Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven: Selected Writings on Theory and Method

Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis

by A.B. Marx, Scott G. Burnham (Editor)

A. B. Marx was one of the most important German music theorists of his time. Drawing on idealist aesthetics and the ideology of Bildung, he developed a holistic pedagogical method as well as a theory of musical form that gives pride of place to Beethoven. This volume offers a generous selection of the most salient of his writings, the majority presented here in English for the first time. It features Marx's oft-cited but little understood material on sonata form, his progressive program for compositional pedagogy and his detailed critical analysis of Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony. These writings thus deal with issues that fall directly among the concerns of mainstream theory and analysis in the last two the relation of form and content, the analysis of instrumental music, the role of pedagogy in music theory, and the nature of musical understanding.

216 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 4, 1997

Reviews

[Darogi86 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into the empirical thinking of a man who understood art music deeply and not just as a mystical, vague sentiment or as the mechanical process 20th century modern Aristotelians wanted it to be reduced to.

[Calvin Lesko · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the only book I've ever read that actually teaches how to compose music. I'm just disappointed I didn't find it years ago. Marx is known as a mediocre composer due to the story of his rejection by Mendelssohn, but he explains the interaction of form and content on a level I've never seen. By walking you through several of Beethoven's works in the most plainly lucid and rational way, he describes the thought processes that go behind expanding a musical idea into a complete work with a form fitting the idea. It is astonishing to me that every composition professor I've ever had has pontificated on whether "one can really teach composition" when Marx moves beyond passive analysis into the actual question of "what to do after you've come up with the initial idea." His concepts of Satz, Gang, and Satz-groups are generalized building blocks that apply to any form or genre.

Thank you to Scott Burnham for finally translating this hundreds-of-years-old text into English.