Becoming Heinrich Schenker: Music Theory and Ideology by Robert P. Morgan (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Becoming Heinrich Schenker: Music Theory and Ideology by Robert P. Morgan Brien Weiner Becoming Heinrich Schenker: Music Theory and Ideology. By Robert P. Morgan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. [xx, 275 p. ISBN 9781107067691 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781316057070 (e-book), $79.] Music examples, illustrations, appendix, bibliography, index. Becoming Heinrich Schenker by Robert P. Morgan is a work that can be read on many levels: by students looking for an overview of a controversial theory and ideology, and by scholars looking for insight into its development. Morgan’s writing is clear, concise, well-organized, and persuasive. His thesis is to show how Schenker’s mature theory of musical pitch motion developed from the often fundamentally different ideas in his earlier writings. Morgan also reconciles the nineteenth-century idealist and twentieth-century modernist philosophies of Schenker, and places him in historical and intellectual context. Ultimately, Morgan treads a middle ground where Schenker’s mature theory should be neither accepted nor rejected in its entirety. Morgan presents an initial summary of Schenkerian concepts that should bring even neophytes up to speed for the theoretical–historical discussion that follows. The bulk of the book explores the development of Schenker’s ideas through “Der Geist der musikalischen Technik,” Die Harmonielehre, Kontrapunkt I and II, the monographs, Der Tonwille, Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, and Der freie Satz. With copious quotations, Morgan’s arguments are supported by Schenker’s own words. Beginning with “Der Geist,” Morgan impressively unravels the intricacies of Schenker’s anti-organicist and organicist positions. Die Harmonielehre contributes the ideas of Stufe and composing-out, and Kontrapunkt introduces the idea of melodic fluency, a precursor of the linear progression and Urlinie. Morgan traces Schenker’s relation of these theoretical concepts to the spiritual nature of music, and his resolution of his earlier distinction between nature and art. The author continues with the monographs, which comprise works on C. P. E. Bach, J. S. Bach, and Beethoven, and their collective contributions to Schenker’s development with respect to aesthetics, manuscript sources, ornamentation, synthesis, and reduction technique. In particular, he notes the introduction of the Urlinie concept in the last monograph, on Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 101, and that as a group, the monographs integrate the nineteenth-century idealism of reduction technique with the twentieth-century empiricism of compositional practice. Morgan further explores Schenker’s most productive years (1921–30), when he published ten issues of Der Tonwille, and three volumes of Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, through which the ideas of the Urlinie and analytic levels take shape. Der freie Satz, published in 1935, “is widely regarded as one of the major accomplishments of Western music theory” and provides “the most authoritative statement of his final theory” (p. 156). Morgan explains, however, that it does not systematize a method of analysis, but takes a varying approach and requires interpretation. He discusses its history regarding Schenker’s earlier work, its organization, the linear progression as its basic function, an example of its graphs, its relation to Schenker’s ideology and religious ideas, [End Page 391] and the overall nature of Schenker’s theory. In the final section of Morgan’s book, he offers a critical assessment of both Schenker’s ideology and theory. He considers Schenker’s theory in the context of western art theory in general and the scientific assumptions of the early twentieth century. In his conclusion, he looks at Schenker’s theory from the present, at its usefulness and limitations, and at the inseparability of the theory from its ideological foundations. On the one hand, Schenker was an innovator who radically extended the strict contrapuntal rules of the past so that they controlled complete compositions. This was achieved through a hierarchical structure of contrapuntal elaborations. The first level, or Ursatz, unfolds the tonic triad contrapuntally in the top voice by stepwise descent and harmonically in the bass by a three-part triadic arpeggiation. Each subsequent level elaborates and may even replicate the Ursatz until the composition itself is revealed. Thus unity in the background supports variety on the surface. On the other hand, since the number of transformations is limited, the theory has a rigidity that has produced both...