In Beethoven's Clock Shop: Discontinuity in the Opus 18 Quartets
2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 88; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/musqtl/gdi008
ISSN1741-8399
Autores Tópico(s)Music Technology and Sound Studies
ResumoFor John Daverio It may be that universal history is the history of a handful of metaphors. It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors. Jorge Luis Borges Between Jorge Luis Borges’s first and last sentences of The Fearful Sphere of Pascal1 is a story, a wide-ranging narrative of a spatial metaphor, the sphere of the world and divine creativity. While lacking Borges’s stunning and effortless erudition, this account of Beethoven’s clock shop is also a story of a metaphor about time and human creativity, a narrative that ranges widely over Beethoven’s works and reflects on purpose, expression, and the shaping of time in his op. 18 string quartets. Metaphor opens the door for freedom of time travel to follow some of the byways such journeys open up, and freedom from being locked into chronology’s process of change from earlier to later. Instead, from a particular vantage point, like the apex of a temporal bridge, we can see in different directions and trace alternative routes through the composer’s work. Two strikingly contrasted quartets define this point of reference at the center of Beethoven’s quartet output: the F-Minor Quartet, op. 95, and the E-flat-Major Harp Quartet, op. 74. As well as offering points of comparison with contemporary and later works, their delineations of time will provide the context for considering op. 18.
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