The Editor and the Virtuoso, or Schenker versus Bülow

Abstract

It so happens that almost all the music which Schenker edited had previously appeared in editions by Hans von Bülow. On each occasion, Bülow's edition provoked from Schenker what he himself described as his ‘frequent and energetic criticism’. Examining the basis of these criticisms may lead us to a better understanding of Schenker's own editorial work – work which had an importance within Schenker's total output that theorists, if not musicologists, have tended to underestimate. For Schenker, editing meant restoring the masterworks of the past to their authentic state (the title-page of his edition of the Beethoven sonatas describes it as a ‘reconstruction’) and thereby ensuring their survival in a world that, in Schenker's eyes, had lost the capacity to appreciate their significance. And such editing called for respect for the masterworks and a profound understanding of them; hence the extraordinary virulence with which Schenker attacked editors such as Bülow, who in his view lacked these qualities. In his study of the G minor Symphony, Schenker wrote: ‘Editions of Mozart's works no longer have anything in common with the original manuscripts.’ And he added: ‘Then is Mozart dead?’ This extreme sense of the editor's responsibility – a responsibility that extended to the life and death of the masterworks – informed everything that Schenker did. I would go so far as to say that Schenker's theory of levels was conceived as, more than anything else, a decisive contribution to editorial method. And to say this entails a considerable revision of the image of Schenker prevalent today.

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