CHAPTER 14

TO P IC S A N D HA R M ON IC S C H E M ATA
A Case from Beethoven

VASILI BYROS

Example 14.1 displays three different realizations of the harmonic and scale-degree
schema that Leonard Meyer (1973; 1980; 1989) termed the 1–7, 2–1. The pattern is one
among several types of “changing-note schemata,” which are united by a shared, under-
lying harmonic statement–response parallelism of I–V, V–I, and a rhyming scale-degree
progression in the top-voice: 1–7, 2–1; 1–7, 4–3; 3–2, 4–3, and so forth. Frequently used as
the presentation phrase of a “sentence” (Caplin 1998), the 1–7, 2–1 is treated identically in
these three excerpts from Meyer’s Style and Music (1989), with respect to syntax, struc-
ture, and formal function. And yet, their expression could not be more disparate. The
Haydn symphony example is a siciliano with an overall pastoral sentiment; the Mozart
quartet a bourrée, with march and fantasia characteristics, and Sturm und Drang in
affect; and the Beethoven trio a sarabande in the Romanza style. In none of these cases
is the affective reference necessary for an understanding of the 1–7, 2–1 syntax on its own
terms: as grammar. Nor, the other way round, is the stylistic and generic expression or
affect of each theme contingent on the underlying harmonic syntax in any way. Much
like the relations between topics and formal functions (Caplin 2005; this volume), top-
ics and harmonic schemata do not significantly correlate in absolute terms, insofar as a
given schema does not require a particular topical realization and vice versa. Examples
of this topical variability of schemata (and the schematic variability of topics) are readily
available in music of the later eighteenth century.
The relative autonomy of the two domains is reflective of a broader conceptual inde-
pendence of musical syntax from musical semantics. Kofi Agawu (1991) articulated
this distinction between music’s intrareferential and extrareferential stylistic sym-
bols—following the linguistic and literary theorist Roman Jakobson (1971)—in terms
of “introversive” versus “extroversive semiosis.”1 This relative autonomy notwithstand-
ing, neither schemata nor topics remain ends unto themselves, insofar as both domains
equally figure in the late eighteenth-century communicative channel (Mirka 2008).
Topics and harmonic schemata are assemblies of musical style symbols that interact in

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EXAMPLE  14.1  Three topically differentiated versions of the 1–7, 2–1 schema from Meyer, Style
and Music (1989), 3 (ex. 1.1a), 4 (ex. 1.1b), and 53 (ex. 2.2f): (a) Haydn, Symphony No. 46 in B
major, ii, mm. 1–4; (b) Mozart, Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478/i, mm. 1–8; (c) Beethoven,
Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano in B flat major, Op.  11/ii, mm. 1–8.
(a)

(b)

(c)

both syntactic (sequentially structured) and semantic (referentially structured) dimen-

sions to some communicative and expressive end.2 There exist no sharp boundaries
between them, either in categorial or pragmatic terms. That is, in respect to both cat-
egorization and language use, syntax and semantics interface in what cognitive linguists
call a syntax-lexicon continuum—“a continuum of symbolic structures” (Langacker
1987: 1991; see also Zbikowksi 2001: 138).
My contribution in this chapter illustrates that, in the case of Beethoven, the musi-
cal equivalent of this continuum enables the communication of a powerful philo-
sophical message in the “Eroica” Symphony, Op.  55 (1803–4), one that involves the
spiritual consequences of suffering, self-sacrifice, and death. “Dies ist Symphonik als
Drama,” says Roger Norrington, in a Konzerteinführung for a series of performances
with the Radio-Symphonieorchester Stuttgart (2002). A  specific interfacing of top-
ics and harmonic schemata provides the structural and expressive basis for commu-
nicating a cultural unit of “abnegation,” with its connotations of “religious drama”
(Hatten 1994). The nature of this interfacing involves, on the one hand, the musical
equivalent of form–meaning pairs:  in cognitive linguistics all grammatical construc-
tions are conceived as amalgams of form and content that vary in terms of their lexical

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  383

specificity (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003; Langacker 1998). The musical equivalents of
form–meaning pairs are schema–topic amalgams: as instances of music-grammatical
constructions, harmonic schemata also contain lexical significance in both “symbolic”
and “indexical” capacities (Monelle 2000:  14–19; after Peirce 1931–58). The expres-
sive genre (Hatten 1994) of the “Eroica” emerges from Beethoven’s use of a particular
schema–topic amalgam, which pivots on the le–sol–fi–sol schema (Byros 2012, 2009).
The le–sol–fi–sol is an instance of harmonic grammar that intersects the semantic world
of the ombra topic (Ratner 1980; McClelland 2012), with its mortal, funereal, and sac-
rificial connotations. Its extramusical references are not inherent, however, but rather
emerge under specific contextual and deictic conditions. The compositional strategies
that produce these conditions involve musical realizations of the principle of “marked-
ness” first outlined in Michael Shapiro’s The Sense of Grammar (1983) and adapted in
Robert Hatten’s Musical Meaning in Beethoven (1994). The extroversive semiosis of
musical grammar is affordant, emerging from its marked use in compositional con-
text. In this way, the syntactic and semantic characteristics of schemata and topics not
only interface within hybrid structures that shade into both categories (categorial), but
through their relative independence they also powerfully interact in the communicative
channel (pragmatic) to produce numerous “correlations,” both positive and negative,
between structure/form and expression/content (Hatten 1994; adapted from Eco 1976).
In the “Eroica,” the correlations produced by the schema–topic interface are the basis
for communicating what Hatten (1994) calls a “tragic-to-transcendent” expressive genre
characteristic of music-spiritual drama.

The drama begins with a modulation to G minor that transpires in mm. 6–9 of the
opening theme. This modulation was the centerpiece of an earlier case study on the his-
torical perception of tonality, which drew on certain aspects of the symphony’s abstract
structure and their reception history (Byros 2012; 2009). The le–sol–fi–sol is the cause
of the modulation. This pattern features a distinctive chromatic turn of phrase in the
bass oriented around the dominant, ♭6–5–♯4–5, with reiterations of scale degrees 1 and
3 in the upper voices. Example 14.2 shows an abstract representation of its most com-
mon form: as seen, the first three stages result in a chromatic expansion of predomi-
nant harmony, with a composing-out of an augmented sixth as a diminished third in
the bass, ♭6–5–♯4, which resolves inwardly onto the dominant. The diminished third
in the bass renders the schema a chromaticized variant of what Italian musicians in
the eighteenth century called a cadenza lunga (“long cadence”), whose bass often tra-
verses a 6–4–5 scale-degree progression as part a perfect authentic or half cadence
(Sanguinetti 2012: 107–10). As a closing device, the le–sol–fi–sol figures among what
Heinrich Christoph Koch described as “punctuation formulas” (interpunctischen
Formeln), “punctuation figures” (interpunctische Figuren), or “punctuation marks”
(interpunctische Zeichen) for realizing one of several “principal resting points of the
mind” (Hauptruhepuncte des Geistes).3 In a sonata- or concerto-form context this often

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384  Vasili Byros

EXAMPLE  14.2  Le–sol–fi–sol schema:  abstract representation.

involves what Koch detailed as the Halbcadenz and Cadenz.4 These are structurally
weighted caesuras that respectively correspond to what James Hepokoski and Warren
Darcy (2006) call the “medial caesura” half cadence of a transition, and the perfect
authentic cadence that closes the second theme: the cadence of “essential expositional
closure” (EEC) in the exposition, and the cadence of “essential structural closure”
(ESC) in the recapitulation. Example 14.3a represents a typical Halbcadenz usage of the
le–sol–fi–sol in the first movement of Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony (1793–94), specifically
at the medial caesura of its recapitulation. Example 14.3b illustrates its Cadenz usage
in Haydn’s String Quartet in D major, Op. 50 No. 6 (1787). This quartet passage also
exemplifies a central harmonic and tonal feature of the schema, namely its frequent
use to effect a modulation up a major third. Haydn’s Cadenz in D major is preceded by
a brief episode in B flat at mm. 140–44, which issues from an earlier deceptive cadence
onto ♭VI at m. 139. Following several exchanges with its own dominant, B flat is rein-
terpreted from a tonic to a submediant where the le–sol–fi–sol begins its semitonal
descent. Because of its ability to efficiently produce such a modulation, the schema
often appears in structurally and expressively significant modulating contexts, both in
sonata- and concerto-form environments (see Byros 2012: 301–5; Byros 2009: 166–69,
292–96).
Analysis of the le–sol–fi–sol in a musical corpus of roughly three thousand musi-
cal works composed between 1720–1840 revealed a population of 550 instances that

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  385

EXAMPLE  14.3  Usage of the le–sol–fi–sol schema: (a) Halbcadenz usage in Haydn, Symphony
No. 101 in D major, “Clock,” i, mm. 240–46; (b) Cadenz and modulating usage in Haydn,
String Quartet in D major, Op.  50 No. 6, “The Frog,” mm. 138–49.
(a)

(b)

historically peaks in the 1790s, the decade immediately preceding Beethoven’s composi-
tion of the “Eroica” Symphony (Byros 2012: 311–13).5 These details suggest that a contem-
porary listener would be prompted to hear a G-minor modulation in mm. 6–9 of the
opening theme on account of perceiving these bars as yet another instance of the harmonic
schema (Example 14.4a). The le–sol–fi–sol is evidently the generic stylistic context and
grammatical symbol in the communicative channel that caused Friedrich Rochlitz, the
editor of the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, to momentarily hear the “Eroica”
as a G-minor symphony that begins in medias res. In a review of the symphony from

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386  Vasili Byros

1807, Rochlitz casually describes mm. 7–9 of its opening theme as having “formally”
modulated to G minor.
The symphony begins with an Allegro con brio in three-quarter time in E♭
major . . . Already in m. 7, where the diminished seventh appears over C♯ in the bass,
and in m. 9, where the 46 chord appears over D, the composer prepares the listener to
be often agreeably deceived in the succession of harmonies. And even this preludiz-
ing deviation, where one expects to be led formally to G minor but, in place of the
resolution of the 64, finds the fourth led upward to a fifth, and so, by means of the 65
chord, finds oneself unexpectedly back at home in E♭ major—even this is interesting
and pleasing.
Der Anfang dieser Symphonie macht ein Allegro con brio im Dreyvierteltakt aus
Es-Dur. . . . Schon im 7ten Takte, wo über cis im Basse der verminderte 7men, und
im 9ten Takte, wo über D der 64ten-Accord vorkommt, bereitet der Verf.[asser] den
Zuhörer vor, oft in der Harmonieenfolge angenehm getäuscht zu werden; und schon
diese, gleichsam präludirende Abweichung—wo man förmlich nach g moll glaubt
geleitet zu werden, aber statt der Auflösung des 64-ten Accords, die Quarte aufwärts in
die Quinte geführt bekommt, und so sich, vermittelst des 65-ten Accords unvermuthet
wieder zu Hause in Es Dur befindet—schon diese ist interessant und angenehm.
(Rochlitz 1807: col. 321)6

Rochlitz’s expectation from m. 9 is realized in Example 14.4b, which gives a hypotheti-
cal continuation of the symphony’s opening theme that completes the le–sol–fi–sol
in G minor. The 46 chord resolves normatively to a dominant seventh in G minor at
m. 10, which continues to a full close with a PAC at m. 13. This cadence is suggested by
Rochlitz’s use of the qualifying adverb förmlich, likely an implicit or explicit reference to
Koch’s förmliche Ausweichung, or “formal modulation,” which specifies a modulation by
way of a cadence and formal phrase ending (Koch 1787: 188). A digital sampling of the
recomposition for four-hand piano is realized in Web Example 14.1 .
In the context of the symphony’s opening theme, G minor of course never fully mate-
rializes by way of a formal cadential close. But the key returns in several dramatic and
strategically located G-minor episodes throughout the symphony (Byros 2012:  305–
7; 2009:  18–22). Among them is a grand perfect authentic cadence in G minor as
the goal of the fugal episode (mm. 114–54) in the Funeral March (Example 14.5). An
augmented-sixth variant of the le–sol–fi–sol returns in this episode to realize the impli-
cations it first laid down in the symphony’s opening theme with a PAC in G minor
at m.  154. This cadence is preceded by a lengthy dominant expansion, what Robert
Gjerdingen would call a “Stabat Mater Prinner” (2007: 442–48): a dominant pedal with
braided 2–3 suspensions beginning on scale degrees 5 and 6 in the upper voices, and
a 1–2, 7–1, 6–7, 1 countermelody. This schema occupies a unique place in Gjerdingen’s
typology, as it is the only phrase-level type whose name implicates a distinct genre,
named after Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (1736), which features the schema promi-
nently in its closing fugal Amen (Example 14.6). On the whole, Gjerdingen’s galant
schemata are abstract forms of scale degree syntax and voice leading with no generic
affiliations—“a particular repertory of stock musical phrases” that transcends semantic

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EXAMPLE  14.4  Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op.  55, “Eroica,”  i: (a) mm. 1–11
with the le–sol–fi–sol schema; (b) hypothetical recomposition in G minor from mm. 6–9.
(a)

(b)

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EXAMPLE  14.5  Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 55, “Eroica,” ii, Marcia funebre,
mm. 143–52.

EXAMPLE  14.6  “Stabat Mater Prinner,” Pergolesi, Stabat Mater, Presto assai, mm. 45–51, from
Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (2007), 442, ex. 30.5.

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  389

distinctions such as “light/heavy, comic/serious, sensitive/bravura” (2007: 6). And still,

both Gjerdingen (2007:  439)  and Roman Ivanovitch (2011:  20), who traced Mozart’s
usage of the schema as a retransitional device, hear associations of “high church
music” in this grammatical structure. To that end, Ivanovitch cites another prominent
sacred-music example in the Credo of Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor, K. 427, specifi-
cally the “Et incarnatus est” (Ivanovitch 2011: 22–24). The implication is that the Stabat
Mater Prinner is a cross between schema and topic, or that its grammar is imbued with
residues of church music, and therefore affords lexical and/or indexical significance.
Indeed Pergolesi’s example is a token of a more general sacred music style type: what
Gjerdingen calls a Stabat Mater Prinner is a voice-leading detail of a larger harmonic
schema and syntactic process discussed in eighteenth-century Satzlehre, treatises,
and dictionaries as an Orgelpunkt or point d’orgue, used to suspend the final close of a
fugue or fugato in the church style. In his Handwörterbuch of 1807, Koch describes the
Orgelpunkt as a “sustained cadence,” which “is really a delaying of the final Cadenz in
fugues or fugal compositions.”7 Johann Georg Sulzer’s earlier entry in the Allgemeine
Theorie der schönen Künste similarly describes it “as a delaying of the conclusion” of
“polyphonic churchmusic,” which in general involves the “final cadence” of fugues,
“but it can be used for other church matters.”8 And Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, in the
Abhandlung von der Fugue of 1753, also defines the Orgelpunkt as the “fourth and last
part of the fugue” (vierte und letzte Theil der Fugue; 1753: 152). In terms of its structure,
the pedal point is defined as a sustained bass, normally the dominant (but can also be
the tonic) scale degree, with various contrapuntal processes in the upper voices. In
Der General-Bass in der Composition of 1728, Johann David Heinichen discusses these
contrapuntal procedures in terms of numerous “variations and foreign syncopations”
(Variationes und frembde Syncopationes) in the organ manuals (1728: 948), such as the
upper-voice 2–3 suspensions of the Stabat Mater Prinner. The entire process is aptly
summarized in Daniel Gottlob Türk’s Anweisung zum Generalbaßspielen from 1800: the
“bass . . . holds the dominant while many sorts of contrapuntal arts begin in the upper
voices” (1800:  321). The harmonic schema is illustrated via several examples from
Eberlin, Emanuel Bach, and of Türk’s own composition, numbered 1 to 3 in Example
14.7, respectively. The last of these, his own contribution, features the same voice leading
of the Stabat Mater Prinner (the last two stages of the schema are implied by the figures
in Türk’s example, and have been realized here in Web Example 14.2) .
Türk’s grouping of the Stabat Mater Prinner’s voice leading within the larger cat-
egory of Orgelpunkte explicitly identifies the pattern as a token of this more gen-
eral church-style type. Descending 2–3 (or 7–6) suspensions over a dominant pedal
are in fact distinctive features of the Orgelpunkt style. Koch’s own example in the
Handwörterbuch pairs only the 2–3 suspensions with a more complex imitative texture,
where imitated 7–1–2 trichords take the place of the Stabat Mater Prinner’s inner-voice
countermelody (Example 14.8a; Web Example 14.3) . In the “Coronation” Mass in C
major, K. 317 (1779), Mozart uses this Orgelpunkt on three occasions, once again in the
Credo, and in each case the suspensions seen in the Stabat Mater Prinner, now realized
as 7–6, are but part of a larger fauxbourdon process over a dominant pedal (mm. 18–22,

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EXAMPLE  14.7  Orgelpunkt from Türk, Anweisung zum Generalbaßspielen (1800), 322–23.

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  391

“Et in unum Dominum”; mm. 85–89, “cum gloria judicare”; mm. 122–28, “Et exspecto
resurrectionem mortuorum”). The fauxbourdon voice leading in the third of these,
shown in Example 14.8b, traverses a complete octave descent in the upper voices (F–F♯,
A♮–A♮), creating a nested predominant expansion (within the dominant prolongation)
that concludes with a le–sol–fi–sol in the upper voice. The same Orgelpunkt variant, with-
out the countermelody, appears in the Stabat Mater of Girolamo Abos (1750) and that of
Giovanni Gualberto Brunetti (1764). The concluding Orgelpunkt in Antonio Caldara’s
Stabat Mater (c. 1725) makes imitative use of the 2–3 suspensions themselves. And the
same fugal usage of the pattern seen in Pergolesi, Abos, Brunetti, and Caldara, finally, is
replicated in the closing Amen of Haydn’s own Stabat Mater from 1767 (Example 14.9).
Here again, the voice-leading and scale-degree content of the Stabat Mater Prinner are
part of a larger Orgelpunkt and a complete octave descent in the top voice. The Stabat
Mater Prinner is thus not a harmonic schema as such, but a topical voice-leading char-
acteristic of the church style within a broader network or chain of indexical significa-
tions, hence the “high church music” designations in Gjerdingen and Ivanovitch. As
both Monelle and Hatten have maintained, “certain topics represent whole genres”
(Monelle 2006: 23; Hatten 1994). The representation here involves a chain of significa-
tions: 2–3 (or 7–6) suspensions over a dominant pedal are a signifier of the Orgelpunkt,
which signifies a fugue/fugato, which signifies a Stabat Mater (or even a “Credo”), which
itself is a signifier of the church/sacred style.
Beethoven would certainly have been familiar with the Orgelpunkt style type and its
various contexts. The treatises of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Beethoven’s teacher in
Vienna, display copious examples of sacred music from Allegri, Bach, Caldara, Carissimi,
Fux, Handel, Kirnberger, Lassus, Palestrina, and Peri (Wyn Jones 1998: 36). The second
page of the Kurzgefasste Methode den Generalbass zu erlernen from 1791 even contains an
example of the same Orgelpunkt harmonic schema that Beethoven uses in the Funeral
March of the “Eroica” Symphony (1791: 2). Perhaps more importantly, Beethoven’s own
Materialen zum Generalbass (Nottebohm 1872)  include paraphrased and copied pas-
sages from the treatises of C.  P. E.  Bach, Albrechtsberger, and Türk, including a cita-
tion of Bach’s discussion of the Orgelpunkt, specifically paragraphs 1, 3, 4, and 6 from
Chapter 24 of Part Two of the Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1762),
which also describes the pattern as “appear[ing] generally in learned things, especially
fugues, near the end over the dominant” (Bach 1949: 319). Among the examples Bach
provides is the Orgelpunkt in Example 14.10, which once again shows the 2–3 suspen-
sions of the Stabat Mater Prinner as part of a larger dominant pedal, and here also with a
chromatic version of uppermost line: ♭6–5–♯4–4–♯3–3–2. And so, Beethoven’s use of this
church-style type in the context of a symphonic slow movement (Example 14.5), one des-
ignated Funeral March at that, becomes a question of “topic” in the deeper sense of the
term: as Hatten (this volume, page 514) puts it, “a familiar style type only becomes topi-
cal when it is imported” into a larger or foreign context or, as Mirka has it in the intro-
duction (page 2), topics are “musical styles and genres taken out of their proper context
and used in another one.” The funereal and mortal significations of the Orgelpunkt in the
Funeral March are thus not inherent, but emergent, arising from the pattern’s migration

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EXAMPLE  14.8  Orgelpunkte from:  (a)  Koch, Kurzgefaßtes Handwörterbuch der Musik (1807),
xiii–xiv, fig.  93 and (b)  Mozart, “Coronation” Mass in C major, K.  317, “Credo,” mm. 122–28.
(a)

(b)

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  393

EXAMPLE  14.9  Orgelpunkt from Haydn, Stabat Mater, “Paradisi Gloria,” mm. 143–51.

from the sacred style into a symphonic context. The intended meaning of the importa-
tion is to semantically charge the key of G minor with connotations of the mortal and
funereal specifically in a sacred context. By staging the Orgelpunkt as the conclusion of
a fugato (double fugue) in a Funeral March, this pedal point, as a form–meaning pair or
schema–topic amalgam, functions as a signifier that brings the mortal, the funereal, the
sacred/spiritual, and the key of G minor into a constellated semantic orbit.
This signification is further highlighted by a merging or “troping of topics” in Hatten’s
terms (1994, 2004, and this volume). The Orgelpunkt combines a motive-form derived
from the fugue (eighth-and-two-sixteenths pattern), as is common practice, with triplet
sixteenths and tremolandi in the first violins that derive from the movement’s opening
funeral march material (Example 14.5). In a minor-mode and flat-key context, tremo-
landi and triplet rhythms are common characteristics of the ombra style, which Clive
McClelland (2012), following the work of Leonard Ratner (1980) and Wye J. Allanbrook
(1983), has recently surveyed in a large-scale study dedicated to the subject and further
discusses in this volume. Both in theatrical- and sacred-style genres, ombra music is
used to depict mortal and funereal scenes, or more generally involves death, burial,
the afterlife, the supernatural, ghosts, spirits, furies, and so forth. Indeed the texture of
Beethoven’s passage (Example 14.5) resembles Gluck’s setting of Alceste’s arrival to the
Underworld, cited in McClelland (2012: 125), which features tremolandi sextuplet six-
teenths, and in the same key of G minor. Beethoven’s example also introduces the more
plaintive, lowered form of the supertonic scale degree at mm. 144 (A♭), Neapolitan har-
mony (here over a dominant pedal) being another characteristic of the ombra style. As
the tonal and harmonic goal of the fugato, the Orgelpunkt and its ombra features render
G minor a representation of the mortal and funereal in a spiritual context. But these
connotations do not begin here.
The sacred-music and funereal resonances of G minor are already intimated by the
symphony’s opening theme: in the Funeral March, the actual G minor cadence is articu-
lated not by the Orgelpunkt but by the le–sol–fi–sol. This harmonic schema is not only a
grammatical structure and punctuation formula but also a characteristic of the ombra
style. The le–sol–fi–sol articulates the very first cadence in the opening tenor solo of
Haydn’s Stabat Mater: a half cadence in D minor on “lacrymosa,” shown in Example
14.11. In the Funeral March, the schema continues the ombra texture of the preceding

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394  Vasili Byros

EXAMPLE  14.10  Orgelpunkt from C.  P. E.  Bach, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu
spielen, vol. 2 (1762), 184.

EXAMPLE  14.11  Le–sol–fi–sol in Haydn, Stabat Mater, “Stabat Mater dolorosa,” mm. 20–23.

Orgelpunkt, with its diminished seventh harmony and angular chromaticism in the
bass. In the symphony’s opening, it serves to introduce mortal and funereal themes
in a G minor context with the very first harmonic motion of the movement (Byros
2012:  305). In texted compositions, the le–sol–fi–sol is consistently used to represent
mortal, funereal, and supernatural qualities and scenes, both in theatrical and sacred
music environments. Mozart employs the schema in such a way as early as 1767, in the
Grabmusik, K. 42 to depict “roaring thunder, lightning, and flames” (“Brüllt, ihr Donner,
Blitz und Flammen,” mm. 141–51; Byros 2009: 464, ex. 3.51). And the pattern’s ombra
characteristics are treated thematically later in Don Giovanni (1787). For example, the
le–sol–fi–sol stages the very moment that the Commendatore is fatally wounded by Don
Giovanni (“Il commendatore mortalmente ferito,” Act 1, No. 1, mm. 174–76), and again
later in the “O statua gentilissima” Duet of Act 2, where the Commendatore returns
to life in ghost form, Mozart uses several variants of the schema (mm. 30–32, 44–46;
see also the Finale, mm. 502–3).9 In the later Requiem, K. 626 (1791), the le–sol–fi–sol
is used to represent eternal life: “Et lux perpetua luceat eis” (And let eternal light shine
upon them, mm. 43–46; Byros 2012: 292, ex. 4a). These powerful examples from early
and late Mozart are representative of the schema’s general ombra usage in the theatri-
cal and sacred-style examples outlined in my corpus study of the pattern (Byros 2009,

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  395

Appendix B). But the le–sol–fi–sol also appears to have had a more specific and circum-
scribed use in church music. Namely, it is regularly encountered in the Credo of a Mass,
notably in the “Et incarnatus est.” The schema is frequently set to the text “et homo factus
est” (and he became man), “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis” (crucified for us), and “passus
et sepultus est” (suffered and was buried). Example 14.12 shows the “passus et sepultus
est” from Mozart’s Missa solemnis in C minor, K. 139 (1769). McClelland’s own illustra-
tions of ombra in a sacred-music context show the same usage of the le–sol–fi–sol in
the “Et incarnatus est” of (the younger) Georg Reutter’s Missa Sancti Caroli from 1734
(McClelland 2012: 176, ex. 7.7, mm. 17–19). And Jasmin Cameron’s analytic study of the
Crucifixion in Music (2006: 90–91, fig. 5.7, mm. 6–7) cites a “Crucifixus” setting of the
schema in a Mass for four voices by Caldara (c. 1720).
The le–sol–fi–sol was something of a trope of the Credo of a Mass that expresses the
theme of sacrificial death. Table 14.1 profiles a selection of examples from the long eigh-
teenth century (c. 1720–1823): the list includes several variants of the le–sol–fi–sol in the
Credo of a Mass, and other related sacred music contexts expressing sacrificial death.
As a recurrent theme or motive in the “Et incarnatus est,” the le–sol–fi–sol is a musi-
cal equivalent of what cognitive linguists term a “collostruction.” As seen above, all
grammar is said to consist of form–meaning pairs, but the pairing varies by specificity
and level of abstraction. A “collostruction” refers to a frequent co-occurrence of cer-
tain lexical and syntactic symbols, or to a consistent and specific form–meaning pair
(e.g. Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003). This is one means by which grammatical struc-
ture acquires semantic meaning, and an aspect of the syntax–lexicon continuum that

EXAMPLE  14.12  Mozart, Mass in C minor, K.  139, “Credo,” mm. 126–27:  le–sol–fi–sol as ombra
topic.

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Table 14.1  Ombra Usage of the le–sol–fi–sol Schema in Sacred Music,

c. 1700–1823.

Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685–1750)

1749 Mass in B minor, BWV 232, “Credo” “descendit de coelis”
1749 Mass in B minor, BWV 232, “Agnus Dei,” m. 39 “peccata,” “miserere”
Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770–1827)
1807 Mass in C major, Op. 86, “Agnus Dei” “peccata mundi”
1819–23 Missa solemnis, “Credo,” Adagio espressivo, mm. 166–68 “sub Pontio Pilato passus”
Caldara, Antonio (1670–1736)
c. 1720 Mass for Four Voices (London, Royal College of Music, “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis”
Gb–Lcm Ms. 105; Cameron 2006), “Credo”
c. 1720 Mass in F (London, Royal College of Music, Gb–Lcm Ms. “et homo factus est”
789; Cameron 2006), “Credo”
Cherubini, Luigi (1760–1842)
1816 Mass in C major, “Credo” “Crucifixus”
Gassmann, Florian Leopold (1729–1774)
n.d. Requiem in C minor, “Requiem aeternam” (McClelland “et lux perpetua luceat eis”
2012)
Hasse, Johann Adolph (1699–1783)
1751 Mass in D minor, “Credo” (MacIntyre 1986) “etiam pro nobis”
Haydn, Joseph (1732–1809)
1802 “Harmony” Mass in B flat major, Hob. XXII: 14, “Credo” “Deo vero”
Heinichen, Johann David (1683–1729)
1724 Mass in D major, “Credo” “homo factus est”
Lotti, Antonio (1667–1740)
c. 1700–40 Crucifixus a 10 (Münster, Santini Sammlung der “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis”
Bischöflichen Bibliothek D-MÜs SANT Hs 2342; Cameron
2006)
c. 1700–40 Missa I (Cameron 2006, No. 61), “Credo” “mortuos”
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–1791)
1769 Mass in C minor, K. 139, “Credo” “et sepultus est”
1769 Mass in C minor, K. 139, “Credo” “remissionem peccatorum”
1774 Missa brevis in F major, K. 192, “Gloria” “peccata mundi”
1779 “Coronation” Mass in C, K. 317, “Credo” “et sepultus est”
1791 Requiem in D minor, K. 626, “Requiem aeternam” “et lux perpetua luceat eis”
Reutter, Georg (1708–1772)
1734 Missa Sancta Caroli, “Credo” (McClelland 2012) “passus et sepultus est”

is perhaps all the more consequential for musical symbols: a grammatical construction
may retain the significance of its collostructural lexical pairs even in their absence. The
le–sol–fi–sol, specifically, affords the connotations of sacrificial death expressed by the
text of the “Et incarnatus est” in its absence. A second means by which grammar inher-
its meaning is via image schemata: syntax relies on “prelinguistic” structures such as
“source–path–goal,” “center–periphery,” “attraction,” and many others (Johnson 1987;

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  397

EXAMPLE  14.13  Axial melodies as symbolic representations of the cross in the “Crucifixus” of
the Mass, from Cameron, The Crucifixion in Music (2006), 57 (a), compared with le–sol–fi–sol
as symbolic representation of the cross (b).
(a)

(b)

see also Lakoff 1987). These image schemas relate to embodied experiences that inform
the structure of language and consequently charge grammar with signification. “Axis
balance” is one such image schema, and it underlies the radial structure of the le–sol–
fi–sol. Cameron discusses several representations of the cross in terms of musical sym-
bolism: among these symbols is a “zig-zag arrangement of notes” (2006: 57) shown in
Example 14.13a. They display melodic profiles very similar in concept to what Leonard
Meyer called “axial” melodies (Meyer 1973; 1989). The le–sol–fi–sol is precisely such a
pattern, with its axial symmetry around scale degree 5 (Example 14.13b). The “image
schema” of “axis balance,” as a characteristic feature of the schema–topic amalgam, fur-
ther affords semantic meaning in the absence of a specific lexical designation through its
musical symbolism—the cross as symbol of sacrificial death.
These sacred-music contexts would likewise have been quite familiar to Beethoven—a
Roman Catholic who not only studied a good deal of sacred music with Albrechtsberger
(Wyn Jones 1998:  36), but at Bonn was also appointed deputy organist by the elec-
tor Maximilian Franz in 1784, and filled in for his teacher and court organist Christian
Gottlob Neefe. Beethoven’s importation of the schema into a symphonic context, and
specifically one that prompts a modulation in its opening theme, once more becomes
a question of topic in the deeper sense of the term. But the topical use of the le–sol–fi–
sol differs from that of the Orgelpunkt in terms of the immediacy of its lexical specifica-
tion—that is, whereas the Orgelpunkt is firmly associated with fugal composition and, by
extension, with the church style, the le–sol–fi–sol is a much more transgeneric instance
of musical grammar. Its lexical specifications are consequently even less inherent, and
therefore require deictic cues to be realized. To that end, the schema is multiply marked
in the symphony’s opening through a number of oppositions involving formal function,
syntax, tonality, and style types. Hatten (1994: 121) cites the opening of the “Eroica” as an
example of a “‘developmental’ unstable theme” type of “strategic markedness” that results
from “cross-matching material and locational functions.” This results from Beethoven’s
having “fronted” a process-orientated, modulatory and cadential schema—that is, posi-
tioned it as the opening gesture of a symphony. Meyer called this compositional strategy
“positional migration,” defined as the (re)positioning of process- and closure-oriented

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schemata—“punctuation formulas” in Koch’s terms—at the beginning of a work

(1989: 124). As seen above, the le–sol–fi–sol was both a common way of producing a mod-
ulation up a third and a structurally important cadence—often a Cadenz or Halbcadenz.
The markedness produced by this fronting strategy is augmented by the le–sol–fi–
sol’s syntactic disruption at m. 10: after being formally displaced to the opening of a
symphony that prompts a modulation to G minor, the dominant of E flat major dis-
rupts the schema’s completion with, as Rochlitz put it, an “unexpected” return to E flat
major (compare Examples 14.4a and 14.4b). These oppositions in the formal, tonal,
and syntactic domains are combined with another level of asymmetry in the form of
topical differentiation. The le–sol–fi–sol introduces textural characteristics of the
ombra style: tempestuous syncopations in the first violins (mm. 7–8), along with the
tremolandi strings (McClelland 2012:  123–30). Indeed the first violins appear to be
lifted straight from Mozart’s first G-minor symphony, perhaps as an intertextual ref-
erencing of this tonality. These textural characteristics and the angular chromaticism
and diminished-seventh harmony of the le–sol–fi–sol grammar blend into a larger
ombra-style topical unit that contrasts with the E-flat major fanfare style of the open-
ing triads and hammer blows in mm. 1–2, and the horn call in the triadic arpeggiations
of the cellos in mm. 3–6, which becomes a literal horn call in later restatements and
reworkings of the theme. More importantly, the G-minor ombra music of mm. 6–9
occurs against the larger stylistic context of the Ländler: a rural dance widespread in
Austria and Germany in the later eighteenth and nineteenth century (see McKee, this
volume). Daniel Heartz (2009: 517, 643) has identified this topic and its close relative,
the “German dance” (deutsche Tanz or Deutscher), for example, in several works of
Haydn and Mozart, including the finale of the Piano Trio in E flat major, Hob. XV: 29,
“In the German Style,” the Trio from Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E flat major, and the
“Drinking Chorus” that ends the “Fall” of Haydn’s Seasons (see also McKee 2012). The
opening theme of the “Eroica” is also broadly cast in the Ländler style, with its character-
istic oom-pah | oom-pah | oom-pah-pah | pah rhythmic pattern in mm. 3–6 and 10–15.
This is a common feature of the Ländler and German dances of Mozart and Beethoven,
and often in combination with tonic pedals and arpeggiation.10 The Trio of Beethoven’s
“German Dance,” WoO 8 No. 3, similarly features a Ländler with a literal horn call. But
the most famous use of this Deutscher/Ländler style may be the Intrada to Mozart’s early
pastoral Singspiel, Bastien und Bastienne (1768), whose main theme is commonly iden-
tified as an anticipation of Beethoven’s opening in the “Eroica” (Example 14.14).
In his Late Beethoven of 2003, Maynard Solomon attributed the affective dissonance
of the opening theme to the disruption of a pastoral sentiment caused by the chromatic
descent in mm. 6–7. He further highlighted the pastoral tone as a relatively unique
instance of this topic in middle-period Beethoven:
On one conspicuous occasion [Beethoven] unveiled a pastoral moment at the very
instant of its fracture by disruptive forces. The two crashing chords that open the
Eroica Symphony introduce a flowing pastoral negotiation of the common chord
[presumably the tonic triad], a shepherd’s yodel or an alphorn call that lasts less than

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  399

EXAMPLE  14.14 Mozart, Bastien und Bastienne, K.  50, Intrada, mm. 38–45:  Deutscher pastoral
topic.

two measures (it may be no accident that it echoes the yodeling figure at the opening
of Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne . . .), until it is tipped into disequilibrium by a deci-
sive descent through D to C-sharp at measures 6–7. In a half step, Arcadia has been
lost, thus launching a prolonged heroic narrative that will revert to the pastoral mode
only in its contredanse finale (Solomon 2003: 75).

The vague “disruptive forces” of which Solomon speaks are the ombra style communi-
cated by the le–sol–fi–sol, which is synactically, tonally, formally, and topically marked,
and “marked entities have a greater (relative) specificity of meaning than do unmarked
entities” (Hatten 1994: 291). The le–sol–fi–sol and G minor thus only acquire mortal and
funereal connotations by virtue of their opposition to the preceding E-flat major fan-
fare, triadic arpeggiation, and the underlying pastoral landscape of the Ländler dance.
Their lexical significance arises precisely in their being “disruptive forces.”
As in the Funeral March, Beethoven’s topical use of le–sol–fi–sol is specifically to
charge the key of G minor with mortal and funereal connotations in a sacred context,
which becomes the symphony’s first lexical reference communicated in strictly musical
terms. This strategic positioning of the G-minor ombra music in the opening theme is
the means of a larger expressive end. Through their expressive correlates, G minor and
the le–sol–fi–sol are structural necessities for communicating a powerful philosophical
message that involves the spiritual consequences of death, suffering, and self-sacrifice
that is only alluded to in the heroic and memorial themes of the symphony’s quasi pro-
grammatic title Sinfonia eroica . . . composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand Uomo
(“Heroic symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man”), but is more
explicit in the intertextual contexts that surround the symphony’s composition. The
same themes of sacrificial death coded in the le–sol–fi–sol and implied in the symphony’s
heroic and memorial epithets are found in Beethoven’s contemporary musical and liter-
ary texts. The “Eroica” was composed during a period when Beethoven was “forced to
become a philosopher,” as confessed in what Solomon has called the symphony’s “liter-
ary prototype”: the Heiligenstadt Testament of 6 and 10 October 1802. The theme of sac-
rificial death metaphorically runs throughout the testament, particularly in Beethoven’s
overt submission to and acceptance of his affliction and fate, which were prompted by
the benefits of virtue, and oriented toward the achievement of a higher state of existence,
in which music would play an integral part:
I would have ended my life—it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed
to me impossible to leave the world until I  had brought forth all that I  felt was

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within me. So I  endured this wretched existence—truly wretched for so suscep-

tible a body which can be thrown by a sudden change from the best condition to
the very worst.—Patience, they say, is what I must now choose for my guide, and
I have done so—I hope my determination will remain firm to endure until it pleases
the inexorable Parcae to break the thread. . . . I am ready.—Forced to become a phi-
losopher. . . . Divine One, thou seest into my inmost soul, thou knowest that therein
dwells the love of mankind and the desire to do good. . . . [V]irtue . . . upheld me in
time of misery. Thanks to it and to my art I did not end my life by suicide. . . . With joy
I hasten to meet death—If it comes before I have had the chance to develop all my
artistic capacities, it will still be coming too soon despite my harsh fate and I should
probably wish it later—yet even so I should be happy. . . . Come when thou wilt, I shall
meet thee bravely. (Forbes 1967, 1: 305)

Solomon has interpreted the Heiligenstadt Testament as a “funeral work” in which

Beethoven “metaphorically enacted his own death in order that he might live again”
(1998: 157). As a “literary prototype of the Eroica Symphony,” the Testament is a pro-
found statement of “heroism, death, and rebirth” (1998: 157–58). John W. N. Sullivan, a
literary journalist who wrote a spiritual biography of Beethoven in the early twentieth
century, similarly described Beethoven’s concept of “hero” as a “synthesis” of “assertion
and submission” (1927: 95).
Both the “Eroica” and the Heiligenstadt Testament are but part of a larger “death of the
hero” repertoire from Beethoven’s output in the first decade of the nineteenth century,
which explored death, suffering, and self-sacrifice as correlates of life, joy, and jubilation.
This includes, among others, the slow movement marked “Marcia funebre sulla morte
d’un Eroe” (Funeral March on the Death of a Hero) in the Piano Sonata in A flat major,
Op. 26; the oratorio Christus am Ölberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives), Op. 85; the
opera Fidelio; and the Incidental Music to Goethe’s Egmont, Op. 84 (see also Solomon
1998: 68–73). The most important among these for understanding the expressive signifi-
cance of Beethoven’s use of the le–sol–fi–sol schema-topic in the “Eroica” is the oratorio,
which, despite the later opus number, precedes the symphony, written in March of 1803,
and performed on 5 April of the same year.11 Christus am Ölberge is the first large-scale
work Beethoven composed since writing the Heiligenstadt Testament, and was done
by his own volition—it was not commissioned. The oratorio’s libretto, penned by Franz
Xaver Huber, portrays Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gesthemane. Unlike the Passions
of the elder Bach, it focuses primarily on Christ’s agony, submission to and acceptance of
his fate, and an understanding of his sacrifice as purposive, for the salvation of human-
ity. The details of the oratorio’s compositional history and subject matter indicate that
Beethoven saw in Christ a model, as he was struggling with the pragmatic, moral, and
philosophical implications of his own suffering and deafness. He said as much in a later
conversation book from January 1820:  “Socrates and Jesus were exemplars for me.”12
From his Nachlassverzeichnis, we also know that Beethoven owned and studied several
theological and Christian-philosophical works. Among the volumes in his library are, in
addition to French and Latin copies of the Bible, the fifteenth-century monastic treatise
The Imitation of Christ (c. 1427) by Thomas à Kempis, and Christoph Christian Sturm’s

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  401

Reflections on the Works of God in the Realm of Nature (1772), which Beethoven allegedly
advised clergy to read from the pulpit.13
The themes of self-sacrifice, death, and rebirth that run through the Heiligenstadt
Testament, though likely not derived from the pages of these philosophical and theo-
logical works, strongly identify with their dominant messages. In Chapter  23 of à
Kempis’ treatise, titled “Thoughts on Death,” we read the following: “Be wary and mind-
ful of death. Try to live now in such a manner that at the moment of death you may be
glad, rather than fearful. Learn to die to the world now, that then you may begin to live
with Christ” (Kempis 2004: 27). That such passages and messages were meaningful to
Beethoven is evident not only from the similar themes expressed in the Heiligenstadt
Testament (“With joy I hasten to meet death”), but also from the many annotations and
underscorings that survive in his copy of Sturm’s Betrachtungen. Beethoven’s biogra-
pher Ludwig Nohl produced a (partially inaccurate) transcription of marked passages
in several volumes from Beethoven’s library (Nohl 1870), which also includes works by
Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Herder, Schiller, and others. Critical English translations
of the marked passages in Beethoven’s copy of the Betrachtungen have been produced
by Charles Witcombe and collaborators (Witcombe 1998, 2003; Witcombe and Portillo
2003; Witcombe et al. 2003). Many of Beethoven’s markings display a man struggling
to find meaning and purpose in his affliction. Some of these marked passages reflect
the themes of suffering and rebirth directly: “To live eternally one day, to be eternally
blessed, to be eternally joyful . . . [N]‌ow I have this hope! How insignificant are all the
sufferings that I have to endure here. As rough and as long as the winter of my life may
be, confidently I wait for spring and the renewal and improvement of my situation in
that world” (Witcombe and Portillo 2003: 22). Others reveal Beethoven’s attempts to
reconcile his suffering as a means of attaining a higher state of being, or as a necessary
resource or path to a higher state of existence and joy: “In order to bring people closer
to the feeling of their final purpose, the abhorrence of sin, and the practice of good-
ness, God turns sometimes to violent and sometimes to gentle means. Occasionally
he finds it best to arouse the sinner out of his slumber through powerful jolts, through
severe punishments, and through continuous judgment. . . . Illness and other accidents
you imposed on me in order to bring me to contemplate my digressions. . . . I only ask
one thing of you, my God: do not stop working on my improvement” (Witcombe et al.
2003: 93, Beethoven’s emphasis). The title of the following passage in Beethoven’s copy
was “marked with three emphatic consecutive lines in [the] margin” (Witcombe et al.
2003: 94), and may well be the most illustrative example of Beethoven’s attempts to rec-
oncile and submit to his affliction and fate, by understanding his suffering as part of a
larger plan overseen by Divine Providence: “If I know that I remain connected with God
and my Savior, then I can also be certain that all future destinies, be they sad or pleasant,
will serve me for the best. Is it not my reconciling God who orders all events and reigns
over the future? . . . What God has chosen for me, That shall and must take place; . . . I have
surrendered myself unto him. To die and to live” (Witcombe et al. 2003: 94, my italics).
It is precisely at the moment that depicts this surrender in the Mount of Olives orato-
rio that Beethoven employs a dramatic use of the le–sol–fi–sol—that is, precisely at the

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EXAMPLE  14.15 Beethoven, Christus am Ölberge Op.  85, No. 5, Recitativo, mm. 18–30:  le–sol–
fi~ti–do variant as representation of Christ’s agony.

moment that Christ submits to his own fate (Example 14.15), and sacrifices himself to die
and to live by God’s will. Measures 18–24 present the same ombra textural features as the
“Eroica,” syncopated and tremolandi strings, with a variant of the le–sol–fi–sol in mm.
20–24 that modulates up a fifth, here from E minor to B minor, via a reinterpretation of
♯4 in the bass to a leading tone in B minor (Example 14.15), which I have described as a
le–sol–fi~ti–do variant: ♯4 (fi) becomes 7 (ti) by resolving the chord it carries to a minor
(and therefore tonic) triad, as opposed to a major (and therefore dominant) triad (Byros,
2009: 305, ex. 5.19, Appendix B). The theme of sacrificial death coded in the le–sol–fi–sol
is thus identified with Christ’s own submission. The schema represents the emotional
turmoil involved in the very act of surrender, as it is only at its completion in m. 26 that
Christ sings to his Father: “Doch nicht mein Wille, nein, dein Wille nur geschehe” (But
let not my will, no, Thy will only be done). The le–sol–fi–sol is thus coextensive with
Christ’s agony, his submission to God, and acceptance of his fate, for the purpose of a
greater good—in this case, for the salvation of humanity itself.
This powerful example from the Mount of Olives suggests that Beethoven con-
ceived of the le–sol–fi–sol as a syntactic and semantic musical symbol capable of com-
municating the submissive and mortal dimensions of his developing hero philosophy
or, in Sullivan’s terms, of his “spiritual development.” The oratorio was one of several
such philosophical-spiritual exercises that he revisited persistently throughout his

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  403

compositional output. The “Eroica” is yet another, early and untexted chapter in what
became a life-long narrative, a “long journey” and a “via dolorosa” (Solomon 2003: 164).
As a philosophical testament, or treatise, similar in ethos to those of à Kempis and
Sturm, the symphony portrays a heroism not of a revolutionary (public) order but,
written on the heels of the Heiligenstadt Testament and the Mount of Olives oratorio,
of a spiritual (private) order.14 Sullivan heard the “Eroica” as the “first piece of music
[Beethoven] composed that has a really profound and spiritual content.” He continues:

Indeed, the difference from the earlier [presumably instrumental] music is so star-
tling that it points to an almost catastrophic change, or extremely rapid acceleration,
in his spiritual development. We have found that such a change is witnessed to by the
Heiligenstadt Testament, and we shall see that the Eroica symphony is an amazingly
realized and co-ordinated expression of the spiritual experience that underlay that
document. The ostensible occasion of the symphony appears to have been the career
of Napoleon Bonaparte, but no amount of brooding over Napoleon’s career could
have given Beethoven his realization of what we may call the life-history of heroic
achievement as exemplified in the Eroica. This is obviously a transcription of per-
sonal experience . . . Heroism, for him, was not merely a name descriptive of a quality
of certain acts, but a sort of principle manifesting itself in life. (Sullivan 1927: 90, 95)

Much of Beethoven’s so-called “heroic period” has been characterized by a “tragic-to-

triumphant schema” of expression exemplified in the Fifth Symphony (Hatten 1994: 79),
in which Beethoven externalized and defeated his menace: Fate, personified in C minor,
and overcome by C major (Sullivan 1927: 95). And much of the music of the period cer-
tainly falls into this generic expressive category. But the “Eroica” is more characteris-
tic of what Hatten identified as the “cultural unit” of “abnegation[, which] is related to
Christian notions of sacrifice and spiritual surrender” (Hatten 1994: 281): the “willed
resignation and spiritual acceptance of a (tragic) situation that leads to a positive inner
state” (1994: 298). The hero philosophy that persists throughout Beethoven’s lifetime is
not overcoming suffering, but its endurance.
In the very opening entry of his Tagebuch (1812), Beethoven inscribes the follow-
ing article of faith: “Submission, deepest submission to your fate, only this can give
you the sacrifices. . . . You must not be a human being, not for yourself, but only for oth-
ers: for you there is no longer any happiness except within yourself, in your art. O God!
give me strength to conquer myself, nothing at all must fetter me to life” (Solomon
2003: 164). And again, in a sketchbook from 1816: “Submission—submission! Thus
may we win something even in the deepest misery, and make ourselves worthy to have
God forgive our shortcomings. Fate, show your force! We are not lords over ourselves.
What is determined must be, and so let it be!” (Schauffler 1929:  358). Submission
was the basis for the Christian-philosophical tenet that, in Beethoven’s words, one
achieves joy through suffering: in a letter to the Countess Anna Marie Erdödy from
Vienna, dated 19 October 1815, he writes: “We finite beings, who are the embodiment
of an infinite spirit, are born to suffer both pain and joy; and one might almost say
that the best of us obtain joy through suffering” (Anderson 1961: 527, Letter No. 563).

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Not only joy, but endurance through suffering leads to a higher state of being; again
to the Countess, in a letter dated 15 May 1816, Beethoven writes: “Man cannot avoid
suffering; and in this respect his strength must stand the test, that is to say, he must
endure without complaining and feel his worthlessness and then again achieve his per-
fection, that perfection which the Almighty will then bestow upon him” (Anderson
1961: 578, Letter No. 633). The first explicit documentation of this spiritual conversion
is the literary prototype of the “Eroica,” the Heiligenstadt Testament: what Beethoven
realized, in Sullivan’s words, was that a “rigid strained defiance was no longer neces-
sary. What he came to see as his most urgent task, for his future spiritual development,
was submission. He had to accept his suffering as in some mysterious way necessary”
(Sullivan 1927: 78).
The le–sol–fi–sol is a schema–topic amalgam that semantically charges G minor in the
“Eroica” as the musical representation of this necessity. The communicative significance
of G minor lies in its structural and expressive opposition to E flat major, as a musi-
cal representation of the spiritual transcendence enabled by suffering and sacrifice. G
minor and the le–sol–fi–sol are a means of musically realizing this philosophical con-
cept of abnegation through what Hatten termed a “tragic-to-transcendent” expressive
genre (1994: 28, 281–86), which is akin to religious drama: “tragedy that is transcended
through sacrifice at a spiritual level. The pathos of the tragic may be understood as stem-
ming from a kind of Passion music, depicting a personal, spiritual struggle; and the ‘tri-
umph’ is no longer a publicly heroic ‘victory’ but a transcendence or acceptance” (79).
The le–sol–fi–sol is the musical impetus for realizing this expressive genre, as it initi-
ates a number of “correlations of oppositions” (Hatten 1994: 292) in the structural and
expressive domains that semantically charge E flat major and G minor as respective
representations of life, joy, and perfection, on the one hand, and death, suffering, and
self-sacrifice on the other. The major and minor modes are of course among the most
readily available oppositions in the classical style, which Hatten aligns with the generic
cultural oppositions of “non-tragic” and “tragic.” In sacred music the specific relation-
ship between G minor and E flat major in the “Eroica”—down a major third—is explic-
itly associated with death and resurrection. In his monumental study of the concerted
Viennese Mass, Bruce MacIntyre illustrates that the “tonic of the Mass opens the Credo
and almost always returns for the ‘Et resurrexit’” (MacIntyre 1986: 322). The contrasting
tonality for the intervening “Et incarnatus est” section, which profiles Christ’s incarna-
tion, crucifixion, suffering, and death, is often the minor-mode mediant, resulting in
precisely the key relationship in the opening theme of the “Eroica.” The progression iii–I
is among the three most common tonal transitions between the “Et incarnatus est” and
the “Et resurrexit” (MacIntyre 1986: 325). For example, Caldara’s Mass in G minor pur-
sues the following tonal scheme: “Credo” (G major), “Et incarnatus est”–“Crucifixus”
(B major–B minor), “Et resurrexit” (G major).15 In the context of a Mass, the life-death
duality expressed by the tonal relationship is of course explicitly communicated by the
text. Sacrifice (“homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis”), suffering (“passus”),
death (“sepultus”), and resurrection (“resurrexit”) are literally inscribed into the musi-
cal work. In addition to the specificity of natural language, the correlation between

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  405

structure and expression is supplied by the Church as a social and pragmatic context for
the expression.
In the “Eroica,” the correlation rests on the affordant meaning of the le–sol–fi–sol
grammar, as it is responsible for introducing the symphony’s first lexical reference. As
a form–meaning pair in the communicative channel, the harmonic schema achieves a
syntactic and semantic function in one gesture: it produces a modulation to G minor
while introducing a sacred-music reference of sacrificial death, thereby marking the
mortal, funereal, sacrificial, and submissive connotations of G minor. The specificity
of the schema’s meaning enabled by its markedness provides a context for a reciprocal
semantic charging of E flat major with its fanfare, horn call, and Ländler topics. Through
their opposition to the G-minor ombra music of mm. 6–9, the pastoral and ceremonial
lexical significations of these topics become metaphoric representations of life, joy, and
jubilation. Dance becomes a metaphor for life.
The same correlation between structure and expression returns in a magnified and
powerful restatement of the G-minor–E-flat-major opposition at the very end of the
symphony’s finale, where it is once more highlighted by a discrete shift in topical dis-
course (Example 14.16). The finale’s theme and variations effectively ends at m.  398,
which immediately leads to a “discursive coda” (Hepokoski and Darcy 2006: 284–88)
and developmental episode. This episode closes with an imposing perfect authen-
tic cadence in G minor at m. 422, extended via its own codetta in mm. 422–33, before
it gives way to a second, fanfare-based coda in E flat major at m. 437. This G-minor
episode literally brings back the music of the Funeral March: mm. 419–22 revisit the
same shimmering triplet sixteenths and tremolo violins from the Orgelpunkt and
G-minor cadence in the Funeral March, before giving way to its march-like, proces-
sional rhythms in mm. 422–32 (compare Examples 14.5 and 14.16). This intermovement
revisitation “topicalizes” the Funeral March itself: imported into the coda of a theme
and variations, it becomes marked by its relocation along with the key of G minor. Its
ombra connotations are further communicated by an ascending chromatic line in the
bass that precedes the cadence, which results from sequential repetitions of a le–sol–
fi–sol variant:  its inverse, fi–sol–le (♯4–5–♭6). In the “Crucifixus” of a Mass, ascend-
ing chromatic bass lines are typically used to represent Christ’s via dolorosa, as in the
“Crucifixus” of Mozart’s “Coronation” Mass and of Haydn’s “Harmony” Mass in B flat
major. These ascending chromatic basses often include inverted le–sol–fi progressions,
as in Haydn’s “Theresa” Mass from 1799 (Example 14.17). The instrumentation following
the G-minor cadence at m. 422—flutes, bassoons, and strings—is also a typical charac-
teristic of ombra music (McClelland 2012: 134–36). The E-flat-major music that follows
the G-minor codetta of this episode is an elaborate fanfare in the military genre, which,
through its “connect[ions] with literature, reflect[s]‌the classical image of the hero”
(Monelle 2006: 5–6). The end-result is a bifocal G-minor–E-flat-major ending that mir-
rors the symphony’s similarly bifocal tonal and topical opening: E-flat Ländler and fan-
fare (mm. 1–6) followed by G-minor ombra (mm. 6–9).
The symphony’s conclusion thus presents a magnified mirror image of the tonal and
topical confrontation between E flat major and G minor from its very opening gestures.

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EXAMPLE  14.16 Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op.  55, “Eroica,” iv, mm. 410–
42:  G-minor ombra versus E-flat-major fanfare.

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  407

EXAMPLE  14.17 Haydn, “Theresa” Mass in B flat major, “Crucifixus,” mm. 79–82:  fi–sol–le
grammar as topical representation of Christ’s via dolorosa.

And, as in the opening theme, the competing tonalities are never reconciled to one
another. The conclusiveness of the G-minor ombra episode creates an impression of two
independent tonal endings for the symphony. G minor is not resolved into the follow-
ing E-flat-major music so much as merged with or confronted by it: the abrupt changes
in tempo (to Presto) and dynamics (to ff) enforce a nearly direct modulation in mm.
434–36 that transforms the G octaves of m. 433 from scale degree 1 to scale degree 3
(Example 14.16). There is no progression to E flat major as a resolution, but a rupture. The
militaristic E-flat-major fanfare from m. 437 to the symphony’s conclusion is thus not a
representation of a public victory, but, bursting, as it does, from the preceding G-minor
ombra music, it becomes a metaphor for rebirth, joy, spiritual perfection, and personal
victory. The two tonalities are kept in abeyance, or held in suspension. As is character-
istic of “religious drama” in general, there is no musical resolution. G minor and E flat
major represent inner states only reconciled within the self: the “conflicting elements [of
assertion and submission] are . . . both located within the soul itself ” (Sullivan 1927: 96).
Joy (E flat major) is achieved through suffering (G minor). This synthesis of asser-
tion and submission, or abnegation, results in a higher state of existence, which, “for
Beethoven, [generally] . . . meant the serene transcendence of a spiritual victory, won not
only through heroic striving . . . but through profound abnegation in the face of a tragic
reality that cannot be cancelled” (Hatten 1994: 286). Nor is G minor cancelled or over-
come. Its “transcendence or acceptance goes beyond the conflicts of the work (after hav-
ing fully faced them)” (Hatten 1994: 79).
The earliest sketches for the “Eroica” in the Wielhorsky sketchbook of 1802–3 sug-
gest that an opposition between E flat major and G minor was in Beethoven’s thinking
from the symphony’s inception (Byros 2012: 305; 2009: 43–47). Among these sketches are
drafts for a third-movement Menuetto serioso in E flat major with a G-minor Trio.16 In
the final version the opposition is not only the central tonal subject of its opening theme,
but, as seen, it frames the entire symphony: E flat major (i, mm. 1–6)–G minor (i, mm.
6–9)–G minor (iv, mm. 419–33)–E flat major (iv, mm. 433–end). Web Example 14.4
provides a summary of this bifocal tonal frame. Through the expressive correlates
of these tonalities, brought on by the several correlations of marked opposi-
tions in the syntactic and topical domains, the bifocal tonal frame becomes a means

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408  Vasili Byros

of communicating a “tragic-to-transcendent” expressive genre for the entire symphony,

and thus expressing a philosophical topic or cultural unit of abnegation. As Nicholas
Cook paraphrases Hatten’s concept, “expressive genres function rather like the key of
a sonata”—not as a continuous expression of the same tonality “in any literal sense, but
the overall key coordinates the diverse tonal contents for the music and so provides a
means for interpreting them” (Cook 1996: 108). In other words, the expressive genre
casts an expressive affect, mood, or theme over the entire drama and its subplots: “once
a genre is recognized or provisionally invoked, it guides the listener in the interpreta-
tion of particular features . . . that can help flesh out a dramatic or expressive scenario”
(Hatten 1994: 89). The tonal opposition thus becomes the basis for what Hatten termed
a “high-level trope”: “The opposition may also initiate an ongoing dramatic conflict of
characters or agents, perhaps suggesting a dramatic program. In addition, the contrast
may lead to tropological interpretation that goes beyond the opposed correlations”
(Hatten 1994: 169).
The complexity of the communicative utterances, drawing, as they do, on the syn-
tactic and semantic properties of the le–sol–fi–sol as their basis, is conceivably among
the characteristics of the “Eroica” Symphony that elicited its contemporary aesthetic
judgments as a “serious” and “sublime” composition. In his review of the symphony
from 1807, Rochlitz makes clear that he intends to write primarily on technical and
less on aesthetic matters. But at the same time, he cautions the readers of the Leipzig
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung that, on account of its “elevated, abstract subject mat-
ter,” the “Eroica” requires a “thoughtful listener,” “an audience that at least pays serious
attention and can maintain its serious attentiveness” (Senner, Wallace, and Meredith
2001: 30, 24). Beethoven’s complex manipulations of both syntactic and semantic sym-
bols in the schema–topic continuum undoubtedly figured among those aspects of the
symphony requiring serious attention. An earlier review from 1805 in Der Freymüthige
attributed its “true originality” to marked oppositions in both syntactic and semantic
domains:  “strange modulations and violent transitions, . . . placing together the most
heterogeneous things, as when for example a pastorale is played through in the grand-
est style” (Senner, Wallace, and Meredith 2001: 15). Because of its complexity, audiences
had to be prepared in advance. For a performance in Leipzig, reported in the Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung on 29 April 1807, “the audience had been made attentive and, as
far as possible, prepared to expect exactly what was offered, not only by means of a
special announcement on the customary concert program, but also by a short charac-
terization of each movement, particularly in regard to the composer’s intended effect
upon the feelings. In both regards, the purpose was achieved completely . . . a truly sol-
emn attentiveness and deathlike silence reigned and was sustained not only throughout
the whole . . . first performance, but also during the second and third, which . . . followed
within a few weeks” (Senner, Wallace, and Meredith 2001:  33). Throughout several
reviews by Beethoven’s German contemporaries is replicated both the theme of tech-
nical and aesthetic difficulty, as well as the requirement of an audience “who listened
with heightened attention” (Senner, Wallace, and Meredith 2001: 38). A reviewer of the
Zeitung für die elegante Welt counted the “Eroica” “among those few symphonies that,

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  409

with their spirited energy, set the listener’s imagination into a sublime flight and sweep
his heart away to powerful emotions. But the connoisseur will only enjoy it as a com-
plete work (and a repeated hearing doubles his spiritual enjoyment) the deeper he pen-
etrates into the technical and aesthetic content of the original work” (Senner, Wallace,
and Meredith 2001: 35).
Like any philosophical treatise, the symphony requires meditation, study, and time
for its message to congeal—presumably owing to the complexity of Beethoven’s interac-
tive use of introversive (schemata) and extroversive (topics) musical symbols. For those
Kenner who devoted their serious attention, the symphony’s intended spiritual message
was evidently not lost: its overarching theme of death and rebirth is explicitly docu-
mented in a later review for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung from 1814, by one “K.
B.,” who begins by citing a funereal poem Das Grab by Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis
(Senner, Wallace, and Meredith 2001: 38–39, my italics):
5.
The grave is deep and still
and horrible its brink!
Who has not felt the truth of these words of the poet already in their life? Does not
the departure of every citizen from this earth from the “friendly familiarity of being
and doing” have in itself something that deeply affects the serious observer? How
much more moving is it, then, when an elevated, magnificent spirit departs forever
from our midst? In a situation such as this, one should listen to the funeral march
from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and sense its effect!—Certainly, a magnificent
person is here being led to the gave; these tones tell us so in the clearest possible way.
All the pain and all the joys of earthly life resound once again in our breast, deep
and sweet, but only as the gentle voice of an echo, for already they are gone by, and
have now fled irretrievably! Assuredly, the departed one now walks in the kingdom of
clarity and light—refreshingly soothing melodies tell us this in the language of heaven
perceptibly enough—but we remain abandoned at the grave and look up toward that
kingdom’s nocturnal womb. . . . [O]‌nly through resignation can we at last tear our-
selves from this place in order to plunge into life’s rushing stream and at least to drink
forgetfulness from this Lethe!

Notes
1. The relative independence of the two domains can be further seen in the competing syn-
tactocentric and semantocentric viewpoints that inform several strains of topic theory.
The former position is summarized by Caplin’s (2005) exploration of the syntax prob-
lem in topical analysis, which shows that many efforts to legitimize the enterprise often
went hand in hand with attempts to syntacticize topics—to examine what grammati-
cal and structural features they themselves might possess, or how they might otherwise
contribute to expressing syntactic, formal, and structural elements. The consequence, as
Nicholas McKay (2007) has argued in a broader, disciplinary study, is a serious undervalu-
ing of the expressive significance of topics. Though Caplin numbers them among music’s

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410  Vasili Byros

“significant forces for musical expression,” citing recent advances in the topic studies of
Raymond Monelle as evidence, their significations operate “quite independently of for-
mal considerations” (Caplin 2005: 124)—so syntax, in a sense, still has the upper hand,
whereas topic theory requires a “dialogue” or “balance” between syntax and semantics
(McKay 2007; Rumph 2012: 94–95). Monelle (2000) presents a similar cautionary tale
from the other, semantocentric side of the platform: we learn from his fictional musicol-
ogist, Dr. Strabismus, that attempts to “embrace semantics and syntactics” are destined
to fail. “No comprehensive theory was possible for him. Only an overmastering stress
on the sense of music, rather than its form or its syntax, united his random thoughts”
(Monelle 2000: 4). Among the reasons for “Strabismus’s failure” is, evidently, the seman-
tic autonomy of the topic. Expressive meaning is self-contained in the topic itself, as the
signification of a particular “cultural unit” (Monelle 2000: 13; after Eco 1976: 67, citing
Schneider 1968: 2; see also Monelle 2006: 10, 29). For Monelle, topical “meanings are
inherent significations, not dependent on the listener; they are lexical, or in common
language they are ‘literal’ meanings.” The “primary concern of the topic theorist is to give
an account of each topic in global terms, showing how it reflects culture and society”
(2006: 10).
2. For an earlier analytic investigation of this interaction, specifically as it applies to the com-
munication of wit and humor in Mozart, see Byros (2013).
3. For punctuation formulas, figures, and marks, see the second and third volumes of Koch’s
Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition (1787: 347–48, 390; 1793: 7, 395) or corresponding
passages of its English translation (1983: 2–3, 22, 64, 234). The Hauptruhepuncte des Geistes
are discussed in the third volume (1793: 342–43; 1983: 213).
4. On the Cadenz, see the Versuch (1787: 419–20; 1793: 342–43) or the English translation
(1983: 38–39, 213). In the Versuch, structurally significant half cadences were designated
Quintabsätze (V-phrases). But later, in the entry “Quintabsatz” from his Musikalisches
Lexikon (1802: cols. 1211–12), Koch would explicitly fix the structural weight of the medial
half cadence (Quintabsatz) of the transition relative to the Cadenz of the Schlußsatz (sec-
ond theme), by designating it a Halbcadenz.
5. Appendix B of my dissertation (Byros 2009) outlines each of these instances, along with
several hundred other variants.
6. The review is actually anonymous. The Rochlitz attribution is from Geck and Schleuning
(1989). The English translation is based on Senner, Wallace, and Meredith (2001: 21).
7. “Orgelpunkt (franz. Point d’orgue), oder anhaltende Cadenz ist eigentlich eine Aufhaltung
der Finalcadenz in Fugen oder fugenartigen Sätzen” (Koch 1807: 263).
8. “Eine solche Stelle wird ein Orgelpunkt gennent, weil die Orgel, welche dabey im Basse
blos den Ton aushält einigermaaßen einen Ruhepunkt hat, da die andern Stimmen
fortfahren. Er kommt entweder auf der Tonica oder auf der Dominante vor und ist als
eine Verzögerung des Schlusses anzusehen. . . . Insgemein bringt man in Fugen bey dem
Haptschluß einen Orgelpunkt so an, daß die verschiedenen Säze und Gegensäze, die in
der Fuge vorgekommen auf einen liegendem Basse so weit es angehet, vereiniget werden.
Doch wird er auch bey andern Kirchensachen, die nicht als Fugen behandelt werden,
angebracht” (Sulzer 1774: 860–61).
9. All of the examples are referenced in Appendix B of my dissertation (Byros 2009).
10. See, for example, K. 536/i, Trio; K. 571/i, iii; K. 600/vi; K. 602/ii, iii; K. 605/i; WoO 8, 11, 15,
and WoO 13/i.

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Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven  411

11. The sketches for the oratorio are contained in the Wielhorsky sketchbook of 1802–3 (see
Johnson 1985). For more on the circumstances of the oratorio’s composition, see also
Forbes (1967, 1: 295–96).
12. “Socrates u. Jesus waren mir Muster” (Köhler, Herre, Beck et al. 1968–2001, 1: 211).
13. According to Anton Schindler’s testimony (Schindler 1996: 248).
14. The Gellert Lieder Op. 48 (1802), which set six religious and spiritual poems of Christian
Fürchtegott Gellert (1715–69), also date from this period.
15. “Mass H” in Walter (1973).
16. See Lockwood (1981) and Byros (2009: 20–24).

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