Schenker's Interpretive Practice (Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis) [Hardcover]

Robert Snarrenberg (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis | Publication Date: May 28, 1997

Schenker's Interpretive Practice is the first comprehensive study of this century's most influential music theorist, Heinrich Schenker. Since the 1960s, American theorists and musicologists have focused almost exclusively on analytical methods distilled from Schenker's writings. Breaking from that tradition, Robert Snarrenberg returns to Schenker's texts and to the humanist roots of his approach, situating Schenker's work in the broader context of his desire to portray the richness and particularity of musical experience. Snarrenberg concentrates on four aims that Schenker hoped to achieve: to present a theoretical account of musical effects encountered in European music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to represent the mindset shared among composers of that music, to convey the expressive interaction of musical effects in individual artwork, and to promote continued creative and re-creative participation in the musical tradition. Author recipient of the 1998 Young Scholar Award from the Society of Music Theory.

Editorial Reviews

Review

..."this book is an important contribution to the critical literature on Schenker." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Book Description

Schenker's Interpretive Practice is the first comprehensive study of this century's most influential music theorist, Heinrich Schenker. Robert Snarrenberg examines Schenker's texts and the roots of his approach, situating Schenker's work in the broader context of his desire to portray the richness and particularity of musical experience.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 199 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (May 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521497264
• ISBN-13: 978-0521497268
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,745,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rich Interpretation, August 22, 2007

By 

Paul Wilson (Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Schenker's Interpretive Practice (Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis) (Paperback)

This book won its author a prestigious award from the premier scholarly organization for music theory in the United States, and the award was fully deserved. The book offers a very enlightening approach to Schenker's work, one that includes both considerable technical detail and a great deal of fascinating intellectual and musical background. Any student of Schenker will find valuable insights in the book to supplement the analytical training that is the more usual focus of work with Schenkerian theory.

22 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars NOT Schenker's Interpretive Practice, August 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Schenker's Interpretive Practice (Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis) (Hardcover)

An extremely bad misrepresentation of Schenker and his work. In the first place the author uses only his own translations in the text, and very many of them are mistranslations of a more or less serious nature. For example, he mistranslates the verb "besteht [in]" (consists in) as "gets its start in"; this mistranslation has fateful consequences for his reading (misreading) of Schenker's interpretive practice. (There are literally scores of translation mistakes, some of them involving the most elementary German.) The author's attempts to portray Schenker's thought process in analyzing music are ludicrous, the work of a person who entirely lacks the requisite training for such an endeavor, and has no conception of who Schenker was and how he thought about music.