WILLIAM DRABKIN

SCHENKER'S `DECLINE': AN INTRODUCTION

For a long time, we were satisfied with an understanding of Schenker's

concepts of musical structure and the methods by which he undertook detailed
studies of the content of classical masterworks; in modern parlance, Schenker
was `constructed' as a theorist and analyst. His outspoken observations on
aesthetic, cultural and political matters were thought best left undisturbed, and
in consequence went largely unexplored.
To some extent, this state of affairs was only natural. The voice-leading
graphs, by which Schenker's world had been charted for so long, are a rela-
tively late feature of his oeuvre and, based on appearances alone, do not
resemble the more text-based work from before 1920. His likes and dislikes,
however, were formed at a relatively early stage in his development as a
musician, before his theoretical programme began to take shape. Though these
changed little after 1900 and continued to find expression in his later work, it
was the originality of the graphic methods, not their consistency with earlier
sentiments, that dominated the reception of Schenker until the 1980s.
The past quarter-century, however, has seen a growth in interest not only in
the earlier formulations of his theory but also in his relationship to the external
world. His readiness to confront the pillars of musical society ± publishers,
composers, well-established critics and authors of standard textbooks ± now
seems more a natural corollary of his artistic personality than a disagreeable or
embarrassing feature one would prefer to forget. The passage of time has also
made it easier for us to protect those parts of his writings that we find offensive,
and to avoid relegating them to an appendix or cutting them altogether.1
Rather than merely poring over the stems and slurs of his wordless, politics-
free graphs, we are just as likely to scrutinise his writings for clues to the
aesthetic and philosophical background underlying his approach to art. A
further result of this shift is the publication, translation and interpretation of
his earliest writings and the study of unpublished and private documents
including letters, diaries, lesson books, rudimentary analyses and annotations
made in his library of scores and books. In this respect, four publications have
been of inestimable value in helping scholars track down the thoughts behind
Schenker's life and work: the catalogues of the two major portions of the
theorist's Nachlass, preserved in the papers of Oswald Jonas and Ernst Oster;2
a volume comprising Schenker's work as a journalist in the 1890s;3 and the
generous selection of correspondence and diary entries that make up Hellmut

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4 WILLIAM DRABKIN

Federhofer's proto-biographical monograph.4 As the most recent Schenker

bibliography shows, there is a rapidly growing body of literature about his life
and personality, together with editions and translations of previously unpub-
lished writings and other materials in the Nachlass, including correspondence
with musicians and friends.5
Of the sources from which to gain a perspective of the formation of
Schenker's aesthetic views, File 31 in the Oster Collection (New York Public
Library) is potentially among the richest. Catalogued as an `alphabetically
arranged file of musical topics',6 it includes a series of folders marked `A' to `Z',
in which loose scraps of paper have been organised; there are, however, several
longer, continuous texts at the front of the file that do not fit this description.
Most of the documents in File 31 are not dated; those that are bear dates from
between 1903 and 1911, and most of the longer texts, too, can safely be
assigned to the first decade of the twentieth century. The material in this file is
thus contemporary with the first two volumes of the New Musical Theories
and Fantasies, and pre-dates the large-scale studies of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony and late piano sonatas.
Some documents contain brief notes on issues in music, notes on named (or
identifiable) pieces, records of conversations, or quotations from German
classical authors that might have found their way into a larger essay. Others are
drafts of essays themselves, including the last of Schenker's essays as a
journalist ± the `Beethoven-``Retouche'' ' for the Wiener Abendpost of 9 January
19017 (items 480±90) and the foreword to Kontrapunkt (items 160±71 and 174±
90, catalogued as `fragment[s] of an article');8 both of these latter texts are
written in a large and elegant Kurrentschrift, an older form of German hand-
writing that was phased out during the twentieth century. There are several
typewritten essays, including a series of three unpublished studies of songs by
Schubert, `Die Stadt' and `Ihr Bild' (settings of Heine from Schwanengesang),
and the early Goethe setting, Meeresstille.9 There is also one printed document
in File 31, catalogued as `pages from an unidentified article or book', which
comprises proof sheets from Harmonielehre (1906); it represents about four
pages of text cut at a late stage. I shall return to some of these documents later.
By far the largest document in File 31 ± and one of the largest in the whole of
the Oster Collection ± is an unsigned, undated and untitled 126-page typescript.
It comprises a single essay, without chapters or subheadings, and without the
organisational section markers (§) that Schenker used in his published theoretical
works. (Since each sheet of paper in the Oster Collection is identified by a
separate item number, the document is catalogued as `File 31, items 28±153'.)
The text is largely concerned with the demise of musical composition in the
nineteenth century, and with the lamentable state of the art in the early twentieth
century. A broad outline of the contents is given in Table 1; approximate page
numbers, taken from the typescript, are provided in curly brackets.10

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 SCHENKER'S DECLINE 5

TABLE 1: Outline of New York Public Library, Oster Collection, File 31, items
28±153

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE MASTERS

Productivity
The productivity of the masters, across a great variety of genres and forms {1±5}
The smaller output of composers after Beethoven, in a limited number of genres {5±13}
Technique
Cyclic form (sonata form) {13±32}
Concerto, overture, instrumentation {32±9}
Mendelssohn and Brahms as the heirs to the cyclic tradition {39±41}
Misinterpretation of cyclic form
Cyclic forms in the hands of inferior composers {41±4}
Schubert, Schumann and Chopin as sonata composers {44±6}

THE DEMISE

Programmatic music
Hector Berlioz {46±56}
Franz Liszt {56±9}
Opera and music drama
Drama, dramatic truth and the reform operas of Gluck {59±65}
Mozart {65±7}
Analysis of Don Giovanni {67±77}
Opera composers after Mozart {78±84}
Wagner's music dramas {84±91}
Wagner on Mozart, Beethoven and nineteenth-century opera: Opera and Drama {91±106}
Music since Wagner
Anton Bruckner {107±11}
Hugo Wolf {111±12}
Richard Strauss {112±14}
Wagner's responsibility for the present plight of music {114±17}

From its contents, this text may easily be identified with an essay first
referred to in the foreword to Harmonielehre (1906), and there entitled `UÈber
den Niedergang der Kompositionskunst: eine technisch-kritische Unter-
suchung';11 indeed, some of the words in this title appear in a crucial phrase
in the text.12 According to the foreword, Schenker planned to issue
`Niedergang' separately, as a supplementary volume to Harmonielehre, before
bringing out his Psychologie des Kontrapunkts as the second major component
of his New Musical Theories and Fantasies.

*
The recently unearthed correspondence between Schenker and the publishing
firm of J. G. Cotta in Stuttgart, which brought out the Harmonielehre and the

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6 WILLIAM DRABKIN

first volume of Kontrapunkt, sheds considerable light on `Niedergang'. To

understand the genesis of the typescript and its relationship to the New
Musical Theories and Fantasies, it will be useful to survey Schenker's
correspondence with Cotta, and other firms, between 1905 and 1910.13
Although Harmonielehre was largely finished by the early spring of 1905, it
took Schenker the better part of a year to find a publisher for it. The book
was rejected by both Breitkopf & HaÈrtel and Brockhaus of Leipzig. Even
Universal Edition in Schenker's home city of Vienna, which had brought out
both his edition of keyboard works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1902) and
the related Beitrag zur Ornamentik (1904), turned it down twice, in April and
in October; rejection here was probably due to Schenker's frank criticism of
contemporary composers, including two ± Richard Strauss and Max Reger ±
whose works had already been published by the firm. An application to Cotta
on 8 November also brought, initially, a quick negative response, the
rejection letter stating that the firm had too many other editorial commit-
ments at the time. But a testimonial to Cotta from the pianist and composer
Eugen d'Albert,14 received a few days afterwards, led the publishers to
reconsider; on 15 November they invited Schenker to send them Harmonie-
lehre. Exactly a week later he sent them the typescript, which he had earlier
admitted contained `quite forthright criticisms of the alleged mastery of
various composers'. Cotta accepted, and on 5 December 1905 a contract was
issued.15
In the covering letter sent with the manuscript of Harmonielehre, Schenker
mentions for the first time a text which, in due course, was to become the
`Niedergang' typescript; what he is describing is, admittedly, considerably
smaller and more concise in its scope:

I have retained only the afterword, so
that I can give it a second reworking. It
is approximately the length of a printed
gathering, and deals with the cyclical
technique ± regrettably now lost ± of our
great masters.
Ich habe nur das Nachwort hier
zuruÈckbehalten, um es einer zweiten
Redaction zu unterziehen: es ist etwa
einen Druckbogen stark, u. beschaÈftigt
sich mit der leider verloren gegangenen
cyklischen Technik unserer groûen
Meister.

When he returned the signed contract to Cotta, on 10 December, Schenker

promised the revised `afterword' soon; in their reply, the publishers expressed
optimism that the book might be out by March 1906. But several factors
delayed production: Schenker had to be chased for some missing music
examples; and the publishers initially wanted to print all the examples together
in an appendix, whereas the author urged them to place the examples at or near
the point in the text to which they referred. Correcting the proofs of
Harmonielehre began as early as January 1906, but proved time-consuming;

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 SCHENKER'S DECLINE 7

moreover Schenker continued to make additions as he went along, so that the

book eventually grew in size from the original estimate of 25 sixteen-page
gatherings to 29 gatherings ± excluding the afterword. Then, in a letter of 29
May 1906, the date on which he sent off the last batch of proofs for the first
(i.e. `theoretical') part of Harmonielehre, he made a startling announcement,
and perhaps an even more startling proposal:

I . . . seize this opportunity to broach ich . . . nehme diese Gelegenheit wahr,

with you the possibility of producing the
first [i.e. theoretical] part on its own, as a
separate volume (I). The afterword could
in fact take up between five and seven
gatherings in the expanded layout of the
work and would perhaps, therefore, very
suitably make up a second volume
together with Part II. However, I leave
the decision on this proposal entirely to
your professional judgement.
Ihnen den Gedanken nahezulegen, ob es
nicht am Platze waÈre, den ersten Teil
schon allein zu einem eigenen Bande (I)
zu gestalten. Das Nachwort naÈmlich
duÈrfte, der vergroÈûerten Anlage des
Werkes, doch 5±7 Bogen betragen, u.
wuÈrde daher mit dem zweiten Teil
vielleicht sehr gut einen zweiten Band
ausmachen. Doch uÈberlasse ich die
Erledigung dieser Anregung ganz u. gar
Ihrem fachmaÈnnischen Ermessen.

To give some idea of what this means, a page of Harmonielehre with no music
examples or section breaks contains about 330 to 340 words; a gathering of
sixteen pages would thus amount to around 5,300 to 5,400 words. A clean page
of the `Niedergang' typescript contains less text (slightly more than 300
words); about 17‰ typewritten pages would be needed to fill a printed
gathering. Schenker estimated the first draft of his `afterword' to be about this
length, but nowhere in File 31 ± or, so far as I am aware, in the whole of the
Oster Collection ± is there an essay of this length, and from this period, that is
specifically concerned with cyclic form. Nor is it possible to identify a
subsection of the typescript that fits this description: the pagination of the
document and its content are sufficiently continuous as to rule out the
expansion of a short text into one that is between five and seven times as long.
Either an early, rudimentary version of pp. 13±32 has been lost, or the shorter
version of the afterword existed largely in Schenker's mind at the time that he
first mentioned it to Cotta.
The final form of the typescript does, however, correspond closely to the
larger of Schenker's estimates made in May 1906: its 125 pages, without cuts,
would have taken up exactly seven printed gatherings. And if the publishers
had accepted his proposal to divide Harmonielehre into two volumes ± the first
being the theoretical part, the second comprising the practical part plus the
whole of a lengthy afterword ± they would have been very closely matched in
size, each taking up between 17 and 18 gatherings.
Cotta sent back their `professional judgement' to Schenker two days later:

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8 WILLIAM DRABKIN

We should like, for technical reasons
relating to the book trade, to advise
against your suggestion of dividing the
work into two parts. . . . Even if the
question of costs touches only you
directly, we would emphatically not wish
to conceal our reservations from you, and
recommend that you restrict the scope of
the afterword, if at all possible.
Ihrem Vorschlage einer Zweiteilung des
Werkes moÈchten wir aus
buchhaÈndlerisch-technischen GruÈnden
widerraten. . . . Wenn auch die
Kostenfrage unmittelbar nur Sie selbst
beruÈhrt, so moÈchten wir doch unsere
Bedenken nicht verhehlen und Ihnen
empfehlen, den Umfang des Nachwortes
wenn irgend angaÈngig einzuschraÈnken.

Within a week, Schenker had not only accepted his publishers' advice but had
also agreed to withdraw the `afterword' from the volume at hand, offering to
defer publication of the text to a later date as a separate volume:
. . . but I have now decided to have the . . . aber nun habe ich mich entschlossen,
afterword published separately, under das Nachwort separat, etwa unter dem
some such title as Beethoven or Wagner?: Titel: ``Beethoven oder Wagner?'' ein
an Afterword to the `New Musical Nachwort zu den [``]M. Th. u. Ph.''
Theories and Fantasies'. Is this not the erscheinen zu lassen. Ist das nicht der
best way forward, given that I set great beste Ausweg, nachdem ich auf das
store upon the afterword and a reduction Nachwort sehr viel Gewicht lege u. eine
of its content is no longer possible, and Reduktion des Inhaltes nicht mehr
also no longer desirable, in view of what durchfuÈhrbar, u. auch nicht, in
it has to say? A reference at the end of Anbetracht der Tendenz, wuÈnschenswert
the main work will alert the reader to the ist[?] Ein Hinweis am Ende des
afterword, which will be published Hauptwerkes wird auf das separat, aber
separately but simultaneously, and vice gleichzeitig erscheinende Nachwort
versa. Please let me know whether this aufmerksam machen u. umgekehrt. Ich
plan is agreeable to you. bitte um freundliche Mitteilun[g,] ob
Ihnen dieser Plan angenehm ist?

The working title given in this letter, `Beethoven or Wagner?', is a quotation

from the last page of the typescript. It sums up the preceding forty pages, in
which the notion of Wagner as heir to Beethoven's compositional legacy is
vigorously rebutted. It is also perhaps the most concise expression of what
Schenker saw as the problem facing the composers of his time. For him, the
only way to relieve the plight of contemporary music was to return to the
period before Wagner and to avoid taking the path that led ± via Berlioz and
Liszt ± to him.16
By the autumn, however, he was insisting again ± and with greater force ±
that there was really only one text, and that the so-called `afterword' was an
integral part of the volume devoted to the theory of harmony and all that
followed from it. He writes to Cotta on 1 October 1906:
What is especially dear to my heart is to Was mir aber besonders am Herzen liegt,
make clear to you that I must, not least ist Ihnen klar zu machen, dass ich schon

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 SCHENKER'S DECLINE 9

on practical and commercial grounds, aus kaufmaÈnnisch praktischen GruÈnden

incorporate into the work the material
that has been reserved for the `afterword'
in some form. In view of the fact that
this material (which, moreover, I will
present not as an `afterword' but as an
organically integrated third and final
section of the practical part [of
Harmonielehre]) contains almost no music
examples, and thus could be typeset
quickly, I take the liberty of asking you
to be patient with me and my work for a
little while longer. I am convinced that
this statement can, in any event, be
published in time for Christmas, since
the conceptual work is already completed.
den fuÈr das ``Nachwort'' reservierten
Stoff in irgend einer Form dem Werke
einverleiben muû. In Anbetracht dessen,
das dieser Theil (den ich uÈbrigens nicht
als Nachwort[,] sondern als organisch
verbundenen III. = letzten Abschnitt
des praktischen Teiles geben will) fast
keine Notenbeispiele mit sich fuÈhrt, u.
sich dessen Drucklegung somit sehr rasch
abwickeln kann, erlaube ich mir, noch
einige Geduld mit mir u. meinem Werke
zu haben. Ich bin uÈberzeugt, dass dieser
Satz alledem noch rechtzeitig vor
Weihnachten wird erscheinen koÈnnen, da
das Konzept bereits fertig ist.

Cotta wrote to Schenker by return of post, reasserting their unease that the
book would be too long if it contained an extensive afterword, and expressing
greater concern that, unless the book were dispatched to retailers in the first
week of November, it would be swamped by `the deluge of Christmas-gift
literature', leaving large numbers of unsold copies that would have to be sent
back to the publisher. Schenker accepted these arguments, in a letter of 6
October:
. . . I am wholly convinced by your . . . u. gerne folge ich Ihrem mir im
arguments and will gladly follow the Schreiben vo[m] 2. 10. gegebenen Rate,
advice you gave me in your letter of von Ihren Argumenten ganz uÈberzeugt.
2 October. Was den fuÈr das Nachwort
As concerns the material originally urspruÈnglich bestimmten Stoff anbelangt,
destined for the afterword, I shall allow so werde ich mir erlauben, ihn gemaÈss
myself to be guided by the valuable Ihrem w. Rathe im Schreiben von 5. Juni
advice in your letter of 5 June [recte: 31 [recte: 31. Mai] 06, als besondere Schrift
May] 1906 and to publish it later, as a nachtraÈglich (u. zw. bis spaÈtestens zur
separate item (but in time for the Easter Ostermesse!) folgen zu lassen, u. eine
trade fair at the very latest!), and insert a darauf abzielende Bemerkung im Vorwort
comment to this effect in the foreword of zu dem gegenwaÈrtigen Buch anzubringen.
the present book. If the shorter piece FuÈr einen Teil der Sachkundigen wuÈrde,
were not to follow promptly, its true wenn die kleinere Schrift nicht alsbald
purpose and relevance would be lost on nachfolgen wuÈrde, die eigentliche,
some of the experts. And, as you rightly aktuelle Pointe fehlen, u. wie Sie richtig
wrote to me on a previous occasion, the mir seinerzeit schrieben, duÈrfte der
supplementary work ought to be a Nachtrag der geschaÈftlichen Wirkung zu
success from a commercial point of view. Gute kommen.

A lively correspondence between Schenker and Cotta continues in the run-

up to the publication of Kontrapunkt, the second volume of the New Musical

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Theories and Fantasies, which Schenker submitted to Cotta in 1908 and whose
first part appeared two years later. The occasional mention of `Niedergang'
makes it clear that, not only was the essay very much on his mind, but that he
also saw it as the lynchpin of his early theoretical work. He writes on 13
September 1907:
Very shortly I shall be send you vol. II, Sehr bald uÈberreiche ich Ihnen den Bd.
Counterpoint, which by reason of its II ``Contrapunkt''[,] der schon wegen
subject matter looks much more like an seines Stoffes, einem wirklichen
actual textbook than does vol. I. And so Lehrbuche aÈhnlicher sieht als Bd. I; so
in the foreseeable future the capstone, daû in absehbarer Zeit die Pointe: ``Der
The Decline of Composition, as vol. III Niedergang der Composition'' als Band
(not the `Afterword', as originally III (statt des fruÈher geplanten ``Nach-
planned) will be able to determine the wortes'') uÈber die Wirkung der ``N. Th.
impact of the New [Musical] Theories and u. Fants.[''] wird entscheiden koÈnnen.
Fantasies. I am firmly convinced that vol. Ich bin fest uÈberzeugt, das Bd III nicht
III will not have been written in vain. vergebens geschrieben sein wird.

A year later (13 October 1908), in a letter otherwise concerned with the
splitting of Kontrapunkt into two volumes, he returns to `Niedergang',
characterising it in similar terms, this time with a request for additional time
before submitting the manuscript:
. . . before I return to vol. III, and the . . . ehe ich zum Bd. III, der eigentlichen
real capstone of the work, The Decline of Pointe des Werkes, ``dem Niedergang der
the Art of Composition, I intend to take a Kompositionskunst'' aushole, will ich
short break to rest and recuperate (spring eine kleine Pause der Ruhe u. Sammlung
and summer [1909]), since for about (FruÈhling u. Sommer) einschlaten, da ich
seven or eight years, as a result of all seit etwa 7±8 Jahren vor lauter Aufgaben:
manner of obligations ± editions of Bach Bach, HaÈndel-Ausgaben fuÈr unsere
and Handel for our Universal Edition, ``Universal-Edition'', ``Ornamentik'',
Ornamentation, Harmony, Counterpoint, Harmonielehre, Kontrapunkt, Konzerten
concerts and teaching, and other such u. Unterricht u. sonstiger Production fast
activity ± I have scarcely been able to gar nicht dazu gekommen bin, ein klein
take a short break. wenig auszurasten.

(The Bach edition is that of selected keyboard works by Carl Philipp Emanuel,
published back in 1902; an invitation to edit a series of major works by J.S.
Bach was not to come for another month, in a letter of 18 December 1808 from
Emil Hertzka, director of Universal Edition.17)
That the completion of `Niedergang' continued to be at the forefront of his
intentions may be seen in a letter of 8 January 1909 to Hertzka, concerning
plans for a new edition of the Well-Tempered Clavier. He says that he must give
priority to his work for Cotta, the royalties from which represent a substantial
source of income, and refers to his outstanding obligations to the Stuttgart
publisher:

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 SCHENKER'S DECLINE 11

Apart from vol. II ± if only it were
already out! ± I still owe Cotta a vol. III
and IV, and it is especially vol. III, the
The Decline of the Art of Composition,
that is taking all my energy, since it
represents the capstone of my harmonic
and contrapuntal theory.
Auûer dem II[.] Band ± waÈre er nur
schon drauûen! ± schulde ich Cotta noch
einen III. u. IV. Band, u. besonders ist
es ja der III[.] Band, der ``Niedergang
der Kompositionskunst'', der alle meine
KraÈfte fordert, da er die Pointe der
Harmonie- u. der Kontrapunktslehre
vorstellt.

At the end of the same year it is still a priority, though now, in a letter to Cotta
of 2 December 1909, he is describing it in terms which suggest that further
volumes of the New Musical Theories and Fantasies are at the planning stage:
For in the first instance I strive to take Denn in erster Linie strebe ich an, die
advantage of the favour that Fate has Gunst des Schicksals, das mir einen
granted in sending me a patron, to MaÈzen geschenkt hat, auszunuÈtzen, u.
complete the work that I have already zum Wohl u. Besten einer kommenden
begun in the interests of bringing about a Musikrenaissance das einmal begonnene
rebirth in music, and that means, in Werk zu vollenden u. namentlich doch
particular, putting vol. III on the market den Bd. III, als den Mittelpunkt des
as the mid-point of the collective work. Gesamtwerkes, auf den Markt zu
bringen.

Still more ambitious plans are laid at the end of the following summer, when he
unleashes on Cotta a projected library of handbooks (Handbibliothek) written in
support of `Niedergang'. Explaining that the latter had to be reduced in scope
and restricted to including just a handful of music examples, thus limiting the
impact of his theories, he writes:
I consider it absolutely crucial to publish halte ich es fuÈr durchaus notwendig, ganz
overwhelmingly convincing evidence in hervorragende Erscheinungen in Form
the specific form of an independent eben eines selbstaÈndigen
music repertory supplement to vol. III, Literaturanhanges zu Bd. III in
appearing in separate booklets. gesonderten Heften herauszugeben.
The series title could perhaps read: Der Generaltitel koÈnnte etwa lauten:
`Music Repertory Supplement to the ``Literaturanhang zum dritten, in
Forthcoming Volume III of the New Vorbereitung befindlichen Band der ``N.
Musical Theories and Fantasies' (or M. Th. u. Ph.'' (so oder aÈhnlich)[,] das
something like that); the individual einzelne Heftchen aber wurde eine
booklets would be numbered, e.g. Nummer tragen, wie z.B.

I I.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Beethoven: IX[.] Symphonie
Each volume would also be obtainable Das Heftchen wuÈrde auch einzeln zu
separately, which would be of great haben sein, was sowohl fuÈr die
advantage not only for the dissemination Verbreitung der Lehre, als auch in
of my theory but also from a commercial geschaÈftlicher Hinsicht von groûem
point of view. vorteil ware!

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On the other hand, these little Anderseits stellen diese BaÈndchen

booklets amount to self-contained short
monographs, such that they can be
profitably read and studied without
knowledge of vol. III, i.e. even before it
is out!
derart in sich abgeschlossene kleine
Monographien dar, daû sie wohl auch
ohne Kenntnis des III. Bd., also auch vor
dessen Erscheinen mit Nutzen gelesen u.
studiert werden koÈnnen!

While Schenker's study of the Ninth Symphony turned out, two years later,
to be something a good deal larger than a Heftchen or `short monograph' ± it
runs to nearly four hundred pages ± several other projects come to light for the
first time in its foreword, including an `Outline of a New Theory of Form'
(Entwurf einer neuen Formenlehre) and an `Art of Performance' (Die Kunst des
Vortrags);18 the first of these, in particular, would have made its natural home
in the New Musical Theories and Fantasies. A Kleine Bibliothek is also
announced here: this is pretty much the same as the Handbibliothek broached to
Cotta, though it was not to be realised until many years later, as Der Tonwille
(1921±24). `Niedergang', too, makes an appearance in the foreword to the
monograph on the Ninth Symphony, in a parenthetical remark about
Wagner:19

The proof given here of Wagner's
primitive relationship to the exalted laws,
as they came to receive expression in the
works of our great masters ± a proof
which I intend, moreover, to strengthen
in the third volume of my `New Musical
Theories and Fantasies' with countless
additional arguments ± thus explains how
it was possible for Wagner to negate
absolute music and to use every possible
pretext to embrace and promote music
drama as, ostensibly, the sole sanctifying
ideal!
Der hier gefuÈhrte Beweis uÈber die
primitive Beziehung Wagners zu den
hochstehenden Gesetzen, wie sie in den
Werken unserer groûen Meister zum
Ausdruck kamen ± welchen Beweis ich
uÈbrigens im III. Bd. meiner ``Neuen
musikalischen Theorien und Phantasien''
noch durch zahlloses anderes Material zu
verstaÈrken gedenke, ± erklaÈrt also, wieso
es Wagner moÈglich wurde, die absolute
Musik zu negieren und das Musikdrama
als angeblich allein seligmachendes Ideal
unter zahllosen VorwaÈnden zu bekennen
und zu predigen!

Not surprisingly, `Niedergang' is described here in the future tense, rather

than as a book whose publication is imminent. By now, the typescript was some
six years old, and the intervening years had seen not only considerable
development in Schenker's work as a theorist and analyst, but also nothing less
than a revolution in musical style in Schenker's home city of Vienna: an up-to-
date account of the `decline of musical composition' after Wagner would have
required more than a few pages each on Bruckner, Wolf and Strauss. And since
Schenker's case against Wagner rested principally on the autonomy of music,
rather than its subservience to a text or plot, that argument would not have
provided sufficient grounds for discrediting the radically new music of

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 SCHENKER'S DECLINE 13

Schoenberg and his school, much of it in cherished genres of instrumental

music (including the string quartet and symphony) that Wagner, Wolf and
Strauss had largely avoided.
A further decade passes, during which Schenker completes the ErlaÈuterungs-
ausgaben of four late Beethoven sonatas and an early draft of what was to
become Der freie Satz. Then in 1923, in the fifth issue of Der Tonwille, he
refers to `Niedergang' in a footnote recording a judgement of Berlioz by
Mendelssohn, written in a language not very different from his own:20
As I shall confirm in greater detail in Noch immer besteht das Urteil
Niedergang der Kompositionskunst, Mendelssohns uÈber Berlioz zu Recht, wie
Mendelssohn's judgement of Berlioz dies genauer im `Niedergang der
remains valid . . . `His orchestration is so Kompositionskunst' nachgewiesen
unspeakably slovenly, such a confused werden soll . . . ``Seine Instrumentierung
scribbling, that one must wash one's ist so entsetzlich schmuÈtzig und
fingers after each time one holds one of durcheinander geschmiert, daû man sich
his scores.' And elsewhere: `. . . a true die Finger waschen muû, wenn man mal
caricature without a spark of talent'. eine Partitur in der Hand gehabt hat.''
Oder: ``. . . eine wahre Karrikatur ohne
einen Funken Talent.''

This is the last sighting of `Niedergang' in Schenker's published work.

OC File 31/28±153 comprises in all 126 sheets of paper, 125 wholly or partly
typed, one entirely handwritten. At least some of the typing appears to be the
work of someone who was neither a professional typist nor fully conversant
with the terminology of music theory. Several clues point to a dictated text,
including the harmonic summary of the overture to Die WalkuÈre, given as `1, 2,
5' rather than `I±II±V' (p. 87), and `um das' (at the top of p. 73) where `und
dass' would have been required for the sense. The typist has numbered most of
the pages in the essay, ending with 117; a change of ribbon can be seen in the
middle of p. 52, but there is no textual discontinuity at this point. Several pages
with additional typewritten text, cued into the original typescript with clear
insertion marks, belong to an early phase of revision.
The later, handwritten changes range from minor corrections of spelling and
orthography to the rewording of sentences (by far the largest category of
changes) and the rewriting of a whole page. An assortment of crosses, carets,
squiggles, asterisks and other symbols are used to reorganise the text within a
paragraph, between paragraphs, and sometimes on a larger scale; not all of
these are free of ambiguity. A further category of handwritten additions is the
marginal reference: these refer to musical works, or writings, that might have
been developed into additional text or footnotes. Finally, short blank spaces

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14 WILLIAM DRABKIN

have been left for about half a dozen music examples; only one of these has
been filled.
Table 2 gives a reconstruction of the `Niedergang' typescript, with the pages
in the order that best accounts for Schenker's revisions.
The handwritten changes are by no means distributed evenly across the
typescript. Apart from the typed insert pages, which are easily identified,
deciphered and positioned, very little has been changed in the last seventy
pages. The first part of the document, however, bears moderate or heavy
corrections on almost every page, and the interpretation of these can be
problematic. Some pages are partly handwritten; others bear one or two lines
of typewritten text only, as if Schenker had deliberately left them blank
because he was not sure about how he would continue his argument. There is
one sheet of thick, brown paper (OC 31/56) ± different from the thin paper that
makes up the rest of the document ± on which Schenker rewrote by hand a
section of typewritten text; that is, the original text (typewritten) and the
revision (handwritten) co-exist in the source.
At the start of the typescript, quite a few corrections have been entered in
ink in a formal hand, the same script that we find in the corrections to the proof
sheets for Schenker's published works. There are also pencil corrections of
mistyped or misspelled words (though quite a few words were left
uncorrected), and signs for new paragraphs. However, most of the changes
have been added hastily, in pencil, and some of these must, at least for the time
being, be deemed beyond legibility. The pattern of changes suggests that, at
the start, Schenker was confident that the typescript could be prepared for
publication, but he later realised that considerably more revision would be
required and so treated it more as a private document.
Changes on grounds of style are sometimes more difficult to transcribe:
while some were entered in ink, in a neat hand that a copyist or printer would
have no difficulty reading, others were penned more hastily, and sometimes in
a minute script. Pencil corrections, which make up the bulk of handwritten
changes are, on the whole, notated even more hastily, and are not always
consistently carried through. The reorganising of text within paragraphs, using
insertion points and sentence numbering, is usually clear; the reorganisation of
paragraphs, in one instance covering the space of several pages (where
Schubert, Schumann and Chopin are assessed as cyclic composers), is more
problematic.
A final category of remark is the marginal note. Throughout the typescript
there are references to works that exemplify the argument at hand. Thus, for
example, Stadt, Bild (p. 112) identifies two Schubert songs that could serve as
counterexamples to Hugo Wolf's technique of song-writing,21 while Passac. in
der IV. Sym. (p. 41) suggests that the finale from Brahms's Fourth Symphony
may be invoked as an instance of an old form (the passacaglia) revitalised by a

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TABLE 2: Reordering of OC File 31, items 28±153 by content (including revisions)

h ± includes additional handwritten text

r ± moderate or heavy revisions to the typescript

OC 31 Page number in typescript OC 31 Page number in typescript

item item

28 unnumbered r 62 30 changed to 30b

29 2 handwritten in ink r 63 unnumbered
30 3 r 64 32
31 4 r 65 33 r
32 5 66 34 r
80 unnumbered 67 35 r
33 6 68 36
34 6 handwritten in pencil r 69 37 r
35 6 changed to 7 r 70 38 r
36 8 r 71 39 r
37 9 r 72 40
38 10 r 73 41
39 11 r 74 42
40 12 75 43 r
41 13 r 76 44 r
42 14 r 77 45 r
43 15 r 78 46 r
44 17 and 18 r 79 47 r
46 19 r 81 48 r
47 20 82 49 r
48 21 83 50 r
45 18 handwritten in ink h,r 84 51
50 23 h,r 85 52
53 unnumbered r 86 53
51 24 87 unnumbered insert page
52 unnumbered 88 54
56 unnumbered h 89 55
54 25 r 90±137 57±104
55 26 r 138 unnumbered insert page
57 27 r 139 105
58 28 r 140 106
59 28 changed to 28b r 141 ad 106 (insert page)
60 29 r 142 ad 106 II (insert page)
61 30 changed to 30a r 143±53 107±17

Notes
OC 31/43 (p. 15) contains handwritten text on verso.
OC 31/49 (numbered `22') not part of final version.
OC 31/56 is entirely handwritten, and duplicates the content of OC 31/53 (lower part), OC 31/51 and
OC 31/52 (upper part).
OC 31/142 initially numbered `107', then changed to `ad 106 II'.
Text from middle of OC 31/76 to top of OC 31/78 probably moved to the middle of OC 31/71.

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16 WILLIAM DRABKIN

later composer. In the section on cyclic form, the names of numerous works
from the Classical period appear in the margins, with Mozart's `Dissonance'
Quartet cited more frequently than any other.22 Lastly, there are references to,
not quotations of, two prose works by Goethe, the Italienische Reise and the
autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit.23
None of these corrections or annotations, however, alters the sense of what
Schenker is attempting to convey: at most they record changes of emphasis, the
reordering of arguments, and references to writings and scores ± in other
words, precisely the sort of corrections that one would expect to be made in the
late stages of writing up an essay.
Although the last three-fifths of the document bear far fewer corrections,
this should not be taken as a sign that Schenker had given up correcting the
text: I think it more likely that he was satisfied with his formulation of the
section chronicling the downfall of music from Berlioz to Wagner, and that the
difficulty with finishing the essay lay in establishing an adequate point from
which to chart that demise.24 In the discussion of cyclic form, especially
around pp. 19±25, the text begins to break down altogether, even if it is still
possible to determine the order of the material before Schenker gave up work
on it. Nowhere are Schenker's difficulties more apparent than in the discussion
of the development. Schenker makes two attempts to define DurchfuÈhrung as
the middle section of a three-part form, analogous to the b section of an a1±b±a2
song form. He then goes on to suggest that the term does not really describe
accurately what the masters did in this section and that it should be dropped ±
though he does not offer a replacement term. It is probably not an exaggeration
to say that `Niedergang' comes unstuck here in the section on classical sonata
form, the very topic that was intended to be the basis of the `Afterword' to
Harmonielehre back in 1905, and that it could not be published until this part of
the text was repaired. An alternative solution would have been to publish a
theory of form separately, restricting the subject of `Niedergang' to the demise
of music after Beethoven. The problems with this part of the text may have led
to Schenker's conceiving the `Outline of a New Theory of Form', mooted in
the Ninth Symphony monograph but never realised.25
Between this point and the discussion of Berlioz, the page sequence is secure
and the typewritten text is once again continuous. The handwritten changes,
however, show considerable rearrangement: at a very late stage the author
appears to have moved his critique of cyclic form in the hands of Schubert,
Schumann and Chopin forward, probably to avoid lumping these composers
with those who misunderstood the Classical masters altogether. As it stands,
the transition leading from the achievements of the masters to the section
charting the period of demise lacks the verbal assuredness that characterises
Schenker at his polemical best.

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*
If the account of Classical form is the most problematic part of `Niedergang', it
is nonetheless interesting; in fact, the very state of incompleteness allows us a
glimpse of Schenker's thought processes, an opportunity to see him develop
technical and critical concepts with which to discuss the works he saw as
evidence ± as proof ± of the genius of the masters of instrumental music. He
introduces a number of terms to help him explain why the composition of
sonata movements requires far more than the invention of two or three themes
and adherence to a pre-determined harmonic plan. These include:
· cyklische Form: Schenker's preferred alternative to Sonatenform.
· Dreiteiligkeit: three-part construction. A quality of cyclic form: works that
exhibit a three-part construction are said to have `cyclic form'. In sonata
movements, this applies both to the large-scale construction based on
exposition, development and recapitulation, and, within the exposition, to
the division of the exposition into first, second and third (i.e. closing)
groups of themes.
· Gruppenbildung: the putting together of thematic complexes from shorter
ideas. This is a term previously encountered in Ein Beitrag zur
Ornamentik (1904), and Schenker seems to be expanding here what had
been explained all too briefly in Harmonielehre (§ 129). Group construc-
tion is the most important feature in cyclic form, a key characteristic of
Classical instrumental music; while the masters were able to fashion
large-scale structures from smaller elements, their imitators used large-
scale, indivisible melodies that lacked internal contrast, as a result of
which their music inevitably has a sectional quality, adding to the
impression of adherence to a predetermined plan. Associated with this are
several closely related words and concepts:
° Zusammensetzung, the act of putting together from smaller parts;
° Mannigfaltigkeit, `many-sidedness', i.e. variety; a term often paired
with Kontrast;
° IrrationalitaÈt, `irrationality', i.e. construction that is either beyond
measure or, literally, `beyond reason'.
The last of these terms, which is not part of Schenker's later theoretical
vocabulary, looms large in the `Niedergang'. It can mean the asymmetrical
construction of groups, for example from phrases containing an irregular
number of bars; but it also refers to the way in which the masters created large-
scale forms without following a predetermined plan. IrrationalitaÈt is perhaps
the most intriguing of the terms Schenker uses here to describe masterful
construction of sonata-type pieces. He does not offer a concrete definition of it,
but comes near when describing (on p. 29) the `less complicated but more

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18 WILLIAM DRABKIN

irrational organisation' (wenig komplizierte dennoch irrationalere Ordnung) of

the first group of Mozart's Symphony in E[, K. 543, first movement. The
word may have been taken over from mathematics, where a number that
cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers is said to be irrational; in
the Mozart symphony, either the component phrases of themes are of unequal
length, or the themes are put together from `irrational' lengths, for example
phrases of five or seven bars, as opposed to the musically rational lengths of 2,
4, 8, 16 and so on.
There is also a philosophical dimension to `irrationality', for which a close
approximation might be `ineffability', in other words the quality of a great
work of art that evokes a sense of wonderment without our being completely
able to express precisely wherein that greatness lies: an irrational effect is thus
one that resists calculation, and is based more on such qualities as instinct,
intuition, feeling, even love. For an example of this, we may turn to p. 31 of the
typescript, where Schenker writes of the transitional passage from the first-
movement exposition of Mozart's Serenade in C minor, K. 388:

Thus for example we should be mindful of the faithfulness, the love shown to
every germ that they created and planted in their works. The same love
embraces the most and the least significant things alike. And what a splendid
effect this love makes when it places these things in the service of the form, to
shape it with variety and irrationality. See, for example, the close of the brief
modulation section. . .: a commonplace, trivial idea, which a Gyrowetz, a Weigl,
Pleyel or Kozeluch made use of every day, every hour ± as did Mozart himself in
other works, is it not so? And yet, Mozart would not be Mozart if he did not
possess a genius's courage to give these stupid tones ± these most stupid tones in
the world ± a wonderful logic.

The recognition of such an `irrational' dimension might, of course, seem

antithetical to Schenker's lifelong insistence that greatness in music could be
objectively demonstrated, that is, proven by rational argument. Alternatively,
we could see irrationality as the ineluctable quality that drives his theoretical
pursuit: to strive unceasingly after the best answers to the question `Where is
the genius in the work?', and to develop and refine his theories in that spirit,
despite a deep-seated admission that the question might never be fully
answered.

*
In contrast to the unevenness of the account of cyclic form, as understood by
the Classical masters and composers of instrumental music after Beethoven,
the last seventy-five pages of `Niedergang' give us Schenker at his stylistic best,
neatly charting the decline of music after Beethoven in a single sweep of
argument. That decline, he says, was a direct result of composers relying on

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 SCHENKER'S DECLINE 19

external associations for their forms, leading to the domination of music by

literature, whether this took the form of a story (programmatic music) or a text
(song, but more particularly musical theatre). In this respect the nineteenth
century, as represented by Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner, reversed the course of
music history by undoing the good work of composers of instrumental music
from Bach to Beethoven, who had built up in a relatively short space of time a
set of laws by which music could flourish as an independent art form.
While Berlioz is dismissed for his compositional ineptitude, and Liszt for his
eclecticism and vanity, the real villain of the story is Wagner. In order to
explain the pernicious effect of his personality on the course of music history, it
is necessary for Schenker to backtrack to the eighteenth century, to
demonstrate how Mozart saved opera from a potentially severe setback at the
hands of Gluck. But even if we might piece together an outline of this critique
from the hints Schenker dropped in his other writings, it is only in
`Niedergang' that his arguments are developed at considerable length, ranging
across the following themes:
· the theatre as principal venue ± for layman and connoisseur alike ± for the
consumption of the arts;
· the status of the different arts in the theatre; the relationship of the poet to
drama, and of the composer to opera;
· the relationship between instrumental music and music for the theatre;
· `truth' and `truthfulness' in music for the theatre;
· musical `aristocratism' versus music composed to accommodate theatre
audiences;
· Mozart's supreme position in the history of opera;
· the relationship between Classical operatic style and that found in
instrumental music;
· form and text in the operas of Beethoven, Weber and Wagner.
By `aristocratism', Schenker means the quality of art music that has come of age,
reaching a point of development at which it is capable of creating and developing
its own laws, independently of text or social function. This is music that will no
longer be fully accessible to all people, least of all to the theatre-going public, for
whom music is merely part of an entertainment that they can take in without
previous training and without exerting themselves intellectually.
The central object of Schenker's discussion of theatre music is Mozart's Don
Giovanni: there are detailed analyses of form, theme and harmony for three
substantial numbers: the Introduction to Act 1, the churchyard duet in Act 2,
and the Act 2 finale; together these account for almost a tenth of `Niedergang'.
Schenker's main point here is that, in arriving at a mature style for comic
opera, Mozart learned the necessity of under-composing by not elaborating
thematic material as much as would be expected in a comparable instrumental

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20 WILLIAM DRABKIN

work, and also by keeping his textures simpler and his forms shorter. Mozart,
he says, `preserves the principles of diversity and irrationality', as well `the
proper conduct of the harmony', but these have been `reduced quantitatively
but not qualitatively by dramatic necessity' (p. 67).
This simplicity is contrasted, on the one hand, with `the artifice with which
his [Mozart's] absolute music is so extravagantly conceived' (p. 67) and which
he has partly demonstrated in brief discussions of solo, chamber and
symphonic music earlier in the essay and, on the other hand, with the artistic
ideals of Beethoven, for whom the idea of making concessions to an opera
audience would have been inconceivable (p. 78). These contrasts ± between
Mozart the mature opera composer and Mozart the composer of cyclic music,
and between Mozart and Beethoven as composers for the theatre ± form the
crux of Schenker's opposition to Wagner. If only Wagner had known Mozart's
string quartets and quintets, Schenker argues, he would never have made the
judgement that opera represented his supreme achievement as a composer.
Likewise, if he had had an `aristocratic' sense of music, that is an under-
standing of the genius underlying the achievements of the Classical masters, he
would never have attributed to Beethoven's later works an entirely new `art of
expression', but would instead have related them to his earlier music, and to
that of Haydn and Mozart. Schenker's critique of Wagner the critic-historian
focuses on half a dozen extracts from Opera and Drama: some of these, he
claims, reveal considerable insight into the operatic music of his time,
especially that of Weber; others, however, betray his fundamental ignorance of
the Classical masters.
Wagner's musical art is also represented, if less generously. Well-known
harmonic monoliths in The Rhinegold, such as the prelude on a single E[ chord
and the music accompanying Wotan's and Loge's descent into Nibelheim, are
easy targets for Schenker's weapons of contrast and variety; the prelude to Die
WalkuÈre is similarly criticised for being nothing more than an overstretched
I±II±V progression (p. 87). The critique of music drama per se is focused largely
on 25 bars from the second scene of The Rhinegold, where the theorist can find no
musical logic in the sudden appearance of the leitmotif representing Valhalla: its
only justification is in the text. This represents a lack of musical motivation:
Wagner's leitmotifs `are far too independent at the time of their first appearance,
and they retain this birth defect throughout the entire piece' (p. 91).26 By
contrast, Mozart is able to use a musical motive ± a falling major seventh, for
instance, to depict Leporello's fear of the statue in the churchyard duet ± in a
variety of functions, with the listener being perfectly aware of how it relates to the
piece as a whole, because `it fulfils very clear obligations to the form' (p. 74).
Indeed, Leporello's falling seventh is, for Schenker, a superior form of leitmotif:
not only does it portray the character's cowardice with great precision, it also
operates within the laws of music to promote the synthesis of the whole.

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Because nineteenth-century programme music and Wagnerian music drama

are, according to Schenker's argument, supported by literary and not musical
foundations, they cannot be taken as the way forward for music. In this
respect, the title `UÈber den Niedergang der Kompositionskunst' may be taken
at face value: it is not the whole of the world of music but the art of composition
that has been in decline, leaving contemporary composers with the choice
either of regaining the Beethovenian path of cyclic form driven by the laws of
music, which leads to Mendelssohn and Brahms, or of following the
Wagnerian line formed from external associations, which leads to the inferior
symphonic constructions of Bruckner and the overly text-reliant songs of Wolf,
and which appears at the time of writing (circa 1906) to have taken root in the
symphonic poems and operas of Richard Strauss. Wagner can, therefore, never
legitimately lay claim to being Beethoven's successor, because his music has
followed an entirely different track. Or as Schenker puts it with all the force he
can muster, on the final page of his essay:
There is nothing more absurd than to mention Wagner when one is talking
about Beethoven, and vice versa. And precisely on the basis of this
contradiction, the question of music history may be expressed as follows:
Beethoven or Wagner? A compromise between these two positions must be
27
ruled out altogether.

The survival of the `Niedergang' typescript is hardly surprising: the Oster

Collection is, in a sense, a repository of Schenker's collected work-in-progress,
the theorist's equivalent of the Beethoven sketchbooks. To a limited extent, its
themes are revisited in publications of the 1910s and 1920s, and readers who
are familiar with these will get a sense of deÂjaÁ-vu ± or deÂjaÁ-lu ± at various points,
such as in the discussion of the commercial value of deceased composers,28 the
contrasting of Gluck and Mozart and the pairing of Gluck and Wagner,29
Berlioz's misguided analysis of the opening of Beethoven's Eroica,30 and, of
course, the artistic barrenness of contemporary music.31 This, however, leaves
the vast majority of the text undisturbed, almost certainly because its author
never fully gave up the hope of seeing it in print. And if `Niedergang' remains
an unfinished work, it is nevertheless complete insofar as it has a definite
beginning and ending, with no loss of material in the middle. Put differently,
the typescript may not have been ready for publication in the state in which
Schenker left it at the time of his death, but it is sufficiently stable and coherent
to allow the reconstruction of a continuous text that sheds considerable light on
his early years as a professional theorist.
More than that, we can see Schenker taking steps to make `Niedergang'
integral to the New Musical Theories and Fantasies by divesting the other

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22 WILLIAM DRABKIN

volumes of material that would have duplicated it. The proof sheets for
Harmonielehre in File 31 (items 154±5), to which I referred earlier (see p. 4),
include pejorative remarks on the repetition of themes in the Tristan prelude,
on Bruckner's appropriation of classical form, and on harmonic coherence in
Richard Strauss's portrayal of his critics in A Hero's Life (compare `Nieder-
gang', pp. 113±14). The handwritten draft of the foreword to Kontrapunkt (OC
31/160±90) is fulsome in its praise of Chopin, Mendelssohn and Brahms as the
last great `legislators' (Gesetzgeber) of music (item 180; compare `Niedergang',
p. 45); in this document Schenker also expresses his dislike of modern play-
wrights, who construct plots that are complicated but lack the psychological
motivation that he found in the work of the classical dramatists (items 178±9).
All these points suit the `Niedergang' agenda admirably.32
In spite of its harsh judgements, usually expressed in a caustic tone,
`Niedergang' does not fall into the category of `censored material' by which
Schenker described essays and extracts that his later publishers refused
outright to print.33 It was, simply, not brought to a sufficiently stable state
during his lifetime. Its publication here, exactly a century after it was first
conceived and drafted, provides us with a biographical tool to help us
understand the formation of his theoretical outlook at the outset of his career as
a serious writer. As the `capstone' and conceptual midpoint of his pre-War
writings, it is the axis on which his theoretical wheels turn, the hub radiating
out to projects that would occupy him for the rest of his life. While his
correspondence with Cotta may to some extent be viewed as self-promoting,
the sentiments expressed in `Niedergang' recur throughout his later work and
cannot therefore be regarded as incidental, or even of secondary importance.
From a larger historical point of view, it is the place where the twentieth
century's most important theorist sets out his basic position on music. On the
broader level of criticism, it takes its place alongside turn-of-the-century
writings said to be of a `conservative' or `pessimistic' character, such as Max
Nordau's Entartung (`Degeneration') of 1896, and Oswald Spengler's Der
Untergang des Abendlandes (`The Decline of the West') of 1918. While a
detailed examination of `Niedergang' against the background of these currents
in German thought is beyond the scope of this essay, the text becomes far more
than an abandoned piece of juvenilia when viewed as a part of this cultural
debate.34
At the specifically musical level, it may be compared to the writings of
Schenker's near-contemporary Donald Tovey, who, though his published
work shows him more as a pragmatist than an idealist and whose own
theoretical magnum opus never materialised, made his general assessment of
classical and modern composers plain enough in the entries for the Encyclo-
paedia Britannica and elsewhere. Like Schenker, Tovey based his conservative
views on objective analysis, on the analysis of what he ± and his readers ± were

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capable of hearing. What Schenker would ultimately call FernhoÈren (`long-

distance hearing') and Tovey's `naõÈ ve listener' are terms more closely related
than they literally suggest.35
Finally ± and, I believe, crucially ± `Niedergang' represents the theorist's
most elaborate statement of the role of music in opera, and his most trenchant
assessment of Wagnerian music drama. We can see Schenker's relationship to
Wagner as paralleling that of Nietzsche and other German writers who fell out
with the composer after initially embracing him.36 `Niedergang' does not tell us
simply that the Schenker of the early twentieth century was opposed to many
of the recent trends resulting from Wagner's influence, it also tells us why. And
it does so with artistic insight in a clear, often poetic, language.

A project of this scope could not have been undertaken without the help of a
community of scholars. I offer my thanks to Robert Kosovsky and the staff of
the New York Public Library for their help and friendliness on a visit to New
York, during which I was able to consult the original typescript; to Hedi Siegel
and Wayne Alpern, for encouragement during my work on this project; to
Joseph Lubben, for help in identifying the Goethe poems quoted in the text; to
Nicholas Cook for advice on the presentation of the translation; and to Mark
Everist for a careful reading of an early draft of this essay. A special debt of
gratitude is owed to Ian Bent, who has kept a close eye on this project since its
inception, and whose current research into Schenker's correspondence with
Cotta and Universal Edition has been of inestimable value in providing a
context for `Niedergang'. Finally, it is to Andrea Reiter, who not only checked
over the German transcription but also helped clarify Schenker's meaning on
occasions too numerous to mention, that this project is indebted most of all.

NOTES
1. The packaging of Schenker's writings in a more purely theoretical form is largely
the responsibility of his pupil Oswald Jonas, who made considerable cuts in the
English edition of Harmonielehre (1954), the second edition of Der freie Satz
(1956) and the Beethoven ErlaÈuterungsausgaben (1971±2); it was, however, con-
sistent with the general post-War emphasis in Schenker studies on dispassionate
voice-leading analysis. But the cutting of politically sensitive material was already
taking place in Schenker's lifetime: an essay and several extracts from the
`Miscellanea' had to be withdrawn from the Tonwille pamphlets, at the publisher's
insistance; see the recent edition of Tonwille in English translation, in which the
`censored material', as Schenker bitterly referred to it, has been restored.
2. Robert Lang and Joan Kunselman, Heinrich Schenker, Oswald Jonas, Moriz
Violin: A Checklist of Manuscripts and Other Papers in the Oswald Jonas Memorial

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24 WILLIAM DRABKIN

Collection (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994); Robert

Kosovsky, The Oster Collection: Papers of Heinrich Schenker: A Finding List,
typescript (New York: New York Public Library, 31 May 1990).
3. See Schenker 1990.
4. Hellmut Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, nach TagebuÈchern und Briefen in der
Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection, University of California, Riverside
(Hildesheim: Olms, 1985).
5. David Carson Berry, A Topical Guide to Schenkerian Literature (New York:
Pendragon, 2004). There are fifteen `divisions' in the bibliography, each of which
contains smaller headings and subheadings; division XIV concerns Schenker's
life and the reception of his work.
6. Kosovsky, The Oster Collection, p. 79.
7. Schenker 1990, pp. 259±68.
8. Schenker submitted Kontrapunkt to Cotta on 26 September 1908; the decision to
split the work into two volumes occurred in 1909. A hand-written draft of the
foreword would thus have been intended for the whole of the text, not merely the
volume published in 1910.
9. The essay on Ihr Bild pre-dates by about fifteen years the publication of an essay
on the same song, of approximately the same scope, published in the first issue of
Der Tonwille. Of particular interest are Schenker's comments on text setting, and
the many points common to the two essays despite the passage of time.
10. These headings and subheadings are entirely my own. The translation of
`Niedergang' is similarly divided into sections, but without the hierarchical
organisation of Table 1.
11. Schenker 1906, p. vii; Eng. trans., p. xxvi.
12. `die Hauptursache des Niederganges der musikalischen Kunst im neunzehnten
Jahrhundert': typescript, p. 13.
13. The correspondence between Schenker and his early publishers is mainly to be
found in four collections: the Oster Collection of the New York Public Library
(Universal Edition to Schenker), the Vienna Stadt- und Landesbibliothek
(Schenker to Universal), the Jonas Collection at the University of California,
Riverside (Cotta to Schenker), and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach,
Germany (Schenker to Cotta, and carbon copies of Cotta to Schenker [some not in
Riverside]). Much of the early correspondence between Schenker and his
publishers is available at the website The Correspondence of Heinrich Schenker:
Pilot Project, maintained by Ian Bent: www.mus.cam.ac.uk/Schenker. At the time
of consultation (late June to early July 2005), all extracts from the correspondence
were quoted literally; some of the translations were slightly modified.
14. A professional friendship between d'Albert and Schenker dates back to 1894,
the year in which Schenker published a warm tribute to him in Die Zukunft.
See Federhofer, ed., Heinrich Schenker als Essayist und Kritiker, especially

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pp. 301±5, and Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker nach TagebuÈchern und Briefen,
especially pp. 55±68.
15. The terms of the contract made the author responsible for the publication costs;
these were covered by Schenker's most important early patron, Baron Alphons
von Rothschild, who later underwrote the costs of printing the first volume of
Kontrapunkt.
16. For the expression of a similar point of view, see Tonwille 1, p. 26; Eng. trans., p. 24:
`For German music there is but one way of salvation: a return to pre-Wagnerian
musical truth'.
17. This led to the publication of the ErlaÈuterungsausgabe of the Chromatic Fantasy
and Fugue, BWV 903, in 1910. See Ian Bent: ```That Bright New Light'':
Schenker, Universal Edition, and the Origins of the ErlaÈuterung Series, 1901±
1910', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 58 (2005), pp. 69±138,
especially pp. 8±12.
18. Schenker 1912, p. vii and xii; Eng. trans., pp. 4 and 8.
19. Schenker 1912, p. xxv; Eng. trans., p. 18 (translation slightly revised).
20. Schenker 1921±4, No. 5 (1923), p. 21; Eng. trans., vol. 1, pp. 189±90, n. 21.
21. By this marginal note, one is able to relate `Niedergang' to the typewritten analyses
of these two songs in File 31 to which I referred earlier. The typing is neat, and the
handwritten additions were made by Jeanette Kornfeld ± neÂe Schiff ± whom
Schenker married in 1919; see Federhofer, Heinrich Schenker, nach TagebuÈchern
und Briefen, p. 37. In his diary, Schenker dates his acquaintance with Jeanette
from 1907, in other words the middle of the period during which he was most
intensely occupied with `Niedergang' (Federhofer, ibid.). The third Schubert
essay, on Meeresstille, was typed on a different machine to the other two.
22. Despite the almost complete absence of analysis of chamber music in Schenker's
later writings ± a short essay in Tonwille 7 addresses a textual problem in
Beethoven's Quartet Op. 127 ± `Niedergang' contains numerous references to the
classical chamber music literature. Admittedly the majority of specific references
are to works in which the piano takes part (especially the piano trios by Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven). But it is the string quartets and quintets of Mozart that
are invoked against Wagner's judgement that the operas represent the pinnacle of
that composer's achievements (`Niedergang', pp. 91±2).
23. Although page numbers are sometimes provided for these, it has not been
possible to identify a particular edition of Goethe's works that Schenker is known
to have possessed or consulted.
24. The only page here bearing more than a set of light corrections is p. 78, which is
concerned with Beethoven as a composer of opera. This may suggest that
Schenker expended more effort formulating commentary on composers he
admired than those he held in low esteem.
25. The earliest known references to a theory of form date from July 1907, that is, at a
time in which Schenker would have been writing Kontrapunkt and revising

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`Niedergang'; diary entries mention `Ideen zu einer ``neuen Formenlehre''' and a

`Formenentwurf'. See Bent, ```That Bright New Light''', p. 96.
26. The use of a biological metaphor (Geburtsfehler, `birth-defect') is typical of early
writings critical of Wagner. In the opening paragraph of chapter 5 of Der Fall
Wagner, written five years after Wagner's death in 1888, Nietzsche asks: `Is
Wagner actually a human? Is he not rather a sickness? He makes everything he
touches sick ± he has made music sick'. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in zwei
BaÈnden, ed. Ivo Frenzel, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Hanser, n.d.), p. 298.
27. Compare Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner, chapter 8, paragraph 2: `Wagner and
Beethoven: that is a blasphemy'. See Nietzsche, Werke in zwei BaÈnden, vol. 2,
p. 304.
28. `Niedergang' typescript, p. 12: see Schenker 1912, pp. xvii±xix, Eng. trans.,
pp. 12±13; Schenker 1921±4, No. 6, pp. 4±12, Eng. trans., vol. 2, p. 36.
29. `Niedergang' typescript, pp. 64, 84±5, 105: see Schenker 1921±4, No. 1, p. 26;
Eng. trans., vol. 1, p. 24. In the later text, Schenker was more specific about the
nature of Mozart's triumph over Gluck: he `could write bass lines of which Gluck
had no inkling'.
30. `Niedergang' typescript, p. 47: see Schenker 1921±4, No. 5, p. 19; Eng. trans.,
vol. 1, pp. 189±90.
31. `Niedergang' typescript, pp. 112±15; the most extensive criticism of modern
music amid Schenker's later writings is in Schenker 1926, vol. 2, which includes
the `counter-example' of Reger's Bach variations, Op. 81 (pp. 173±92; Eng.
trans., pp. 106±17), and a brief analysis of an extract from Stravinsky's Piano
Concerto of 1924 (pp. 37±9; Eng. trans., pp. 17±18).
32. In a letter of 30 June 1906, Schenker told Cotta that sections of Harmonielehre
had been cut because he was developing the material in a different way in the
`afterword' (i.e. in `Niedergang'): this refers specifically to OC 31/154±5. While
the critiques of Wagner and Bruckner are exemplified by entirely different pieces
(the Tristan prelude and the Seventh Symphony, respectively), Schenker uses the
same passage from the same tone-poem to rebuke Richard Strauss for turning
irony into a weapon to be used against music itself.
This excision may have been motivated by a desire to keep the theoretical text
of Harmonielehre, rigorously organised in numbered parts, chapters and sections,
free from the application of the theory to historical and aesthetic problems. For
Schenker, an important feature of Harmonielehre were the asides and critical
comments that follow from the theory; but these made it more difficult to justify a
second book in which these `points' are amplified yet further. In other words, the
excision may represent an attempt, by no means carried through, to keep separate
the `theories' (= Harmonielehre) and the `fantasies' (= `Niedergang') indicated in
the series title. (I am indebted to Ian Bent for calling my attention to the passage
in this letter.)
33. Part of File 39 is a folder marked `Zenzuriertes!', which contains handwritten text
and galley proofs from writings of the 1920s, mostly from Tonwille. See Ian Bent

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and William Drabkin, `General Preface' to Schenker 1921±4, Eng. trans., vol. 1,
p. xi.
34. A ground-breaking essay in this field is Andrea Reiter's ` ``Von der Sendung des
deutschen Genies'': The Music Theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868±1935) and
Cultural Conservatism', published in Resounding Concerns, ed. RuÈdiger GoÈrner
(Munich: Iudicium, 2003). Relying on published writings, Reiter sees Schenker's
notorious introductory essay to the Tonwille pamphlets (1921) as the central text. It
is not that Schenker's basic views change after `Niedergang', but rather that the
intervening historical and political events alter the mode in which they are expressed.
35. Much of Tovey's writing on music was sanitised for posterity by the omission of
various `essays in musical analysis' from the official six-volume set published by
Oxford University Press in the 1930s. For a full discussion of this, and the text of
the composer entries, see Tovey's The Classics of Music: Talks, Essays, and Other
Writings Previously Uncollected, ed. Michael Tilmouth, David Kimbell and
Roger Savage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
An ambitious multi-volume Language of Music, begun in 1896 when Tovey
was in his early twenties but abandoned within a decade, would have made
interesting comparisons with Schenker's New Musical Theories and Fantasies.
Without it, we have to piece together his overall view of music from an almost
inexhaustible supply of short essays; however, these leave us in no doubt that, for
instance, Tovey regarded Bruckner's symphonies as vastly inferior in
construction to those of Brahms, whom ± like Schenker ± he acknowledged as
the last master of German instrumental music. Coincidentally, Schenker's
earliest English-speaking champion and first translator, John Petrie Dunn (1878±
1931), taught music theory at the University of Edinburgh, where Tovey held the
Reid Professorship of Music from 1914 until his death in 1940.
36. See especially Nietzsche's Der Fall Wagner. Nietzsche's works are said to have
had a profound influence on Thomas Mann, who had been an `ardent admirer of
Wagner' but became increasingly critical of him; a lecture on Wagner delivered in
1933 led to his banishment from Nazi Germany; see Reiter, `Schenker and
Cultural Conservatism', pp. 135±59, especially pp. 146±8. Another major critique
by a writer who became disaffected with Wagner and was banished by the Nazis
is Theodor Adorno's Versuch uÈber Wagner, whose origins go back to the 1930s
but which was first published in its entirety in 1952 (Eng. trans. by Rodney
Livingstone as In Search of Wagner [London: New Left Books, 1981]).

REFERENCES TO SCHENKER'S PUBLISHED WRITINGS

1906: Harmonielehre = Neue Musikalische Theorien und Phantasien I
(Stuttgart: Cotta). Abbreviated and translated as Harmony, ed.
Oswald Jonas, trans. Elisabeth Mann Borgese (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1954).
1910/1922: Kontrapunkt = Neue Musikalische Theorien und Phantasien II, 2
vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta; Vienna: Universal Edition). Translated as

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28 WILLIAM DRABKIN

Counterpoint, ed. John Rothgeb, trans. John Rothgeb and JuÈrgen

Thym, 2 vols. (New York: Schirmer, 1987).
1912: Beethovens Neunte Sinfonie (Vienna: Universal Edition). Translated
as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, ed. and trans. John Rothgeb (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
1921±4: Der Tonwille: FlugblaÈtter/Vierteljahrschrift zum Zeugnis unwandel-
barer Gesetze der Musik, einer neuen Jugend dargebracht, 10 nos.
(Vienna: Tonwille-FlugblaÈtterverlag). Translated as Der Tonwille:
Pamphlets/Quarterly Publication in Witness of the Immutable Laws of
Music, Offered to a New Generation of Youth, ed. William Drabkin,
trans. Ian Bent, William Drabkin, Joseph Dubiel, Timothy Jackson,
Joseph Lubben, William Renwick and Robert Snarrenberg, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004±5).
1925: Das Meisterwerk in der Musik vol. 1 (Munich: Drei Masken).
Translated as The Masterwork in Music, vol. 1, ed. William Drabkin,
trans. Ian Bent, William Drabkin, Richard Kramer, John Rothgeb
and Hedi Siegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
1926: Das Meisterwerk in der Musik vol. 2 (Munich: Drei Masken).
Translated as The Masterwork in Music, vol. 2, ed. William Drabkin,
trans. Ian Bent, William Drabkin, John Rothgeb and Hedi Siegel
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
1932: FuÈnf Urlinie-Tafeln (Vienna: Universal Edition). Translated as Five
Graphic Music Analyses, ed. and trans. Felix Salzer (New York:
Dover, 1969).
1990: Heinrich Schenker als Essayist und Kritiker, ed. Hellmut Federhofer
(Hildesheim: Olms).

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Plate 1: Oster Collection, File 31, item 28 (first page of the `Niedergang'
typescript) Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts: Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

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Plate 2: Oster Collection, File 31, item 45 (page from the `Niedergang' typescript)
Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: Astor,
Lenox and Tilden Foundations

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Plate 3: Oster Collection, File 31, item 77 (page from the `Niedergang' typescript)
Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: Astor,
Lenox and Tilden Foundations

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