’Free Forms’ in German Music Theory and the Romantic Conception of Time

This chapter investigates the concept of “free forms” from the perspective of German speaking theoreticians beginning with Adolf Bernhard Marx. The issues surrounding freedom, to which the definition of the genre alludes, involve a cornerstone of Romantic aesthetics: the unfolding of “absolute interiority”. As regards music, “free form” is closely intertwined with problems involving performance, in particular improvisation. Questions of compositional technique are discussed, with analytical observations on Mozart’s Fantasia in C minor, Schubert’s Wandererfantasie and Schumann’s Impromptus op. 5. The final section puts the concept of time as developed by Romantic thinkers in relation to the new forms that emerged in fantasias and variation cycles in the post-Beethoven era.