The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination by Matthew Guerrieri Page A
Authors: Matthew Guerrieri
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Left-Hegelians, a lapsed theologian
named Ludwig Feuerbach, who liked to bring metaphysical flights of fancy down to earth
by flipping around subject and predicate. For Marx, the Idea doesn’t project circumstances
onto people; people project onto their circumstances the illusion of an Idea. True
greatness was not, as Hegel might have put it, the realization of an ideal Fate; true
greatness—Beethoven’s greatness—was to triumph in spite of it. 63
But what does the materialist conception of history—and its colonization of the modern
worldview—have to do with the Fifth’s subsequent biography? A lot, perhaps; at the
very least, a renewed focus on the first movement and its omnipresent motive. Once
the motive’s assigned meaning—Fate—became a matter of worldly friction instead of
Ideal accord, the sharper contrasts of the opening movement were bound to sound more
“real” and immediate than the relentless victory of the end. Initially, the Fifth
was particularly celebrated for its Finale, the troublesome scherzo exploding into
triumphant, major-key synthesis, a musical Hegelian in-and-of-itself. But as the perception
of history shifted toward materialism, the first movement—and its epochal opening—gradually
became the symphony’s most famous feature: a dramatic showdown between history and
the individual, irreconcilably defiant. The fact that more people know the Fifth’s
beginning than its end could be read as evidence that Marx’s historical-materialistic
inversion of Hegel, with its embrace of contradiction and struggle, is the more deeply
woven into the fabric of society.
Then again, it could just be shorter attention spans. But it is worth noting that
it was Engels, the onetime prospective composer, who initially formulated historical
materialism—and who later forever complicated Marxist thought by insisting that the
dialectic was not just an intellectual tool: “[D]ialectical laws are really laws of
development of nature.” 64 If the dialectic is inherent in creation itself, the struggle and triumph of the
Fifth Symphony’s narrative could be applied to the whole of existence.
AS M ARXISM shifted into Marxism-Leninism, the materialist interpretation of history took a detour,
one reminiscent of how the revolutionary impression of Beethoven’s music was interpreted.
Karl Kautsky, an evangelist for “traditional” Marxism, had criticized the Bolshevik
Revolution, arguing that the Russian proletariat wasn’t ready for Communism, that
the revolution had, in effect, happened too early—beating history to the punch, as
it were. As a result, he predicted, the conditions were ripe for another Reign of
Terror. “If the morality of the communists has not formed itself before the beginning
of socialisation,” Kautsky warned, “it will be too late to develop it after expropriation
has taken place.” 65 Leon Trotsky ridiculed Kautsky’s critique: “[T]he Soviet regime, which is more closely,
straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of the people, does achieve
meaning, not in statically reflecting a majority, but in
dynamically creating it
” 66 (emphasis added). The Slovenian Hegelian-Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek
has noted how Trotsky’s formulation has a parallel in modern attitudes toward innovation
and cultural history. He quotes T. S. Eliot: “The existing order is complete before
the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the
whole
existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions,
values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is the conformity
between old and new.” 67
It’s an expanded perspective on the idea that truly revolutionary works of art create
their own audience—except in this view, such works actually create (and re-create)
their own history. It is not hard to find
named Ludwig Feuerbach, who liked to bring metaphysical flights of fancy down to earth
by flipping around subject and predicate. For Marx, the Idea doesn’t project circumstances
onto people; people project onto their circumstances the illusion of an Idea. True
greatness was not, as Hegel might have put it, the realization of an ideal Fate; true
greatness—Beethoven’s greatness—was to triumph in spite of it. 63
But what does the materialist conception of history—and its colonization of the modern
worldview—have to do with the Fifth’s subsequent biography? A lot, perhaps; at the
very least, a renewed focus on the first movement and its omnipresent motive. Once
the motive’s assigned meaning—Fate—became a matter of worldly friction instead of
Ideal accord, the sharper contrasts of the opening movement were bound to sound more
“real” and immediate than the relentless victory of the end. Initially, the Fifth
was particularly celebrated for its Finale, the troublesome scherzo exploding into
triumphant, major-key synthesis, a musical Hegelian in-and-of-itself. But as the perception
of history shifted toward materialism, the first movement—and its epochal opening—gradually
became the symphony’s most famous feature: a dramatic showdown between history and
the individual, irreconcilably defiant. The fact that more people know the Fifth’s
beginning than its end could be read as evidence that Marx’s historical-materialistic
inversion of Hegel, with its embrace of contradiction and struggle, is the more deeply
woven into the fabric of society.
Then again, it could just be shorter attention spans. But it is worth noting that
it was Engels, the onetime prospective composer, who initially formulated historical
materialism—and who later forever complicated Marxist thought by insisting that the
dialectic was not just an intellectual tool: “[D]ialectical laws are really laws of
development of nature.” 64 If the dialectic is inherent in creation itself, the struggle and triumph of the
Fifth Symphony’s narrative could be applied to the whole of existence.
AS M ARXISM shifted into Marxism-Leninism, the materialist interpretation of history took a detour,
one reminiscent of how the revolutionary impression of Beethoven’s music was interpreted.
Karl Kautsky, an evangelist for “traditional” Marxism, had criticized the Bolshevik
Revolution, arguing that the Russian proletariat wasn’t ready for Communism, that
the revolution had, in effect, happened too early—beating history to the punch, as
it were. As a result, he predicted, the conditions were ripe for another Reign of
Terror. “If the morality of the communists has not formed itself before the beginning
of socialisation,” Kautsky warned, “it will be too late to develop it after expropriation
has taken place.” 65 Leon Trotsky ridiculed Kautsky’s critique: “[T]he Soviet regime, which is more closely,
straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of the people, does achieve
meaning, not in statically reflecting a majority, but in
dynamically creating it
” 66 (emphasis added). The Slovenian Hegelian-Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek
has noted how Trotsky’s formulation has a parallel in modern attitudes toward innovation
and cultural history. He quotes T. S. Eliot: “The existing order is complete before
the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the
whole
existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions,
values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is the conformity
between old and new.” 67
It’s an expanded perspective on the idea that truly revolutionary works of art create
their own audience—except in this view, such works actually create (and re-create)
their own history. It is not hard to find
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