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Felix-Eberhard von Cube and the North-German Tradition of Schenkerism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1984

William Drabkin
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Extract

It is well known that the first, and strongest, branch of the Schenker family tree leads from Vienna to New York City. One of Schenker's early pupils, Hans Weisse, emigrated to America and taught at the David Mannes Music School in the early 1930s; it is thanks to Weisse's efforts that the ‘Five Graphic Analyses’, with which most musicians make their first contact with Schenker, were published simultaneously in New York and Vienna in 1932. Schenker's death, together with the Nazi threat to Austrian Jewish life and culture, led to what seemed like a complete transfer of the Schenker ‘school’ from Vienna to New York by the late 1930s. Two of Schenker's pupils, Oswald Jonas and Felix Salzer – both of whom (like Schenker) were Jewish and both of whom had published important books in Vienna' – had by this time left for America; and Schenkerian theory, which had never been looked on as more than a cottage industry in the 1920s and 30s, apparently ceased to be practised in Europe altogether.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 111 , 1984 , pp. 180 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Felix Salzer, Sinn uni Wesen der abendländischen Mehrstimmigkeit (Vienna, 1935). Oswald Jonas, Das Wesen des musikalischen Kunstwerkes: Einführung in die Lehre Heinrich Schenkers (Vienna, 1934, rev. 2nd. edn., 1972); Eng. trans. by John Rothgeb as Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

2 William J. Mitchell, ‘Heinrich Schenker's Approach to Detail’, Musicology, i (1946), 117–128; Mitchell's involvement in Schenkerism can be seen indirectly in his English translation of C.P.E. Bach's Versuch (Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, New York, 1949) and directly in his editorship of and contributions to The Music Forum (New York, 1967-). Milton Babbitt, review of Salzer's Structural Hearing (see fn.22), in Journal of the American Musicological Society, v (1952), 260–265. Allen Forte, ‘Schenker's Conception of Musical Structure’, Journal of Music Theory, iii (1959), 1–30, reprinted in Readings in Schenker Analysis and Other Approaches, ed. Maury Yeston (New Haven, 1977); Forte's development of Schenkerian thought can be seen not only from his writings, including the recent Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis written with Steven Gilbert (New York, 1982), but also from the influence of the Yale-based Journal of Music Theory on American university thinking and training in analysis.Google Scholar

3 It is not difficult to sense a new awakening of interest in analysis as a discipline in its own right in British universities. The establishment of the journal Music Analysis edited by Jonathan Dunsby (Oxford, 1982-) has been a major step forward in this direction, as has been the inauguration, at King's College, London, in September 1984, of a biennial conference on analysis and theory. Comparable to Babbitt's review of Salzer (see fn.2) in 1950s America is Dunsby's perceptive critique of the English translation of Schenker's Der freie Satz in the R.MA. Research Chronicle, xvi (1980), 140–148.Google Scholar

4 Harald Kaufmann, ‘Fortschritt und Reaktion in der Analysenlehre Heinrich Schenkers’, Neue Zcitschrift für Musik, cxxvi (1965), 9. The esteem in which the author held Schenker's work is reflected not only in the substance of this essay but also by the play on words in the title of the collection of essays in which it was reprinted: Spurlinien: analytische Aufsätze über Sprache und Musik (Vienna, 1969), 37–46.Google Scholar

5 Otto Vrieslander, ‘Heinrich Schenker’, Die Musik, xix (1926–27), 33–38. Wilhelm Furtwängler, ‘Heinrich Schenker, ein zeitgemässes Problem’, Ton und Wort (Wiesbaden, 1954), 198–204. See also Bruno Walter, Theme and Variations (New York, 1946), 23. Although Anthony van Hoboken is remembered more as a Haydn scholar than as a pupil of Schenker, he was enormously helpful to his teacher in establishing the Photogramm-Archiv in Vienna for reproductions of composers' autograph manuscripts, and in giving financial assistance to the publication of Schenker's later theoretical works (including Der frere Satz).Google Scholar

6 As early as 1927, Schenker was counting the number of centres where his theories were recognized. In a letter to von Cube dated 1 June 1927, he wrote:

Auf dem von Ihnen zu beschreitenden Weg wind Sie ermuntern zu hören, dass H. Prof. Dr. R. Oppel – den ich Ihnen wohl genannt haben mag – an das Leipziger Konservatorium als Prof, für Theorie berufen worden [ist], in welcher Eigenschaft er, wie er mir mitteilt, mein System offiziell lehren wird. Die Wirkung breitet sich mehr u. mehr aus: Edinburgh (auch New-York), Leipzig, Stuttgart, Wien (ich. u. Weisse), Wrieslander in München (er schreibt eine grosse Monographie über mich), Sie in Duisburg, u. Halm u.s.w. … Das alles zeigt, dass – trotz Schönbergs und Hindemiths – auch unsere Stunde schlägt; diese Stunde aber dauert eine Ewigkeit, weil sie die Wahrheit, nicht bloss eine Mode, trägt.

It will give you encouragement on the path that you shall travel to learn that Prof. Dr. R[einhold] Oppel (whose name I have probably mentioned to you) has been appointed professor of theory at the Leipzig Conservatory, and that in this capacity (so he informs me) he will officially teach my system. The effect [of my teachings] continues to be felt more widely: Edinburgh (also New York), Leipzig, Stuttgart, Viènne (myself and Weisse), Vrieslander in Munich (he is writing a long monograph about me), you in Duisburg, and [August] Halm, etc. … All this shows that, in spite of Schoen berg's and Hindemith's hour, ours has also struck; but this hour will last an eternity, for it bears the truth, not merely a fashion.

The naming of Edinburgh is a reference to John-Petrie Dunn, who translated parts of Schenker's Kontrapunkt and later corresponded with him (and is even supposed to have visited him in the Tirol, in 1928).

7 Hellmut Federhofer, Akkord und Stimmführung in den musiktheoretischen Systemen von Hugo Riemann, Ernst Kurth und Heinrich Schenker (Vienna, 1981), 55–56.Google Scholar

8 Karl-Otto Plum, Untersuchungen zu Heinrich Schenkers Stimmführungsanalyse = Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung, no. 102 (Regensburg, 1979).Google Scholar

9 Though the title suggests equal coverage for three renowned theorists, Federhofer's book is in reality a history of twentieth-century German theory as seen through Schenker-tinted spectacles. It is also a summary of Federjofer's life-work on Schenkerism in a broader historical context, and parts of it reach back to his first study in this field, the Beiträge zur musikalischen Gestaltanalyse (Graz, 1950).Google Scholar

10 Among Dahlhaus's numerous studies expressing – directly or indirectly – anti-Schenkerian sentiments are two which are specifically attacked by Federhofer in the central chapter on Schenker reception in Akkord und Stimmführung: ‘Relationes harmonicae’, Archiv für Musikwissenschafl, xxxii (1975), 208–227; ‘Über einige Voraussetzungen der musikalischen Analyse’, Bericht über den I. Internationalen Kongress für Musiktheorie Stuttgart 1971 (Stuttgart, 1972), 153–169. A less hostile example of Dahlhausian doctrine – still criticized by Federhofer because of its apparent failure to comprehend large sections of music as tonal entities (and thus, by implication, anti-Schenkerian) – is his ‘Musikalische Form als Transformation’, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, ix (1977), 27–36.Google Scholar

The Dahlhaus-Federhofer controversy, which I referred to in my review of Akkord und Stimmführung and Plum's doctoral thesis (Music Analysis, ii (1983), 102–105), turned into a veritable fireworks display in an exchange of views and reviews by Dahlhaus, Federhofer and Plum in Die Musikforschung, xxxvi (1983), 82–87 and xxxvi (1984), 21–26; the accusations and counter-accusations therein have been excellently summarized by Derrick Puffet in Music Analysis, iii (1984), 289–292.Google Scholar

11 The present study is based on a series of interviews with von Cube held at his home in Hamburg in the spring of 1984; on a study of the letters Schenker wrote to him which are still in his possession; on some unpublished compositions and – more importantly – two unpublished writings, one theoretical and one largely autobiographical; and on the reading of the relevant secondary literature, much of it in the library of the Musikwissenschaftliches Institut at the University of Hamburg. Generous financial assistance for this research was provided by the Southampton and Hamburg University Staff Exchange. I also owe a personal debt of gratitude to Herr and Frau von Cube, for their hospitality; to the library and secretarial staff of the Musikwissenschaftliches Institut; and to Dr. Karl-Otto Plum and his family, for his perseverance and their generosity.Google Scholar

12 The central part of von Cube's letter runs as follows:

Schenker sagt, alles – meine Finger, meine Auffassung, meine Gefühle – meine Nerven alles muss an mir ‘stilisert’ werden. Vorläufig bin ich ein Wasserfall, dessen Kraft sich in Tropfen verzettelt und verpufft, und muss erst in einen Kanal gefasst werden, damit meine Explosionskraft zweckmässige Arbeit leisten kann.

Schenker says that everything about me – my fingers, interpretation, feelings, and nerves – must become ‘stylized’. At present I am a waterfall, whose power is dissipated and blown away in droplets; I must first be made into a canal, so that my explosive power can accomplish some purposeful work.

13 Very little has been recorded about Angelika Elias. She was probably a pupil of Schenker's from the mid-1920s (her studies overlapped with von Cube's, which ended in 1926), but was apparently not a member of the legendary analysis seminar that met weekly at Schenker's home from late 1931 until 1934. A Jewess, she was arrested by the Nazis after the German annexation of Austria, and – like Schenker's widow – died in Theresienstadt. See Plum, Untersuckungen, 12; also von Cube's autobiography Todeskampf oder Wiederauferstehung der deutschen Musik, unpublished typescript (Hamburg, 1984), 51.Google Scholar

14 Heinrich Schenker, Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln / Five Analyses in Sketchform (Vienna and New York, 1932), revised and with a new introduction and glossary by Felix Salzer as Five Graphic Analyses (New York, 1969). For a glimpse of the early phases of the analysis, see Drabkin, William, ‘A Lesson in Analysis from Heinrich Schenker: the C major Prelude from Bach's Well-tempered Clavier, Book I’, Music Analysis, iv (1985), 241–58.Google Scholar

15 Of the twenty-eight postcards Schenker wrote to von Cube, several were issued by the Deutscher Sprachverein and bear the caption:

Der Deutsche Sprachverein, gegriindet im Jahre 1885…, will die deutsche Sprache hüten und pflegen, die Liebe zu ihr wecken, ihre Reinheit und Schönheit wahren, das Verständnis für sie verteifen, das Sprachgefühl schärfen und dadurch dem deutschen Volkstum und der deutschen Zukunft dienen. [The boldface is original.]

The German Language Society, founded in 1885…, is dedicated to protecting and cultivating the German language, to inspiring love for it, to preserving its purity and beauty, to deepening the understanding of it, to sharpening the feeling for language and thereby to serving the German people and the German future.

16 I am grateful to Julian Budden for calling to my attention the fact that, in the official National-Socialist Lexikon da Juden in da Musik, mit einem Verzeichnis jüdischa Wake (Berlin, 1940) compiled under the supervision of Herbert Gerigk, Schenker's name is marked with an ‘H’, for ‘Halbjude’. This either was the result of careless scholarship or, more probably, took account of the political and ideological content of Schenker's writings. It could hardly have gone unnoticed by the Nazi authorities that the leading article in the first issue of Der Tonwille, ‘Von der Sendung des Deutschen Genies’, was no more than an attack on the cultural and financial exploitation of Germany by the Allied powers in the aftermath of the First World War. From the first Erläuterungsausgabe of the late Beethoven sonatas until Der freie Satz, Schenker consistently praised the German people for producing so many eminent composers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and derided other Western cultures for their musical impoverishment, the achievements of Chopin and Domenico Scarlatti nothithstanding. For this the Nazis could have easily overlooked his well-known antipathy towards Wagner.Google Scholar

17 Bernhard Martin, Untersuchungen zur Struktur der ‘Kunst der Fuge’ J.S. Backs = Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung no. 4 (Regensburg, 1941), 14.Google Scholar

18 Bernhard Martin, ‘J.S. Bachs letzte Fuge’, Die Musik, xxxiii (1940–41), 409–412.Google Scholar

19 Bernhard Martin, ‘Mozart's Fuge “Cum sancto spiritu” aus der grossen c-moll-Messe’, Die Musik, xxxiv (1941–42), 130–134.Google Scholar

20 Bernhard Martin, Untersuchungen zur Struktur der ‘Kunst der Fuge’ Johann Sebastian Bachs: eine angewandte Lekre von den lebendigen Grundlagen der Tonkunst. 2. völlig neu gearbeitete Auflage, typescript (Bottrop, 1950), 1.Google Scholar

21 Todeskampf oder Wiederauferstehung der deutschen Musik, typescript (Hamburg, 1984). This volume, subtitled ‘ein autobiographisch-historisches Essay’, has strong ideological undertones echoing the sentiments expressed by Schenker in the first pan of the century.Google Scholar

22 Oswald Jonas, Das Wesen des musikalischen Kunstwerkes (see fn. 1); Felix Salzer, Structural Hearing (New York, 1952), Ger. trans. as Strukturelles Hören (Wilhelmshaven, 1960); Gerald Warfield, Layer Analysis (New York, 1976); Allen Forte and Steven Gilbert, Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

23 Peter Westergaard, Introduction to Tonal Theory (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

24 ‘Der Klang in der Natur ist ein Dreiklang’ was the first sentence of Schenker's ‘Erläuterungen’, printed as an extract from work in progress on Der freie Satz in the later numbers of Der Toruville and in the three issues of Das Meisterwerk in der Musik.Google Scholar

25 Lehrbuch der musikalischen Kunstgesetze, i, 20.Google Scholar

26 Lehrbuch, i, Anhang, p. 1Google Scholar

27 This change of emphasis reflects an attitude towards analysis which differs from that of his teacher: whereas Schenker the theorist developed his ideas in support of an unshakable belief in the great music of the past, von Cube the composer relies on them to a far greater extent to uncover the shortcomings of most twentieth-century music and, by implication, the viability of his own.Google Scholar

28 The voice-leading graphs for Die Doppelgänger have recently aroused considerable interest in the Schenker world. Hellmut Federhofer reproduced them as an example of a perfectly rational tonal analysis that could stand up against a more ‘modern’ approach to the song, by Werner Thomas (Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, xi, 1954, 252–267), which called into question its tonal basis; see Akkord und Stimmführung, 173–178. In a virulently dismissive review of Federhofer's book, David Neumayer reproduced von Cube's analysis once more, citing it as the most interesting item in the final chapter; see Journal of Music Theory, xxvii (1983), 99–110.Google Scholar

29 It is interesting to note that Donald F. Tovey, despite numerous stern warnings about illusory relationships between music and the visual arts, frequently invoked the analogy of perspective when explaining tonality to the layman. In the introduction to the first volume of Essays in Musical Analysis (London, 1935), for instance, he wrote: ‘The tonic is the horizon, or vanishing point, of any piece of music that can be said to have the harmonic perspective which we call key’ (p. 4). A Schenkerian extension of fig. 7 one stage further into the background would, of course, yield a C major triad at the vanishing point.Google Scholar

30 It was Schenker who first introduced the term ‘Gegenbeispiel’ into music analysis to refer to a work whose structure could not be explained by the application of his theories, and which was therefore not a good composition. ‘Ein Gegenbeispiel: Max Reger, op. 81: Variationen und Fuge über ein Thema von Joh. Seb. Bach’, Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, ii (1926), 171–192) is his longest pejorative analysis; but a better model for von Cube's voice-leading graphs of ‘bad’ twentieth-century compositions, found in the appendix to the Lehrbuch, is Schenker's analysis of a section of Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (Meisterwerk, ii (1926), 37–39).Google Scholar

31 Alois Melichar, Die Überwindung des Modemismus (Vienna 1952); Musik in der Zwangsjacke: die deutsche Musik zwischen Orff und Schönberg (Vienna 1959); Schönberg und die Folgen: eine notwendige kulturpolitishche Auseinandersetzung (Vienna and Stuttgart, 1960).Google Scholar

32 Federhofer's chapter ‘Übereinstimmung und Divergenzen in Stimmführungsanalysen’ Akkord und Stimmführung, 99–115) has been singled out by John Rothgeb as of special interest to Schenkerians; see his review in Music Theory Spectrum, iv (1982), 131–137. Regrettably, it is the one chapter where an insufficient number of music examples make the author's arguments difficult to follow.Google Scholar

33 Susan Tepping, ‘An Interview with Felix-Eberhard von Cube’, Indiana Theory Review (Fall 1982-Winter 1983), 77–100.Google Scholar

34 An extract from this, published as ‘Zur Rettung der deutschen Tonkunst: Wer war nun eigentlich Heinrich Schenker?’ (Musik und Sprache, July 1980, 40–52), is an impassioned attack on virtually all contemporary German composers for their apparent neglect of the natural laws of music: in particular for their inability to write pieces that can ultimately be reduced to a Schenkerian Ursatz and are therefore worthy of being called works of art. But von Cube fails to give an answer to the question posed in his title.Google Scholar

35 Friedrich Herzfeld, Musica nova: die Tonwelt unseres Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1955).Google Scholar

36 Todeskampf, 126–127.Google Scholar

37 For Schenker's criticism of Wagnerian chromaticism in a specifically Tristanesque context, see Meisterwerk, ii (1926), 29–30. A more abusive attack is found in Der Toruville, no. 1 (1921), 25–26, where Wagner is held responsible for, or rather made the scapegoat of, the decline of German music since the end of the nineteenth century. In this earlier writing, Schenker had concluded: ‘Für die deutsche Tonkunst gibt es nur einen Weg der Rettung: die Rückkehr zur vor-wagnerischen Musikwahrheit’. In his summary appraisal of representative composers since the end of the nineteenth century (Todtskampf, 186), von Cube refers to Wagner as a ‘special case’, whose music is ‘largely coherent in delimited sections’; but Brahms remains for him, as for Schenker, the ‘last unassailable old master’.Google Scholar

From the appendix to the Lehrbuch, and from a series of other unpublished graphs, one can see that von Cube's analytical methods have developed from the most advanced stage of Schenker's work of the 1930s. His prose writings, however, are closer in spirit to the half artistic, half political polemics which abound in Der Tonwille (1921–24) and the first two volumes of Meisterwerk (1925–26), i.e. in those publications that date from the time of his studies with Schenker in Vienna.Google Scholar