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  • Der Tonwille: Pamplets in Witness of the Immutable Laws of Music, Offered to a New Generation of Youth
  • Benjamin McKay Ayotte
Der Tonwille: Pamplets in Witness of the Immutable Laws of Music, Offered to a New Generation of Youth, vol. 1. By Heinrich Schenker. Edited by William Drabkin. Translated by Ian Bent. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [xx, 231 p. ISBN 0195122372. $150.00.] Index.

"Der Tonwille," which roughly translates as "the will (desire or egotism) of the tone" is the name given by Schenker to a series of pamphlets, of roughly fifty pages each, issued between 1921–24 by Universal Edition that contain essays addressing various topics in the field of music. Considered by its editor to be "a central work—in several respects the central work—in the Schenkerian canon" (p. vii), Der Tonwille contains three basic types of essays: (1) analyses of individual pieces; (2) essays of a theoretical nature; and (3) writings of a political nature. Each issue, moreover, contains a section of miscellany ("Vermischtes")containing observations on various aspects of music and politics, although it should be noted that in each type of essay political commentary is "not far from the surface" (p. ix). The content of Der Tonwille chronicles the genesis of the probing insights into tonal music for which Schenker is known as well as that of the accompanying graphic analytic notation. The concepts of the Urlinie and Ursatz, for example, are expounded upon in de-tail for the first time in these pamphlets. The former receives its first thorough treatment in the first issue ("The Urlinie: A Preliminary Remark"), and the latter is mentioned for the first time in the miscellanea of issue 5. Taken together, the Urlinie and Ursatz form the ultimate conceptual basis of Schenker's view of tonal structure.

The publication of a complete translation of Der Tonwille by Oxford University Press is a laudable achievement; English-speaking musicians will now have at their disposal most of Schenker's principal theoretical works (the four Erläuterungsausgaben [End Page 997] of Beethoven's piano sonatas and Schenker's early journal essays remain untranslated). Prior to this publication, translations into English of individual essays were scattered throughout the scholarly literature, with the most comprehensive set of excerpts found in Robert Joseph Lubben's dissertation ("Analytic Practice and Ideology in Heinrich Schenker's 'Der Tonwille' and 'Cantata Harmonia Mundi'" [Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1995]), which contains translations of twelve of the essays. The ten pamphlets of Der Tonwille have been available in one volume since 1990 in a photographic reprint by Georg Olms Verlag with a preface by Hellmut Federhofer. The subject of this review is the first half of the new English translation (issues 1–5); a second volume containing the second half (issues 6–10) is projected for 2005.

In the analytical essays, of which there are eighteen in this volume, "matters of analysis ... are generally followed by remarks on autograph materials and early editions, and on editorial issues arising from them; recommendations on performance, in relation to both the analytical and text-critical discussions that precede them; and finally a dismissive survey of the secondary literature" (p. viii). The pieces discussed in individual essays include six by J. S. Bach, three by Beethoven, two each by C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart, and one each by Handel and Schubert. It is unfortunate that, since the present volume contains only the first five issues of the ten that comprise Der Tonwille, only two-thirds of the analysis of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is present (the final segment occurs inthe sixth issue).

The theoretical essays, of which there are five, are "concerned with such matters as musical structure, history, and perception; but they are more philosophical in tone" (p. ix). These essays include "The Urlinie: A Preliminary Remark," "Laws of the Art of Music," "History of the Art of Music," "Yet Another Word on the Urlinie," and "The Art of Listening."

The "political" writings include the lead essay ("The Mission of German Genius") as well as a generous sprinkling throughout the four sections of miscellany (so much so that, in one instance, Emil Hertzka, the executive...

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