Five Graphic Music Analyses (Dover Books on Music) by Heinrich Schenker

Author:Heinrich Schenker
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2013-04-15T03:00:00+00:00

SCHENKER’S LIST OF COMPOSITIONS TO BE ANALAYZED.

I am in no position to state when Schenker himself had completed analytic work on these five compositions. It was my impression that it was done before our sessions began, perhaps simultaneously with his work on the “Eroica,” since the graphing technique is very similar. He led us step by step into all facets of voice leading and of musical synthesis. This kind of analysis can only be taught by one who has clarified for himself the analytical problems of a particular work. I shall never forget the highly persuasive and artistic manner in which he explained particular sections or passages, playing them on the piano, sometimes in “slow motion,” so as to make their voice leading clear. Thus it appeared that the explanations and analytic readings grew, so to speak, out of the most inspired and lucid playing.

This publication stems from the last period of Schenker’s life, following the appearance, in 1930, of the exhaustive analysis of Beethoven’s Third Symphony.2 In my opinion, the five graphs show the profound insights of Schenker in his most mature and convincing manner. The lucidity of the graphing technique is unsurpassed by that of any of his other publications.

Schenker, in a letter to me, explicitly stated his intention to issue other publications in similar form containing analyses of some of the works on the seminar’s list. Why a second or third series was never completed I cannot state with certainty. I have always believed—and some passages in his letters seem to corroborate this belief—that he was under so great an inner pressure to complete his main work, Der freie Satz, that there was simply not enough time to publish a further series of analyses. However I recall, and some of the graphs in my possession show, that work on a second series was well under way at the time of his death. They stem from our work in the seminar during the two following seasons (1932 to 1934); they are in various stages of completion. The publication of some of these is planned in the future.

New York

October, 1968

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