Music in the writings of Hermann Broch

Much of Hermann Broch's novelistic and discursive writing is indirectly or directly concerned with music. This concern has received comparatively little attention in the literature on Broch. Although Broch himself had only an amateur's training and background in music, the philosophical implications of musical cognition interested him from his earliest writings. Indeed, with Der Tod des Vergil, Broch might be considered the preeminent example of a writer who attempted to import the epistemological techniques of music into the novel.;This dissertation analyzes those works of Broch which have the strongest links thematically or methodologically with music. A brief introduction places Broch in a historical context, beginning with the German Romantic writers who tended to place music at the peak of the hierarchy of the arts. Broch's ultimate skepticism about the utility of literature is consistent with this position. A biographical chapter points up Broch's relative lack of sophistication about music, which undercuts Broch's theoretical endorsement of serial music.;Broch's essay on Schonberg is examined in light of the earliest writings, in particular the phenomenon of simultaneity, or Zeitaufhebung, and its relationship to music. Musical thematics and methods of the novels are covered next: Die Verzauberung, Die Schuldlosen, Die Schlafwandler, and Der Tod des Vergil. Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit is used to place music in the context of the other arts.;Der Tod des Vergil is the most successful of Broch's attempts to use musical methods to create a figuration of simultaneity, so it is given more extensive discussion; the concepts of time and timelessness in the novel are compared to the philosophical writings of the musicologist Thrasybulos Georgiades. The "ethical" quality of music described by Georgiades is reflected in the musicality of Broch's text.;Also included is a digression on Jean Barraque's fragmentary musical work La Mort de Virgile: an effective translation of some of Broch's philosophical ambitions into a directly musical experience.;While Broch's theoretical discussions of musicality remain problematical, the use of musical cognitive methods in his literary work is uniquely successful.