Abstracts - American Musicological Society

24
FxidaY morning
in the late 1780s. The particulars of these
" curios ities n deserve attentl-on for rshat they reveal
about reception history in the domestic sphere'
"HdRT IHR WOHL'':
BEETHOVEN'S CHORAL FANTASY AS SUMMONS AND SERMON
Steven Moore Whiting, Madison, WI
The critical repute of Beethoven's Choral Fantasy,
Opus 80, has suffered unduly through comparison to the
finale of the Ninth Synphony. This paper attempts a
fresh, and fairer, perspective on the Fantasy by
viewing it in the context for which it was
cornposed- -Beethoven's Academy of 22 Decernber 1808. An
examination of the evidence at hand- - including the
concert bi11, contemporary reactions to the work and to
its unusual scoring, and Beethoven's sketches- -suggests
that Beethoven intended the designation Finale ( found
already at bar 27 of the work) to apply not so much to
the position of the Allegro within the Fantasy as to
the position of the Fantasy within the whole concert.
This view is borne out by an interpretive analysis of
the Fantasy' s theme and variations and of its
connections to the theme's source, the double- song
" Seuf zer eines Ungeliebten,'/,,Gegenliebe . " Further
evidence is derived from the formal and expressive
connections between the Fantasy and other works
introduced at the Academy, among them the "Pastoral,'
Synphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Fifth
Synphony.
Just as the Fantasy can be shown to exhibit an all
too frequently overlooked formal integrity, so too the
concert as a whole shows signs of having been shaped
according to an underlying comprehens ive p1an. Not
just an assortment of recent works intended to display
Beethoven's compositional prolress, the Academy amounts
to a r.ride - ranging yet cohes ive mus ical commentary on
some central concerns of the human condition--in effect
a sermon, to whose irnport the Choral Fantasy summons
attention, and for which it provides the ( inevitably
inadequate) verbal and musical peroration.
SCHUBERT'S "GRUPPE AUS DEM TARTARUS" (D.583)
AND TABLEAUX VIVANTS
Marj orie I,Iing, Yale UniversitY
Probing the relationship between music and the
wisual arts provides invaluable ins ight into some
musical works. A striking exampl-.
lt^ :'cruppe aus a"*
Tarrarus" (D. 583), Schubert's terrifying *of
portrait
the damned souls in Virgil' s He11 . This o.-.*"..1- " '
deparrs radically in structure and.tvf. song
ir"-*';i^r
of Schubert' s Lieder. Presented iror--;;" "":.1;::