Rewriting Schenker: Narrative--History--Ideology

Abstract

Heinrich Schenker's system can be read as narrative purveyed in the traditional genres of drama and epic. We begin with a discussion and critique of recent music-narrative studies and then propose a historicist interpretation of Schenker's work that concentrates on its ideological agenda. Finally, we respond to his system by displacing, expanding, and rewriting segments of its conceptual framework to permit multiple readings of a musical text (specifically, a brief fivefinger exercise by Carl Czerny) and to illustrate our contention that the so-called intrinsic value of an artwork has nothing to do with its internal relationships and everything to do with the expertise of the professional interpreter. narrative to literary form, and to map that form onto music, robs narrative of its historic social function as bearer of representational and semantic values-in short, of meaning. We have suggested that Schenker's narrative of m sical structure represents a political agenda couched in traditional literary genres well-suited to his ideological motivations. And e have adduced historical circumstances th t might have prompted such an account, instead of accepting Schenker's myth of musical structures that self-generate in some epic Raum inhabited by the artist-genius. Ideology plays a crucial role in all interpretive enterprises, and its effects on Schenker's methodology have been made abundantly clear by Schenker himself; ere we have merely summarized. To loosen the bonds of absolutist Schenkerian practice, including the neo types, we have rewritten his method in a narrative better suited to its presen -day (democ atic-academic) context. Setting in motion a kaleidoscope of readings of a single piece, all based on a variety of qually valid musical intuitions, we have c ncentrated more on the interpretive act than on mining out buried musical treasure. In so doing we have tried to point up the historical contingency, ideological constraints, and arbitrariness of Schenker's story, and indeed, of all interpretive pronouncements. 5 c.t.? 5 c.t. (=8) A / 1 6 5 A ' 1 I I 5 4 I 1 , I I . I This content downloaded from 207.46.13.28 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 05:13:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms