“What has evidently gripped Adorno in Beethoven’s late work is its episodic character, its apparent disregard for its own continuity. If we compare a middle-period work, such as the Eroica with the opus 110 sonata, we will be struck with the totally cogent and integrative driven logic of the former and the somewhat distracted, often extremely careless and repetitive character of the latter. The opening theme in the thirty-first sonata is spaced very awkwardly, and when it moves on after the trill, its accompaniment-a studentlike, almost clumsy repetitive figure-is, Adorno correctly says, “unabashedly primitive…His late work still remains process, but as development; rather as a catching fire between extremes, which no longer allow for any secure middle ground or harmony of spontaneity.”[1]
Reem Faiq is a recent graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and is currently completing her Master of Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
[1] Edward Said, “Timeliness and Lateness” in On Late Style (First published in Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2006), 10.