Elephants, Crocodiles, and Beethoven: Schenker's Politics and the Pedagogy of

Schenkerian Analysis
Author(s): Carl Schachter
Source: Theory and Practice , 2001, Vol. 26 (2001), pp. 1-20
Published by: Music Theory Society of New York State

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41054326

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41054326?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Music Theory Society of New York State is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Theory and Practice

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Elephants, Crocodiles, and Beethoven:
Schenker's Politics and the Pedagogy
of Schenkerian Analysis1
Carl Schachter

In Canto 1 of his unfinished masterpiece, Don Juan, Byron writes about young
Juan's education. The boy's mother was worried about his reading the Greek and
Latin classics, with their indecent passages describing the "filthy loves of gods and
goddesses," who "never put on pantaloons or bodices." Byron describes an
attempted solution to this problem. I quote stanza 44 and part of 45:

Juan was taught from out the best edition,

Expurgated by learned men, who place
Judiciously, from out the schoolboy's vision
The grosser parts, but fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission,
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix,
Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;

For there we have them all at one fell swoop,

Instead of being scattered through the pages;
They stand forth marshall'd in a handsome troop,
To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,

The learned editors of whom Byron writes were trying to safeguard the question-
able innocence of adolescent schoolboy readers while at the same time remaining
faithful to their Greek and Latin authors - a hopelessly self-contradictory enter-
prise. All that their transplanting accomplished was to facilitate their readers'
gorging themselves on the forbidden fruit, now conveniently gathered into one
place. Such editions, by the way, really existed and in fact still do, and in our own

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
2 Theory and Practice

field. Readers of Schenker can encoun

Appendix 4 of Free Composition, which c
edition of Der freie Satz, translated by
the book was prepared for publication
Ernst Oster. Most of these had already
tion by its editor, Oswald Jonas,and
from his English translation.2 Incident
found their way into the English versi
I don't know. In Appendix 4 as it stan
graduate music programs can find "at
statements about matters philosophic
esthetic. Some of these passages are qu
ly with music-theoretical issues. Man
attitude, especially in matters relating
vinism that so strongly characterizes
Central Powers in World War I. Wher
protect their readers from their authors
to protect their author from their re
that he felt that the passages in quest
musical ideas would not receive a fair
no way an essential part of the book'
same way. My teacher, Felix Salzer, w
the cuts, though the two of them disa
fears were not altogether misplace
American of Italian ancestry, who wa
about Italian music, and no doubt the
reactions. Nevertheless Schenker's app
ents precisely in the twenty years sinc
whatever ill feelings these passages m
The following is one of the more bizar
cal. Remember that the book was hur
death on January 22, 1935; he did not
revision. Hitler had already consolidat
tion of Austria, where the book was pub

Just this passion for flying over drive

hews to landscapes as rubrics according
creations. But modern man thinks he
scapes simply because he can fly over
nature, like art, will win out. Just as na
odiles, for example, where she can pro
place a Beethoven - if indeed ever again

Behind the amusingly incongruous

beasts, there lurks a rather grim idea:
endowed only the Germans with the

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 3

just as she has endowed only tropica

existence of elephants and crocodiles.
passages in Der freie Satz where Sch
fact there is one aphorism in the In
"music is accessible to all races and cr
any race or creed - who learns to m
art which is genuine and great/'4 I s
addition to the book, intended to di
the reactionary elephants and crocodi
lier version, survivals that he might
proofreading and revision of th
Composition over a period of many
polemical passages in Free Compositi
in some of Schenker's earlier publicat
Schenker's writings prior to World
those from the 1920s are full of nat
most unattractive contempt for Germ
tone, by the way, also characterized
with whom he disagreed - a feature
opposition to his musical ideas. Thr
outbursts; all three are higly impo
Schenker published his Erläuterungs
Piano Sonata, Opus 101; this is the fir
of the Urlinie. In it Schenker explicitly
death of Brahms ("a final, eternal Bi
situation of post-war Germany an
understanding of and reverence for
their own culture and to reject fore
structures borrowed from the nation
began to issue Der Tonwille (The Ton
pletely devoted to analyses based on
"Von der Sendung des deutschen Gen
was entirely given over to the topic
and intellectual worthlessness of the Western democracies and of those Germans
sympathetic to them.6 Schenker had at one time intended this essay for inclusion in
the second book of Kontrapunkt, but his publisher had vetoed the idea. In any case,
the eventual Preface to Kontrapunkt II, which appeared in 1922, continued along
similar lines, though thankfully with somewhat milder language and not at so
great a length.
It is quite startling to turn from these xenophobic outbursts to the musical
discussions a few pages on - from statements, like one in Kontrapunkt about "the
peoples of the West, contaminated by deception and profiteering and barely
touched by civilization" - to the first discussion of three-voice counterpoint six
pages later on, which calmly and lucidly explains how the principles of two-voice
counterpoint govern writing in three voices as well.7 Schenker himself obviously
believed that his political fulminations and his musical ideas belonged together,

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
4 Theory and Practice

that both were armaments, as it were

lead to a regeneration both of music a
ing world. What I want to do in this pap
cal views and attempt to place them in
sider whether the musical and politic
Schenker's readers today (few of whom
eration he sought). And finally wheth
needs to incorporate references to hi
have been heavily indebted to two bo
on Schenker's diaries and letters,8 an
ideengeschichtlichen Kontext von Sche
context in which Schenker's theorie
German chauvinism.
Read in the light of subsequent events, Schenker's nationalistic statements
are quite disheartening, to say the least, but in one crucial respect his pan-German
nationalism is very different both from the National-Socialist ideology it partly
resembles and from the proto-Nazi racist theories of Houston Stewart
Chamberlain and Adolf Josef Lanz.10 As Eybl points out, Schenker's nationalism is
not based on biological determinism-this despite his invoking "nature" as the
agent who might place another Beethoven among the Germans.11 Schenker, him-
self a Jew, believed that it was quite possible for culturally assimilated Jews to par-
ticipate in and contribute to German national life, and he said specifically about
Beethoven, whose ancestry was partly Flemish, that what made him German was
not his bloodline but rather the breadth of his linear progressions: "The creator of
such linear progressions must be a German even if foreign blood perhaps flowed
in his veins!" (This comes from a paragraph in the first edition of Der freie Satz that
never found its way into Appendix 4 of the English translation.12) Thus when
Schenker writes about the German "race," as he sometimes does, he means it pri-
marily as a cultural entity, not a biological one - he never refers to "Aryans." He
certainly regarded Mendelssohn as a German composer; and he once even cited
Chopin as a kind of honorary German. And of course he thought and spoke of
himself as German although he was a Jew and born in the Polish-speaking part of
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Schenker's reference to the importance of land-
scapes (in the elephants and crocodiles quotation) might resemble the Nazi slogan
of "Blut und Boden" - blood and soil - but he seems to have believed in the soil
more than the blood.
Schenker was by no means free from racism. In the Opus 101 commentary
and the Tonwille essay, he criticized the French army's use of African soldiers, call-
ing France the "Franco-Senegalese nationality" and referring to the black soldiers
then occupying the Saar district of Germany as the "vanguard of the
[Frenchman's] itchy genitals, flesh of his flesh, cannibal esprit of his cannibal
esprit."13 I'm not trying to defend him when I state that such racism was shared by
many - perhaps most - white people in those days, not only in Germany and
Austria but also in Britain, France, and the United States; witness the cinematically
great but revoltingly racist film "Birth of a Nation" by D. W. Griffith (1915). But it
is significant that Schenker, when invoking German superiority, never speaks of

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 5

purity of blood, of the mongreliza

surements, or indeed of any of the
I am sure that Schenker's Germa
the undeniable fact that a dispropor
music were German and that the l
and hearing he valued were especia
his belief in German superiority wa
that no other people could have pr
her giants in other fields - Luther,
him, was uniquely suited to the fo
ders how he accounted for Thoma
Montaigne, Newton, Descartes, R
Another facet of his chauvinism wa
guage. This preference possibly rela
few terms like "Prolongation" and
is deeply rooted in the German la
impossible to translate into English
Jonas called Schenker's "recalcitranc
also reveals a rather typical German
gant writing.14 In any case Schenk
most artistic language and the on
thought, in contrast to the "inferio
guage and "the lowest of all langua
don't know how well he knew Fren
Shakespeare reveals a confidence bo
English and, near the end of his life
zine article (an interview in New Yo
Schenker's pupil Hans Weisse).16 Ma
about the superiority of German -
suitable for philosophy.
Heidegger was not the only Germ
leled Schenker's. It helps put Schen
it was shared by many important in
world of his time, including a large
the city of Berlin, Faust's Metropoli
of influential historians in late nine
superiority of German culture abov
preserve and disseminate German K
field of music, there is Schoenberg
with his twelve-tone system he was
hundred years - a prediction that t
The great conductor Otto Klempe
German, wrote a jubilant letter from
over the fall of France and the triu
called it a "miracle"), which he felt
end on Hitler's terms, of course).18

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 6 Theory and Practice

Germany was destroyed by the Nazi g

Klemperer, to be sure, was a clinica
problems. Perhaps even stranger is th
nificant, since it concerns an artist of
suspicious of the Hitler regime, as on
and his veneration for his Jewish teac
he became more and more sympath
Hitler would curb the initial excesses
engendered by his strong belief in G
with people like Schoenberg, Klemper
violinist Louis Krasner, who knew hi
of the Berg Violin Concerto, with W
his belief in the superiority of Germ
Webern suffered under the Nazis. Hi
up to ridicule and opprobrium as sp
German annexation of Austria, Webe
Performances of his music were forb
sharply reduced (at least partly becau
dents and eventually none). Despite all
a letter to a friend during the early d
going forward with giant steps? This
one, to be sure! ... It is something
would have imagined that Anton W
just the grandiosity, the "giant steps"
In his published writings, Schenker
party politics of Germany or Austria,
except in the most general terms; fo
one must turn to the few comments
and diary excerpts. Federhofer quotes
es Hitler for getting rid of the comm
strongly nationalistic and anti-democ
first.21 It is clear from comments in ot
was no adherent of National Socialism
assimilated but believing Jew, unlike
were baptized (though Schoenberg late
began to attend synagogue services in
ty alone would have prevented Sche
Nazism's reliance on street demonstr
revolted Schenker. In another of the
bring together as many as two or t
entertain 50,000 people-this can be ac
massacres, pogroms: a brutal rantin
cry."22 On the surface this passage ex
is not for the masses. But it also seems to me to contain an anti-Nazi subtext. I'm
not sure he had the Nazi demonstrations and rallies in mind when he wrote it, but
I strongly suspect that he did; the inclusion of the word "pogroms" is especially

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 7

telling.
According to Federhofer's biography, Schenker was a supporter of Engelbert
Dollfuss, who was Chancellor of Austria in the early 1930s.23 Dollfuss suppressed
the Austrian Nazi party, but he was equally opposed to the parties of the left.
After riots by Austro-Marxists in Vienna (February 1934), brutally put down by the
army, he instituted a "corporate state" (Ständestaat) somewhat resembling
Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy. Hoping to receive support from the Italian gov-
ernment, Dollfuss continued to oppose the Nazis. As it turned out, he was assassi-
nated by Austrian Nazis a few months later, paving the way for the German
annexation of Austria in 1938. Schenker's support of Dollfuss's fascistic regime is
consistent with his rejection of democracy as a political system, and this rejection
relates directly to his belief that only in an aristocratic society can the arts flourish.
As John Rothgeb cogently argues in his Preface to the English translation of
Kontrapunkt, Schenker was "adamant in his rejection of both communism and
Western-style democracy as ideologies exalting the masses (and thus the lowest
common denominator). ... He believed that genius - the single source of high
Art - could only flourish in an elitist, aristocratic culture."24 In rejecting commu-
nism and democracy, Schenker also rejected the concentration of political power in
the hands of the proletariat (whom he associated with communism) or the bour-
geoisie (whom he associated with democracy).
Schenker, of course, was an anti-modernist, especially but not exclusively
with regard to music. Many modernist writers and artists, however, shared his
contempt for the values of mass culture. Indeed, as far back as the 1850s, early
modernists - Gustave Flaubert is an outstanding example - helped to define their
own artistic stance through opposition to the aesthetic preferences of the bour-
geoisie. In the early twentieth century, quite a few artists and writers, modernists
as well as traditionalists, were at least temporarily beguiled by Fascism or Nazism.
Some, like the Italian Futurists, were attracted by the very violence and destruc-
tiveness of these political ideologies - they liked the "brutal ranting and raving,"
the "demented and chaotic outcry," to use Schenker's words.25 Other more conser-
vative types, possibly including Schenker, may have felt that totalitarian govern-
ments represented a return to aristocratic principles. What they all had to have
overlooked was the fact that these were mass ideologies promoting a mass culture
as debased and vulgar as anything the democracies had to offer. The Fascist sym-
pathies (at least for a while) of English-language writers like William Butler Yeats,
Bernard Shaw, and of course Ezra Pound, have been documented for a long time.
But, in the field of music, it is only fairly recently that such scholars as Michael
Kater, Harvey Sachs, and Richard Taruskin have begun to investigate the at least
temporary Fascist or Nazi leanings of figures as significant as Anton Webern,
Luigi Dallapiccola, and Igor Stravinsky. And in general, the attraction of totalitari-
an regimes of both the right and the left for many artists, writers, and intellectuals
of the first half of the twentieth century is a component of modern cultural history
that is still incompletely investigated and understood.
To round out and a little bit to purposely complicate the picture of
Schenker's opposition to democracy, I should mention that a diary entry from as
early as 1923 states that he was opposed to democracy "less in the political than in

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
8 Theory and Practice

the cultural sense/'26 And although Sc

diction in terms, he welcomed instances
truly artistic. Thus there are analyses o
Free Composition, mixed in with those o
1931 diary entry which refers to th
"Grock" (Adrian Wettach) and to Cha
kindness; both, so to speak, are missiona
ing popes, statesmen, generals, journal
effect."27 Of course, Schenker would ha
Strauss Waltzes and Chaplin films are "p
public; their creation, however, is due
And who could deny that this was true?
racy as the glorification of the lowest c
are still current, as can be seen from re
Endowment for the Arts. Whether a po
like ours can foster valuable artistic pro
any case, recent trends in this country
anti-intellectual, reactionary regime in
intellectual, populist, Labour governme
brought about a decline in cultural stan
have here, if only because the standards
As Martin Eybl indicates, Schenker's a
a belief system that seems to have been
cal manner.29 The Germans are ranked above all other nationalities. Other
Europeans, inferior as they are to Germans, are nonetheless superior to us
Americans. (What he thought of Asians and Africans I don't know, but his com-
ments about the "Franco-Senegalese nationality" lead me to doubt that his view
was a flattering one.) German superiority, however, does not reside in each indi-
vidual German, but in their collective existence. The German masses constitute a
kind of nourishing soil - "humus" is Schenker's word - in which superior individ-
uals, and eventually geniuses, can grow. Why the German "humus," in contrast to
the Italian, or French, or Slavic, has this genius-growing propensity, he never
explains, although, as we know, he compares it to the tropical environments that
sustain the lives of crocodiles and elephants. Within each society, there is thus a
hierarchical distinction between average people and the gifted elite (and, especial-
ly in Germany, the geniuses) that more or less mirrors the distinction between the
German people and the rest of humanity. Certainly a monarchical and aristocratic
society with its stratification by hereditary class would accord better with this kind
of world-view than a democratic one. Schenker believed that an aristocracy of
some sort - at least in cultural matters if not also in political structure - would pro-
mote the selection and support of gifted individuals among whom the rare genius
might emerge. That he was altogether wrong in this last view, I'm not prepared to
say. In any case, similar ideas, more cogently argued, occur elsewhere, for example
in Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.
Schenker's obsession with geniuses has, in part, a distinctly personal quality.
In the field of music, he rather naively believed that his concepts of the Urlinie and

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 9

Ursatz provided an objective criteri

was not. And since most of the gen
approval were German and all of th
preoccupations within one focus: m
dence of modern times, and the in
This synthesis was uniquely Schenke
and Ursatz were common in his mil

... a time when art is content with

with no feeling for Justice and the Sta
foolish of historical views, the mate
capitalism and of Marxism; a time w
than political economy and technical
to be a form of madness; a time with
time without originality and yet the m

Except for the reference to paintin

have been taken from one of Schen
er, comes from Otto Weininger's Gesc
lished in 1903. 30 This demented
because of the lurid manner of We
age of twenty-three in the house w
corresponded to currents of thoug
book is extraordinarily misogynisti
in genius-worship - Weininger asse
except the products of genius, and m
make oneself into as much of a gen
way, is barred to women.) An in
traced much further back in Germ
and Schenker; Alexandra Richie date
Young Werther created a kind of na
stood genius.31
Like everyone, Schenker was a
have noted analogies to his musical
raries such as Karl Kraus, Sigmund
domain of music theory his contrib
theirs. He is, I think, the only theo
handedly produced a kind of parad
have far greater explanatory power
also a child of his milieu in his natio
occupation with genius. More than s
still alive and active and continue to
about society and politics, for the mos
many are thoroughly discredited. N
other sources, but they are also mo
now do with some of the most horrif

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
10 Theory and Practice

To what extent do Schenker's polit

approach? Allen Forte, in his Introductio
language readers might be puzzled or ev
Appendix 4. He goes on to state: "Almos
relation to the musical concepts that he
that standpoint, can be disregarded;
work/'32 Twenty years ago almost every
have agreed with Forte's statement. N
view hinges upon how one understands
tion to the musical concepts." If one tak
development of the theory," then Forte
takes them to mean (as I think Forte int
cal ideas," then I believe that he is comp
was certainly a felt connection between
Bent points out in an interesting article, S
outward manifestation of inner forces
selves - applies to music what Schenker
time) regarded as special qualities of Ger
out that shunned superficial verbal dext
tous changes in Schenker's thinking sign
Ursatz and the eventual move to a most
tion were partly brought about by his b
thought was reflected in the music of th
is certainly plausible. If it is correct, Sc
appears today, must have played a form
genesis of the theory.
Martin Eybl also points out that the d
cided with Schenker's post-war writings
tions of the Western democracies.34 Sc
music from Bach to Brahms as the supr
by extension, of the human spirit altoge
ty as a wilfull rejection of genius, a kin
creations, parallel to the dissolution o
Austria. And he viewed his theoretical
struction, in the distant future if at al
music. His calling Brahms "a final, etern
how close he felt the connection betwe
certainly saw relations between music an
him, going back to Plato and Confucius
for an ideal society, not society as a m
Preface to Kontrapunkt II with the followi

The sum total of my works present a

growing of itself~but despite all infinitud
its through selection and synthesis. It is m
mately be permitted to be guided through

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 1 1

of selection and synthesis, and to shape al

such as state, marriage, love and friendsh
the laws of artistic synthesis.35

Schenker perceived in music not only

but also and much more importantly
grandeur of God. Indeed he saw a direct
Ursatz and the Jewish religion. In his di
Jonas in May 1933, a conversation par
German Jews in the earliest days of th
my avowal of Judaism. Parallels: in the
cause in the Ursatz - thus monotheistic t
ing the world and music today [is] a pag
isolated details."36 This remark of Schen
Der freie Satz, though there without the
sage E from Appendix 4 of the translatio

Between fundamental structure and fore

much like that ever-present, interactional
and creation to God. Fundamental structu
of this rapport, the celestial and the terrest

And note in another of the Appendix 4

quasi-scientific rather than religious lang

Just as life is an uninterrupted process o

leading strata represent an energy transfo
the fundamental structure.38

Thus Schenker certainly saw many

world at large. The primary thrust of hi
in musical terms as an autonomous dom
rowed from literature, mathematics, h
thought. Remember his words from Kon
"as self-contained, as growing of itsel
famous graphic analyses based on the ele
of reducing (though not entirely elimin
Indeed, in the Preface to the Fünf Urlin
Schenker proudly states that he has dev
the point where no explanatory text is n
tions between music and the world take
and understood in its autonomy, when t
the combination of musical sounds. The view of music as an autonomous domain
is also reflected in the layout of Schenker's publications. The polemical statements
are only rarely attached to the analytical monographs or the theoretical explica-
tions; they appear as separate essays, as introductory material (perhaps in a fore-

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 12 Theory and Practice

word), or as aphorisms placed in a sec

himself had a lot to say about the self-suff
excerpt from an article about the Urlinie
good sample of Schenker's polemical ton
whom he disagreed:

The Urlinie also gives the lie to the so-ca

many images of human life cross over int
by humans not reflect humanity? Never
pulled in as a help by certain muscle me
that it is only valid to assimilate oneself to
Never mind how often it is invoked by ce
affect, whose incompetence forces them
world of objects instead of hearing their w
an ear-cinema. Far above all that remains
itself comparable to the cosmos; like it, ab
actions without [an external] goal.39

It was perhaps because of Schenker's

some of the most devoted members of h
cause if they rejected his political ideas o
thinking. Oswald Jonas, one of Schen
made significant and lasting contributio
Vienna to Berlin largely because he could
him so much as a musician and man tha
ments with him.40 Walter Dahms, a Be
posers, was a disciple of Schenker's from
their relationship was conducted mainly
summer of 1919, soon after the end of t
was followed up by an outspoken lett
fought in the war and had developed a
tarism; indeed he wanted to leave Germ
most insulting remarks to Schenker
Hindenburg, the two field marshalls w
and whom Schenker revered. Dahms also made clear his view that as a civilian,
Schenker had no right to his opinions about the war. Significantly, this heated
political dispute had no effect on Dahms's enormous admiration for Schenker the
musician or, for that matter, on Schenker's very warm feelings for Dahms as a per-
son and writer.41 Schenker's close friend, the artist Victor Hammer, also strongly
disagreed with Schenker's politics; he was very much an internationalist. At the
same time he continued to be fascinated by the Urlinie concept.42 Thus the removal
of political ideology from Schenker's approach - a trend that developed in full
force here in the United States - actually began early on in Austria and Germany
among some of Schenker's pupils and followers, who distanced themselves from
the ideology while holding on to the musical concepts. If Allen Forte writes that lit-
tle of the polemical material bears significantly on Schenker's musical concepts, he

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 13

is in the very good company of peopl

in the same Austro-German cultural m
who rejected the politics.
What about those of us studying
analysis today? It depends, I think
approach primarily as a theory or as
able distinction.43 If our aim is to stu
artifacts in the history of music theo
sophical currents of thought, then att
part of the study. Only we must be c
text of other writings of his time and n
of a person writing after World War
Schenker's nationalistic writings in th
also beware of making facile connect
music theory. After all, Hugo Riema
his views on World War I were, as far
but their music-theoretical ideas were
tempting to relate Schenker's hierarc
levels (and tracing such a relation
remember that the structure of tonal
ous ways, hierarchical, and that one
German nationalist to perceive musica
theorist to demonstrate hierarchical t
hierarchy - one based on the contrap
he also abandoned some earlier hierarchical theories. For Rameau and his follow-
ers, the fundamental form of a triad was the ì position and the Î and Î were almost
always to be considered inversions, that is, derived and subordinate forms. For
Schenker the ì was also in principle the basic form, but voice-leading context often
required reading a particular ì as standing for a Í or even a Í This contextualizing
of harmonic analysis also led Schenker to reject a basic component of "functional
harmony": that tonic, dominant, and subdominant represent overarching cate-
gories to which every chord can be referred. For Schenker, a II might indeed some-
times stand for a IV, but like Freud's cigar, which was sometimes just a cigar, it
might also simply be a II. And at times a IV might stand for a II, a seeming I might
not be a tonic at all, and indeed many chords, arising out of voice leading, might
have no harmonic function of any kind.
Which brings us to the practice of Schenkerian analysis, to the study of the
theory as a guide to analytical practice, to the further development of the theory,
and to pedagogy. Here I hope I may be forgiven for writing about myself, but I
must confess that I never think about Schenker's politics, religion, or philosophy
when engaged in analyzing a piece or refining a theoretical concept, and I very
rarely discuss these matters when teaching analysis. I do attempt to incorporate in
my teaching a sense that music relates to the world at large and to human life in
particular. But I try to let this perspective emerge out of the study of the music
rather than discussing it as a topic in itself. I'd like to close this paper by briefly
describing a course I recently taught at the Mannes College of Music - an elective

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
14 Theory and Practice

course in the analysis and performance

was restricted to pianists who had pr
made this requirement a prerequisite b
ses of the Etudes - both published an
them. (The unpublished material came
Division of the New York Public Librar
different levels of pianistic ability and
more receptive than others to the stud
course, and their playing showed it.
I mention this class - surely the first
gested to me some of the directions that
of all, there is the relationship of analysis
analyses, Schenker included beautiful su
extensive notes on Vortrag in the unpub
however, have contributed relatively litt
think, for us to return to this Schen
unpublished analyses - an excellent read
especially revealing. In his foreground
to mark every appearance of the ubiqu
diminuendos are not Chopin's markings
conventional sense. Their presence indica
of the foreground, was not separate
Observing the diminuendos in performa
tiated and distinct melodic profile than
hears. And for the analyst, Schenker's
kind of object lesson. Part of the analyt
implications for performance of one's a
the markings in Schenker's scores of pi
were conceived together with his concep
there is a kind of muscular-kinetic compon
Schenker's analyses of some of the E
others are by no means convincing. Th
contain work in progress that he had no
some of the published readings are
Composition, for instance, has a very doub
Edward Laufer tentatively suggested
Composition, but even his improvement is
came up with a still better reading for my
such a solution brought me closer to
Schenkerian analyst: to use Schenker's
than some of Schenker's own. Among pr
an outstanding example of one who fol
who has arrived at many analyses that
internally consistent than Schenker's re
Another task is to expand the limits o
inadequate account of musical experienc

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 15

instance, was a remarkably gifted seve

Etude's formidable technical difficultie
standing. Still, even with Schenker's he
tory in his performance. It seemed to m
vertical sonorities - specifically to som
chromatic passing tones of the right-ha
triadic harmonies. Especially the first o
hand's Cf against the O of the A-minor
impact. This augmented octave become
minor ninth C-D> that initiates the mid
in the Picar dy third that colors the f
heard requires a consciousness of their
first have. It is also important to take
metronome marking, J=144.
Schenker himself had little if any inter
ticalities that characterize this Etude, b
design of a composition. Awareness
Schenkerian orientation in other matt
former's) reach into areas that Schenker
it? The disruption caused by the first O
functional Dt, and its eventual resolut
nario, and one which is far from obvio
create the need for analyzing music, an
can benefit performers. Another narrativ
ural and raised forms of the same scal
Schenker highlights in his analysis of
stood in an almost programmatic sense
symbolized by the ê-5 descending semi
this interpretation, since it grows out of
In my Chopin Etude class, I had a nat
German chauvinism. Near the beginnin
Meisterwerk essays on the El>-minor and
initiated a discussion of Schenker's state
that "for the profundity with which N
more to Germany than to Poland. May
their attention and understanding."47 I
risk antagonizing any of my students,
with what they might legitimately reg
feelings that this quotation might evo
tions, and to what musical purpose. Not
gleaned from Schenker's analyses woul
discussion. I'm not saying that my dec
the only one I felt capable of making at
thy for Jonas's and Oster's decision to cut
still think that that decision was incorr
theory, then all aspects of the writings

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 16 Theory and Practice

access to all the aspects. Where the main

Chopin, or Haydn, or Brahms, and the t
relevant parts of the theory need come
sisted only of his philosophical ideas
would be completely forgotten today. I
insights without parallel in the long tra
bered and read. His politics would hold n
music theory and analysis. I firmly belie
tial component of the analytic practice.

NOTES

1. An earlier version of this paper was read at the CUNY Graduate School on
December 1998 as part of the series "Perspectives in Musical Scholarship."

2. Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz), vol. 3 of New Musical Theories
Fantasies trans, and ed. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979). The first German
edition was entitled Neue musikalische Theorien und Fantasien, III, Der freie Satz:
erste Lehrbuch der Musik (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1935). The 2nd edition (Vien
Universal Edition, 1956) ed. Oswald Jonas, dropped the subtitle.

3. Schenker, Free Composition, 160, passage H (Rothgeb's translation). The German (D

freie Satz, 1st ed., p. 22) is: Schon treibt die Leidenschaft des Ueber-fliegens die
Menschen auch dazu, sich wider die Natur aufzulehnen: sie, die Natur, hält sich
Landschaften geradezu wie an Rubriken, nach denen sie ihre Schöpfungen richt
und abtönt, der Mensch von heute aber glaubt, auch die Unterschiede de
Landschaften aufheben zu können, nur weil er sie über-fliegt. Kein zweifei, abe
daß sowohl die Natur, wie die Kunst obsiegen wird. Wie die Natur z. B. Elephanten
Krokodile immer nur dorthin setzen wird, wo sie die ihnen gemäßen
Lebensbedingungen wird bereitstellen können, genau so wird sie z. B. ein
Beethoven, wenn überhaupt noch einmal, wieder unter den Deutschen erstehen
lassen.

4. Schenker, Free Composition, xxiii, (Oster's translation). The German (Der freie Satz, 1st
ed., 6; 2nd ed., 19) is: Erkennt meine lehre die Züge als ein Hauptelement der
Stimmführung, so ist die Musik dadurch allen Kirchen, allen Menschen gleich
zugänglich geworden: wer Züge schaffend beherrscht, beherrschen lernt, dessen
Kunst ist echt und groß.

5. Schenker, Die letzten fünf Sonaten von Beethoven: Kritische Ausgabe mit Einführung und
Erläuterungen, Op. 101, A Dur (Vienna: Universal-Edition, 1920). The comparison of
Brahms to Bismarck ("ein letzter, ewiger Bismarck deutscher Musik") appears on p.
25. All the political comments were removed from the 2nd edition (Vienna: Universal
Edition: 1972) by its editor, Oswald Jonas.

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 17

6. Schenker, "Von der Sendung des deut

Gutmann, 1921), 1-21.

7. Schenker, Kontrapunkt. Zweiter Teil: D

Edition, 1922), viii. Schenker's words a
tionsgetünchten Völker des Westens/'
Counterpoint, Book II, trans. John Roth
York: Schirmer Books, 1987) xiii.

8. Hellmut Federhofer, Heinrich Schenk

Jonas Memorial Collection, University of
1985).

9. Martin Eybl, Ideologie und Methode: Zum Ideengeschichtlichen Kontext von Schenkers
Musiktheorie (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1995). Although I disagree with some of
Eybl's conclusions, I found his book very helpful in preparing this paper.

10. Valuable accounts of the views of Chamberlain and Lanz can be found in William M.

Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History 1848-1938 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976), 328-32.

1 1 . See Ideologie und Methode, 25-26.

12. Schenker, Der freie Satz (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1935), 18-19. Schenker's text is as
follows (the English translation is mine, as are all subsequent translations unless oth-
erwise stated). In den weiten Spannungen der Züge lebt sich das Werk der deutschen
Musik-Genies aus. Die Kraft der Spannungen und Erfüllungen darf geradezu als
Blutprobe angesehen werden, als ein Gut der germanischen Rasse. In diesem Sinne
ist z. B. die Frage, wohin Beethoven zuständig sei, unwiderlegbar entschieden: er ist
nicht, wie man es haben wollte und noch haben will "...nur halb ein Deutscher,"
nein, wer so Züge schafft muß ein Deutscher sogar sein, wenn vielleicht auch
fremdes Blut in seinen Adern rollte! Hiefür ist das bestimmte weitgespannte
Vollbringen mehr Beweis als der aller Rassen Wissenschaft.

The work of German musical genius lives its life in the wide tension-spans of its lin-
ear progressions. It is precisely the strength of the tensions and fulfillments that
should be viewed as a blood test, as an attribute of the Germanic race. In this sense,
for example, the question of Beethoven's nationality is incontrovertibly decided: he is
not "only a half German," as some have wished - and still wish - to have it. No, the
creator of such linear progressions must be a German even if foreign blood perhaps
flowed in his veins! In this regard, the bringing to fulfillment of extended tension-
spans is better proof than any evidence from racial science.

13. Schenker, Tonwille 1, 16. The passage containing these words reads as follows: "die
Schmach seiner schwarzen Truppen, der Vortruppen seiner Genitalitis, des Fleisches
von seinem Fleisch, des Kannibalen-Esprits von seinem Kannibalen-Esprit."

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 18 Theory and Practice

14. See Jonas's Introduction to Heinrich Sc

Elizabeth Mann Borgese (Chicago: The Un

15. Schenker, "Von der Sendung," 11. S

gemiederte, gezirkelte, für höchsten Gei
letzte der Sprachen, die verlotterte englis

16. I know this from an unpublished letter

to translate the article for him. Kolodin,
"ear-line," an error that Schenker rather l

17. Alexandra Richie, Faust's Metropolis: A

1998) p. 250.

18. Peter Heyworth, Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983, 1996) vol. 2, 105.

19. See Michael H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 72. Kater's discussion of
Webern's relation to the Nazi regime ( 72-74) is well worth reading.

20. Kater, The Twisted Muse, 74.

21. Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, p. 329.

22. Schenker, Free Composition, 159 (passage B, Rothgeb's translation). Der freie Satz, 1st
ed., 8. Sogar 2-3000 Menschen können noch durch Kunst gebunden werden - , dage-
gen brauchen 50,000 Menschen zu ihrer Bindung und Unterhaltung Sport, Hahnen-
und Stierkämpfe, Massakers, Pogrome, kurz ein brutales Toben und Rasen, ein irres
und wirres Geschrei

23. Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, 356.

24. Schenker, Counterpoint, Book 1, xiv.

25. Plus ça change. On Sunday 16 Septemb

called the terrorist destruction of New Y
of art
ever." Speaking to reporters, he
bring about
in one act what we in music
for 10 years, completely, fanatically for
work of art for the whole cosmos." See Th

26. Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, 327.

27. Ibid., 357. Nach der Jause, "Grock":

Güte in den Menschen aus, beide sind gl

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Schenker's Politics 19

die Liebe und übertreffen Päpste, Staa

Kongresse an edeler Wirkung.

28. A sign of the times: the marketing st

must use in order to attract an audience. Here is the latest brochure of the New York

Philharmonic, advertising the Verdi Requiem: "this choral classic garbs religious cele-
bration in the vivid hues of Tintoretto and Michelangelo as violins weep, drums
pound, and voices soar in fervor and ecstasy."

29. Eybl, Ideologie, especially 29.

30. This passage is quoted in Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New
York: The Free Press, 1990), 20.

31. Richie, Faust's Metropolis, 101.

32. See Forte's Introduction to Schenker, Free Composition, xviii.

33. Ian Bent, "Heinrich Schenker e la missione del genio germanico" (trans. Claudio
Annibale) Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 26/1 (1991): 3-34. See especially 17 and 21.

34. Eybl, Ideologie, 105.

35. Schenker, Counterpoint, Book 2 (Rothgeb/Thym translation), xx. In Kontrapunkt II,

xvi, the passage reads as follows: Aus der Summe der Arbeiten wird man das Bild
entnehmen, wie sie in sich selbst ruht, durch sich selbst wächst, gleichwohl aber,
trotz aller Unendlichkeit der Erscheinungen, durch Auslese und Synthese wieder
auch sich selbst Grenzen zieht. O, möge es der Menschheit endlich gegönnt sein, sich
durch den Wohllaut der Kunst zum erhabenen Sinn von Auslese und Synthese
führen zu lassen und alle Gebundenheiten ihres irdischen Lebens, wie Staat, Ehe,
Liebe, Freundschaft nach Gesetzen künstlerischer Synthese zu wahren Kunstwerken
zu gestalten.

36. Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, p. 320. Jonas... ist erschüttert von meinem Bekenntnis
zum Judentum. Parallele im Kosmos die eine Ursache in Gott - in der Musik die eine
Ursache der Ursatz - also monotheistisches Denken dort und hier. Alles Andere in
Betrachtung von Welt und Musik heidnisches Festhalten am Vordergrund-
Vergottung der Einzelnen heute.

37. Schenker, Free Composition, 160 (Rothgeb's translation). In Der freie Satz, 1st ed., 18:
Aenlich wie von Gott zum Geschöpf, von Geschöpf zu Gott eine Fühlungnahme wal-
tet, stets ineinanderlaufend, stets gegenwärtig, wirkt sich eine Fühlungnahme auch
zwischen Ursatz und Vordergrund aus als gleichsam einem Jenseits und Diesseits in
der Musik.

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 20 Theory and Practice

38. Ibid., 160 (Rothgeb's translation). In Der

ununterbrochener Energie- Verwandlung
eine Energie- Verwandlung des Lebens vor

39. Schenker, "Die Urlinie: Eine Vorbemerk

auch die sogenannte
Idee Lügen poetische
vom Menschenleben in die Musik hinübe
Kunst nicht den Menschen in sich enthalt
Hilfe gezogen werden von all den gew
begreifen, wie es allein nur gelten kann,
Kunst in sich, oder von den gewissen
Unfähigkeit zwingt, auch in die Musik
hineinzusehen statt hineinzuhören und dadurch Musick zu einem Ohr-Kino herun-
terzusetzen - über alles das hinweg bleibt die Musik mit der Urlinie eine eigene Welt
für sich, vergleichbar der Schöpfung, wie diese nur in sich selbst ruhend, sich
auswirkend ohne Ziel.

40. I heard this from Irene Schreier, Jonas's step-daughter, who was very close to him
both personally and musically.

41. Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, 87-96, especially 90.

42. Ibid., 150.

43. Charles Burkhart made this distinction in his Keynote Address, "Reflections on
Schenker," at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory in New York, 4
November 1995.

44. Schenker himself was well aware of this. In his very first published discussion of the
Urlinie, he states that "the hand must also help to express the truth of the Urlinie
[through appropriate fingering] and - it can do so." See the Erläuterungsausgabe of
Beethoven, Op. 101, 22. The German text reads: So muß auch die Hand die Wahrheit
der Urlinie ausdrücken helfen und - sie kann es.

45. Schenker, Free Composition, Fig. 42/ 1 .

46. Edward Laufer, review of Free Composition, in Music Theory Spectrum 3 (1981):
158-84. The discussion of the Etude is on 164-65.

47. Schenker, "Chopin: Etude in B minor, Op. 10, No. 6," in The Masterwork in Music, vol.
1, ed. William Drabkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 81 (trans. Ian
Bent). In Schenker, Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, l. Jahrbuch (Munich: Drei Masken,
1925), the passage reads: Um der Tiefe willen, die ihm die Natur schenkte, gehört
Chopin mehr zu Deutschland als zu Polen, so möge ihn der deutsche Musiker
endlich auch mit Verständnis pflegen.

This content downloaded from

132.64.187.13 on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 07:49:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms