Customer Reviews

Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker

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This is a short book, originally published in 1934, but contains a huge amount of detail and a large number of examples by the great composers. It is one of the most brilliant books I've ever read, but is also opinionated and closed-minded. Jonas's examples of Mozart in particular help me to understand the genius embedded in the simplicity of Mozart's style.

Jonas emphasizes the evolution of music as a tonal art-form and rejects all work more recent than Brahms. The first two chapters ("Music and Nature" and "The Artistic Formation of the Chord") I found riveting, but subsequent chapters were of a lesser standard. Some of the material in them was impossible for me to understand, despite taking a great deal of time to study the examples that were supposed to illustrate it. Some examples of the masters' work are presented only in chord form, with the reader being given no opportunity to take in their full merit. There are also many examples created synthetically by Schenker.

Much digestion of theory and listening to music in new light convinces me that Jonas and Schenker are right and conventional theory (which emphasizes chord progressions) is wrong. Jonas berates the French for ruining German music. He tediously lauds Brahms as the only composer who took the trouble to unlearn new developments in music in the second half of the 19th century. I believe that Jonas should have welcomed the music of Bruckner, Sibelius and Korngold, who (by my hearing at least) satisfy his ultimate test of writing a "living bass" that does not merely stamp a sequence of chords.

To me the book provides an excellent base for students to embark on study of the masterworks.