On Schenkerism: A Closed Circle of Elite Listeners?

Abstract

This article considers two recent collections of essays on Schenkerian analysis and, on the way, a few other important short contributions to the subject. It offers an opportunity to take a cross-section of current Schenkerian thinking and to attempt to identify certain trends in, and preoccupations of, Schenkerian analysis. Schenker Studies, edited by Hedi Siegel (hereafter 'Siegel'),' originates in a conference held in 1985 at the Mannes College of Music in New York, the spiritual home of Schenkerism in the United States. The volume comprises, by and large, essays of a strict Schenkerian nature. Although it is dedicated to Felix Salzer, who died in 1986, there is little reference to his work (except in the essays on early music) and there are no attempts to follow Salzer's extension of Schenkerian concepts to twentieth-century music. Trends in Schenkerian Research, edited by Allen Cadwallader (hereafter 'Cadwallader'),2 is similarly located at the heart of Schenkerian theory, with four articles dealing exclusively or substantially with Mozart, nothing on early music and only an essay on Gershwin to represent the twentieth-century extension of Schenkerian theory. The contributors to the volumes (of whom five are common to both) are almost exclusively American, reflecting the importance of Schenkerian theory there. Current Schenkerian writing is characterised by collections of short pieces, whether articles, conference papers or reviews.3 The impression received is that each Schenkerian occupies a different room in some mythical Institute of Schenkerism working on a little problem. There is a need for an overview of the subject to complement Forte's and Gilbert's textbook on the mechanics,4 and for a complete translation of all Schenker's writings. A striking characteristic of the papers in these volumes is their fundamentalism, with their constant zealous references to Derfreie Satz (hereafter DFS),5 despite its sketchy treatment of many topics and its dogmatism. Few analysts feel the need to move outside the restricted repertoire examined by Schenker. One would search these volumes in vain for mention of Italian, Russian and East European (Chopin excluded) music of the nineteenth century. Fewer still feel the need to combine Schenkerism with other, complementary modes of music analysis. Schenker himself is seldom criticised (and if so only in the mildest terms), and the criticisms of Schenker by others are disregarded. The essays under consideration here include analytical studies, manuscript studies, Schenkerian views of musical history, studies of Schenkerism in relation to nineteenth-century thought and eighteenth-century music theory, and extensions of Schenkerism to early music. These topics, together with the Schenkerian preoccupations with creating a theory of form, the almost obsessive search for motivic parallelisms, and the separation of real from apparent tonics, represent pegs on which to hang a form of analysis whose outcome is, in broad terms, predictable from the start even if, to paraphrase Carl Schachter, it is more than

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