ABSTRACT
Nattiez describes noise as “whatever is recognized as disturbing, unpleasant, or both” and suggests that music is probably best defined in contrast to it. The opposition between the two, however, may be specious. A vortex is created, an in-betweenness of the metaphorical and the literal, through which music opens the text and its subjects simultaneously inward and outward, as an analogue to the workings of musical semiosis itself. Beethoven–a noise in the narrative—becomes voice through the subject. The characters, the writer, and the reader are all engaged in a process of taking up roles as listening and performing subjects, creating what one may call Beethoven’s voice in the novel. Beethoven’s voice is based as much on the listening tradition as on the subjective experience of the characters, the writer, or the reader.
