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In this stylishly written, profoundly argued, richly evidenced account,
Arndt explores how Schoenberg, modernism’s most revisionist composer of
Western art music, and Schenker, its commanding theorist dedicated to pre-
serving our understanding of classical masterpieces, conducted their com-
plementary, lifelong quests. Much more than a disquisition on modernist
music and music theory, this is a rigorous exploration of contemporaneous
kinds of faith in genius.
Jonathan Dunsby, Eastman School of Music,
University of Rochester, USA

Schenker and Schoenberg – often regarded as polar opposites who embody

a fissure in the history of Western music and the collapse of a common lan-
guage – are brilliantly reevaluated in Matthew Arndt’s scholarly debut.
Through a meticulous analysis of notated and written sources and a virtu-
osic interplay of disciplines and methods, Arndt delves beneath the surface
of the usual narrative to sound out the musical thought and spiritual beliefs
that shape the theory and music of both thinkers. As a result, what modern
scholarship has divided is reintegrated, not only by melding the technical
and metaphysical elements to illumine each other, but by drawing Schoen-
berg and Schenker so tightly together that, like repellent magnets held in
tension, their proximity reveals the secret of the other’s meaning. This is a
bold, brave, brilliant book.
Danuel Chua, Hong Kong University, China
This page intentionally left blank
The Musical Thought and Spiritual
Lives of Heinrich Schenker and
Arnold Schoenberg

This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musical
thought of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. One of the premises
is that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s inner musical lives are inseparable from
their inner spiritual lives. Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in
much the same musical-spiritual place, yet musically they split while spirit-
ually they grow closer. The reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work
has sidestepped this paradox of commonality and conflict, instead choosing
to universalize and amplify their conflict. Bringing to light a trove of unpub-
lished material, Arndt argues that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict is a
reflection of tensions within their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a
particular conception of the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual
eye of the genius. The tensions inherent in this largely psychological and ma-
terial notion of the tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius
shape both their musical divergence on the logical (technical) level in the-
ory and composition, including their advocacy of the Ursatz versus twelve-
tone composition, and their spiritual convergence, including their embrace
of Judaism. These findings shed new light on the musical and philosoph-
ical worlds of Schenker and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and
spiritual questions with which they grapple.

Matthew Arndt, Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of

Iowa, holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an MM
from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a BA with honors from
Lewis & Clark College. He has previously taught at Mercer University,
Lawrence University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Professor
Arndt primarily studies the application of insights from the history of music
theory to music theory pedagogy, analysis, and criticism. He also studies
technical aspects of sacred music from the Republic of Georgia.
Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900
Series Editor: Judy Lochhead, Stony Brook University, USA

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A recent resurgence of interest in theoretical and analytical readings of mu-
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György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre

Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque
Peter Edwards
The Musical Thought and
Spiritual Lives of Heinrich
Schenker and Arnold
Schoenberg

Matthew Arndt
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Matthew Arndt
The right of Matthew Arndt to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Arndt, Matthew.
Title: The musical thought and spiritual lives of Heinrich Schenker
and Arnold Schoenberg / Matthew Arndt.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon: New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. |
Series: Ashgate studies in theory and analysis of music after 1900 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017016009 | ISBN 9781138287259 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315268347 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874–1951—Criticism and
interpretation. | Schenker, Heinrich, 1868–1935—Criticism and
interpretation. | Music—20th century—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML410.S283 A85 2018 | DDC 780.92/2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016009

ISBN: 978-1-138-28725-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-26834-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by codeMantra

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Frontispiece: Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. Drawings by Tony Carter.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of examples x
List of audio examples xiv
Acknowledgements xv
List of abbreviations xvii
Style xix

Introduction 1

Part I
Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s thinking about music 19

1 The eye of the genius 21

2 The obstacle of interruption 73
3 The trouble with problems 95

Part II
Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s thinking in music 117

4 Schenker the progressive 119

5 The cold shoulder 154
6 Zeroing in and zeroing out 180
7 The turning point 217
Conclusion 253

References 255
Index 273
Examples

1.1 Goethe’s conception of the genius, nature, and art 26

1.2 Schopenhauer’s conception of the genius, nature, and art 31
1.3 Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conception of the subject, the
tone, and the genius 35
1.4 The genius’s view into the musical work for Schenker. FC,
1st ed., figure 1 39
1.5 Schenker, sketch for Free Composition, OC, 23/25 40
1.6 Schenker, sketch for Free Composition, OC, 23/43 46
1.7 Schenker’s conception of the course of culture. FC, 1st ed.,
figure 13 48
1.8 Schoenberg’s conception of the line of evolution 49
1.9 The spiral of the disciple and the straight line of the genius
for Schoenberg 55
2.1 The first model for depicting interruption. FC, figure 21a 74
2.2 The second model for depicting interruption. FC, figure 21b 74
2.3 The perfect authentic cadence 78
2.4 Consonance and dissonance 80
2.5 The harmony and voice leading of Mozart, K. 332, I,
second theme in recapitulation, actually mm. 177–192.
MW, 2:11–12/2:1, figure 1 83
2.6 Schenker, sketch for Free Composition, OC, 20/84v 88
2.7 A piece of music with interruption 89
2.8 Schenker, “Liebe,” for “Das Leben als Lobgesang Gottes”
(January 14, 1932), OJ, 94/14 (labeled 34/14). The aphorism
continues with a few lines of text 90
3.1 The tone 98
3.2 Consonances and dissonances 100
3.3 The musical work as a presentation of the musical idea 108
4.1 Schenker, Étude, no. 1 of Two Piano Pieces, op. 1,
presentation at beginning of exposition, mm. 1–4, OJ, 23/1 121
4.2 Schenker, Étude, end of recapitulation, mm. 38–44, OJ, 23/1 122
4.3 Schenker, “Mädchenlied No. 1,” continuation in exposition,
mm. 15–18, OJ, 22/23. There are a few changes in pencil on
 Examples xi
the ink original, but they are neither clear nor consistent,
so I follow the original 123
4.4 Schenker, “Mädchenlied No. 1,” continuation in
recapitulation, mm. 60–63, OJ, 22/23 123
4.5 Schenker, “Heimat,” basic idea, mm. 10–13, OJ, 22/3 124
4.6 Schenker, “Heimat,” mm. 22–29, OJ, 22/3 124
4.7 Schenker, “Mir träumte von einem Myrtenbaum,” version
e of a–e, first strophe, mm. 1–9, OJ, 22/26 125
4.8 Schenker, “Mir träumte von einem Myrtenbaum,” middle
of coda, mm. 34–36, OJ, 22/26 126
4.9 Schenker, “Wandrers Nachtlied,” closing section,
mm. 49–52, OJ, 22/6 127
4.10 Schenker, “Mondnacht,” repetition of basic idea in
recapitulation, mm. 17–18, OJ, 22/2 127
4.11 Schenker, “Meeres Stille,” beginning of exposition,
mm. 1–3, OJ, 22/3 128
4.12 Schenker, “Mir träumte von einem Myrtenbaum,” middle
of third strophe, mm. 25–26 with pickup, OJ, 22/26 129
4.13 Schenker, Syrische Tänze for piano four hands, book 1,
no. 2, mm. 9–16, OJ, 23/10 130
4.14 Schenker, no. 2 of Two-Voice Inventions, op. 5, conclusion,
mm. 25–28 with pickup, OJ, 23/4 131
4.15 Schenker, no. 5 of Five Piano Pieces, op. 4, end of
exposition, mm. 17–21a with pickup, OJ, 23/4 131
4.16 Schenker, no. 1 of Two-Voice Inventions, op. 5, exposition,
mm. 1–8, OJ, 23/4 132
4.17 Schenker, sketch for trio Scherzo, in contrasting middle in
exposition, mm. 21–28, OJ, 23/20 132
4.18 Schenker, trio Allegretto, core 2 in contrasting middle,
mm. 66–77, OJ, 23/18. Again there are a couple of changes
in pencil on the ink original, but they are neither clear nor
consistent, so I follow the original 133
4.19 Schenker, “Tausend schöne goldne Sterne,” continuation,
mm. 5–10, OJ, 22/13 134
4.20 The formal design of Schenker, Fantasy, I 136
4.21 Schenker, Fantasy, I, exposition in A division, mm. 1–16,
melody, OJ, 23/2 138
4.22 Schubert, Fantasy in C major, II, mm. 1–8, melody 138
4.23 Schenker, Fantasy, I, contrasting middle in A division,
mm. 17–33 with pickup, melody, OJ, 23/2 139
4.24 Fantasy, I, recapitulation in A division, mm. 34–49 with
pickup, melody, OJ, 23/2 140
4.25 Schenker, Fantasy, I, transition, mm. 50–82, melody, OJ, 23/2 142
4.26 Schenker, Fantasy, I, introduction in B division,
mm. 83–100, melody, OJ, 23/2 143
xii Examples
4.27 Schenker, Fantasy, I, exposition in B division,
mm. 101–170, melody, OJ, 23/2. Note: The first ending of the
repeat is almost identical to m. 96, beat 2, through m. 100,
shown in Example 4.26. The second ending is in Example 4.28 144
4.28 Schenker, Fantasy, I, contrasting middle in B division,
mm. 171–286, melody, OJ, 23/2 145
4.29 Schenker, Fantasy, I, end of recapitulation in B division,
mm. 377–416, melody, OJ, 23/2 146
4.30 Schenker, Fantasy, II, beginning of introduction, mm. 1–4,
melody, OJ, 23/2 147
4.31 Schenker, Fantasy, II, theme, mm. 21–25, reduced, OJ, 23/2
(2:37 on recording) 148
4.32 Brahms, Symphony No. 3, III, beginning of primary
theme, mm. 1–12, melody 148
4.33 Schenker, Fantasy, II, beginning of variation no. 17,
mm. 161–164 with pickup, OJ, 23/2 (11:26 on recording) 149
4.34 Bach, Fugue No. 12 in F minor, from The Well-Tempered
Clavier, Book 2, mm. 1–4 149
4.35 Schenker, Fantasy, II, culmination, mm. 241–248 with
pickup, reduced, OJ, 23/2 (13:13 on recording) 149
5.1 Schoenberg (1966), “Ich darf nicht dankend,” introduction,
mm. 1–3 166
5.2 Wagner’s Tristan chord and Schoenberg’s spirit chord 167
5.3 Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet and Schoenberg’s spirit chord 167
5.4 Schoenberg’s “Ich darf nicht dankend” as the successful
realization of a vision and an unsuccessful attempt at
self-realization 169
5.5 The clarification of G in Schoenberg, “Ich darf nicht dankend” 171
5.6 Seven strands of motivic development in Schoenberg, “Ich
darf nicht dankend” 173
5.7 The harmony and voice leading at the end of Schoenberg,
“Ich darf nicht dankend” 174
6.1 An intermediate degree of integrity in a regular musical work 182
6.2 Absolute integrity in Schoenberg, op. 19, nos. 1–4 186
6.3 Schoenberg (1968), op. 19, no. 1, primary theme (half-
sentence), mm. 1–2 187
6.4 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 1, transition, mm. 3–4 with pickup 188
6.5 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 1, secondary theme, mm. 5–6
with pickup 189
6.6 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 1, bridge, mm. 7–8 189
6.7 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 1, contrasting middle/elaboration,
mm. 9–12 190
6.8 Gestalten x, y, and z in Schoenberg, op. 19 191
6.9 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 1, secondary theme ⇒ primary
theme, mm. 13–15 192
 Examples xiii
6.10 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 1, coda, mm. 15–17 193
6.11 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 2, introduction and basic idea, mm. 1–4 195
6.12 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 2, repetition and continuation, mm. 5–6 195
6.13 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 2, cadential phrase, mm. 7–9 196
6.14 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 3, antecedent, mm. 1–4 198
6.15 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 3, basic idea in consequent, mm. 5–6 199
6.16 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 3, contrasting idea in consequent,
mm. 7–9 199
6.17 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 4, antecedent, mm. 1–6 200
6.18 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 4, episode, mm. 6–9 202
6.19 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 4, consequent, mm. 10–13 203
6.20 Schoenberg, Blauer Blick (ca. March 1910), SC, CR 64; and
Schoenberg, Roter Blick (March 26, 1910), SC, CR 65 204
6.21 Dissolution in Schoenberg’s self-portraits and Blicke from
1910, SC, CR 13, 11, 15, 71, 12, 61, 63, and 65; based on
Hoeckner 2002, figure 3, 192–193 205
6.22 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 5, basic idea, mm. 1–3 207
6.23 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 5, repetition ⇒ continuation,
mm. 4–8 with pickup 207
6.24 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 5, continuation, mm. 9–11 with pickup 208
6.25 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 5, cadential phrase, mm. 12–15 209
7.1 Schoenberg’s new path to salvation 221
7.2 Schoenberg’s conception of a Rätsel 224
7.3 Schoenberg (1999), “Toter Winkel,” mm. 1–18, simplified 227
7.4 Schoenberg (1981), “Wenn Vöglein klagen,”
mm. 1–6, simplified 229
7.5 A strand of motivic development in Schoenberg, “Wenn
Vöglein klagen” 230
7.6 Schoenberg, “Wenn Vöglein klagen,” mm. 37–39, simplified 230
7.7 Schoenberg (1980b), “O daß der Sinnen doch so viele sind,”
bass, mm. 16–35 231
7.8 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 6, introduction and presentation,
mm. 1–6 233
7.9 Schoenberg, op. 19, no. 6, continuation and cadential idea,
mm. 7–9 234
7.10 Schoenberg (1980a), “Du sollst nicht, du mußt,” basic idea,
mm. 1–2 237
7.11 Four strands of motivic development in Schoenberg, “Du
sollst nicht, du mußt” 238
7.12 Schoenberg, “Du sollst nicht, du mußt,” last continuation,
mm. 22–24 239
7.13 Schoenberg (1977–1978), Moses und Aron, Act II,
conclusion, mm. 1131–1136d 241
Audio examples

The audio examples can be accessed via the online Routledge Music
­Research Portal: www.routledgemusicresearch.co.uk. Please enter the ac-
tivation word RRMusic and your email address when prompted. You will
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4.1 Heinrich Schenker’s Fantasy for Piano, op. 2, I 16:09

4.2 Heinrich Schenker’s Fantasy for Piano, op. 2, II 13:45

Performed by Luiz de Moura Castro in The Music of Heinrich Schenker

© Musical Heritage Society 1988
Acknowledgements

I owe this book to a host of people who have given their time, energy, and
money over more than a decade.
Above all, I thank the distinguished Schoenberg scholar and radiant hu-
man being Severine Neff, who encouraged me to write the book instead
of continuing to publish articles, who has mentored and advocated for me,
and who labored over the entire manuscript with me. A big thank you to
Emma Gallon and Annie Vaughan for their editorial work at Routledge.
I thank my former advisors, Leslie Blasius and Brian Hyer, for their work
on my doctoral dissertation, which is the origin of the book as a whole,
as well as my mentor Steven Bruns. I thank Robert C. Cook and Jennifer
Iverson for filling in for me at the University of Iowa during a research leave
in the fall of 2014 and for giving me feedback on Chapter 1. I also thank
Ian Bent, James Bungert, Poundie Burstein, Charlotte M. Cross, Christine
Getz, Jason Hooper, Daphne Leong, Roberta Marvin, Katherine Ramsey,
and Robert Snarrenberg for their feedback on various parts of the project.
A special thank you goes out to my anonymous readers for their feedback,
which has been transformative. I thank Seth Monahan and Christopher
Brakel for their help with engraving.
I thank the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of
Iowa, in particular Erin Hackathorn, Jennifer New, and Teresa Mangum,
for making me a Fellow in Residence for the Fall 2014 semester and for all
their assistance. I thank the other Fellows—Jonathan Doorn, Mary Lou
Emery, Michael Hill, and Frank Salomon—for good conversations and
feedback on my writing. I thank the School of Music, the College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences, and International Programs at the University of Iowa for
helping to fund research trips to New York, Riverside, and Vienna, as well
as trips to present my research.
I thank Eike Fess and Therese Muxeneder for facilitating my examination
of Schoenberg’s musical manuscripts, paintings, notebooks, and glosses
during my visit to the Arnold Schönberg Center in 2013. Mr. Fess and Ms.
Muxeneder have gone above and beyond in providing information, materi-
als, and translations.
xvi Acknowledgements
A special thank you goes out to Tony Carter, who drew the portraits for
the cover.
Thank you to Luiz de Moura Castro for permission to feature his perfor-
mance of Schenker’s Fantasy for piano, op. 2. The recording first appeared
on The Music of Heinrich Schenker (MHS 522205H), copyright © 1988 the
Musical Heritage Society; the latter was acquired by Passionato, LLC, but
both firms went out of business in 2013.
Thank you to the University of California, Special Collections & Uni-
versity Archives, UCR Library, University of California, Riverside, as the
physical owners of Schenker’s diaries, aphorisms, and compositions in the
Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection.
Schenker’s notes for and diagrams from Der freie Satz, vol. 3 of Neue
musikalische Theorien und Phantasien, copyright © 1935 Universal Edition
A.G., Vienna, revised edition copyright © 1956 Universal Edition A.G., Vi-
enna, UE 6869/69A, are used by permission. Images of notes from the Oster
Collection are provided by the New York Public Library.
Schoenberg’s music and poetry and quotations for epigraphs are used
by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. Schoenberg’s
paintings, copyright © 2016 Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles / ARS,
New York / Bildrecht, Vienna, are also used by permission.
Stefan George’s Journey through Snow, in The Works of Stefan George,
translated by Olga Marx and Ernst Morwitz, the University of North Caro-
lina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures, no. 78, copyright
© 1974 the University of North Carolina Press, is used by permission of the
publisher.
Translations for the epigraphs to the Introduction and Chapter 7 are used
by permission of Ian Bent and Lee Rothfarb, Columbia University Press—
publisher of Schoenberg’s The Musical Idea, copyright © 1995—and Walter
B. Bailey. The scriptural epigraph, taken from the New King James Version®,
copyright © 1982 Thomas Nelson, is also used by permission.
Portions of Chapters 1–2 first appeared in Theoria 20 (2013): 39–120, pub-
lished by UNT Press, and Journal of Schenkerian Studies 6 (2012): 1–32,
published jointly by UNT Press and the Center for Schenkerian Studies.
Portions of Chapter 3 first appeared in Theory and Practice 37–38 (2013):
1–62, and are used here by permission of the Music Theory Society of New
York State.
I acknowledge with gratitude the diligent work of codeMantra project
manager Rebecca Dunn and freelance indexer Paula Durbin-Westby. The
index was graciously funded by subventions from the University of Iowa
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Society for Music Theory.
Abbreviations

CP Schenker, Heinrich. Kontrapunkt. Vol. 2 of Neue musikalische

Theorien und Phantasien, 2 bks. 1910 and 1922. Reprint,
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1991. Translated by John Rothgeb
and Jürgen Thym as Counterpoint, vol. 2 of New Musical
Theories and Fantasies, ed. John Rothgeb, 2 bks. New York:
Schirmer Books, 1987.
FC Schenker, Heinrich. Der freie Satz. Vol. 3 of Neue musikalische
Theorien und Phantasien. 1st ed. Vienna: Universal Edition,
1935. 2nd ed. Edited by Oswald Jonas. Vienna: Universal
Edition, 1956. Translated by Ernst Oster as Free Composition.
Vol. 3 of New Musical Theories and Fantasies. New York:
Longman, 1979. German page number references are to the
second edition.
FM Schoenberg, Arnold. Fundamentals of Musical Composition.
Edited by Gerald Strang with Leonard Stein. London: Faber
and Faber, 1967.
HL Schenker, Heinrich. Harmonielehre. Vol. 1 of Neue
musikalische Theorien und Phantasien. 1906. Reprint, Vienna:
Universal Edition, 1978. Translated by Elisabeth Mann
Borgese as Harmony. Edited by Oswald Jonas. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1954.
HL Schoenberg, Arnold. Harmonielehre. 1st ed. Leipzig: Universal
Edition, 1911. 3rd ed. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1922.
Translated by Roy E. Carter as Theory of Harmony. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978. German page number
references are to the first edition except where indicated.
HS Federhofer, Helmut. Heinrich Schenker: Nach Tagebüchern
und Briefen in der Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection,
University of California, Riverside. Hildesheim: Georg
Olms, 1985.
MI Schoenberg, Arnold. The Musical Idea and the Logic,
Technique, and Art of Its Presentation. Edited and translated
by Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995.
xviii Abbreviations
MW Schenker, Heinrich. Das Meisterwerk in der Musik: Ein
Jahrbuch 1–3 (1925–1930). Translated by Ian Bent, Alfred
Clayton, William Drabkin, Richard Kramer, Derrick Puffett,
John Rothgeb, and Hedi Siegel as The Masterwork in Music:
A Yearbook. 3 vols. Edited by William Drabkin. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994–1997.
OC The Oster Collection: Papers of Heinrich Schenker. New
York: Music Division, The New York Public Library, Astor,
Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Reprint, New York: The New
York Public Library, 1990. Citations in the form file/item.
OJ The Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection. University of
California, Riverside, Special Collections & University
Archives. Citations in the form box/folder, page number.
SC Arnold Schönberg Center. Vienna. www.schoenberg.at.
SD Schenker Documents Online. www.schenkerdocumentsonline.
org.
SF Schoenberg, Arnold. Structural Functions of Harmony. Edited
by Leonard Stein. Revised ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969.
SI Schoenberg, Arnold. Stil und Gedanke: Aufsätze zur Musik.
Edited by Ivan Vojtěch. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer,
1976. Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg.
Translations by Leo Black. Edited by Leonard Stein. Rev. ed.
Reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, [2010].
TW Schenker, Heinrich. Der Tonwille: Flugblätter/
Vierteljahreszeitschrift zum Zeugnis unwandelbarer Gesetze
der Tonkunst einer neuen Jugend 1–10 (1921–1924). Reprint,
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1990. Translated by Ian Bent,
William Drabkin, Joseph Dubiel, Timothy Jackson, Joseph
Lubben, William Renwick, and Robert Snarrenberg as Der
Tonwille: Pamphlets/Quarterly Publication in Witness of the
Immutable Laws of Music, Offered to a New Generation of
Youth. 2 vols. Edited by William Drabkin. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004–2005.
Style

I omit citations, editorial additions, and obvious typos in quoted text. I omit
capitalizations of common nouns in quoted translations, but I capitalize all
untranslated German nouns. I omit cross-outs and the like in quoted text. I
render all pitch names with regular capital letters. Emphasis in quotations
is in the quoted text except where indicated. Two citations separated by a
slash—e.g., HL, 1/1—refer to the original and the published translation for
the purpose of comparison. A single citation of a translated work refers to
the published translation. I omit dynamics, tempo, phrasing, and the like in
many of the musical examples to avoid clutter.
I signify distinct motives and Gestalten with separate letters, and I signify
distinct “motive-forms” and Gestalten-forms “produced through variation”
by adding primes or manipulating the letters. I do not use separate symbols
for “variants” that “have little or no influence on the continuation” (FM,
8 and 9). I heuristically supplement Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s theories
with William E. Caplin’s (1998) theory of formal functions, Hepokoski and
Darcy’s (2006) theory of sonata form, and Janet Schmalfeldt’s (2011) theory
of formal reinterpretation. I use a mix of Schenkerian and Schoenbergian
Roman numerals, supplemented by chord symbols and by “Q” for fourth
chords (quartal chords), fifth chords (quintal chords), and Viennese tri-
chords (which are frequently voiced as altered fourth chords).
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction

Art and theory are in essence a single, inseparable concept.

—Heinrich Schenker (1916)

Fundamentally the human mind is capable of only a single manner of

thinking.
—Arnold Schoenberg (1936)

This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musi-
cal thought of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) and Arnold Schoenberg
(1874–1951), two of the most influential and intriguing musicians of the
twentieth century. The first premise is that there is such a thing as their
musical thought evident in their scores and writings, involving both their
“thinking in tones and rhythms” (Schoenberg) and their thinking about
“strange mysteries… behind tones” (Schenker).1 This premise is fully in
keeping with their own attitudes that “art and theory are in essence a single,
inseparable concept” and that “the human mind is capable of only a single
manner of thinking.”2 The notion of musical thought is an old one, so this
premise may seem undistinguished, but in fact it has been explored only to
a limited extent. While Schenkerian theory (in the Anglo-American world)
and Schoenberg’s music have become canonical, Schenker’s music and—to
a lesser degree—Schoenberg’s theories have been neglected.3 This is not to
say that Schenker and Schoenberg are both equally accomplished in both
domains. Nor is it to say that their theories merely explain their compo-
sitions or that their compositions merely apply their theories. Theory and
composition with Schenker and Schoenberg stand in a relation of mutual
mediation, where their music relies on their theory (and subsequent anal-
ysis) for decipherment, while their theory—especially with Schoenberg—
relies on their music for embodiment and transformation of its concepts.4
­(Naturally, their music embodies other concepts as well.) The same rela-
tion of mutual mediation applies to theory and performance or listening—­
especially with Schenker—but I will consider only the theoretical end of this
exchange.
2 Introduction
The second premise of the book is that their musical lives—for ­Schoenberg,
primarily in composition, and for Schenker, primarily in performance and
listening—­are inseparable from their spiritual lives. This premise is in keeping
with Schenker’s belief that “music mirrors the human soul” and S ­ choenberg’s
belief that music actually gives humanity “an immortal soul” to begin with.5
Here again, music scholars have minimally explored this notion, inasmuch
as they have too often historicized, politicized, or ignored spiritual matters.
Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in much the same musical-­
spiritual place. During the nineteenth century, ethnic Jews flocking to
­Vienna are attracted to studying music as “the most effective and rapid
means to establish themselves in the metropolis,” and ironically “Viennese
Jews [become] the quintessential bearers, defenders, and ultimately inven-
tors of a self-conscious Viennese late-nineteenth-century musical tradi-
tion” (Botstein 2004, 50 and 57). The Viennese ethnic Jews Schenker and
­Schoenberg continue this practice: They share a set of beliefs in art as a
moral, spiritual practice; in music as an autonomous art; and in the masters
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially Johannes Brahms, as
models for their own time, and accordingly they side with the critical mod-
ernists influenced by Karl Kraus in opposing “the corruption of musical
culture in their own time.”6 They also start out with substantially similar
artistic sensibilities, which I show to be embodied in their early music.
But musically Schenker and Schoenberg split. These two Viennese Jewish
critical modernist musicians clash bitterly over Viennese Jewish aesthetic
modernist music, with Schenker rejecting it (especially Schoenberg’s music)
as the destruction of tradition and Schoenberg upholding it (especially his
own music) as a renewal of tradition, and they lock horns over a number of
theoretical issues, such as what counts as a chord.
While musically Schenker and Schoenberg split, spiritually they grow
closer. For example, while it is common knowledge that in the early 1920s
Schoenberg embraces an individualistic form of Judaism, as I will show,
there is a parallel, simultaneous change with Schenker, who represents him-
self as more consistent in his Judaism than he actually is. Both of them iden-
tify with the prophet Moses, but Schoenberg does so in proclaiming the law
of the emancipation of the dissonance, while Schenker does so in proclaim-
ing the diametrically opposed law of the Ursatz (the originary statement).
So it is that Schenker, while writing his crowning work, Free Composition,
which explains the activity of the Ursatz, records in his diary on January 6,
1932, that his wife Jeanette “heads the index: With God!” From that point
on, the phrase becomes an urgent refrain: It reportedly appears again in the
manuscript in his wife’s hand and in his own script on the last page (which
is later pasted into his diary), it heads his final diary, and it opens his final
diary entry.7 And on May 31, 1922, while working out his new twelve-tone
compositional method, which is to be underwritten by the emancipation of
the dissonance, Schoenberg similarly dedicates a sketchbook: “With God.”8
These are also the last words of the libretto for his twelve-tone masterwork,
Moses und Aron (Schoenberg 1957, [305]).
 Introduction 3
The reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work has sidestepped this
paradox of commonality and conflict. Instead, it has chosen to amplify and
universalize their conflict. A few writers have explained their conflict pri-
marily in terms of opposing theoretical paradigms (Borio 2001, 274; Pieslak
2006; Peles 2010, 167). But starting with Carl Dahlhaus, many writers have
interpreted Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict in terms of “a gulf which
could hardly be imagined deeper” between their conceptions of musical co-
herence as tonal and motivic, respectively, attributable to their “­ directing
their attention to different stages of musical history.”9 In this way, the re-
ception has informed the notion of a “rupture” in music history at the be-
ginning of the twentieth century consisting in a “collapse” of the shared
language of tonality, and this notion has conversely shaped the reception.10
This notion of a collapse of tonality has been shown to have serious
problems: the obvious continuance of tonal music post-1908; the ideolog-
ical nature of the concept of tonality, which has served both modernist
and reactionary agendas; the conflicted nature of tonality as both histor-
ical and psychological; and a greater degree of continuity between tonal
and so-called “post-tonal” music than has previously been recognized.11
­Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict cannot be attributed to their atten-
tion to different historical periods if the periods in question do not exist.
This is not to say that a dissolution of tonality plays no role in Schenker’s
and Schoenberg’s musical thought; certainly it does, as I will explain. But
that is just the thing: It is an element of their thought, not a historical reality
that conditions their work.
Nevertheless, the prevailing musicological narrative has been that
­S chenker theorizes tonal music, while Schoenberg composes “post-tonal”
music. In the United States and the United Kingdom, this narrative has
shaped the development of music theory as an academic discipline, which
at first consists of Schenker and sets (for “post-tonal” music). Although
the discipline of music theory has outgrown this original binary division,
the reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work continues to hew to
this narrative through its neglect Schenker’s music and Schoenberg’s
theories and through the non-intersection of Schenker specialists and
Schoenberg specialists.12
In repudiation of this falsely dichotomous reception, I argue that
­Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict is a reflection of contradictions within
their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a particular conception of
the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual eye of the genius. The
tensions inherent in this largely psychological and material notion of the
tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius shape both their mu-
sical divergence on the logical (technical) level of theory and composition
and their spiritual convergence, including their invention of the Ursatz and
twelve-tone composition and their simultaneous return to Judaism.13 These
findings shed new light on the musical and philosophical worlds of Schenker
and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and spiritual questions with
which they grapple.
4 Introduction
Method
As the motto quoted above already illustrates, there are several difficulties
with understanding Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s thinking about music:
While Schenker’s writings are generally more cogent than Schoenberg’s, in
both cases their writings are often aphoristic or fragmentary, contradictory,
figurative, and alien in the ways they combine “music theory” with history,
sociology, philosophy, and poetry. Who or what is or is to be “with God”?
What does God have to do with music?
In the case of Schenker, scholars have tended to characterize certain as-
pects of his writings as extraneous to the canonical theoretical content. For
example, Nicholas Cook (2007, 307 and 67) distinguishes between “the spe-
cifically theoretical content of Schenkerian theory” and “Schenker’s claims
about the ultimate agency of music,” which “do not just defy common sense:
they are vague and contradictory, or perhaps we should see them as simply
rhetorical and figurative.” Robert P. Morgan similarly makes a distinction
between “Schenker’s ideological-aesthetic position and his theoretical for-
mulations,” his “specifically theoretical” formulations, again denying the-
oretical status to parts of his theoretical writings.14 But Schenker regards
such things as his “long forwards or aphorisms” as necessary “to prove
[himself] and [his] theory.”15
In the case of Schoenberg, scholars have interpreted his laconic and
charged writings with reference to various ideologies ascribed to his ca-
nonical music, such as Wagnerism or modernism.16 A particularly common
theme, again starting with Dahlhaus and persisting to this very day, is that
Schoenberg’s theories are disingenuous attempts as self-justification or at
least out of touch with his music. Dahlhaus writes that Schoenberg’s theo-
ries, with their “irritat[ing]” mixing of genres, “are characterized by a help-
lessness which prevents us from taking them at their word as being motives
for compositional decisions.”17 Michael Cherlin characterizes Schoenberg’s
theories as behind the times of “the music itself”:

In many ways Schoenberg’s critical writings cling to a teleological

world-view. Yet, Schoenberg’s abandonment or repression of tonality
was concomitant with the development of a musical syntax that did not,
and could not, end in perfection. Despite Schoenberg’s formidable con-
tributions to theory and criticism, his intuitions and vision as a com-
poser outstripped his capacity as a theorist and critic.18

Cherlin makes Schoenberg out to be Schoenberger than most but not the
Schoenbergest. It is as Schoenberg reports,

Many people call me Schoenberger; I have obviously not done enough

to imprint my name on them. So then I have to defend myself: “Please,
don’t compare; the comparative is too little—I can make no increase; so
please, simply the positive: Schoenberg, I myself am the superlative.”19
 Introduction 5
And Julie Brown (2014, 6) says of Schoenberg’s concept of the musical
idea that “it was less a serious music-theoretical concept than a figure [of
speech]… through which he constructed and reconstructed his compo-
sitional project.” So in both cases, wherever Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s
theoretical writings are marked by the difficult aspects mentioned above,
writers have tended to dismiss them—as not theoretical, not serious, and
so forth.
Just as we need a method for analyzing Schoenberg’s difficult music, so
too we need a hermeneutic method for analyzing ambiguity, contradiction,
figurative language, and hybridity in Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s writ-
ings. This is not to defend Schenker and Schoenberg; this is just to say that
­criticism requires analysis. This point cannot be overstated. Inadequate anal-
ysis has resulted in misinterpretations on all levels of their musical thought,
from the technical to the metaphysical. I use an intertextual, deconstructive,
synoptic, metaphorical, integrative, dialogical, post-secular method to ana-
lyze Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s writings. I am embarrassed to bedeck my
work with all these badges and tarry from the work itself, but it is necessary
so as to prepare the reader to consider my iconoclastic interpretations.
The literary critical technique of intertextual reading is relevant for un-
derstanding ambiguity in Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s writings. An inter-
text is any text “the reader may legitimately connect with the one before
his eyes.” It is not simply the source of an idea; rather, an intertext is based
on varied repetition of “structural invariants.” “Intratextual anomalies—
obscure wordings, phrasings that the context alone will not suffice to ex-
plain”—can signal an absent intertext.20 Music theorists will recognize the
similarity of intertextual analysis to motivic, voice-leading, and twelve-tone
analysis. Just as motivic labels already embody interpretation of context, so
quotations of texts embody interpretation of intertextual contexts; in other
words, I do not spell out my reasoning for every quotation. I read Schenker’s
and Schoenberg’s writings on music across all periods and genres to find
their structural invariants. I look to Goethe’s and Schopenhauer’s writings
as intertexts. Above all, I use Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s writings as each
other’s intertexts. Schenker and Schoenberg must be read in tandem, be-
cause they read each other as they write, perhaps more than they admit,21
and they pursue different sides of their shared contradictions. Schenker and
Schoenberg are like repellent magnets, whose properties are only revealed
when they are brought into proximity.
Contradiction in Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s writings—when it is gen-
uine and not merely apparent—can be a fundamental feature, an indi-
cator of change, or simply a dead end. When it is a fundamental feature,
I ­deconstruct the text, explaining the contradiction as a substructural invar-
iant beneath the surface claims. When it is a dead end (or rather split end),
I trim it away through “abbreviation,” a basic principle of art for Schenker
and ­Schoenberg, and by extension of theory (Schenker, HL, 28; ­Schoenberg,
HL, 359). Schoenberg contrasts science with art in that “science must
6 Introduction
explore and examine all facts; art is only concerned with the presentation of
characteristic facts.”22 Like Charlotte M. Cross in her article “Three Levels
of ‘Idea’ in Schoenberg’s Thought and Writings” (1980) and her dissertation
“Schoenberg’s Weltanschauung and His Views of Music: 1874–1915” (1992),
I thereby aim for a synoptic view of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s thinking
about music that weaves together widely dispersed strands of text through
their invariants. Such a wide-angle view is not maximally fine-grained, but it
reveals a certain wholeness that would not be visible otherwise. As Schoen-
berg says, “We must be at some distance from an object if we are to see it as
a whole; up close we see just individual features, only distance reveals the
general ones,” including what connects artists whose “personalities differ
sharply from each other” (HL, 330 and 412).
A concern for structural and substructural invariants across texts tends
to find aphorisms and fragments at least as revealing as large-scale works.
This point also applies especially to my analysis and interpretation of
Schoenberg’s music, which are not only highly selective but almost inversely
proportional in scope to that of the works.
As for figurative language, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have hy-
pothesized that metaphor is a basic characteristic of thought, which means
that apparent ornaments can be structural, as Schoenberg would agree.23
Lakoff and Johnson claim that we conceptualize things in more abstract
cognitive domains through the projection of structure from more concrete
domains, forming conceptual metaphors. A central component of metaphor
theory is the notion of image schemas, which are basic patterns of objects
and forces that are said to be derived from our interactions with the world.
The physical relationships in image schemas are claimed to enable logical
reasoning in other domains. Three important image schemas are source-
path-goal, derived from our experience of moving through space; center-­
periphery, derived from being surrounded by other things; and part-whole,
derived from having a body with various members.
While recognizing that metaphor plays an important role in conceptual-
ization, Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (2008) have shown that mere
cross-domain mapping cannot account for the full complexity of metaphor,
nor can metaphor account for the full range of figurative language and
thought. Fauconnier and Turner (2002, 2010) posit a general cognitive op-
eration called integration or blending. Integration is the creation of mental
spaces, or models for thinking and acting, through the blending of elements
from two or more input spaces. The corresponding elements in the input
spaces are connected by a generic space, which contains what the input spaces
have in common. Generic spaces do not always need to be analyzed, because
they merely spell out what is implicit in the counterpart connections. The
generic space, the input spaces, and the resulting blended space form an inte-
gration network, or collection of interconnected mental spaces. According to
­Fauconnier and Turner, blended spaces can themselves become input spaces
for further blends, and they can become entrenched patterns of thought.
 Introduction 7
Several writers have applied blending theory to music analysis. In these
analyses, the music typically occupies a single mental space, which is blended
with the contents of some extramusical space to create musical meaning.24
I use blending theory not only in this way but mainly to analyze Schenker’s
and Schoenberg’s concepts. In doing so, I draw on certain established con-
ceptual metaphors and treat image schemas as a primary means of struc-
turing mental spaces. Apart from Fauconnier and Turner themselves, who
draw on image schemas to a certain extent, no other scholar to my knowl-
edge has combined metaphor theory and blending theory in this particular
way or applied blending theory to the history of theory.25
The findings of blending theory and metaphor theory imply that reason
and knowledge are not entirely objective; rather, the way we think is shaped
by our particular brains, bodies, and interactions with the world.26 What
this means for understanding Schenker and Schoenberg, or indeed any his-
torical theorist, is that nothing can be taken for granted, especially what
constitutes music theory in the first place. It is all a matter of what is blended.
Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s promiscuous mixing of genres, which has gar-
nered them censure, is in fact characteristic of the fin-de-siècle Viennese
liberal ethnic-Jewish community, which supports “the pursuit of a synthesis
of the humanities, natural sciences, art, and culture such as scarcely can be
imagined today, in which traditional and modern currents enriched each
other” (Springer 2006, 364). As Cross (1980, 24) points out, “upon closer
inspection, what might first be construed as philosophical tangents and re-
ligious overtones” in Schoenberg’s writings “prove essential to the issues at
hand,” and the same is true for Schenker. Accordingly, we need to read his-
torical theories, especially Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s, dialogically, listen-
ing carefully to all of a text’s metaphorical resonances and responding to the
questions that it raises through its foreignness (Christensen 1993; Tomlinson
1993, 1–43). As Schoenberg says, “the only correct attitude of a listener has
to be[:] to be ready to listen to that which the author has to tell you.”27 We
need to refrain from jumping to conclusions about what is relevant or irrel-
evant, just as we refrain from interrupting people.
The possibility of historical dialogue means that when we are faced in mu-
sic studies with ultimate questions such as the existence and nature of God,
humanity, and art—and in Schenker and Schoenberg studies, that means
all the time—we do not need to choose between historicizing them (parrot-
ing instead of conversing), politicizing them (dominating the conversation),
or ignoring them (cutting off the conversation). According to Lori Branch
(2015), “if we live up to the insights of the religious turn” in humanities
scholarship, especially the post-secular recognition that faith and knowl-
edge are inseparable because of the uncertainties of language, “then we can
engage ultimate questions not as buffered or distantiated selves but as per-
sons in relation to these questions and writers who ask them, past and pres-
ent.” We need not restrict ourselves only to what is provable. As Schoenberg
says, “as little as someone who sets up a theory should insist that his theory
8 Introduction
resolves all questions…, just so little should one maintain that such a the-
ory is wrong, since after all it is merely incomplete” (MI, 91). We need only
ensure that our claims are supported by our premises, method, and evidence.
A notable example of such patient, critical engagement with ultimate mat-
ters is found in the work of Daniel K. L. Chua. His virtuosic “Beethoven’s
Other Humanism” (2009), an article about Theodor W. Adorno and Ludwig
van Beethoven that is roughly speaking a combination of history of theory
with analysis and criticism, is the closest thing to a model for this book.
Like Chua’s examination of Adorno’s and Beethoven’s musical thought, my
examination of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s musical thought is neither a
regurgitation nor a diatribe; I simply analyze it and trace its consequences,
both good and ill.
Schenker heads Chapter 1 of Free Composition—somewhat surprisingly
in light of his dogmatism—with a quotation from Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe that affirms the role of irony in theory, while Schoenberg somewhat
similarly asserts in his Harmonielehre that “whenever I theorize, it is less
important whether these theories be right than whether they be useful as
comparisons to clarify the object and to give the study perspective” (FC, 3;
Schoenberg, HL, 19). Now if Schenker and Schoenberg retain a certain de-
gree of detachment in theorizing—in keeping with a certain skepticism to-
wards language, which I explain in Chapter 1—all the more must I qualify
my interpretations of their writings as lacking complete certainty, although
I approach language more in a spirit of cooperation than suspicion.
I analyze and interpret Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s music using a method
based on my interpretations of their writings, focusing on what Schoenberg
calls problems or unrest—new, unclear relations of tones. My analyses of
problems are compatible with those of Jack Boss in his recent Schoenberg’s
Twelve-Tone Music: Symmetry and the Musical Idea (2014), but my theoret-
ical understanding of problems is quite different, as I explain in Chapter 3.
­Although I make every effort to orient my analyses and interpretations objec-
tively toward “the plan upon which the work itself is oriented” (­ Schoenberg,
HL, 30), insofar as this plan interacts with their theories, I recognize the
highly individualized perspective that I bring to the music, particularly in
the intertextual connections that I make.28 In my defense, I affirm that

the possibility of finding truth at all subsists only as long as the free
interchange of various perspectives is given, regardless of whether this
variety is to be traced back to the different standpoint of the observer
or whether it rests on an error.
(Ratz 1973, 10)

Overview
To say that theory and composition with Schenker and Schoenberg are mu-
tually mediating is to say that their theories are most basically theories of
 Introduction 9
composition. In his Harmonielehre, Schenker, who identifies himself only
as “an artist,” writes, “In contrast to other books on music theory, con-
ceived, one might say, for their own sake and apart from art, the aim of this
book is to build a real and practicable bridge from composition to theory,”
meaning that he wants to initiate “a reform process” in theory and compo-
sition (Schenker, HL, v, xxv, and vii/xxvi). And in his own Harmonielehre,
Schoenberg writes, “Courses in harmony and counterpoint have forgotten
that they, together with the study of form, must be the study of composi-
tion.”29 He aims “to make things clear to himself,” not just to the pupil.30
To be sure, Schenker draws his examples exclusively from eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century music (at least, the examples he commends), but that is
just because he believes twentieth-century music sets a poor example (for
itself). And Schoenberg likewise focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-­
century materials, but that is just because he proceeds historically, and “we
do not yet stand far enough away from the events of our time to be able to
apprehend the laws behind them” (HL, 417).
Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s Harmonielehren represent the first install-
ments of comprehensive, theoretical-pedagogical studies of composition
in the tradition of Adolph Bernhard Marx’s four-volume Die Lehre von
der musikalischen Komposition, practisch theoretisch.31 Although we have
used Schenker’s theories for analysis, Schenker himself uses them to teach
composition, as well as piano performance conceived as re-­composition.32
Schenker’s project is encompassed by New Musical Theories and Fantasies,
of which Harmonielehre, completed in 1906, is the first volume; C­ ounterpoint,
written 1906–1922, is the second; and Free Composition, written 1922–1935
and initially conceived as part of Counterpoint; is the third.33 “The Decline
of the Art of Composition,” drafted in 1906 and focused on the damage
done by Richard Wagner, is also projected as part of New ­Musical Theories
and ­Fantasies, but “since Schenker’s case against Wagner rested principally
on the autonomy of music, rather than its subservience to a text or plot,
that argument would not have provided sufficient grounds for discrediting
the radically new music of Schoenberg and his school,” so he abandons it
(Drabkin 2005, 12–13). Although Free Composition is meant as the cap-
stone to New Musical Theories and Fantasies, the coherence of the volumes
is far from transparent. Schenker often cites the earlier volumes in Free
­Composition, but their content is overshadowed by the Urlinie (the origi-
nary line) and the bass arpeggiation, as if by a freeway overpass with its
concrete pylons, and the concluding section on form is generally regarded
as “hastily thrown together” (Smith 1996, 192). Schoenberg first articulates
his vision of a series of works forming an overarching theory of composition
in a letter to his publisher in 1911: The components are to be Harmonielehre,
a volume on counterpoint, a book on orchestration, a three-part study of
form, and a synoptic work.34 Most of Schoenberg’s theoretical writings
­after Harmonielehre, completed in 1911, are connected to this grand pro-
ject (Neff 1993–1994). Coherence, Counterpoint, Instrumentation, Instruction
10 Introduction
in Form, partially drafted in 1917, sketches the remaining components, with
coherence playing the unifying role. This sketch is then filled out somewhat
by The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation,
partially drafted 1934–1936 and corresponding to the earlier coherence sec-
tion; Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint, partially drafted 1942–1950;
Fundamentals of Musical Composition, drafted 1937–1948 and focused on
form; and numerous shorter writings. Structural Functions of Harmony,
written 1946–1948, revisits the matter of harmony, but it is often unclear
what comes from Schoenberg and what comes from his editor, Leonard
Stein (Neff 2011). Neither of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s theories, then, at-
tains complete expression—especially Schoenberg’s—and certain key com-
ponents must be recovered from fragmentary traces.
Part I reconstructs and deconstructs Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s theo-
ries of composition with respect to their shared conceptions of the tone and
the genius mentioned above—an effort that is especially significant given
the continued belief in genius to this day. This part is not intended as a
comprehensive survey of their theories. Chapter 1 analyzes Schenker’s and
Schoenberg’s understanding of the genius as the true artist who realizes
the tone and the ideas of freedom, God, and immortality for themselves
and others, a belief that draws on Goethe and Arthur Schopenhauer. Like
Goethe and Schopenhauer, Schenker and Schoenberg metaphorize the state
of pure, spiritual perception that is said to constitute the genius’s act of re-
alization as a self-seeing inner eye, and they disavow the actual blindness of
an eye that is turned entirely in on itself. The genius, who embodies this eye
by realizing a vision of the tone, is in truth blind and blinding, alienated and
alienating. I argue that these circumstances contribute to Schenker’s and
Schoenberg’s divergent musical and convergent spiritual developments.
Chapters 2 and 3 fill out Schenker’s and ­Schoenberg’s mature understand-
ings of the logical level of a piece of music with respect to their concepts
of interruption and problems, which both dramatize the realization of the
tone and use the same image schemas, but with differing emphases on the
organic significance of repetition versus variation. C ­ hapter 2 also begins
to show how Schenker’s re-compositions in performance and listening play
a role for him comparable to Schoenberg’s compositions in seeking God,
while Chapter 3 gives an overview of the analytical framework used in
Part II.
Part II analyzes key pieces of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s music that
develop the findings from Part I about their divergent musical and conver-
gent spiritual lives and the themes of the genius’s blindness and alienation.
This part is not meant to suggest that Schenker’s oeuvre is on a level with
Schoenberg’s, nor is it a comprehensive survey, but it does offer explanations
for why Schenker stops composing and why Schoenberg goes through the
three style periods described by Ethan Haimo (2006, 354–355). Chapter 4
shows that Schenker, like Schoenberg, emancipates dissonances and solves
problems in his music, and that Schenker’s rejection of suspended tonality
 Introduction 11
(the absence of tonality) and Schoenberg’s embrace of it are complementary
responses to this shared compositional experience. Chapter 5 draws a con-
nection between this phenomenon of suspended tonality and S ­ choenberg’s
alienation in his emulation of the genius, both of which start with “Ich darf
nicht dankend,” op. 14, no. 1, toward the end of his transformation period.
Chapter 6 shows how Schoenberg uniquely experiences the blindness of the
genius at the end of his New Music period in the Six Little Piano Pieces,
op. 19, which are linked intertextually with “Ich darf nicht dankend.”
­Chapter 7 illustrates how Schoenberg, shaken by this experience, tries to
turn art into prayer in his reconstruction period starting with op. 19, no. 6,
and how he continues to misread the genius’s blindness, supposing it to be
a kind of paradoxical precondition of vision. The chapter culminates in a
reconsideration of Schoenberg’s magnum opus, Moses und Aron. The con-
clusion, elaborating on an undercurrent of unease in Schoenberg’s music,
suggests that at the ends of their lives, Schenker and Schoenberg both start
to realize that God—if he exists—is not just an idea.

***

This book affords a fresh understanding of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s

musical thought and to that extent of twentieth-century musical thought,
in which it plays a major role. Although it is known that the conservative
Schenker is modernist and that the modernist Schoenberg is conservative,
writers have not recognized their commonality as the very source of their
conflict.35 While others have largely ignored Schenker’s music (while mak-
ing arguments about his musical thought) and have been unable to analyze
Schoenberg’s music in a unified way, I analyze Schenker’s and S ­ choenberg’s
music—both tonal and non-tonal, including twelve-tone music—all with the
same method. Some writers have acknowledged Schenker’s and ­Schoenberg’s
ideals of the tone and the genius, but no one has undertaken to discover:
what does it actually entail for them to earnestly pursue these ideals? What
are the conditions of success or failure, and what are the consequences? This
book offers possible answers to these questions.

Notes
1 Schoenberg, “Zu: Darstellung des Gedankens” (August 16, 1931), SC, T35.40, [1];
and FC, 9. More precisely, I should say “tones and rhythms of tones,” since “the
material of music is the tone.” Schoenberg, HL, 19. Schenker goes so far as to say
rhythm is from tones. FC, 32.
2 Schenker, diary entry, December 29, 1916, trans. Ian Bent and Lee Rothfarb,
Schenker Documents Online (old site), www.columbia.edu/~maurice/schenker/
archives.html; and MI, 117. See also TW, 2:32; and MW, 3:8.
3 On the marginalization of Schoenberg as a theorist, see Dunsby (1997).
4 Theodor W. Adorno has a similar view of music and philosophy. See Goehr
(2006, 43 and 49).
12 Introduction
5 FC, 19/xxiii; and Schoenberg, “Gustav Mahler: In memoriam” (1912), in SI, 448.
6 Botstein (1997, 19). On critical modernism, see Janik (2001, 40).
7 Schenker, diary entries, January 6, 1932, OJ, 4/5, 3695; February 19, 1932, OJ, 4/5,
3707; September 6, 1932, OJ, 4/5, 3770; 1934–1935, OJ, 4/5, 3950; and ­January 4,
1935, OJ, 4/8, after 3970.
8 Schoenberg, “IV. Kleinen Skizzenbuch,” SC, MS74, Sk810, 1.
9 Dahlhaus (1973–1974, 214–215). For similar views, see Dunsby (1977, 31), W ­ ason
(1985, 142), Moreno (2001, 91), Wright (2005, 51–57), and Arnold Whittall, in-
troduction to Chapter 2, in Bent, Bretherton, and Drabkin (2014, 31). Hellmut
Federhofer (1994) can be grouped with these authors, but with the difference
that he sees Schoenberg as a would-be visionary whose self-serving theories pale
in comparison to Schenker’s.
10 Morgan (1991, 8 and 6). With its ironic coupling of composers’ “free[dom] to
­follow their imaginations at will” with “isolation . . . from the larger social fab-
ric” (ibid., 488 and 489), the notion of a collapse of tonality has resonated with
Carl Schorske’s (1980) influential thesis that Viennese modernism represents
an aestheticist retreat from the political sphere. However, Steven Beller (2001,
18–20) and Allan Janik (2001, 45) have revised Schorske’s thesis by proposing
that Viennese modernism is by turns aestheticist and critical, and that it is over-
whelmingly a response by ethnic Jews to the failure of Jewish liberalism.
11 See especially Wörner, Schneider, and Rupprecht (2012).
12 Several writers have attempted to combine different elements of Schoenberg’s
theories with Schenker’s—see for example Epstein (1979), Schmalfeldt (1991),
Moreno (2001), and Boss (1999)—but only with respect to tonal music. Others
have explored their common adaptation of the thought of Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe and Arthur Schopenhauer. See especially Neff (2006) and Eybl (2006).
13 My point is not just, as Nicholas Cook (2007, 171) puts it with regard to Schenker
and Schoenberg, that “to be diametrically opposed you must be working within
a common framework.” My point is that the framework itself is conflicted.
14 Morgan (2014, xix and xvi). See also Blasius (1996, 100) and Snarrenberg (1997, 133).
15 Schenker, diary entry, December 20, 1931, OJ, 4/5, 3689.
16 On the reception of Schoenberg in terms of various ideologies, see Tonietti
(2003, 237).
17 Dahlhaus (1987, 82 and 88). See also Haimo (1997, 73) and Böggemann (2012, 110).
18 Cherlin (2007, 19 and 8). In one respect, I agree that Schoenberg’s intuitions as
a composer outstripped his capacity as a theorist, but I come to this conclusion
only by insights obtained through his theories.
19 Schoenberg, “Aphorismen und Sprüche” (1916–1936 and 1949), SC, T50.08, 11.
20 Riffaterre (1980, 626 and 627). Jennifer Shaw (2002, 36–38) likewise draws on
Riffaterre in a study of Schoenberg.
21 Cook (2007, 170) makes a similar point. Schenker calls his Harmonielehre “a
prerequisite for Schoenberg’s.” Schenker, letter to Emil Hertzka, July 9, 1923,
in Bent, Bretherton, and Drabkin (2014, 117). See also Schenker, diary entry,
April 22, 1915, OJ, 1/18, 916. Schoenberg professes, “I have not read his book;
I have merely browsed in it.” Schoenberg, HL, 318. Schoenberg makes a careful
study of Schenker’s writings in 1922–1923. Dunsby (1977, 27). In the margins
in his copy of Schenker’s Beethovens IX. Symphonie (1912), Schoenberg accuses
Schenker of stealing the phrase “neither read nor hear” from his Harmonielehre
(1911): “He knows my book! That is stolen!!” SC, S6, 240. Schoenberg is referring
to the following statement about Johann Sebastian Bach’s use of chords foreign
to the harmonic system: “The rascal hid them in motets, which are written in the
old clefs where a theorist cannot easily read them, and as passing tones where an
aesthetician cannot easily hear them.” HL, 324.
 Introduction 13
22 Schoenberg, “Brahms the Progressive” (1947), in SI, 399. See also Schoenberg,
“Zu: ,Darstellung des Gedankens‘” (1923), SC, T01.15; Schoenberg, “‘Schoen-
berg’s Tone-Rows’” (1936), in SI, 214; and MI, 93 and 115.
23 See especially Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Johnson (1987), and Schoenberg,
HL, 303.
24 The first such analysis is Zbikowski (1999).
25 A few writers have applied metaphor theory to the interpretation of Schenker
and Schoenberg. See especially Saslaw (1997–1998), Zbikowski (2002, 126–130
and 317–318), and Watkins (2011, 163–244).
26 Lakoff and Johnson (1999) make a similar argument, but with reference to the
body in general, not particular bodies.
27 Schoenberg, “What Have People to Expect from Music” (1935), SC, T18.07, 4.
28 Some readers may wonder at the absence of pitch-class set analysis in the book.
Like Haimo (2006, 296–297), I find it to be of limited value in analyzing motives,
for set class is only one out of many possible motivic features, and it is generally
reducible to intervallic features.
29 Schoenberg, HL, 13. Volker Kalisch (1996, 122–124) observes that Schenker and
Schoenberg, together with Hugo Riemann, are among the last advocates of a
compositional mission for music theory.
30 Schoenberg, HL, 417. On the tension between theoretical and pedagogical aims
in Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre, see Hinton (2012, 118–119). Schoenberg’s the-
ory becomes more self-pedagogical and genuinely theoretical as he establishes
his method of composing with twelve tones related only to one another. At this
point, Schoenberg, like Schenker, embraces the term “theory” (Theorie) as op-
posed to just “study” (Lehre). Charlotte M. Cross, commentary in Schoenberg
(2007, 167).
31 Although Schenker and Schoenberg have the same goal of studying composition,
they have different approaches. In a word, Schenker observes, while Schoenberg
experiments. They also have different conceptions of counterpoint, as I explain
on p. 92n9.
32 Jackson (2001, 2). Schenker says unambiguously that his theory “is concerned
on the creative side with artistic invention in accordance with nature, and on
the recreative or listening side with empathetic artistic response,” i.e., “composi-
tional phenomena,” not analysis. MW, 3:8.
33 Schenker refers to work on Counterpoint in his diary in August 1906. Ian Bent,
“Kontrapunkt,” SD. He refers to work on Free Composition in a letter to
Moriz ­Violin, December 21, 1922, transcr. and trans. William Drabkin, SD.
34 Schoenberg, letter to Emil Hertzka, July 23, 1911, SC. See also Schoenberg,
“The Musical Idea; Its Presentation and Elaboration” (n.d.), in Schoenberg
(2007, 187). On Schoenberg’s theory of composition, see Carpenter (1998).
­A lthough Schoenberg’s project crystalizes in 1911, Cross (1994) has found that
­S choenberg already sketches ideas for a theory of composition at the turn of
the century.
35 On Schenker’s modernism, see Cook (2007, 89–139) and Watkins (2011, 163–191).

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———. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western
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———. 2014. Becoming Heinrich Schenker: Music Theory and Ideology. Cambridge:
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———. 2006. “Schenker, Schoenberg, and Goethe: Visions of the Organic Art-
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Part I

Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s

thinking about music
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1 The eye of the genius

To the genius it is given to see.

—Heinrich Schenker (1926)

A higher way of viewing things… represents the most precious origin of the
genius’s accomplishment.
—Arnold Schoenberg (1930)

Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s theories of composition address three levels:

(1) the “purely material” tone, which becomes “logical” tone-art (music), (2)
the “psychological,” and (3) the “metaphysical.”1 Schoenberg relates these
levels as follows:

The material of music is the tone; what it effects first, the ear. The sen-
sory perception releases associations and connects tone, ear, and the
world of feeling. On the cooperation of these three factors depends
everything in music that is felt to be art.2

And these levels are united ideally by the genius.

In the third and final volume of The Masterwork in Music, Schenker
makes a statement about the genius that remains astonishing, not so much
on account of its fanaticism, for which he is notorious, but on account of its
fantastical imagery and ideas:

The genius gathers the gazes of men unto himself; woven out of these
gazes directed upward to the genius there arises, as it were, a mysteri-
ous cone of light, the most inspiring symbol of a great community of
mankind. Without such a cone of light, the mass of mankind remains in
a plane that extends in all directions hopelessly, desolately, to infinity.3

Schenker likely knows that people do not actually gaze up at any genius, yet
he treats this image as the literal basis of the “as it were” figure of a cone of
light. Furthermore, he also treats that image as a symbol for a community,
22 Thinking about music
which means that the gazes must somehow literally be the community. What
is so arresting about this statement, then, is that, as in a musical work as
read by Schenker, there is nothing but figures and figures of figures.4 What
could they all mean then?
Schoenberg makes an equally astonishing statement in his eulogy to
Gustav Mahler:

We are still to remain in a darkness which will be illuminated only fit-

fully by the light of the genius. We are to continue to battle and struggle,
to yearn and desire. And it is to be denied to us to see this light as long
as it remains with us. We are to remain blind until we have acquired
eyes. Eyes that see the future. Eyes that penetrate more than the sensual,
which is only a likeness; that penetrate the supersensual. Our soul shall
be the eye. We have a duty: to win for ourselves an immortal soul. It is
promised to us. We already possess it in the future; we must bring it
about that this future becomes our present. That we live in this future
alone, and not in a present which is only a likeness, and which, as every
likeness, is inadequate.
And this is the essence of the genius—that he is the future. This is why
the genius is nothing to the present. Because present and genius have
nothing to do with one another. The genius is our future. So shall we
too be one day, when we have fought our way through. The genius lights
the way, and we strive to follow. Where he is, the light is already bright;
but we cannot endure this brightness. We are blinded, and see only a
reality which is as yet no reality, which is only the present. But a higher
reality is lasting, and the present passes away. The future is eternal, and
therefore the higher reality, the reality of our immortal soul, exists only
in the future.
The genius lights the way, and we strive to follow. Do we really strive
enough? Are we not bound too much to the present?
We shall follow, for we must. Whether we want to or not. He draws
us upward.
We must follow.5

Here, too, Schoenberg likely recognizes that people are not actually fitfully
illuminated by any genius. Yet Schoenberg seems to take this image of see-
ing light as the literal basis for the figure of having eyes. Furthermore, he
takes that image as a symbol for having a soul and living in the future. Or is
it the other way around? As in a musical work by Schoenberg, every figure
here refers to every other figure, and “there is no absolute down, no right or
left, forward or backward.”6 What do they all mean?
Who is the genius?
This question is particularly pressing given that belief in genius has by
no means gone away. As Darrin M. McMahon (2013, loc. 318 of 8330) puts
it, despite our witnessing the dark side of the genius in totalitarian states
 The eye of the genius 23
such as Nazi Germany and North Korea, and despite our recognition of the
social nature of creativity, “genius is seemingly everywhere today, hailed
in our newspapers and glossy magazines, extolled in our television profiles
and Internet chatter,” only now genius is more of an aspiration of the many
than a province of the few. McMahon (2013, 242) himself treats genius as
if it were in part an empirical phenomenon like autism rather than purely
a theoretical and social construct, and he affirms, quoting Ralph Waldo
Emerson, that “‘we feed on genius,’… we need it as sustenance to survive.”
He could just as well have quoted Schenker: “Among men, the true genius
is… an elemental drive, so to speak: the hunger, thirst, and love of mankind
as a whole.”7
McMahon (2013, loc. 158 of 8330) argues that an important reason for the
persistence of belief in genius is “the stubborn desire for transcendence,”
but the way that he formulates this insight clouds the issue. He correctly
observes that the modern genius was born in the space opened up by what
appeared to many as the absence of God. But while we have millennias’
worth of writings that attempt to analyze the concept of God, “we really
know very little about what genius is” as a theoretical construct (Wellbery
1996, 121). The term “is often a kind of aporia. It refers to the ‘what’ which
escapes the categories of comprehension and speech” (Bone 1989, 113). The
same is true of the term “transcendence.” And this slipperiness is precisely
why the concepts of genius and transcendence are relatively immune to the
demythologization that afflicts the concept of God, for which they often
substitute.
In the case of Schenker and Schoenberg, the slipperiness of the term “ge-
nius” can be seen in its irreducible figurativeness. Understanding their con-
ception of the genius, then—and perhaps something of present-day belief
in genius, too—means not so much relating it to a supposed empirical phe-
nomenon as attending to the term’s “functional placement within a discur-
sive constellation” (Wellbery 1996, 122), similarly to how we understand a
motive in a piece of music.
This discursive constellation is not limited to the writings of Schenker
and Schoenberg themselves. Schoenberg’s comment in his eulogy to Mahler
that the genius draws us upward alludes to the conclusion of Goethe’s Faust,
which Mahler sets in his Eighth Symphony, and which ends with the excla-
mation, “The eternal feminine / Draws us upward.”8 Schoenberg’s substi-
tution is entirely in the spirit of Goethe, for no one does more to exalt the
genius in German thought than Goethe (Schmidt 1985, 1:193–336). Goethe
serves as a mentor for Schopenhauer, who has a “special importance for
young intellectuals at the turn of the century” in Austria.9 In Goethe and
Schopenhauer, as in Schenker and Schoenberg, we find an association be-
tween the genius and vision. For example, Goethe says that upon reading
the work of the genius Shakespeare, he “stood like a blind person given
vision in an instant by a miraculous hand,” and that “few eyes reach up so
far, and it is thus little to be hoped that one could outsee him or indeed rise
24 Thinking about music
above him,” and Schopenhauer says that “genius is the ability… to remain
pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world.”10 I am interested in tracing
the concept of the genius and the figure of vision as they pass from Goethe
through Schopenhauer to Schenker and Schoenberg. As I have mentioned,
some work has been done on Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s adaptation of
Goethe’s and Schopenhauer’s thought; however, these studies say virtually
nothing about Goethe’s conception of the genius.
Except for Cross (1980), who analyzes the concept itself, writers have
tended to address Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conception of the genius
only as an element of various philosophical, narrative, ideological, aes-
thetic, and cultural contexts for their theories.11 That we still have a ways
to go is confirmed by the common translation of “das Genie” in Schenker’s
and Schoenberg’s writings as “genius,” which overlooks that they are refer-
ring, almost without exception, to a person: the genius.
Aided by my study of Schenker’s journals and unpublished writings and
Schoenberg’s notebooks, I explain how their theories of composition de-
pend on a conception of the genius as the true artist who realizes the idea
of the tone in a piece of music in real time, attains self-realization, and
points the way to the realization of mankind.12 This belief draws on those
of Goethe and Schopenhauer and is founded on a myth of subject and ob-
ject united in a metaphorical self-seeing inner eye, but with Schenker and
Schoenberg, the emptiness of this myth begins to show itself, and the ge-
nius’s vision and communion implicitly revert to blindness and alienation.13
These circumstances impact their divergent musical development and their
convergent spiritual development. I begin with an analysis of Goethe’s and
Schopenhauer’s conceptions of the genius and then go on to explain Schen-
ker’s and Schoenberg’s understanding of the genius’s realization of the idea,
his self-realization, and his prospective and elusive realization of mankind.

Goethe and Schopenhauer on the genius

The figure of the genius explodes into prominence in the German-speaking
world during the literary period known as the Geniezeit (the Genius Period,
ca. 1760–1775)—first because the genius poet serves as the prototype of the
self-made individual for the emerging bourgeois, and second because the
Enlightenment, which strips religious and artistic tradition of its authority,
conversely leads to the exaltation of the genius as another Creator and a
source of beauty (Schmidt 1985, 1:1–10 and 224). As McMahon (2013, 74)
puts it, “Geniuses offered assurance… that a privileged few could see where
the many were blind.”
But the genius himself, as formulated by Goethe, turns out to be blind.
Schopenhauer reformulates Goethe’s conception of the genius in light of
a dissipation of other sources of value, and we will find that Schenker and
Schoenberg reformulate both in light of a dissipation of the subject.
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whenever we stopped Mansing pathetically conversed with the dog, who
seemed almost to understand all the coolie was telling him.

A Tibetan Camp of Black Tents

It was rather a puzzle to me why this dog followed us so long, for we had so little
food that we could but seldom spare him any. He slept near us at night with his
head on the lap of one of us, and during the march he showed quite sporting
instincts by chasing antelopes and kiang (wild horse) when we encountered
herds of hundreds of them. Curiously enough, when we entered a Tibetan
encampment he always avoided being seen in our company. It seemed almost
as if he realised that we were not welcome guests in the country, and feared the
consequences. Possibly [139]he only temporarily left us to see what he could pick
up in the way of food, but whenever we came across him in the encampment, he
never would show signs of recognition, much less of affection, as was the case
when he would rejoin us some miles beyond on the march, when he made
ample efforts to reingratiate himself. He seemed almost to want to express:
“Sorry I had to cut you in the encampment, but I really had to!”
At last the day came when we were captured, and underwent several kinds of
tortures, as I have already described in In the Forbidden Land. The dog had
vanished, and, to tell the truth, we did not give him much of a thought, as we
were somewhat concerned about ourselves.

One day, when Mansing and I were stretched, or rather suspended, on a

primitive kind of rack, and we were for some time left to ourselves—the soldiers
and Lamas having retired some distance off into the huge tent of the Pombo, a
high official—the dog sadly walked towards us, sniffing us, and rubbing himself
against Mansing and me. He was particularly affectionate to Mansing, whose
face he licked several times; then with a pathetic movement of his head as if to
express his sorrow, he gave us a parting sad look, turned his back, [140]and
walked slowly and sorrowfully away. That was his last mark of friendship and the
last we saw of him.

Tibetan encampments have no great interest except for the peculiar shape of
the black tents—a pattern of shelter most suitable for the climate of their country.
The two sides of the tent are separate, and when the tent is put up it leaves an
aperture all along its highest ridge. This is for various reasons. First, because
the Tibetans light fires inside their tents, and an opening is necessary to let the
smoke out; also as a means of ventilation, the cold air not penetrating so quickly
as when it comes in at the sides, owing to the warmed atmosphere inside. The
black tents are woven of a coarse and waterproof fabric of yak hair. Through the
slit at the top generally protrude the props of the matchlocks bundled against
one of the tent poles.

Every man in Tibet owns one of these weapons, and is considered a soldier in
time of war.
 Interior of a Tibetan Tent, showing Churn for mixing Tea with Butter

The inside of a large Tibetan tent is quaint enough when you have reached it by
skipping over masses of dirt and refuse which surround its outside. Only, when
you peep in, the odour is rather strong of the people, old and young, all since
[141]birth innocent of washing, and the smell of badly-prepared skins, and stores
of chura (cheese). Nor must I forget to mention the wall of yak-dung erected
right round the tent inside to serve the double purpose of protection against the
wind where the tent meets the ground, and of fuel, being gradually demolished
to feed the double mud-stove erected in the centre of the tent. Mud alone is also
occasionally used for the inside wall.

As you know, dung is practically the only fuel obtainable in the highest parts of
Tibet, although occasionally a few low shrubs are to be found. The fuel is
constantly collected and conveyed from one camp to the next, when changing in
order to find more suitable grazing for the sheep and yaks.

The centre mud-stove is built according to the most practical notions to make it
draw properly, and upon it can nearly always be seen one or two large raksangs,
brass vessels in which brick-tea is being stewed and stirred with a long brass
spoon. But the operation of tea-making is rather complicated in Tibet. After the
leaves have been stewed long enough the liquid is poured into a dongbo, or
cylindrical wooden churn, in which have been deposited several balls of butter
with copious [142]sprinkling of salt. A piston which passes through the movable
lid is then vigorously set in action, and when well stirred and steaming the
mixture is served all round and avidly drunk in wooden bowls, one of which
every one carries about the person. Tsamba, a kind of oatmeal, is frequently
mixed with the tea in the bowls, where it is made into a paste with the fingers.
 A Little Boy learning to Pray

No matter how much non-Tibetan folks may find merriment in the idea of tea
being brewed with butter and salt, there is no doubt that for a climate like Tibet it
is “the drink” par excellence. It warms, nourishes, and is easily digested. I very
often indulged in the luxury myself, when I could obtain butter, only, my digestion
working rather rapidly owing to the amount of roughing we daily endured, I left
out the salt so that I should not digest the mixture too quickly.

The richer owners of tents generally have a sort of folding shrine, with one or
more images of Buddha, which occupies the place of honour in the tent.
Numerous brass bowls and ornaments are displayed in front of these images
and also offerings of tsamba and butter. Wicks, burning in butter, are
occasionally lighted around and upon the shrine. Decrepit old women seem to
[143]spend most of their time revolving their prayer-wheels and muttering prayers
in front of these altars, and when occasion arises thus teaching little children to
do the same. The younger folk, too, are very religious, but not to the fanatical
extent of the older ones.

It is quite amusing to see little mites—children are always quaint in every country
—try to master the art of revolving the prayer-wheel. It must be revolved from left
to right, to pray in the proper fashion,—not that if you revolved it the other way
you would necessarily be swearing, only, according to the laws of Tibetan
Buddhism, prayers spun in the wrong direction would have no effect and bring
no benefit. In a similar way circumambulations, either round hills for pilgrimages,
or round a tent, or round a sacred lake, must always follow a similar direction to
the revolving of the prayer-wheel.

In Lhassa and many other sacred places fanatical pilgrims make these
circumambulations, sometimes for miles and miles, and for days together,
covering the entire distance lying flat upon their bodies, then placing the feet
where the head was and stretching themselves full length. Inside temples a
central enclosure is provided, round [144]which these circumambulations are
performed, special devotions being offered before Buddha and many of the
other gilt or high-coloured images which adorn the walls of the temple.

As can be seen by the coloured plate illustrating one of these scenes, from the
ceiling of the temple hang hundreds of long strips, Katas, offered by pilgrims to
the temple and becoming so many flying prayers when hung up—for mechanical
praying in every way is prominent in Tibet. There is, after all, no reason why
praying should not be made easy like everything else. Thus, instead of having to
learn by heart long and varied prayers, all you have to do is to stuff the entire
prayer-book (written on a roll in Tibet) into the prayer-wheel, and revolve it while
repeating as fast as you can go these four words: “Om mani padme hum,”—
words of Sanscrit origin and referring to the reincarnation of Buddha from a lotus
flower, literally “O God, the gem emerging from the lotus flower.”
 Interior of Tibetan Temple

Worshippers circumambulating the inner enclosure lying flat full length.

The temples of Tibet, except in Lhassa itself, are not beautiful in any way—in
fact, they are generally very tawdry and dirty. The attention of the pilgrims is
directed to a large box, or often a big bowl, where they may deposit whatever
[145]offerings they can spare, and it must be said that their religious ideas are so
strongly developed that they will dispose of a considerable portion of their
money in this fashion.

Large monasteries, of red or yellow Lamas, are attached to these temples,

where proselytes are also educated. These Lamas, whatever their colour, are
very clever in many ways, and have a great hold over the entire country. They
are, ninety per cent of them, unscrupulous scamps, depraved in every way, and
given to every sort of vice. So are the women Lamas. They live and sponge on
the credulity and ignorance of the crowds; and it is to maintain this ignorance,
upon which their luxurious life depends, that foreign influence of every kind is
strictly kept out of the country. Their abnormal powers have been grossly
exaggerated. They practise, it is true, hypnotism, but that is all. They can
perform no more marvellous feats than any one can do in England who is able
to mesmerize. As for the Mahatmas, who, our spiritualistic friends tell us, live in
Tibet, they are purely imaginary, and do not exist. The Tibetans have never
heard of them nor about their doings.

Personally—and I am glad that the few men [146]who know Tibet from personal
knowledge and not from political rivalry agree with me—I believe that the
intrigues of the Lamas with Russia are absolute nonsense. Tibet, it must be
remembered, was not forbidden to Englishmen only, but to everybody from
every side, whether native or white, certain Nepalese and Chinamen, only,
having the privilege of entering the country. It was a fight against Western ways
in general which the Lamas were carrying on, quite successfully owing to the
geographical position of their country, and the natural difficulties of reaching it,
and not a fight against one race more than another. The accounts of the Lhassa
Mission to the Czar were possibly the best diplomatic practical jokes which have
been played upon this credulous country; and the mythical and much-feared
Dorjeff is possibly—at least as far as power is concerned—nothing more than
the creation of hysterical Anglo-Indian officials who, everybody knows, seem to
see the treacherous hand of Russia in everything.
 Tibetan Women weaving

Perhaps no other country but England would be so rash as to go and sink

millions of pounds sterling good money on a country that is, for all practical
purposes, absolutely useless and worthless. [147]This does not detract from its
pictorial, nor from its geographical or ethnological interest; from these points it is
most interesting indeed.

Agriculturally, as I have stated, nothing grows there; no very wealthy mines have
so far been discovered, the only mines that are plentiful being of borax, which
has not sufficient market value to pay for the expensive carriage from Tibet to
the coast. Regarded as a climate for a sanatorium for our sick soldiers in India—
for which Tibet is frequently recommended by Anglo-Indian papers—I believe
that such an establishment would be a very quick way of disposing altogether of
all the sick men sent there. And as for such gigantic schemes as the
construction of railways, say from India to the upper waters of the Yangtze-
Kiang, or to Pekin, the expense of taking a railway over the Himahlya range and
keeping it in working order during the wintry months—nine out of twelve—would,
I think, never be remunerative. In Tibet itself the construction of a railway would
be comparatively easy, as great stretches of the country are almost flat. Stations
of imported fuel would have to be provided for the entire distance across Tibet,
and the engines would have to be constructed specially to suit the great altitude.
[148]

For trade and commerce with the natives themselves, the population of the
country is so small, so deplorably poor and so lacking in wants, and the country
is so large that, personally, I do not see how any large commercial venture in
such a country can turn out successful. It is very difficult to get money where
there is none. Small native traders, of course, can make small profits and be
satisfied. Besides, the intercourse between Tibet and the neighbouring
countries, particularly those to the south, can only take place with comfort during
three months of the summer when the high snow-passes are open.

So that, much as I would like to see Tibet open in a proper way to travellers, I
cannot quite understand the necessity of the Government spending millions of
money and butchering thousands of helpless and defenceless natives in a
manner most repulsive to any man who is a man, and of which we can but be
ashamed—and all this to obtain a valueless commercial treaty. It is true, the
Tibetans had been very impudent in every way on our frontier, but for this we
only have to blame ourselves and our incompetent officials. If, instead of giving
way to their bluff, we had kept a firm hand, matters would have been different.
 Tibetan Women cleaning Wool

[149]

Even in the case of my capture and torture on my first expedition into Tibet I
never had a feeling of resentment towards the Tibetans for what they did to me.
It was very exciting and interesting for me to endeavour to reach their sacred
city, but I did so at my own risk and against their repeated warnings and threats,
and I got nothing more for it in the end than I expected, in fact, bad as it was,
considerably less. Highly amusing as it was to me to give them endless trouble,
it was undoubtedly equally enjoyable to them to torture me, when once they
succeeded in effecting my capture. Possibly, if I now have any feelings at all
towards the Tibetans, it is a feeling of gratitude towards them for sparing my life
in the end, which, by the way, they came within an ace of taking as they had
promised to do.

As a punishment for what they did to me—because, after all, my men and I
suffered a great deal more than the average man could stand—the Government
of India practically ceded, as we have said, all the rights to Tibet of an immense
district of British territory at the frontier. Can you blame the Tibetans for doing
worse if they had a chance? [150]
[Contents]
 CHAPTER XIV

In heart and soul the Tibetan is a sportsman; but if you look for grace in his
movements you will be sorely disappointed. Indeed, more fervour and
clumsiness combined are hardly to be paralleled anywhere. Perhaps the Tibetan
is seen to advantage on his pony, and some of his feats on the saddle I will here
describe.
 A Lama Standard-Bearer

Horse races are quite a favourite form of amusement, and are run in a sensible
manner. Only two ponies at a time go round the course, the final race being run
between the winners of the two best heats. Praying is usually combined, in
some form or other, with everything people do in Tibet, and so even races are
run round the foot of an isolated hill or around an encampment of tents; for, as
you know, circumambulation of any kind, if in the right direction, is equivalent to
prayer, and pleases God. Thus, just as with their prayer-wheels, a rotatory
[151]motion is kept up from left to right, so races are run in the same way from the
standpoint of the spectator.

A Tibetan race would astonish an English crowd—the means adopted by the

well-matched couples being very effective, if somewhat primitive. Such simple
devices as seizing one’s opponent’s reins, or lashing him in the face to keep him
back, or pushing or pulling him off his saddle, are considered fair and legal
means in order to win the race. The last heat is usually the most exciting,
especially for the spectators, for blows with the lash are exchanged in
bewildering profusion by both riders taking part in it, their respective ponies
sharing unsparingly in the punishment. Occasionally the race becomes a regular
hippic wrestling match, when both riders, clinging tightly together, tumble over
and roll to the ground. When the ponies are recaptured, the bruised horsemen
remount and continue the race as if nothing had happened.

The heavy sheepskin coats worn by the Tibetans are some protection when the
lash is applied, and the pain inflicted is not always in proportion to the noise
made by the blow; but such is not the case when they catch one another across
the face. [152]

The winner is presented with a kata by the umpire—a high Lama or a military
officer, a most picturesque creature in a brilliant red coat and fluffy hat, who has
a peculiar standard with hundreds of long, vari-coloured strips of cloth, or flying
prayers. Sitting on a handsome pony, with gaudy harness of green leather inlaid
with brass, a valuable Chinese rug upon the saddle, and many tinkling bells
round the pony’s neck, the umpire and his pony certainly produce a gay
ensemble. This gentleman takes himself very seriously, and seldom
condescends to smile.

The kata, or “scarf of love and friendship,” which is given to the winner is a long
piece of silk-like gauze, the ends of which have been trimmed into a fringe. As I
have elsewhere described at greater length, these katas play quite an important
part in the social intercourse of Tibetans. They can be purchased or obtained
from the Lamas of any monastery, or where no monastery exists the natives
manufacture them themselves, for they are constantly needed. No gift can be
sent nor accepted without “a veil of friendship” accompanying it, and no stranger
ever enters a tent without offering, with outstretched hands, a kata, which he
quickly lays at the feet of [153]his host. Diminutive katas are enclosed in letters;
sweethearts exchange katas on every possible occasion—until they are actually
married. Polyandry being prevalent in Tibet, when one of the several husbands
returns to his wife after the customary absence, he never fails to bring a kata
with him. Not to offer a kata to an honoured visitor is as palpable a breach of
manners, and as great a slight as can possibly be offered in the Forbidden Land.

Necessarily, when a kata has been blessed by the Lamas, or is won in a race
before high officials, it has additional value, and these simple folks value it more
than a gift of money or food. It is stored away in the tent among the heirlooms,
and is handed down to posterity.

A slightly more difficult feat, very common in a similar form in most countries, is
the picking up of a kata by horsemen at full gallop. One horseman, a high
official, revolves the kata seven times in the wind, and then darts full gallop in
one direction, followed by twenty, thirty, or more horsemen riding wildly, and
each trying to push his neighbours out of the way. The official, some thirty yards
ahead, flies the kata in the wind, and when fancy takes him lets it drop out of his
hand. The kata eventually settles on the ground, and the horde [154]of riders
gallops away from it, yelling and quarrelling. At a signal from the officer the
horsemen turn round and make a dash for the scarf, towards which all the
ponies are converging. Clinging to the saddle with one hand and hanging over,
each rider attempts to pick up the kata without dismounting. Collisions and nasty
falls are numerous, and this sport generally partakes of the character of an all-
round fight among the ponies’ legs. Somebody, however, always succeeds in
picking up the scarf and getting clear of the others, when he triumphantly rides
round the camp fluttering the prize in the wind.

Some of the younger fellows are clever at this sport, and when one rider at a
time does the feat, he seldom misses picking up the kata at the first swoop.
 A Race for the Kata

An interesting and more difficult feat of horsemanship I witnessed in Tibet was

the loading and firing of a matchlock while at full gallop—a performance which
requires a firmer seat on the saddle than appears. The heavy and cumbersome
weapons had to be unslung from the shoulders, the props let down, the fuse
lighted by flint and steel, some gunpowder placed and kept in the small side
receptacle, and last, but not least, the shot fired off—that [155]is to say, when it
would go off! The full use of both hands was required in this exercise, and
therefore the horsemen held the reins with their teeth. When firing they lay
almost flat on the ponies’ backs in order to prevent being thrown by the sudden
bucking of the frightened ponies.

Another exercise consists in bodily lifting a person on the saddle while the pony
is at full gallop. The pedestrian is seized as low near the waist as possible, and
the impetus of the pony’s flight, not the rider’s actual strength, is utilised in
raising the person on the saddle.

The women seemed particularly interested in this sport, because a practical

application of this exercise is used by enterprising lads of Tibet to overcome the
scruples of reluctant maids who do not reciprocate their love. At a suitable
opportunity the doomed young lady is abducted bodily in that fashion, and
conveyed in all haste to the suitor’s tent, with the honourable intention, of
course, of making her his happy bride.

Women are scarce in Tibet, and actual raiding parties, I was told, occasionally
take place against neighbouring tribes in order to obtain a fresh supply of wives.

Taking things all round, there are few men and [156]women in Tibet who cannot
ride well, yet there are few who can claim exceptional skill in that line. The
Tibetan generally values his bones too much to indulge in fancy tricks upon his
pony. Some young fellow, more ambitious than others, will master the art of
standing erect upon the saddle while going full speed, his feet being inserted
into the stirrups, which have for the purpose been shortened as high as they
could go. By pressing with his ankles against the saddle he manages to
maintain his balance, in the familiar way of the Cossacks and tribes of Central
Asia, who all excel in this game.

Tibetan saddles, as you know, are in appearance not unlike a cross between a
Cossack saddle and a rude Mexican saddle, and as good as neither, but quite
suited to the country where they are used. Men and women ride astride, with
exceptionally short stirrups, so that the leg is bent at the knee at a right or even
an acute angle. In order to maintain one’s equilibrium when riding fast some
additional stability is obtained by stretching out the arms sideways.
 Tibetan Soldier at Target Practice

Taking all things into consideration, there is no doubt that in a rugged,

mountainous country like Tibet, and for a Tibetan, his is the most practical
[157]and useful type of saddle, and his fashion of riding the most sensible—
evidently the outcome of practical experience. When riding in caravans, driving
herds of laden yaks or ponies, the advantages of legs doubled up high upon the
saddle are soon apparent, avoiding the danger of crushing one’s lower limbs or
having them partly torn off. In the English way of riding, when among obstacles,
one’s legs are always in the way; in the Tibetan fashion they are always out of
the way, or, at any rate, can easily and quickly be moved over from one side to
the other of the saddle. Also, when tired of riding in one position, altering one’s
position to side-saddle is quite convenient and easy.

The blocks of the saddles are of wood imported mainly from India, Nepal, or
China, with bindings of hammered iron or brass, often inlaid with silver and gold.
Lizard skin and coloured leather adorn the front and back of the saddles, and a
substantial pad covers the central part and the otherwise very angular seat. For
extra comfort rugs—occasionally valuable and always decorative in blue and red
tints—are spread, while to leather laces behind the saddle are slung double
bags containing tsamba, chura, or cheese, a brick of compressed tea, and
whatever sundry articles may be used on a journey. [158]The last, but not least
attachment on a Tibetan saddle is a long coiled rope of yak hair with a wooden
peg at the end for tethering the pony at night.

Whatever one may say of Tibetans, the best-inclined could not compliment them
on their shooting. Their matchlocks—their only firearms, made in Lhassa and
Shigatz—are weapons so clumsy and heavy and badly made, that when fired it
is truly more dangerous to be behind them than in front of their muzzle. During
my captivity in Tibet in 1897, indeed, I was fired upon twice—by distinguished
marksmen who took accurate aim only a few paces from me—but neither time
was I hit. Nor in all my experience of Tibet have I any remembrance of ever
seeing a Tibetan hit with a projectile from his matchlock anything which he
intended, although the range was never more than twenty or thirty yards. Few
are the matchlocks in the Forbidden Land which will carry as far as fifty or a
hundred yards.