ABSTRACT
In the most immediate sense, the problem to which H. Schenker’s work was addressed was the falling standards of musical culture. In seeking to distinguish the principles of music from the speech, and in seeing Richard Wagner as having betrayed these specifically musical principles, Schenker was adopting the position of an older Viennese critic: Eduard Hanslick. Published editions of Schenker’s writings embodied this selective, or even censorious, approach to the extent of actually deleting passages of the original that were considered unnecessary or undesirable. With regard to undeniably important things as editorial practice and the technical understanding of tonal structure the answer must, on the whole, be yes. But Schenker formulated his analytical methods within the context of a comprehensive and coherent theory that embraced not only music but also psychology, metaphysics and ethics.
