The Decline of the Art of Composition: A Technical-Critical Study. By: Schenker, Heinrich. TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM DRABKIN Music Analysis, Mar2005, Vol. 24 Issue 1/2, p33-129, 97p; DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2249.2005.00217.x; (AN 20928386)

)This translation is based on an amended typescript in the New York Public Library, Oster Collection, File 31, items 281±53, transcribed here on pp. 131±231.Details of the organisation of this document, and of the nature of the changes made by Schenker to the original typescript, are provided in my introductory essay and in the preface and notes to the transcription.For passages in which Schenker's handwriting has been deemed illegible, I have adopted the following procedures: · Where the sense of a phrase or sentence with handwritten corrections can plausibly be determined from what is legible, any words that are needed to complete the sense are enclosed in square brackets. · Where the meaning of a word or short phrase cannot be determined, a gap is indicated by an ellipsis [. . .].· Where the meaning of an entire sentence cannot be determined with confidence, the translation is based on the original typescript and a note indicating this is provided.In revising the typescript, Schenker at times cancelled sentences and even whole paragraphs, sometimes by putting a cross over the material to be deleted, sometimos merely by drawing a faint line across the page. If this material is of sufficient scope and, at the same time, does not duplicate arguments in any replacement text, it appears in this translation in a smaller typeface. Otherwise, I have not attempted to offer simultaneous readings of earlier and later phases of the text.Typewritten page numbers in the typescript provide the main referencing system in this translation, and are supplied (boldface in curly brackets) without comment; for pages that are unnumbered, or numbered by hand, I provide the Oster Collection file number in square brackets, for example [31/52]. For the most part the sequence of pages is straightforward and unambiguous. For the text on andaround pp. 14±27, and pp. 39±47, Schenker has explicitly indicated or suggestedconsiderable reordering of sentences, paragraphs and larger sections of text forcontinuity of wording and argument. For details on the reordering of pages in thetypescript, see Table 2 in the introductory article.Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) 33ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

HEINRICH SCHENKER THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION:A TECHNICAL-CRITICAL STUDY TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM DRABKINThe section headings, printed in boldface type, are my own. They have been added in order to help guide the reader through the various topics discussed, and do not in any way reflect the structure of the typescript, for which Schenker provided no such markers.The Productivity of the Masters, Across a Great Variety of Genres and Forms [31/28] We live in a musical age that, by and large, could be called an age of

dilettantism. The proud procession of geniuses ± Handel, Sebastian Bach, Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms ± has passed: a procession that would have a difficult time finding an equal in the history of human intellectual ende avour. As soon as one man went, another came; Germany had at all times a towering figure. Now the last one ± Brahms ± is gone, and nowhere is there so much as a hint of a true genius. Twilight of the masters!1 After more than two hundred years, it has come to pass that we cannot point to any artist in Germany to whom we can look up with unclouded reverence, with unconditional love and admiration: no artist on whom we can rightfully bestow the honorary title of master, in its purest meaning.It is not easy to admit that the picture is bleak. Many are even incapable ofdoing so: they appeal to the law of development as a natural law and conclude from this that we must be engaged in a state of progress, if for no other reasonthan we are living in an age very far removed from that of Bach and Beethoven.They do not consider that, as all teleology in nature is generally false, soteleology in art must also be false. Has not history constantly taught us thatnature cares little about scattering the seeds of genius at all, and forever? Howmany cultures has she not already destroyed? And how seldom does she thinkabout letting each death-consecrated culture2 be succeeded by a greater one!Who can deny that, already in ancient times, there may have lived a hero, a poet,a person who, as hero, poet and person, was greater than that which the worldhas yet to see? Does nature always think about continuity, and just for the sake ofpeople and their arts? Indeed not: she thinks of no succession, of no developmentof geniuses. Here she breaks off; there she starts up again; in short, she governslike the Fates, without wanting in any way to be engaged in the medium ofhuman teleology. Should one not rather consider the image of all artistic humanactivity as resembling the elevations and depressions of the world's surface? Dothe Alps contemplate the Himalayas? Is Monte Rosa3 about to reach its peak inMount Everest? By no means: here we have an elevation, there a depression; hereone range breaks off completely, there a new one begins.ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)34 HEINRICH SCHENKER[31/29] Only this much is, admittedly, true: that genius alone can beget genius ± and only in the most favourable situations ± if it comes to begetting at all. And that is precisely the point of departure. It should be self-evident that, no matter how large a number of talents have been occupied with intellectually digesting the work of a true genius, these can never add up to a collective genius, so to speak, and therefore can never result in progress. Talent and genius are in fact two different intellectual qualities; and it will always remain the case that a talent, even a talent of the thirtieth century, will still be worth less than a genius of, say, the fifteenthcentury.4 Although the teleological viewpoint does not lead further, other contemporary catchphrases such as `the art of today' or the `art of its time' are unfortunately also of little help in bringing comfort or shedding light. If you think carefully about them, even these phrases merely contain tautologies in themselves. Of course, every age has its art; it is simply that not all ages are of equal value. For do we not know, from history, of periods of decadent intellectual life? Think, for example, of the

period of exhaustion in Greece after the death of Euripides, or the period of decline in Italy after Michelangelo or in England after Shakespeare. Did not these ages also have their own arts? And yet how insignificant, compared to those that preceded them! Thus we certainly have an art of our times ± an `art of today' ± but it can by no means be said to represent progress merely because it belongs to our time. If the middle of the present time is, in a sense, framed by the past and the future, then already the past argues against our pronouncing the art of today as great, or even as art.That should already be sufficient; yet perhaps fortune will be kind enough to demonstrate, by a greater future as well, how wretched the present time is. Anyone who considers the external indicators carefully will have no choice but to concur with my opinion.It used to be the custom of great composers to have a comprehensive mastery of all the forms of the art and all the stylistic genres, complete command of musical technique, which enabled them to conceive ever new {3} creative tasks.Let us begin simply by leafing through the systematic catalogues of the works of our masters.5 There we find, for example, among Bach's instrumental music alone,keyboard music, works for one or several keyboards accompanied by other instruments, works for the violin, for the flute, for the cello, for organ, and for orchestra. To this can be added a St John Passion, a St Matthew Passion, aChristmas Oratorio, an Easter Oratorio, a Mass in B minor, four short masses, the Magnificat, a burial service,6 motets, 198 sacred and 22 secular cantatas, and so on. And what richness and variety there is, for instance, in the keyboard works alone! Consider, too, that Bach had a difficult life: he had twenty children by two wives, and did not live beyond the age of 65!Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 35What a wealth is to be found in the works of Mozart! Masses, cantatas, oratorios, operas; arias, duos, terzets and quartets with orchestra; lieder, canons; symphonies, serenades, divertimentos, smaller pieces and dances for orchestra, marches, concertos for a solo string or wind instrument with orchestra; string quintets, quartets and duos; concertos for one, two and three pianos with orchestra; piano quintets, quartets and trios; sonatas and variations for piano and violin, for piano four hands and for two pianos; sonatas and fantasias for piano, variations and shorter pieces for piano, sonatas for several instruments and organ, and so on and so forth. And what breadth there is just in Don Giovanni, in the quartets and symphonies! A lifespan of 35 years had to suffice for this. And how little even the appalling suffering of the final years ±which a Methuselah himself would surely have found difficult to bear, even if it were spread across his long, exceedingly long, life ± affected the force of his genius!!!!If we look at the systematic catalogue of Beethoven's work, we find works for orchestra (including military band), for violin and orchestra; quintets, string quartets, string trios, wind music; music for string and wind instruments, for piano and wind, for piano quartet, for piano, clarinet and cello, for piano and violin, for piano and cello, for piano and a solo wind instrument, for piano four-hands and piano solo, for harp;7 masses, {4} oratorios, operas and other works for voice with orchestral accompaniment, partsongs and canons; folksong arrangements for one

voice (sometimes several voices and a small chorus) with piano trio accompaniment; lieder and songs with piano accompaniment. Note, however, the abundance within each genre: nine symphonies, sixteen string quartets, thirty-two piano sonatas, and so on. Every genre comprises quite a few pieces. What a wealth of work! And all this with severe physical affliction, which allowed the master to live a mere 57 years! Mendelssohn, too, composed five symphonies, seven overtures and other works for orchestra; a concerto for violin and orchestra; an octet, two quintets, seven quartets, a piano sextet, three piano quartets, and two piano trios; an overture for wind instruments, concert pieces for clarinet and basset horn, piano concertos, countless solo piano pieces, six organ sonatas; two oratorios, cantatas, psalm settings, motets, operas, partsongs and songs for voice and piano. He achieved this wealth in a lifespan of 38 years.It is unnecessary to consider here the life's work of, for example, a Haydn or a Schubert. These are, as I have said, thoroughly described in the systematic catalogues of their works.8But, as we can read in their biographies, all these masters additionally had taxing duties to fulfil, such as conducting, performing in public, giving lessons in public and private schools; and still they found time to write long and witty letters, to engage with society, to undertake concert tours, and so on. How was all this possible!ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)36 HEINRICH SCHENKERIn this respect, Brahms was the last of the masters who possessed a comprehensive mastery of the entire art of music. He was still capable of writing four symphonies, two serenades, two overtures, variations and dances for orchestra; a double concerto for violin and orchestra, a violin concerto, two string sextets, two string quintets, a {5} clarinet quintet, three string quartets, two piano concertos, a piano quintet, three piano quartets, five piano trios (including one with horn and one with clarinet), two clarinet sonatas, three violin sonatas, two cello sonatas; pieces for two pianos and for piano four hands, sonatas and countless pieces for piano solo, pieces for organ, arrangements for piano, studies, 51 exercises, Hungarian dances; and finally vocal music: ten opus numbers for mixed chorus, each opus of course comprising several pieces (thus for example five motets); Fest- und GedenkspruÈ che for eight voices, partsongs for female chorus and for male chorus; numerous vocal works with orchestra including A German Requiem,Song of Destiny, Song of Triumph, Song of the Fates, etc.; a burial song for chorus and wind instruments; songs for female choir accompanied by two horns and harp; two songs for alto voice, viola and piano; further, vocal music accompanied by the organ, vocal music with piano accompaniment including choral music and the enchanting Liebeslieder waltzes for four solo voices, duets and solo songs: 260 lieder! What an eternal treasure for the nation! And his life measured only 64 years.The Output of Composers after Beethoven [31/80]9 Let us compare these pictures with the life's accomplishments of the other so-called `masters', for example Berlioz. Four symphonies, ten overtures,and eight smaller instrumental works are all there is in the way of absoluteinstrumental music. The vocal music comprises seven sacred works, six secular

cantatas, songs for chorus with orchestra and for one or two voices, songs with piano, five operas, and arrangements of all sorts: in any event, still a respectable output for a life of 66 years. It is only a pity that none of his works, not a single one, possesses that high perfection of, for example, a work by Beethoven.Similarly in the music of Liszt and Wagner, whole categories of musical productivity are missing: in the case of Liszt, for example, the various forms of chamber music; with Wagner, virtually all instrumental music. But what applies to Berlioz applies no less to the {6} two last-named masters. Their outputs are still, in fact, colossal achievements when one compares them in particular with what the present, swell-headed generation has to offer. Just take a look at, for instance, the total artistic output of thecelebrated symphonist Anton Bruckner.10 He wrote nine symphonies (though not a single one that could be compared with one by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn or Brahms for being thoroughly worked out). A Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 37 single piece of chamber music: a string quintet! A single piano piece, `Remembrance' (!). Admittedly, this is compensated by a Te Deum for chorus, soloists and orchestra; three masses, a psalm and other sacred music in several sections; and a few secular choral works of a smaller scope. During this time 76 years elapsed.11[31/34] Now I can safely leave it to the reader to survey the output of the socalled moderns, our contemporary artists. Without having been a leading genius, Antonõ n DvorÏ a k may at least, it seems, be regarded as the last whose work, in common with the true masters, shows the trait of variety that I have just described. What the remaining figures can offer is, to begin with, already too little from a quantitative point of view, to say nothing of quality. I declare:today's artists, in effect, write too little; they are insufficiently productive, whether in relation to what we now know of the accomplishments of true geniuses or truly great talents, or simply considered in absolute terms. But do not think that, if I base my objections on their limited productivity in this apparently superficial manner, I am disposed to measuring the work of the human intellect by the yard: I will shortly take the opportunity of basing my objection on yet other, more organic, grounds.Concerning this lack of productivity, we must be all the more amazed by the fact that the present generation, as it arrogantly proclaims, actually works without any preconceptions. If the artists of today are so proud of having freed themselves from all tradition and no longer feel obliged to cart about with them any technical ballast from the past, why is their productivity not at the same time even more fluid and greater than that which we have already seen from the masters? If, as it seems, one has merely to follow one's own individuality, {7} or, as is often said, merely to work by following one's nose, how does it come about that such lack of preconceptions ± which, as is well known, has become the proud fanfare of all contemporary composers' guilds and individual `masters' among the `moderns' ± promotes productivity so little, so very little?Should this misfortune actually be blamed on other things, e.g. on social causes, as those who are interrogated about it are quick to reply? I do not think so. One merely has to read the biographies of the classical masters to learn that the

circumstances of their daily lives was in truth no better than those of modern artists, if not seldom even worse.And how are we to account, moreover, for the other fact, namely, that today's artists have become so very monotonous in the assignments they set themselves? Lacking in most, if not all, the requisite skills for the task, they begin their artistic output mostly with `symphonic poems' and then devote their entire life to this genre, occasionally interspersing a few short songs for charity's sake. What is it, then, that prevents them from occasionally writing A German Requiem, as a Brahms has done? A Song of Triumph? And Liebeslieder waltzes? And, last but not least, `Hungarian dances'? Did not a Beethoven alsoß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)38 HEINRICH SCHENKERwrite `bagatelles' and `romances'? Did he not arrange folksongs? Did he not compose marches and polonaises? Did not Schubert compose alongside proud songs and symphonies also the most magical marches, laÈ ndler, waltzes and a divine Divertissement hongrois? Did not Bach devote himself to small works, alongside his passion settings and cantatas? Did he not write short inventions and preludes, alongside the Well-tempered Clavier?I therefore ask once more: what in Heaven's name has happened that today's generation behaves so arrogantly and grandly, working only on symphonies or symphonic poems? There would certainly be no objection to this, if only they hada certain amount of artistic worth a tiny amount, a very tiny amount! Why do people of today not sense that, for example, a good piano sonata is still rather better than, say, a bad opera or a bad symphonic poem? How has our concern for style, for musical culture and perfection ± not only in the largest sense, but also in the smallest ± become lost? {8} And when I consider further that, for example, the symphonies or piano sonatas of Beethoven and, in recent times, the compositionsof Brahms are, work for work, individual and different in both technique and expression, then I must ask again: why is it that all symphonic poems, moreover,look so shockingly like one another, even those by different composers? Seen from this standpoint, it sounds of course all the more grotesquely comic that the little dwarves12 ± I beg your pardon, the `masters' of today ± make fun of even a Mendelssohn or a Brahms, and are especially fond of criticising the latter of disproportionate straining in the understanding of art, of `reflections', as if, conversely, to write so little without reflection, as the moderns indeed do, would not actually by itself alone involve a logical contradiction of the facts and the concept. If Mr X or Mr Z gives himself airs that he is capable of composing on the spot, why does he not write twice as much as Brahms ± and twice as well? To derive, however, the larger number of artistic works merely from a relaxation of willpower and an increase of working hours, is this not the greatest, the most pointless foolishness? Perhaps this idiocy is believed today, for precisely those reasons, but I ask: who would not gladly make the effort to bring to fruition a Ninth Symphony, if it can indeed be brought to fruition by hard work? Did not Wagner shed so many tears over this score, and would he not gladly have liked to create a similar work? But did he in fact compose a Ninth Symphony?And was not Mozart called, during his lifetime, `a remarkable man for every philosophical friend of music'? And merely on account of his Piano Quartet inG

minor!13 Was not Beethoven regarded as a brooding, reflective artist? How ridiculous: a master who effortlessly put on the market five to eight large-scale works, year after year, including some that he actually performed in public himself! He, who put together six quartets in a single set, Op. 18, not one of them of a lower order than the others, and who dedicated to Count Razumovsky the three quartets of Op. 59, which are of truly symphonic dimensions! Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 39And so I believe that it is finally time to lay these nonsensical {9} conclusions to rest. For in fact the chronically recurring complaint about excessive reflection, actually directed at highly esteemed masters such as Brahms, is at all times based only on a false conclusion. Anyone who takes himself as the point of comparison will, in fact, make a mistake when making a disparaging judgement of a master. Deep inside him, his own vanity and a comic megalomaniaflatter him with the treacherous thought: `Surely I could also have done this,had I wished to exert myself as much as he had.' Once a celebrated Viennesesymphonist,14 when asked by a singer why he did not write beautiful lieder, asDr Brahms did, answered: `If I wanted to, I could. But I don't want to'. Now,this anecdote may in the end have been true, to a certain extent. But it may betaken to be no less true that the same symphonist would often have not evenunderstood the content of the texts that Brahms set to music.It would therefore be merely an act of justice to recognise Brahms, the last ofthe masters, as simultaneously the most fluent genius of our age, whether ornot his works tax the average listener too much.Is it so very difficult to understand that he was an artist whom nature blessedmore generously with the gift of a special understanding of the most subtletechnical problems and all the finer effects, which art makes possible, and that bycontrast the other composer lacked the sensitive nerves that are required for this?Was not indeed Haydn, for example, the son of a simple cartwright, i.e. someonewho basically had no literary training? And yet what technical-constructive lawshe conceived for the art of music! By contrast, fate did not wish to allow anothercomposer with a shortfall in literary education ± Bruckner, for instance ± toperform an equal act of grace for our art. Conversely, however, even the highliterary education that we find in Berlioz or Liszt was incapable of leading to anypositive results in the realm of music. From this one can only see what must ingeneral be recognised as self-evident, that in the remaining matters of art neitherbirth nor cultural surroundings, neither education nor reflection is decisive:what matters is, simply, a specific nature-given ability.One need only consider the field of literature to see that the same also appliesto poetry: a productivity of the true geniuses, verging on the astonishing,joined with an enchanting variety of artistic tasks, in short, accomplishmentsthat could never have been achieved by reflection alone. One need only think ofthe life's work of a {10} Goethe, a Schiller!The real reason, however, why the great masters were so productive and at thesame time created such consummate works of art lies, as I have said, simply intheir secure command of the technical means, just as, conversely, the decline maybe sought in the lack of any technique today. Ah, the moderns do not have an

inkling of all the things that must be learned in art for them to be justified beingregarded as honest artists. Here it does not matter whether this is achieved in the swift tempoof a genius or in toilsome work over a period of years or decades. Thus Goethe once said:15ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)40 HEINRICH SCHENKERI have tried many things: drawn, engraved copper,Painted in oils; I also produced much in clay,But nothing endured, I neither learned nor accomplished.Only a single talent did I bring near to mastery:Writing in German. And so, as an unhappy poetI unfortunately am wasting life and art in the worst of all materials.So, merely `near to mastery'? What would the moderns say to this? Is theGerman language for them, too, only a `worst of all materials'? Oh, if only thatwere the case! Later on in the epigrams we also find the following:The German learns and pursues all the arts: to each oneHe can show an appealing talent if he applies himself to it diligently.Only one art does he practise without wanting to learn: the art of writing.Thus he dabbles about with it: Friends, we have experienced this.And we are still experiencing it in music. And here is one more:What did fate want of me? It would be foolishTo ask this; for generally it does not want much of many.It would have been successful in making a poetHad not speech shown itself to be insuperable.And let us hear what Schiller has to say, in a letter to Goethe of 1795:For every hour of courage and faith there are ten in which I am despondent, anddo not know what I should think of myself. This much have I learned fromexperience: that only strict determination of thoughts assists me in gainingfacility; otherwise I believed the opposite and feared hardness and rigidity.{11} Does it not follow unambiguously from this that poetry contains,among other things, elements that can be mastered only by diligent effort andinspired experience if a flawless work of art is to be created? It is the same inmusic. A Handel passes sentence on Gluck ± but why? Mozart and Beethovenpass sentence on so many contemporary composers ± but why? And was notalso Brahms often severe enough in his judgement of the younger generation ofcomposers ± but why? Is this all based merely on caprice, or perhaps on the factthat they could not understand those who wrote differently? Certainly not.Rather, their judgements were based on technical mistakes that could bepinpointed quite precisely in the works of the composers concerned; of course,posterity was not immediately conscious of these failings, though theymercilessly soured the enjoyment of the work.16Thus in music, too, there is a mechanical, purely technical something,a workmanlike ingredient, which each and every artist must possess.Unfortunately, the acquisition of these technical elements is not merely amechanical act, as one might perhaps like to expect. Although it appears to begiven objectively, so that no one can bypass it, whether they will or not, instinct

is in truth accessible only to the eyes and ears of those who are in any event ledMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 41and compelled by inner instinct and artistic imagination. Thus it happens thatthe mere appreciation of the technical points of a work of genius requires arecreative spirit and that, likewise, they are revealed to those who are alreadyon their trail. That alone is the actual meaning of Schumann's famous dictum,`Only genius can understand genius'.That humanity does not have the nature of a genius, may certainly be[accepted] without [argument]. To use an analogy from chemistry, the geniusesrepresent to a certain degree elements that are indissoluble in the great waters ofhumanity. I can therefore say with confidence that surely not a trace, not anatom, of the works of, say, a Beethoven was known at that time, and that thingswill never be different until the end of time. It may be noted, in passing, thatthis very indissolubility explains why geniuses must always end up in amaterially unfavourable position compared to their contemporaries. In agenius's lifetime, a publisher will take {12} a purely businesslike standpoint,even when he is convinced of the force of the works. `I cannot give away myassets', he is accustomed to reasoning, `on something that is not going to show aprofit for the next thirty to forty years; I want to take in the profits myself. Also,I am not responsible for the pleasures of my children, who should rather pay forthis themselves'. Now these children either are not endowed with capital assetsor have not even yet arrived in the world; therefore, when they do come of age,they cannot offer a fee to the composer who has provided them with suchpleasures, since in most cases he will have long been dead. At best, a monumentis the useless honorarium for the dead genius. Thus things stand in a financialstate of suspension between two generations: the older does not want to bearmaterial responsibility for the younger. There is a most marvellous irony toconsider when afterwards, such a genius, who had been deprived of earnings fortwo generations, himself proves to be an earning power of the first rank in thestrictest sense of the national economy.17 Just reckon the monetary value of, forinstance, the works of Mozart, how his shares on the world market have risensince his death, and you will have to admit that the poor musician, who in thelast years of his life had to beg from a Herr Puchberg18 ten guilders here, fiftythere, is a respectable millionaire, who would have the right to look downproudly upon all those businessmen who regarded their handful of wretchedguilders as of materially higher value, in effect, than the whole of Mozart withall his works. For him, ten guilders were a manifest reality. But that a Mozarthas a million times more than these ten guilders in himself, that is something thegood Puchberg surely does not know. And how many millions is a Beethovenworth?! How many publishing houses did he make wealthy? How much moneydid he put in circulation by virtue of conductors and virtuosos paid handsomelyfor performing his works ± and being paid in perpetuity! Consider what capitalforce Richard Wagner represents! He, who in his own times was constantly infinancial straits, could today negotiate royalty payments for his works with theß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)42 HEINRICH SCHENKER

largest banking houses. It is indeed high time that artists, too, were regardedfrom a purely economic standpoint as a kind of wealth producer, {13} and whomay be differentiated from the merchants and financiers of all sorts only fromthe character of the wares they produce.What we cannot, however, expect of the world, should this not be demandedall the more of the fellow-artists of the genius? If we must forgive the world atlarge [. . .] for standing always in a distant relationship to the ingeniousness of awork, should we, for this reason, forgive the artists as well, who themselvesshow so little concern for the finer points of their art? What an enormous sumof technical experience had already been drawn up by our masters in sonataform, for instance, and made manifest in their works. And yet there were in factonly two masters who, in their turn, were capable of understanding theirsignificance: Mendelssohn and Brahms!The situation is identical with regard to the application of the cyclic prin-ciple to the orchestra, i.e. to the symphony. Here it is again only Mendelssohnand Brahms who were in a position to receive the monumental technique ofHaydn, Mozart and Beethoven.It is, however, this very misunderstanding of cyclic form, as the highestrepresentation of absolute music, that I hold principally responsible for thedecline of the art of music in the nineteenth century,19 which the last twomasters of those just mentioned were hardly able to stem. Perhaps themisunderstanding may be ultimately be forgiven [. . .] on account of the all-too-happy fate of German art, which bestowed the succession of Emanuel Bach,Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven at much too quick a pace. Hardly had theinheritance of one master been assimilated than the next amassed his treasures;and so this overabundance continued, so that it is only now that we can beginto make an inroad into the world of these masters.Let us make an attempt, then.Cyclic FormThat `sonata' is an entirely noncommittal, neutral term is something we haveknown for a long time. Sonare means simply `to sound'; thus a sonata isnothing more than a piece that sounds. One need only think of `ballade',`intermezzo', `overture', `march' etc. to understand the difference. In the lattercases, in fact, the title also functions as a programme for the content; this is notthe case with `sonata', and no more so with `symphony', which can be definedsimply as a sounding piece for several instruments.{14} Even with regard to the number of movements, the composer hascomplete freedom of choice. We know of sonatas in one movement by DomenicoScarlatti, in two movements by, for example, Haydn and Beethoven, in three andfour movements by Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and others.Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 43With respect to the character of the movements, the greatest freedom andvariety also reign. First movements, for instance, are not always animated;often enough we find a slow movement at the beginning, also variations,minuets (for instance, Beethoven's Op. 54 in F). It may at most be true thatallegros predominate as first movements, but that can be explained quite

simply: is it not natural for a composer to seek to gain the listener's activeinterest, thereby preparing a favourable basis for the engagement of specialmoods such as are represented in the middle movements? Who wouldotherwise enter into company, all of a sudden, with the unveiled expression of aspecial, exceptional mood, e.g. of resignation or world-weariness? [. . .] Is itrather not more likely that someone in the company of strangers would firstmake an effort to win them over by leading a lively and agreeable conversationand, only later, when a more intimate and reassuring relationship has beenaffirmed, dare to speak of things especially close to his heart? This is entirelytrue of the composer. He will not make easy work of introducing the listener tothe more exclusive mood of a slow movement: a stronger personal credit, or astronger art, is required for this. In general, composers are right to warm upthe listener with lively allegro music. But now I ask: if the problem of the firstmovement is based on naturalness, can one say that the allegro character of thefirst movement belongs to the form only in terms of a schematic plan?The inner working of the structure of a cyclic movement is based [. . .] on theprinciple of three-part construction. As I already mentioned in Harmonielehre,§5, musical ideas are in a sense divisible by two or three; this divisibility may beapplied to a single theme, or to the entire movement. If a movement ofinstrumental music can be divided into three parts, it has cyclic form. Thethree parts being: the first three thematic groups, the {15} development, andthe recapitulation. Cyclic form is based not only on the three-part constructionof the entire movement but also ± and this must be emphasised above all ± [. . .]on the special three-part construction of the first part of the movement. Thus ifone finds a piece of music whose first part already shows a three-partconstruction, then it has cyclic form and whatever its title may be then becomesa secondary matter.Apart from the fact that the essence of three-part construction is incorrectlyjudged, it is moreover a mistake to conclude that there is a schematic plan insonata form. For the three-part construction is not present for sake of the formin general; rather it is its own specific organisation of the musical content,something quite different from two-part construction. For just because theymay share a three-part construction, sonata movements do not all have thesame form. The situation is rather as follows: to speak about sonata form as aspecific form, and indeed because of this three-part construction, is just asfutile [. . .] as to bring to mind the trivial fact that, for example, Negroes,Caucasians, Malays etc. are all forms of human beings. It is good to know, onceß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)44 HEINRICH SCHENKERand for all, that a human being is not a bird, but it is much more useful to speakabout the differences between races, nations and peoples, rather than of thediscovery [. . .] of the concept of man. Likewise, it is much more profitable tospeak about the differences in form among individual three-part cyclic works,rather than referring continually to their most decisive feature, three-partconstruction, which degrades the form to a schematic plan. I believe that, hadmusicians after Beethoven's death looked into the organisation of specificworks rather than always gaping at the grand three-part design of exposition,

development and recapitulation, it would surely not have occurred to them tospeak of a classical formal scheme for the sonata. For to repeat once again: it ismore a question of the individual way in which three-part form is revealed,than of the principle of three-part construction, which is an immanentprinciple of musical shaping related to two-part construction.[31/43 verso] What absolves our earliest and latest masters of sonata form ofthe suspicion that they started from a preconceived scheme is simply the factthat, in their time, there were no theory books that could have led them astray.However, the impulse toward three-part construction was, above all,something spontaneous for Emanuel Bach, in which nature and art played anequal role. With the eye of a genius, he had perceived the artistic effect ofthree-part construction and applied it to his music. And if a Haydn was able tosense this effect more tellingly, in order to discover many more newconstructions, then this is merely the free act of the genius, an artisticunderstanding of three-part construction, not faith in a scheme.Already the `first group' reveals to us the masters' preference for thetechnique of group construction, that is, the putting together of several indivi-dual ideas, of which I had just spoken in Harmonielehre, §129.20 What onecommonly calls a `first subject' or `first theme' is only rarely an individual idea,but much more often an actual group.{17} The [masters] even tend to assemble each individual theme, i.e. theindividual component of the group, from a variety of material. This verymanner of assembly, from a variety of contrasting materials, gives the themeperforce a new appeal, an appeal that could [hardly] have come about if thetheme were made of merely uniform material. Apart from the fact that such anappeal must involve the player or listener with greater animation, thistechnique at the same time reveals an act of intuitive precautionary wisdom, inthat a kind of capital is laid down, from the interest on which even the middlesection of the development is paid out in the most natural way.The examples of group construction are already given in the theoreticalsection, [Harmonielehre,] §129. At this point I should like to add to thoseexamples just one more, from Mozart's Sonata in C major, K. 309. Here wefind a group comprising two themes, which are most marvellously connectedby two transitional bars; as far as their technical value is concerned, they areMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 45perhaps without equal in the entire music literature. The bars are, namely, theend of the first theme and at the same time the transition to the second andenable, moreover, the second theme to begin most gracefully on chord IV:21The first group of themes is followed by the modulation section, the partthat is called upon to join the first group to the second. The techniqueassociated with this section was developed by the masters in such a delicatefashion ± and, more precisely, because it can be created only from the greatestwealth of thematic material, as indeed only the masters made their hallmark ±that perhaps it must be described as simply inimitable. The danger is always athand that the composer will lose too much to the mechanical function of themodulation section, which consists in arriving at a new key. Vi=22 A modern

composer might perhaps also ask: what is the point of another key? To answerthis question is certainly not difficult: the significance even of a key can only bemade sufficiently perceptible to the ear by the contrast of another, just as onedoes not want to remain with a single theme; rather, a development leadingfrom one theme to other, new themes should take place. So the fact that adevelopment takes place ± but at its best only by means of a resplendentevolution of key ± is made plausible to the ear. In addition, the return to theprincipal key, from which one had started, attains its rightful sound only if inthe meantime one had lingered elsewhere, namely, in a different key. é To use atrivial example by way of analogy: if one leaves one's home with the intention of returning, thenthe very act of leaving is all the more essential to a feeling for the point of departure.{19} Nevertheless, the masters were always able to arrange things in such away that the very mechanics of the modulation problem receded entirely intothe background before the charm of one or more new themes, which theystrewed like flowers upon the path of modulation. The sheer joy of the presence1014Ex. 1 Mozart, Sonata in C, K. 309, first movement, bars 10±17ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)46 HEINRICH SCHENKERof a new theme made it impossible to perceive the path of modulation as a meremechanical act. One could, however, continue to think that herein just anotherschematic plan was at play, if the muscle of the modulation section always liesbetween the first and second theme groups in a cyclic form. Did it have to bethis way? If so, why? For sake of the form? =de It should not be seen as acompulsion of form, but rather a compulsion of nature, if the classicalcomposers chose to proceed along those lines; and yet what is to be stressedmore than the presence of the modulation section at all is the great freedom withwhich they did proceed in this manner. So great and varied is the latter, that it isabsolutely impossible to determine a rule for the technique of modulation.Here I shall give just a few possibilities.1) The modulation takes its continuation from the consequent phrase of themain theme, whether or not this continuation forms a group. See, for example,Mozart's Piano Trio in G major, where the theme is designed so broadly that agroup was unnecessary.23 One can also look merely at the first movement ofBeethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 2 No. 1, or Op. 101, where the first theme isvery short and the consequent phrase immediately sets to work on themodulation.24 In such cases as these, the consequent phrase by no means losesthe character of a consequent as a result of being charged with the modulation.The consequent merely entwines itself with the actual modulation section toform a unity, as it were.252) Alternatively, the modulation proceeds from the consequent phrase of thesecond theme belonging to the group, a technique that presupposes groupconstruction in the main theme. In such a case, the antecedent phrase of thesecond theme is reckoned as part of the first group on account of being in the

same key, but the consequent must already be called upon for the modulationsection.26 This is what happens, for instance, in the last movement ofBeethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 101 where, after the main theme is finished,things proceed in the manner described here. Of special interest is the Rondofrom Mozart's G minor Piano Quartet, where the first group is in factcompletely set off, and only after a rest do we get the start of a theme whoseconsequent will be called upon to transmit the modulation. One could, if onelikes, {20} call this a third theme, reckoning from the start of the piece; in mostcases of this sort, however, this function would fall to the second.[3)] Often the modulation section is introduced after the conclusion of theprincipal theme without further ado; and thus it lacks the character of aconsequent phrase. This happens often enough when the masters actuallyplace the principal motive itself, or at least a part of it, at the start of thissection so that, beyond the complete two-part construction of the principalsubject, the peculiar impression of a consequent phrase with a special effect issuggested. And, indeed, the start of the main theme and that of themodulation section want to give the impression of being related to oneMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 47another as antecedent and consequent phrase. Thus for example the Andanteof Mozart's Piano Trio in C major,27 and the first movement of Beethoven'sPiano Trio in C minor.28[4)] The modulation section can also be made up of rhetorical progressions;this procedure rules out a clearly defined two-part construction in theantecedent and consequent phases. Consider in this respect the first movementof Haydn's Piano Trio No. 11 (in the Peters Edition), etc.29 This much can besaid: the most dangerous point in a cyclic composition lies in the modulationsection. It is here that one can decide who has inventiveness and who does not,who is a master and who is not. Here the honour of imagination is saved, as isthe honour of form, which can never be regarded as a schematic plan so long asit is possible to infuse with spirit a process that is basically rather mechanical. Iam almost inclined to advise, when judging the worth of a composition, alwaysto start by looking at the modulation section and only then, secondarily, to seewhether the composer understands group construction. So long as the modula-tion section is successful, one may confidently be curious about the work. If itis unsuccessful, then one can put the work to one side: the magnificence of thethemes themselves will never, in the long run, disguise from us the fact thathere we have merely the filling up of a schematic plan.{21} The modulation section is followed by the second group of themes,which present-day nomenclature calls the `secondary subject' [Seitensatz],secondary group, or cantabile group [Gesangsgruppe]. Here, too, we encounterindividual themes as well as groups. What may be observed above all, however,is how the modulation runs its course and how the second group (or secondtheme) is related to it. Often it is the case that the modulation section finishes onthe dominant and the second group begins with the same dominant chord, forexample, in Beethoven's first Piano Sonata [Op. 2 No. 1] and the finale of hisPiano Sonata Op. 101. But things can be different; that is, the modulation

section may finish on a harmony other than the dominant, and still otherharmonies may be used to open the second group. This was, moreover, alreadydiscussed in the theoretical part (Harmonielehre, § 131).30 In any event, theconvergence of the end-point of the modulation section with the beginning of thesecondary group is among the most interesting problems of a three-partcomposition, but also among the most difficult ones. As a great master can, bythe creation of a new theme, free himself of the mechanical difficulties associatedwith the procedure of modulation, so in a similar way, where it is a question ofinterconnecting the modulation section and the second group, he can freehimself of the danger of a potpourri-like mechanism by great inventiveness withregard to ending the modulation section and beginning the second group.[31/45] Even for the design of the third and last part, i.e. the closing themeor closing group, there are in general no binding regulations. But, compared tothe second group, an even heavier responsibility is verily placed upon it in theß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)48 HEINRICH SCHENKERcontinuity of the three-part construction. For the latter is, in a higher sense,comparable to a bar in triple time, where the first element is strong (that is,accentuated), the other two weak (that is, less strongly accentuated); likewisethe strongest emphasis in the three-part construction of a cyclically designedwork falls on the first group, whereas the second group and closing themeappear less accentuated. The slighter degree of emphasis is revealed in mostcases by the fact that the closing group is customarily kept shorter than theprevious sections. It thus takes the form of a kind of narrow outlet, so to speak,for the first and second groups.In the closing group, there is also the greatest freedom with regard to thestarting harmony. But often enough, it is so closely intertwined with the secondgroup that the end of the latter and the beginning of the former areindistinguishable, as, for example, in the last movement of Beethoven's PianoSonata Op. 101.31From the above account of three-part form, one may be inclined to derivewhat appears to be a self-evident postulate: that the themes of the second andthird groups would have to be entirely new. Nevertheless, the masters did notalways hold firmly to such a principle, for often enough we encounter themesfrom the first group in the second or third. Such a continuity of motivicmaterial might mislead us into rejecting three-part construction in thisparticular case. That, however, would be a mistake. For without doubt achange of key has taken place, and this alone provides sufficient grounds forthemes that stand upon the foundation of the new key ± for despite anysimilarity to the principal theme, they may still exhibit sufficient differences ±to be regarded as entirely independent themes. In other words, the {23} newkey as well as the modifications to the theme will necessitate the assumption ofa second, respectively third, group, by which the three-part construction, too,is anchored. This applies especially to the closing theme, which, even moreoften than the second group, is connected thematically to the first andnevertheless, merely on the grounds of the space allotted to it, must indeed beregarded as a third theme.32

The criterion of tonality is, in fact, decisive also when the parts of the formflow into one another in such a way that a differentiation between them issimply impossible. Compare, for example, the conjoining of the modulationsection with the second group in Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 101, firstmovement, or the lack of differentiation in the closing theme of the samecomposer's Piano Trio Op. 70 No. 1, first movement.[31/53]33And there is more to this: there are cyclic compositions in which doubts can ariseeven about the presence of a second or third group at all. For example, who could determine withcomplete precision the second group of themes in the first movement of Beethoven's PianoSonata Op. 101, or the closing theme of the first movement of the same composer's Piano TrioOp. 70 No. 1?Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 49[development section: handwritten text][31/56] The tripartite first section, understood as part of the higher-levelthree-part construction of the entire movement, is followed by the so-calleddevelopment. It generally has as its mission to create the necessary tensionbetween the first and third sections, by analogy with the middle section, b, ofan a1±b±a2 song form. But since, as already underscored in Harmonielehre,§[130],34 it must clarify itself in its own terms, then everything must be offeredin such a way that it indeed becomes clear in its own terms, without the aid ofrepetition. Hence the numerous and rapid parallelisms in this section, andabove all the technique of returning to themes and thematic elements from thefirst part, their development and clarification. The art of association celebratesits greatest triumphs here; and insofar as the themes of the first part areassembled, it is the individual components of these that are highlighted in theirown terms. This explains, moreover, why the word `development' is used todesignate this part; it refers to the technique described here. But our masterswere never trapped into supposing that the sole purpose of the development layin the motivic working-over of previously given themes. Often enough, theyreturn to the first and original meaning of the middle section, and indeed whenthe themes in the first part had at any rate been sufficiently elucidated anddeveloped in all their elements by frequent repetition. Far from treating themiddle section in a merely schematic way, they instead felt compelled in suchcases instead to introduce entirely new themes, rather than develop the oldmaterial still further ± something which would necessarily have led tomonotony.One might ask whether it might not be advisable finally to drop the term`development', since the word itself so easily gives rise to the impression of aone-sided technique, and thus a schematic approach.[development section : typewritten text][31/53 (ctd)] The first section, which thus comes to an end, is followed by the development.

It has as its mission to create a certain tension between the first and third sections, by analogywith song form. Since the development must clarify itself, by means of itself, as already[explained] in §130, so everything must be presented in such a way that it can become clearwithout the assistance of a second statement. For this reason one finds in this part numerous,rapid parallelisms; short themes clarify themselves by repetition, etc.; perhaps, however, the bestmeans of avoiding incomprehensibility in the development is to return to the themes of the firstpart. Thus the requirement of clarity alone leads to the fact that the35 {24}36developmentsection is occupied with material that had been treated in the exposition. Thus the need to see theearlier themes and motives in a new light contributes in a beneficial way along the same lines.[31/52]37For if it is the task of the development to shed light on the motives of the first part, byß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)50 HEINRICH SCHENKERtransformation and all sorts of recombination, then it is practical ± as can easily be understood ± toprovide at the outset a quantity of individual characteristics, of various small units, in the core of atheme, for the very intention of their future utilisation in the development. Consider, however,where things must necessarily lead if one is so uninspired as to build the main theme onmonotonous material and, moreover, to let the development section be soaked up by thismonotony. I shudder when I see this mistake perpetrated ± by choice ± in modern cyclic works.And yet against this mistake a remedy is already provided in the classical works! For the masters,when they formed main themes that were less the result of being put together from smallerelements, liked to introduce an entirely new theme in the development section to avoid that verymonotony of motivic material. This is based on an entirely natural principle: that which isexpressed clearly enough in the main theme by repetition or contrast ± which is precisely the case

when the theme is not put together from smaller elements ± does not need further light andclarification, that is, it does not have to be chewed over to the point of being tiresome. If on theother hand the main theme has been assembled, then the individual components from which ithas been assembled are in need of subsequent illumination, so that the development section ismerely fulfilling its moral obligation when it elaborates them.{25} The last phase of the development is probably one of the mostcompositionally demanding problems of the entire form: specifically, it mustsomehow be made clear to the listener that the turbulent forces of thedevelopment have been extinguished and the recapitulation is close at hand. Inother words, in the final phase of the development, the recapitulation must, soto speak, already hang in the air. The means that the masters used to conveythis can in no way be reduced to artistic concepts that can be technicallydefined: they are mainly of a psychological nature and are based on an almostdivinatory gift ± on the secure feeling that this or that device will work itsintended effect upon the listener. These wonders of [. . .] confidence may beappreciated and learned only in each individual work. Each of these wonders isa new one!Basically, the task of the recapitulation is to repeat the content of the firstsection in full. It is however remarkable that even practical musicians, eventhose of the greatest reputation, with the countless recapitulations they have infront of them to read or play or teach, have failed to learn a cardinal principle,and that even someone like BuÈ low, through insufficient understanding,unfortunately lets himself get carried away by making the recapitulationresemble the first section aÁ tout prix, as can be seen at many points in hiseditions of the Beethoven sonatas.38 Nevertheless, [. . .] the principle of diver-sity and variety applies here, too. This explains why the masters liked toreproduce the content of the first part with all sorts of delays, variations,expansions and contractions; every caprice is appropriate, diversity alone isreason enough for these changes. To look for deeper reasons is entirely futile;for how could one find a reason that was even deeper than that most artistic andnatural requirement of variety and diversity? If someone of limited intelligenceMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 51must forever repeat himself in the concepts and words he uses, preciselybecause he lacks a larger world of concepts, so it is difficult for a person ofimagination to indulge in similar repetitions: the richness of his thought itselfdraws forth ever new variations, new images, and he must obey this naturaldrive, whether or not he is conscious of it.{26} But how the three-part form that I have described here had to preventmusic categorically from being fertilised by programmatic perspectives, bymaterial associations with the real world, is utterly incomprehensible. Just aslittle as a two-part form excludes a programmatic idea, so a three-part form, i.e. the sonata or the

symphony, does not rule out a programme merely on account of its three-part construction. Infact, over the course of the past centuries the masters have amply demonstratedthe possibility of connecting the programmatic with two- or three-part form,i.e. with form in general. One may confidently reckon as programmatic musicnot simply those works officially so designated, by titles and inscriptions, butrather the major part of the masterworks in general, since seldom do themasters create a work of significance without some definable impetus from theoutside world, even if this is not absolutely essential and the impetus may bequantitatively small. It is just that they have the instinct to feel two- and three-part construction at all times as internal and unalterable house rules of nature,and as such never to deny them for sake of the programme. And rightly so. Forif, for example, the taking of nourishment and periods of rest are thematicprinciples of an organism, who would confess to being able to live ± withprogrammatic intention ± against these principles? Thus it is also with music.Even dialectically it may be shown that form, so long as it is not arbitrary but organicallynecessary, has nothing to do with whatever associations of an extra-musical nature that may havebeen deposited in the musical content. So long as the musical associations are satisfied, first andforemost, then all sorts of other associations can run their course alongside them. They elevateeven the psychological reality of the music, without in any way encroaching too closely upon it.Anyone who does not concede its own laws has only himself to hold to accountfor the fact that his work can, for sure, have only very small artistic worth,merely the worth of a potpourri, even if he grants it the proud title of`symphonic poem' or the like and is actually so arrogant as to think that he hascreated an art-work of high rank.{27} Of many works by, for example, Emanuel Bach, Sebastian Bach,Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, the nature of the impetus at work has,moreover, been brought to light at a later stage. But one could have believed iteven without these documents.If, then, programmatic associations are indeed not excluded by form initself, and rather their utilisation signifies for the artist at most theheightening of psychological relevance, then conversely the connectednessof form, its synthesis, represents precisely the most vital worth for art. Insynthesis is contained the basic condition of art. If necessity leads toß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)52 HEINRICH SCHENKERabbreviation and to stylisation, already from the nature of limited humancreativity in general, then this artistic activity, verily to find a selection ofmotives and to bind these together, can indeed be understood only assynthesis. But apart from its necessity as a matter of principle, synthesisadditionally brings to music the inestimable advantage, that it makes musicallegislation possible in the first place. Just as in the past, in the most learned

form of fugue, musical laws were discovered, determined and incontro-vertibly demonstrated, so, too, the synthesis of the freer forms, i.e. of two-and three-part form, leads to new laws.39 By this I mean to say that onlywithin a fully achieved synthesis can a new effect, i.e. a new musical law, beasserted and demonstrated. Synthesis, then, may be thought of as the litmustest for the value of the new discovery. It is thus simply the case, as is themeasure of the value of all [. . .] and cultural accomplishments for humansociety in general, where it is namely the synthesis alone that decides thevalue. Just as the values at hand fall away when they are detached from theirpurpose in society, so little do musical discoveries have any meaning outsidean apposite musical synthesis.As it would be impossible to give a complete account of the limitless wealthof possibilities, I should like now to draw upon a few concepts regardingartistic synthesis.{28} Within a synthesis there arises, in an entirely natural way, the grouping of bars, i.e. theirordering and arrangement in stressed and unstressed or, if you prefer, strong and weak bars. Thebasic form of the ordering of bars is again two- or three-part, seldom five-part. Composite formsare based on simpler ones. The same applies to the individual beats within the bar itself.Now if, within a specific ordering of bars, the composer accentuates an unstressed beat oran unstressed bar, then this accentuation achieves its effect as contrast from, and only from,the background of synthesis. (That is to say: if we did not [have] the customary ordering ofbars and groups as accentuated (strong) and unaccentuated (weak), then the accentuation of aweak bar or beat would be incapable of creating any effect.) Such an accentuation of weakelements would then signify, with respect to connectedness, a return to nature, which lurksbehind all art. This would result in an increased supply of nature and art, whereby art isrepresented by the synthesis of the grouping of bars, nature by the accentuation of the weakelement.To bring variety to the statements of individual themes, the masters liked tolet their motives proceed from weak beats. The performer should never shy away frommarking out the beginning of a motive in some way, lest it be swallowed up in the unaccentednessof a weak beat. A light emphasis, a light animation of the weak beat will always be entirely

appropriate here. On this point, the author of A Contribution to the Study of Ornamentation hasexpressed himself as follows, with regard to a survey of Emanuel Bach's keyboard works (p. 10,numbered point 3):40{28b} But even elsewhere, i.e. even within the motive, they like to accen-tuate the weak bar and weak beats, usually prescribing them with the markingsMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 53^, sf, fp, mfp,<>,<, and so on. How Schubert, for example,delights in this type of accentuation, e.g. in the Waltz Op. 18a No. 6, and theString Quartet in A minor (p. 15),41 [as do] Mozart and Beethoven. Apart fromthe effect of variety, which cannot be praised too highly, [. . .]A more intensive effect is made by the accentuation of weak bars, e.g. Schubert's Op. 9 No.18; [see also] Brahms.They seek the effect of variety also in the reinterpretation of strong bars asweak ones, and vice versa. Music has, in fact, among other things the property that theend-point of one theme can be elevated to become the starting point of the next, withoutprejudicing other possibilities of continuing the content. And when, in a weak beat, the cadenceof one theme and the start of the second converge, then it often occurs that the starting bar must,precisely for the sake of the second subject, be perceived as strong, i.e. as the beginning of a newmetric ordering. Thus a weak bar is reinterpreted as a strong one, as the following illustrationshows:42With new events always at hand, the metric ordering is constantly in flux, which leads to themost delightful, even though rarely heard, effects. Consider the following example, fromthe Scherzo of Beethoven's Piano Trio in G (see Ex. 2). Bars 9±12 are initiallyintended to represent a parallelism to bars 5±8, with the same four-barordering retained. Meanwhile, Beethoven uses the last bar (bar 12), verily inopposition to the tendency of parallelism, as the starting point of a newappearance of the motive, thus making it the head of a new grouping of bars.The repeat of the latter, in bars 14±15, shows that the motive (bars 12±13) has atwo-bar organisation. From bar 12, then, the ordering is as follows: 12+13,14+15. Thus we have a reinterpretation of what was originally a weak twelfthbar as a strong first bar of the new {29} grouping. And within this newgrouping one can now see how the sforzati give emphasis to bars 13 and 15, i.e.the weak bars, until finally the sf in bar 18 [recte: 29] puts an end to these

striking convulsions.And [we may consider] a similar metric within a larger group of themes.Take for example the first group of themes from Mozart's Symphony in E[, K.543. The group consists of three sections. The first section alone (bars 1±28) istwo-part, that is, it is made up of an antecedent and consequent, each part ofwhich comprises 14 bars resulting from a relationship of 8+6. The middlesection (bars 29±35), with forte character, contains 7 bars; [. . .] the third andlast section (bars 36±45) is again two-part, this time with a relationship of 5+5bars. The result is, first of all, the impression of three-part construction for theentire group which offers the ear a more irrational ordering than two-partconstruction, even if it is also less complicated. Secondly, the six-bar groupfollowing an eight-bar group in the first section represents a secondirregularity. Thirdly, the seven-bar length of the middle section is certainlyan irrational situation; and finally we have the two five-bar constructions of thelast section, which are again far from being simple structures.ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)54 HEINRICH SCHENKERBut in the way I have portrayed it here, Mozart's procedures in all his worksis radical and wild; there is nowhere a trace of barren regularity, as iscommonly attributed to him today. Just look at the beginning of his G minorSymphony! What significance is gained by the fact that the first bar initiallyintroduces the accompaniment.43Even the manner in which an accompaniment is often introduced ahead oftime in the joining of themes belongs to those accomplishments that only anorganic synthesis can create and confirm. The masters actually liked tointroduce the accompaniment for a new melody simultaneously with theconclusion of the previous theme, delaying the entry of the melody itself. Forexamples of this, see no. 6 in the theoretical part.44{30a} By this artifice, the possibility is gained of changing the beginning ofthe next melody in relationship to the previous one, for example by placing iton the third or fourth beat (in short, the last weak beat) but without having agap occur between the end of the earlier theme and the beginning of the newone, which would compromise the form. The accompaniment itself mediatesbetween the two themes [i.e. statements of the theme], fills the space out and,AllegroScherzoAllegro( )13Ex. 2 Beethoven, Piano Trio in G, Op. 1 No. 2, third movement, bars 1±24Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 55so to speak, sets the new beginning in relief from its background so much moreclearly. By this sort of technique, a new conflict comes to life; in particular, thequestion arises as to whether the accent falls on the bar with which theaccompaniment begins or, rather, the bar in which the melody begins. One'ssenses are conscious of this conflict in the most lively way; the composer, who

must settle the conflict in the end, is even more conscious. The means ofsettlement are of course indefinable; one can only study them oneself in thepassage in question. In most cases it is a new motivic construction that bringswith it a new metric organisation, and thus resolves the conflict.To the realm of the same problem belong cases like Handel's Concertogrosso in A minor [Op. 6 No. 4],45 Mozart's Symphony in G minor, theAndante from Beethoven's Octet [Op. 103], and Mozart's Symphony in E[major. In all these cases the melodies seem to point to their own metricorganisation: the starting point is actually like an upbeat to the next bar, whichwould have to bear the strong accent; but the accompaniment takes the strongaccent for itself and, in so doing, leaves the composer with troublesomeconsequences. In fact, this kind of irregular construction, which can perhapsbe seen most clearly in the first example cited above, is full of the mostbeautiful, I would even say mysterious, consequences for the entire movement.In other words, the way in which the accompaniment is set places an obligationupon the composer; or, conversely, the composer feels morally and artisticallyobliged with respect to the accompaniment.One should not assume, however, that all the artifices portrayed here areconnected merely with three-part form; it is self-evident that they occur also intwo-part form. That two-part form, seen by the inner eye of the masters, is justas little a lifeless schematic design as three-part form {30b} may best be shownby the Andante from Haydn's Piano Trio in F] minor, Hoboken XV:26.Apparently this is a simple song form, a1±b±a2. Or is what we call the b-sectionmerely to be understood as a return modulation, which starts in A major andfollows classical practice by actually starting with the principal theme, theprevious section in C] major (which has its own theme) merely extending thestandpoint of the dominant, into which the main theme seems to be joined inthe manner of an antecedent phrase? Ah, who would and could count up all thefreedoms that the masters revealed in their forms, two- and three-part alike! Iwould, nevertheless, consider it a mistake when Professor [Hermann]Kretzschmar says, somewhere in his undoubtedly valuable FuÈ hrer durch denKonzertsaal, that to write out the programme of classical works is not in factdifficult. I would reply that it is certainly not difficult if this means indicatingonly the main, secondary and closing themes, the development, therecapitulation and perhaps also the transitional passages; but it is very difficult± almost insolubly difficult ± if the truly genius-endowed linchpins of thecomposition are to be uncovered.ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)56 HEINRICH SCHENKER[31/63]46 And how much more there is to testify to the glory of themasters!Thus for example we should be mindful of the faithfulness, the love shownto every germ that they created and planted in their works. The same loveembraces the most and the least significant things alike. And what a splendideffect this love makes when it places these things in the service of the form, toshape it with variety and irrationality. See, for example, the close of the briefmodulation section in Mozart's Serenade for eight wind instruments [K. 388]:

a commonplace, trivial idea, which a Gyrowetz, a Weigl, Pleyel or Kozeluchmade use of every day, every hour ± as did Mozart himself in other works, is itnot so? And yet, Mozart would not be Mozart if he did not possess a genius'scourage to give these stupid tones ± these most stupid tones in the world ± awonderful logic. They first appear in oboe 1 (see Ex. 3a); but it is only later thatwe get the second, captivating and artistic [development] (see Ex. 3b):a 2a 2a 2dolce1.2.OboesClarinetsin BHornsin EBassoons1.3640Ex. 3 Mozart, Serenade in C minor, K. 388, first movement(a) bars 36±43Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 57Another example worth mentioning occurs in the Rondo from [Beethoven's]Sonata in E[ major, Op. 7:1.2.Bassoonsa 2Hornsin EClarinetsin BOboesa 21.167171175Ex. 3 Mozart, Serenade in C minor, K. 388, first movement(b) bars 167±177ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)58 HEINRICH SCHENKER{32} Consider, too, the following bars from the last movement of the great Amajor sonata (Ex. 5a) by Beethoven, [and] how they later return to introduce

the coda (Ex. 5b):In all of these cases, one can observe a wonderful instinct for associationsand parallelisms by which musical art, also of the masters, is promoted.Indeed, one should not forget that even the nightingale, the quail and thecuckoo from the Andante of the Pastoral Symphony are used in a parallel5863Ex. 4 Beethoven, Sonata in E[, Op. 7, fourth movement, bars 58±66a tempoEx. 5 Beethoven, Sonata in A, Op. 101, third movement(a) bars 123±128(b) bars 314±321Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 59construction, for Beethoven would never have dared merely to set down a germor a series of tones, i.e. without an effect for the synthesis.47But in order to complete my discussion of the concept of `master', I have afew more points of view to consider, which I shall choose at random from alimitless multitude.Concerto, Overture, InstrumentationThe form of an instrumental concerto became immediately clear to them, as an unceasing battlebetween the orchestra and the piano or other solo instrument, which rivalled it as an equal. Inspite of all freedom and self-evident irrationality of form and content, they had their sightsfirmly set on presenting the orchestra as of equal importance, even in relation to the soloinstrument. Thus it came about that, for instance, the entire story of the concerto is given by theorchestra, by way of introduction, in an uninterrupted current, and that even in the furthercourse of events the orchestra often takes the lead with lengthy presentations, in accordance withthe principles of cyclic form ± apart from the fact, of course, that it has to serve up the thematicmaterial almost without interruption. In this way, the concept of concerto is truly fulfilled, thecontrast sets both forces in relief against each other and illuminates them; the ear, which couldotherwise easily be dulled by the uninterrupted sound of the solo instrument, is agreeablystimulated by the change of sound. Thus the whole thing `is of a piece', as one sometimes says.One can understand, even in optical terms, why an orchestra sits there and is called upon to

accompany, and also how the objectivity of the problem itself is thoroughly worked out in thedeepest way.{33} Similar objectivity is at work, for instance, in the overture. One can see whatconstructions, for instance, the third Leonore overture represents, in spite of a recognisable,clearly marked programmatic intent! In spite of the quotations from the opera Fidelio! How easilythe purpose could have corrupted even this form, had Beethoven not been strong enough tosubsume even these operatic ingredients, in which the character of the overture reveals itself, inits form at large, to the advantage not only of the form but also of the particular quotations. Andthe Corolian overture! What programmatic content, what musical irrationality, and yet whatclosure from a purely musical standpoint! And the Egmont overture!From these examples one might then finally understand that it is purposefulness andobjectivity, above all, that are given expression by the medium of the freest, most irrationalconstruction. Purposefulness seeks to bind things that seem mutually incompatible, namely,programme and pure musical form; but it is only this very purposefulness and objectivity that Icall musical style.But even for the essence of sound, i.e. the technique of instrumentation inthe work, the synthesis of form is of primary importance. That is, what cannotbe accounted for or shown by the synthesis will not yet be produced sonically.Of course, the sound, i.e. a particular instrument, can from time to time inspirethe composer; but it can never allow him to be seduced into sacrificingß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)60 HEINRICH SCHENKERsynthesis for sound. In a word: synthesis is not merely the proof of the themes,but also of the way they are made manifest in sound.This is the basis, above all, for the economy in the use of instruments,which we always find in the masters' work. Thus, for example, in his FifthSymphony Beethoven saves the trombones, and also the contrabassoon andpiccolo, until the last movement. By this is undoubtedly revealed the intention toincrease the sonic power of the finale in relation to the previous movements, {34} but, markyou, only in relation to the preceding movements of the same symphony. But if oneconsiders that the same master's Seventh Symphony uses neither trombonesnor contrabassoon, in spite of the fact that their use here would have been noless possible, then it follows that the first employment of these veryinstruments in the Fifth Symphony, however much it may signify a con-quering of these instruments for the genre of symphony, should nevertheless

not be taken as binding upon Beethoven for the instrumentation of all hissubsequent symphonies. What is strictly decisive in this matter are the needsof content at hand, so that we find, for example, trombones only in the lastmovement of the Sixth Symphony and in the Ninth Symphony (scherzo andfinale), piccolo in the Sixth (Storm) and Ninth (finale), and the contrabassoononly in the last movement of the Ninth.It is even more instructive, however, to see the method by which Beethovenjustifies such new instruments, precisely by means of synthesis.48One cannot finda more edifying example than the treatment of the piccolo in the finale of the Fifth Symphony.The assignment of supplying the sounding body with the highest imaginable register, the flute's[highest] octave, could in the long run hardly have been Beethoven's sole reason for incorporatingthis instrument in the content. The key to the solution of this question is the closing subject. In atrue symphonic manner, Beethoven scatters a sixteenth-note figure over theregularly constructed subject. This figure is at first played by the violins,namely, in the antecedent phrase of the subject (Ex. 6a):vn 1cl. 1, vlavn 2 cl. 2, vlc.bsn 1–2Ex. 6 Beethoven, Symphony No. 5, fourth movement(a) bars 64±68Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 61And while the entire orchestra ± that is, all the strings, all the woodwind andbrass instruments ± play the consequent phrase forte (I repeat: forte), thepiccolo is on its own, entirely on its own, setting that sixteenth-note figureagainst all the other instruments of the orchestra (Ex. 6b). Thus the burden ofan important, indispensable motivic association rests entirely on its shoulders,and it is precisely from this {35} that the newborn instrument matures, so tospeak. And once more, towards the end of the movement, we hear the piccoloweighed down by a similar motivic burden. What we can learn from thismethod is that, precisely to the extent that the instrument plays a significantrole in the thematic development, its sound, too, is better proven to the ear, soto speak, and thus appears more beautiful. And what, after all, is the differencebetween a better proven sound and a better sound altogether? Only that whichis proven in terms of its content can also sound better, in purely sonic terms.Think, too, of Mozart's use of two basset horns in his Requiem.As in the world of ideas, so it is also the case in the world of sounds thatvariety and contrast are reckoned as the [. . .] principles that make a difference.The effect of tone colour should be promoted only through contrast. What isparamount here is variation ± quick and rich variation ± in tone colour, so thatthe ear itself is not dulled by the sound of one [instrument]. From this, self-

evidently, arises the principle of variety. And it is on these principles alonethat we may then derive the much misunderstood technique of, say, writingfor the horn. It is a mistake (one that Richard Wagner also made) to believethat, in the sound-world of the masters, the use of the horn was restricted,apparently on account of its limitations in the Classical period. For in the firstplace the principle governing the use of this instrument was the same as thatgoverning the use of other instruments. Specifically, the particular sound ofthe horn was emphatically not intended to intoxicate the ear of the listeneruninterruptedly; this would have amounted to causing a nuisance. Everysound must simply be freshened, so to speak, as the air in a room must befreshened.piùtuttipiccoloEx. 6 Beethoven, Symphony No. 5, fourth movement(b) bars 72±78ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)62 HEINRICH SCHENKEROne need only compare the horn part in Mozart's Quintet for piano, oboe,clarinet, bassoon and horn, or [those] in the Serenade K. 388 or the GrandPartita for thirteen wind instruments, with the horn parts in his other works inorder to understand that Mozart was on no account afraid of making full use ofthe technical capacity of the horn when that instrument was required in asoloistic context, [or] of making a correspondingly modest use of its total rangewhen the ensemble in which the horn had to participate was larger.Thus there are, of course, in one and the same symphony, an inordinatenumber of places in which the horn could take part, were it not that thecomposer, as I have explained, had the better instinct to protect us from theeternal sonority of the horn, which would have destroyed our ear. But toobject, on the other hand, that the masters' hesitation with respect to the hornresulted for an entirely different reason, namely from the purely mechanicalincapability of the natural horn of the time, is entirely frivolous.{36} This explains why, for example, there is not a single passage in thewhole of Don Giovanni in which he writes for the horn as we would expect tosee in the parts conceived soloistically. But this is only because Mozartconsidered the greater complex of instruments in the opera orchestra as awhole, and regarded a soloistic prominence for the horn as incompatible withit.49 It is indeed the same thing, moreover, with the treatment of a violin part ina string quartet: how much bolder, more embracing, more technicallycomplicated and intellectually high-powered is the first violin part in one ofthe late string quartets of Beethoven compared to that in one of the samemaster's orchestral works! Thus, as we can see, there is method in the way inwhich the horn was treated by the masters. The increased size of the orchestraleads to a restriction in the soloistic treatment of the horn, as it does preciselyfor all the other instruments. In Beethoven's symphonies we can see clearlyenough what sorts of difficulties an orchestral horn player (who was not simplya solo virtuoso) could be expected to cope with at the time. They are no easier

to negotiate today, even though the natural horns have of course been replacedby valved instruments. When we undertake a careful study of the works of theClassical composers, we find in the repertory of the horn an utterlyunbelievable number of notes,50 which is not so very much smaller than thatof today's valve horn, without of course taking into account all the otherdifferences between the two repertories. From this alone it already follows thatthe masters took even the horn for granted. But in the very fact {37} that thetreatment of the horn within a work of art was, furthermore, subject to theprinciples of variety and contrast, according to context, precisely on account ofthis, I say, the true style of synthesis is revealed.These last principles were so firmly marked in the artistic conscience of themasters that they never hesitated to let the more modest body of wind instruments rivalthe more powerful string orchestra, even on a dynamic level. This is a point that had alreadyMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 63caught the attention of Richard Wagner, and even more so the people of today. In all thesymphonies of the masters, there are passages in which string and wind instruments replyto each other like choruses: this is an idea that actually presupposes completedynamic parity between the two parts. They would rather let an unequal battlebe waged than renounce the principle of contrast or balance the forte strengthsagainst one another. In order to measure the full force of the driving principle,it is enough to refer to the famous bassoon passage in the recapitulation of thefirst movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. It would be hypocritical toregard this instrument, which is noble in its place, as beautiful. And yetBeethoven is right: for the principle that has led him to it is that sameorganising principle that helped him to construct the great work of art, whereasthe feeling that expresses itself merely at this point, in its revulsion for thebassoon, is a momentary sensation of discomfort that is entirely lacking inlarger consequence.It would, however, be a mistake to regard what I have said as implying arestriction or limitation upon the way in which the masters wrote forinstruments. As stimulating and potentially rich as the laws of variety and contrastundoubtedly are, so many other people like to think of them as restrictive and qualifying inthe same measure. For when one is compelled to create contrast, is not this very compulsionalready a possible hindrance {38} to find a new sonority that lies entirely outside the contrast?One could in fact argue that the choice of this or that instrument could be blamed on the principleof contrast. So why should one be bound to the principle of contrast at all?And yet, as I have said, the restrictions that are enshrined in all laws,including those mentioned here, have not succeeded in dampening the

masters' impetuous desire in the sonorous manifestation of their work.51Though it is generally little known, it is no less true, however, that we have themasters themselves to thank for the greatest discoveries in the realm ofinstrumental technique. In the textbooks on this subject, we find as detailed aregister as possible of their proud deeds. It is just that they have been mixedtogether, rather indiscriminately, with the untested discoveries of othercomposers, who were far from being masters. And it is again precisely the mastery inconceptual matters that is decisive in determining the value of the instrumental discovery inquestion. I have already had occasion to show how the masters felt themselves compelled tojustify their instruments thematically, and need merely repeat here that a sonority gains in thepower of conviction when it is at the same time motivated conceptually. We should actually be allthe more amazed by the far-reaching, indeed fanatical orchestral sensitivity that led to countlessgenius-endowed discoveries, since the very synthesis of form itself is intimately perceived as themedium in which that sensitivity could manifest itself. One need only think, for example, of theways in which Beethoven combined the timpani: in the second act of Fidelio (A and E[);52in the[finale of the] Eighth Symphony; in the Adagio of the Ninth, where they are strucksimultaneously in fifths; and of the timpani solo in the Fifth Symphony, and the one in theFourth. [Recall], too, Mozart's invention of Janissary music in The Abduction from the Seraglio,ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)64 HEINRICH SCHENKERHaydn's extravagant use of trombones in The Seasons, the trumpets in Mendelssohn's overtureThe Fair Melusine, and so on.I should thus like to say: the synthesis of form in the works of the masters isproof of their ideas {39} and also of the sound. In synthesis, they developed acode of laws, determined the possibility of new discoveries in the realm of formas well as orchestral technique, and thus advanced the riches of music bylasting, irrevocably validated achievements.53Schubert, Schumann and Chopin as Sonata Composers[{44}] It is indeed hard to believe, after what was said above, and yet perhapsalready understandable, if I say that even a Schubert, a Schumann and aChopin were too weak to write a cyclic work with that degree of perfection ofwhich Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and, after them, only Mendelssohn andBrahms were capable of writing.

Who would, or could, argue over the genius of a Schubert! And yet itremains true that the genre of song served as the foundations of synthesis forhis genius, upon which it was able to produce new artistic laws. In cyclic form,on the other hand, he is unable to find that irrationality, which arises only froman outstanding development of the content, this of course in spite of greatmoments which then stand out all the stronger ± but also all the more isolated ±from the rest of the content, which has not actually been stretched withsufficient tautness. Even the case of Schubert may teach us that, howeverbeautiful the themes (too beautiful, in fact, for the purpose of cyclic form),however striking and original the harmony, and however novel the mood, thesethings are incapable of achieving the effect of a true synthesis and a deeplyfounded irregularity.54[{45}] No more could Schumann succeed in overcoming his propensity,apparently marked out by nature, for the small song form, than by denying thisin a cyclic work. And even when he writes ten bars (instead of eight) and allsorts of other irregularities that are unfortunately of a lower order (likeSchubert), one nevertheless quickly sees him exhausted, so to speak, seeking abench on which to rest;55 and that is precisely the point at which he hasbrought his lyrical theme to a conclusion, after a stretch of some twenty tothirty bars. Despite all the vigour that the themes in his cyclic work radiate,especially in the louder dynamic ranges, his temperament nevertheless lacksthat specifically cyclic verve, the temperament that races forth like a wildhuntsman over all the boundary points in themes and groups, mercilesslydriving the themes ahead of them, gathering them tightly together. Thus it wasnot granted to Schumann to create new technical values in the realm of cycliccomposition, though in the smaller forms he was capable of making fascinatingnew discoveries of a synthesis-bearing character.Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 65Similarly Chopin ± this original, almost singularly original, genius ± wascapable of mastering infinitely many new laws in the tiniest domain of amazurka, a waltz and the like, for which reason he may be regarded as one ofthe last of the musical lawgivers. But hardly does he think about writing asonata than his spirit is broken; and what he offers as a sonata is little morethan merely the most regular course of a schematic pattern which, were it notfor such an original sweep of ideas, would hardly have been thoughtnoteworthy.56[{46}] I believe, therefore, that it may be agreed that in all three of these last-named masters there existed only a lyrical enthusiasm in the foreground oftheir selves, so to speak; i.e. a lyricism that could not suffice for what could, infact, be called the dramatic problem of cyclic form.Mendelssohn and Brahms as the Heirs to the Cyclic Tradition{39 ctd} I already said, along these lines, specifically that the form of the classical composerswas misunderstood, and that the catastrophe which engulfed our art took as its starting point

precisely this misunderstanding. In the first place, the blame must probably fall upon those artistswho themselves latched onto the classical masters with righteous and inspired adulation andsought to imitate the form of masterworks in their own productions. And they did this out ofconviction. What, however, could imitation bring forth? Freedom? Variety? These it certainlycould not, for they are the property only of genius-endowed beings, only the privilege of a greatrichness of ideas. For an artist who is not a genius, these qualities of the works are, therefore,utterly inimitable; and in this respect there is no school that can teach genius, no tradition that cancontinue it, no reason that can compel it. I admit that another genius can learn purely technicalconstructive principles of art from his predecessors, i.e. the geniuses, but only on his own; andagain only as a genius can he reconstruct the principles of art through the medium of his richness,and also construct new artistic principles within new syntheses. Haydn found himself in thissituation with respect to Emanuel Bach, Mozart with respect to Haydn, Beethoven with respect toall three, and, for example, Mendelssohn and Brahms with respect to all four of these.Specifically, these last-named geniuses were clever enough to grasp, to understand with theinstinct of genius, the extent to which synthesis in the classical works is bound more to the natureof music than to any schematic abstraction. And if, in their quartets, quintets and symphonies, i.e.in their cyclic works, they continued the tradition of three-part form, they did so not so much as agesture to Haydn or Beethoven or Mozart, but rather because they felt themselves at the sametime to be on the track of these masters, that it could indeed not be otherwise, that it was the art ofmusic itself that insisted that they take that direction.{40} And if, further, they were minded, within a cyclical work, to make useof technical principles that had already been tested by earlier geniuses, that isagain no more than proof of their artistic intelligence and their genius. Theycertainly did not want to make things worse, and when one reckons that everyother path leads to a worse result, why should they then have exertedß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)66 HEINRICH SCHENKERthemselves merely to be different, merely for the sake of being different? The

vanity itself, of wanting to do things differently, lay far from their thoughts.And they felt the value of those achievements too deeply to give them up soeasily, in a childish way, without being able to replace them.When Brahms writes a symphony, he observes everything that belongs tothe style of a cyclic work, regardless of whether or not the technique has beenhanded down. In the first instance, it is the perfection of the matter thatinterests him. And if perfection can be reached by no other path than, forexample, the very one which the masters have already taken, then he does notshirk from taking the same path. For this reason he composes themes that havebeen put together from groups, according to the principles of variety andcontrast; and insofar as he additionally includes some technical achievements ofhis own, he still knows how to convey that indefinable irrationality which is thesign of a true masterwork. And what, indeed, has it been, if not this veryirrationality which, as we can well remember, made our contemporaries uneasywhenever a new piece by Brahms received its first performance? When Brahmswrites a piano concerto or violin concerto, the orchestral tutti continues to playthe same role as in a concerto by Mozart or Beethoven. He uses the same rangeof ideas in the introduction, and again large sections for orchestra in the courseof the concerto: and all this comes from an understanding that things cannotpossibly be otherwise.But if Mendelssohn and Brahms, just to name these last two, are in thisrespect conservative, as is commonly said ± this is also expressed by theoffensive word `epigones' ± then the artistic intelligence that led them to a stylethat had previously been established and verified did not, however, kill off theindividuality in these masters, nor did it prevent them from inventing newproblems. For does not Mendelssohn, {41} in his cyclic works, have a style ofhis own, which cannot be mistaken for that of any other master, and indeed inspite of the fact that he had the sense to remain faithful to the stylisticaccomplishments of the great masters? Did the technique handed downprevent him from writing a symphony with a programme of Scottish moods, orItalian tarantellas? And are not these moods indeed new in the symphonicliterature? I ask further: did the technique prevent him from writing overtures± which even Richard Wagner admitted to be artistically accomplished ±which, though not always new in their form, were certainly new in theirmaterial, i.e. in their mood and colour? It is the same with Brahms: did he notwrite the German Requiem from an entirely new spirit? And likewise the greatchoral odes, etc.?57 And in creating these new values was he hindered by thefact that he was clever enough to take what was good from the old composers,merely because it was good? And is not Brahms the `epigone', in spite ofeverything, his own master?Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 67Cyclic Forms in the Hands of Inferior ComposersAs favourable as things stand with Mendelssohn and Brahms, they do notunfortunately go so well with the other composers who would like to take thesame path. One should indeed not make it a point of criticism that a composercannot do something better than he can actually do. If I admit this, out of

generosity, then I have the right to disparage a point of view that elevates itself sofar as to use the masters' credit to bolster a bad work, and merely because of acommon title. It is truly high time that we dropped the absurdity of a classicalformal scheme and, even restricting ourselves to the realm of cyclic works,distinguished the good from the bad with all the greater artistic and criticaljudgement. It is high time that a symphony by, say, Glazunov did not earn morerespect because it is called `symphony', and thus is believed to hold fast to theform that was so sacred to our masters. Oh, no: Glazunov's symphony hasnothing at all to do with the true symphony.58 There only a schematic planunfolds, {42} a predetermined form. It is by now a puzzle how, over the courseof the decades, a false view about the ostensible form of the classical composerscould have developed. But once the absurd irony came into the world, and thebad works were thrown into the same pot as the good ones on account of anostensibly common form, it was already too late to sense how much the way inwhich this Glazunov writes ± and the listener hears his work, and the criticreviews it ± merely compromises the masters. And so today, whenever asymphony or a quartet is first performed, we hear from composer and audiencealike that this is a piece in the classical form. Oh, how happy would be the time ifthis were the case, as it last was the case with Brahms. But no: we are mixing up alive form and a schematic pattern, merely because of the appearance of the title.What is missing from bad modern cyclic works is in fact very easy to say.While the masters wrote both their individual themes and their groups ofthemes in a joined-up way, the modern cyclic composer writes his melodiesstraight as an arrow and without connectedness, from a single idea and as farpossible without groups. He is still proud of this mistake beyond all measure,and does not realise how much it ruins his own plan. There arises in this way,first of all, the monotonous construction of the modern long melody, whichproceeds ad infinitum in superfluous repetitions ± and only in such repetitions± and additionally gives the impression of a foolish sentimentality. This`melody' is now followed by a mechanical transition to the so-called subsidiaryarea, void of themes and as short as possible, verily corresponding to a miserlyprovision of ideas. Now the second vanity follows: the so-called subsidiaryarea, another pretty melody, as far as possible not put together from smallerelements, filled with a narrow-minded sentimentality, conferring all honourupon its nickname, the `lyric theme'. It is now self-evident that the time for theclosing theme has thus arrived, a short motive or another short melody, so thatß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)68 HEINRICH SCHENKERthe first section may be seen as having come to an end. The developmentsection restricts itself to the task of working over the material of the firstsection, to `develop' it. And that means that {43} what had been said and chewed overa thousand times must be chewed over yet again, for the thousand-and-first and -second time,wallowing about in the melodic sentimentality of the first or second theme. Finally the

recapitulation. Here, thank God, there is no work to be done: simply transpose, back to the homekey, leaving the content in all other respects unchanged; that is the watchword. And thus theentire first movement has been erected. The middle movement is constructed in a modest songform; it might also be a variation set, or something like that. Perhaps, to fill things up, a`humorous,' `sparkling', `cheerful' Scherzo will be squeezed in, and a finale. Here therondo form is popular, according to the plan A±B±A±B±B or A±B±A±C±A, etc.59 Thus theentire cyclic work is now complete. The lucky composer will succeed in gettingit performed. The audience will be impressed at the outset by the title `sonata'or `symphony', as this appears to be one of those works conceived alongclassical lines, full of serious, genuinely artistic effort. They receive itrespectfully, but are no less willing to admit afterwards that they found itthoroughly tedious. But where did the tedium come from? Perhaps from itsclassical construction? Of course not. The tedium is, rather, the consequenceprecisely of the misunderstanding of what a cyclic work must actually be. Thework has indeed not become an organic structure, but rather a potpourricomprising three melodies that seem to have been locked up in cages; and sinceit otherwise lacks any artistic effect of a higher order, on account of its all tooregular construction and philistinism, it is clear that it cannot give rise to thatirrationality that draws us to a true work of art in the first place. In the samespirit as the public, who found the work tedious, the official criticism sends outa warm notice that nevertheless does not conceal the tedium that was produced,without failing to underscore the idea that, in the end, the entire `classicalform' has survived. So strong is the suggestion of the title, as I have alreadyexplained, that in spite of the fact that the great masters have provided andcontinue to provide the counter-proof of their immortality, which has wellwithstood the test of time, {44} it is accepted in all seriousness that the tediouswork was, at least in its form, just as `classical' as one by a Beethoven. Withrespect to form, perhaps, only with the difference of genius, namely, on thepart of Beethoven's.That there can be no place in such works for artistic effects of a higher nature should be clearwithout further explanation. There are no surprises in the modulation section or the developmentsection, nor are there effects from the reinterpretation of bars, as arises from the continuousdrawing together of new themes with natural force. The contrasts in dynamic serve only theflattest of purposes; in short, the piece works basically as mockery of higher art.This is the way in which composers such as Pleyel, Kozeluch, WoÈ lffl, Reissiger, Onslow,Spohr and Carl Maria von Weber were disposed to writing cyclic works.60

{46 ctd} Think, for instance, of the piano concertos that were composed after Beethoven.Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 69Apart from those of Mendelssohn and Brahms, of which I spoke earlier, composers usually makethe mistake of not keeping the orchestra and piano as equals. I regard this merely as a lack ofinsight, which I must condemn all the more because it unfortunately results all too often in anatmosphere of wanting to do something completely different everywhere. What else can it havebeen, then, that makes the piano concertos of Chopin and Schumann, for example, today seem sowanting in a certain sense? For does the content of their themes not remain the same, inviolable inits high poetry, unquestionably borne by the breath of genius, even here? And yet the pitiableorchestra, the miserable role to which the orchestra is reduced, has upset all the composer's plans.There is good reason why we perceive a piano concerto by Mozart or Beethoven today as muchmore precise and objective than those by Chopin. After the passing of further decades, a similardecadence may be prophesied in the effect on listeners of such currently popular piano concertosas those of Liszt and Grieg; they are so grateful for them from a pianistic standpoint that theycannot drive their composers' stupidity from the world: the orchestra has a poor role to play. Forthis reason the old masters were right when they kept to concerto form in the way in which we seeit in their works.Hector Berlioz and Programmatic MusicFrom all this, however, it is clear that cyclic form may not only be regarded asyet to be superseded, but rather that it presented ± even to geniuses likeSchubert, Schumann and Chopin ± difficulties of the highest order. That,however, artistic impotence is the last authority with the right to proclaimvictory over such an inimitable `form' must be taken for granted. At the start ofthe nineteenth century, the Frenchman Hector Berlioz found himself in such astate of impotence with regard to the cyclic problem. He possessed from theoutset61 very few musical red blood {47} cells; but, by way of compensation, hehad a more developed sense for the external features of musical meaning. As asophist of instrumental music he was seduced by all manner of musical paradoxand aphorism. He was able to think of musical effects even independently oftheir location in the synthesis; that is, independently of their place in the livingwork of art. And thus he could take pleasure in the effect of, for example, three

flutes, four flutes, several timpani, all this at the expense of a future work of art,as if a true work of art could ever admit such musical calculations on demand.This frame of mind is itself enough to show that he appears neither to havesensed, nor to have known, that it is only the synthesis of form that is in anyway capable of affirming and justifying the musical sound.In addition, there arose a very serious misunderstanding with regard to theputative simplicity of Beethovenian `melody'. To be sure, this master derivedhis structures from the idea of the triad. And yet: can things possibly bedifferent? And is it not still far more important to note the characteristic irrationality, whichexpresses itself repeatedly in the melodic design? And further, as it is self-evident thatthe theme of the Eroica is created from the E[ major triad:ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)70 HEINRICH SCHENKERwas it not Berlioz's duty to observe what follows on immediately:and always to consider the totality as such? Is it acceptable, then, to cut the firsttriadic construction loose from the whole in the most childish way, and to seein it, so to speak, the top trump-card of ingeniousness? When one nowconsiders that Berlioz was possessed by the idea of imitating the supposedsimplicity of Beethoven even in his own melodic constructions, then the scopeof this disaster can in fact hardly be overlooked.{48} Thus Berlioz was naturally drawn towards a different outlet, namely,programmatic music. Neither could he in any way suppress his musical talent,nor on the other hand could he achieve the greatness of art, as manifestlyembodied in the great masters. Being in this respect brittle, so to speak, onlyhalf a musician ± I should like to think of him as having initiated a series ofillegitimate musicians, as opposed to the legitimate musicians, which themasters were ± and unable to find his place in synthesis, he sought such a placeoutside of synthesis in programmaticism, as he openly acknowledged. Here heEx. 7 Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 (Eroica), first movement, bars 3±6cresc.cresc.cresc.510Ex. 8 Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, first movement, bars 5±15Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 71believed that he had found the justification and proof of his innovations. Infact, the hoped-for result has come about, insofar as the programme indeedindicates the applied effect, and the composer deceives himself only insofar asthe sum of the individual moments, however explicable they may be, fall farshort of signifying a work of art. In other words, the relationship between theprogramme and the individual passages can by no means suppress the postulatethat the work of art creates the explanatory power for everything offered in theway of ideas and effects, above all from purely internal, musical sources. It has

been an altogether futile vanity to create for music a freedom of form andexpression along any other path except that of artistic irrationality by synthesis,as received from the hands of the masters, as described above. Only someonewho could overlook the irrationality that was already available could dream ofcreating a new one, a first one. Only one who remained unaware of all thatmusic was capable of achieving on its own could now mobilise other arts in arescue operation, in order to rush to the aid of an art of music that wasostensibly too weak.In fact, however, programme and music are related in the following way:programme, being the product of literature, has a story to unfold according tothe strict logic of human events. That this logic is inexorable, that is, that thestory cannot be deflected to the right or the left of its course of events withoutbecoming improbable, is perfectly clear. {49} But since music, on the otherhand, has its own laws, such as the principle of repetition, harmonicprogression, two- and three-part structure, and so on, then in the given caseI believe that this struggle can in no way be resolved by complete paritybetween the two arts, but rather only on the basis of what may be called theprinciple of hospitality. By this I mean the following: if it is the musician who,for any artistic purpose, should temporarily invite a programme, i.e. the poet,into the house of music, then he must see to it that, under all circumstances, heremains in charge of his house and that, conversely, the poet is merely a guest.If, on the other hand, the poet invites the musician to be his guest, he mustassume the right of master of the house and not surrender his art to themusician. This is the way the masters behaved, as I have already said before;they were satisfied with the general idea of the programme, with the help that itcould give, with merely a general stimulation, and in all other respects theyallowed the synthesis to govern according to purely musical house rules.Without doubt, this stimulation gained an influence on the design of themusical idea, and upon a few characteristic passages and figures; nevertheless,all these points receded into the background compared to the autochthonousrule of musical laws.62Of course, anyone who does not recognise these can easily sacrifice them tothe programme. He follows the course of the programme along the entire story,forcing a foreign logic on the work at the expense of musical logic. The effect of aß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)72 HEINRICH SCHENKERpiece of programmatic music may be described with complete precision, objectively andsubjectively.Objectively, programmatic music reveals internal associations being setaside, in order to be replaced by external ones. When one considers that ourmusic first became an art only by the victory of purely internal musicalassociations (see Harmonielehre, §3), and in this respect is perhaps to bereckoned as at most five or six centuries old ± compared to the other arts, musicis much the youngest ± then {50} the damage that music suffers fromprogrammatic music must be described as all the more terrifying. For beforethe laws of this young art were even understood and further developed, the

malicious attempt was made to untie this development by referring again toexternal associations with poetry (i.e. with the word), as in the most primitivetimes. In other words, programmatic music destroys the creation of musicallaws, without being able to give music new laws, precisely on account of thelack of a purely musical synthesis.Subjectively, however, the effect on the world of entertainment is quitecomplicated. Without doubt, the uneducated layman can actually relate to theprogrammatic better than to the synthesis-bearing absolute. For the laymanbasically wants to know always what the tones mean. He wants to gain insightinto them, just as he wants to gain insight into a picture or drama, andtherefore to be able to have one thought or another about it, whether fictionalor material. Because our great masters in the end based their art more uponitself, their works have been distanced from the world at large. Their entire artbecame aristocratic, and thus not understood by the great masses and only littleappreciated. Let us not be deceived about this: the instrumental works of aJohann Sebastian Bach, a Handel, an Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and soon, have remained unknown to the world, and in truth only because they arenot picture books for small children. Compared to music, which had grown up,the world remained the big child, who is glad when it suddenly gets anotherpicture book opened by an artist. Now, people can rejoice in being involved inworking out what this series of tones means, and to find confirmation that somemusical figure represents a particular object, or that some harmony representsa particular part of the programme; in short, music turns out more agreeably asan art with a clear meaning than as a non-programmatic symphony. Thisreturn to clearly denoted music signifies, therefore, a de-aristocratising of ourart and, at the same time, a homage to the standpoint of the layman.Now the question arises: is the layman such a profitable gain for the art ofmusic as one might believe? There has been a lot of enthusiasm, especiallythese days, for the widening of audiences or, what amounts to the same thing,for the raising of the general level. {51} Verily, the point has been reached atwhich voices are counted, instead of being weighed. And an artist will gladlyrun after the layman, since every voice that he gains makes him proud. One hasMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 73gone so far as to be willing to reduce the clefs in our notation system to two, atmost three, only in order that the much-courted layman can follow the scorewithout difficulty. (God forbid that he should need instruction in readingclefs!) But as much as the artist overestimates the layman in this respect, hecertainly underestimates him in another respect, but only [. . .]. For as true as itis that the layman enjoys clearly denoted music, it is no less true that hesuspects that, for example, Bach and Beethoven are higher beings ± puzzles forhim, temporarily ± the pondering of whom must, however, be regarded as anhonourable activity. He feels, as it were, the majesty of aristocratic genius as adark, secret burden upon himself, a genius that seems to live abstractly for art'ssake, unconcerned with that approval. Thus we see an irony that is certainlynot without humour: the artist lowers himself to the level of the layman, thechild, and is pleased if he can give other children pleasure. And now it is these

very children who will leave him ignominiously in the lurch, out of awe andrespect for other, true masters. I believe I have thus shown that the layman is,after all, not such a welcome figure in art. Hardly have fifty years passed since[a composer's] principal works were written than we find that, from a musicalpoint of view, they are not sufficiently substantial, i.e. interesting. All charmsseem faded, betrayed by the lack of argument such as could only have beenprovided by an appropriate synthesis. Did this come about all of a sudden?Certainly not. Rather, it is to be understood that, even in the moment of firstpleasure, there was a small dose of poison, or discomfort, in the listener. It is alltoo evident that basic effects seem to have the upper hand, as follows: the veryjoy of working out the meaning; then the aggressive meaning of this impetuousmusic, with all the measures of the reality of the programme; and, not least, thesupposed revolutionary quality, that seemed to be expressed by these means.On the basis of all these passing impressions, it was now believed necessaryactually to establish a school. And if the founding of such a school, {52}understood historically in the driest sense, i.e. in the common sense thathistory retells everything that has ever happened, has indeed to be accepted,then it is nevertheless painful to realise that clear mistakes and momentarymental lapses could lead to an abortive founding of a school, whereas in factonly musical disadvantages emerged: the banishing of internal associations, thedestruction of taste and hearing, the shaking of musical conscience by theirresponsible foundation of schools, by the attribution of historical quality toworks of an inferior rank, by the mobilising of unmusical people for the sake ofideas that led away from art, and the like.63But what is most depressing to observe in Berlioz's works is the completedisappearance of all synthesis-bearing complexity and irrationality. That is, themusic as understood in purely musical terms probably stands on the bottomrung when it comes to musical synthesis. Neither the design of the individualthemes nor the construction of groups and, ultimately, of the whole exhibitsß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)74 HEINRICH SCHENKERany noteworthy features. The briefest of Haydn keyboard sonatas has moremusically synthesis-bearing esprit than the entire life's work of Berlioz. Thiscomplete deficiency of intellectual complexity would certainly have beenintolerable to Berlioz himself (as he was without doubt a man of greatambition, and talent too) had he not lived by the fallacy of using the othermeasures, which he applied for the sake of the programme, to make music morecomplicated than was necessary. I am convinced that he regarded his music asmore complex than Beethoven's. He took such great pleasure in those verydrastic measures that he applied to excess. Oh, the happy child! He had noinkling of what musical complexity means: that, for instance, the technicalartistry that I described above makes for a much livelier flow of musicalcontent than does such drastic flaunting of an individual moment for thebenefit of an external association.{53} That association, as Berlioz interpreted it, had moreover the appallingconsequence of making the tempo of the musical action altogether slower.When Beethoven, for example, surrendered himself to the idea of `storm', he ±

the most accomplished of all synthesisers ± knew first of all to choose all thetone-painterly values in such a way that they would became motives in thesame sense in which other values were otherwise motives, even if they hadnothing at all to do with tone-painting, as for instance in the SecondSymphony. In other words Berlioz, proceeding from the opposite notion that astorm could be expressed with greater musical similarity than we find inBeethoven, and indeed by the application of stronger measures, also had tomake a greater effort to realise this similarity. To underscore the similarity,however, he had to allow more time for the depiction. To put it briefly: themeasures have become denser, and the time required for them to take effect hasbecome greater. Merely the depiction alone lasts longer and retards the music,making it slower. To the same extent that purely musical synthesis becamemore tightly compressed, the general nature of programmatic music thusbecame slower, as regards its inner character. It is always individual points thatpreciously peer out from outside the musical frame, so to speak, and attempt tocome as near as possible to an alien truth, no matter what the cost.[31/87] The fussiness, then, with which the programmatic composer tracesevery individual association, merely to be perfectly truthful, perfectly clear,also makes the pieces longer to the same extent that the tempo has been madeslower. For this reason, programmatic composers write only long pieces,whether overtures or symphonic poems. They actually use up large stretches oftime for individual events, and so the sum of the individual events leads to ageneral lengthening of the piece. Inexperienced laymen, whether or not theywrite about music, are apt to err in calling long pieces `large forms'. But thetwo are quite different things. Thus, for example, a large form exists only whenthe content is expressed by unusually large group constructions, or when theMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 75individual themes are put together in an unusually varied way, as for instancethe first theme of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. That a large number of barsdoes not, however, signify a large form may perhaps best be proved by the factthat it would be possible to stuff the content with superfluous repetitions andsimilar triflings, and then to add these up to make a large number of bars inorder to gain a large form. Thus the programmatic composer gives theimpression of being more complex, `more generous in his forms', as one sooften hears said today.{53 ctd} The self-delusion that consisted of believing that his works werepermeated by musical progress, because he found them more complicated thanprevious music in terms of the measures that he applied, is a delusion thatBerlioz also managed to communicate to the rest of the world. The world thusbegan to believe that here, at any rate, lay a form of progress, and that anostensibly greater complexity was the very thing that explained why new musicdid not work so satisfactorily and could not claim an immediate victory. And itis here that we can see perhaps the greatest damage caused by programmaticmusic: that it succeeded in giving the illusion that the art of portraying aWitches' Sabbath is a much more complicated task than the organisation of thecontent of a First Symphony. {54} Since time immemorial, charm has been an

enemy of wisdom in the following sense: that, for instance, a symphony byHaydn or Mozart, because its high degree of perfection makes the mostcharming impression, in no way permits the layman to recognise what anextraordinary degree of complexity is hidden behind this charm. Mozart'ssymphonies give pleasure because they are `so pretty'. But the same personwho has just enjoyed these symphonies can allow himself to be impressed by anaggressive, drastic programmatic music, without realising that there wasactually more in Mozart's symphony by which to be impressed. Howevermuch, in fact, the grounds for being impressed by Mozart's music lie deeperand are resolved so wonderfully in its perfection, to an even greater extent dothe apparent grounds on which programmatic music makes its effect lie on thesurface. And that appearances have an easier chance of victory is well-known.But as I have already said, in the long run the nemesis of truth will of courseprevail over all previous victories of appearance.The introduction of programmatic music was also accompanied by otherunacceptable qualities, which have unfortunately remained stationary in therealm of the art. Indeed, I said earlier that the new, impetuous method whichseemed to taste so much like greatness of thought and artistry, like a passion fortruth and progress, made an immediate impression on many people; but that,nevertheless, in some corner a small proportion of revulsion still remained,without those so affected being able to account for it. One knows from history,to put it briefly, that Berlioz's programmatic music could not win those purefeelings of love, awe or respect, that the works of our masters were capable ofß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)76 HEINRICH SCHENKERgaining from the world. From the very first moment, had not the cleft beenopened? One could be impressed, but one had a secret feeling that, forexample, Haydn was an entirely different world, a higher and purer one: andthis indeed in spite of all the charm and `Papa Haydn' qualities that the stupidworld imputed to him and which it thinks it has long since outgrown.64 Butnow such pure feelings as were conveyed to the masters, even when from timeto time they [had] appealed in vain to the listeners' reason, {55} can certainlynot be imposed with force. The friends of programme music, and of Berlioz,and above all Berlioz himself, might have felt or recognised the true, sorry stateof affairs, for nothing was so near to their hearts as to win the people's love fortheir master in the name of progress, of novelty, etc. How, by contrast, wereour masters moved, without knowing how and when this happened! Theirworks came like rays of the sun, not by announcing their advent but bysuddenly being there, offering nourishment. And, conversely, they gainedrenown without having to make any particular effort at it. Since Berlioz, thingsare different. Here practically everything must be forced: the listener's love,and the recognition of mastery. For the first time, a kind of eminence by forcewas being practised. And the preparation for this compulsion became theoccupation of a musical party, which was by no means always free frompolitical beliefs.Franz LisztAfter Berlioz, a further step leading away from the honest and lofty art of our

classical masters was taken by Franz Liszt. One can take it as read that theformer had the stronger initiatives, the latter basically restricted himself tofollowing a path already trodden. If, however, I leave the question of priorityto one side, that unfortunately does not change the fact of the matter, namely,that Liszt also continued to promote programme music with great zeal. Theeffect of his personality, furthermore, contributed the most to help thesupposed `reform music' to gain respect. For me, perhaps the strangest puzzleabout this artist is how he managed to take this wrong turning in spite of somuch specifically musical talent, which places him actually higher than Berlioz.Liszt was very well acquainted with almost the entire output of classical music,better than Berlioz and better even than Wagner who followed him. He soughtconstantly to remain in touch with the masters and their works, in order tolearn honestly from them and to perfect his own art. In spite of all the otherfeatures of his character, which, to be sure, do not place Liszt in the ranks ofthe greatest men, I am convinced of his great integrity in pursuit of a high art.{57} This speaks to me from all those countless transcriptions of works byBach, Beethoven, Schubert and others. These were, for him, certainly not justtranscriptions in the superficial sense, pieces full of a brilliant new technique,Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 77which he may have wanted to distribute to virtuosos and pianists for concertperformance, but also the equivalent to copies of masterful paintings made bybudding artists. It was his way of studying the masterworks, precisely byturning them simultaneously into piano transcriptions. Utility took manydirections: he learned himself, and pianists benefited from his work.Nevertheless, I should like to maintain in spite of all circumstances, that thisself-study occupied him more than did transcribing.But then how was it possible that he, who availed himself so intensively of theopportunity to examine the works of the classical composers, did not unlocktheir intensity to the extent that he noticed the crux of their technique, as didSchubert and Schumann and, more remarkably, Mendelssohn and Brahms?How was it possible, I ask, that he did not feel precisely that quality whichmakes the works of the classical composers distinctive: the plan of action, all thetechniques that make the necessary effect in the shortest possible way, and thevarious artistic techniques of which I expressly spoke earlier? In order to answerthis question, I trace this fact back to a defect in Liszt's artistic personality. Hewas unfortunately burdened with a large measure of superficiality and vanity,which worked detrimentally, at cross purposes to his undisputed idealism. Itwas the piano, and pianism, that gave rise to his vanity and nourished it. To hispiano belonged the whole world, which he was unfortunately too weak to resist.He had also achieved for himself a magnificent cultural upbringing; but it wasmerely an upbringing of the salons, not a powerful, permanent, original one.Cosmopolitan man of the salon that he was, he developed a correspondingeclecticism, compared to which the much-reviled Meyerbeerian eclecticismseems to be in the purest German tradition. In his melodic lines areincorporated rather trivial Italian tunes. But it was not that high {58} Italianart of a Domenico Scarlatti, which is in no respect inferior to German art.65 No,

this was just Italian melody per se, stretched out at length and lacking in artistry,perhaps useful only for the purpose of opera, and certainly not for cyclic works.Beside this Italian touch, a staunch Frenchness: all the elements that one findstime and again, such as his farcical irony, his mania for showiness, worship ofwomen and worldly things, the femininely sparkling piano texture, in short thesentimental feminine in him and in his works. In addition, a mad Hungariancharacter with which his youth was associated, with all the recollection of theoriginal, ingenious gipsy style. And thrown in with this, a piece of German art:Bach, Beethoven and Schubert. The eclectic standpoint actually eludes himonly rarely. Where he frees himself from it, he can virtually make his way to anoriginal ingeniousness. And the heart of this ingeniousness is irony, and thesovereignty that is contained in it, which thirsts after the amazement and theveneration of people, no matter who these people are.Thus for example I admire him for the second etude, in A minor, from theTranscendental Etudes, perhaps the piece that most outstandingly reflects hisß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)78 HEINRICH SCHENKERspecific talent. Here he is original, excellent, the sovereign lord not only of theinstrument but also, at the same time, of music. And however small the piecemay be, it credits him with the highest honour and bears witness to adisposition imbued with genius much more reliably than his largest works, theoratorios not excepted. For it is actually in these larger works that eclecticismagain comes to the fore, along byways that arise from the need to create longstretches of music, insofar as he often must, for example, imitate the learnedstyle of Bach in order to get through certain sections of his oratorios. In suchworks, then, all the features of Liszt's musical personality create the contra-diction that has ensnared them from the outset: German, Italian, French,Hungarian music, all mixed together and, unfortunately, never harnessed by ahigher organisational instinct. {59} A second, better nature may have struggledwithin him, seeking isolation, depth and an element of German character; butit was actually suppressed by the inferior nature in him, and thus he lacked thelogical education of an inalterably high character. Traits such as these ± that hetook leave of the world for a long time, in order to perfect his piano technique;that he gave up performing in public at a relatively early age, apart fromoffering his services most generously for good causes; that he was drawn toreligion; that he loved, honoured and promoted all that was great and endowedwith genius, regardless of whether it was old or recent art, or whether theartists were famous or still unknown ± all point to a great being, to whomdestiny denied the finishing touches, when we consider all the other traits thatare mixed in with these. And so I deduce, finally, from his half-finishedcharacter the half-finished quality of his musical instincts; that is to say,however much he studied and imitated the classics with the most awesome,deepest love, his instincts were halved, intermixed and insufficient to seeeverything that needed to be seen with a logical presentiment and inspiration.Drama, Music Drama, GluckBut the final blow, which threw the masters from the saddle, was struck byRichard Wagner. By offering the specific genre of music drama, he is more

kindly disposed towards the layman than Berlioz and Liszt with their pro-grammatic music: for what sort of miserable clarity may be found in the lattercompared to the clarity that the stage can offer? If, in programmatic music,only the ear and the intellect are active in working out what the music issupposed to represent, in music drama the sense of sight makes a decisiveentry. Now, accordingly, there is no longer any puzzle: to the eye and the ear,everything is clear and every atom of music can be controlled by beingequated with the association that the composer has given to it. That thisseries of notes is dedicated to the Rhine, that one to the sword, still another tothe Rhine journey, all of this is, so to speak, clear to the ear and the eye. If aMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 79puzzle possibly remains, it can only be {60} the highest one, hovering over allthe senses, namely the dramatic one: the nub and the significance of thedrama itself ± a question, moreover, that the world, the audience at large,avoids. But this last puzzle does not in the least nullify the fact thateverything else offers the layman a clear picture, of the sort that music canapproach only in the genre of song where, namely, the word explains andcontains. That comes, of course, from the stage, which is so arranged that theviewer need only keep his eyes and ears open to get closer to the things thatare played out before him. The layman loves the theatre above all, preciselybecause of this convenient access to a work of art. If, on the other hand, hehas to read a book, he must collect his thoughts, make a certain amount ofeffort, seek out peace and quiet, and then place his imagination at the author'sdisposal, whereby the support from the eyes and ears is withdrawn. Whenconfronting a painting, he must shift his imagination again into a similarlyheightened and active state if he is to comprehend the sense; and, finally,when confronting a piece of music he must rid himself of every self-evidenttruth. But the theatre, alone among all artistic sites and artistic possibilities,offers him the advantage that, by being supported by all of his senses andhaving less of a struggle than in all the other cases, he can just get on with thereality of things. The fact that one does not have to make a serious effortoffers us a sufficient explanation as to why, for the world in general, art is,plainly and simply, the theatre, and why all the people of the world, from theemperor to the lowliest worker, are equally drawn to the theatre to enjoy art,rather than to a performance of a symphony or string quartet. I can say withperfect equanimity that, for audiences at large, Goethe and Schiller, forexample, are known only by their plays, Mozart only by his operas, but thatthe other works of these masters, because they require more effort, haveremained unknown, both in their time and ours. The question now arises,however, whether the arts actually present their best work in the form ofdrama, as the stage demands. Poetry is still able, with reasonable help fromthe other arts ± insofar as one might wish to consider set-designing as abranch of painting ± to pursue {61} its own life, even on the stage.And when a poet is overcome by a desire to speak to the people, in order toinstruct them or to give them artistic edification, he can attempt this preciselyfrom the stage without further ado, for he will find no more wide-ranging

organ than the stage to satisfy his purposes, without exacting a sacrifice frompoetry. Even on the stage, poetry can remain poetry, and the world at largemay draw advantages from it because it is possible to enjoy it without makingany great effort. However, this advantage is in fact only a property of the art ofthe spoken word: the plastic and musical arts are excluded. On the stage thesetwo are not entirely in their own element, as poetry can be. Rather, when theyare obliged to work on the stage, especially with the considerable presence ofß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)80 HEINRICH SCHENKERpoetry or dance, they must make significant sacrifices with respect to theiressential qualities and the laws that govern them. Instead of appearing withtheir innate effect, painting and music on the stage, in such circumstances,merely serve as applied arts, and from the outset their fate is sealed. They mustserve the spoken art, which is the only one that works just as innately on thestage as in the novel and in lyric verse.What might possibly be the reason for this? I believe that there is no otherreason than that poetry uses language as a tool, the same language that we usein our daily life for purposes of communication. Under all circumstances it isthis language, which is understood ± must be understood ± by the audience atlarge. In this way a minimum of clarity and sense is guaranteed to the poetfrom the outset. From this it follows that, by means of a language that isgenerally intelligible, the plot, the anecdotal features of drama, must succeed inbeing realised. Now even if the poet dare not hope that the audience will everunderstand the specifically poetic aspects of his work ± his art of abbreviation,the elevation from a free structure towards a highly organised one, and all thecountless indefinable artistic techniques that are part and parcel of a dramaticpoet's me tier ± one can nevertheless say that a sufficient result has beenobtained if, at the very least, the story, as an imitation of life, is recognised andappreciated through the medium of language.{62} Unfortunately the comfort of an equally favourable result is notgranted to those who work in the fine arts, or in music. One might object,saying that even painting has its subject matter, which it takes from life andnature in the same way that poetry does. Yet between the two types of subjectmatter lies a fundamental difference: in poetry, the event retains its plasticityby moving forward in time, so that time forms the embodiment of the event, soto speak, in the same way as it does in real life. By contrast, the element of timeis excluded from painting, which is ruled only by the plasticity of the instant;from here one can of course point forward into the future, or backwards intothe past ± but to do this must already mean an act on the part of the viewer.Thus in painting that which is material, even though taken from real life, is avery small quantum, too small to seize the public's attention for a length oftime; for the artistic moment, the abbreviation of an instance in life or natureis, for the brushstroke and the application of colour, no more the subject ofgeneral interest than it is in poetry.The material of music, however, is no more than the motive, from the outsetan invention that is alien to the real world and of which one certainly takes nonote on its first appearance, even one that is possibly derived from life or from

nature ± especially in the case that it is so derived. Universal clarity, so tospeak, has completely disappeared, and all that remains is art ± repetitions andforms ± in which, as I have said, the audience shows no interest at all. Fromthis standpoint, music surely has the worst position among the arts.Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 81Unfortunately, the opposite of all this is believed. For one likes to think thatmusic in particular, through the sensuous effects of its elements, has no lesswide-ranging relationships to the real world than does poetry. One goes evenfurther and declares that a stronger effect on audiences at large is contained inthe indefinable qualities of musical content than in the clarity of poetry. Andyet I believe I can maintain that all this is only an illusion; for if one observescarefully, {63} one finds that music achieves such an intensive effect less bystanding in relationship to itself than by striking up a relationship withfunctions of life which, precisely because of their greater power (the power oflife and also of speech), raise the effect from the outset. This is the case when,for instance, music is placed in the service of religion, or war, or dance, etc.Without the clear basis of the religious action (in ancient times, one could alsoreckon on drama), which on account of its own character disposed the mood ofthe listener towards the most intensive artistic effect, the music that wassupplied would never have created that effect that one mistakenly attributes toit alone. Similarly in the case of, for instance, the Marseillaise, the effect of themusic is overrated if one underrates the political intention of this all-powerfulsong. And cannot also all dance music, with all its sensual charm, be tracedback to the effect of the dance itself, more than to its content?Thus at an early stage, the fine arts and music have learned to recognise that,in the wide, wide world, they can never achieve the popularity of effect forthemselves, as is granted to so great an extent to poetry on the stage. They weredriven by necessity into a partial retreat, in order to pursue their own essencein peace. And so they were successful in developing laws of their own, and inbringing forth ever more effects, which were no longer effects for the world atlarge. In this way these arts achieved an emancipation, if one wishes to use adifferent term to designate their flight from the real world. I should like to callthis transformation `aristocratism', insofar as they were content to give up,once and for all, feeling entirely at home in the world at large.In this respect, then, opera is a limited genre. To speak now of this art alone,we may characterise it as the renunciation of the aristocratism that had beenwon following a long struggle. Because of its common and general clarity, theart of speaking, i.e. poetry in opera (in common parlance: the action, the text) isthe strongest force at work, and there remains nothing more for music to do{64} than to use its measures to give further help to the effects that are alreadyguaranteed. When one considers all that music has won in being differentiated,in its aristocratism with regard to laws and effects, and when one furtherconsiders that it is hindered in opera from thus showing what has indeedbecome of it, merely because the poetry does not need this, then one mustdefine the position of music in opera as an art that merely serves. And one canvery easily derive from this the fundamental principle that the hybrid genre of

opera, where music can never entirely come into its own, can allure most easilyß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)82 HEINRICH SCHENKERonly those who do not perceive the aristocratism of music, and who do notknow all that music is capable of doing, and what they therefore owe it ± inshort, those who do not have very much to lose thereby.In a similar situation was Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck. To him thearistocratism of music was, for sure, entirely unknown, as regards all that musichad already achieved through [Domenico] Scarlatti, Handel and Bach. Heknew, too, that theatre audiences in general have nothing in common with allthese accomplishments. It was easy for him to sacrifice what he was incapable ofdoing, and so he gave in to his inability when he appeared on the scene as theapostle, so to speak, who would teach music to be truthful. As if music, as art,should not in the first place be beautiful ± music, above all ± and as if itstruthfulness should not reside in its beauty! As if music must only be foreverjudged on this matter by poetry, as if it were being asked to make a confession ofits truthfulness before an examining magistrate! Is not music the best judge ofits own matters? And must it give evidence of its truthfulness in a poetic forum?Does poetry, conversely, thus subordinate itself in a musical forum?{65} In this way, Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck had truthful music. Iask now: where did this truthfulness get him? Has it not disappeared, along withthe corresponding truthfulness to life in the libretti he set? And, indeed,disappeared for ever, in spite of the ardent efforts of Wagner and hisfollowers?66 Was it therefore necessary to play this truthfulness as the highesttrump-card of art? To set the entire world on fire in the name of truthfulness?And did not those do better who sought to give music what belonged to it,leaving it alone in its aristocratism, with the result that they continue to live inour midst today, as if on the first day? What is the point, I ask, to rob music of itsmost beautiful, its most innate qualities, in order to be punished later for thisbetrayal? But, of course, lack of ability and lack of aristocratism are also forcesand, moreover, they are pernicious forces. But even more pernicious is the lawof the audience, which will, like a wicked woman, drag an all-too-weak artistdown with it. Yes, from the standpoint of music, opera may be defined as theadmission of inability, lack of aristocratism, and servitude before the audience.MozartNow Gluck's music was truthful, as I said, and it was also beautiful in manyrespects; but when measured against what music was at that time, it could notin the least be called high art. And now the very thing came along that did poorGluck more harm than his fanaticism for truthfulness had helped him: for nowcame Mozart! Ah, this divine one knew what was truthful; but as a musicalaristocrat he also knew what beautiful music was. And so he taught Gluck alesson in how one can write music that is truthful and at the same time of highquality, even in the service of the accursed genre of opera, where music is by noMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 83means in its element. And in my view Mozart's greatest accomplishment is, byvirtue of his higher operatic art, to have made Gluck unviable once and for all.

Perhaps, if viewed historically, it is his only such accomplishment, for in thecomposition of quartets, symphonies, trios and so on he had rivals ± assumingthat it is indeed possible to make comparisons among geniuses. By contrast, thebenefit he bestowed on music, by placing Gluck in the corner in which he nowstands,67 is something for which we should erect monuments to him. For onecannot imagine the harm that would have befallen music, {66} whose extra-ordinarily high degree of perfection had only recently been gained throughHandel and Bach and taken along new paths by Emanuel Bach and Haydn (noless truthful, even though they were far removed from opera!), had thetruthfulness of Gluck failed to be corrected by that of Mozart.Mozart would not have been the musical genius that he was had he beenunable to renounce what the art of music of his time amounted to. His instinctpositioned itself in relation to opera from the outset in an entirely different waycompared to Gluck. Even here, he had to remain the musician that he wasanyhow. And so, as early as on the occasion of The Abduction from the Seraglio,he wrote those remarkable words to his father to the effect that `poetry in operamust be the obedient daughter of music' precisely in relation to this opera.68These words, however, mean something other than what they are generallytaken to mean. For The Abduction from the Seraglio was written with anattitude towards art, with the intention of beauty and perfection in art, whichfits in very well with his early years, less so with the needs of the drama. Theyouth within him has, in its tempest, something almost innocently ostenta-tious: he wants to show all that he can do, namely, all that he could do at thetime. A certain forcedness, even exertion, is clearly in evidence ± the vanity ofthe bridegroom, to put it in human terms. He therefore wants to write elevatedbeautiful music at the outset; and in order to justify this, to himself and to hisfather, he constructs the postulate that music has the greater weight incomparison with poetry. But one must take care when considering these wordsif one is to understand Mozart correctly. For, as I have said, they apply only tothe case of The Abduction from the Seraglio, and his own later practice changesthe postulate significantly.For if Mozart had remained true to his vision, then, as his absolute musicalabilities increased, he would have had to propose, in principle, acorrespondingly richer, more complicated music in his later operas, comparedto what he offered in The Abduction from the Seraglio. The heightened art,which he revealed as continually evolving in his symphonies, quartets andtrios, {67} would have logically had to lead to an elevated artistic developmentin his operas as well. And yet we see that precisely these works are free of thoseheightened elements; they are constructed merely according to the principle ofthe greatest possible simplicity. In the whole of Don Giovanni one findsß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)84 HEINRICH SCHENKERabsolutely nothing of the artifice with which his absolute music is soextravagantly conceived; nothing of the complexities of voice-leading, whichbecome concentrated by embracing the more learned forms, from the simplestimitation right up to fugue;69 and nothing of the indescribable wonders of hissynthesis. Rather, the music appears so simple here that it is hard to believe

that the same composer also wrote that artistic body of work. As one can see, heno longer had the compulsion to imbue music with all that it was capable ofdoing, as he had previously done at the time of The Abduction from the Seraglio;but he no longer wanted this. His mature sense of the theatre required him tomoderate his art in such an intelligent way.Don Giovanni: Act 1 IntroductionWhat he preserves of his high art in opera are the principles of diversity andirrationality ± here at any rate reduced quantitatively but not qualitatively bydramatic necessity ± as well as the proper conduct of the harmony. In thisrespect, it is most instructive to examine the Introduction to Act 1 of DonGiovanni, which Bulthaupt has so usefully assessed from a different point ofview.70 The piece begins in F major, the orchestra setting up a ten-barantecedent phrase which ends on a dominant chord. The consequent phrase istaken immediately by Leporello and answers the antecedent precisely, exceptthat instead of closing [onto the tonic] it too ends on the dominant. Thus acontinuation is sought, as if the two previous groups of bars had, finally, to beanswered by a definitive consequent phrase. A new idea begins in bar 20, thistime on the downbeat, in contrast with the first idea, which had begun on thethird beat of the bar. This second theme may be partitioned as follows. First ofall, three bars plus three bars (20±22, 23±25). This six-bar group, which itselfexhibits a parallel construction, is answered in a general way by a seven-bargroup (25±32), whose construction begins once more on the third beat of thebar. {68} And here too a parallelism, of two-times-four bars, may be discerned(25±29 and 29±32), even though the second element appears shortened by abar. The tonic is finally reached in bar 32, but it is still too weak to be capableof bringing the necessary repose to the musical mass that precedes it. Thus anew group, comprising a further two-times-four bars and beginning on thethird beat, is added, its material split between the orchestra and vocal part.Even though all this has occurred for the sake of an effective close, and thesense of closure is satisfactorily secured, Mozart nevertheless had reason toensure the effectiveness of the great variety contained in the previous materialwith all the means at his disposal. And how better to accomplish this thansimply by a repetition of the entire complex? Thus with the speediest decisive-ness, he moves in bar 40 towards a gentle cadence on the dominant, finishingwith a fermata (bars 40±44). Now, in bar 45, the previous material is repeated,Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 85with the most notable irrational feature, namely, that the initial nineteen-bargroup is omitted. The repetition proceeds exactly, from bar 45 to bar 57, wherewe arrive at the position reached in bar 32. And since Mozart had previouslystrengthened the close at bar 32 with the eight-bar phrase leading to bar 40, asmentioned earlier, here too he intends a similar effect, only via a differentroute, namely by repeating the previous group of bars 50±57 (in contrast to theearlier procedure, where they were left unrepeated). Between these two groups,however, he inserts a new one, bars 57±63, on the one hand to avoid robbingthe repetition of its effect, and on the other hand to achieve a greater diversity.Thus may Leporello's entry be understood in musical terms. All things

considered, the construction is very similar to that of an abstract musical idea:we see the same characteristics found {69} in high Classical art, with fullemployment of the repetition that is, after all, indispensable but with aconsiderable number of irrational features: changes [to the starting beats] ofphrases, three-bar groups, the abandonment of repetition in one place, theinsertion of material between antecedent and consequent phrases elsewhere,and above all the impression of a spirited, rich ± abundantly rich ± formation ofnew ideas, which are assembled to form a larger group.Let us examine the Introduction further. Bars 70±74 make up the orchestralprelude to the entrance of Donna Anna and Don Giovanni. For this pair ofcharacters, however, Mozart has a different tonal backdrop, B[ major. Beingthe key of the subdominant, it satisfies the demands of absolute music; but howdoes Mozart get to B[? By the quickest route possible, in three bars, by simplyadding the seventh, E[, and nothing more. The semiquaver figure, which theorchestra introduces in three bars (70±72), is intended to provide the motto, soto speak, for the new situation; and this occurs in such a way that it functionssimultaneously as the start of a five-bar group beginning at bar 73. The firstexchange between Anna and Giovanni is despatched in the form of anantecedent plus consequent, bars 73±77 and 78±82. To this group are attachedfour more bars, 83±86, with a new motive appearing in the orchestra and thevocal trio. An internal parallel construction of two-plus-two bars, togetherwith the stationary tonic harmony, are additional features of the new group ofbars. In a further three bars, the harmony proceeds by way of VI and II to animperfect cadence on the dominant in bar 90, giving all the material thus far inB[ major the impression of making up a huge antecedent complex. Thedominant is now sustained from bar 90 to bar 101. And indeed this harmony isat first perceived as the dominant of B[, up to bar 96; but the chromatic E\ inbar 97 and especially the creation of a new motive built round an F major chordin bars 98±102 give the feeling that the key of F major has been reached. In thisgroup too, bars 90±97, a parallel construction is instantly recognisable: bars 90±94 followed by 94±97. If we survey all that has occurred in the key of B[, wecan marvel at the enormous diversity of {70} ever new elements, which is inß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)86 HEINRICH SCHENKERevidence no less here than in the earlier F major section; the easy animation ofthese elements; and above all the irrational circumstances in which they receiveexpression. Even in a string quartet movement or a symphony, the irrationalityof the group structure and the move within the group to the dominant couldnot have been realised differently. Of course there, and only there, this wouldhave been achieved by an expansion of the technical measures, something thatwould be stylistically inappropriate here. The variety of entries and thevibrancy of all these devices is something that one can see for oneself, in the fullscore or a piano-vocal reduction.In bar 102, the most important thing is the start of a second group in B[major, a duel in quavers between Anna and Giovanni, which reaches a textbookcadence in bar 112. The violin figure joins this section to the previous one,which it had actually initiated. Now the whole of this second B[ group is to be

repeated; thus Mozart turns toward the dominant in four bars (112±115), set inrecitative style, with a cadence loosely appended. And here, though he couldhave introduced the expected repetition without further ado, he prefers insteadto increase the degree of irrationality by including a repetition of bars 98±102.The two B[ groups may be thought of, in dramatic terms, as a single largesection in B[ major, which provides a contrast to the starting point of F major.But, as is appropriate for the dramatic situation, the second of these groups ismore strongly developed; it offers more in quantitative terms. And thisquantum is meant to depict the intensification of the struggle between Annaand Giovanni.A further four bars takes us suddenly to G minor: the Commendatorestaggers onto the stage. This key, however, is not affirmed until the followingbars, with [a perfect cadence in] bar 146. G minor is sustained until bar 152, atwhich point a two-bar modulation leads to D minor, which lasts from bar 155to 165. If one considers that, after a further modulation from D minor to F, thevery last key is to be used, [in the form of] F minor, then one will understandthe rapid changes of key as arising from the quick sequence of events on thestage: the angry exchange between the Commendatore and Giovanni, the duel,and the death of the Commendatore. All these events are played out in anunexpectedly quick {71} tempo, and Mozart is correct in tracking them withequally quick modulations. One should never forget, however, that the speedof the key changes could not have been given musical expression had notMozart indeed possessed the right artistic judgement in planning the previousB[ section over a considerable length of time. One need only imagine theopposite strategy, i.e. to suppose that Mozart had already made a disruptivemodulation within the exchange between Anna and Giovanni, which is after allno less an exchange of words than the exchange between the Commendatoreand Giovanni that follows. The result would have been the breakdown ofmusic on dramatic grounds. For however effectively disruption may be set offMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 87from order, and digression from continuation, the contrast between the twoenables both events to appear in their best light, the effect of disruption isdissipated when it has only disruption as its background. Thus a strongerdramatic instinct and a specifically musical intelligence guided Mozart to theprinciple of contrast and, consequently, to the strategy described above.It is not to be denied that Mozart, with his rapid modulations toward theend of the Introduction, moves in the direction of the specifically musical-dramatic; that is, in a movement of instrumental music such a chain of keys andsuch a design could not be justified, since the nature of the art simply does notpermit them. But we must look at all that he does here to minimise thesacrifice, and be secure in the knowledge that the F major and B[ majorsections appear at least to be composed according to all the rules, even those ofinstrumental music, and are musically saturated in a natural way, and thatmoreover Mozart's intention led him from the outset to write an Introductionthat met the needs of the drama, though not one that could in any way be calleda well-rounded form. But what musical techniques would have been more

powerful, in such a rapid unfolding of content, to hold that content togetherthan the principle of parallel construction? Thus, by the creation of a newmotive, in bars 149±152, the last phase in G minor is connected to bars 155±158. The parallel construction is realised here {72} between two keys, not inthe same key, which only adds to the heightened irrationality. In addition,what is most to be admired from a musical-dramatic point of view is the way inwhich Mozart finds the occasion and means to make space, musically, even forthe subtlest dramatic gesture. For the old hothead, the Commendatore, he usesa half cadence on the dominant of G minor in bars 146±149, then themodulation to D minor in bars 152±155, both times indicating the character'sanger with forte. By contrast, Giovanni's replies are kept piano, by whichMozart is able to portray his composure and circumspection. In bars 155±158Giovanni can, of course, contain himself no longer, and while the orchestraremains piano he himself becomes more agitated: Mozart indicates this with thedynamic markings mezza voce and piuÁ voce at the words `Misero! Misero!' Butbefore the outbreak of forte there is a general rest ± a full bar's rest ± and onlyafterwards a forte leading to the cadence in D minor.The duel itself is not made the object of an orchestral set piece; rather, it isintended to give the music the opportunity to modulate, in the space of tenbars, from D minor to F minor.71 The association with duelling is readilysuggested and accomplished by the motive, which appears alternately in thesoprano and bass registers. And thus the matter must be worked throughrapidly, so that the next point in the drama is quickly reached: the death of theCommendatore. That Mozart was dramatically right in this reasoning can beseen from a consideration of the drama as a whole, in which the duel and thedeath of the Commendatore are merely preliminary matters, merely anß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)88 HEINRICH SCHENKERexposition which, if extended beyond reasonable proportions, would have beendamaging to the larger unity. Thus a mere twenty bars ± in a tempo of Andante± are sufficient for him to portray the death of the Commendatore: a shortstatement in F minor which recovers the motive from the B[ group ± some-thing of great value for Giovanni ± and which otherwise strikes a free musicalpath, as far as the motive is concerned. Even this short statement is in effectpunctuated in the middle by a cadence, which thereby makes its musicalstructure clearer.In summing up these observations, we can conclude: that Mozart has in allrespects and at all times been faithful to the interest of music ± by contrast, byparallel constructions in the large and small, and by saturation of key; that wefind the same measures of irrationality that he has used in his purelyinstrumental music; {73} and that above all this irrationality hovers the spirit ofunity in which the individual parts are resolved, just as we find in hisinstrumental music.Don Giovanni: Churchyard DuetAllow me to comment also on the Duet between Don Giovanni and Leporelloin the cemetery. Mozart is not interested in the slightest in portraying deathand night, in which the action takes place, in an unsettling way, nor in evoking

gloominess by musical association, though these would undoubtedly seemappropriate. On the contrary, he seeks to indulge Giovanni's high spirits in thebrightest E major:72 if Giovanni is untroubled, why should Mozart be? Butwhen, in the midst of this boisterousness on Giovanni's part, theCommendatore casts his shadow, then it is of the utmost interest from amusical standpoint to see how Mozart, too, can cast shadows in his musicwithout extracting too great a penalty, and to give up on making the duetsatisfy the highest demands from a purely musical perspective.Broadly speaking, the music unfolds from E major to the upper fifth, Bmajor, in bars 1±19. It then stays in B major in bars 20±44, followed by a returnmodulation to E major, whose tonic appears in bar 48 and is used at thecadence in bar 59. At this point E major is maintained with a short section,which gives this key the opportunity to show that it has predominated over Bmajor. In other words, the breadth of the middle section in B major demands ofthe composer an appropriately stronger expansion of the principal key. Adeceptive cadence, V±VI in E major/minor in bars 73±74, helps postpone thedefinitive ending. The dominant is sought once more, and it is reached in bar82. From this point on, the paths to the final cadence are cleared, and the trueending is found in bar 96.73 A short, swift coda is appended.And now for the details: what richness, what irrationality! The first sectionin E major, bars 1±19, comprises three sections ± 1±10, 10±14 and 14±19 ± inMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 89each of which different motivic material is used. Specifically, however, in thefirst part, two contrasting elements are juxtaposed, i.e. the very same techniquethat Mozart regularly used in his purely instrumental compositions. What Imean is that bars 3±6 are governed by one character, bars 6±10 by another. Onemight almost be inclined {74} to elevate the downward leap of a seventh, apregnant figure conveying Leporello's fearful mood, to a kind of leitmotive,almost in the Wagnerian sense of the term, at least for the duration of thisscene. Mozart is able to use this very motive in such a variety of ways in thecourse of this duet that one could almost forget how it constantly proves to bein the service of the form; that is the triumph of his art! It is less important,then, to note that the said motive appears in the B major group in bars 23±27and then returns in bars 54±58 and finally in bars 91±95; rather the way inwhich it is used each time illustrates most clearly how Mozart treated a musicaldesign very much like the modern leitmotive. Thus we see that the secondoccurrence has precisely the same function, the same relationship, as the first,except of course that it is transposed to B major. At its third appearance it maybe said to conclude the return modulation from B major to E major. Andlikewise at its fourth appearance it is placed at the end of the extended cadence.Depending on its position in the form, the same motive can achieve a differenteffect; conversely, by the exact placement that it assumes within the form, itfulfils very clear obligations to the form. But all these inestimable benefitsderive from the art of creating one theme from several (here, from two)different types of material. Had Mozart not known this technique from hisexperience in composing absolute music, had he lacked the skill ± acquired

from that very experience ± to place a motive in different contexts with a clearunderstanding of its effect each time, the world would have been the poorer fornot having this splendid piece.The B major section initially reproduces the E major music, with lightvariations. But en route to the dominant, what an effective use of modalmixture, with B minor in bars 29 and 30! And how effective is this stroke,despite its simplicity! When the dominant is reached, a second idea belongingto the B major group is heard; it is a kind of pedal point on the dominant.Following the minor-mode feature of which we have just spoken, this secondpassage in B major (without mixture) has a delightful psychological mission:Mozart despatches this key {75} in order to simulate, as it were, the conditionof Leporello's involuntary courage. Poor Leporello is actually in a veryunpleasant frame of mind: he cannot overcome his fear, but the commands ofhis master require him to pull himself together and at least summon hiscourage artificially. A painful minor-mode relapse still awaits him, at the words`Ah, ah, ah, che scena eÁ questa!' at bar 44 in the transition. But preciselybetween these two incidents of B minor, the major mode fulfils its obligations,using a thoroughly easy-going motive, one that works in a natural, amiableß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)90 HEINRICH SCHENKERway. Thus the genius-endowed Mozart understood the delightful necessity ofgiving B major a broader base, in order to unite it with the dramatic effect.I already mentioned that the return modulation to E major must briefly takeup E minor, as Leporello is so afraid at this moment. Giovanni returns him tothe major mode, so that Leporello, however fearful, can nonetheless sing hislittle phrase in bar 60 in E major. We now come to the deceptive cadence wherethe dramatic situation intensifies: Giovanni himself intervenes and addressesthe statue: `Parlate, se potete!' How appropriately is this turn of eventsexpressed by the deceptive cadence, which must also prepare a new develop-ment in the form. After the Commendatore's `SõÁ !', the two main characters singtogether until the final cadence: this passage begins in E minor, so that thetonality can put itself right, with some effort, and end in E major.Don Giovanni: Act 2 FinaleI cannot refrain from pointing out places in the Finale to Act 2 that will offerproof of the purely musical principles underlying Mozart's compositionaltechnique. Even the very first section, in D major, shows the greatest diversityand irrationality in the way it has been put together from groups. Threemotives are joined to form a kind of antecedent phrase, whose consequent istaken only by the second and third motives. There now follow the three well-known quotations, in D major, F major and B[ major. Now for the wonder ofDonna Elvira's entry, again a three-part group in the [new] principal key of B[major. The first part moves to the dominant, the second finishes on the tonic,and the third modulates to F major. Even the F major section is made up ofgroups. Altogether this is an amazing confluence of three parts. In the returnmodulation to the principal key of B[ major, {76} the motive from the first partof the group has a role to play. Just before the repeat of the first group in B[major, a new motive is introduced, which is treated in the course of this scene

as a kind of leitmotive for Don Giovanni, analogous to Leporello's in thechurchyard duet. The reprise in B[ major also introduces new elements. Anelaborate modulation, containing numerous chromatic features, leads bystepwise motion from B[ via B\, C and C] to D minor; a half cadence isfinally made in this key. Immediately thereafter, the key of F major isintroduced, the music mainly taken by Leporello. Here, too, we can but marvelat the richness of motives, their assemblage into larger groups, and alsofeatures of parallel construction.Now for the scene with the Commendatore. In four bars, an orchestralintroduction leads back to D minor. Here the most difficult problem for Mozartlay in wait: to balance the [dramatic] demands of this unusual scene with thedemands of musical logic. For how severely did the appearance of the Com-mendatore, Don Giovanni and Leporello ± three such disparate elements ± strain aMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 91musical synthesis! Was there not the danger that unity could scarcely be achievedif the music were to give to each of these characters that which belonged to him?Should not the Commendatore have his own, heavy rhythm, a more astonishingharmony, a more ceremonious instrumentation? Should not Giovanni andLeporello be given, by contrast, features of rhythm, harmony and alsoorchestration that stand out from these, and, if so, how could all these disparatecharacteristics be put together in a unified way? Without doubt, the gravity of theassignment was somewhat lessened from the outset by the fact that Giovanni andLeporello's music had to be attuned to the mood of the supernatural powers. Thatis, once the Commendatore has appeared, it is impossible for the other twocharacters to appear as they have previously, i.e. boisterous and high-spirited.Rather, this complete contrast to the epiphanic ceremoniousness could be omitted,as the mood emanating from the Commendatore could tolerate earthly resonancesin no mortal being. Although the composer still had a great task ahead of him,Mozart was fortunately the genius who knew precisely about the artistic means athis command. {77} And who better than he knew what a blessing resides in theassemblage of a group from several motives, a secure progression of harmoniesand, above all, a secure tonal design. With these means, he dared also to overcomethe difficulties here, and the challenge paid off.What a broad arc he conceives right in the first group! Thanks to itsdiversity, not only the Commendatore but also Giovanni and Leporello arecomfortably accommodated, and each with his own characteristic expression.It may be noted in passing that this group also makes up the first section of theoverture. And it is instructive to study the differences between these parallelconstructions. At the words `Non si pasce' a modulation to A minor isconceived with strong dramatic measures, but in agreement with all the rules ofa musically ordered structure. This last-named key, however, soon passes intoG minor,74 from which D minor, the starting key and principal key will finallybe reached. Note that the modulations regularly follow the [words of the]Commendatore: he has the power to change the course of fate.To the last part of this scene, the struggle between the Commendatore and

Giovanni, falls the task ± to put it in plain terms ± of winning back D minorand ending in this key. And if it is quite natural for the harmonic progressionI±IV±V±I, with the usual chromatic tones, to be called upon to fulfil such atask, I would still ascribe a higher, almost emblematic significance to Mozart'sbass line D±F]±G±C]±D±G]±A±D, which is, strikingly, used three times insuccession. And if I might also point out that this last passage is dominated bythe motive that had been used to portray the duel in the Introduction, thenthat too may be taken as further evidence that Mozart, without giving offenceto the music, could on the contrary use the most appropriate musical means tounderscore matters that, strictly speaking, lay outside his remit and whichwere also basically inaccessible to the poet.ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)92 HEINRICH SCHENKEROpera Composers After Mozart{78} Of the artists after Mozart who concerned themselves with opera, onlyBeethoven was in the similarly fortunate position of being a complete musicalaristocrat. On the other hand, precisely Beethoven's approach reveals acontrast that makes Mozart's dramatic effect all the more comprehensible.Beethoven had not the slightest idea that his aristocratic manner would only beout of place in opera, and so we see him composing his Fidelio with almost thesame effort at high art as that which he used for his symphonies and stringquartets. Here he might use a canon, elsewhere even a variation movement:what are these artifices doing in an opera? For the opera audience, the worst ofall theatre audiences? For people who, generally speaking, have a truly intimateunderstanding of neither poetry nor music nor painting, and who are thuseasily satisfied and can live cheaply with half-measures of poetry, music andpainting, and who, for a moderate fee, are able to flatter themselves that theyare connoisseurs in all these arts?Beethoven's situation in Fidelio is identical to that of Mozart in The Abductionfrom the Seraglio, at least as far as musical principles are concerned: the musichas too much art. But one should not suppose that Beethoven, had he composeda second or third opera, would have abandoned that principle and taken the paththat Mozart later took, i.e. that he would have given the music only as much as itneeded for such ignorant theatregoers as are found in the opera house.Beethoven was too high-minded, too stubborn, too perfect an aristocrat to bewilling to do a deal, or even be capable of such a thing. We see him often in othergenres, for example in vocal music ± both solo song and choral music ± rebellingagainst nature herself, which is certainly more of an achievement than resistingall the audiences of all time, with a sense of impulsiveness that, had it not beeninspired by such lofty ideals, would have also had to manifest itself to us asunstylistic and perhaps even as frivolous. Did he not, from time to time, believethat in such audacious moments he could wrest effects from nature, though shewould never concede these effects, not even to him? Should he concede musicitself, his beloved high art, to his audience? He? No, not in a million years!Probably he never even contemplated this problem; and merely being at onewith his natural self, he wrote his {79} Fidelio according to his best artisticstandards; and for this we ought to be grateful. Equally, however, it is

abundantly clear that audiences are certainly not in the least grateful to him,since they take infinitely greater pleasure in Wagner's Lohengrin. And beforethey enjoy Fidelio once, they would rather listen to Lohengrin a hundred times.Viewed from a Beethovenian perspective, Mozart might be said to appear inan unfavourable light, in that one could criticise him for his lack of high artisticcharacter, the lack of an equally high aristocratic presence, as was characteristicof Beethoven. And yet I am inclined to take the composer of Don GiovanniMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 93under my protection, in spite of everything, and to explain him as follows:nature sent him out into the world as a prodigy, with the sunniest disposition,and he seems throughout his life to have accomplished his marvels under herbeneficent guidance. Nature, who brought him up, accompanied him in hisworks. She never abandoned him, and he in turn never had the presumption ofbeing ungrateful to her. In his bloodstream, there is not a single corpuscle ofspite or rebellion. And thus if nature has set a limit, say, on the singing voice,he avoids exceeding it in any way. Even his greatest extravagances, his highestrevelations, all lie within the boundaries of art itself and its technical means.Without suffering damage in any way, his genius was always able to gain accessto the nature of musical materials and instruments in such a way that theresultant work reveals a perfect balance between the highest artistic perfection,on the one hand, and an untainted naturalness, on the other. I would go so faras to call him the greatest practical politician that music has known, without ofcourse implying any of the unpleasant attributes that are commonly associatedwith that term. Anything forced was utterly foreign to him, unknown both tohis will and to his art. In this respect alone he was the complete opposite ofBeethoven who, being less musically spontaneous, often had to compensate thisshortcoming by a certain forcedness. That is enough to explain to us why, inhis later operas, Mozart was at all able to disown music, up to a certain point.{80} The clarity of his instinct ± knowing exactly what to do in every situation± prevented him from writing canons, variations and fugues in his operas. Andif, in The Magic Flute, he occasionally touches on the learned style, this is onlyto use secretive means to give representation to secrets, namely, the secrets offreemasonry. For in order to convey a secret to an operatic audience, nothing isindeed more appropriate than ± do not laugh ± a short fugato. Would not such apiece of art sound ± to an audience ± in and of itself mysterious, as high art?To this we may add his upbringing as a youth, which came at a time whenthere was no higher goal than to fulfil a commission, in one theatre or another,to compose an Italian opera. Thus it was from an early age in his blood, almosta habitual instinct, to compose operas on commissioned texts for his dearaudience. And if he retained that instinct toward operatic composition even inhis later years, one may nevertheless make allowances for the fact that he neverhad the opportunity to free himself from that instinct, either by living longer orby becoming financially better off. So much is clear, at any rate: that he set tomusic subjects that were close to him, such as Don Giovanni and The MagicFlute, differently from Titus. To Beethoven, however, such an upbringing wasunknown; he lacked that mischievous theatrical daemon, against whom he

would have had to put up a struggle, so to speak. In this respect he had aneasier time relating himself to operatic composition in the way that he did.Of the opera composers who followed Beethoven, none can, unfortunately,be placed on that high plane of musical aristocracy, on which we have just seenß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)94 HEINRICH SCHENKERMozart and Beethoven. Even Carl Maria von Weber was not sufficientlyintimate with the essence of cyclic composition to apply the blessings of thistechnique to the benefit of operatic music, at least in relation to its newframework, as Mozart had been able to do. To the extent that his technicalability in purely instrumental music fell infinitely far short of that of Mozart,he was excluded from the possibility either of writing dramatic music only withthe means of high art or of achieving dramatic effects with means that are alsorooted in and validated by absolute music.{81} The operatic music of Weber thus shows a tendency, for example,towards longer drawn-out melodies which, lacking variety and the quality ofbeing put together from smaller elements, remain small forms that dispensewith a higher art of group construction. He introduces that cantabile elementstraightaway, which is in direct conflict with instrumental music in the highersense, and whose principle, when combined with an increasing impoverishmentof material, leads perforce to the complete trivialisation of art. The melody toAgathe's words `Leise, leise, fromme Weise' stands in relation to the higherrealms of art ± forgive the severity of the standpoint taken ± no differently froman aria from Bellini's Norma, so small-minded is the approach to melodicinvention and the treatment of compositional problems. In Weber's music thesmaller song forms lack features of higher stylisation. And as a substitute forthis lack of art we find already in Weber the impulse toward the folksy and thenaõÈ ve. I should, rather, say: towards the too-folksy and the too-naõÈ ve.I daresay that Mozart, had he had the idea of writing in such a folksy way,would have solved the problem of the peasant waltz, the bridesmaids' chorus,the hunters' chorus and the many other choruses, without harm to their[dramatic] effect but with significantly greater artistry (mark you, still withouthigh art!) than Weber had done. I need only point out that Don Giovannicontinues to work its magic on an audience no less successfully than Weber'sDer FreischuÈ tz. From this it follows that a higher art must by no meansrelinquish its position if, like Mozart's, it merely avoids being the highest artitself, something which of course must remain ineffective in opera at all times.Thus even from the standpoint of opera, it is not necessary to do what Weberdid, namely, to strip away from music the modicum of art ± of which it is stillcapable, even in the realm of opera ± and actually to sacrifice music toaudiences in the name of Romanticism, or realism, or nationalism. I repeat: thebeauty and effect even of Weber's art is something that I accept, not only foraudiences but also for myself; but anyone who believes that such beauty had tobe paid for by such a lack of art is mistaken. For does not higher {82} art alsohave its beauty? Then what justification is there, if all forms of beauty are to beregarded as equal, for celebrating in the name of progress that very techniquethat evinces a lesser degree of art? Merely because of the material, because of

the story, because of Romanticism, because of patriotism? There may indeedMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 95be a degree of progress in the eyes of patriotism, but progress in patriotismdoes not always have to coincide with progress in music. And if the material ofDer FreischuÈ tz is really more folksy than that of The Marriage of Figaro, am Itherefore also obliged to indicate an improvement in Weber's music in com-parison to Mozart's? Where only the joy of conquering well-known legendarymaterial is given expression? And what, I must ask, does the audience's new joy± which, as one can see, is mainly influenced by the material ± ultimately haveto do with the question of whether a given work signifies progress also from anartistic perspective?If Weber at least had one foot in the doorway to instrumental music ± and heis also well known for his cyclic music, including sonatas and chamber music ±that was unfortunately not the case with Meyerbeer or Wagner. On thecontrary, these two came into the world with a secret predestination toward thehybrid genre of opera. Neither had any impulse to cultivate music merely forits own sake, free of theatrical effect. Also, to both the artistic experiencesgained by our aristocratic masters were almost entirely unknown. One canprobably even assert that this repertory was, to a large extent, unknown tothem. They lived with the theatre-going public and for the theatre-goingpublic, in so far as their life may be summed up. That which Handel and Bachcreated, that which Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven bequeathed to us, thissimply did not exist for them since it did not proceed along the path of thetheatre.75 On this basis alone, however, i.e. that the points of departure of bothcomposers were negative, it by no means follows that they had to take the samepath. Yet the inevitably ill consequences had to befall both, however differenttheir paths turned out. Meyerbeer wrote his grand operas, Wagner his musicdramas, and it would appear that these directions are diametrically opposed toone another; yet the distance between them is closer than the space separatingthem from music in general, and from the type of music that Mozart wrote forthe opera.Wagner had by no means criticised his operatic rival on account of {83}compositional technique, but rather for his artistic character, his commoneclecticism, etc. In this, I believe, he was entirely mistaken. For it would havebeen at most of interest to learn whether more damage is done to the audience'staste by a compositional technique such as Meyerbeer's than, conversely, theirjoy in the melodies and in theatrical effect. The level of melodic construction inMeyerbeer's music, considered from a sophisticated standpoint, is so low andthe lack of art is so widespread that for this reason alone one should pity anyaudience that takes pleasure in it. And if there is such a thing as artistic politics,and a kind of musical dictatorship, then it would be only too understandablethat it turned against Meyerbeerian opera. But to perceive confusion in theseworks is, for sure, taking things too far. Each of his effects is, surely, ashonestly conceived and carried out in theatrical terms as, say, one of Gluck's.ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)96 HEINRICH SCHENKER

Does not his music still always arouse in his audience the feelings of dramatictruth? Do not The Huguenots, and The Prophet create tension in the theatre?And where does the music contradict the text? Wherein is an artistic lie to beperceived? On the contrary, did he not often seek to arrive at the truth to thebest of his ability, and often by the application of new orchestral effects? And ifmusic does not in any way openly contradict dramatic truth ± as is certainly notthe case with Meyerbeer ± then all music in opera must in every instance beperceived as true. Or, to put it in different terms: can one, then, speak about atype of music from any other point of view than merely a purely musical one,and is not dramatic truth of secondary importance to it? The deceitfulness of amelody rarely reveals itself; but its inferior construction is all too apparent.And it is for this reason that I believe that Wagner would have done better tospeak about the latter, rather than the former. Did not Meyerbeer do every-thing that he believed necessary to fulfil his theatrical obligations in the bestfaith? Must not the effect be heeded? Must not the great artistically ignorantmasses not merely be persuaded about the effectiveness, but also forced toaccept it? Are not all these things laws of the theatre, laws made by theaudience, which must indeed be upheld? Then why fault a dramatic composerfor fulfilling his obligations? Everything else, however, lies with the {84}destructive character of the hybrid art in general, against which no dramaticcomposer can hold out, unless he is a Mozart who is capable of offering theintrinsic nobility of music some protection, at least, even from a theatreaudience. I thus find it proper to leave the question of truth versus untruth inMeyerbeer out of consideration, and to develop consistently a musicalstandpoint, the measure of which must always remain absolute music ± vieweddispassionately ± and nothing else.Wagner's Music DramasThe time has now come to judge Wagner himself from a purely technicalstandpoint. With his music, the error of the entire artistic genre has been raisedto the highest power, and discoloured most irresistibly. It is beyond disputethat he was an immeasurably stronger personality than Meyerbeer, that hisgoal was full of imagination and greatness, and that for his determination andoriginality he must certainly be reckoned among the greatest artists of all time.Yet it must be regretted that, like the first Mozart who corrected Gluck, he wasnot similarly followed by a second Mozart, who corrected him in the sameway.76Just as he found happiness in his entire life, so, too, he found it after his death. Untilnow he has been spared having his work refuted by a music drama of musicallyhigher quality. And perhaps we can only attribute the blame for this to Wagnerhimself, as he made it impossible for there to be a foundation upon which amusically higher phenomenon could take root. I do not in the least deceiveMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 97myself that it would be ill-conceived and unfruitful even to raise purelytechnical considerations against Wagner, since he has been raised to the level ofnational god in Germany, even from a purely musical perspective, and is

celebrated even by our lexicographers as the greatest musician sinceBeethoven. Nevertheless, a higher moral duty compels me not to shirk fromsetting out my arguments against his colossal presence.I said earlier that the exchange of truth between poetry and music, as occursin opera, is only of rather vague, limited and ephemeral value. The operas ofLully, Gre try and Monteverdi were indeed also true in their respective time,and even then theatre audiences were impressed above all by the agreement{85} between music and poetry, which is what we call musical-dramatic truth.Since those earliest operatic times, things have remained the same up to thepresent day: that the world mainly speaks only about that which itunderstands, and thus only about truth in opera. Even so, the course ofhistory has proven that it is not musical-dramatic truth that is the determiningand decisive element in the development of the genre, but rather the purelymusical. That which is musically more differentiated, stronger and richer, hasalways driven the all-too-weak and uncomplicated off the stage. Here, too, as inall of art, we have a victorious affirmation merely of that which manifested itsperfection by a wonderful, mysterious irrationality that nevertheless is rootedin the deepest instinct towards art.Of course, the catchword `truth' has always served very well as a temporaryweapon, so long as one may reckon that the audience will likewise join thebattle ± for or against ± in the name of truth, of which it is supposed to havesome understanding. In this way, Gluck's revolution was artificially con-structed; and so, too, was Wagner's battle: truth was the point about which thebattle was waged. If Gluck battled against the existence of coloratura, heoverlooked the fact that not every coloratura had to be deprived of dramaticexpression, and that often enough it may relate to truth just as much as thesimplest series of tones in any of his purified works. We know this much bettertoday than Gluck could in his time. Thus, for example, Rossini's music did notalways deceive, even though he used coloratura passages in his Barber ofSeville; they only needed to be sung dramatically, say, the way in which onewas able to hear it sung by Patti.77 But one cannot of course derive a truth froma poor performance of coloratura; thus it has almost become a general principlethat every musical coloratura is deceitful with respect to poetry.{86} But even with Wagner it is a good idea to leave the question of dramatictruth entirely out of consideration. For who knows whether at some point evenhis form of truth will become more a burden to the world than a source ofenjoyment. Admittedly, with his instinctive, ingenious cleverness, he seizedupon the old sagas, which were supposed to remind the German nation of itsglorious days of yore. He hoped and counted on making the fluids of oldß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)98 HEINRICH SCHENKERcirculate once again, and so kept continuously in a state of renewal. In doing sohe seems to have forgotten a basic law of nature, which plays a part not merelyin the life of an individual being, but also in that of entire nations as individualbeings of a higher category, so to speak. For if it is supposed to be true, as is sooften asserted by scientists, that an organism completely replaces its fluids afterthe passing of so many years, why should this not apply to a nation as well?

Should not the German nation thus have replaced the fluids of its youth long,long ago? And what significance should Wotan and his circle have for a highlydeveloped nation? Had not the gods been long forgotten before Wagner's time?What meaning can the truth of such an artificially freshened-up saga hold forus in our times, apart from a purely aesthetic one? At first sight, of course,precisely these materials helped Wagner secure his victory; yet even today onecan see clearly that it is no longer the saga that allows the victory to assert itselfbut the music alone, which had previously seemed to be no more than amodest, trusty ally in the decisive battle. I fear that Wagner had undervaluedthe significance of music to the same extent as Gluck and that, conversely, heovervalued the significance of the saga as much as Gluck. What he hardly daredto think is the only truth: that in opera, or in music drama, only the value of themusic matters. It is only through the music that history may be written, and ahigher-ranking music will always suppress the less significant.78{87} Thus from the outset it is actually only a question of judging thestandpoint taken by Wagner in his music. In this respect, what actually mattersis the technique that he used after Lohengrin. And if I were to sum up in a fewwords the cultural situation of music as found in his later works, it is enoughfor me to say: no synthesis anywhere, not, at least, of the sort handed down tous by the masters of absolute music or in Mozart's operatic works. All musicalmovement and continuity are basically thought processes set to music [vertonteGedankenfolgen]. His music follows the logic of thoughts and eventsincomparably more than the laws that reside in music itself. Since he devoteshimself entirely to drama, he does not bind himself to the needs of a purelyconstructive nature. He does not put together ideas from various elements, hebuilds no groups, he takes no care of the succession of keys, since he never hasin mind a higher unity that is equivalent to any form.One should indeed not be deceived by the construction of lengthy preludes,interludes, or postludes. These, too, do not represent any group constructions,since in most instances they consist of just a few immensely extended harmonicdegrees, with which length ± and therefore the illusion of an adding together ±is achieved where in fact only a single thought is expressed. To these belong,for example, the prelude to The Rhinegold, which is based on a single harmony;the postlude to the second scene of the same opera, which is likewise supportedby a single bass note; and the prelude to The Valkyrie with the usual progres-sion of I±II±V. Where this is, however, not the case, where several motives areMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 99joined together, this does not happen with the same means that, for example,Mozart uses when building a group, but is based rather on the principle ofwhat in musical terms would be called a very loose potpourri, which at any ratefinds its partial justification in the succession of moods to be expressed.Wagner could not have done this any other way, since the individual com-ponents of such a larger unity are usually rather small motives, which arecreated in a different place. The origins of his technique are found in the veryway in which his motives arise.{88} Whereas in all music, including Mozart's operatic music, every musical

idea is a part of the form in the strictest sense ± whether it represents theantecedent or consequent, the middle section of a song form, a cadence, thefirst or second theme of a group, or a modulation section, etc. ± in the case ofWagner such a motive would in this sense be musically without foundation, i.e.without past and without future: a musical atom in itself. If in addition Mozart,for example, gives the key in which each motive is set a special mission in theoverall course of the harmonies and keys ± by being set, say, in the key of thefifth so as to portray the mounting tension that is developing in a movement, inthe key of some other degree according to its relationship to the whole ± withWagner, all meaning of tonality is lost because the musical atom is withoutfoundation. It is entirely sufficient for him to make the keyword on stage thebegetter of motives, to reply to a dramatic association, be it a mood or anobject, with a musical atom. Thus for example he is able to dedicate to themagic hood [Tarnkappe] a musical association of visionary beauty. But see howthis musical construction appears there without foundation, even when it isused for the first time. Hardly has the keyword been uttered on stage than the[musical] construction is conceived, beginning with itself, ending in itself, andthus without any capacity for synthesis. The motives arise in his music atvarious points, precisely in relationship to the drama. And it is therefore clearthat, when he occasionally places them beside one another on purely dramaticgrounds, the synthesis is thus still unable to gain anything of a purely musicalvalue.Consider the following example. After Fasolt and Fafner have made theirentrance in the second scene of The Rhinegold, the orchestra plays an associa-tive phrase that appears to be constructed irregularly, even though it representsan eight-bar phrase that is clearly in F major/minor. It begins with thedominant, and seems to reach an imperfect cadence at the end of bar 3 beforeseeking its conclusion with a kind of consequent phrase; nevertheless animperfect cadence is introduced again in bar 6, one that requires the composer{89} to make a sort of repeat of the consequent phrase to bring it to a definitiveconclusion the second time round. Still, at any rate, the next five bars may beread as a transition to the next group, in D minor; but suddenly, at Fasolt'swords `deckt und schliesst im schlanken Schloss den Saal', the Valhalla motiveß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)100 HEINRICH SCHENKERis sounded in B[ major, for the simple reason that Fasolt points to the castle.The collision between these two motives, each completely self-contained, doesnot however evoke the impression of an absolute musical synthesis. For neithermotive, when it was formed, was predisposed to take account of the other, nordid the two stand in any kind of relationship to one another. To no greaterextent are the keys developed from the point of view of a past or a future;instead, both motives function as set pieces, which happened on this occasionto stand next to one another. Thus while Fasolt's thought process follows anormal course, prescribed by the nature of human reasoning, and at the sametime his speech follows this logic to the letter, in so far as it delivers the correctsentence construction and grammatical expressions, the music must on thecontrary be content with a rupture, since that which does not belong together is

joined by force to form a connection, for the simple reason that this is whatagrees with the logic of the drama. Is there, on the contrary, a single instance inthe whole of Wagner's work in which the words have suffered a similarrupture, in order to allow music a life of its own, for once, in accordance withits own logic? Did Wagner ever miss out just one subject, or verb, or comma,for the sake of the music? And why must music, which also has its subjects andpredicates and commas, renounce its laws of grammar and break intohundredths and thousandths, merely because the poetry wills it so? It is wellknown that Wagner granted the sovereignty of poetry over music not only byletting it rule music drama in such a way as to make music actually superfluous:in order to prevent music from gaining anything from poetry, he went so far asto do without any word repetition whatever: that ordinary word repetitionwhich may be understood in all previous opera as an indispensable concessionof poetry to music. {90} In short: in his theatre, poetry remains what it is,whereas music is no longer what it otherwise would be.At any rate his set pieces manifest themselves in ever new variations, andthese too are always combined with each other in ever different ways. But theirmakeup is never determined on a purely musical basis, but rather from adramatic-poetic viewpoint. The unceasing industry of combinations andvariations gave rise to the much-discussed concept of `unending melody',which Wagner himself gave the pretence of being a kind of symphonicdevelopment. Since then, a serious confusion and bewilderment has arisen. Ina [sonata form] movement, for example in a symphony, all the ideas initially lietogether, either in the womb of the first or second or third group, and theirsignificance is defined precisely by the fact they are only part of a higher entity,so that the development can itself take what was previously undifferentiated (orinsufficiently differentiated) and portray and characterise it in an independentstate of differentiation, and the parts that had been so explained and broughtinto proximity can finally be presented to us in the recapitulation as firmlyjoined units; but Wagner utterly squanders his most genius-endowedMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 101combinatorial gifts in a vain attempt to solve the unsolvable: to differentiatewhat is already differentiated. Do you not see that there is a contradiction here?Should not that which is to be differentiated appear at first undifferentiated? Isthis contrast not [. . .], and is this not also the case in nature? And how is it evenpossible to speak of differentiation in Wagner, if he introduces every motive asequally differentiated, and indeed on account of its jurisdiction in the drama?In other words, his motives are far too independent at the time of their firstappearance, and they retain this birth defect throughout the entire piece. Asoften as they appear in this or that form, one recognises them over again as thatwhich they merely were, i.e. merely independent motives. In the so-calledsymphony of the pit orchestra, then, no development in a truly symphonicsense takes place since, as I have just shown, variations on leitmotives {91} aresomething different from thematic development in a symphony. Overjoyed byhis variation technique, Wagner had apparently forgotten that he was alwaysapplying this only to an individual element, and not to an organism. Thus one

could, if one likes, say rather that the endless melody represents a summationof variations on leitmotives, whereby each motive and every variation giveevidence of true genius. But on no account does this come anywhere near theconstruction of a true musical organism, which resolves all its relationshipswithin itself as the sentence resolves its problems, a painting resolves what itdepicts, and music in a symphony resolves again within itself.Wagner on Mozart, Beethoven, Weber: Opera and DramaThat Wagner could regard the symphonic aspects of his music as a truesymphonic style is naturally only the result of his utter failure to understand ±to have any idea of ± the genuinely symphonic. One need only consider how hedefined Mozart in Opera and Drama:He was so completely and thoroughly a musician, and nothing but a musician,that we can see in his work, most clearly and most convincingly, the only trueand correct position of a musician, even in relationship to a poet. His mostimportant and decisive achievements in music are, unquestionably, in opera ± inopera, for whose construction it did not in the least occur to him to act withquasi-poetic sovereignty, rather to accomplish precisely that which he was ableto accomplish by purely musical means. But by compensation, precisely by thetruest and purest engagement of the poetic intent ± where and as it was available± he expanded his purely musical capabilities to such an extent that in none ofhis absolute musical compositions, namely, not even in his instrumental works,do we find his musical art so broadly and richly developed as in his operas.79Now we have it: how facile his judgement! Did Wagner never hear Mozart'sstring quartets, his quintets, which would have enabled him to judge that hisinstrumental music, when one considers musical art in absolute terms, standsß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)102 HEINRICH SCHENKERon an infinitely higher plane than all his operas and that {92} in the latter onlythe most indispensable means of continuation in absolute music are found, andno more? And even if it is true that Mozart's `most important and decisiveachievements' are actually in the field of opera, that is by no means in the sensethat Wagner intended, but merely in the sense that I explained earlier: namelythat he transplanted into opera ± though this does not represent his highest art(as Wagner would have it) ± at least a high enough degree of artistry that musiccould finally be recognised as such, even in opera. That for Wagner, moreover,this high degree of artistry actually appeared to be the highest may be taken assufficient proof of its stature, but at the same time a proof of his lack of insight.But his thoughts on instrumental music themselves show, even more clearlythan the above definition of Mozart, how far he was from understanding theway in which the intrinsic laws of instrumental music work.Whereas operatic melody, if not truly fertilised by poetry, proceeds from oneforced situation to the next, capable only of supporting a life of drudgery,incapable of procreation, instrumental music gained the capacity of dividing theharmonic dance and folksong into smaller and smaller parts by a new and variedway of combining, extending or abbreviating these parts, to make a speciallanguage; this remained arbitrary and incapable of expressing the purely humanso long as the demands for a clear and intelligible portrayal of specific,

individual sentiments was not the sole authority for the construction of thosemelodic speech-parts. That the expression of a quite specific, clearlyunderstandable, individual content was in truth impossible in this language,which had developed only as far as conveying the general sense of a sentiment,was something that was first realised by the instrumental composer in whom thedemands to express such a content became the all-consuming, fiery life-force ofartistic creation. The history of instrumental music is, from the point at whichthat demand first manifested itself, the history of an artistic error;80 {93} yet itwas one that ended not with a demonstration of the powerlessness of music, likethe error of opera, but rather one with the manifestation of its limitless innerpowers. Beethoven's mistake was the same as Columbus's, who only wanted tofind a new way to India, an old land that was already known; even Columbustook his error with him to the grave, by making his fellow voyagers swear anoath that they take the new world for the old India. But however much he wascaught in the fullness of his mistake, his deed nevertheless loosened theblindfold from the face of the world, and taught it to recognise in the mostincontrovertible way the true shape of the world and its undreamed riches. Tous, now, the inexhaustible power of music has been unveiled by thisfundamentally powerful error of Beethoven's. By his intrepid efforts, to achievethe artistically necessary within an artistically impossible, the limitless capacityof music has been revealed for the solution to any imaginable problem, so longas it remains precisely what it really is, and no more: the art of expression.81Now, precisely the opposite of all this is true. That Wagner could arbitrarilyindicate that putting together, expansion or abbreviation of smaller and smallerMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 103parts, as mentioned at the beginning of the quotation, as the source of higherartistic meaning shows how little feeling he had for the action of a motive, forthe laws of tonality and the way the parts interact with each other insofar asthey are meant to serve a whole; and above all how little he realises that it is nota matter of arbitrariness when, for example, Bach writes a fugue in a particularway and not in some other way, or orders the tonality in his choruses and not insome other way, or when Emanuel Bach or Haydn or Mozart or Beethovenorganise the details of their themes in a particular way and not some other way,and then build the groups and the whole in a particular way and not some otherway; rather, that in all these artistic revelations, the higher artistic meaning isexpressed in precisely the opposite way, in the servitude ± one could say slavery± in which the composer finds himself when confronting a problem. This issomething that music learned precisely when it achieved its freedom from`individual human feelings' {94} and the `purely human'. But Wagner was notthe man who was capable of feeling or judging the purely musical. And hereinlay the greatest shortcoming of his artistic being: that in order to enjoy music,he had to interpolate a word or a picture. In this respect he was just like hisdear audience, which prefers to regard all absolute music as artificiality andarbitrariness, simply because it does not know what it might represent. That iswhy Wagner too, as we saw above, enjoyed imputing to Beethoven the desire toexpress `a quite specific, readily comprehensible individual content', whereas

Beethoven in reality thought of form only in absolutely musicals terms and,when the occasion arose, additionally used impulses of life, moods and images.He appears not in the least to have recognised that Beethoven's techniquerepresents a mere extension of that of Haydn and Mozart, that furthermore thisis less a qualitative than a quantitative extension, and that it is preciselyBeethoven who shows most clearly how important it is to organise musicalcontent into two or three parts (a five-part form will of course be understoodby the listener as dividing two plus three or, conversely, three plus two) if onewished to transmit to the listener more than two or three small themes. In otherwords: the greater the thematic richness, the more important it becomes tocontrol it in a two- or three-part form, since it is only by this plasticity that onecan come to enjoy this richness; otherwise, the sum of ideas will pass by the earof the listener like an incoherent swarm, without making any impression. Justconsider the chaos the many, many motives would have created for the themesin the first movement of the Eroica had Beethoven not placed some in the mainsubject, others in the transition, still others in the development, etc.; some inE[ major, others in B[ major or E minor, in that one grants another itsproportionate tonal expansion and sense of directedness. Would these themes,I ask, have been better, more expressive themes if they were mixed together,proceeding without purpose? If abbreviation is indeed a necessity of humancreation, {95} then it seems to me that order in general belongs to the businessß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)104 HEINRICH SCHENKERof abbreviation much more than disorder, in the sense that one could almostsay that abbreviation can be expressed only by order: how could it beotherwise? It follows from this that, even for the receptive listener, the joy ofabbreviation is an artistic and aesthetic one, but this is probably true to thesame extent of the joy of ordering, which made abbreviation possible in thefirst place. By contrast, the lack of order in a work of art always unleashes asense of discomfort, since the listener has the instinctive feeling that thecreative artist has somehow neglected to deal with abbreviation properly. ThusI do not believe that the time could ever come when ideas expressed by dis-order worked better than ideas expressed by order. If only one could under-stand, just for once, that musical form does not actually exist for its own sakebut rather for themes, like the division of a drama into acts and scenes, theframing of a picture, etc.Wagner was entirely oblivious to the very idea that musical themes mustcreate an order, that the tones must, so to speak, already be working towardsthat order so long as they remain in the servitude of dance and song, and thatthey had to work twice as hard at this when they were finally left alone, asabsolute music. He was only in a position to gain insight into that order bywhich the word forced itself upon music, and he imagined in this case that hehad perceived order in music, whereas he was de facto again perceiving onlyorder in poetry. In other words, he imported into music the necessity of apoetic logic, and everything that he was not able to justify in terms of this logicappeared to him arbitrary. Conversely, he did not understand that there lies anecessity, albeit a purely musical one, that for instance a given tonality can only

be understood as such when it is set in contrast with another tonality, and that,similarly, the principles of contrast and variety represent a necessity of musicalnature in general, which is of equal validity to the logical necessities of poetry.And so we see him groping in the dark not only when he asks whether musical{96} forms are or are not arbitrary formations, or whether, furthermore,Beethoven's technique differs from Haydn's or Mozart's, but also when hemistakenly thinks that the music of the later Beethoven is the result of adifferent compositional technique than what in reality underlies it. Thus heexplains:In the works from the second half of his creative life Beethoven is notunderstood ± or is rather misunderstood ± when he seeks to express anespecially individual content in the most comprehensible way. He goes beyondthe musically absolute, which ordinary convention recognised ascomprehensible, i.e. in some recognisable form of dance or song ± in order tospeak in a language that often appears as an arbitrary omission of mood and, notbelonging to a purely musical relationship, is connected only by the bond of apoetic intent, which, however, cannot in fact be expressed with poetic clarity inmusic. The majority of Beethoven's later works must be understood asMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 105involuntary efforts to create a language for his [artistic] needs, so that they oftenappear like sketches for a painting of which the artist was quite clear about thesubject but not about the rational way of arranging it.82What blatant misunderstandings is Wagner guilty of in these remarks! For theworks from the second half of Beethoven's life are, above all, verycomprehensible; they become incomprehensible only if one cannot recognisethe same synthesis that marks out his works from the first half of his life.Although the themes may have become bolder, the part-writing richer, alsothicker and more convoluted, nevertheless there remains in all these pieces anadherence to two- or three-part form, and to the principles of contrast, varietyand group construction; and it is very much to be regretted that a genius likeWagner does not see the two things in these works, namely (1) the way in whichthey are the same as the early works with regard to musical necessities, and (2)the way in which, in spite of this identity, they are so very different. Butprecisely the example of Wagner ought to teach us {97} how musical content canwork in such different ways, in spite of the fact that the laws of music remain thesame, and how much room for play these laws allow, if they can give rise to astring quartet by Haydn and to one of the late quartets of Beethoven. And whatrich creative possibilities must be granted by the same musical laws if a Wagnercould deceive himself about Beethoven's works to such an extent that hepresumed that they were governed by a different technique from those ofMozart and Haydn. And, furthermore, what little imagination he shows incontinuing to speak of `dance and song tunes', where the emancipated art ofmusic had long ago created laws of continuity of its own that for a long time havehad nothing in common with them, and which the art of music has no intentionof sacrificing if it happens to be joined once more with the word or the dance.And, finally, to maintain that musical content in the works from Beethoven's

second period are a language held together only by linkage to a poetic intent,unrelated to a purely musical cohesiveness, is even more ridiculous than thevery opposite of this is all the more demonstrable. For these works, above all,give evidence of a purely musical cohesiveness precisely according to those lawsthat Wagner did not understand or refused to recognise; whereas a poetic intentcan perhaps be supposed but unfortunately not proven, and in any event plays asecondary role so long as music exists as such. If only Wagner, instead of issuingall these words, had been able to feel how Beethoven, say, prolonged musicallaws, demanded new forms of expression from them, nuanced them. But to beforever searching in his works for the art of expression, i.e. Wagner's idea ofthis, conflicts not only with the nature of music but also with the genius ofBeethoven, who embodied it so beautifully.To understand how much Wagner needed the straitjacket of the text to makemusic may best be shown by the fact that, as I said earlier, he banished wordß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)106 HEINRICH SCHENKERrepetition from his texts. All of his theoretical pronouncements on the subjectare merely a precarious self-delusion that is supposed to help him get round theproblem that he cannot so easily extend music into longer forms with a fewwords. He needed the very signpost of the word {98} as the generator of tones,verily step by step; he could not dispense with the word when he wanted tocreate new musical content. And it thus sounds like self-consolation when,conversely, he chides earlier melody on the grounds that `the verse wasdesigned to be stretched out by numerous repetitions of phrases and words, asa foundation for operatic melodies, to give them the necessary breadth', andwhen he says that with his procedure `a far more intimate union of poetry andmusic takes place than had previously been the case' and `that melody and itsform are supplied with limitless riches which are utterly unimaginable withoutthis procedure'.83 Indeed! Even without this procedure there were alreadylimitless riches, and these were with Mozart.84 It is just that he brought theseriches along different paths, paths of which Wagner could not possibly havehad an inkling. I ask: how could Wagner have denied that such riches were athand, and to claim to be the first to create them in music? He could do so onlybecause the riches achieved by group construction, whereby various elementsare joined together to form a theme and several themes to form a group, wereinaccessible to his feeling and beyond the reach of his abilities. And even thosewho would have no interest in denying Wagner's riches must therefore not joinwith him in disputing those of an earlier composer; at best, then, these twotypes of riches may be said to differ according to the way in which they areexpressed: in Mozart, by order, and by purely musical group construction; inWagner, merely by the order in the text, but at the same time, unfortunately,by lack of order in the music. It is now up to everyone to decide in favour ofone or the other.It is astonishing that Wagner could have overlooked such a fundamentaldifference as exists between the nature of poetry and that of music. For thewords of language, on account of association, work with lightning speed tomake their meaning clear to us, and we must thus comprehend a very long

sentence, in all its elements, as this or {99} that impression of nature andreality; by contrast the possibility of understanding a succession of tones issuch a narrower one, that is, the comprehension takes place at a much slowerspeed, since the succession needs its own imitation (see Harmonielehre, §4) inorder to be understood as a series of tones in the first place. Consider, now, thatthis imitation does not remain for music, even in those instances when verbalassociation is at work. And if, at best, the understanding of music is facilitated atiny bit by the assistance of words, then one can understand why I say that it isself-evident that the tempo of music is, by its very nature, slower than that ofpoetry. While speech can rush forward, introducing new concepts, a new con-struction and a new impression, music can in the same available time merelyMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 107realise the imitation of an earlier series of tones; thus if at the outset poetrytakes no notice of this special quality of music, a clash between the two arts isunavoidable. In the latter case, namely, in the case that the two arts are not incommunication, music must remain beholden to poetry for the development ofa second theme,85 since it is still busy explaining its own series of tones. Thisexplains, logically and artistically, why word repetitions were an integral partof earlier operatic composition. New conceptual material would have requiredmusic to provide new musical associations; and thus music, if it were con-stantly occupied with explaining what the spoken word offered, would neverhave arrived at explaining its own material. Thus it came to be that the contentof the spoken word was reduced, so to speak, so as not to set music theimpossible task of explaining itself and, at the same time, conveying the senseof an overabundance of verbal material. How, nevertheless, richness ± poetic aswell as musical ± can be incorporated into drama is something that is bestexplained by Mozart's works. I have already spoken about musical richness;and if I now say that the poetic content would have gained very little if itsthemes and words were given greater elaboration, then I have said enough:thus I hesitate to think that additional {100} text would have made Mozart'srich musical development possible.Wagner, however, had in his head precisely that which was unnatural; andso he inevitably made the mistake of imitating language musically, which wasconstantly hurrying forwards, always offering something new; in this way,music was prevented from explaining itself as it had to, and as it had hithertodone. And in this way he developed his orchestral technique of `putting thingstogether', for which he had criticised the earlier masters.But things are still more extraordinary. Wagner's instinct was entirelycorrect in despising `melody', absolute melody,the naked, ear-pleasing absolute melody, that is, the melody that was onlymelody and nothing more, which slipped into the ear. We do not know why wepick up this tune, nor why we exchange it for the one we heard yesterday andwhy we shall have forgotten it tomorrow. Neither do we know why it soundssorrowful when we are happy, or why it sounds happy when we feel depressedand we hum it to ourselves anyway ± we just do not know why.86From this standpoint, he does not shy away from criticising Weber, whom he

liked so very much. So we read in Opera and Drama, which I have just quoted:We saw further that Weber's objection to Rossini was directed at theshallowness and lack of character of this melody, but by no means at theunnatural relationship of the musician to the drama itself.87How astute his instinct! He feels the curse of a long, expansive melody,overextended and merely concerned with its unity and beauty. He senses howthis melody, on account of the all too coquettish, crude emphasis of its ownß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)108 HEINRICH SCHENKERindividuality, spoils the equilibrium in the work of art, because it mustperforce suppress other parts, for example the connective passages, far toomuch. But he {101} does not realise that the old masters of fugue already knewthis well, and that they, too, also knew the curse of the overly long subject; andfurther that the old cyclical composers also avoided melody in the same way,and that it was only technical considerations that argued against melody.Think, for instance, of a long subject dragged through the numerousdevelopments in a fugue: how ponderous and monotonous would the endlessrepetition of an overgrown construction be! Thus composers readily avoidedexcessively long fugue subjects; the repetitions did not tire and the fuguebecame more fluent. And if they wished to do something musically for fun,they could add a countersubject or use inversions and stretto, as much as theywished, which would only add to the riches. That melodies had no place incyclic movements has already been shown: the three-part construction wouldhave been made too crude just because of the three melodies, i.e. it would havebecome a potpourri of melody. For this reason, cyclic composers built theirthemes with a variety of character and joined them into groups. And so wemeet Wagner at the point at which he despised melody out of a correct artisticinstinct, but at the same time rejected the counter-technique, so to speak,which the instrumental composers discovered, because he found it artisticallyarbitrary. Is that not in truth a bizarre contradiction?This inability to understand Mozart's operatic technique becomes in time allthe more inexplicable, given that he would have had, almost by necessity, toarrive at the same solution to the problem as that by which he writes aboutWeber's Euryanthe. Listen to his judgement:Weber's melody had to be everywhere full of character, i.e. true andcorresponding to the emotion of the matter at hand. Thus he had to progressto a different procedure. Wherever his long-breathed melody ± generallyconceived in advance and spread over the text like a dazzling garment ± wouldhave done that text an obvious disservice, he broke up this melody itself intopieces, and put the individual parts of his melodic construction {102} togetherin an artificial mosaic, in accordance with the declamatory requirements of thetext; he then covered this with a delicate melodic varnish, in order to retain forthe entire construction, viewed from without, the appearance of absolutemelody, as separable as possible even from the text. But he never succeeded inachieving the desired illusion.88By getting onto the track of Weber's procedure, he clearly betrays howimportant it is, even for the opera composer, to avoid `melody'. He is able to

sympathise with Weber's difficulty, and as a consequence he is better informedabout the solution to the problem that Weber posed. Is it therefore not doublyextraordinary that he failed to recognise in Mozart's technique a solution to thesame problem as that found in Weber, only a far more successful one? InMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 109judging Weber he is perfectly correct; why does he fail to see that theMozartian way is the only correct one, insofar as it concerns the solution to theproblem that he himself had fully sensed and formulated? This contradictionalone is enough to show us that he had to avoid a path that in some way partookof the blessings of absolute music, for which he had the capacity neither to hearnor to understand. For him, then, all there was to do was to avoid all melody ±partly, as said, on account of his correct artistic instinct; partly because of hisinsight into Weber's procedures, which he was not prepared to follow. Ofcourse, Mozart's way still stood open to him, if he wished to avoid Weber's.But it was in every respect inaccessible; and so he conceived a new procedure,the so-called Wagnerian one, which lost all connection with absolute music. Hewrites at one point:These contradictions are: absolute self-fulfilled melody and true dramaticexpression. Here one or the other had to be sacrificed: melody or drama. Rossinisacrificed drama; the noble Weber wanted to restore it by the strength of hismore contemplative melody. He had to learn that this is impossible.89But Wagner, of course, sacrificed absolute melody; yet he did not realise theextent to which he had ± unnecessarily ± to sacrifice absolute music outright inorder to sacrifice this melody. I say `unnecessarily' because, as I haverepeatedly said, {103} Mozart was the example by which one could avoidfalling into the trap of absolute melody and yet at the same time writeconvincing absolute music even in opera.90Now Wagner had destroyed melody and, intentionally, torn up all forms.And the result? The absence of all connection and unity, hence an isolation ofindividual parts both in terms of their spatial proportions and their tonalrelationships. Components took shape ± particles that were far from capable ofcollectively presenting a symphonic development. This result is all the moreapparent today, since the effect of the text has become somewhat dulled. Andone senses all the more acutely the drawbacks that his music presents, preciselyin an age when one would want to like it. A strange irony seems to govern hisoutput: one asks about music in it, even though he did not indeed want to makeany. That aforementioned rule of opera, which vindicates musicunconditionally when it comes to deciding about merits and weaknesses, isnow pointed against Wagner himself: the matter had to arise sooner or later,since the law does not ask about Wagner's intentions. This disappointment thatstands before the world is not entirely dissimilar to that which Wagner himselfexpresses so shrewdly with regard to Weber:Even Weber's operas were attended by audiences only for the purpose ofhearing as much of this sort of melody as possible. And the master was verymuch mistaken in flattering himself in believing that that over-varnisheddeclamatory mosaic, which was of such fundamental importance to him, was

ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)110 HEINRICH SCHENKERregarded by his audiences as melody. If, in Weber's own eyes, this mosaic couldbe justified only by the text, from the audience's point of view (quite rightly, inthis case) the words did not, on the one hand, matter at all. On the other hand,however, it turned out that this text was not even completely expressed by themusic. Precisely this untimely half-melody turned the listener's attention awayfrom the words and towards the tension of the melodic construction; {104} thistension, however, did not actually materialise, with the result that the listener'sdemand for the expression of a poetic thought was denied from the start. Butthe pleasure in a melody was all the more painfully reduced as the demand for itwas awakened but not fulfilled.91[31/138] This critique of Wagner's concerning Weber has, in addition to itsimportance as a critique, a second meaning, namely an argument that one couldeffectively use against Wagner if it is said, in defence of his errors, that hewanted his work in just such a way from the outset. To be sure, that he wantedit this way and not otherwise can be seen not only from his musical works butalso from his writings. And it is well known that he maintained that, with thecomposition of Tristan and Isolda, he had actually exceeded the limits of histheory. But see how Wagner himself finds fault with Weber, although it is clearto him that Weber wanted things in such a way, and not otherwise. That is, acomposer's clear intent concerning his artistic procedures does not in the leastprevent Wagner from criticising him. Why, then, should we not be permittedto have reservations about Wagner's intentions, even when we know what hisintentions were? Complete awareness and intent, then, may by no means betaken as an excuse for an artistic deed; on the contrary, they must rather lead tothe sharpening of judgement.{104 ctd} It must be admitted that Wagner did not, at first, have an easytime with his audience. That which was specifically Wagnerian was, for a longtime, not to their liking. It was the healthy musical instinct that defended itselfagainst some thing in Wagner's procedures. It is important to recall that theworld's resistance to Wagner's late style in no respect resembles that resistancewhich no genius has ever been spared. Even in Leipzig, people grumbled aboutBach. Even in Vienna, people were envious of Mozart and Beethoven, and alsoof Brahms in his last days, etc. But in all these cases, the public had at the sametime a secretly founded impression that these were true masters of composi-tion, to whom the respect owed to them should not be denied. It was otherwisein Wagner's case. It was by no means the poorest of musicians who did notwish to believe in Wagner's musical abilities, to say nothing of being able tomake up their minds to recognise him as a master of music. And so even today,in spite of his global success, effectively gagging the mouths of all superiorartistically thinking musicians, there remains a latent unease ± one thataccompanied Wagner from the beginning ± which has never been eradicated.Even today, Germany has a strange feeling that, for instance, Beethoven andMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 111Wagner are two different phenomena. And not merely because one wrote only

one opera and the other created a music drama. Wagner merely succeeded,with his powerful and high-handed delusion, in persuading us that he himselfwas in one respect Mozart's heir, and in another respect Beethoven's. Weknow, too, that Wagner by no means let his work mature slowly in the public'sfavour. He did not have the gift of our honourable masters to create one workafter another without the least concern for success or failure. He lacked thenobler sense merely to live for the sake of his art and {105} not to waste timemarketing his own works. One is accustomed to tracing this back to histemperament, a specific artistic inclination that has nothing further to do withthe matter. I have thought, however, that perhaps the other masters werecertainly no less temperamental; if their biographies say nothing about this,their own works tell us all the more plainly. For this reason they alloccasionally expressed their displeasure about the failure of their works butnever made too much of this, preferring instead to channel their temperamentinto the works themselves. And it also explains why just two composers ±Gluck and Wagner ± were guilty of dispatching writs, communications andmanifestos into the world and, through their friends, propaganda of all sorts, inspeech and in writing. Is this really pure coincidence? That the last-namedcomposers are thoroughly deprived of the aristocracy that has marked out theGerman masters since time immemorial? Heine recounts so amusingly howMeyerbeer could never tolerate knowing about anyone who was opposed to hisworks.Now, then, I confess freely that the imposition of Wagner's works, howevermuch idealism and patriotism may be concealed beneath it, has not made afavourable impression on me. For I need only to remind myself that Beethovenissued his last string quartets, which surely contain music at least as good asWagner's tetralogy, without imposing them upon his audience. Should wetherefore take Wagner's actions as a sign of his vanity? I do not think so. On thecontrary, I rather think that their deepest origins lay in his not being sure of hisown materials, without actually knowing why. And thus his propagandisingtemperament strikes me as being a complementary manifestation of his art.This art was in need of propaganda; that of a Bach or a Beethoven certainly wasnot. Gluck and Wagner had to impose, if they did not wish to run the risk oflosing their works. The others could simply let the future decide. Thus whatwas unhealthy in Wagner's art gave rise, above all, to yet another unhealthysymptom, {106} that art was promoted by societies of intolerant amateurs.[31/141] It was entirely characteristic of Wagner to use all his powers todeclare his interests in that which was least organic. It was easy for him to thinkthat it would be possible for an art like music, which was differentiated to sucha high degree, to give up its differentiation for sake of his own theorem of thetotal artwork. How little feeling he had for organicism is already revealed byß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)112 HEINRICH SCHENKERthe fact that, from a sudden caprice, he hoped to achieve the force by which themusic drama would vanquish the instrumental music of a Bach, a Beethoven ora Brahms, as if it were possible to make a child ± who had already come into theworld ± unborn. How could one? And thus I believe that Wagner could never

have hoped that such complete perfection, such a high degree of independence,could have been driven from the world. In the very conception of the totalartwork, there lies such an unhealthy offence against the laws of nature, andalso of our art in particular, that, even from this attitude alone, one can withoutfurther ado draw a characteristic but unhappy a posteriori conclusion about hiscompositional method. Anyone who can be guilty of such childish fantasisingmight very well deal all too fantastically, and thus somewhat irresponsibly,with his own art. Just look at the childishness in the founding of Bayreuth!With what capricious lack of organicism has this idea forced itself into ourworld! An idea which the world, after it had a Beethoven, a Mozart ± suchsplendid crown witnesses ± cannot however proceed along further festivalpaths, which are appropriate only for an earlier age, in which all the arts lietogether in the womb of a single unity merely because they are stillundifferentiated and thus incapable of standing on their own feet. But wecan best see today how little fruit Wagner's unorganic vagaries have borne! Atthe most a Bungert, for instance, is thinking of festival playhouses for hisdramas.92 Now, as before, the course of the music business shows that no one istaking any notice of Wagner's grandiose ideas. We still play the Beethovensonatas and string quartets the way we have always played them, in spite ofWagner having seen an error in them. We still perform the entire corpus ofinstrumental music in our concert halls and at home, since we cannot satisfyour lives with the tetralogy alone, and since great [31/142] works of art cannotbe swept into a corner. What a sad place the world would be if men andwomen, from morning to night, in the house and the concert hall, could hearnothing but extracts from Wagner's works or, as surrogates for it, theprogramme music of a Berlioz or a Liszt! All this music is not after all so truethat, for its sake, one should have to renounce the beauty of other music,namely the instrumental music practised by our masters. And yet how simpleto believe that, in point of truth, a Beethoven is no less realistic than a Berlioz.Should, then, the degree of realism be determined on the basis of such flimsyevidence that, for instance, Berlioz uses four timpani in his Fantastic Symphonyto portray a storm whereas Beethoven uses only two? Should the dose ofmusical realism be, therefore, also contained in this dose of timpani?{106 ctd} But that is perhaps the least of the evils that were attributable toWagner. That he destroyed the unity of listening and tonal coherence, not onlyin his own work but also in the listener, has more far-reaching tragic implica-tions. Since we have to live with the unfortunate consequence that, afterWagner, no one came along who might have shown the healthier side of musicMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 113in a music drama, the unfettered dissemination of his works becomes all toounderstandable. This is, however, accompanied by the inexorable destructionof the musical ear. Custom has done its part in making the offence almostindiscernible. We have learned to come to terms with the individual parts, andto give up the demands of tonality and unity; we have become so demoralisedthat, for the undoubtedly great enjoyment that this or that passage elicits onaccount of its indisputable beauty, we confer gratitude upon the whole work of

art, despite the fact that our great masters were so generous as to give us workswhose value resides not in an individual passage but in the whole. We haverepeatedly grown accustomed to following the individual motives with thesame instinct with which we would otherwise follow a banal operatic melody,while at the same time we show little interest in the less significant connectivematerials. Even in the Wagnerian sense it was always just the melody thatcaptivated the ear of the layman; the rest fell victim to inattentiveness. Therearose in this way an unhealthy, almost intermittent attentiveness, i.e. theopposite to that artistic listening that always took ± and still takes ± as giventhat our masterworks are complete organisms in themselves. In other words, inconceding Wagner his principle, we have lost the art of hearing continuouslyand artistically.Anton BrucknerNot only audiences but also creative artists, however, fell victim to this illness.Blinded by the success of Wagner's music and driven to imitate him in themeans with which he was able to conjure such a success, {107} they took somuch trouble to get inside the sound of his music that, unfortunately, theythereby lost their powers of listening. Their instincts gradually crumbled away,becoming ever more brittle, and ± something that has not previously happenedin Germany ± the leading composers of today are making bad music, which isin fact something different from music that is merely boring. While, forexample, a Schumann lays out his ideas before us in the most original way,invoking a wealth of new piano textures for the representation of his content,he is still always capable of composing the most daring things with such asomnambulistic confidence that they can be explained in the easiest possibleway even in terms of simple relationships. We must be even more amazed bythe music of, for instance, Chopin, who often elaborates the content ofharmonic steps in the most ingenious way, and not seldom even in such a waythat the concept of the harmonic step threatens to disappear altogether;93nevertheless the most daring ideas are, as it were, underpinned and clarified bythe simplest of basic principles. Such splendid instinctive powers asSchumann's or Chopin's have today become impossible ± I am not afraid tosay so ± in the atmosphere of Wagner. Thus it would never have been possibleß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)114 HEINRICH SCHENKERfor a Chopin, who has demonstrated his undisputed harmonic ingenuity timeand again, to construct such a tonally confused theme or, if you will, groups ofthemes such as we find, say, in the first group of Bruckner's Fifth Symphony.One should not object to the comparison on the grounds that Chopin neveractually composed a symphony, or even tried to write one; for in his largerpiano works he developed equally long ideas, if one is in fact talking aboutlength. Basically it is a question of the composer's stance regarding tonality,regardless of whether in a symphony or in a polonaise-fantasy. In thissymphony of Bruckner's, how are we supposed to arrive at a feeling that thegroup is unified (for this is what surely matters, as it was in fact also thecomposer's basic intention) if we are presented essentially with three distinctsections, the first comprising bars 1±14, the second bars 15±54, and finally the

last from bar 54 to the end of the group, but all three are rather loosely placedalongside each other, without any connecting material between them? {108}The first of the three sections moves clearly enough from the tonic to thedominant, in the manner of a prelude. The second section begins with a newmotive, in G[, so that one can imagine a VI of B[. But the further course ofevents, especially from bar 31 onwards, puts the main tonality more in doubtthan is necessary, and presents an unambiguous D minor, whose dominantactually concludes this section. And now from this dominant of D minor, asudden move to the tonic of D minor, and from here without any scruples to B[for the third section, which actually shows the most normal structure of a two-part theme. Thus the first two sections appear to be functioning more as aprelude; and the seat of the actual theme is the third section. But now thequestion arises as to whether the second section, on account of its expansionand because its construction is too self-contained, contributes a perceptibleamount of damage to the whole by spoiling the equilibrium. By this I meanthat it would have suited the middle section more had the home key beendischarged with all the greater breadth and force in the third section itself. Butis this the case? No. The antecedent and consequent both move in verymoderate dimensions and the composer, on account of his predilection fordescending thirds, evidently has difficulty retaining the home key. And nowthe most crucial of all factors: the consequent phrase itself, as one can clearlysee from the development of the content, also wants to provide a modulationsection. And yet for the two purposes, the space of 22 bars proves too short,insofar as the home key still badly needed a more emphatic confirmation and amore expansive modulation was surely needed to balance the collective force ofthe three sections. But how strange it is that the modulation section presentsitself so surprisingly in E[, while the subsequent secondary theme apparentlyaims for the dominant of the home key, i.e. F major/minor. How can all this besquared? And now one only has to look at any of the thematic groups from theclassical masterworks, which have just been discussed in Harmonielehre,94 inMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 115order to see how much each of these parts contributes to the whole, and inorder to perceive their origins all the more clearly as to why, in the case ofBruckner, {109} a discrepancy among the individual parts must arise. And thusI maintain that a similarly mistaken disposition would never have crossedChopin's mind, for his instinct would, so to speak, have been identical with theneeds of the principal key itself. He would have certainly been unable tocompose the second section of the group in such a wayward manner.Furthermore, it would have been impossible for him to go, apparently, to E[major and then to introduce a general pause in order suddenly to let the key ofF be sounded. Now, as I have said, Bruckner is certainly one of thosecomposers whose musical upbringing was actually founded on a healthytradition. If, then, even his sense of tonality has gone awry to such a frightfulextent, how much lower a result may be seen in other contemporaries, who arecertainly not his equal. This matter has absolutely nothing to do with the sizeof the themes, which so oft comes to light in Bruckner's works. On the

contrary, for me the very force and splendour of the individual theme appearsto work against their synthesis. Is it then not roughly the same as with theprinciple of mass in melody as demonstrated above? That is, is it not similar tothe situation that an excessively long melody must be ruled out of cyclic worksfor technical reasons, also that an all too intensive stress of the individuality ofthe component part goes against the principle of cyclic composition? It isindeed clear that the group as such will be harmed if its parts are not mutuallydependent and, instead of persevering in a balance between serving their ownends and dedicating themselves to the whole, perhaps emphasise their ownends. Somehow, the will of the individual part must be muted if it is to beperceived merely as part of a whole. And thus I believe that Bruckner sins mostgrievously by individualising and overstretching the beauty of the componentpart. Is that, then, not ironical, that beauty can be an offence against effect?And yet it is so. If only his intention were, at least, directed at the level of thegroup, the effect would have been better achieved. But as the matter actuallystands, one can see that Bruckner's instinct was not sufficiently strong as tohave a feeling for what belonged to the group {110}, and what belonged to thecomponent part. This way of Bruckner's, to luxuriate in the component partsand, beyond these, to lose all sense of form and tonality, leads me to believethat his level of invention was not as high as is commonly believed today inmany circles. It was an exalted manner, reckoned in terms of exaltation, so tospeak; a symphony by him, taken as a whole, represents a kind of potpourri ofexaltations. To him the powers were not given to move from point to pointwith graceful invention, and to use the weapons of one motive to conquer thenext; rather he had to wait for the grace of heaven, which granted to himintense moments of inspiration only in larger time-frames. This explains thevery limited number of his works, which would otherwise be inexplicable hadß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)116 HEINRICH SCHENKERhe been swept along in a flood of invention, like Brahms or DvorÏ a k. Hismusical brain consisted, as it were, merely of peaks; and what he conceives asmoves into valleys in order to give the listener the illusion of trekking over hilland dale is artistically so improbable that the only impression which remains isthat of leaping from peak to peak. He lacks all technique for gaining ahighpoint and leading down from it; the gradients have all been incorrectlymeasured, and nearly all of them are so steep that one is truly at a loss tocomprehend how, short of a miracle, one can possibly reach the next peak. Andso there remains nothing more for the listener than to hear musical passages inisolation, as with Wagner's art-work, but not as elements of a whole, sincehearing them in that way is impossible to realise. This neglect of organisationalpower is something for which I blame Wagner. And the damage resulting frompresent and future generations being offered, in the name of `symphony', suchinorganic constructions to listen to as a symphony by Bruckner may bedemonstrated by the fact that today's audience will be grateful if a composermanages to achieve just two or three appetising passages ± I say passages ± inthe course of a piece lasting half to three-quarters of an hour. The ear has beendestroyed to such an extent that it will even show a preference for individual

passages, when what is ostensibly on offer is a continuous work. {111} Musicalconscience is already so spoiled that, in addition to showing respect andgratitude for our great masters, it can even confer the title of `master' on acomposer who provides a few attractive passages.Hugo WolfThis iniquity has eaten more deeply into other composers. Take, for example,Hugo Wolf. Born with the fluency of feeling of our more gifted, i.e. moremusically literate artists, so to speak, he is in fact able to write, from time totime, in such a way ± as we never find in Bruckner ± that the tones do not havea common goal, that one contradicts another instead of mutually helping eachother towards an effect. For all the beautiful things that sprang from his head,his creative instinct already brought forth constellations of notes that show thathe, i.e. his instinct, no longer understands how to attend to the tone,95 forexample in the Italian Serenade, pp. 5 and 4, and Anacreon's Grave.The incapacity for synthesis that originated in Wagner is, moreover, shownfurther by the fact that, in song, a genre he cultivated to the exclusion of almosteverything else, he surrenders the prosody of the poetic foundation apparentlyfor the benefit of a higher truth. The music thus dissolves the poem into proseand we see that, from Wolf's striving to give prominence to strong words bystrong musical accentuation, a musical construction arises that is in no waysimilar to the songs of Schubert, Schumann or Brahms. I do not believe thatone can criticise the latter-named masters for a deficiency of psychologicalMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 117truth in their songs. It will probably take a while longer for us to realise thattruth in no way suffers if, at the same time, art comes into its own. It is merelya higher art, a higher ability and a finer intellect which, when it expressesmusical truth in the genre of song, does not of necessity damage the prosody.We know, moreover, from the history of music that both directions take turnsrather often. There were schools of composers who respected metre, followedby those who did not care about it; and so even in the most recent times therestraint of Brahms's songs is set in opposition to the all too great a freedom ofWolf's. As with all art that makes a great show in its striving for freedom, theaudience is very much drawn to it; on the other hand the restraint of an artistinitially deters the listener from participating, {112} only later to win him overmore convincingly, and forever. If I am not deceiving myself, audiences hear inSchubert's songs, despite their melodies, the truth no less strongly than inWolf's. From this it follows that melody and prosody do not rule out truth.Thus one is right to ask why one should rob art of that which belongs to it, ifdoing so fails to lead to a higher point of development, to a greater victory.96Everyone can only do that of which they are capable. If Wolf had felt as secureas Schubert or Brahms in the possession of artistic means, he would certainlynot have done that, because he simply would not have needed to. But it wasnone other than Wagner who apparently prevented Wolf from thinkingthrough his problem. And thus, like his model, he was sufficientlyundisciplined as to feel compelled to underscore the truth a great deal, andto be little concerned with metre. It is a great pity that it was Wagner and not,

for example, Beethoven or Brahms who took possession of Wolf's intellect. Forthere is no doubting that we are talking about an attractive, inventive talent.Richard StraussIf Wolf reveals the damage caused by Wagner's principle only in the genre ofsong,97 Richard Strauss represents, in our own time, the full scope of the errorthat could be realised in the continuation of programmatic music. To thedamages that programmatic music in general causes in itself, a further, specialone is added with Strauss ± for which, again, only Wagner can be heldresponsible ± namely the deficiency of a sense of tonality. Not only do hisharmonic progressions lack precision, but so much has also been packed into theindividual harmonic degree that it is impossible for the ear to gain control of thislength. Over long stretches, the fanatical recklessness of this method works allthe more banally, since as we know it is not basically a question of a new artisticmanifestation that has not yet been overcome, nor is it an erroneous one per se.For so long as a modicum of clarity is brought to the harmony, and the listener isguaranteed each time that it is a question of this harmonic degree and no other,then so far as I am concerned the part-writing can be as reckless as one likes,ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)118 HEINRICH SCHENKERwithout causing any damage. It cannot be denied, however, that the enormousexpansion of degrees has made harmonic progression in music very unwieldy.The spectacle that we have already witnessed before, with respect tocontrapuntal technique, has repeated itself once again: {113} the over-burdening of the cantus firmus in the past, the over-burdening of the harmonicdegree today. Consequently art can again draw no benefit from the fact that thehorizontal line is fluent and developed, for now length in music is beingmisused, and a healthy relationship between the length of the motive and theproportions of the harmonic progression is nowhere in evidence. One need onlyconsider all that, for example, rests on the point of theGharmony in Strauss's AHero's Life! (See p. 23 of the score.98) It is not that motives cannot also expressthe G minor triad, and thus be part of the G harmony; rather, too much isexpected here of the root insofar as its bearing capacity has been increased, so tospeak, neither by what has gone before nor by what is to follow. For the root B[had just been presented in ample dimension. Now suddenly, after a fermata, weget something which we could almost call a little portrait, again on G, of whichone does not know and cannot sense what role is assigned to it in the course ofthe harmonies and keys and, ultimately, the plan of the form. One might object,in connection with the example cited above, that Strauss was conscious of theirrationality of the part-writing, as well as the fact that the root G bears toolittle, and that he even wanted, for sake of irony, to be guilty of this mismatchbetween the bass and the upper parts that portray the scene; for he intendedhere to represent in a tone-painterly way the self-contradictions, so to speak, ofhis `critics', that is, the nonsensical chattering that says one thing here, andanother thing elsewhere. But by this he merely escapes the frying-pan only toland in the fire; for we must reply that Strauss by no means has the right, if onoccasion he wants to use irony for sake of a programme, to turn the point of thatirony against music itself. For the result will be an entirely different one from

what he expected. Namely, one will laugh not at the critics, whom Strausswishes to expose to our ridicule by tone-painterly means, but rather at musicitself. And so I ask: does Strauss have the right to make music the subject ofridicule? And was it his intention to do so? I do not think so. One sees, then, thatthe composer is not in a position {114} to know what means will ensure that hisintention is realised (in my view, the first sign of dilettantism); he wanted aparticular effect, and something else came out. Ought that to happen to acomposer of rank? Look, for example, at how Beethoven depicts the dancingpeasants in his Sixth Symphony: how delightfully he is able to draw the danceinto the realm of humour, indeed of irony. The accompaniment of the stringorchestra, the accompaniment of the violins, the movement of the oboe part andabove all the amusing bassoon progressions: how naõÈ vely, indeed realistically,everything is portrayed! And yet always the beautiful means of art are at work.Beethoven was sensible enough to take good care to portray the way in whichMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 119the bass part of the peasant ensemble goes awry, as must surely have happenedon many occasions. It is well known that Mozart poked fun at dilettantism andall manner of poor musicianship in a work of minor importance, the so-called`Village Musicians' Sextet',99 but it would occur to no one to regard this littlepiece, conceived from the outset only in jest, as an opus of the Mozartian muse.And so I maintain: a programmatic composer commits a hideous error if hepractises irony at the expense of his art. But even here one can see clearly thatStrauss would certainly not have done what he did had he possessed highermeans, such as were available to Beethoven, for example, in the passage citedabove.The escapades of Wagner, based upon the misunderstanding of the artisticprinciples in force up to his time has, as one can see, led to consequences such asthe escapades of Wolf in song and of Strauss in instrumental music. Behind allthis lies an inability to think through the problems that the composers setthemselves, above all an inability to respect those technical means that hadalready been in common use by the masters. To sum up: there came to the forewhat may be taken as the sign of dilettantism: not following through to theparticular goal, and not being intimate with the means that could lead to theintended goal. In the name of a very poorly understood freedom, the mostsacred treasures of music and the effects that had been gained and learned byhard work were misunderstood, and all the means that happened to be availablewere emptied ± without goal, without choice, without being corrected bysynthesis and purpose ± into one {115} and the same work, if possible into thesame passage, not only horrifying the listener, who does not know where tobegin with these false riches, but also doing a disservice to the effect, whichmust suffocate from confusion and overloading. One need only think of today'smethod of writing for instruments, in which one can in truth discover noprinciple at all, other than that of having no principles. It is no longer contrastthat reveals the individual instrumental colours to the ear, supported further bysynthesis; rather the sound is shifted away from the realm of contrast towardsthat of identity by, for instance, the employment of several parts within an

instrument family ± as, for example, three or four oboes, or four or five clarinets± or by the excessive use of divided strings. One can increase the effect of thepart-writing by having it realised by a variety of instruments; but such atechnique is not designed to favour the individual instrument. The least thatone can say is that the one-sided cultivation of the same instruments can onlyresult in injury to art. To be sure, the ear will initially experience a mesmerisinginstrumental swell, on account of which one commonly speaks today of agenerally well-developed technique of orchestration. Now, the presentgeneration is at any rate in the grip of such a frenzy; the future, however, willcertainly teach us that, unless the essence of sonority in itself is based on theprinciple of contrast, and stands in a healthy relationship to synthesis as theß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)120 HEINRICH SCHENKERlegitimising power, all spectre of colour is but an illusion: colours cease to becolours whenever the objective foundation becomes discredited.Wagner's Responsibility for the Present Plight of MusicAnd so Wagner, by his own procedures, taught today's generation a falsefreedom. The emancipation of music from Beethoven's artistic error, asWagner imagined it, amounts to the same thing as a strong notion of music as asupport for the association of external ideas, namely those of the word in musicdrama and song, and of the programme in symphonic poems. It is certainlybeyond dispute that music, from the beginning, i.e. Gregorian chant, right upto the flowering of vocal polyphony in the sixteenth century, in the accom-panied monody of the Florentines, {116} benefited greatly from the stimula-tion of words. But it is equally beyond dispute that, had an extraordinarypower ± call it chance, or the impetus of play, or whatever ± not led humanityto polyphony, to the discovery of the canon, i.e. to purely formal technicalelements, whose ultimate cause did not lie directly upon the foundations ofpoetry, music would never have been able to experience a further development.For it is precisely the emancipation from the word, the cultivation of thoseformal-technical elements and the cultivation of the instrumental motive thatunderlie the historical development that culminates in those peaks that arerepresented by a Bach, a Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and so on. It is thus stillalways imaginable that music, notwithstanding that it has reached such a peak,can expect much new stimulation from a union with the word or theprogramme; but ± call it what you will, and let it come as it may ± none is evento be wished if it means that the accomplishments of our masters thus far aresomehow called into question. And so the course of world history is much to beregretted, that Wagner appeared at a time when music was still so young,barely four or five hundred years old, and could have had so little strength todefend itself against his errors. The damage would never have been as great asit actually is if it were a much older art, like painting or poetry, and, as a resultof its age and the experiences gained over the course of time, had achievedimmunity against poisons of such an extraordinary kind as Wagner's. It is alsoregrettable that the misunderstanding of the classical composers was a firmbase upon which these excrescences could thrive.In any event, the emphasis on extra-musical associations has become a new

wave in history, and the future will tell us whether it is sufficient for thesalvation of music. Nothing, however, is more certain than that, betweenBeethoven and Wagner, there is a difference and not a continuation or adevelopment, as is generally believed. Let that difference be made clear, if fromnothing else, from the passage of Wagner's I quoted earlier, where he speaks ofan artistic error on Beethoven's part: Beethoven was the error, and WagnerMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 121wanted to be the truth. And are not {117} error and truth mutually contra-dictory? Thus there is nothing more absurd than to mention Wagner when oneis talking about Beethoven, and vice versa. And precisely on the basis of thiscontradiction, the question of music history may be expressed as follows:Beethoven or Wagner?100 A compromise between these two positions must beruled out altogether. And it may also be accepted as certain that, if music is topartake of a further development, it can only do this by first breaking withburdensome, unwieldy extra-musical associations, as it had done earlier at theend of the period of vocal music. I cannot express it in any other way: evenWagner, despite all respect for his genius, must be placed in the same corner inwhich Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck stands if a Beethoven is to receivehis due,101 if we are come out of the current abysmal phase victorious, and ifmusic is once more to resume its normal development, in order to achieve newapplications of old laws and to flourish anew.NOTES1 MeisterdaÈ mmerung: a play on the titles of two of Wagner's music dramas.2 dem Tod geweihten Kultur: another Wagner reference, this time to the text ofTristan.3 Monte Rosa is a large glacier-covered massif in the Swiss/Italian Alps, withseveral peaks of over 4,500 metres, the highest in Europe apart from Mont Blanc.4 This is a viewpoint that Schenker had previously articulated and was to return to.In the 1897 essay `UnpersoÈ nliche Musik' (`Impersonal Music'), he wrote: `Thetalent of the twentieth century will still always be smaller than the genius of theeighteenth century: of that one may be certain!' (see Schenker 1990, p. 221). Aquarter of a century later, he wrote: `They [the German masters] have been notjust ahead of their own time, but ahead of all times. And so, if I may be permittedto quote myself, for mankind a Sebastian Bach will have more importance for alltime than will a talent of the fortieth century' (Schenker 1921±4, No. 4, p. 22;Eng. trans., vol. 1, p. 160).5 In the paragraphs that follow, the oeuvre of composers from Bach to Brahms isgiven in some detail. This information is, of course, based on nineteenth-centuryscholarship, and I have not noted errors or omissions.6 Trauerode, on the death of Electress Christiane Eberhardine, in October 1727; inthe current Bach catalogues, this work is reckoned as a secular cantata.7 Beethoven's only work for harp solo (or piano) is the set of Six Easy Variations ona Swiss Song WoO 64, composed in 1790.8 Thematic catalogues of the works of these composers were to become a focus for

two scholars closely associated with Schenker. Otto Erich Deutsch, who hadcompiled a documentary biography of Schubert as early as 1914, was the jointß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)122 HEINRICH SCHENKERauthor of a Schubert thematic catalogue which appeared in 1951. The firstvolume of Antony van Hoboken's Haydn catalogue appeared in 1957; the three-volume project was completed in 1978.9 This sheet is the original bottom half of page 5, but was removed to a later pointin the typescript, together with the discussion of Berlioz as a composer. I haverestored it here not only for sake of textual continuity, but because Schenker'sremarks on the creative output of Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner and Bruckner form agroup.10 In Harmonielehre (Schenker 1906, p. 228, n. 1) Schenker describes Bruckner insimilar terms (`my teacher, who became a famous symphonist'), thus emphasisingthe limited range of his productivity. (The English translation renders thisinaccurately.)11 Schenker miscalculated Bruckner's life-span; he died in 1896, at the age of 72.12 die Zwerglein: Schenker is possibly alluding to a letter by Beethoven written to hispublisher Schott of Mainz in December 1824: `while here below people only pourscorn on the mastery of tones: the All-Mighty little dwarves!!!'. The letter isquoted in Schenker 1921±4, No. 7, p. 43; Eng. trans., vol. 2, p. 74.13 ein merkwuÈ rdiger Mann fuÈ r jeden philosophischen Liebhaber. This phrase appearedin the June 1788 issue of the Weimar Journal des Luxus und der Moden, in aparagraph about a `Quadro' for piano and strings by Mozart. See Mozart: DieDokumente seines Lebens, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch (Kassel: BaÈ renreiter, 1961),pp. 279±80. Deutsch believed that the quartet referred to was not the G minor, K.478, but the more recently published one in E[ major, K. 493.14 Anton Bruckner. Schenker had mentioned the composer by name in the originalversion of the typescript.15 The three verse extracts quoted here are from Goethe's Epigrams, first publishedin 1790.16 The translation of the second clause of this sentence is based on the originalreading in the typescript.17 This argument, that the impoverished genius boosts the state's economy in hisafterlife, is repeated in the foreword to Schenker 1912, pp. xvii±xix; Eng. trans.,pp. 12±13, and also in `State and Genius', in the Miscellanea of Schenker 1921±4,No. 6, pp. 41±2; Eng. trans., vol. 2, p. 36.18 Johann Michael Puchberg (1741±1822), textile dealer and manufacturer, to whomMozart repeatedly turned for loans in the last three years of his life. Puchberg lentseveral small sums, adding up to 1,415 guilders; Mozart's widow repaid these infull.19 die Hauptursache des Niederganges der musikalischen Kunst im neunzehntenJahrhundert: a close approximation of the title of the essay, as it was transmitted

in the foreword to Harmonielehre.20 The section in Harmonielehre to which Schenker refers is subtitled `On theorigins of thematic groups'.Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 12321 Because of a syntactical gap in the revised version, the translation makes slightuse of the original typescript at this point.22 Connected to `=de' on following page, at first possibly to `é' on this page.Schenker may be adopting the `Vi=de' connection as found in Beethoven'ssketches, which he would have known through the manuscript studies of GustavNottebohm.23 Schenker must be referring to the earlier of Mozart's two trios in G major, K.496.24 Marginal note probably refers to the Quartet in C, K. 465 (see notes 28 and 32below).25 Marginal note: `give references to Mozart and Beethoven symphonies'.26 Marginal note: `Ninth Symphony'.27 Schenker is probably thinking of the Andante, in C major, from the Trio K. 496,a movement that conforms to the construction described here. In the slowmovement ± Andante cantabile ± from Mozart's only piano trio in C, K. 546, themodulation section is based on new material.28 In the margins, a list of works:Mozart Piano Quartet in E[ major (to the key of B[ major)Eroica SymphonyC major String Quartet by Mozart29 This is the Trio in A[, Hoboken XV:14.30 The discussion of cyclic form here includes some remarks on key relationships inthe exposition.31 Pencil note in the blank space here: `Space for examples, quotations'.32 Marginal reference: `Mozart's Quartet in C major'.33 An alternative formulation to the paragraph immediately above (seetranscription, n. 51).34 In §130 in Harmonielehre, where the technique of cyclic construction is discussedgenerally, no analogy with song form is specifically mentioned.35 Notes at the bottom of the page: `Prejudice ± it must not only be old, but alsonew. The word signifies [. . .]'.36 Text at top of the page only, which is clearly a continuation of OC 31/53 (out ofsequence).37 Unnumbered page, the top of which has been cut off; follows p. 24 in its argument.38 Schenker writes z.B., `for example', but does not actually provide any examplesfrom BuÈ low's edition of Beethoven's sonatas. (These were to feature in theErlaÈ uterungsausgabe a decade later.) Marginal note: `Goethe vol. 1, p. 180'; thismay refer to the autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit.39 Marginal note: `lawgiving'.

ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)124 HEINRICH SCHENKER40 The author of this commentary is, of course, Schenker himself; the work waspublished in 1904, and revised in 1908. The paragraph referred to here, but notactually copied into the typescript, follows on from a discussion of groups ofthemes beginning variously on strong and weak beats, and concerns the dynamicsof light and shade within a group:The dynamic contrast unquestionably reinforces the contrast between theindividual components of the group, and also contributes to the expression of therhythm. Another fact is equally clear: the greater the independence given eachpart the greater the intensity and beauty of the group as a whole. For does not thewhole benefit from the merits of its individual parts? Is it not true that the morelucid and impressive the parts, the more lucid and impressive the whole?`A Contribution to the Study of Ornamentation', trans. Hedi Siegel, The MusicForum, 4 (1976), pp. 30±1.41 Schenker is referring either to the middle section of the Menuetto (bars 21ff.), orits companion trio section (bars 92ff.), or the main theme of the finale.42 Two lines have been left blank for an illustration, which Schenker did notprovide.43 This point is amplified in the analysis of this symphony in Schenker 1926, vol. 2,p. 118; Eng. trans., p. 66.44 Schenker is probably referring to Harmonielehre, Ex. 4 (Beethoven, Sonata in Eminor, Op. 90, finale), in which the semiquaver accompaniment figure for the`modulation section' precedes the entry of the `new melody' in bar 33.45 Schenker is probably referring to the fourth movement, Allegro, whose mainmelody begins with an upbeat to the second bar.46 Unnumbered page, but correctly positioned between pages 30b and 32.47 Marginal notes: `Ninth Symphony chorus, instrumentation', plus some jottingsabout dynamics.48 A vertical line has been drawn through the next three sentences, but they providea context for the argument that follows.49 Schenker is ignoring the soloistic horn writing in, for example, Fiordiligi's aria`Per pietaÁ ' in the second act of CosõÁ fan tutte.50 Short blank space for a music illustration. The same point is made in the article`Beethoven-``Retouche'' ', published in the Wiener Abendpost of 9 January 1901;see Schenker 1990, p. 265, where the full range of the three horn parts in theEroica Symphony is given as Ex. 4.51 This sentence taken from the original typescript (the pencil revisions notsufficiently legible).52 Schenker is referring to the introduction to Florestan's aria at the start of Act 2.In the typescript, the pitches are mistakenly given as C and G[.53 At this point Schenker places an asterisk in the text. The same sign appears in themiddle of p. 44, probably to indicate that the material which follows ± aMusic Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 125

discussion of Schubert, Schumann and Chopin as composers of cyclic works ±should be moved forward to this point. I have accordingly made thistransposition; the page numbers that apply to the transposed material have beenplaced in additional square brackets54 Some faint pencil notes in the bottom margin:[. . .] tenses upIn the melody, group construction is present, but the material is sentimentaland only [. . .] seldom joined-upSong-like, the melody is too melodic.55 Ruhebank: Schenker may be thinking of benches that are placed at intervals alongpopular mountain footpaths.56 Schenker made at least three attempts to formulate the last part of this sentence; Ihave used a pencil version found in the bottom margin of the page.57 Pencil note: `Passacaglia in the Fourth Symphony'.58 Glazunov's eight symphonies were written between 1881 and 1906. At the timewhen Schenker was writing `Niedergang', the most recent would have been No. 7(1902), a `Pastoral' Symphony in F.59 Why Schenker crossed out the top of p. 43 is unclear, since the discussion of thesham cyclic work is now discontinuous. It is possible that he intended to removemore of this discussion, or to replace it with new text.60 The discussion of Schubert, Schumann and Chopin as cyclic composers has beenmoved back five pages (see n. 53).61 Note in the bottom margin, `for the talent of our[?] time[?]', possibly intended aspart of this sentence.62 Pencil note: `Leonore Overture, Coriolan, etc.'.63 A pencil note in the top margin refers to critiques of Berlioz's music: `SchumannI, 118ff. Fantastic Symphony, Harold in Italy, Kretzschmar'. The books referredto are Schumann's Gesammelte Schriften uÈ ber Musik und Musiker and HermannKretzschmar's FuÈ hrer durch den Concertsaal.Throughout this paragraph Schenker is probably alluding to the `NewGerman School', a loose association of Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner and theiradherents, as antithesis to the notion of genius working on its own, withoutenlisting `political' support. This becomes a major argument in his critique ofWagner towards the end of this essay.64 Pencil note at bottom of page: `Perhaps the opposite is true: the world plays therole of the stupid ``Papa'' and merely imagines it to be a child'.65 The genius of Domenico Scarlatti ± `Italy's greatest musician' ± is the subject of theintroduction to the first two Scarlatti analyses in Schenker 1925, vol. 1, pp. 127±9;Eng. trans., pp. 67±8.66 Wagner had adopted Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis for Dresden in 1847, and wrotesympathetically about the composer in Opera and Drama.ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)

126 HEINRICH SCHENKER67 In Schenker 1921±4, No. 1, p. 26 (Eng. trans., p. 24), Mozart is said to triumphover Gluck not by his musical superiority as opposed to Gluck's dramatictruthfulness, but rather by his ability to compose bass lines (see also n. 76).68 The famous letter from Mozart to his father that includes this dictum is dated 13October 1781; plans for The Abduction from the Seraglio were in place theprevious month, and the opera was finished in July 1782.69 Schenker is discounting the fugato at the start of the final chorus, `Questo eÁ il findi chi fa mal!', a form alluded to in the preceding line of text (l'antichissimacanzon: `the oldest of songs').70 Heinrich Alfred Bulthaupt (1849±1905), writer, critic, dramatist and librettistactive in Bremen. His most important contribution, to which Schenker isreferring, is Dramaturgie der Oper (1887).71 Schenker writes `von D-moll nach F-dur', but the harmonies surrounding thediminished seventh, at which point the duel is over, suggest F minor rather thanF major.72 The key of E major favours the brightness of the upper register of the violin. Thevery first chord in the first-violin part, e1±b1±e2, requires an open E-string.73 Takt 92: Schenker has misnumbered the bars at the end of the duet (subsequentmistakes arising from this misnumbering have been tacitly corrected).74 In fact, more than fifty bars elapse between the establishment of A minor and thecadence on G minor, of which thirty (bars 487±516) make up the transitionbetween the two keys.75 Marginal note: `Wagner's knowledge of the literature'.76 This statement is repeated, in almost the same language, in the first issue ofTonwille; see also nn. 67 and 101.77 Adelina Patti (1843±1919), one of the leading interpreters of the role of Rosina inthe nineteenth century.78 Two notes in bottom margin, `Bulthaupt's refutation of The Prophet', and`Goethe, From my Life XII (64) Book XXIV'. The latter is confusing: Goethe'sautobiographical work, which was published under the title Dichtung undWahrheit (`Poetry and Truth'), is divided into just twenty books, and so Schenkermay be referring to Book XII.79 Opera and Drama, part I, chapter 2. In the recent `JubilaÈ umsausgabe' markingthe hundredth anniversary of Wagner's death (Richard Wagner: Dichtung undSchriften, ed. Dietrich Borchmeyer [Frankfurt: Insel, 1983], vol. 7), thequotation appears on p. 37.80 Pencil remark on p. 93 verso: `Goethe's Italian Journey, p. 33, first paragraph,conclusion'.81 Opera and Drama, part I, chapter 5 (JubilaÈ umsausgabe, pp. 71±2).82 Opera and Drama, part I, chapter 5 (JubilaÈ umsausgabe, pp. 73±4).Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 12783 I have not been able to trace the source of this quotation.84 und diese war bei Mozart: the wording suggests a biblical tone.85 die Verarbeitung des zweiten Gedankens: since musical form requires time for ideasto establish themselves as themes, there is no time for a `second theme' to bedeveloped in contrast to the first. Only in the poetry, in other words the text, canthere be a `first' and `second' theme.86 Opera and Drama part I, chapter 2 (JubilaÈ umsausgabe, p. 43).87 Opera and Drama, part I, chapter 6 (JubilaÈ umsausgabe, pp. 83±4).88 Opera and Drama part I, chapter 6 (JubilaÈ umsausgabe, p. 87).89 Opera and Drama part I, chapter 6 (JubilaÈ umsausgabe, p. 89).90 Marginal note: `Wagner as Klopst[ock][?]'. The identification of the musicdramatist with the classical poet Friedrich Klopstock (1724±1803) is justified onat least two grounds. Both men were of an independent spirit, and Klopstock'sidea of Selbstverlag, an independent publishing house that would free the writerfrom the tyranny of booksellers, resonates with Wagner's conception of thefestival playhouse for the performance of his works independently of the operaticestablishment. The poet's nationalist sentiments also drew him to the Nordicmyths and early German history, especially in his later writings. Neither of thesepoints of contact is relevant to the present discussion of melody in opera, thoughSchenker does later berate Wagner for his obsession with the old Norse gods andhis `childish' founding of Bayreuth.91 Opera and Drama part I, chapter 6 (JubilaÈ umsausgabe, pp. 87±8).92 August Bungert (1845±1915), composer of a tetralogy based on the Odyssey,which was to form part of a larger projected set of music dramas entitled TheHomeric World.93 In a much later publication, the Five Graphic Music Analyses, long stretches ofChopin's Etude in C minor, Op. 10 No. 12, are described in similar terms: `Allaids to explaining a foreground ± concepts such as harmony, modulation, and soon, fail with regard to bars 21±41 [and bars 61±71]' (Schenker 1932; Eng. trans.,p. 58).94 Harmonielehre, §129, includes a long list of Classical works with interestingfeatures in their form; this was deleted from the English edition of 1954.95 dass er, naÈ mlich der Instinkt, auf den Ton nicht mehr zu horchen versteht, theimplication being that the music becomes tonally incoherent. In Anacreon's Grave,he is probably referring to the chromatic passage in bars 8±10, which leads fromthe principal key of D major through C minor, en route to the subdominant, G.File 31, item 508, throws more light on this sentence. It is a sheet of papersimply headed `Hugo Wolf', with line-by-line notes and music examplesidentifying the work in question as the Italian Serenade. On `p. 4' (the secondpage of the score), he takes exception to the sudden shift from D to C (there is a`false relationship between the two harmonies'). On `p. 5, system 3', he marks theß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005)128 HEINRICH SCHENKERfirst three bars (bars 79±81) as falsch (`wrong') and rewrites the lower parts umnach a = II in Gd motiv[iert] zu kommen, `in order to arrive at A minor, as II of G

major, in a logical way':96 Marginal notes: `Stadt', `Bild'; these refer to songs from Schubert's Schwanen-gesang that could serve as counter-examples to Wolf's song-writing technique.File 31 includes typewritten essays on these songs, item 435 (Die Stadt, ninepages) and item 436 (Ihr Bild, six pages), with emendations in JeanetteSchenker's hand.97 Marginal note at the start of this paragraph: `Variety replaced by other crudemeasures'.98 The score was published by Leuckart in Leipzig. Schenker refers to thispublication in the galley proofs for text cut from Harmonielehre (File 31, items154±5), which offers a lengthy critique of the same section of music, that is, thepassage marked `Etwas langsamer', which begins between rehearsal numbers 13and 14 (p. 29 in the Eulenburg miniature score).99 This is the title by which the Serenade K. 522, for two violins, viola, bass and twohorns was commonly known in Germany. Mozart himself referred to it as Einmusikalischer Spass (`A Musical Joke').100 Beethoven oder Wagner?: this was Schenker's original working title for this essay,as conveyed in a letter to Cotta, the publisher of Harmonielehre. (See above, p. 8).101 See nn. 67 and 76 above.Ex. A Hugo Wolf, Italian Serenade, bars 79±82Ex. B Schenker's revision (Oster Collection, File 31, item 508 recto)Music Analysis, 24/i±ii (2005) ß Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005THE DECLINE OF THE ART OF COMPOSITION 129