Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199981779.003.0008
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Unrepresentable Labor
Moscheless letter points to something else, as well: however commodified four-hand
music was, the labor of playing itself does not produce a single thing that would be
referred back to a consumernot even in the very limited sense that there are likely to
be listeners distinct from players. Four-hand playing is, rather, the production of what
Marx might call a perfect use-value, the producers of which are also its consumers, living
aesthetically hand to mouth. However much the nineteenth century understood fourhand playing in terms of socialized labor, it was also keenly aware that four-hand playing
could model a possible, yet-to-be-realized form of social (or communal) labor. In this
chapter, I will deal with four-hand playing as a figure for a different and better division of
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As Richard Leppert has shown, it is a common signal in the musical iconography of the
nineteenth century that the viewer is not supposed to accept the person depicted playing
an instrument as just playing an instrument, that the busywork on the keyboard is in fact
epiphenomenal.8 The same holds true for the case of the Brothers Goncourt: Their hands
appear to perform four-handed labor, but their reclined bodies are those of aestheticist
dandies who want to do nothing. Gavarni depicts a scene at the piano, but it seems he
doesnt mean for it to be about the piano. The picture isnt about music; its about fourhandedness as such, and four-handedness cannot be depicted without a piano. The
picture is about a communal creation, about collaboration, about community through
writing and production. But all this can be depicted only when the metaphor is literalized
via the (p.191) keyboard. Gavarni thus folds the temporality of four-handedness: the
sequential harmony of the brothers literary output becomes a true synchronous
harmony when it turns musical.
While Gavarnis hands thus depict the four-handed pair of authors, the brothers paid him
back by writing a (four-handed) biography of the artist after his death in 1866. The
brothers express their love and admiration for Gavarni, and remark that he showed for
the younger of the two of us a kind of paternal affection. 9 In the biography, the two dont
recount sitting for the drawing, but they mention in their diary that the drawing exists:
The director of the Porte Saint-Martin put on a display in the foyer of the portraits that
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Failing at Unification
Why would Musil choose Beethovens Ode to Joy as Walter and Clarisses project du
jour, and why would he choose to have his narrator dissect four-hand playing specifically
on the basis of this piece? Significantly, Musils narrator speaks only of the Odethat is
to say, the concluding movement of Beethovens symphony; (p.209) Walter and
Clarisse, he suggests, are cherry-picking their favorite parts of the musical canon. But the
narrator is pointing to something else yet, since he makes direct reference to the millions
who embrace in Schillers poem, which Beethoven set to music. Walter and Clarisse arent
just playing a transcription of Beethovens piece. By calling it an Ode and invoking a
text the four-hand version doesnt have, Musils narrator makes clear that Walter and
Clarisse arent just pulling an arbitrary score from their library, they are pulling out a
whole lot of cultural baggage with it.
Schillers Ode, composed in 1785, represented a celebration of unification, oneness,
and brotherhood so delirious that the poet (who wrote the work for friends) later
disowned its philosophy. Joys beautiful, divine spark will heal what fashion has pulled
apart. Under joys influence all men become brothers. And, perhaps most significantly,
those who persist in animus and separateness may forever steal away from our
congregation [Bund]. Behind Schillers celebration of joys unifying power lies an
ideology of unification in the Platonic mold. All men were once brothers, but fashion
intervened and separated them from one another. Joy is able to (momentarily,
ecstatically) bridge that separation, to restore what once was. Those who cannot bridge
that separation, Schiller implies, those who cannot embrace joys power to overcome
wanton divisions, are somehow defective and unworthy of the congregation celebrated in
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