Heinrich Schenker's Conception of Harmony

<b>The first detailed study of Schenker's pathbreaking 1906 treatise showing how it reflected 2500 years of thinking about harmony and presented a vigorous reaction to Austro-Germanic music theory ca. 1900.</b><br><br><br>What makes the compositions of Handel Bach Haydn Mozart Beethoven Schubert Schumann Chopin and Brahms stand out as great works of art? Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) set out to answer this question in a series of treatises beginning with a strikingly original work with the deceptive title <i>Harmonielehre</i> (roughly: Treatise on Harmony 1906). <br><br> Whereas other treatises of the period associated harmony with the abstract principles governing chords and chord progressions Schenker's treated it as the conceptual glue that allowed the individual elements of a work (melodies motives chords counterpoint etc.) to work together locally and globally. Yet this book though renowned and much cited has never been studied systematically and in close detail. <br><br> <i>Heinrich Schenker's Conception of Harmony</i> approaches Schenker's 1906 treatise as a synthesis of ancient ideas and very new ones. It translates for the first time two preparatory essays for <i>Harmonielehre</i> and describes his later views of harmony and the ways in which they influenced and also were ignored by the 1954 edition and translation entitled simply <i>Harmony</i>. Though problematic <i>Harmony</i> was the first published translation of a major work by Schenker inaugurating the study of his writings in postwar America and Britain where they continue to be highly influential.