Ioannis
Fulias, “Interpretative
approaches of a multidimensional work: Beethoven’s Große Fuge”, in: Olympia Psychopedis-Frangou –
Christoph Stroux – Nikos Tsouchlos – Ioannis Fulias (ed.), Music Analysis and Interpretation (Proceedings of the Second International
Congress of Musicology / Athens
Concert Hall,
4-6 November 2003), Athens Concert Hall’s Organization, Athens 2006, p.
269-289.
The long history of the interpretative approaches
of Beethoven’s Große Fuge opus
133 in this paper is attempted to be classified in three main directions: the
first of these is represented mainly by d’Indy and Kirkendale, which set as a
basis for their survey the contrapuntal plot of the work and confront it with
the conditions of the instrumental polyphony of the late Baroque, approaching
mainly the genres of ricercare and canzona; a second group of analysts (with
Scherchen, Misch, Kropfinger and Chua, among them) is focalised on the
macrostructural organisation of this piece on the model of the sonata form and
evaluates the fugue principle as a secondary formative parameter; moreover, the
third interpretative approach (which is represented mainly by d’Indy,
Leichtentritt and Mahnkopf) comes to supplement one of the former two,
presenting the possibility of a perception of the work on the basis of a more
or less complete sonata cycle, namely as a sequence of different movements
subsumed in one and the same! During the synoptic reference to the most principal of the analytical
contributions about the Große Fuge,
interactions and original suggestions among the researchers are pointed out, as
well as several problems that appear in these. Thereinafter, specific questions
are put in regard to the structure and the function of the partial sections of
the work, and with these as a reason is exhibited a subjective viewpoint for
the complex form of the Große Fuge:
main points in this interpretation are the acceptance of the sonata form regarding
the macrostructural planning, the structural verification of a complete
scherzo, the restriction of the effect of the fugue form on the separate
sections, but also its decisive role in the macrostructure, as well as the
realisation of the variation form beyond the given application of the principle
of variation in the whole work.
© Ioannis
Fulias