Eine "innerlich und räumlich weitläufige Komposition"
Music, Time and Space in Thomas Mann’s "The Magic Mountain"

Summary/Abstract: Thomas Mann spoke of the »musical construction« of "The Magic Mountain". His words have thus far remained unquestioned by scholars, in spite of the fact that leitmotifs often discussed in relation to The Magic Mountain are not a musicological category. Significantly, the romantic music in The Magic Mountain constitutes a theme. However, when it comes to its form as an »extensive composition« (T. Mann), it should not be thought of only in musical, temporal or syntagmatic terms, but also from the paradigmatic perspective of space. The Berghof sanatorium is a hermetical compression and enclosing of an epoch – and in its epical preservation of time the novel narratively points to form immanence of music.

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