Marva Duerksen
CUNY Graduate Center
This paper responds to Kerman's well-known critique of organicist models in music analysis. Kerman's argument concerning organicism is that its force is primarily ideological, and that music analysts using the idea are simply validating the work selected. He argues further that twentieth century analysts--Schenker, Tovey, and Reti--used organicist models to protect nineteenth century music from the advent of modernism. kerman views their efforts as an anachronistic imposition.
It is my belief that Kerman;s focus on ideological issues has obscured crucial philosophical and historical aspects of the idea--aspects which I address in the paper. First, what value did organicism have historically and philosophically? In other words, what did music analysts gain from their appropriation of organic models? Second, how did early analysts use the organic metaphor? what kind of explanatory power did it have for they music they discussed? Two case studies focus the discussion: first, a Beethoven string quartet analysis by Johann Christian Lobe (1850); and second, a Mozart string quartet analysis by Alexander Ulïbïshev (1843). Finally, I point out the illusory nature of the attack on organicism. i demonstrate first that one of organicism's most provocative tenets--the belief that music has a will or spirit--has slackened very little in its appeal for present-day writers, Kerman included. And then I point out the historically accurate position of writers such as Schenker and Reti in applying organic concepts to music produced in the heyday of the idea. Organicism was not anachronistic but contemporary to the composition of nineteenth-century music.