The Origins of Schenker's Thought: How Man Is Musical

Abstract

There is without doubt a growing interest in the earlier periods of Schenker's work and its general course of development as well as in the intellectual background from which it emerged and forms a part. But these aspects of Schenkerian studies have still a long way to go if they are to give us the measure of insight and relevance already achieved in the more practical areas of Schenkerian analysis and its application to the repertories of tonal music. The work that we can point to in these mostly uncharted areas is so far disappointing. The errors of method and interpretation that I see in them can be attributed often to the tyranny of Schenkerian ideology employed in the creation of its own origins and history. The founder himself and most of his later adherents have written the typical history of a movement in terms of the archetypal hero myth, and the usual motifs of isolation, rejection and ultimate teleological certainty all play their role. Take, for example, the question of the gradual evolution of Schenker's theories. Many of the themes of the myth can be seen, for example, in the pioneering work of Oswald Jonas. In his edition of Schenker's Harmony, Jonas took every opportunity to see clear and unambiguous anticipations of Schenker's later work on nearly every page. In his Introduction Jonas