"Was Gleichzeitig Klingt": The Schoenberg-Schenker Dispute and the Incompleteness of

Music Theory
Author(s): Stephen Peles
Source: Music Theory Spectrum , Fall 2010, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall 2010), pp. 165-171
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Music Theory

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 research notes 165

with aesthetic, historical, and technical dimensions, and it

had profound consequences for the still-important intellectual
traditions founded by the two disputants.
Research Notes: While Schoenberg’s stance in this matter was undoubtedly
rooted in a Romantic article of faith (one shared by Schenker),
“Was Gleichzeitig Klingt”: The Schoenberg-Schenker Dispute namely the conviction that a “masterwork” does not contain ir-
and the Incompleteness of Music Theory relevancies, one need not share that ideological conviction to feel
a measure of sympathy with his epistemological point about the
stephen peles domain of theory and its current state of incompletion. The si-
multaneities produced by “non-harmonic tones” are underdeter-
Keywords: Schoenberg, Schenker, epistemology, non-harmonic mined by any accepted account of common-practice tonal syntax
tones and are thus wholly extra-syntactic under those accounts (in the
sense that their occurrence is not syntactically necessary in order
to fulfill, for example, any condition of tonal well-formedness).
Schoenberg’s contribution to the debate consisted of the proposal
Those who are merely ahead of their time deserve to have it that we might begin to render our harmonic theories less incom-
catch up. plete by treating such events and the simultaneities they engender
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1930) as piece-specific but potentially coherence-inducing phenomena,
very much like “motives” and “themes,” relating to one another
What are the tasks of music theory? What questions do we through patterns of repetition and variation.
expect the discipline to answer?
In the 1910s and 1920s Schoenberg and Schenker engaged * * *
in a famous series of public disputes which centered precisely on
these questions, although that aspect of the matter is easily lost I assume that the broad outlines of the dispute are familiar.1
sight of, since the argument ranged so widely over issues of con- That portion of the quarrel that found its way into print began
sonance and dissonance, the necessary conditions for musical with the publication in 1906 of Schenker’s Harmonielehre,
coherence, the proper interpretation of the history of Western which contained a number of stinging diatribes (for the most
music, and a host of other concerns raised by die neue Musik. part omitted from the abridged English translation) aimed at
By the 1920s the quarrel had come to focus more particularly modernist and proto-modernist composers such as Max Reger
on one of the seminal oddities of Schoenberg’s account of for whom Schoenberg maintained a degree of respect; in 1939,
harmony—understood both as a musical phenomenon and as in an unpublished response to a subsequent attack by Schenker,
the discipline devoted to its study—as set forth in the he refers to Reger as a “significant” composer.2 But even absent
“Harmoniefremde Töne” chapter of his Harmonielehre, a chap- that respect for composers explicitly named by Schenker in
ter in which he advanced the startling claim that such tones 1906, the terms in which the attacks were couched would be
simply do not exist, and this by definition if “harmony” is in- sufficient to incur Schoenberg’s wrath, since the charge
deed, as Schoenberg held it to be, the study of simultaneously Schenker levels against these composers is that they fail to live
sounding tones. This was not merely a quirky manifestation of up to the artistic standard set by Austro-German composers
Viennese Sprachlehre, a Krausian insistence on a literal interpre- during the Golden Age of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
tation of language (although the influence of Karl Kraus on turies, a failure symptomatic of a general decline in musical cul-
Schoenberg’s sense of the ethical responsibility attendant upon ture from which few later composers, apart from Brahms, were
the public use of language can be seen here as it can be seen in exempt—the chain of intergenerational German genius,
Schoenberg’s related objection to the term “atonal”); it was also Schenker claimed, had been broken by composers of subsequent
a claim about the then-current state of music theory. In con- generations. As a member of one of those subsequent genera-
trast, on Schenker’s view, theory was complete, or very nearly so, tions it is easy see why Schoenberg, though not named by
and it was he who completed it by discovering its eternal laws— Schenker, would be personally offended by his grim Spenglerian
a view which comported well with his view of music history,
with the Golden Age located somewhere in the past. On A longer version of this paper was presented at the Dublin International
Schoenberg’s view, theory was incomplete; indeed, for him our Conference on Music Analysis in June, 2005.
talk of “non-harmonic tones” indirectly acknowledges that in- 1 For secondary literature, see Dahlhaus (1973–74), Dunsby (1977), and
completeness, since on Schoenberg’s account to say an event is Simms (1977).
“non-harmonic” is simply to say that it cannot be accounted for 2 For Schenker’s attack on Reger, see Schenker (1906, 222n–24n). On
Schoenberg’s support for Reger, see Simms (1977, 120); see also Arnold
given the currently incomplete harmonic theories available—a Schönberg, “Zu Regers Violinkonzert” [“On Reger’s Violin Concerto”]
view which comported well with his view of music history as (1923, with addendum dated August 7, 1932), manuscript T.36.02 in the
cumulative and ever-progressive. Despite the seemingly Arnold Schönberg Center archive, Vienna. I am grateful to Severine Neff
pedestrian object of dispute, in short, this was thus a quarrel for bringing this document to my attention.

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 166 music theory spectrum 32 (2010)

perspective on history, and no doubt offense was taken as early (a) (b)
as the book’s preface, in which Schenker promises the imma-        
       
nent publication of a supplement to the Harmonielehre entitled        
       
“On the Decline of the Art of Composing: A Technical-Critical
   
Analysis.”3
     
Schoenberg’s initial riposte appeared in 1911 with the publi-
[1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8]
cation of his own Harmonielehre, and he expanded his response
to Schenker considerably in the 1922 revision of the book. In
the interval Schenker had published a more direct attack against example 1.  Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre, Example 231
Schoenberg himself in his 1915 analytical edition of Beethoven’s
Op. 111, which included a blistering denunciation of inability to experience hierarchically prior pitches as “conceptu-
Schoenberg’s brief 1914 essay “Why New Melodies Are ally sustained” whether they are acoustically present or not.9
Difficult to Understand.”4 Schenker names the essay but not its Now, the position Schoenberg is staking out here is an-
author (small matter, readers knew), and rhetoric such as the nounced unambiguously in the opening paragraphs of this
following suggests that the war was doing little to improve his chapter: “Either there is no such thing as non-harmonic tones,
mood or his opinion of the current generation: or they are not non-harmonic . . . nonharmonic tones do form
chords [Zusammenklänge], hence are not non-harmonic; the
What a hostile, wretched picture this sketch presents! Never once in
his unspeakably miserable incompetence does he recognize the rep- musical phenomena they help to create are harmonies, as is ev-
etitions in the works of our masters; there he flails at all those who erything that sounds simultaneously,”10 and he reiterates the
cannot or will not sink as rapidly with him into the depths of his point even more succinctly later: “There are no nonharmonic tones,
ignorance.5 for ‘harmony’ means tones sounding together [Zusammenklang].
Nonharmonic tones are merely those that the theorists could
Schenker offers little by way of actual argument in this essay,
not fit into their system of harmony,” going on to suggest that
although he makes abundantly clear his disapproval: the words
“we ought rather to try to discover their regularity, the laws to
“modern,” “progress,” and “future” appear with relentless regu-
which it conforms.”11
larity, embedded throughout in ironic scare-quotes. In contrast,
It is clear that there are personal, aesthetic, historical, and
in the second volume of Das Meisterwerk, published in 1926,
technical dimensions to the quarrel, and some of these are logi-
Schenker gets down to technical brass tacks in the essay
cally connected to others and some are not; the argument stands
“Fortsetzung der Urlinie-Betrachtungen,” citing Schoenberg by
at the intersection of a number of intellectual fault-lines which
name and objecting in detail over the course of several pages to
were fracturing Viennese intellectual life at the time. To begin
certain of the examples offered in the controversial “Non-
with, that facet of the dispute which was an argument over the
harmonic Tones” chapter of Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre. One
aesthetic value of the new music is inseparable from the facet
of these, Schoenberg’s Example 231, is transcribed as my
which was an argument over the correct interpretation of music
Example 1. Example 1(a) consists, as Schenker quite aptly de-
history. In both cases the disputant’s interpretation of history
scribes it, of a pair of “simple octave progressions in treble and
followed from his aesthetic evaluations. Schenker believed that
bass with sustained inner voices.”6 In Example 1(b) Schoenberg
musical culture was in decline because of his negative evaluation
rearranges in register the music of Example 1(a) and rearticu-
of the new music: he believed that composers had lost the abil-
lates those “sustained inner voices,” omitting the consonant
ity to write great music and listeners had lost the ability to dis-
points of departure and arrival at the beginning and end—
tinguish the good from the bad. Schoenberg believed in no such
changes which serve to focus the listener’s attention on the
decline because he believed that masterworks were still being
pitch-class content of the six non-triadic simultaneities (the
produced. And their opposing positions on the appropriate
“einzelnen Momente,” as Schoenberg calls them7) which, to state
theoretical descriptions of the literatures in question likewise
the matter as Schenker might, arise as the byproducts of the two
followed necessarily from these core beliefs. History had in an
linear progressions. The Arabic numerals underneath the ex-
important sense come to a close for Schenker; the great works
ample are mine; I shall return to these in a moment. Regarding
had been written in a Golden Age of the past and the theory
these simultaneities Schoenberg says, “I maintain that these are
that explained them was now complete as well: it was he who
chords: not of the system, but of music.”8 Schenker, for his part,
completed it by codifying the laws which governed their behav-
ridicules Schoenberg for what he alleges is Schoenberg’s failure
ior. In a similar manner Schoenberg’s opposing aesthetic
to hear passing motions as passing motions, and his supposed

9 Schenker (1996, 13).

3 See Schenker (1906, vii). 10 Schoenberg (1978, 309).
4 See Simms (1977). 11 Ibid. (318, 390). Emphasis in original. “System” in this context is a techni-
5 Ibid. (113). cal term for Schoenberg, often contrasted with “Theorie.” Considerations
6 See Schenker (1996, 13). of space preclude a thorough examination here; however, the first chapter
7 Schoenberg (1922, 390). of the Harmonielehre, “Theorie oder Darstellungssystem?,” provides useful
8 See Schoenberg (1978, 322). background.

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 research notes 167

position determined his interpretation of history, which for him than the chasm Bernhardt was attempting to bridge. And
was cumulative and progressive, with each generation building Schoenberg pushes the point farther than Bernhardt, for whom
upon the accomplishments of its predecessors. at least some of the contextual features of the prima prattica
The aesthetic side of the quarrel has dominated post-war (those which originally rendered the disputed dissonances co-
accounts of the dispute as if there were no other, to the detri- herent) were preserved in the seconda prattica; Schoenberg sug-
ment of its more interesting and problematic aspects. Dahlhaus, gests the wholesale elimination of the original context.
for example, reads Schoenberg’s claim as nothing more than Be that as it may, I do not doubt that Schoenberg’s own devel-
aesthetic and the dispute itself similarly: “[H]is assertion that opment followed a historical course such as the one he describes,
non-harmonic notes, notes without harmonic influence, do not and as a piece of autobiography it is intriguing in what it suggests
exist is an aesthetic postulate, rooted in the opposition to all Schoenberg was listening for in, say, Bach and Mozart. For us to
things ornamental and without function.”12 True enough, but be persuaded by this argument it helps, of course, to share
the aesthetic credo that “masterworks” contain no irrelevant Schoenberg’s sense of history and its associated epistemic com-
events was not under dispute; both men subscribed to that belief mitments; the analogy would be a false one to those of Schenker’s
(and thus did Viennese aesthetics make strange bedfellows). more pessimistic persuasion. Schoenberg clearly understood that
More importantly, this was a dispute over what counts as an whatever else it might be, this was an argument about history and
event and what counts as relevant. Each man was concerned the current state of art and discourse about it, and he himself di-
with a wholly different explanandum. For Schoenberg, the enti- agnosed, in the Harmonielehre’s revised edition of 1922, the source
ties with which the discipline of harmony is concerned are si- of what he saw as Schenker’s error as being fundamentally his-
multaneities; for Schenker harmony is the study of Stufen and torical in nature: “that tacit but fundamental assumption of school
their progression, and the underlying psychology. Simultaneities historians that the ‘golden age’ of music is past.”14
and Stufen are different kinds of things, and the two are incom- But, importantly, that historical error, albeit originating in
parable: not all simultaneities are Stufen, and not all Stufen are what Schoenberg saw as an erroneous aesthetic evaluation, has
(literal) simultaneities. Indeed, for Schenker the defining char- empirical and epistemological consequences on Schoenberg’s ac-
acteristic of the passing tone is precisely its inability to create a count, as it results in the unwarranted restriction of the domain
change of harmony (see his remarks on second species in under consideration, effectively limiting what there is to be ob-
Kontrapunkt I), so of course he regarded Example 1 as express- served and explained. “Such errors result whenever one merely
ing only one “harmony.” searches out reasons enough to explain what is known, instead
For all these reasons it is equally simplistic to see the quarrel of providing a surplus of reasons to embrace cases that do not
as just a technical dispute over, for example, whether “consonant” yet exist. Such errors result whenever one takes the known phe-
and “dissonant” are mere descriptive predicates applied to expe- nomena to be the only ones there are, to be the ultimate and
riences that are largely social constructions and thus best under- immutable manifestations of nature, and explains only these, in-
stood as matters of degree (Schoenberg’s position) or whether stead of contemplating nature comprehensively in its relation to
they are mutually disjoint natural kinds whose members are eter- our feelings and perceptions.”15 In that respect what was at
nally fixed by immutable natural law (Schenker’s position), stake was not just the aesthetic valuation of new music, but what
though these were in part the terms in which the dispute was there was to be heard in the music of the past as well.
conducted. Rather, throughout the non-harmonic tones chapter Schoenberg’s insistence on a strict definition of “harmony,” his
Schoenberg’s most frequent argumental strategy is historical, and disdain for mere “ornament,” his commitment to a progressive view
consists of adducing dissonant verticalities from conventional of music history, are all important aspects of the
tonal contexts (either invented for the occasion or drawn from way Schoenberg tries to make his point but they are not them-
the literature) and pointing out their “comprehensibility,” the selves the point; they are aspects of the presentation, not the
implication being, of course, that harmonies of the new music idea, conditioned by the world in which the dispute was taking
are not entirely unfamiliar, and indeed arise as a logical continu- place. But the Viennese world of Schenker, Schoenberg, Kraus,
ation of familiar tonal practices, the only variable being the con- and Loos, was also the world of Mach, Wittgenstein, Carnap,
text in which they appear. They will become, he suggests, and Popper, and this was as much a dispute concerning dis-
acceptable as independent musical entities with the further pas- course about music as about the music itself: there is an episte-
sage of time, in the same sort of process by which, he says, mological quarrel going on here about the nature and task of
chordal sevenths and ninths arose from earlier passing tones. music theory which is ultimately logically independent of the
This is a form of argument, of course, that has a long history in personal and aesthetic dimensions of the debate. If music his-
our profession, and no doubt most of Schoenberg’s original read- tory is ever-changing in perpetuity then music theory must be
ers recognized it; one is reminded of Christoph Bernhardt’s ar- the same, Schoenberg claims. By the same token, he is saying,
gument in the Tractatus.13 But in 1911 and 1922 the chasm there is no reason to believe we know all that we could even
separating the new music from the old was surely vastly greater about the already established and agreed-upon canon. On

12 Dahlhaus (1973-74, 135–36). 14 Schoenberg (1978, 318).

13 See Hilse (1973). 15 Ibid. (319).

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 168 music theory spectrum 32 (2010)

1: {C,E,G} Subphrase 1 Subphrase 2 Subphrase 3

4 38
2: {C,D,E,G,B}

  8       
 
 
3: {C,E,G,A}
4: {C,E,F,G}
5: {C,E,F,G}
 4    38 
  
6: {C,E,G,A}
 8      

7: {C,D,E,G,B}
8: {C,E,G}

example 3.  Arnold Schoenberg, Op. 23, No. 1, mm.1–3

example 2.  Pitch-class content of Example 1(a) simultaneities

Schoenberg’s view Schenker’s theory is complete only by fiat, as Now, we know from archival evidence that, as Jonathan
a matter of convenience for the theorist insofar as it has an- Dunsby noted in his 1977 article on Schoenberg’s largely un-
swered the questions that happen to interest him. “To represent published commentary on Schenker’s work, “Schoenberg made
life in art, life, with its flexibility, its possibilities for change, its an intensive study of Schenker in 1922 and 1923, especially in
necessities; to acknowledge the sole eternal law [to be] evolu- early June 1923 (perhaps as a relaxation from work on his Opp.
tion and change—this way has to be more fruitful than the 23 and 24, which were completed in April),”18 right around the
other, where one assumes an end of evolution because one can time the Harmonielehre was being revised and his rejoinder to
thus round off the system.”16 Schoenberg reminds us that disci- Schenker in the “ ‘Harmoniefremde’ Töne” chapter expanded.
plines are defined by the questions they ask, and the epistemo- So in light of that, and in light of the relations we noted in the
logical side to this debate consisted of a dispute over precisely example from that chapter in the Harmonielehre, I would like to
what, for music theory, those defining questions are, and revisit the opening phrase of Op. 23, No. 1, shown in Example 3.
whether those questions are open or closed. Are there “observ- This passage has received only modest attention in the litera-
able regularities” associated with the simultaneities of music of ture, mostly from historically oriented analysts concerned to
the common-practice era apart from those accounted for by understand the work’s role in the ultimate evolution of
Stufentheorie? If so, what is their effect?17 Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, which is to say, as a proto-
With that, I would like to revisit Example 1. Though not serial piece. John Graziano views the piece in terms of three
usually remarked upon, it is worth noting in this context that the rows, one of 21 tones, one of 20, and one of 13.19 Ethan Haimo
only two things that move, the outer-voice eighth-note lines, are reads the phrase in terms of a four-part array of an ordered
really a single thing happening twice: they are mutual transforms hexachord, including rotation in his canonical operations, and
of each other, under either pitch-transposed retrogression or, suggesting a unison intersection between two of the four lines
mod the diatonic collection of C major, pitch-transposed inver- over much of the phrase.20 Both these authors capture mean-
sion, both perfectly respectable and familiar motivic relations. As ingful aspects of the work; I will suggest an alternative “serial”
indicated earlier, Schoenberg recasts the passage as shown in organization in a moment, but in keeping with my topic, I want
Example 1(b) to emphasize the pitch-class content of the simul- to begin by examining the passage’s simultaneities. The first
taneities of the passage. In Example 2 I have abstracted the consideration of all of the simultaneities of this phrase was of-
pitch-classes involved in these eight harmonies to make the fered by Elaine Barkin in her article “A View of Schoenberg’s
point: the temporal succession of simultaneities is palindromic, a Op. 23/1.”21 Sadly, one almost never sees this article cited,
retrograde relation that follows in an utterly “law-like” fashion which is a pity as it offers some intriguing observations about
from the motivic-transformational relation between the two the piece. I suspect this lack of recognition is in part because,
moving outer voices. I see no reason not to regard that pattern of like the Harmonielehre, the article is very much a product of its
vertical repetition as motivic (and it is not hard to hear, the chief time and place: its time was 1971 and its place was Perspectives
impediment being that it usually does not occur to one to listen of New Music, at that point under the editorship of Benjamin
for it) and whatever else its effect might be, it certainly serves to Boretz, who was also Barkin’s dissertation advisor, and the ar-
unify the passage in both pitch-space and time. ticle originated in Barkin’s dissertation.
Given that historical context it is not surprising that Barkin
characterizes the verticalities of the passage only to within pitch
16 Ibid. (31). class; I reproduce the unnumbered figure from her article which
17 It is fair to say that the question has not been central to post-war Anglo- does that as my Example 4.
phone music theory. Notable exceptions include Babbitt’s discussions of
what he calls “associative harmony” (see, e.g., his remarks on Bach chorale 18 See Dunsby (1977, 27).
217 in Babbitt [1987, 124–33]) and Lester (1981). Lester’s discussion of 19 Graziano (1973).
the famous opening of Mozart’s K. 331 in particular resonates interestingly 20 See Haimo (1990, 71–74).
with my remarks about Op. 23, No.1. 21 Barkin (1973–74).

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 research notes 169

m. 1 m. 2 m. 3 Subphrase 1:
(p.c. C = 0 666 3 2 5 3 4 77 77 F F F
887 10 10 10 10 10 9 0 11 8
900 0 0 11 11 2 22 11 2 2 1
trichord 3 A A 6 G
in prime 013 025 016 026 026
4 5
A
form: 026 024 015 027 016
016 027 C C

p p p
Subphrase 2: T-6 I T-6 I T-7 I
example 4.  From Barkin (1973–74)
E D F

4 5
p
T–5 I
3 B B 6 B
2
T10 I T9 2 1
p
T–3 I
C C B

             example 6.  Comparison of subphrases 1 and 2

            
         
 
Tn/Tnl Class: [013] [026] [016] [025] [024] [016] [015] [026] [027] [027] [026] [016]
each is the final event in one of the three subphrases, as a glance
p p
back at the score will confirm. That the first two contain the
T–7 I T–6 I
same number of simultaneities suggests a comparison of those
p
T1 verticalities. Example 6 attempts this, vertically aligning ab-
stractions of those chords that occupy the same order position
example 5.  Op. 23, No. 1, opening simultaneities in their respective subphrases: the first of the first subphrase
above the first of the second subphrase, and so forth. Only in
the case of the third chord of each subphrase do the two belong
Here Barkin has represented each of the simultaneities re- to the same Tn/TnI-class, that is the aforementioned pair of
sulting from the three-part counterpoint in pitch-class integer pitch-inversionally related [016]-trichords, the first two of the
format, and she identifies what we would now call the Tn/TnI- three-chord network shown at the bottom of Example 5, the
class of each at the bottom of the figure; as it happens there are Tp-7I related pair. In the case of the other two pairs—the first
no rests and no simultaneous octaves in the phrase, and thus at chord of each subphrase and the second—not only are they not
every moment there are precisely three pitches sounding with related by any pitch transform but none even belong to the same
no duplicated pitch classes.22 In Example 5 I represent the ac- Tn/TnI class. But that is not to say that there is not an audible
tual pitches of the passage (all of them; I am assuming there are parallelism here: in each case chords in the same order position
no “non-harmonic tones”); my analytical notations follow the are related by exactly two-thirds of a pitch inversion, and it is the
Babbitt/Rahn convention, with zero assigned to middle C. This same pitch inversion in both cases: Tp-6I. Moreover, when the
more refined interpretation of the data reveals aspects of coher- unordered pitch-class intervals (Forte’s “interval class”) are con-
ence that are invisible in the pitch-class representation: in cer- sidered (I have indicated certain of these in the example by the
tain cases chords that belong to the same Tn/TnI class are more arcs on the left-hand side of the chords) one can see a consistent
closely related than just that—they are actual pitch transforms of “inversion-like” pattern of reversal from subphrase to subphrase:
each other, a fact reflected in the notation by the superscript “p.” there is an interval 2 between the top and middle notes of the
I will return to this point in a moment; for now I wish merely to first chord of the first subphrase and an interval 3 between the
direct attention to the transformations indicated at the bottom top note and the bottom note; in the first chord of the second
of the example. There are three trichords involved, all of type subphase there is an interval 2 between the bottom note and the
3–5[016], and all three are related by pitch transformation: in middle note, and a 3 between the bottom note and the top.
fact, that network contains all and only the 3-5[016] trichords The final subphrase, represented in Example 7, displays a
in the entire passage. On what I hope is my uncontroversial palindromic symmetry around its central pair of [027] trichords
parsing of these measures there are three subphrases here: the (quite strikingly the only time in the passage where two tempo-
first consists of the first three simultaneities, the second of the rally consecutive trichords belong to the same Tn/TnI-class; al-
next three, and the third of the final six. The network of three though not indicated in Example 7, those two are related by
pitch-transformationally related 3-5[016] trichords is reflected pitch inversion at Tp-3I, as shown back in Example 5, the
prominently in this phraseological organization of the passage: change from one to the next being accomplished by the single
move from A to C in the middle voice, the first time that move
22 Ibid. (122). has occurred since the bass motion that begins the piece).

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 170 music theory spectrum 32 (2010)

Subphrase 3:

D E G G G G

5 6 2 5 4 1
B 2 B 5 A 5 C 6 B G

1 4 5 2 2 5
B D D D C C

example 7.  Relations within subphrase 3

(a)
4 3
Subphrase 1 Subphrase 2 Subphrase 3
  8       8  

 
  
   
 4    38 
  
     8      

(b) –1 +2

  
Outer Voices –1 +2

   

[012345]
–1 +2

    
   

+2
–1

–1 +2

   
[012345]
example 8.  3-5[016] Trichords and outer-voice counterpoint –1 +2


+2 –1
Example 8(a) portrays the way the three terminal 3–5[016]
trichords marking the end of each subphrase accumulate in    
time, such that the Tp + 1 relation (the move up one half step)

[012345]
+2
between the first and last is reinforced by an identical order of
  
arpeggiation (top, bottom, middle) in both cases: the two are
identical to within pitch-transformation in both time and reg-
ister. That prototypically “serial” relation leads me to my con- example 9.  〈-1,+2〉 Pitch array
cluding observation. Example 8(b) isolates the outer voices of
the 3–5[016] progression. In this hypothetical Aussensatz the
two voices move in parallel tritones such that the succession of formally, the linear dimension of the passage can be usefully
ordered pitch intervals within each line is -1, +2. That, of modeled by a single-column six-part array of order-related
course, is the Farben motive, which brings me to my final ex- trichords, where the array is understood as determining the ini-
ample, Example 9. tial appearance in time of each pitch. On this “cross-section”—
There are precisely two repeated pitches in these three mea- to borrow Schoenberg’s term—this is a strictly serial passage:
sures: the Eb/D# of the uppermost line and the Ab/G# of the not twelve-tone, but three-tone. There is one and only one line
middlemost. If we regard the second occurrence in each of those of the six that is incomplete: the lowest. It would be made com-
cases as a repetition of the first we are left with the array shown plete (the “tonal problem” it poses would be solved, if you like)
underneath the score in the example, which arises from induc- in either of two ways, though the same pitch is involved in both:
ing on each of the three lines a straightforward 2-partition in a Bb a ninth below middle C positioned either before the A or
register into a pair of trichords, high and low. Each of the three after the B. Those who know the piece will recall that that, in
surface hexachordal lines is thus understood to be compounded fact, is how it ends, with that particular Bb in the bass.
of two registrally disjoint trichordal lynes, and those six Passages like this suggest that Schoenberg’s music may be
trichordal lynes all ordered identically to within the canonical usefully understood as more polymorphic in its organization
transformations of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system. More than much mainstream discourse about it might lead one to

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 research notes 171

believe, with different elements and collections of elements aris-

ing at different levels and over different time spans, relating to
one another in ways that are perfectly coherent without neces-
sarily entailing total transformational equivalence. And his
quarrel with Schenker, which led me to that observation, is per-
haps itself a useful reminder of the ways our research (and even
our hearing) can be limited by unacknowledged (and thus un-
questioned) assumptions about what might be worthy of our
attention.

works cited

Babbitt, Milton. 1987. Words About Music. Ed. Stephen

Dembski and Joseph N. Straus. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Barkin, Elaine. 1973–74. “A View of Schoenberg’s Op. 23/1.”
Perspectives of New Music 12 (1–2): 99–127.
Dalhaus, Carl. 1973–74. “Schoenberg and Schenker.”
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 100: 209–15.
Dunsby, Jonathan M. 1977. “Schoenberg and the Writings of
Schenker.” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 2 (1):
26–33.
Graziano, John. 1972. “Serial Procedures in Schoenberg’s Opus
23.” Current Musicology 13: 58–63.
Haimo, Ethan. 1990. Schoenberg’s Serial Odyssey: The Evolution
of his Twelve-Tone Method, 1914–1928. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Hilse, Walter. 1973. “The Treatises of Christoph Bernhard.”
Music Forum 3: 1–196.
Lester, Joel. 1981. “Simultaneity Structures and Harmonic
Functions in Tonal Music.” In Theory Only 5 (5): 3–28.
Schenker, Heinrich. 1906. Harmonielehre. Vol. 2 of Neue musi-
kalische Theorien und Phantasien. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche
Buchhandlung Nachfolger.
———. [1915] 1971. Beethoven: Die letzten Sonaten: die Sonate
C Moll Op. 111: Kritische Einführung und Erläuterung von
Heinrich Schenker. 2nd ed. Ed. Oswald Jonas. Vienna:
Universal Edition.
———. [1926] 1996. Das Meisterwerk in der Musik. Vol. II.
Hildesheim. Ed. William Drabkin. Trans. Ian Bent et al. as
The Masterwork in Music: A Yearbook. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Schoenberg, Arnold. [1922] 1978. Harmonielehre. Vienna:
Universal Edition. Trans. Roy E. Carter as Theory of
Harmony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
Simms, Bryan. 1977. “New Documents in the Schenker-
Schoenberg Polemic.” Perspectives of New Music 16 (1): 110–24.

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