Tonality and Structure in Schoenberg's Second String Quartet, Op.

10 by Catherine Dale;
Funktionelle Atonalität: Analytische Strategien für die frei-atonale Musik der Wiener Schule
by Mark Delaere
Review by: Severine Neff
Notes, Second Series, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Mar., 1995), pp. 914-918
Published by: Music Library Association
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914 NOTES, March 1995

appropriately detailed discussion of such the variation movement of Mozart's Sere-

magic movements as, to name two oppo- nade, K. 361.
sites, the opening movement of Haydn's LASZL6SOMFAI
F-minor String Quartet, op. 55, no. 2, or Institutefor Musicology,Budapest

Tonality and Structure in Schoenberg's Second String Quartet, Op. 10.

By Catherine Dale. (Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British
Universities.) New York: Garland Publishing, 1993. [xix, 380 p. ISBN
0-8153-0951-1. $86.00.]
Funktionelle Atonalitit: Analytische Strategien fur die frei-atonale
Musik der Wiener Schule. By Mark Delaere. (Veroffentlichungen zur
Musikforschung, 14.) Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel, 1993. [176 p.
ISBN 3-7959-0643-1 (pbk.). DM 64.00.]
A wry, knowing smile was Milton Bab- matische<< Gestaltung ("athematic" shaping),
bitt's only comment on Paul Hindemith's and Harmonik (harmony)-and combines
tonal analysis of Arnold Schoenberg's them with structures stemming from nine-
twelve-tone Piano Piece, op. 33a in a class teenth-century tonal Formenlehreto com-
lecture over twenty-five years ago (Paul ment on various nontonal works of Schoen-
Hindemith, The Craftof Musical Composition, berg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern.
trans. Arthur Mendel, vol. 1 [New York: B. Neither text, however, ,deals thoroughly
Schott, 1968], 217-18; the class experience with Schoenberg's own approach to tonal
was my own). For decades the theoretical music. Indeed this lacuna is inevitable
community led by Allen Forte and David given the inaccessibility of some of Schoen-
Lewin has zealously protected Babbitt's berg's most crucial theoretical writings.
view, offering analyses of Schoenberg's This situation is now being rectified with
nontonal works without allowing for even the publication of major works from 1917
a hint of tonality. Only recently has opinion and 1934-36 (see Arnold Schoenberg, Co-
changed, producing a bevy of texts and herence, Counterpoint, Instrumentation, In-
articles emphasizing possible tonal aspects struction in Form, ed. Severine Neff, trans.
of Schoenberg's nontonal pieces (e.g., Charlotte M. Cross and Severine Neff [Lin-
William Thomson, Schoenberg'sError [Phil- coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994];
adelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Arnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and
1992]; Silvina Milstein, Arnold Schoenberg: the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presen-
Notes, Sets, Forms [Cambridge: Cambridge tation, ed. and trans. Patricia Carpenter and
University Press, 1992]). Two revised doc- Severine Neff [New York: Columbia Uni-
toral dissertations, Catherine Dale's Tonality versity Press, 1994]). Here I shall confine
and Structure in Schoenberg'sSecond String my comments to Dale's work on the first
Quartet, Op. 10, and Mark Delaere's Funk- movement of the Second Quartet and
tionelle Atonalitdt: Analytische Strategien fiiur Delaere's analysis of the Small Piano Piece,
diefrei-atonaleMusik der WienerSchule[Func- op. 19, no. 6. The discussions by both schol-
tional Atonality: Analytic Strategies for the ars are insightful in themselves, but in both
Free-AtonalMusic of the VienneseSchool] are cases consideration of Schoenberg's own
current additions to this burgeoning theo- thought proves fruitful.
retical literature. In the case of the first movement of the
Dale exhaustively analyzes Schoenberg's Second Quartet, Dale rightfully draws at-
Second String Quartet, op. 10, "based upon tention to the recapitulation within this pu-
Schenkerian paradigms, [but also calling] tative sonata form. Does the recapitulation
upon the significance of the motive as a occur with the return to the initial thematic
determinant of musical gestures at levels material at m. 146 or the return to the tonic
beyond the foreground" (p. 60). Delaere's region in m. 159? Though scholars Jan
analytic method features three of his own Maegaard and Alan Lessem as well as
analytic principles-thematisch-motivische Ge- Schoenberg himself favor the first option,
staltung [thematic-motivic shaping], >Athe- the critic Jim Samson and Schoenberg stu-

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Book Reviews
dent Erwin Stein prefer the second. Dale
uses a Schenkerian approach to demon-
strate that the fundamental structure ends
in m. 159. Thus she reads m. 146 as the
beginning of the recapitulation and m. 159
as the beginning of a long coda. For her,
m. 201-the beginning of the coda for all
of the above commentators-has no major
formal implication.
Dale's formal interpretation is chal-
lenged by Schoenberg's own approach to
tonal music as described in the writings of
two students virtually ignored by her: Wal-
ter Goehr and Patricia Carpenter. Walter
Goehr recalls Schoenberg's classroom anal-
ysis of the Eroica in which "individual notes
are carrying the implications of keys," hav-
ing wide-reaching formal meanings (see
Milstein, p. 10; Walter Goehr studied with
Schoenberg in Berlin in the late 1920s).
Carpenter elucidates aspects of this point
by explaining Schoenberg's term "har-
monic problem." Using Schoenberg's theo-
retical documents as evidence, Carpenter
attests that in a tonal or nontonal context
the Grundgestalt is a prefiguration of the
material of the work, while the theme, par-
ticularly in a tonal work, clarifies the in-
herent dynamic-the "rest"and "unrest" or
"balance" and "imbalance" of the material.
Schoenberg called the components of "un-
rest," the "tonal problem"-these compo-
nents are problematic in that they need
resolution in the tonic for a work to be
complete. The unique tonal dynamic of
each work is shaped by the precise path by
which these agents of "unrest" find "rest."
As Schoenberg says:
Each composition raises a question, puts
up a problem which in the course of
the piece has to be answered, resolved,
carried through. It has to be carried
through many contradictory situation
[sic]; it has to be developed by drawing
conclusions from what it postulates ...
and all this might lead to a conclusion,
a pronunciamento. ("My Subject: Beauty
and Logic in Music," unpublished manu-
script at the Arnold Schoenberg Insti-
tute, Los Angeles. See description of the
manuscript in Jean and Jesper Chris-
tensen, From Schoenberg'sLiteraryLegacy:
A Catalog of Neglected Items [Warren,
Mich.: Harmonie Park Press, 1988], 99.)
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915
(Carpenter was Schoenberg's student at the
University of California at Los Angeles
from 1942-44 and remained a private pu-
pil until 1948. For further discussion of the
"harmonic problem" see her "Grundgestalt
as Tonal Function," Music TheorySpectrum
3 [1983]: 15-38; my "Goethe and Schoen-
berg: Organicism and Analysis" in Music
Theoryand The Exploration of the Past, eds.
Christopher Hatch and David W. Bernstein
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993], 409-33; and P. Murray Dineen,
"From the Gerald Strang Bequest in the
Arnold Schoenberg Institute: Documents
of a Teaching," Theory and Practice 18
[1993], forthcoming. For discussions of the
"harmonic problem" in Schoenberg's prose
works, see Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of
Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter [Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978], 130-
31; Schoenberg, The Musical Idea, 62-3,
132-33, 180-81, 228-29.)
The "tonal problem" manifesting as a dy-
namic of "rest" and "unrest" or "balance"
and "imbalance" is vividly portrayed in the
first movement of the Second Quartet. The
opening phrases of the work constitute a
phrase structure analogous to a sentence
form (for descriptions of the sentence, see
Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentalsof Musi-
cal Composition,ed. Gerald Strang and Leo-
nard Stein [London: Faber and Faber,
1967], 163) in which m. 1 corresponds to
A, the Grundgestalt,m. 2 to A' and mm. 3-4
to the reduction and liquidation.The e#' in
m. 1, the leading tone, has no immediate
resolution to f#', thus creating an "unrest"
or "imbalance" in the voice-leading struc-
ture. As e#' resolves to f#' in m. 2, d' rises
to a d#' that has no immediate linear con-
sequent. In terms of Schoenberg's concept
of voice leading, the d'-d#' line in itself
produces "imbalance," for the d' is not neu-
tralized. According to Schoenberg's notion
of neutralization,the pivot tones, natural-6
and natural-7 must descend in minor, and
the raised-6 and -7 must ascend. These
scale steps further act as a model for the
inclusion of chromatic steps on all scale de-
grees in a harmonic progression: for ex-
ample, in a progression in C major, the
inclusion of a line fi'-g' must be preceded
by the progression f'-e' in some voice of
the part writing. Otherwise, the tonal bal-
ance of a passage is undermined. (See
Schoenberg, Theoryof Harmony, 161, 185;
916
Schoenberg PreliminaryExercisesin Counter-
point, ed. Leonard Stein [New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1962], 61, 63.)
The various forces of "unrest" converge
in m. 3. The first violin articulates f~', the
linear consequent of the d#' in m. 2 (Dale
sees d#' in m. 4 as the consequent: p. 257).
In representing the e#' from m. 1 as f~',
a chromatic tone in F# minor, Schoenberg
produces an even stronger sense of "un-
rest" or "imbalance" than in mm. 1-2. fW'/
f#' is further reiterated in the chord F#-
d-a-ft' on the second beat of m. 3, a
structure that is a major-minor triad. This
chord is the most condensed presentation
of the components of "unrest" that to-
gether constitute the "tonal problem." In-
deed this structure has strong implications
for the tonal dynamic of the piece as a
whole.
Schoenberg understood the form of this
movement as still influenced by sonata-
allegro principles, as he explains in his
"Notes on the Four String Quartets" (Ur-
sula Rauchhaupt, ed., Schoenberg, Webern,
Berg: The String Quartets: A Documentary
Study [Hamburg: Polydor International
GmbH, 1971], 42-44). This document al-
lows a clear sense of Schoenberg's ideas on
the structure.
Exposition:
First Theme 1-43 Ft minor. A minor.
D minor
Second Theme 43-89 "Roving," F# minor
Elaboration: 90-146 D minor
Recapitulation: 146-201 F major, A minor
Coda: 201-33 F# minor
In the example above I indicate the keys
used at each juncture of form. Notice that
the keys used-as Schoenberg would say,
the regions-are none other than those of
the pitch classes of the most condensed ver-
sion of the "tonal problem": the chord in
m. 3, F#-d-a-ft'. These key areas deter-
mine not only the formal divisions of the
movement but the transpositional levels of
the repetitions of the opening theme. The
only formal articulation not repeating the
opening theme is also the only one which
does not present a more or less clear key
area-the second theme group. However,
here all the pitches of the "tonal problem"
are themselves present (an added D-minor
repetition appears at m. 33). Most crucially,
however, only at the coda do all pitches of
the tonal problem finally resolve into a
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NOTES, March 1995
tonic triad for the first time in the work,
fA' becoming e#', the leading tone of the
tonic.
In Dale's Schenkerian analysis of the
opening of the Quartet the crucial sonority
F#-d-a-f' is inevitably relegated to linear
detail in the voice leading. As Dale ex-
plains: "Schenker's view of chromaticism as
'an element which does not destroy the dia-
tonic system but which rather emphasizes
and confirms it' serves to strengthen his
notion of tonality as the prolongation of a
single chord in time" (p. 22). Dale's con-
clusions about the tonal conservatism of the
first movement are virtually built into the
Schenkerian method she uses in her anal-
ysis in which only triadic relationships can
delineate form, and certainly not a disso-
nance such as F#-d-a-ft'.
In a Schoenbergian interpretation cer-
tain other details in the movement assume
importance. For example, Schoenberg's
use of the Et moving to F# in the bass at
m. 159-a surface detail for Dale-
becomes of paramount importance. Ac-
cording to Schoenberg's understanding of
neutralization,E does not resolve to F# at m.
159. Instead the descending-fourth motive
in mm. 158-59 returns in the cello at mm.
196-201 to incorporate the pitches d, A,
and fi" of the "tonal problem." Along with
e#", all these elements of the "tonal prob-
lem" finally resolve here into a tonic triad.
Dale's viewpoint concerning chromatic
details and vertical sonorities seriously un-
dermines some of her own conclusions.
Specifically, in the fourth movement Dale
stresses the crucial importance of a non-
triadic sonority, claiming there is no such
structure in the first movement (pp. 223-
24, 250-51). If, however, we view the use
of the F#-d-a-f' sonority as a generator
of thematic transpositions and regions in
the first movement, is it not analogous to
a referential sonority such as the d'-g#"'-a"
in the fourth movement? Does this not
make the first movement more consistent
with the language of the last movement and
thus a tonally more progressive piece?
Moreover, the F#-d-a-f' sonority is but
one significant verticality overlooked by a
Schenkerian approach. The opening of the
development section of the first movement
(m. 98) is a most striking moment: Schoen-
berg stops the motion of the entire work
at a chord, c#'-f#'-e"-b", which is never
Book Reviews
used elsewhere in this movement. Instead
it is related by inversion to the chord at the
initial fermata in the second movement:
Dl/Al/el/al/bb/f#' (m. 13). A transposition
of it is embedded in the climactic chord of
the third movement (m. 65, beat 1): el/
a,/al'/dV',/gl". But, most crucially, it is a
transposition of the "Ich fuihle luft" theme
in the fourth movement: d'-g'-a'-c". In-
deed, these associations should not be over-
looked for the sake of a classical Schen-
kerian methodology, which Schenker
himself would never have claimed to be
applicable to Op. 10.
While Dale's book is definitely a byprod-
uct of post-1970s Schenkerianism in Brit-
ain and the United States, Delaere's could
have been written before 1955, the year
of Babbitt's first publication on set theory
("Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Compo-
sition," The Score and I.M.A. Magazine 12
[1955]: 53-62). Delaere resists any use of
American set-theoretic techniques as
mechanistic and often unrelated to surface
phrasing and motivic structures. He in-
stead espouses Schoenberg's nineteenth-
century view of the musical work as an im-
age that is like an organism, possessing the
vital unity of a creature: "the work of art,
like every living thing, is conceived as a
whole-just like a child, whose arm or
leg is not conceived separately," (Arnold
Schoenberg, Style and Idea, ed. Leonard
Stein [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975],
458). The "tonal body"-and for Delaere
the "atonal body"-of the artwork contains
functioning parts-phrases and other
Gestalten-whose meaning is clear only in
reference to the whole. Thus, even as his
analyses delineate similar procedures in
different atonal works, he always attempts
to respect the surface details, articulative
boundaries of phrases, and traditional
formal integrity of each piece.
Delaere's analytic comments on the sixth
of Schoenberg's Little Piano Pieces, op. 19,
illustrate certain of his methods quite lu-
cidly. Delaere sees a Beethovenian period
form in the work: mm. 1-2 function as the
antecedent, mm. 2-4 as the consequent.
The remainder of the work he understands
as development (mm. 5-6) and extension
to a cadence (mm. 7-9). He comes to this
conclusion through the application of an
>Athematische<< Gestaltung ("athematic"
shaping) called Komplementaritat(comple-
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917
mentation). "Complementation" as used
here is clearly quite unrelated to the use of
the term in American set theory. Instead
Delaere is referring to the repetition of
pitches or pitch classes at crucial junctures,
thus delineating the formal structure of a
piece. This, incidentally, is not a new notion
for analyzing atonal works. Forms of this
method were suggested forty years ago by
Walter and Alexander Goehr, thirty years
ago by Babbitt, and most recently by Mil-
stein. Delaere, however, seems unaware of
this literature. (See Walter and Alexander
Goehr, "Arnold Schoenberg's Develop-
ment Towards the Twelve-Tone System,"
in European Music in the TwentiethCentury,
ed. H. Hartog [London: Routledge and
Paul, 1957], 76-93. Alexander Goehr also
mentions principles of repetition and
nonrepetition in his article, "The Theo-
retical Writings of Arnold Schoenberg,"
Perspectivesof New Music 13/2 [1974]: es-
pecially 8. Babbitt sees the same in Das Buch
der hdngenden Gdrten ["The Book of the
Hanging Gardens"], Op. 15: see "Three
Essays on Schoenberg," in Perspectiveson
Schoenbergand Stravinsky,ed. Benjamin Bo-
retz and Edward T. Cone [New York:
W. W. Norton, 1968], 52; see also Milstein,
10-12.)
For Delaere the repetition of the opening
fourth chord in mm. 1 and 2 of Schoen-
berg's piece articulates the period form.
Moreover, the exact pitch-class content at
the end of phrases in mm. 5 and 8 (C-
G[-E-D), delineates the form of the rest
of the piece. Delaere's formal reading of
the work is further amplified by a parallel
interpretation of the rhythmic and pitch
structure of mm. 5 and 9, derived from one
of his analytic principles from the category
Harmonik (harmony). Delaere sees the ar-
ticulation of the pitch-classes B-F-Bb-Al
(G#) in both mm. 4-5 and 9 as within the
same attack pattern of five beats, thus mak-
ing a formal parallelism between the end
of the period and the end of the work.
Though I agree with Delaere that the
work is Beethovenian in structure, I con-
ceive the piece as analogous to Schoen-
bergian sentence form: mm. 1-4, A; 4-6,
A'; 7-8, reduction and liquidation; m. 9,
cadence. For example, while Delaere
merely sees m. 7 as an extension, making
motive reference to mm. 3-4, I see it as an
imitation from m. 5 to 7: a'/bl'/d" (mm.
918
4-7, middle to upper line)-c#-d-f# (only
line). Because vertical fourths are no longer
present, by m. 7 the content of the imi-
tation is indeed a reduction of the opening
material. The chord cluster that follows in
m. 8 certainly sounds like a liquidation. For
Schoenberg,
Liquidationconsists in gradually eliminat-
ing characteristic features, until only
uncharacteristic ones remain, which no
longer demand a continuation. Often
only residues remain, which have little in
common with the basic motive. In con-
junction with a cadence or half cadence,
this process can be used to provide
adequate delimitation for a sentence.
(Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical
Composition,58)
Specifically, the closeness of register in m.
8 produces an ambiguity in intervallic
SIXTEENTHCENTURY
Musica getutscht: A Treatise on Mu-
sical Instruments (1511). By Sebastian
Virdung. Translated and edited by
Musical
Beth Bullard. (Cambridge
Texts and Monographs.) Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
[xii, 275 p. ISBN 0-521-30830-5.
$69.95.]
One year after Musica getutschtwas pub-
lished it got a devastating review in the
preface to Arnolt Schlick's Tabulaturenetli-
cher Lobgesang (Mainz, 1512). Not only,
wrote Schlick, are Sebastian Virdung's il-
lustrations not represented by the true art
of printing (they are woodcuts instead of
engravings), but the tablatures are "entirely
corrupted" by errors and impossible fin-
gerings. Now, 483 years and many treatises
and discussions later, Virdung is still being
palmed off on us as a valuable source for
the history of musical instruments.
Beginning with my article "The Critic
Criticized: Sebastian Virdung and His
Controversy with Arnolt Schlick," (Journal
of the American Musicological Society 10
[1957]: 1-6), which was followed by Edwin
Ripin's "A Reevaluation of Virdung's Mu-
sica getutscht," (Journal of the American
Musicological Society 29 [1976]: 189-223),
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NOTES, March 1995
relationships: fourths are difficult to hear
as fourths; the small registral span of
the cluster totally contradicts the expansion
of the opening. Out of this liquidated ma-
terial comes the cadence, picking up on the
embedded material (d'-e'-g#'-c")-so el-
egantly analyzed by Delaere-and resolv-
ing it.
The text of Delaere's book is well pro-
duced. The paper is of fine quality, and the
print is a good size. The music examples,
however, should have been computer gen-
erated. Also, why is there no index to the
text? In contrast, Dale's book is strictly a
photographic copy of her typed disserta-
tion with hand-copied examples. The text
itself, however, is beautifully proofed.
SEVERINE NEFF
of Music,
College-Conservatory
Universityof Cincinnati
Musica getutscht should have been laid to
rest as very unreliable. Nonetheless, it re-
ceived considerable critical attention from
Gerhard Stradner in his Spielpraxisund In-
strumentariumum 1500: dargestelltan Sebas-
tian Virdungs "Musicagetutscht"(Basel 1511)
(Forschungen zur alteren Musikgeschichte,
4/1 [Vienna: Verband der wissenschaft-
lichen Gesellschaften Osterreichs, 1983]) as
well as a 157-page French discussion and
translation by Christian Meyer, Sebastian
Virdung, 'Musica getutscht':les instrumentset
la pratiquemusicaleen Allemagne au debut du
XVIe siecle (Paris: Editions du Centre Na-
tionale Scientifique, 1980). Stradner's book
uses Virdung as a point of departure for
instruments and performance practice of
its time while maintaining a soberly critical
attitude to Virdung himself. Meyer accepts
Virdung at face value and is laudable
chiefly because the translator includes doc-
uments pertaining to Virdung's scant bi-
ography as well as the treatise itself. Since
the treatise now exists in German and
French, two of the four main languages of
Western musicology, do we really need an
English translation, particularly when the
source is suspect?
Bullard's translation is quite good, but in
order to justify her book (originally a dis-
sertation) she feels that she has to restore