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Cube, Felix-Eberhard von

Felix-Eberhard von Cube (1903–88). Cube grew up in Munich and studied music privately with Otto Vrieslander, a family friend who was for a time the private librarian to the playwright Carl Sternheim, Cube’s maternal uncle. On Vrieslander’s recommendation, Cube went to Vienna in late 1923 to study with Schenker; lessons continued until early 1926. After a period of five years’ teaching at the Rheinisches Musikseminar, a provincial conservatory in Duisburg in Germany’s industrial area, he was recommended by Schenker to help Moriz Violin set up a Schenker-Institut in Hamburg in 1931. The Institute had a shaky existence for about two years, closed down in 1934 and reopened after the War as the Heinrich-Schenker-Akademie, though with only modest success, for another decade and a half.

Unswervingly loyal to Schenker and his cause, Cube attempted to put his teacher’s theories into a useful pedagogical form for German-speaking musicians, in a Lehrbuch der musikalischen Kunstgesetze, a typewritten treatise first conceived around 1934 but not finished until 1953 (and periodically augmented thereafter with further graphic analyses); an English version of this appeared in 1987 as The Book of the Musical Artwork. A second book, Todeskampf oder Wiederauferstehung der Deutschen Musik (Mortal Struggle, or the New Resurrection of German Music), is essentially a diatribe against modernism, but includes anecdotal information about his upbringing, his studies with Schenker, and his career as a teacher in Duisburg and Hamburg. Cube also wrote a quantity of chamber music, songs, and concertos, some of which were performed by North German Radio.

Cube and Schenker corresponded extensively between 1924 and 1934: OJ 9/34 (Cube to Schenker) and letters in family possession (Schenker to Cube).

Cube is mentioned elsewhere in the Schenker correspondence:

OJ 5/18, 1, October 7, 1930 (Schenker to Jonas)

OJ 5/18, 59, October 16, 1934 (Schenker to Jonas)

OJ 5/18, 60, October 25, 1934 (Schenker to Jonas)

Author: William Drabkin

Felix-Eberhard von Cube (1903–88). Cube grew up in Munich and studied music privately with Otto Vrieslander, a family friend who was for a time the private librarian to the playwright Carl Sternheim, Cube’s maternal uncle. On Vrieslander’s recommendation, Cube went...

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