The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative Experience

The Sonatas

The Sonatas 00 00 A piece of music is a meaningful construction, at once sensuous and logical, fashioned and sustained by the need of the mind to explain itself to itself. Lacking a fixed physical dimension but existing in time on a tangible instrument, the playing of a piece is the embodiment of subjectivity. In this meeting of self and ideal in which the support of tradition and reputation is insufficient, the player is forced to look for musical meaning. If that search is successful, the result is a oneness with the music that confers upon the player a new, spiritual identity. To achieve this oneness, the sole reliable, if sometimes perplexing, guide is the composer's score. Through the discipline of analysis, perceptions compared become judgments made, as a result of which a larger and more complex piece emerges, requiring new perceptions and judgments. Thus the playing of a piece presupposes, within fulfillment, the possibility of unfulfillment, as it was for the composer in the moment of creation. The listener's understanding of the depth and richness of a piece depends upon the player's perceptions and judgments. Nevertheless, just as the player, in attempting to define the indefinable, may never fully comprehend the composer's own concept of the music, the listener may be only dimly aware of what the player comprehends during performance. Ultimately, all that can be communicated is an awareness of a spiritual presence. That the conjuring up of this presence should be effected by an insecure human being in a state of unfulfillment remains the mysterious irony of our profession. This page intentionally left blank ...