Abstract

This thesis explores the question of whether it is justifiable or even interesting to interpret music biographically. My answer is in the affirmative, but such an answer needs to be arrived at after a process of analysis. To this end, a variety of biographical studies of Beethoven's life and works are used as examples, and four basic interpretive paradigms are isolated from these biographies and are examined in detail: the Hagiographic, the Phenomenological, the Psychoanalytic and the Marxist paradigms. Each of these interpretive systems is discussed critically in order to show both the strengths and weaknesses in each. However, they are also ranked in terms of what I perceive to be their interpretive power and adequacy. Thus the Hagiographic paradigm is shown to leave unresolved certain interpretive problems which the Phenomenological mode of interpretation resolves. And, in its turn, the Phenomenological model is shown to give rise to problems which the Psychoanalytic paradigm can more adequately deal with. The Marxist hermeneutic is, I argue, the interpretational mode which achieves the most adequate understanding of music, but this in its turn is also shown to leave certain interpretive problems unresolved. In the concluding chapter I outline my own "dialectical" interpretive paradigm and attempt to show how this approach resolves the problems which the Marxist paradigm cannot deal with