Re: Correcting Small Errors in Beethoven's Piano Sonatas
Posted: 27 Feb 2020, 23:34
I am glad you are getting into this, Anders, because I think you will find yourself very much at home. Schenker thought like a musician, not a theorist. He spent his life trying to express what he was hearing in great music first in words and then by means of symbols, and it is best to travel the path with him to completely understand what he was doing. Fortunately (for me) almost all of his works are now in English. The scholars who have done the translations have added much helpful additional information in footnotes, so even fluent German readers would profit from them.
The musical examples in the German version of Der Freie Satz match the English text exactly. They didn't re-engrave the examples, but simply translated the small bits of German text into English.
Der Freie Satx is a summation of his life's work and contains only musical snippets to illustrate his basic ideas. One must read his other works to get a complete picture of what he accomplished. HIs early book on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is a good place to start since it is entirely in words and one immediately grasps the depth of his musical insight; then the Harmony and Counterpoint books. Das Meisterwerk in der Musik comtains some of his best mature analyses of complete works, the complete analysis of the Symphony no. 3 being possibly his greatest. There is an excellent introduction to his work by Oswald Jonas. And I am reading a more recent book by Carl Schacter called The Art of Tonal Analysis, a transcription of a lecture series that is a complete delight.
PS I forgot 5 Graphic Music Analyses, which I think you know well.
The musical examples in the German version of Der Freie Satz match the English text exactly. They didn't re-engrave the examples, but simply translated the small bits of German text into English.
Der Freie Satx is a summation of his life's work and contains only musical snippets to illustrate his basic ideas. One must read his other works to get a complete picture of what he accomplished. HIs early book on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is a good place to start since it is entirely in words and one immediately grasps the depth of his musical insight; then the Harmony and Counterpoint books. Das Meisterwerk in der Musik comtains some of his best mature analyses of complete works, the complete analysis of the Symphony no. 3 being possibly his greatest. There is an excellent introduction to his work by Oswald Jonas. And I am reading a more recent book by Carl Schacter called The Art of Tonal Analysis, a transcription of a lecture series that is a complete delight.
PS I forgot 5 Graphic Music Analyses, which I think you know well.