A literary perspective on Schenker's Jewishness

Reiter, Andrea (2015) A literary perspective on Schenker's Jewishness. Music Analysis, 34 (2), 280-303. (doi:10.1111/musa.12045).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Heinrich Schenker was a keen observer of and participant in the cultural life of his time and in his diary he diligently recorded his impressions about a wide variety of cultural events. In recent years scholars have increasingly recognised the impact his response to his cultural environment had on his own ‘project’, to allude to the title of Nicholas Cook’s ground-breaking book from 2007. This essay will explore Schenker’s views about his Jewishness as they become apparent in his response to some literary texts. Following an examination of his comments on Jews and Jewishness I will discuss three entries on literary works with a Jewish subject: Karl Kraus’s poem ‘Gebet an die Sonne von Gibeon’, John Galsworthy’s play Loyalties and Schalom Asch’s story ‘Der reiche Herr Salomon’. Schenker’s ‘literary criticism’ exemplifies three principal Jewish concerns in his thinking: the biblical foundation of Judaism; the relationship between Jews and the people among whom they live; and the Jew as an exemplary human being. Critiquing these texts allowed Schenker to highlight the characteristics of the Jews as a people and as individuals; Jewish monotheism; the Jews’ predisposition to studying and thinking and their philanthropic attitude. Most importantly, the Jews appearing in these texts reinforced his own positioning as a Jew and professional in a non-Jewish environment

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