Cook, Nicholas - The Schenker Project

This book interprets the music theory of Henrich Schenker (1868-1935) as part of a comprehensive project encompassing not just musical reform but social and political critique. It sets his work into the contexts of Viennese modernism, German cultural conservatism, and Schenker's position as a Jewish immigrant to the city where modern anti-semitism first developed.

---

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Schenker's contexts
1. Foundations of the Schenker project / Schenker and the philosophers / Formalists against formalism / Rehabilitating musical logic
2. The reluctant modernist / Curlicues and catastrophe / Ornamentation and critique in fin-de-siecle Vienna / Modernists against modernism / Alienated classics
3. The conservative tradition / Schenker's politics / The logic of nostalgia / The anachronistic city
4. The politics of assimilation / Schenker's project and Jewish tradition / The logic of alterity / Schenker and others
5. Beyond assimilation / Schenker's Rosenhaus / The posthumous Schenker
Conclusion: music theory as social practice
List of references
Appendix: 'The spirit of musical technique', Translated by William Pastille
Index