the comedian in the prologue, 'Vorspiel auf dem Theater', of Faust: 'Suppose I talked about posterity, who'd give us any fun today?'..." (165)
— Jan 25, 2020 03:12PM
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Jan 24, 2020 02:03PM
"Another unmistakable sign of the times was the mark of rationalism. Sonata form of 1780-90 (the decade in which Kant's fame spread throughout Germany) was no longer satisfied with a general sympathy for systematization and 'clarté' (clarity), but sank its roots into a rationalism that governed all its moves with the logical behaviour of deduction, analogy, and conclusion. Basically the development became in fact a 'critique' of the themes, their limits and their combinatory possibilities, the deepest possible deciphering of the physiognomies presented in the exposition. The syntax of the sonata worked out by Viennese classicism, taking the themes out of their niches, transforming substance into function and individual detail into continuity, showed a tendency comparable to the revolution performed by Kant's critique of logic. While Kant mocked Swedenborg's theosophy and all metaphysical theory (he claimed that one cannot understand spiritual matters, one can only bear witness with moral behaviour), the expression 'thinker in music' could be legitimately used again thirty years after Bach's Art of fugue. The rococo, Arcadia and the galant disappeared, without even resorting to the programmatic passion of the Sturm und Drang, simply through a wider exercise of reason." (109-10)
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