Zur Poetik und Interpretation des offenen Schlusses

Abstract

This article reviews the long historical process and changing significance of open endings in music from Haydn's mid-period symphonies of the 1760s to Helmut Lachenmann. Taking two case studies by Alban Berg (Lyric Suite, Wozzeck) as its starting point, the article demonstrates that open endings are often linked to ideas of cyclicity and the permanence of "objective time" as well as to a critique of social or political situations. Therefore, open endings challenge the aesthetic difference between the musical art-work and everyday experience, a tendency, that can be traced back to the emergence of self-reflexivity in early 19th-century music and aesthetics and even to Haydn's earlier listener-responsive musical writing. In later 19th-century and early 20th-century music, large-scale forms increasingly posed the problem of an inability to achieve closure. Further key examples elaborate the tendency of open endings toward musical self-reflexivity and the appearance of the composer-persona at the end of a cyclic work: Schubert's Der Leiermann from Winterreise, Schumann's Der Dichter spricht from Kinderszenen, Schoenberg's concluding piece from Six little Piano Pieces op. 19 as well as Lachenmann's "music with images" The Little Match-Girl. Finally, Schumann's and Schönberg's closing pieces are considered from the perspective of performance history and analysis, highlighting th performer's substantial impact on creating (or limiting) the impression of "openness".

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