Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre by Jeffrey Kallberg

Review by: John Michael Cooper

Notes, Second Series, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Dec., 1997), pp. 456-458
Published by: Music Library Association
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456 NOTES, December 1997

complex, especially when different verbal tion of motets and on details of specific
texts sound simultaneously" (p. 98). interpretations-as well as suggestions for
In the Middle Ages, basing a motet on further research, indicating that the future
a cantus firmus-and likely one with sym- of motet research is wide-open and vital.
bolic connections to the upper voices-was Yet, Hearing the Motet-with its specialized
standard practice and thus not particularly essay format-leaves important issues un-
significant. In the Renaissance, however, addressed. Somewhat ironically, while each
the act of composing a motet with a sep- of the authors seems to imply that in-
arately texted cantus firmus is more un- formed "hearing" requires sensitivity to
usual, and may reflect a historicist tendency text and context, none of them includes
on the part of the composer. In "Lasso as much discussion of actual performance
Historicist: The Cantus-Firmus Motets," practice. As a consequence, "hearing" takes
Haar addresses this manifestation of his- on a rather abstract and idealized quality,
toricity by examining fifteen cantus-firmus readers learn more about who was listening
motets by Lasso. Haar considers the im- than about who was singing and how the
plications of cantus-firmus text with respect music may have sounded. In fact, only one
to patronage and interpretation, although of 725 footnotes refers to a specific record-
in many cases he can only assume that who- ing of a motet under discussion. Another
ever commissioned a particular motet must practical issue that receives scant attention
have intended to convey a specific message is the mediating impact of transcription on
"but it would seem now to be irrecoverable" hearing and analysis. Bent's observation
(p. 269). Haar also investigates Lasso's that "our understanding of musical lan-
musical treatment of cantus firmi, distin- guage at this period is still so fragile that
guishing between a traditional approach, in we timidly fail to recognize as nonsense
which the cantus firmus determines the some manuscript readings that demand to
overall structure of the motet, and a newer be corrected in accordance with musical
approach, in which the cantus firmus is ad- sense" (p. 92) underscores the relationship
justed to fit the surrounding counterpoint. between transcription and analysis and
These disparate approaches, indicative of challenges us to consider it more fully.
continuity and change, suggest that Lasso In an era of increasing specialization,
was "at least something of a musical his- Hearing the Motet offers those interested in
toricist" (p. 276). medieval and Renaissance motets a chance
The concept behind Hearing the Motet in- to see beyond the limits of a particular
spired scholars to contribute a diverse array repertory and benefit from a rich cross-
of essays representing major currents in fertilization of ideas and approaches. If "to
motet research and detailing significant hear in the fullest sense is to understand"
findings about composers, works, chronol- (Haar, p. 14), let us hope that a significant
ogy, contexts, and interpretive strategies. number of musicologists and performers
The book also contains a number of in- are listening.
conclusive speculations-most notably on SUSAN KIDWELL
matters pertaining to the liturgical func- Austin, Texas

Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre. By Jeffrey

Kallberg. (Convergences: Inventories of the Present.) Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1996. [xiii, 301 p. ISBN 0-674-12790-0. $45.00.]
The latest volume in Harvard University lifluous prose to address a wide range of
Press's Convergences series represents one problems concerning a central figure in the
of the more eloquent contributions to nineteenth-century piano repertory. At the
nineteenth-century musicology submitted same time, the broad spectrum of topics
in book form in recent years. A compila- represented in the essays demonstrates the
tion of essays originally published between widely divergent trends represented in mu-
1983 and 1994, Chopin at the Boundaries sicological research of the last decade and
deploys Jeffrey Kallberg's consistently mel- a half.

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Book Reviews 457

The title of the volume warrants some text in writings about nineteenth-century
explanation. The main title derives from instrumental music. Yet the arguments ad-
Kallberg's identification of a problem at vanced here profit substantially from Kall-
the core of Frederic Chopin reception his- berg's facility with numerous musicological
tory: the fact that while his music occupies philosophies, "old" as well as "new," for
an undisputed position of honor in the Kallberg's predominantly contextual per-
nineteenth-century repertory, many per- spective decisively shapes not only tenuous
formers find it somehow discomfiting; as arguments such as his reading of the G
Kallberg points out (p. [ix]), several leading minor Nocturne, op. 15, no. 3 (Kallberg
twentieth-century pianists, including Ru- discovers in the work's structural and sty-
dolf Serkin, Glenn Gould, and Alfred listic idiosyncracies a generic combination
Brendel, have been able to omit Chopin of nocturne and mazurka that was de-
from their repertory almost entirely, signed to expand "the range of expression
leaving him "at the boundaries" of the of the genre" especially for Chopin's Polish
nineteenth-century canon in a way that compatriots), but also a solidly (or, for
many of his contemporaries are not. "Sex" some, stodgily) conventional exploration of
refers to a central thesis of several of Kall- the ways in which nineteenth-century copy-
berg's essays: the notion that gender and right law influenced Chopin's published
sexuality crucially informed Chopin's mu- oeuvre. Even those who find essay 3 ("Small
sic and much of the Rezeptionsgeschichte of Fairy Voices: Sex, History, and Meaning in
Chopin's works. "History" indicates the Chopin"), with subheadings such as "Be-
role of reception (i.e., contemporaneous tween Androgyny and Hermaphroditism,"
and posthumous scholarly and public per- "Between Hermaphroditism and Sodomy,"
ceptions of Chopin and his music) in plac- and "Conclusion: Between Sodomy and
ing Chopin in his uncomfortably paradox- Pathology," to be self-indulgent or other-
ical position. And "Genre" refers to what wise just too much will admit that the
is probably the largest overarching theme fascinating contemporaneous and posthu-
of Kallberg's essays: the idea that generic mous responses assembled in it can be use-
designations crucially inform our under- ful for other interpretations. Most impor-
standing of musical artworks, and that tant, Kallberg's ability to assimilate his solid
Chopin's adherences to and deviations control over the byzantine complexities of
from these generic expectations provide sa- Chopin source materials into the context of
lient insights into the musical texts them- broader social and cultural observations is
selves. hardly to be taken for granted in the cur-
In his preface to the volume, Kallberg rent musicological literature, and the re-
divides the essays into three groups. In part sulting quellenkritischeAesthetikundoubtedly
1 (essays 1-3), he argues against "the mis- gains in depth, breadth, and persuasiveness
conception that Chopin's piano works were because of this interaction among diverse
conceived and understood as primarily musicological perspectives.
autonomous forms of music, free of any For all this, however, I cannot help but
extra-musical significance" (p. xii). Part 2 wonder whether the greatest contribution
(essays 4 and 5) "tackle[s] the presentist of Chopin at the Boundaries is the ques-
assumptions about Chopin's creative pro- tions it raises about future inquiries into
cess and compositional style" (ibid.), focus- nineteenth-century music. Perhaps more
ing on a group of late compositions: the than anything else, this volume shows
Polonaise-Fantasy, op. 61, the F minor Ma- Kallberg to be one of those rare indi-
zurka, and the op. 28 Preludes. Finally, the viduals who can combine sharp prose, pen-
essays in part 3 stress the "ineluctably social etrating analysis, and keen reasoning into
nature" (ibid.) of the early nineteenth- an expansive view that stimulates or even
century musical artwork, emphasizing the compels creative interpretation. This vol-
importance of interactions between musical ume raises the possibility that the general
texts and their intended audiences. issues Kallberg explores will continue to
All this may, of course, be somewhat off- lend impetus to musicological inquiry long
putting to critics of the so-called "new mu- after the current obsession with gendered
sicology," those who resist the perceived interpretations of individual works or oeu-
disproportionate emphasis on context vs. vres has receded into the blissfully distant

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
458 NOTES, December 1997

past, leaving only vague memories of a time these essays might not eventually be ap-
where plagal progressions symbolized fem- plied profitably to the reception history of
ininity while authentic ones symbolized Chopin-as well that of as other composers
masculinity, and where thematically in- -in future inquiries. To date, Kallberg's
verted recapitulations somehow provided interpretations-proceeding from the as-
deep artistic revelations about a composer's sumption that musical expression is a
sexuality. In fact, Kallberg's essay on communicative act in which the describer
"Chopin and the Marketplace" (adapted almost necessarily reveals accurately the
from his dissertation [University of Chi- ideas and intentions of the creator-
cago, 1982] and first published in Notes 39 generally seem to take it for granted that
[1983]: 535-569, 795-824) may provide contemporaneous and posthumous de-
far-reaching insights into the artistic as well scriptions reveal at least as much about the
as pragmatic contexts that made it neces- composer as they do about the commen-
sary for composers of the late eighteenth tator. But a different paradigm of musical
and nineteenth centuries to publish parallel expression-such as the widely held
multinational editions of their works, often nineteenth-century view that listeners' and
in subtly-or even substantially-varying performers' interpretations were supposed
versions; those who follow Kallberg's lead to reveal the interpreters' own personalities
in interpreting musical artworks on the ba- and perspectives (through the mirror of
sis of the ways in which the musical text the artwork), rather than (necessarily)
relates to its designated genre and intended those of the composer-would require a
context may well find that Kallberg's essay rethinking, or at least a substantial quali-
represents an essential step in understand- fication, of some of Kallberg's findings. To
ing the scope and nature of their inquiry. be sure, the discipline has already wit-
(Certainly anyone who has had to deal with nessed some substantial first steps in this
these complex mazes of nineteenth-century direction, exploring the complicated issues
editions will appreciate the lucid and de- of, for example, Franz Schubert's sexuality,
tailed explanation provided in this essay!) the image of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as
Similarly, the final essay in the volume, the perpetual child, the interpretation of
dealing with what Kallberg calls "the Felix Mendelssohn as the effeminate bour-
Chopin 'problem' "-the existence of mul- geois child prodigy whose development vir-
tiple equally or ambivalently authoritative tually ceased because of his racial heritage,
versions of many of the works and the con- the cult of Ludwig van Beethoven as sym-
sequences this has for Chopin scholars and bol of tormented genius and virile German
performers-may well signify a crucial in- masculinity. But a refocusing of Kallberg's
tersection of literary and musical scholar- data on the issue of the agendas of those
ship. For while literary textologists have who received and interpreted Chopin's
long since established that the notion of a music, rather than on the music itself,
single version vested with a final authority, might facilitate a clearer understanding
which was divorced from the contextual of precisely how this central figure of
considerations that produced substantial nineteenth-century music has come to be,
variant readings even after publication, is in many key respects, a "peripheral" com-
a relatively late editorial (and usually not poser who paradoxically manages to fall at
authorial) philosophy vis-a-vis nineteenth- the boundaries of the nineteenth-century
century texts, musicological studies have pianistic canon.
only begun to explore the ramifications of With an eye to the marketplace Kallberg
these findings, and this primarily on a case- identifies as central to the shape and nature
by-case basis. Since recent research has of the artistic undertaking, perhaps the
shown that this dilemma greatly transcends best way to summarize this volume is to
the implications of a rubric such as "the observe that almost every serious musician
Chopin problem," Kallberg's essay on that is certain to find in it some things that seem
subject may well have touched on one of not particularly convincing or useful, but
the decisive themes of future musicological also much that stimulates, provokes, and
inquiry. otherwise delights.
Finally, I wonder whether the gender- JOHN MICHAELCOOPER
oriented approach employed in most of Illinois Wesleyan University

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