Heinrich Schenker
Heinrich Schenker (June 19, 1868 - January 13, 1935) was a music theorist, best known for his approach to musical analysis, now usually called Schenkerian analysis.[1]
Schenker was born in Wisniowczyki (now Vyshnivchyk) in Galicia then in Austria-Hungary (now Ternopil oblast, Ukraine). His musical talent was recognized early on, and at the age of 13 he was sent to study with Carl Mikuli, a student of Frédéric Chopin, in Lemberg (now Lviv). He moved to Vienna where he studied music under Anton Bruckner and became known as a pianist, accompanying lieder singers (such as Johan Messchaert) and playing chamber music. He taught piano and music theory privately, and Wilhelm Furtwängler, Anthony van Hoboken, Felix Salzer, and Hans Wolf[2] were among his pupils.[3]
Schenker's ideas on analysis were first explored in his Harmony (Harmonielehre, 1906) and Counterpoint (Kontrapunkt, 2 vols., 1910 and 1922), and were developed in the two journals he published, Der Tonwille (1921-24) and Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (1925-30), both of which included content exclusively by Schenker. Schenker regarded his analyses as tools to be used by performers for a deeper understanding of the works they were performing. This is demonstrated by his editions of Ludwig van Beethoven's late piano sonatas, which also include analyses of the works.
In 1932, Schenker published Five Graphic Music Analyses (Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln), analyses of five works using the analytical technique of showing layers of greater and lesser musical detail that now bears his name. Following Schenker's death, his theoretical work Free Composition (Der freie Satz, 1935) was published (first translated into English by T. H. Kreuger in 1960 as a dissertation at the University of Iowa; a second, better translation, by Ernst Oster, was published in 1979). Some English translations of his work have deleted passages that could be considered politically incorrect and irrelevant to the topic. For example, in the Preface to Counterpoint Schenker writes that "the man ranks above the woman, the producer is superior to the merchant or laborer, the head prevails over the foot," etc.
Other music theorists, for example Felix Salzer and Carl Schachter, both added to and disseminated Schenker's ideas: by the 1960s Schenkerian analysis had begun to attract renewed interest, and by the 1980s it had become one of the main analytical methods used by many North American music theorists. While his theories have been increasingly challenged since mid-century for their rigidity and organicist ideology, the wider analytical tradition that they inspired has remained central to the study of tonal music in North America.
A 2007 book by Nicholas Cook [4] presents a wider historical perspective on Schenker's life and work than hitherto, quite distinct from the positivistic application of a small sub-section of Schenker's ideas and methods that became institutionalised in post-war Anglo-American academia.
Notes
- ^ SchenkerGUIDE By Tom Pankhurst, p. 5 ff
- ^ http://www.soundfountain.org/rem/remwolf.html
- ^ These and other students and colleagues are discussed in Hellmut Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker: nach Tagebuchern und Briefen in der Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection, University of California, Riverside (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1985). Additionally, Schenker kept a lesson book from 1912-1931 in which he recorded the basic contents of many (but not all) of his students' lessons. This lesson book is housed in the Oster Collection, Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
- ^ Cook, Nicholas (2007). The Schenker Project: Culture, Race, and Music Theory in Fin-de-siècle Vienna. Oxford: Oxford University Press