HERMANN HESSE AND THE DIALECTICS OF TIME Salvatore C. P. ...

uns abends alte Musik und nimmt ofter auch mit mir irgend etwas Theoretisches,
meist Kontrapunktisches durch, da ich das fiir meine spatere Arbeit brauche 7 (Musik,
164). In a letter of June 1935 to Isenberg, Hesse refers to the poem 'Zu einer Toccata
von Bach7, included in Das Glasperlenspiel (SW 5, 401), as an unsatisfactory result, and
the reason for his disappointment largely rests in what Hesse perceived as the lack of
any immediate and tangible reference to music: 'Im Bachgedicht stort, dass das
Gedicht ja nicht eigentlich von der Musik handelt, sondern von dem Bild, das jene
Musik mir suggeriert: der Schopfung des Lichts 7 (Musik, 169). A month later, in a
letter to Cecilie Clarus, he categorically rejects the possibility of transferring music
into writing 'natiirlich kann man Musik nicht in Versen wiedergeben 7 (Musik,
169) thereby showing a conscious understanding of the difficulties inherent in the
portrayal and reproduction of music by means of words.
The problematic transliteration of music into words occupied Hesse
intensively in those years, as another letter of 1934 to Isenberg witnesses:
ich mochte [...] ein Schrittchen weiterkommen in dem Problem, ob und wie
Musik, oder doch Erinnerung an Musik, auf intellektuellem oder
dichterischem Weg reproduzierbar ist. Also z. B.: wie weit die Analyse einer
klassischen Musik in Worten heute moglich ist. (Musik, 159)
Two short pieces, 'Dreistimmige Musik', composed in 1934 (see section 2.4),
and 'Ein Satz liber die Kadenz' (SW 10, 573-74; Musik, 110), which Hesse wrote in
1947, both explicitly adopting music structures and patterns, can be read as the
literary outcome of this period of intense speculation on music theory.
In seeking to examine the latter, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music
defines a cadenza as 'a flourish (properly, improvised) inserted into the final cadence
of any section of a vocal aria or a solo instrumental movement7 . 'Ein Satz uber die
Kadenz7 consists of an exceptionally long sentence (220 words), where the absence of
any full stop conveys the idea of improvisation. 23 Moreover, Hesse describes the
exuberant joy and musical freedom of the soloist who, in a cadenza and 'fiir eine
Atempause' (Musik, 110), stands out from the orchestra. The pace of his writing,
23 See also Schneider (2009, 383).
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