[Smt-talk] Female theorists in history

[Nicolas Meeùs]

The name of Adele Katz has been mentioned before.

Paul Henry Lang's derogatory comments of 1946 explicitly were directed 
against her /Challenge to Musical Tradition/ of 1945, but his only 
specific criticism points at her 1935 /MQ/ paper ("Heinrich Schenker's 
method of analysis"), which itself was based on Schenker's 
/Erläuterungen/ (/Tonwille/ 9 & 10 and /Meisterwerk/ I & II), at a time 
when /Der freie Satz/ was not yet available.

Even in /Challenge to Musical Tradition/, it is not obvious that Adele 
Katz had read /Der freie Satz/; at least,she does not appear to have 
assimilated the idea of the /Ursatz/ and /Urlinie/ in their canonic form 
(descending line above a single arpeggiation). On the other hand, her 
book includes several terms and concepts that reappear in Salzer's 
/Structural Hearing/ (such as harmonic /vs/ contrapuntal, or structural 
/vs/ prolongation chords).

David Carson Berry's paper in Current Musicology 2002 (which I only 
cursorily reread just now) does discuss some of this, specifically Katz' 
and Salzer's reciprocal indebtedness, but I think that some more work 
may be useful, confronting Adele Katz' works and their theoretical 
foundation with /Erläuterungen/, /freie Satz/,/Structural Hearing/, etc. 
I, at least, would very much like to read such a study.

Nicolas Meeùs
Université Paris-Sorbonne




Le 17/10/2011 05:21, kos at panix.com a écrit :
> Those who know the history of Schenkerian Analysis in the United 
> States will be keenly aware of the extremely derogatory comments by 
> musicologists such as Paul Henry Lang, which was then followed by 
> years of deliberate silence on the part of musicologists (described by 
> Ernst Oster in a 1961 JMT article).
>
> So too, it could be that more intensive examination of the history of 
> music theory will not only recognize more female music theorists, but 
> might also contribute to a greater understanding of why certain 
> theories or theorists dominated their times to the exclusion of other 
> theorists - including women.
>
>
> Bob Kosovsky, Ph.D. -- Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts,
> Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
> blog:  http://www.nypl.org/blog/author/44   Twitter: @kos2
>   Listowner: OPERA-L ; SMT-TALK ; SMT-ANNOUNCE ; SoundForge-users
> --- My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions ---
>
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