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Essays from the Third International Schenker Symposium.

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Essays from the Third International Schenker Symposium. Edited by Allen Cadwallader, assisted by Jan Miyaka. (Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft, Bd. 42.) Hildesheim: Olms, 2006. [xix, 305 p. ISBN-10: 3487132001; ISBN-13: 9783487132006. [euro]48.00.] Index.

Conferences devoted to a specific analytical system are rare, especially when compared to conferences examining a composer's works or a genre of music. Heinrich Schenker's analytical approaches, however, continue to hold sway over the American music theory community, and are steadily becoming a force to be reckoned with in German-speaking lands as flags continue to be planted on the map in the basement of the Mannes College of Music (see William Rothstein, "The Americanization of Heinrich Schenker," In Theory Only 9, no. 1 [September 1986]: 5-17). Conferences devoted to other methods of analysis, e.g., set theory, transformational voice-leading, or neo-Riemannian theory are not typically given with such regularity, although some do occur. This alone gives powerful testimony to the explanatory power, artistic usefulness, analytical rigor, and sound technique of Schenker's theories and analytical methods. Although the conference on which this book is based was billed as the "Third International Schenker Symposium," there have been at least eight symposia devoted specifically to Schenker: four at Mannes (1985, 1992, 1999, and 2002, the last being the "Schenker Institute"), and one each at Notre Dame (1984), the University of Hartford (1986), Utrecht University (2001), Vienna (2003), and Berlin, Sauen und Mannheim (2004). In addition, special workshops and courses continue to be offered on a regular basis and the discipline of music theory continues to be renewed, refreshed, and enriched by this ongoing critical engagement with the multifaceted thought of Heinrich Schenker.

As the most recent in a series of essay collections devoted specifically to Schenker's theories, Allen Cadwallader's collection will join those of David Beach (Aspects of Schenkerian Theory [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983]), Maury Yeston (Readings in Schenker Analysis and other Approaches [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977]), Carl Schachter and Hedi Siegel (Schenker Studies I and II, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 and 1999]), Joseph Straus (Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory and Analysis [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998]), as well as the collection that Cadwallader edited in 1990 (Trends in Schenkerian Research [New York: Schirmer, 1990]), and another co-edited by David Gagne and L. Poundie Burstein (Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music: A Festschrift for Carl Schachter [Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2006]). Of these, the volumes edited by...

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