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Beethoven's Tempest Sonata: Perspectives of Analysis and Performance edited by P. Berge, W.E. Caplin, and J. D'hoe (Analysis In Context. Leuven Studies In Musicology: Peeters) For music analysts and performers alike, Beethoven's Tempest sonata (1802) represents one of the most challenging pieces of the classical and early romantic piano repertoire. This book is a collection of eleven essays, each dealing with this sonata from a different analytical perspective and investigating the possible connections between music analysis and the practice of performance. Under the editorship of Pieter Berge, Jeroen D'hoe and William E. Caplin, the book presents essays by Scott Burnham (hermeneutics), Poundie Burstein (Schenkerian approach), Kenneth Hamilton (history of performance), Robert Hatten (semiotics), James Hepokoski (Sonata Theory), William Kinderman (source studies), William Rothstein (tempo, rhythm, and meter), Douglas Seaton (narratology), Steven Vande Moortele (20th-century Formenlehre) and the editors themselves (motivic analysis and form-functional approach respectively).

Excerpt: The present book is a collection of eleven analyses of Beethoven's famous Piano Sonata in D minor, Op. 31/2, also known as the Tempest. Although the book focuses on a single composition, its real scope is more far-reaching. Indeed, the collection was initially generated by two conceptual considerations and only thereafter by a special interest in Beethoven's masterpiece. The first of these considerations involves interrelating different music-analytical approaches. The collection was conceived in the belief that any one perspective falls short of unveiling the full complexity of a great composition. Given that any approach is necessarily dependent on methodological choices, every interpretation is restrictive by nature: what is essential from one perspective may be subordinate from another, and vice versa. Rather than entering into unproductive debates over the putative superiority of one analytical method over another, this book seeks to bring different analyses together in their own right. This would seem to be an effective way of generating a context in which the analytical understanding of a piece can approach the inherent complexity of the music itself. Such an attitude might appear to advocate gratuitous analytical eclecticism, yet that is far from the purpose of this book. Analytical observations should not be isolated from the larger conceptual frameworks from which they spring. Indeed, this book's fundamental assumption—that analytical multiplicity is necessary for the understanding of music—is grounded in the notion that any theory must be considered as a whole, and it is only as such that any one theory may be brought into perspective with other theories. Such a viewpoint implies that even a collection of analytical essays remains incomplete. Yet such a collection can at least present itself as a declaration of intent, as a demonstration of how musical complexity can be approached in a more integrative manner.

Tackling the issue of integration from a different angle, the second conceptual consideration involves bridging the gap between music analysis and performance practice (or between 'music analysts' and 'performing musicians').'

All contributors were invited not only to present an analytical interpretation, but also to investigate the extent to which their insights could be of interest to performers. Many of the authors found this request to be particularly challenging and expressed a certain reluctance to fulfill it—not because they had nothing to say about performance, but rather because they were afraid that performers might misinterpret their remarks as recommendations or even as prescriptions. From an analyst's perspective, it can be difficult indeed to find a mode of expression that is neither too general nor potentially patronizing. Despite some initial reluctance, the challenge ultimately proved fruitful, and it inspired the contributors to re-evaluate their interpretations from novel angles, to reconsider earlier readings of the piece, to re-orient their approaches toward more practice-related aspects, and even to raise fundamental questions of how the potentiality of the score and the actual performance of the score can relate to each other. Of course, the significance of each individual analysis should not be measured solely in terms of its appeal for performers. Rather, the aim was to stimulate a level of discourse in which 'purely' analytical and 'performance-related' analytical remarks could be mutually confronted.

Admittedly, the two fundamental objectives of this volume are not groundbreaking in themselves. As far as the interrelationships among music-analytical approaches is concerned, there is today an increasing willingness to allow space for bringing together differing analytical voices.  Some old orthodoxies and dogmatisms may well survive here and there, but from a broader perspective, they will probably not be able to compete with the growing tendency to investigate musical phenomena from alternative and complementary perspectives. As for the second consideration—bridging the gap between analysis and performance—a significant evolution has taken place in the past twenty-five years. Around 1985, the analysis-and-performance topic "had not even begun to gain currency, much less independence, as a field of inquiry", as Janet Schmalfeldt observes in a recent look back on her pioneering article 'On the Relation of Analysis to Performance'.  Today, many a theorist still tends to avoid performance-related considerations, but this has not prevented the issue from being investigated in recent years with increasing vigor. Many authoritative voices have entered into the discussion, either by developing ideas on basic theoretical problems in the field or by simply demonstrating how music theory and performance can collaborate in productive and inspiring ways. In both cases, however, the aforementioned problem of 'prescriptivism' remains a point of concern. Three more specific aspects of this problem can be identified here. First, many music theorists continue to write about performance in a manner that seems to instruct the performer. Even if such an approach is not necessarily intentional, it clearly inhibits all efforts for mutual rapprochement, especially from the performer's side. Second, many performers remain suspicious about possible performance-related interpretations that spring from a 'theoretical' field of investigation. This attitude may be defensible—and is perhaps even to be recommended—but it looses its credibility as soon as it turns into a rejection `on principle'. Third, as long as the attempt to defeat the 'phantom of prescriptivism' is battled out in primarily academic forums (publications, conferences, etc.), such efforts are unlikely to be all that successful.

This threefold problem—and especially its last aspect—has continually challenged the editors of this volume. Whereas the first two concerns may be minimized by explicitly acknowledging that each author is taking a personal stand on these matters, the third one radically questions the very suitability of the publication itself. Indeed, a volume that appears within a university series on 'Analysis in Context' will easily reach an academic audience and possibly even attract some interest for the specific domain it tries to investigate. But to introduce this book into the community of performing musicians is a more complicated affair. To be sure, the contributors to this volume have tried to make their essays as accessible as possible for a readership that is not primarily attuned to theoretical matters, but that does not change the fact that 'the act of reading' is simply not the prevailing mode of communication among performers. Communication here is dominated by oral, aural, and other types of physical conveyance. Consequently, theorists who are interested in introducing analytical ideas into the area of musical performance must seriously reflect on how best to adapt their methodologies to the prevailing pedagogical and communicative strategies of that domain. In the present volume, such an enterprise has not yet been undertaken, but at least the book delivers a multitude of considerations that may help to pave that way.

In order to realize the two basic goals of this volume, the editors have decided to concentrate on a single composition. The choice of Beethoven's Tempest sonata was rather obvious in this respect, and for several reasons. First, the piece's well-known role in Beethoven's oft-quoted intention to embark on a 'new path' around 1802 grants the work an important place in music history. The very fact that the piece is related so explicitly to the composer's breakthrough to 'romanticism' has caused it to attract significant scholarly interest for almost two centuries. Even if such an interest may often be based on an overemphasized antithesis between 'classical conventionality' and 'romantic individualism', the sonata is undoubtedly original in so many respects that it inevitably provokes analytical discussions on all possible domains of musical understanding. Furthermore, the long, multifarious, and still-flourishing reception history that the piece has accordingly generated incites further analytical interest today.

The Tempest sonata was also chosen because it is one of Beethoven's most frequently performed (and most beloved!) piano works. Given the second of the volume's fundamental considerations in particular, the selection of a familiar and well-appreciated work seemed the most logical way to excite the interest of performers. Indeed, the sonata has drawn at least as much attention in the history of performance as it has in scholarly circles. The Tempest thus offered a meeting-point for the intellectual and emotional engagement of music analysts and musicians alike, and a nexus for the growth of an unprejudiced exchange of thought between them.

The two fundamental objectives of this volume are clearly reflected both in its overall structure and in the format of the individual essays. A consequence of the assumption that all of the proposed analytical approaches are equally valid is that the order of the contributions is essentially arbitrary (thus they appear here in alphabetical order by author). Even essays with shared opinions or belonging to similar traditions do not necessarily follow one upon the other. On the contrary, each essay is presented as a completely self-sufficient contribution, standing on its own and perfectly comprehensible without any further contextualisation. In other words (and as already mentioned at the beginning of this introduction), each analysis is a whole, which need not necessarily be brought into relation with different approaches, but which can be if so desired.

As far as the structure of the essays themselves is concerned, all contributors were asked to follow the same basic tripartite scheme: first,, o give a short account of the theoretical framework in which they operate, referring to significant predecessors within the relevant domain or introducing necessary basic concepts; second, to present their own analytical interpretation, usually in dialogue with earlier (mostly well-known) readings; and third, to deal with the issue of performance. Some of the essays maintain a strict separation between the central (analytical) and final (performance-related) parts, whereas others interweave the two topics. In all cases, however, the authors dealt with the issue of performance by expanding their analytical horizons and re-assessing their pre-existent analytical assumptions.

The first essay, by Pieter Berge and Jeroen D'hoe, investigates the motivic structure of the sonata's first movement. The authors distinguish between explicit and implicit motives (melodic, harmonic and rhythmic) and also reconsider Dahlhaus's interpretation of the so-called 'underlying idea' ("die zugrunde liegende Idee") from a motivic perspective. Their analysis of how the various permutations of individual motives are connected leads to a consideration of how these connections may be made explicit in performance (or not!). Adopting a hermeneutical standpoint, Scott Burnham (essay no. 2) considers the sonata primarily as a 'characteristic' piece, a 'cogent series of dramatic events'. In dialogue with nineteenth- and twentieth-century Beethoven scholars, he investigates how purely musical techniques can generate extra-musical meaning and how performers can benefit from that intrinsic potential. A Schenkerian methodology allows Poundie Burstein (in essay no. 3) to demonstrate how the voice-leading of the work is organized on different hierarchical levels. The implicit relatedness of these levels suggests performative possibilities that emphasize musical coherence. William E. Caplin's essay (no. 4) provides a practical application of his 'theory of formal functions'. His analysis demonstrates how musical form is generated by a succession of individual formal functions that express specific temporal identities on different structural levels. He concludes with some broad principles by which a performer can articulate formal temporality. In contrast to all other contributions, Kenneth Hamilton's approach in essay no. 5 is not purely 'theoretical'. Instead, the author delivers a detailed survey of performance practices from the premiere of the sonata onwards. Insofar as these practices bear some serious implications on current analytical interpretations, the inclusion of a 'historical' chapter in a largely 'theoretical' volume is not only justified but even indispensable. In the sixth essay Robert Hatten's semiotic reading of the piece reveals how stylistic types, such as 'topics' and 'gestures', function within the sonata. The author thereby distinguishes between 'structuralist' and 'hermeneutic' interpretative levels. In the former, he is mainly concerned with identifying those general types that have stable correlations of meaning in a given style, whereas in the latter he envisages their 'contextual', and ultimately 'creative', interpretation. Like Caplin, James Hepokoski (in essay no. 7) applies a theoretical model of musical form—`sonata theory'—to the first movement of the work. His well-considered, highly detailed analysis aims to unveil the movement's unique identity by examining it in a 'dialogical' context. Differences between Beethoven's concept draft of the first movement in the well-known Kessler sketchbook and the final version of the piece lead William Kinderman (in essay no. 8) to suggest that an awareness of underlying generative processes may shed important light on how the composer himself conceived his music. Tempo, rhythm, and—above all—meter are the central topics of William Rothstein's analysis in essay no. 9. Through consideration of the music's metric and hypermetric organization, and through durational reductions of the music's outer parts, he reveals that superficial contrasts are based on more implicit principles of coherence. In essay no. 10 Douglass Seaton discusses the sonata's narratological potential. Seaton rejects a superficial programmatic interpretation in favor of an approach that tries to understand the music as a `plot' that is driven—at least partially—by a 'voice' or 'narrative persona'. The final essay, by Steven Vande Moortele, reassesses some of the most influential interpretations of the formal ambiguities in the sonata's first movement. His reevaluation, focusing in particular on the tradition of twentieth-century Formenlehre, suggests ways to express those ambiguities in performance.

This collection of essays is the result of a long and intensive working process. First and foremost, I wish to express my gratitude to all of the contributors to this volume, especially for their willingness and flexibility in taking up the challenges described above. In particular, of course, I am indebted to my co-editors William E. Caplin and Jeroen D'hoe. The first introduced me in the exciting field of North American music theory by supporting my application for the Mannes Institute on Musical Form in 2004. It was there, thanks to the encouragement of its director, Wayne Alpern, that I first became acquainted with more than half of the authors who ultimately collaborated on this project. Fur-) Caplin was a devoted colleague in developing the international scope of our research program and in taking on some of the less attractive editorial tasks in the final stages of the preparation of this volume. Jeroen D'hoe was the first person to attract my attention to the issue of 'analysis and performance'. Under his leadership, the research project, from which this volume is the principal outcome, was initiated and accomplished. I am grateful for his friendship, enthusiasm, and everlasting encouragements to fulfill our initial intentions. Finally, I expressly thank Yves Knockaert, director of the University of Leuven Institute for Research in the Arts (IVOK), for his loyalty towards our research ambitions and for his support in ensuring their continuation in the coming years.