Conference Agenda

Topic theory is associated with the historically-informed performance of eighteenth-century music, where performers use their knowledge of topics to inform decisions about tempo and articulation. In this context, topical interpretation stands in opposition to a modernist, “objective” performance style that treats the score as an autonomous, authoritative record of the composer’s intention. However, this paper argues that the conceptual roots of topic theory are actually entwined with the Second Viennese School’s performance culture. By examining unpublished writings by Arnold Schoenberg and refinements by his interpreter, violinist Rudolf Kolisch, I demonstrate that these modernists recognized a gestural lexicon akin to topics long before Ratner’s formalization after 1960.

I challenge the prevailing view of these primary texts—particularly those stemming from Kolisch’s collaboration with Theodor Adorno—as philosophy. Approaching these texts instead as literal performance practice, I demonstrate that Schoenberg and Kolisch viewed “musical character” as essential interpretive knowledge. Kolisch identifies a lexicon of gestural types that requires performers to bring social and conventional knowledge to the score—knowledge not contained “absolutely” within the notation. This reliance on social gestures creates a productive tension with Schoenberg and Kolisch’s reputation for prioritizing the objectivity of the score and the abnegation of the performer’s subjectivity over the composer’s intention. By reconnecting Kolisch’s Wiener espressivo to these earlier rhetorical traditions, I suggest that the origins of topic theory lie in a mid-century modernist environment where “topical awareness” was a vital tool for reconciling contemporary style with the inherited traditions of the First Viennese School.