Op. 131 and the Rise of Attentive Listening

This chapter begins with a discussion of Mark Andre’s ensemble work riss 2 (2014) as an alternative window on the modern-day reception of Op. 131—the two works can similarly disrupt our ontological understanding of musical works in terms of structure, sound transformations, and especially sense of time. I then step back to consider the larger context in which Op. 131 was originally heard, setting it within an emerging ideology of “serious listening” in Vienna in the early nineteenth century. I consider the early nineteenth century as an era in which the seeds for silent listening were sown, by key agents of change, who tried to adjust audience behavior at string quartet concerts—influential figures such as Schuppanzigh, Beethoven, and reviewers for the Wiener Theater-Zeitung and Viennese Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in the 1810s and ’20s. Beethoven’s C-sharp minor quartet can be understood as a work that took part in this move to instill silent and serious listening. However, the climate in Vienna was not was not such that Beethoven (and Schuppanzigh) could enjoy much success with this particular listening project. The “romantic listener” does not represent a nineteenth-century norm, and was certainly not the norm in Beethoven’s Vienna. But the compelling ideology of listening and associated habits that started to develop there—especially reverent silence—continue to influence powerfully our concert hall behaviors today.