2009 Articles

Review of Nicholas Cook. 2007. The Schenker Project: Culture, Race and Music Theory in Fine-de-siecle Vienna. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press

Tunbridge, Laura

Nicholas Cook states the aim of his book to be “construct a meaningful relationship” in place of the perceived “cultural chasm” between our world and Heinrich Schenker’s. Cook takes his title from James Heposki’s 1991 article “The Dahlhaus Project”, and both Schenker and Dahlhaus in many ways represent opposing poles- the formalist versus the cultural historian- and their simultaneous reassessment may be only coincidence. But such events may possibly indicate the consolidation of a generational shift: now that the “new musicologists” have become the establishment, polemics about getting out of/getting into analysis or the supremacy of German instrumental music are being being replaced by accounts of Schenker or Dahlhaus as cultural phenomena.