Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven

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 centuries: the relation of form and content, the analysis of instrumental music, the role of pedagogy in music theory, and the nature of musical understanding.

• This is the only available English translation of some of the most important music theoretical writings of the nineteenth century • The writings have been selected and edited so as to present Marx’s musical thought directly and authentically • Contains important sections on the music of Beethoven

Foreword Ian Bent; Preface; Introduction: music and spirit; Part I. Music Theory as Education of the Spirit: 1. The Old School of Music in Conflict with our Times: selected excerpts; 2. A Practical and Theoretical Method of Music Composition, vol. I: selected excerpts; Part II. Marx’s Formenlehre in Theory and Application: 3. ‘Form in music’; 4. A Practical and Theoretical Method of Music Composition, vol. III: selected excerpts; Part III. Hermeneutic Analysis and the Idee; 5. Ludwig van Beethoven: Life and Works: selected excerpts; Select bibliography; Index.