# The Beethoven Syndrome: Hearing Music as Autobiography



## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

In 2019 the book 'The Beethoven Syndrome: Hearing Music as Autobiography' was published. I quote here the abstract: "The "Beethoven Syndrome" is the inclination of listeners to hear music as the projection of a composer's inner self. This was a radically new way of listening that emerged only after Beethoven's death. Beethoven's music was a catalyst for this change, but only in retrospect, for it was not until after his death that listeners began to hear composers in general--and not just Beethoven--in their works, particularly in their instrumental music.

The Beethoven Syndrome: Hearing Music as Autobiography traces the rise, fall, and persistence of this mode of listening from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present. Prior to 1830, composers and audiences alike operated within a framework of rhetoric in which the burden of intelligibility lay squarely on the composer, whose task it was to move listeners in a calculated way. But through a confluence of musical, philosophical, social, and economic changes, the paradigm of expressive objectivity gave way to one of subjectivity in the years around 1830. The framework of rhetoric thus yielded to a framework of hermeneutics: concert-goers no longer perceived composers as orators but as oracles to be deciphered.

In the wake of World War I, however, the aesthetics of "New Objectivity" marked a return not only to certain stylistic features of eighteenth-century music but to the earlier concept of expression itself. Objectivity would go on to become the cornerstone of the high modernist aesthetic that dominated the century's middle decades. Masterfully citing a broad array of source material from composers, critics, theorists, and philosophers, Mark Evan Bonds's engaging study reveals how perceptions of subjective expression have endured, leading to the present era of mixed and often conflicting paradigms of listening."

Well, my question to TC members: Do you hear music as autobiography?


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Do you hear music as autobiography?_

Perhaps in classical or romantic era composers though not all. Haydn's humor comes through. I don't hear Mendelssohn telling me anything about himself.

Probably not with more modern composers. Is Edgar Varese revealing himself in his music even when he tells you what he's doing? Or Stravinsky? Shostakovich certainly but Samuel Barber or Howard Hanson? I doubt it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Thanks for posting this. Bonds is wonderful. I will be getting this book.

Music as autobiography is a pervasive view among classical listeners and so of course some TC members buy into it. I notice this because I always argue against it, saying that the expression of musical works from Beethoven on should be attributed not to their composers, but to fictional personae inhabiting the works themselves. One should no more assume that a composer's emotions are expressed in a composition than one should assume the beliefs and feelings of fictional literary characters are shared by their authors. Of course, when a composer subtitles a work "CPE Bach's feelings," for example, the likelihood of autobiographical content must be taken seriously.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

It looks like a good book. I've always considered art to be an expression of the human "soul" or whatever you want to call the subjective role of art. Music can't be "objectified" in this sense, since its meaning is human inter-subjective interaction.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Of course, when a composer subtitles a work "CPE Bach's feelings," for example, the likelihood of autobiographical content must be taken seriously.


Or Frobergers "Reflections on my own future death". If it wasn't for the subtitle you would never get the idea, that the music was about this. Because a musical expression can't be that specific.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

This is something that has been on my mind lately and I was even considering starting a thread about it. If Mozart wasn't dying when he wrote the Requiem, would we find it as poignant? If we didn't think that Shostakovich was trying to write "protest pieces" with his 5th symphony and string quartets, would they be so intriguing to us? How about if we strip Mahler's 9th and DLVdE of all autobiographical implications? There is no easy answer to this, and it's hard for me because I do this all the time. Certainly correlating an artist's life circumstances with their work is helpful and fascinating up to a certain point, but ultimately it's the work itself that matters. On the other hand, I think it's very helpful to know why, for example, Stravinsky underwent such a radical change in his artistic philosophy from his early, quintessentially "Russian" style to stark neoclassicism and then expressive serialism. Same with why Bach wrote literally all of his music. So I would say that knowing these things can be beneficial, but they are certainly not the end-all-be-all of artistic criticism, and it has to be informed by fact and not by silly myths like "Tchaikovsky was getting ready to commit suicide when he wrote the 6th" and other crazy things like that.


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## ethan417 (Jun 10, 2020)

Can we separate the composer from his/her works?
Do life events, feelings and thoughts resonate through our actions, perspective and the creative process.
I think yes.
The arc of life is reflected in our thoughts and actions.
To think otherwise, would diminish the loves, friendships, and experiences that have and continue to shape our lives.


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## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

ethan417 said:


> Can we separate the composer from his/her works?


Absolutely yes, We know hardly anything about JS Bach and yet his work is extremely popular and well regarded.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

BenG said:


> Absolutely yes, We know hardly anything about JS Bach and yet his work is extremely popular and well regarded.


Ravel is another example where biography provides little real insight.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

BenG said:


> Absolutely yes, We know hardly anything about JS Bach and yet his work is extremely popular and well regarded.


That's misleading in a sense. Bach's music does tell us many things about him.


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