Tovey's Idealism/ Craig Comen

While the writings of Donald Francis Tovey have been celebrated for their sensitive treatment of the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, their methodology has evaded systematic reconstruction. This study argues that at the heart of Tovey's critical oeuvre there lies a coherent framework, one indebted to the philosophy of German idealism. First, Tovey embeds himself in its aesthetic tradition by articulating a claim about what it means for music to be modern, most evident in his essay "Haydn's Chamber Music", where he presents the composer as responsible for initiating what he calls the "Copernican revolution" of the "sonata style". Second, Tovey's analytical approaches rely on Hegelian dialectical thinking. A prime example is found in his early essay on Haydn's E flat keyboard sonata, in which he elaborates his conception of the sonata style and presents a sophisticated method to analyse the music of Haydn and his successors.