Handwritten letter from Schenker to Cube, in Jeanette Schenker’s hand, dated June 30, 1931 diktirt!1 Lieber Herr Professor v. Cube! Hier der mehrmals angekündigte Brief. Gleichzeitig geht ein Sonderdruck des Kunstwart-Aufsatzes an Sie ab.2 Die hier beigelegte Karte ist sozusagen ein Sonderdruck aus dem Sonderdruck u. enthält die stolzeste Aeußerung eines Musikgenies über die Musik überhaupt.3 Ich weiß nicht wie die Pläne Professor Violins4 reifen, ob seine Schule offiziell meinen Namen tragen wird, jedenfalls möchte ich den Unterschied hervorheben, der zwischen eine Schule u. einem Seminar besteht. Ob Sie in der Violin-Schule5 so wie in Köln6 werden verfahren können, möchte ich bezweifeln. Ich denke Sie {2} mir als Lehrer dort gebundener, auch die Schüler. Der Nachteil einer solchen Unterrichtsmethode ist der, daß Sie der verschiedentlichen Anregungen einer freien Diskussion entbehren u. Ihre Lösungen mit aller Autorität auszuforschen haben. Und da möchte ich Ihnen gegenüber aussprechen, wozu ich – mit Erfolg – Weisse7 geraten: Sprechen Sie Ihre Meinung ohne Hemmung aus, als Ihr derzeit Bestes u. ehrlichst Gegebenes. Es wäre keine Schande, nach Jahren eine bessere Lösung zu finden u. einzubekennen. In unserer Sache gibt es nur das eine Prestige: das der Wahrheit. Aus Ihrer Duisburger Lehrzeit dürften Sie wohl die Ueberzeugung gewonnen haben, daß – freilich bis auf meine letzte methodische Darstellung im freien Satz – der Unterrichtsstoff {3} schon ein geschlossenes Ganzes bildet: die Stimmführungs- Sollten es im Laufe des nächsten Jahres die Umstände zulassen, so dürften Sie einen Zuwachs an Urlinie-Tafeln aus Wien erhalten gemäß einer Verabredung mit Prof. Violin; diese Tafeln gingen auch nach New York zu Weisse als Unterrichtsstoff u. bezögen sich auf die Chopin-Etüden op. 10 Nº III, IX [recte: VIII] u. XII (Edur Fdur, {4} Cmoll), auf die Durchführung in Haydns grosser Sonate in Esdur (Peters IIII), auf S. Bachs 1. Präludium Cdur usw. Ich werde Sie noch ganz genau darüber informieren, damit Sie nicht schon früher gerade eins von diesem Stücken vorlegen.10 Sie sehen, daß ich die Hilfe meines teueren Lie-Liechens in Anspruch nehme; meine Augen haben über der Arbeit an der Eroica11 so sehr gelitten, daß ich sie jetzt eine Zeitlang völlig ruhen lassen will. Möge Ihnen in Hamburg ein Erfolg so beschieden sein, wie Sie ihn unter den heutigen schwierigen Umständen erwarten dürfen: langsam, aber immer u. sicher voran. Mit den besten Wünschen u. Grüßen von uns Beiden Ihr © In the public domain. |
Handwritten letter from Schenker to Cube, in Jeanette Schenker’s hand, dated June 30, 1931 dictated!1 Dear Professor von Cube, Here is the letter I have mentioned several times. At the same time an offprint of the article in Der Kunstwart is being sent to you.2 The enclosed card is, so to speak, an offprint from the offprint, and contains the proudest statement from a musical genius about music in general.3 I do not know how Professor Violin’s4 plans are shaping up, whether his school will officially bear my name. In any event I would like to underscore the difference that exists between a school and a seminar. I doubt whether you will be able to carry on in the Violin School5 as you you were doing in Cologne.6 I imagine that you {2} will be more tied down; so will your pupils. The disadvantage of such a method of teaching is that you will have to forego the various propositions arising from a free discussion and will have to work out your solutions with all authority. And in this connection I should like to tell you the advice that I—successfully—gave to Weisse:7 Communicate your opinions without constraint, as the best and most honorable that you are capable of giving at the time. It would not be a disgrace if, after years had passed, you discovered and recognized a better solution. In the cause, there is only one matter of honor: that of the truth. From your time as a teacher in Duisburg, you must have certainly gained the conviction that the material for instruction—apart, of course, from my last, methodical presentation in Free Composition— {3} makes up a self-contained whole: theory of counterpoint and harmony in the foreground, and the theory of the background in the issues of Der Tonwille and in the three yearbooks.8 In addition, I would strongly recommend that you interest your pupils in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s treatise on thoroughbass9 and that you take them through it in the same way in which I conveyed it to you, i.e. by incorporating the features of our theory into Bach’s examples. Should the conditions in the course of the next year allow, you may receive an increased number of Urlinie graphs from Vienna, in accordance with a discussion with Professor Violin. These graphs would also go to Weisse in New York, as teaching material, and would be concerned with Chopin’s Etudes Op. 10, Nos. 3, 9 [recte: 8], and 12 (in E major, F major, {4} and C minor); with the development section in Haydn’s great Sonata in E flat major (Peters Edition, vol. 1, No. 3), with J. S. Bach’s first Prelude in C major [from the Well-Tempered Clavier], etc. I shall give you precise details of this in due course, lest you choose one of these very pieces ahead of time.10 As you can see, I am availing myself of the help of my dear Lie-Liechen. My eyes have suffered so much from the work on the Eroica|11 that I want to give them a period of complete rest. I hope that you are as successful in Hamburg as today’s difficult circumstances will allow: slowly, but with steady and secure progress. With best wishes and greetings from the two of us, Yours, © Translation William Drabkin, 2006. |
COMMENTARY: FOOTNOTES: 1 The entire letter is written by Jeanette Schenker, apart from the interlinear insertions (and quotation-marks round Tonwille) on p.3, and the signature. 2 This is in all probability a seven-page article by Schenker entitled “Ein verschollener Brief von Mozart und das Geheimnis seines Schaffens,” a defense of a purportedly forged letter about Mozart’s creative process, which was brought to light by Friedrich Rochlitz in 1815. Schenker’s article appeared in Der Kunstwart 44/10 (July 1931), pp. 660-66; a copy of this is preserved as OC 50/12, and a newspaper clipping with a short reply is found in the Schenker Scrapbook (OC 2/p. 84). Schenker also received two letters (OC 50/14–15), one of them from Alfred Einstein, explaining that the musicological world did not accept the letter as genuine. 3 “card”: Already promised by S in vC 36, June 6, 1931. S had already sent one of these to Jonas on April 1, 1931 (OJ 5/18, 6), remarking in the covering letter: “Enclosed is a calling card of Mozart’s, which I myself have had produced at the printery. I hardly need tell you how the sight of these words, the highest revelation, which came to us from the mouth of genius, made me feel so happy and thankful toward God. (More about the origin of the passage in a special essay.)” It is likely that the essay never materialized, and there appears to be no copy of the document in OC or OJ. Whether it was a reproduction of an original calling card of Mozart’s, or a card devised by S using words uttered by Mozart (from the wording of this letter, those words may derive from the forged Mozart letter discussed in his “Ein verschollener Brief”), is unclear. 4 Click on Moriz Violin. 5 Violin-Schule: a play on the word for a book of exercises or studies for the violin. (Moriz Violin was, in fact, a pianist.) 6 Schenker is referring to Cube’s series of lectures and seminars as a visiting teacher at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne in 1929-30. 7 Click on Hans Weisse. 8 "three yearbooks": i.e. Das Meisterwerk in der Musik. In this extraordinary statement, Schenker likens the early parts of his Neue musikalische Theorien und Phantasien, viz. Harmonielehre and Kontrapunkt—the latter referred to here as Stimmführungslehre—to the foreground of his teaching, while the later analytical work of the 1920s provides the background, probably because its language is more closely aligned with that of the forthcoming Der freie Satz. 9 This is Part 2 of Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Berlin: Winter, 1763). Schenker owned the fifth edition, ed. Gustav Schilling (Berlin: Stage, 1856) and new edition by Walter Niemann (Leipzig: Kahnt, 1906): see Musik und Theater enthaltend die Bibliothek des Herrn Dr. Heinrich Schenker, Wien (Vienna: Heinrich Hinterberger, n.d.), items 8 and 9. 10 This list bears a close resemblance to the contents of the Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln, published by UE simultaneously in Vienna and (as Five Analyses in Sketchform) New York in 1932: the Bach Prelude, the first-movement development of Haydn’s Sonata in E flat, Hoboken XVI:49 (not that of the other “great” E flat sonata, Hoboken XVI:52, which had been the subject of a Tonwille essay), and two of the Chopin Études mentioned here (Nos. 8 and 12). The fifth work in the set is a chorale from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; the other Chopin Étude, No. 3 in E major, was intended for a subsequent series of Urlinie-Tafeln whose publication never materialized. — Curiously, Cube ignored his teacher’s word of caution and proceeded to work out a voice-leading graph of the Bach Prelude—for the second time in two years—later in the year. See Cube’s letters OJ 9/34, [28] and [29], October 16 and 20, 1931, and Schenker’s reply, vC 40, undated. 11 This long essay on Beethoven's Eroica Symphony occupies most of Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, vol. 3 (1930). SUMMARY: © Commentary, Footnotes, Summary William Drabkin 2006.
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