Rhetoric Vs. Truth

In this essay Bonds outlines why and how Haydn’s music was contemporaneously regarded as a representation of rhetoric through explaining the position of the listener, which changed throughout the end of the 18th C. and early 19th. The paradigm in Haydn’s time rested on the premises that music functions as a language, and that “the burden of intelligibility lies with the composer” rather than relying on the listener to “exert themselves unduly in following the trajectory of a musical discourse” (111). In the early 19th century when Beethoven was rising to acclaim, “the musical work came to be perceived not as an oration… but rather as an object of contemplation” (112). The difference of the two paradigms is the focus of this essay, which reveals the opposing stances of rhetoric: #1) that truth and rhetoric are intrinsically linked, or #2) that rhetoric veils truth, which is higher up, abstract, and separate from our attempts to explain it. By revealing how Beethoven’s sublimity was regarded, referring to Hoffmann’s celebrated review of Beethoven’s 5th, Bonds ultimately shows us that the preference for an abstract, absolute truth separate from rhetoric (argument #2) explains how “Haydn’s image declined so markedly over the 19th century” while Beethoven came to be regarded as divine (125). Was there a specific preference for rhetoric in Haydn’s time, and a specific preference for the sublime in Beethoven’s time, or were listeners just processing and changing according to the music that was provided them? Did the regard for a musical work as something to be contemplated begin with Beethoven, or does Hoffmann’s review reflect the social attitudes of the time?