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I. Infroduction
Beethoven is often considered to be a key figure in the major shift that occurred within music aesthetics around 1800, particularly in the emergence of what Lydia Goehr has termed the "work-concept" in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Whereas in previous ages music had tended to serve a particular function, such as to aid worship or provide entertainment, by Beethoveth era the emphasis had shifted fiom music as perfbrrnance to music as text, with the musical work being viewed as an autonomous self -just4ing objaz in the same manner as a painting or a sculpture, or any other museum piece. This was linked with the value placed on music (particularly instrumental music) within Romantic aesthetics, which saw music as being able to provide access to the metaphysical world by arousing emotions in the listener that cannot otherwise be expressed in language. Several of Beethoven's more "monumental" works, particularly those of his middle period, dearly demonstrate through their inner coherence and unity that he thought of them as autonomous, independent creations, and E.TA Hoffinann's iconic review of the Fifth Symphony from 1810 demonstrates how the work-concept had influenced music criticism through its dose reading of the score} Hofflnann approached the work as a self-sufficient unity whose meaning can be read and interpreted in the same manner as a literary text. His review was, at the time of its publication, the longest essay ever to have fbcused on a singjeworkby Beethoven.3
While it is generally accepted that Beethoven's output exemplifies this new approach to music, there is no scholarly consensus as to how influential Beethoven himself was in the emergence of the work-concept. Despite the fact that Goehr refers to the new mode of thinking in music aesthetics after 1800 as "Beethoven paradigm,"4 she reflains flom suggesting that Beethoven himself was responsibk Instead, she points to a general shift in thought among musicians towards the end of the eighteenth century that "changed their expectations and ideals about the basic conditions of their practice."5 Carl Dahlhaus, on the other hand, credited Beethoven with a greater degree 0f influence on this change. According to Dahihaus, the idea that the musical work harbors a meaning independent of its perk.rmance...