February 29. 1980 NEW SOLIDARITY Page 7

Music: Vivian Freyre Zoakos

Schenker's Major Work Released

Heinrich Schenker

Free Composition, by Heinrich Schenker, translated and edited by Ernst Oster. Longman, Inc.: New York 1979; 2 Vols., $29.95.

The release of this English edition of the great musicologist Heinrich Schenker's last work 45 years after its first German-language publication, should be counted as a victory by those who wish to see a broad-based musical revival in America in the tradition established by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

For several years New Solidarity has named the circles responsible for blocking Schenker's major writings from general circulation in Europe and the United States during the post World War II period. This assessment was verified by Schenker's leading student, Dr. Felix Eberhard von Cube, the director of the Heinrich Schenker Akadamie of Hamburg, West Germany, who in an article in this paper noted that Schenker's works were banned by both the Nazis and the postwar British Occupation.

The translator of Free Composition, the late Ernst Oster, was for 30 years prevented from publishing it by the same Frankfurt School and Aspen Institute-linked circles who supervised the creation and marketing of rock music. The same vicious tactics used against Oster are now being used against the founders of the Humanist Academy in America and Europe. Oster was slandered as a Nazi both publicly and clandestinely among musical circles. Previously both Schenker and his lifelong associate, the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler were given the same treatment. Near the end of his life, Oster showed the effects of these calumnies; he was a mere shadow of the musical crusader he was during the early 1950s.

A quotation from Schenker's introduction to Free Composition contains the key to his unique contribution to musical theory.

"A performance, in serving background, middle ground and foreground can employ the greatest variety of color. Even the richest and most varied resources of performances can be taught—and learned—with great exactness. On the other hand, commitment to background, middleground and foreground excludes all arbitrary personal interpretation." [emphasis added]

Schenker's approach to musical analysis, elaborated in Free Composition, combines principles derived from the Gestalt psychology of Wolfgang Kohler and others with classical principles of counterpoint and voice leading, resulting in an approach corresponding to that of the dialogues of Plato. Although inadequate as a basis for fully elucidating the compositional method of Beethoven, Schenker's theory, the practical basis of his association with Furtwangler, was crucial in producing performances of Beethoven's major works which uniquely involve the audience in the process of creating new musical ideas and new modes of development.

Schenker's work, and particularly Free Composition, is for the musician what advanced mathematics and geometry is for the student of physics. This book is meant for the music student who is already thoroughly versed in the basics of musical theory and practice and ready to tackle the problems of performance and composition posed by Beethoven's late works.

Currently, classical performers' training is in general terminated prematurely, and such advanced studies not undertaken. As a result the performance of the greatest works is approached on a purely intuitive basis, and the question of compositional method completely ignored. In such a context mediocrity

flourishes, and the contemporary musical world remains dominated by the likes of Herbert van Karajan and Carl Orff—both formerly card-carrying members of the Nazi Party!

Today's standard intuitive performance of Beethoven, although polished, is boring, undifferentiated, and frequently not distinguishable from the typical polished performance of cocktail music, a fact which makes "exciting" music such as jazz and rock a credible alternative to millions of people. The release of Free Composition is a blow against such musical ignorance and the tastes so fostered. It must be followed by the early transition of the other major Schenker works, including his as-yet-unpublished Treatise on Performance, currently sealed off from public inspection in the Oster archives at the New York Public Library.

This column was contributed by Dr. Peter Wyer of the Humanist Academy in New York.