ABSTRACT
The tensions of early twentieth-century Wilhelminian society discernible behind the metaphors and images of the Pfitzner-Busoni-Bekker polemics are also found in many German narratives concerning music from the teens and, following the fall of the Empire, the 1920s. In Death in Venice the extra-aesthetic significance of music begins with the most basic opposition of silence and sound, each suggesting different social levels. At the beginning of the novella, music and sound have a similar meaning for Gustav von Aschenbach; they are both associated with that which is foreign to him, which he fears, and which he therefore seeks to repress. Aschenbach’s aesthetic production results from a nearly masochistic exercise of willpower and repression. Ironically, Aschenbach’s society continues to revere him for his moral epic-noble production and to stigmatize the musician even after his writing has fallen under the influence of sexualized—and hence, in his eyes and the eyes of his society, immoral and feminine—music.
