The Role of Adele T. Katz in the Early Expansion 
of the New York "Schenker School" 

By David Carson Berry 

In 1927, Heinrich Schenker named New York as the first North American 
city in which his ideas were spreading, though he was not specific as to the 
means of transmission. l Four years later, however, the chief point of con­
tact would be clear, as Schenkerism found an institutional home at the 
David Mannes Music School (now Mannes College of Music) . It was there 
that Schenker's student Hans Weisse began teaching in 1931; starting the 
next year, he concurrently conducted graduate seminars at Columbia Uni­
versity. Mter Weisse's untimely death in 1940, Schenker's student Felix 
Salzer assumed similar duties at Mannes; he later became a professor of 
music at Queens College ofthe City University of New York. Through their 
efforts, and those of other early adherents, Schenkerian analysis gradually 
propagated elsewhere, first in outposts at Princeton and Yale Universities, 2 

and then throughout other parts of the country. Still, the New York 
"Schenker School" has remained of enormous significance. Numerous 
Schenkerians currently active in teaching and publishing were trained in 
New York by such esteemed individuals as Carl Schachter, who (like his 
own teacher, Salzer) taught at both Mannes and Queens College. Mannes 
in particular has continued to be an epicenter for Schenkerian research 
through various events held there, such as three International Schenker 
Symposia (in 1985, 1992, and 1999) and an "Institute on Schenkerian 
Theory and Analysis" convened in 2002 as part of the Mannes Institute for 
Advanced Studies in Music Theory. 

In short, New York has flourished as something of a "capitol city" for 
the American Schenker enterprise, in ways that are probably well known 
to most present-day Schenkerians.3 However, the precise role of one im­
portant participant in the emergence and development of New York's 
"Schenker School" has remained largely unknown, and without an under­
standing of her diverse activities, one has an incomplete picture of the 
true nature and extent of that School. This person is Adele T. Katz. Her 
name is recognized by those who know early Schenkerian literature, due 
to two landmark works. In 1935, she issued the first substantive English­
language distillation of Schenkerian concepts in a Musical Quarterly article 
entitled "Heinrich Schenker's Method of Analysis." In 1945, she published 
the first English-language book devoted to a Schenkerian analytical ap­
proach, Challenge to Musical Tradition. Despite her frequent citation in bib-

Current Musicology, no. 74 (Fall 2002) 
© 2004 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 



104 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

liographies, however, almost nothing has been knovm about Katz's life or 
professional endeavors apart from these writings.4 This neglect is unfortu­
nate, as from the early 1930s through the 1960s she was very active in 
teaching music and analysis in New York City, where she had contact with 
other early supporters and instructors of Schenkerian analysis. Investigat­
ing the extent of her activities and associations allows us to paint a much 
fuller and richer picture of the initial dissemination of Schenkerian ideas 
in the U.S., just as it permits those familiar with Katz's writings to probe 
the personality and philosophies behind the words and graphs. 

Although there is no Katz estate-whatever personal materials re­
mained upon her death were not preserved5-through institutional archive 
research and consultations with those who knew or worked with her, I 
have documented her endeavors in an effort to rescue them from their 
present obscurity. Following a biographical overview, the largest compo­
nent of this article will be devoted to Katz's teaching activities; a consider­
ation of her publications will follow. In a brief conclusion I will then sum­
marize the primary focus of her work as a Schenkerian, and address a 
more general topic that will have emerged through this narrative: the roles 
of women in the transmission of Schenker's ideas. 

I. Biographical Sketch 
Adele Terese Katz was the youngest of the four children of Emmanuel and 
Hannah Gunst Katz.6 She was born in San Francisco in 1887, a much ear­
lier date than has probably been suspected by those familiar with other 
Schenkerians working around the same time. Thus, she was older than 
even most first-generation Schenker students, such as Felix Salzer (b. 1904), 
Oswald Jonas (b. 1897), and her own teacher, Hans Weisse (b. 1892). She 
moved with her family to the East Coast at a young age, and from 1896 to 
1907 she attended the Packer Collegiate Institute, a preeminent school in 
Brooklyn Heights (then only for girls but now coeducational). While there, 
she studied harmony with Raymond Huntington Woodman and violin with 
Henry Schradieck. 

I am not aware of further institutional studies in music on her part 
until some twenty years later, although she did study theory and composi­
tion at some point (perhaps privately) with Gena Branscombe, Alfredo 
Casella,7 and Mortimer Wilson. Mter leaving Packer, it is known only that 
for some period she wrote the music and staged the plays for the School 
Settlement Association in Brooklyn.8 Like other settlement houses, it sought 
to improve the lives of primarily the working poor. Such establishments 
offered a wide range of services, and provided rooms for clubs, classes, 
concerts, debates on important issues, recreation, dramatic presentations, 
and so forth.9 Music was often an important part of settlement houses, and 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 105 

in fact David and Clara Mannes, founders in 1916 of what was then called 
the David Mannes Music School, were active around the same time at the 
Music School Settlement on the Lower East Side, and at the Music School 
Settlement for Colored People, which they established in Harlem in 1911.10 
The settlement at which Katz worked may not have been as known for its 
musical activities,l1 but she probably selected it for reasons of newness and 
proximity; it was organized in 1906, around the time she left Packer, and 
was located roughly three miles from her family's home. 12 

Katz seems to have first enrolled in the Mannes Music School in 1928, 
although from October 1928 until January 1929 she was briefly a student 
at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where she studied composition un­
der Rosario Scalero (perhaps having followed him from his prior appoint­
ment at Mannes).l3 Otherwise, from 1928 to 1935 she studied at Mannes, 
which was then located at 157 East 74th Street, approximately two miles 
on the other side of Central Park from the apartment Katz inhabited for at 
least half a century, at 277 West End Avenue. At Mannes, she studied com­
position with Leopold Mannes (son of the school's founders) and the 
"Schenker approach" with Hans Weisse, who arrived there in Fall 1931.14 

Beginning in the 1930s, Katz became active as a teacher of theory and 
analysis; she held various positions over the years, at different institutions 
in New York City, as I will detail. Apart from courses that she gave at Co­
lumbia University Teachers College, however, none of her appointments 
was at a degree-granting institution-a condition perhaps due to her own 
lack of even a bachelor's degree, although she also could have faced dis­
crimination due to being a woman and Jewish. Many ofthejobs she held 
were probably also low-paying. For example, for services at the Rand School 
of Social Science, she was paid as little as $5.00 per weekly class session;15 
and when working at the teacher-cooperative called the Studios of Music 
Education, she might have been paid nothing for a given week.16 Fortu­
nately, money seems not to have been a principal concern for her. Her 
father had worked in advertising for publishing tycoon William Randolph 
Hearst and later started his own advertising company; through family money 
and/ or her own investments, she seems to have remained financially inde­
pendent. This allowed her to teach music and Schenkerian analysis wher­
ever there was mutual interest, without recompense being a primary moti­
vator; in this sense, Katz was both a practitioner and a patron of Schenker's 
ideas in the U.S. It is known that Schenker relied on many faithful patrons 
to support his work and publications in Austria; 17 but it seems equally true 
that his ideas would not have reached such a great diversity of people in 
and around New York, were it not for Katz's self-supporting resources. 



106 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Figure 1: Principal institutions at which Katz taught. 

Rand School of Social Science 
(1931-40) 

New School for Social Research 
(1932-34) 

Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) 
(1932/33-34/35; 1938/39) 

Mannes School of Music (Westchester Branch) 
(ca. 1936) 

Columbia University Teachers College 
(1946-51) 

II. Teaching Activities 

Studios of Music Education 
(ca. midI940s-69) 

In this section, I will survey the places at which Katz taught and what is 
known of her activities (see figure 1 for these institutions and her dates of 
service). Before proceeding, however, a certain irony must be commented 
upon. Katz was politically liberal, as was reflected by some of the institu­
tions at which she taught-e.g., the New School for Social Research and 
especially the Socialist Party-sponsored Rand School-and as has been 
confirmed by her great-niece, Barbara Eisold. Accordingly, among the first 
places where Schenker's ideas were proselytized in the U.S. were institu­
tions of which Schenker himself would surely have disapproved. Schenker 
believed in the "aristocratic nature of art," and argued that it is "totally 
impervious to the principle of the electoral majority, which is the be-all 
and end-all of the democratic way of life" (1997b:72). In the period be­
tween the World Wars, he lamented the fact that Germany had adopted 
"from the hostile nations of the West their lie of 'liberty.'" Thus, he sighed, 
"the last stronghold of aristocracy has fallen and culture is sold out to de­
mocracy, which, fundamentally and organically, is hostile to it-for culture 
is selection, the most profound synthesis based on miraculous achieve­
ments of the genius" (1987, 2:xiii). Marxism was likewise opprobrious to 
Schenker: Karl Marx and Richard Wagner were his twin "executioners" 
(Henker) of German culture, the former destroying its humanity and the 
latter its music. In Schenker's eyes, the two were "equally guilty of grave­
the gravest-mistakes and crimes against German humanity" (1921 b:26) .18 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 107 

That Schenker's ideas might be communicated in democratic America, at 
a socialist school such as Rand, in a course that coexisted on a schedule 
with one entitled "The Social Philosophy of Karl Marx," would likely have 
struck him as ludicrous.19 Yet, despite his probable sentiments, through 
Katz his ideas reached people that otherwise might never have encoun­
tered his approach to musical understanding. 

Rand School (1931-40) 
By far, Katz's primary teaching involvement in the 1930s was at the Rand 
School of Social Science. Established by the Socialist Party in 1906, it was 
the nation's first major workers' school. Located from 1917 until its clos­
ing in 1956 at 7 East 15th Street, near Union Square, it evolved into an 
adult education institute that in the 1920s expanded its course offerings to 
include many areas outside of socialist instruction, such as music, art, pub­
lic speaking, psychology, and home economics.20 Today, all that remains of 
the Rand School are the contents of its library, housed at New York Univer­
sity. The archive includes course records and other materials related to 
the school. Several items relate specifically to Katz's activities there-not 
only catalogs and brochures listing her courses and lectures, but also hand­
written and typed course outlines, and even school-related handwritten 
letters. Given the lack of materials elsewhere, the Rand archive provides 
the closest thing we have to a Katz Nachlass. 

Music does not seem to have been of great emphasis at Rand prior to 
the 1930s, except during one brief period. In the late 1910s and early 
1920s, Herman Epstein offered lecture-courses on various musical topics. 
During this time, composer Carl Ruggles was also associated with the school, 
first (in 1918) as the founding director of its orchestra, and later as direc­
tor of its chorus and newly-established music department. 21 Ruggles left c. 
1921, and in the last half of the decade Epstein seems not to have been 
involved either, although he lectured again in 1930 and early 1931. It was 
with Katz's arrival in October 1931 that music courses began being offered 
more frequently. During the 1930s (in the midst of the Great Depression), 
the Rand School attained one of its two peaks of public interest,22 and so it 
was a promising time for Katz to participate and help expand the curricu­
lum as a one-person music department. 

Figure 2 summarizes the courses planned by Katz during her nine­
and-a-halfyears there. Some of the course titles changed between her sub­
mitted outlines and the published catalogs, and so there could be some 
redundancies (as the annotations indicate). Also, some courses might have 
been cancelled due to low pre-registration or initial enrollment. Still, the 
list suggests how busy Katz was at Rand during these years; and indeed, her 
activities extended beyond the cited courses. For example, the catalog for 



108 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Figure 2: Katz's courses and lectures at the Rand SchooL 

1931 
October 

1932 
January 
September 

1933 
January 
September 

1934 
January 

September 

1935 
January 

Spring 
Fall 

October 

1936 
January 

Fall 

September 

1937 
January 
January/March 
March 
September 

"Music in a Changing World" 

"New Forms of Old Music" 
"Challenges to Tradition" 

"Beginnings of Tomorrow's Music" 
"Sight Singing and Musical Theory" 
"The Sonata and the Symphony" 

"National Tendencies in Modern Music:" 
"Origins of Modern Music" [same as above?] 
"Sight Singing and Musical Theory" 
"Adventures in Music" 
"Historic High Lights in Music" 
"Sight Singing and Chorus" 

"An Elementary Course in Music" [or "Elementary Music"] 
"Further Adventures in Music" [or "Further Adventures in 
19th and 20th Century Music"] 
"The Nibelungen Ring" 
"Fundamentals of Music" 
"Music and Society" 
"Current Changes in American Culture," a symposium with 
Katz's "Present Tendencies in Music" 

"The Fundamentals of Music" 
"The Music of the Masters" 
"Lecture Courses for Our Time," a series with Katz's "A 
course in the development of music (as yet unnamed)" 
[perhaps the below course?] 
"From the Folksong to the Symphony" 
"The Music Workshop" 

"How to Listen to a Symphony: A Beethoven-Brahms Cycle" 
"Music Workshop" 
"How to Listen to Modern Music" 
"Bach, Beethoven and Brahms" 
"Music for Amateurs" 



Figure 2 (cont.) 

1937 (cont.) 
November 

1938 
January 

[Fall] 

September 

October 

1939 
January 

October 

1940 

DAVID CARSON BERRY 109 

Women's Committee Program (Nov. 9): Katz on "Music: It's 
[sic] Place in Education and Life" 

"Music for Amateurs" 
"Understanding Contemporary Music" 
Women's Committee Program: Katz on "Beethoven and 
the Revolution" 
"Chamber Music of Yesterday and Today" 
"Music in a Changing World" 
"Music and the Listener" 
"Social Forces in the Development of Music" 

"The Masterworks of Opera" 
"The Symphony from Haydn to Stravinsky" 
"Social Backgrounds of Music" [or "Social Forces in the 
Development of Music"]' 
"Music and the Listener"" 

February ISept. "Backgrounds of Contemporary Music" [or "Backgrounds 
of Today's Music"] 

Fall "The Symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms" 

* An October 1939 course entitled "Backgrounds of Today's Music" also bears the 
same description. 

** An October 1939 course entitled "How to Understand and Appreciate Music" also 
bears the same description. 

1932-33 indicates that she was attempting to organize a students' chorus, 
and notes that: "[ w] ith her technical ability and her inspiring personality, 
there can be little doubt that the long wished-for chorus will become a 
reality this year." Whatever may have come of plans at that time, Katz re­
mained committed to the idea. In the 1934-35 year she offered a course 
entitled "Sight Singing and Chorus," which focused on "elementary sight­
singing and choral work for those who wish to participate in a Rand School 
Choral Club." A concert was planned for the end of the year. 23 Also, in 
1935-36, Katz is listed among "visiting faculty" on the brochure for the 



110 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Figure 3a: Katz's handwritten course outline (Rand School, Fall 1932). 



DAVID CARSON BERRY III 

Figure 3b: Katz, chapter outline for Challenge to Musical Traditions (1945). 

Introduction 

Ch. 1: The Concept of Tonality 

Ch. 2: Johann Sebastian Bach 

Ch. 3: Philipp Emmanuel Bach 

Ch.4:JosefHaydn 

Ch. 5: Beethoven 

Ch. 6: Wagner 

Ch. 7: Debussy 

Ch. 8: Stravinsky 

Ch. 9: Schonberg 

Rand High School, a four-year institution that aimed "to send forth stu­
dents firmly grounded in history and economics, [and] well acquainted 
with the main currents ofliterature, music and art."24 

From Katz's large catalog of courses, I will draw special attention to 
two. It is notable that one of her first, from Fall 1932, was called "Challeng­
ers of Music Tradition"-a title clearly evocative of her 1945 book, Chal­
lenge to Musical Tradition. It was listed as a "series oflecture-recitals" by Katz, 
with Kurz Weil at the piano;25 it met weekly (Fridays at 8:30 p.m.) for four­
teen sessions, for which a student was charged either $4.00 for the term or 
501t per single admission. It is not known to what extent the course and the 
book overlapped in content. Katz's handwritten course outline (fig. 3a) 
consists of general composer headings only; and while some of these match 
the composer headings of the later book (fig. 3b), nothing much can be 
inferred. It certainly cannot be known whether or not the course included 
Schenkerian aspects of some degree. She would have been just one year 
into her studies with Weisse, so certain capabilities might have been lack­
ing even if an enthusiasm was aroused. Still, it is interesting to find that the 
seeds for her later book were planted so many years in advance. 

Given the range of musical topics she covered at Rand, and given also 
her proclivity to include Schenkerian ideas at even elementary levels of 



112 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Figure 4a: Analytic graph included among materials for course, "The Music of the 
Masters" (Rand School, Spring 1936). 

£. .. ----..... 

.n J /if~.bL ~.J i:-d~ I ~ ---- -. ~ ',; . 
o' 

I I~/ I I Ir T , 
j 1 \ J ; .1 I I 

\ , 

0 ,0 !\..,-:l 
.- /J -

,. 1 J ;J11 .J '_I 
--

) ~ f fj " ./ II I I' 
.,. f 

" , 
, 1\\'1; f 

-
1 I) 1 -

LJ.-J V/ r 3 

7 
... 



Figure 4b: Schenker: Graphs of]. S. Bach, Little Prelude no. 1, in C Major (BWV 924). From Der Tonwille 4 (1923). 

Figure 4c: From Der freie Satz (1935), Figure 43. 

A A A 
3 2 1 ,J rr~J dl 
r E r 

i 1i£1j;J J I 
r:------------------~ F r 

(=1--- IV V I) 

o :;.. 
< 
8 
~ 
~ 
CJJ 
o 
Z 
1:0 
M 
~ 

~ 

.... 

.... 
(.)0 



114 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

instruction (as will be demonstrated below in the discussion of her activi­
ties at the Studios of Music Education), it seems likely that Schenker would 
have been introduced in at least some of her later work there. In one 
instance there is evidence to support this supposition, which brings us to 
the second item of interest. In January 1936 she began a course entitled 
"The Music of the Masters." Two different outlines exist, one handwritten 
and one typed, and the former describes the class as "[a] series of discus­
sions on the various forms of music which composers from Bach to 
Stravinsky have used ... to express their musical ideas." Along with mate­
rials for the course, the Rand archive also (unusually) contains some musi­
cal examples, apparently handwritten by Katz. Mostly these consist of quo­
tations of themes and melodies from various works, but there are two ex­
ceptions. The first is a schematic indicating the entries of subjects, an­
swers, and countersubjects in Bach's C-Minor Fugue from the Well-Tem­
pered Clavier, Book J.26 The second is the multi-stage analytic reduction re­
produced as figure 4a. Although unlabeled, it is of Bach's Little Prelude 
no. 1, in C Major (BWV 924); its presence is consistent with both versions 
of the course outline, which include a section on the "prelude" with refer­
ences to Bach and Debussy (one version additionally cites Chopin). Inter­
estingly-and also disappointingly, given the lack of extant unpublished 
analyses by Katz-these graphs were mostly taken from Schenker's own 
work. The foreground reduction labeled "A" (the two-staff component that 
begins at the top) is identical to the one Schenker published in the supple­
ment to Der Tonwille4 (1923),27 reproduced here as figure 4b; and the final 
reductions, labeled "C" and "D" (at the bottom of Kaltz's page), are identi­
cal to the ones Schenker published in Der freie Satz (1979), reproduced 
here as figure 4c. 28 Only the somewhat unrefined level "B" seems to be 
original to Katz. 29 

Mter Katz left Rand, music instruction there seems to have suffered 
from declining interest or support. Composer Gail T. Kubik took Katz's 
place and stayed there for a year; but in the mid-1940s there seems to have 
been no activity along these lines. From the late 194:0s until the school's 
close in 1956, music courses were offered sporadically, if occasionally by 
those who have since become familiar names, such as musicologist Paul 
Henry Lang, and composers Nicolas Nabokov and Morton Feldman. 

There is another, tangential relation between the Rand School and 
Schenker that should be mentioned in passing. Rand was affiliated with, 
and furnished the staff for, an adult-education campus in New Jersey called 
the Newark School of Social Science.3o In January 1939, Herta Schweiger 
taught a course there on "Music for Modern Times." Shortly beforehand, 
on October 31,1938, Schweiger had given a paper at a Greater New York 
chapter meeting of the American Musicological Society.3! Titled "Chang-



DAVID CARSON BERRY 115 

ing Trends in Musicology," it considered the work of musicians such as 
Schenker, Schoenberg, and Hindemith, who "attempted to free theory 
from its previous restrictions, showing a new approach and developing 
new methods." Schweiger had received her Ph.D. from the University of 
Vienna, and thus she may have known the work of Schenker from her time 
in his home city. Nonetheless, by the occasion of Schweiger's paper, Katz's 
article on Schenker in Musical Quarterly was over three years old, and it is 
likely that, given her paper topic, Schweiger was aware of both the article 
and the fact that its author was the sole music teacher at Rand's principal 
campus. Accordingly, the two might have met personally and discussed 
Schenker's ideas, although such a possibility must remain conjectural. 

New School (1932-34) 
For three springs beginning in 1932, concurrent with her own studies at 
Mannes and her initial years teaching at Rand, Katz also lectured at the 
New School for Social Research, which had recently relocated from the 
Chelsea neighborhood of London Terrace to West 12th Street, in Green­
wich Village. Although the New School had originally focused on social 
sciences, in the 1920s the curriculum was broadened (much like at Rand) 
to include cultural subjects such as literature, music, and art, as well as 
philosophy and psychology; there was also a move away from a highly re­
search-oriented faculty toward adult eduction. There were many notable 
musicians affiliated with the school from the late 1920s onward. Aaron 
Copland began teaching there in 1927, and his lectures formed the basis 
for his 1939 book, "What to Listen for in Music. Henry Cowell came to the 
New School in 1930, and the next year was joined by Charles Seeger, where­
upon they taught the first courses in ethnomusicology given in the U.S. 
(Pescatello 2001). The 1930s also saw the arrivals of composers such as 
Hans Eisler,Joseph Schillinger, Elie Siegmeister, and Ernst Toch. 

In some general ways, Katz, as aJewish woman, matched the profile of 
many at the school during her time there. The majority of students were 
women,32 and from 1923 to 1933, the school depended almost exclusively 
on non-faculty lecturers for instruction, fully half of whom were Jewish. 
Mter 1933, the school became a sanctuary for Jewish and socialist scholars 
persecuted by Hitler. In another way, however, Katz may not have been an 
ideal match, because, despite her liberal political leanings, her writings 
reveal her to be rather conservative in her musical tastes (much like her 
teacher, Weisse, and his teacher, Schenker). Yet, in its cultural classes, the 
New School was primarily interested in "modern" developments; thus, art 
critic Leo Stein lectured on modern art, dancer Doris Humphrey on mod­
ern dance, Copland and music critic Paul Rosenfeld on modern music, 
and so forth. The changing description of Katz's course, related below, 



116 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

could be interpreted as a way of accommodating the modernist and socio­
cultural interests of the New School curriculum. 

In Spring 1932, she offered a course entitled "Wagner's Nibelungen 
Ring: A Study in Conflicts." In the New School course catalog it was billed 
as a series of six lecture-recitals in which Katz would "interpret the univer­
sal conflicts that underlie the ancient mythology of the Nibelungen Ring." 
Katz was to "explain and analyze the music," thereby accounting for the 
lecture, while pianist Kurz Weil (her Rand accompanist) would provide 
the recital, accompanying a reading of an abbreviated version of the opera's 
text. The course was apparently successful enough to have been expanded 
the next spring (1933). Now, during a course of ten lecture-recitals, Katz 
was to discuss not only the Ring, but Die Meistersinger, Tristan und Isolde, and 
Parsifal, "emphasizing the influence of Wagner's life upon his work and 
the significance of his changing philosophy as a direct factor in his musical 
development." The course was offered again in the spring of 1934 (now 
with Martha Thompson at the pian033

), and its description in the catalog 
was once more altered. It now emphasized the connection between 
Wagner's music dramas and "present social theories,," as well as their "in­
fluence upon contemporary and later composers." (Katz would continue 
her course on the Nibelungen Ring in 1935, but at Rand.) 

It is not known whether or not her Wagner courses included 
Schenkerian aspects to some degree. Challenge to Musical Tradition would 
address these very operas in Schenkerian terms; but that was a decade 
hence, and at this point she was still a Schenker student herself, under 
Weisse. Nonetheless, by the time of her last New School lectures, she was 
only a year away from publication of her Musical Quarterly article on 
Schenker's ideas, and so including some of these same concepts within 
her analyses would surely have been possible. 

There is at least one later connection between the New School and 
Schenkerism that should be mentioned before leaving the institution. In 
1946, Schenker's student Victor Zuckerkandl became a music theory teacher 
there. His Schenker-influenced book, The Sense of Music (1959), originated 
in his course materials from the New School, as well as those from his time 
at St.John'S College (Maryland). 

Other Activities (1930s) 
Throughout the 1930s, Katz was active on several other fronts. Most promi­
nent among these was the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA, to­
day known as the 92nd Street y), at which Katz lectured.34 The institution, 
which established its School of Music in 1917, has had a long history of 
offering courses, lectures, and workshops on music. During the 1932-33 
season, Katz conducted a series of lectures there, entitled "National Ten-



DAVID CARSON BERRY 117 

dencies in Modern Music." During the following two seasons she gave 
courses on "Music and Society" and ''The Symphonies of Beethoven," re­
spectively. Two additional courses were planned for 1935-36, but were can­
celled due to lack of pre-registration. 35 She returned once more however, 
in 1938-39, for a course on "Chamber Music of Yesterday and Today." 

It is not known to what extent (if any) a Schenkerian approach was 
taken in Katz's lectures, although the YMHA was apparently amenable to 
it. The institution featured Schenkerian tutelage some years later, under 
Weisse's and Schenker's former student Felix Salzer. He first taught there 
in Spring 1944, when he assumed courses that composer and conductor 
Paul Dessau had taught the previous fal1.36 For three semesters, from Spring 
1944 until Spring 1945, Salzer taught intermediate and advanced harmony, 
counterpoint, and composition. In Fall 1945, however, he conducted a 
class expressly devoted to "Schenker Analysis." It was offered as "a scholar­
ship course for those qualified," and was described as having been 

established by a group of friends in memory of Dora Fineberg, 
piano and literary pedagogue, in 1943. Scholarships for this course 
will be awarded annually in the theory of Schenker analysis, which 
was so close to the heart of Mrs. Fineberg. The course will be given 
under the direction of Dr. Salzer, and the class will be limited to 
10 students. 

Because of the reference to 1943, along with the notice that" [a] new class 
will be formed" for Fall 1945, it may be assumed that prior installments of 
the course were also held. There is no mention of them among materials 
in the YMHA archive, although it is possible that they were held elsewhere. 

Around 1936, Katz was also on staff at the short-lived Westchester 
Branch of the Mannes Music School, in New Rochelle,37 and she gave lec­
tures for the Institute of Advanced Education at the Nicholas Roerich 
Museum in New York City.38 Other activities during the decade included 
lecturing before various groups, such as the Woman's Club of Brooklyn, 
the Women's Club of The Oranges (Nj.), the Woodmere (N.Y) Music 
Club, and the Drama Study Club. She gave presentations at the Briarcliff 
Manor School and the Unity House. 39 And she was involved in performances 
through directing the Woodmere (NY) Choral Club from 1936 to 1941.40 

Throughout these years she also continued to teach privately; figure 5 is a 
1936 advertisement for a course on Schenkerian approaches to teaching 
Bach's music, to be held in her apartment. 

The Early 19405 
I have found no direct references to Katz's activities in the early 1940s. 



118 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Figure 5: Advertisement from Music Teacher's Review (Oct. 1936, p. 60). 

ADELE T. KATZ, Lecturer 
Announce. 

A Special Course for Teacher. 

THE 
SCHENKER METHOD OF ANALYSIS 

al applied to the teaching of J. S. Bach 

Course begin. October 19th, 10 o'clock 

277 West End Ave., New York City 
EN - 2-1017 

Evidently, she had planned to continue at Rand in Spring 1940, but with­
drew after her name had already appeared on some ]promotional materi­
als. Her teacher, Hans Weisse, died after a brief illness in February 1940, 
and that event could have had some effect on her decision not to teach 
that semester; still, one can only speculate. Whatever the reason, she seems 
to have retreated from institutional teaching during these years. 

Given that her book, Challenge to Musical Tradition, was published in 
1945, she must have devoted much of the early 1940s to its preparation. In 
its acknowledgements, Katz thanks Felix Salzer for "the warm and unflag­
ging interest he has shown from the inception of this book through its final 
phases" (vii, emphasis mine), suggesting that formal work on the volume 
was begun only after Salzer arrived in the U.S. and assumed Weisse's du­
ties at Mannes, in 1940Y Katz also recognizes Salzer for the "many stimu­
lating discussions of problems dealt with in this book." The informal ses­
sions she evidently had with him surely enhanced her Schenkerian think­
ing during this time.42 Over the next several years, Katz apparently repaid 
her debt to Salzer in kind, through interest in his o",m evolving book. In 
the acknowledgements for Structural Hearing, Salzer wrote that, along with 
Leopold Mannes, 

Above all, my thanks go to Miss Adele T. Katz ... [whose] intimate 
acquaintance with the problems discussed in this book has been 
of great assistance. Her constant encouragement has been most 
inspiring, and in all these years of preparation and research she 
has generously given from the rich fund of her knowledge and 
experience (1952, 1:xviii).43 

Columbia University Teachers College (1946-51) 
Mter publication of her book, Katz resumed teaching, serving for five years 
(1946-51) as Instructor of Music and Music Education at Columbia Uni-



DAVID CARSON BERRY 119 

versity Teachers College. While there, she taught an evening course each 
term entitled "Analysis in Relation to Hearing and Performance." It was 
expressly described in the Teachers College bulletins as a course on "The 
Schenker approach to the problems of musical structure," which would 
offer "A new conception of tonality affecting the hearing, teaching, and 
performance of music." Musical examples were to be drawn from "the 
17th to the 20th centuries." The course likely exploited materials presented 
in Challenge, whose dust jacket subtitle ("A new approach to the analysis 
and understanding of musical structure") resonated with the above de­
scription. Katz's book was likewise promoted on its dust jacket as offering 
"the musician and music student" a new method for "the hearing and un­
derstanding of music," and it covered music of nearly the same time span, 
from]. S. Bach to Stravinsky and Schoenberg.44 

The offer for Katz to teach a course on Schenker at Teachers College 
may have been extended by Howard A. Murphy, who taught there 1927-
61 and was a supporter of the Schenkerian method, if not a Schenkerian 
per se.45 As Murphy wrote in an endorsement that appeared on the dust 
jacket of the first edition of Salzer's Structural Hearing, he had "long been 
acquainted with the Schenker approach, and believe[ d] in it strongly, since 
it offers one of the most logical and comprehensive explanations of music 
structures." Murphy's initial introduction to Schenkerian ideas could have 
been by any of various people other than Katz herself; for example, he 
would have had earlier contacts at Columbia. In the 1930s, Hans Weisse 
offered seminars at Columbia that included some Schenkerian tutelage.46 

Murphy also would have had at least a collegial association with William]. 
Mitchell, a student of Weisse's who taught at Columbia beginning in 1932 
(eventually becoming chair of the music department). There is even the 
possibility that he learned of Schenker from George Wedge, a music theo­
rist at the Institute of Musical Art (now]uilliard), to whom Murphy had 
been an assistant when he was an Instructor there (1920-36). In a column 
that featured an interview with Weisse, music critic Irving Kolodin (1932) 
cited Wedge as "a pioneer in this [i.e., Schenker's] work in America." 
Whatever the source of Murphy's introduction to-and extent of familiar­
ity with-Schenkerian analysis, he apparently supported its dissemination 
at a time when many others in New York's music institutions probably did 
not. He endorsed research into the theory, and it may also have influ­
enced his own teachings, at least to a small degree.47 

Studios of Music Education (c. mid 19405-1969) 
Katz's longest tenure as a Schenker advocate began by the mid 1940s and 
lasted for over two decades, as she taught at the Studios of Music Educa­
tion (SME). 48 The SME seems to have been largely ignored even by his to-



120 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

rians of New York City's musical life, based on the fact that no citations of 
it are found in major musical or cultural reference works, but it had a 
lengthy and interesting history. It was founded in 1934 by Anne Holden 
and Lyn Egli. "Their purpose was to devise a long range program of music 
education for the part time student, a program that would include all the 
minimum essentials for competence in musical activity, and that would 
equip and stimulate students to continue enjoying and cultivating their 
musical skills throughout life" (Holden 1986:189) .49 It began as a teacher­
cooperative, with teaching salaries coming out of whatever remained after 
all other expenses were paid. Its classes were initially divided among four 
centers, two in the WestSide of New York City and two in NewJersey (hence 
the plural "Studios"). Courses were eventually consolidated into one build­
ing; from 1944 until the dissolution ofthe school, at the end of the 1979-
80 year, it was located at 57 West 94th Street. 

Holden (1901-1992) was a 1922 graduate of Barnard College, with a 
major in psychology and a minor in English. From 1924 to 1931 she per­
formed as a charter member of Margarete Dessoff's first choir in New York, 
the Adesdi Chorus of women's voices, and from 1926 to 1930 she studied 
flute and composition at the Institute of Musical Art. From 1931 to 1934 
she and friend Egli (1905-1985), a professional pianist and violinist, stud­
ied music in Vienna. 50 It was there that the idea for the SME was devel­
oped, and it was put into place upon their return to New York City. One 
might well imagine that their contact with Katz and, through her, Schenker's 
theories occurred upon their return, as they sought like-minded activist 
teachers. But in fact, they learned of the Mannes School's Schenker pro­
gram while a continent away. In a letter of April 12,1933, Holden wrote to 
her mother from Austria: 

We have such a wonderful and enlightening time playing chamber 
music with Manfred Willfort. He's a pupil of Heinrich Schenker, 
whose theories about traditional harmonic structure are creating 
a big stir over here and make much more musical sense than what 
one finds in the usual textbook. Maybe I mentioned Willi (which 
is what everybody calls him) when I told you about ou[r] birthday 
party. If I didn't I should have. He's the young man whom we 
invited but he never got there because he was trying to finish a 
composition for flute and viola to bring us as a present. He brought 
it the next morning, after having been at it all night. (Holden 
1986:55-56) 51 

Willfort, a former pupil of Weisse's, was at the time of Holden's letter com­
mitted to a weekly seminar at Schenker's apartment (along with Salzer 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 121 

and two others), a recent result of which had been the analyses of Funf 
Urlinie-Tafeln (Schenker 1932). Following Willfort's advice, upon their re­
turn to New York, Egli took a course with Weisse, and concurrently met 
Katz. In turn, Katz was later "instrumental in getting [Holden] into a two­
year fellowship course with ... Salzer," which "was given for the purpose of 
guiding music teachers in methods of applying" Schenker's theories 
(Holden 1986:56).52 

Beginning in 1947, Katz taught the two highest grades of music study 
classes at the SME; she continued for twenty-three years, until 1969 (at 
which time she was 82 years old). These classes were described by Holden 
as follows: 

Music Study VII and VIII are a two-year course that introduces 
thematic form and takes some excursions into musical history and 
modern directions, but is mainly concerned with the analysis of 
how harmony and counterpoint interrelate to create musical 
coherence. It is a course influenced by the findings of Heinrich 
Schenker whose discoveries about musical structure the founders 
of SME first encountered when they played chamber music with a 
student of his in Vienna ... It has been so consistently stimulating 
to its SME students that whenever two former members of Music 
Study VII-VIII get together they are likely to begin an excited 
babbling about it. (Holden 1986:203) 

An example of one of Katz's SME handouts is reproduced in figure 6a; a 
transcription follows in figure 6b.53 She illustrates how a sixteen-bar melody 
in F major (seemingly adapted from that of the first scene ofHumperdinck's 
opera Hansel und Gretel)54 "horizontalizes" first the tonic chord in descent 
and the dominant chord in ascent, both supporting a structural top-voice 
C

5
; and then the tonic chord again in its final "structural" descent to F

4
• 

The various constituents of the chordal unfoldings are labeled "top," 
"middle," and "lower" voices, in accordance with the voices shown in her 
final reduction;55 other tones are labeled as to their neighboring or pass­
ing functions. Katz's commitment to ensuring that students recognized 
the function of each note, as well as the melodic goal of each line, is dem­
onstrated not only here but also in her 1959 pedagogical tract, Hearing­
Gateway to Music. 

Although the role of Katz and the SME in instructing generations of 
pre-collegiate musicians in the insights of Schenker has heretofore man­
aged to slip under the radar of the mainstream music-theory community, 
it was a role of which the SME itself was both aware and gratified. As it 
proclaimed in its newsletter of June 1953: "For the past twenty years 



122 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Figure 6a: Katz: Class handout from Studios of Music Education (early 1950s). 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 123 

Figure 6b: Katz: Class handout (transcription). 

[5] 

N.N. N.N. 

P.T. M.V. r:L M.Y. 

L.v. LV. 

space outlining space filllng;--------

This shows motion from C, a top voice [T.v.,] to A, [a] middle voice [M.Y.,] and onto F, a 
lower voice [LV.], a direct descent of a 5th, embellished by N.N. [neighbor notes]. 
Motion [is] achieved through the horizontalized tones of [the] F[-] major chord. It is thus 
an expansion of the F[-] major chord, with C still a T.Y. 

N.N. 

ascent from M V. to T.V. 

Just as there is a descent from C to F, a M.V. in meas. 1-8, so there is a return motion of an 
ascent from G, a M.Y. to C, a TV. [in] meas. 9-12[. A]ndjust as meas. 1-8 show a 
horizontalized F chord, meas[.] 9-12 indicate a horizontalized U[.] Note also that the Cis 
common to both chords and is the start of the descent and the climax of the ascent. Thus 
this C is retained as a T.v. since with the tones in a vertical position, it would be the T.v. of 
each chord. 

It is evident that meas. 5-8 and 13-16 are identical but that the latter are shown in half­
notes in the sketch to indicate that C no longer is retained but makes a final descent to F 
in the conclusion of this melodic line. The fundamental distinction between these two 
similar motions is that the ascent from G to C proves that the motion (meas. 1-8) is not 
conclusive since C again is the focal tone. In the final meas[.] the half-notes indi[c]ate 
that there is no further motion and that the melody descends to F-its goal. 



124 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Schenker's discoveries and outlook ... have been Q, ferment slowly and 
scatteredly working to revivifY American musical pedagogy, and the SME is 
extremely proud to be one of the instruments in thaI: process. "56 

The Late 1950s and Afterward 
Apart from her continued work at the SME, Katz's activities as a teacher 
once again seem to have subsided in the 1950s. By the end of the decade, 
she was devoting time to music therapy at the Manhattan State Hospital 
(later the Manhattan Psychiatric Center), located on Wards Island at the 
northern end of the East River. According to her great-niece, Barbara Eisold 
(who would at times accompany Katz and later became a psychologist her­
self), Katz gave lessons and got the patients involved in performances; she 
became very interested in mental illness and even remarked that, if she 
were able to begin her life's work again, she might become a psycholo­
gist.57 

At the end of the next decade, in 1969, she stopped teaching at the 
SME. I assume that, for the remaining ten years of her life, she was no 
longer publicly active in musical pursuits. She died in 1979, at age 92. She 
left no direct descendants but was remembered fondly not only by her 
nieces and nephew and their families, but also by the many with whom she 
had had contact as a teacher, as evidenced by the brief tribute submitted 
to the New York Times by the SME: 

[A] dedicated scholar and teacher, [she] will be remembered with 
enduring love and gratitude for the inspiration and support and 
warm friendship she gave to her students and colleagues at the 
[SME].58 

III. Publications 
Although known mainly for the article and book cited at the beginning of 
this essay, Katz in fact published two articles and two books. In the follow­
ing, I will summarize the objectives and principal components of her pub­
lications, drawing attention to Katz's indebtedness to other individuals and 
writings where appropriate. 

"Heinrich Schenker's Method of Analysis" (1935) 
Her first article, "Heinrich Schenker's Method of Analysis," is familiar to 
Schenkerians due to its chronological priority in summarizing, in English, 
key aspects of Schenker's approach to musical interpretation. Victor Vaughn 
Lytle, also a student of Weisse's and a music professor at the Oberlin (Ohio) 
Conservatory, had published an English-language, anlj-modernist polemic 
in November 1931, in which several Schenkerian terms were named and 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 125 

very generally defined (including "tonicalization," "auskomponierung," 
"prolongation," "Urlinie," and "Ursatz") .59 But it is only with Katz's Musical 
Quarterly article that Anglophones were given a proper summation of the 
Ursatz as a combination of Urlinie and Grundbrechunrwith notated illus­
trations of the now-familiar models of 3-, 5-, and S-progressions-as well as 
an exposition of Schenker's graphing apparatus and analytic observations.5o 

Katz would have had only about three-and-a-half years of Schenkerian 
tutelage, under Weisse, at the time the article was completed. Perhaps 
because of her relative newness to the method, most of her examples as 
well as portions of her commentary are directly traceable to Schenker's 
own work, although, given the expository nature of her essay, perhaps such 
a basis was inevitable. Nonetheless, Katz's summation is remarkable in that 
she apparently had no access to Der freie Satz, in which Schenker's final 
formulations were presented. Her lack of access is suggested, in part, by 
the close dates of the two publications: Der freie Satz was issued in Vienna 
after Schenker's death in January 1935, sometime around or before May 
of that year,5! and Katz's article must have been written well in advance of 
the July 1935 publication date of the journal in which it appeared. More 
significantly, while Katz cites or quotes from Der Tonwille, Das Meisterwerk, 
Funf Urlinie-Tafeln, and other Schenker tracts, no mention is made of Der 
freie Satz.52 

Katz's article may be divided into three components. The first, pro­
ceeding from the assertion that, "[f] or some of us, . .. Schenker's work 
has revolutionized the whole conception of music as an art" (311), defines 
the difference between Schenker's approach and that of other theorists in 
terms of the disparity between "synthesis" and "analysis." The former term 
represents a significant borrowing from Schenker's lexicon; his comments 
on Synthese are scattered throughout the Tonwille and Meisterwerk volumes. 
At times he waxes poetic about it, as when he declares that "Synthesis is 
love. Love creates, love unifies the whole; and love courses through the 
veins" (Schenker 1994: lIS). At other times, he asserts its importance by 
arguing against "the kind of analysis that remains firmly on the surface" of 
the music, in favor of an understanding that extrapolates "foreground re­
lationships from the background and middleground." Only those who 
possess the latter "have the gift of appreciating the synthesis of a genius" 
(Schenker 1997a:6S). As Katz distinguishes the terms in her 1935 article, 
"[a]nalysis is the dissection of a work into its various parts," as when a 
"theorist is concerned with examining each chord as a specific harmony" 
or "with differentiating between the parts of a musical form by indicating 
the various themes and labelling them." But" [s]ynthesis is the re-assem­
bling of a work whose various parts grow out of one principle." It "searches 
beyond the outward appearance ... for a principle of Coherence" (312). 



126 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Having asserted synthesis to be a defining characteristic of Schenker's 
approach, Katz then progresses to the second component of the article, in 
which she demonstrates how it infuses Schenker's view of tonality. Her 
exegesis continues by eventually considering also his conceptions of har­
mony and counterpoint. Here, Katz draws commentary as well as examples 
from Schenker's own work, especially from the "Erlauterungen" that ap­
peared in Tonwille and Meisterwerk. 63 Analyses are also taken (implicidyor 
explicidy) from Schenker (summarized in figure 7); while some levels of 
the article's graphs are more or less original to Katz, they are mosdy 
Schenker's own. 

In the third and final component of the article, Katz addresses the 
implications of Schenker's ideas for the interpretation and performance 
of music. Her case study is J. S. Bach's C-Major Prelude (from the Well­
Tempered Clavier, Book I), as analyzed in Schenker's Mannes-supported com­
pendium of less than three years earlier, Funf Urlinie- Tafeln or Five Analyses 
in Sketchform.64 Here, Katz also returns obliquely to her initial theme-the 
differences between Schenker's approach and that of other theorists-by 
comparing his analysis with that of Hugo Riemann (1914), who had of­
fered a reduction of the prelude melody to whole and half notes, repre­
senting its "melodic summits." Although Schenker had not direcdy com­
pared his and Riemann's analyses of this particular piece, Katz clearly took 
her cue from a 1921 Tonwille essay in which Schenker quoted from 
Riemann's analysis of Bach's EIrMajor Prelude (also from the Well-Tempered 
Clavier, Book I), in order to distinguish the latter's reduction to Grundzuge 
or Melodiespitzen from his own (eminendy superior) Urlinie analysis, and 
thereby to demonstrate what a "non-ear" (Un-Ohr) Riemann really was.65 

Katz's article also implicidy demonstrates the influence of her teacher, 
Weisse. For example, when Katz writes that Schenker's approach allows 
one to understand "what was in the mind of the comlPoser himself' (311), 
it recalls a component of Weisse's teaching demonstrated later that same 
year, when he delivered a paper at the annual meeting ofthe Music Teach­
ers National Association (MTNA) (published as Weisse 1936). In it, a hy­
pothetical student was "given the privilege of a happy dream" in which 
Mozart appeared and explained, in his "own" voice, a difficult passage from 
the second movement of his Piano Sonata in F, K 533. Weisse's Mozart, of 
course, carried in his mind an interpretation entirely consistent with 
Schenker's views. It also seems likely that Katz had at her disposal an un­
published lecture by Weisse, entided "Was ist Kontrapunkt?" ("What is Coun­
terpoint?"), which was apparendy written in the early 1930s.66 In it, he 
analyzed Mozart's "Dissonance" String Quartet in C, K 465, and the canon 
from the central section in the second movement of Beethoven's Piano 
Sonata, op. 101. These are the very two works cited jill passing by Katz, at 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 127 

Figure 7: Analytic graphs in Katz, "Heinrich Schenker's Method of Analysis." 

Beethoven, Piano Sonata op. 2/1: I (f"rrst 8 mm.) 
Article page(s): 316 
Citation given: Doesn't cite Schenker 
Source of Schenker's analysis: "Beethoven: Sonate opus 2 Nr. 1," Tonwille 2 (1922): 

25-47 + Beilage. 
Description of graph levels: 

A = from score 
B = based on that in Schenker's Beilage 
C = presumably Katz's own 

J. S. Bach, C-Minor Fugue from WTC I: subject (f"rrst 2 mm.) 
Article page(s): 320-21 
Citation given: Schenker's essay "Das Organische der Fuge" 
Source of Schenker's analysis: "Das Organische der Fuge," Meisterwerk II (1926): 

57-95 
Description of graph levels: 

A = from score 
B = realignment of score's displacements; based on Schenker's foreground graph 
C = presumably Katz's own (infl. by Schenker's) 
D = presumably Katz's own (infl. by Schenker's) 

J. S. Bach, Sonata [sic-Partita no. 3] in E for Violin Solo (f"rrst 29 mm.) 
Article page(s): 322 
Citation given: cites levels A and B as Schenker's, but source not named 
Source of Schenker's analysis: 'Joh. S. Bach: Sechs Sonaten fur Violine. Partita III 

(E-Dur), Praludio," MeisterwerkI (1925): 77-98 
Description of graph levels: 

A = excerpted from Schenker's foreground (with slight notational changes) 
B = infl. by Schenker's foreground, but it does not appear as such in his work 
C = referred to as "Urlinie," but actually an excerpt from Schenker's graph of 
mm. 1-29 (from his fig. lc) 

J. S. Bach, C-Major Prelude, WTC I 
Article page(s): 324ff. 
Citation given: Schenker's Funf Urlinie-Tafeln 
Source of Schenker's analysis: Funf Urlinie-Tafeln (1932) 
Description of graph levels: 

Ex. 14c = melodic/bass outline based on Schenker's "Urlinie Tafel" 
Ex. 14d = from Schenker's "Urlinie Tafel" (some annotations omitted) 
Ex. 14e = from Schenker's "Ursatz" 
Ex. 14f= based on Schenker's "1. Schicht" 
Ex. 14g = reproduces excerpts from above (ex. 14d) 



128 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

the end of her article, as she criticizes theorists who have spoken of "radi­
cal" tendencies in such compositions without "hear[ing] and 
understand[ing] what lies behind these so-called dissonances" (328)-i.e., 
the middlegrounds elucidated in Weisse's lecture.57 

''Analysis or Synthesis?" (1936) 
The year after the previous article, Katz published a second one entitled 
"Analysis or Synthesis?," with its title (and main focus) obviously derived 
from the initial component of the first article. It appeared in the Musical 
Review, which was billed as "a journal for thinking music teachers" and 
aimed primarily at (perhaps female) readers in Brooklyn and Long Island.58 

Just three pages in length, it often reads like a precis of the Musical Quar­
terlyarticle (even its few musical illustrations come from there59); but now 
Katz's commentary is directed expressly toward other music teachers, in 
an effort to evangelize the interpretive benefits of a Schenkerian approach. 
As she writes in her concluding paragraph, the "Schenker method ... 
challenges the teacher as well as the student," offering them a "direct, 
clear-cut means of reaching the heart of a work, in order to understand 
and interpret it from the composer's point of view" (5). 

Again one can perceive the influence of Weisse, even in subtle ways. 
For example, just a few months earlier, in the paper delivered before the 
MTNA, Weisse had affirmed that the beauty of Schenker's approach was 
that it gave interpreters and teachers of music a manner of "talk [ing] about 
music like musicians and no longer like scientists."7o Now, in a comment 
not found in her 1935 article, Katz criticizes the customary analytical method 
(one "based upon the theories oflaw-makers and pedants, rather than the 
music itself'), characterizing it as "a system of analysis that is concerned 
primarily with music as a science, rather than music as an art" (3). 

Finally, this article, along with a portion of the earlier one, may pro­
vide insight into what Katz might have communicated in the "course for 
teachers" of Bach's music, which she advertised a few months later (see 
fig. 5). Near the end of the article, she summarized some ofthe pedagogi­
cal applications of Schenker's approach: 

Can the synthetic method be used by the teacher in her work with 
small children as well as adults? The answer is yes! It should be 
used as a means of developing the child's ability to hear within a 
space and to retain the original tonality, regardless of the extensions 
of that space. It will make for a new understanding of those works 
which form the background of a student's education. It will make 
teaching simpler in establishing the importance of a single tonality 
rather than the various harmonies and modulations emphasized 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 129 

in the older system. It offers a clear and simple way of presenting 
a new work to a pupil, and indicates the manner of performance, 
in its differentiation between functional and non-functional 
harmonies. (5) 71 

In conjunction with her commentary on three Bach compositions in the 
1935 article (especially that on the C-Major Prelude), we can glean some­
thing of what Katz wished to communicate to other teachers about this 
composer's music. 

Challenge to Musical Tradition (1945) 
Like her first article, her book Challenge to Musical Tradition is well known 
to Schenkerians for its own chronological distinction. Published in 1945, 
when Katz was 58 years old, it was the first English-language book devoted 
to a Schenkerian analytical approach. (Figure 8 reproduces the interest­
ing monogram that was embossed on the front board of the first edition: a 
treble-clef sign efflorescing at the bottom into the author's conjoined ini­
tials, "ATK.") Promoting Schenker's ideas was a principal objective for Katz, 
as she indicated in the introduction: 

None of Heinrich Schenker's books, now under the Nazi ban, has 
been translated into English. His distinguished colleague, the late 
Hans Weisse, who introduced his teachings in this country and 
carried them to a further development, aroused a tremendous 
response through the inspiration of his creative approach. The 
rapidly increasing number of students and musicians who recognize 
the advantages of this way of hearing makes it essential that the 
far-reaching implications and consequences of Schenker's 
conception of structural coherence on the understanding and 
interpretation of music be revealed to a wider public. It is hoped 
that this book will fill this need, which is its raison d'etre. (xxiv-xxv) 

Along these lines, one of the two meanings of the titular "challenge" refers 
to Katz's opposition to the methodology proffered by many harmony text­
books. That is, she intended to challenge the analytic tradition that merely 
labeled chords locally without regard to their function within the whole. 
(In this regard, she was again likely inspired by her teacher, Weisse, to 
whom Challenge was dedicated. He had disputed the same practice in the 
paper he delivered to the MTNA. 72) The "traditional" approach does not 
clarifY tonality, Katz argued, but instead "complicates it by converting the 
basic impression of a single organic phrase into a series of fragmentary 
modulations that both the music and our ears belie" (5). Following 



130 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Schenker, she wished instead "[tJo clarifY the concept of tonality as or­
ganic oneness," as "the expression of a single key through the prolonga­
tion ofa primordial framework" (38). To provide the appropriate founda­
tion for her readers, she outlined the principal tenets of Schenker's view 
of tonality in the initial chapter, mainly using excerpts from J. S. Bach's 
chorales to illustrate various concepts. Her approach here was strikingly 
different from that of her 1935 article, which had drawn heavily on 
Schenker's own analyses and explanations. The expository material in the 
book seems to be entirely in her own voice, and demonstrates the growth 
she had experienced as a musical thinker in the foregoing decade. 

Ultimately, however, Challenge was not designed as a tutorial for 
Schenkerian analysis, as Salzer's Structural Hearing was seven years later 
(albeit with alterations to Schenker's theory). Katz's main agenda involved 
a second sense of the word "challenge": that to compositional traditions. 
The remaining chapters of the book are devoted to members of a small 
group of composers that embodied different characters and styles of mu­
sic, and spanned roughly a quarter-millennium; they were J. S. Bach, C. P. 
E. Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg. 
These were her "challengers to tradition," so called 

not only because they rejected in their artistic maturity certain 
restrictions and limitations in technique and style that had been 
accepted by their predecessors, but because they either evolved 
new forms or introduced such dynamic innovations in forms 
already established that they contributed an entirely fresh impulse 
to musical expression. (xxii) 

Katz's compositional "challengers" were of two types: "those who defied 
tradition within the framework of tonality"-that is, those who rejected 
traditions but, in doing so, "acknowledged the musical principles on which 
they were based and ... molded them to their own needs"-and "those 
who attacked tonality in order to defY tradition" (ibid.). The dividing line 
falls upon Wagner, with Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg belonging 
clearly on the side of those who "inva[dedJ ... the tonal citadel" (xxvii). 
For a book predicated upon Schenker's ideas, it may seem ironic that the 
preceding four composers-fully half of those surveyed by Katz-were 
among those that Schenker held in low esteem (three of whom dared to 
write music after the death of Brahms, Schenker's "last master of German 
composition").73 And indeed, it should be emphasized that it was in Chal­
lenge, not Salzer's Structural Hearing, that analytic graphs of twentieth-cen­
tury works were first published-excepting two of Schenker's own in 
Meisterwerk II (1926), which were intended to show the deficiencies ofthe 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 131 

composers.74 
Nonetheless, despite claims of objective evaluation, Katz was hardly 

more prone to accept the artistic validity of modern music than Schenker 
had been. "Good" works are defined as those that exhibit structural unity, 
coherence, and organicism (forms of these words abound in the text), 
and using Schenker's methods, Katz was able to show that the music of the 
four tonal composers exhibited these traits. For the non-tonal music un­
der consideration, however, she had no a priori analytic technique that 
would adequately demonstrate the same. She aspired to evaluate such works 
without prejudice; "to investigate these systems ... [and] find the new 
concept of unity they express" (xxviii). Ultimately, however, she was un­
able to do so. In this respect, her remarks at the end of the chapter on 
Stravinsky are illustrative: 

In evaluating Stravinsky's works, it matters little whether we like 
or dislike his innovations. The sole consideration is the effect of 
these innovations on the clarity and coherence of the music. 

Their effect has been obvious. They were vital factors in the 
breakdown of a basic principle-the concept of tonality; they 
changed the functions of the essential elements of music; and they 
engendered new vertical and horizontal techniques. What new 
structural principle they provide to supplant the older concept, 
and what functions, both individual and combined, these new 
techniques fulfill, neither Stravinsky nor any of his interpreters 
has revealed ... 

The question ... to which his music gives rise ... is of a 
fundamental nature, since it underlies a concept that is common 
to every form of expression-the law of unity and coherence. Can 
a system, however new and inventive it may be in reflecting the 
thought and life of its period, be an adequate substitute for tonality, 
unless it replaces the older principle of coherence with a structural 
principle of its own? This is a question the reader must decide for 
himself. (348-49) 

In phrasing the question of the penultimate sentence, Katz implicitly ad­
vances the view that Stravinsky's music does not have a coherent structural 
principle of its own; thus, while readers are encouraged to answer the ques­
tion for themselves, a decidedly negative interpretation has been given to 
color their opinions.75 

Her pessimistic view of modern music aside, Katz's book was laudable 
for its demonstrations of how an underlying coherence persisted in tonal 
works despite (as the first-edition dust jacket claimed) "the numerous and 



132 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Figure 8: Monograph embossed 
on the front board of Challenge to 
Musical Tradition. 

Figure 9a: "Direction line" of English folk song, 
"0, Give Thanks." 

Figure 9b: "Motion sketch" of Spanish melody (set to the words "Let's Go Fishing"). 

varied changes in technique, style, and form that [took] place" over the 
years, and for the fact that her case studies featured oiiginal analytic graphs, 
not those borrowed from Schenker, as in her 1935 article. 76 Still, her argu­
ments were predicated upon an analytical methodology that would have 
been largely unfamiliar to most readers, which perhaps explains why con­
temporary reviewers tended to be unkind to Katz's efforts. Percy M. Young 
(1947) chastised the author's "formidable combination of pedantry and 
stylistic infelicity" and asserted that" [t]he reader who survives" the book 
"with faculties unimpaired" should be congratulated. Hugo Leichtentritt 
(1945-46) echoed these remarks, and called reading the book "so labori­
ous an effort that I doubt whether in all America more than six persons 
will actually make so heroic an effort." Herman Reichenbach (1945-46) 
acknowledged that "the Schenker method" contains "much that is vital 
and true," and thus warrants a book that will make his approach acces­
sible, but added that "there is considerable reason for suspecting that Miss 
Katz does not possess sufficient motility of mind for presenting the method 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 133 

in its best light." Most damning was the criticism of Paul Henry Lang, who 
took the opportunity to offer a general harangue about the work of 
Schenker and his followers. Lang proclaimed that their "musical theory 
and philosophy is not art, its whole outlook ... lacks feeling ... [They] 
play with music as others play chess ... They see lines only, no colors, and 
their ideas are cold and orderly" (1946:301-2). 

With the passage of time, as more and more readers have come to 
Katz's book with a (frequently favorable) foreknowledge of Schenker's theo­
ries, a former barrier to an appreciation of her positive contributions has 
been removed and assessments have been kinder. As an example, consider 
the more recent evaluation by Jonathan Dunsby and Arnold Whittall: Katz's 
"[p]enetrating technical analysis is tempered continuously by critical re­
sponse-and responsibility. It is the preserve of few to be able to mould 
analysis into such comprehensive musical discourse ... " (1988:55-56). 

Hearing-Gateway to Music (1959) 
Katz's final book (indeed, her final publication of any kind), entitled Hear­
ing-Gateway to Music, was published in 1959 with co-author Ruth Halle 
Rowen. Later a professor of historical musicology at the City University of 
New York, Rowen had been a member of a graduate seminar Weisse con­
ducted at Columbia shortly before his untimely death, in which Schenkerian 
analysis had been introduced.77 In the 1940s, Rowen happened to discover 
that she was living in the same building as Katz, and prompted by the 
coincidence of having had the same teacher, as well as having a mutual 
interest in Schenker's ideas, the two eventually began working together on 
Hearing, designed to introduce implicitly Schenkerian concepts on a more 
elementary level to younger, incipient musicians. 78 The pedagogical impe­
tus for writing the book surely stemmed from Katz's work at the SME, where 
she had instructional contact with such musicians on a weekly basis. 

Schenker's name is nowhere to be found in the main text; it appears 
only within brief remarks "about the authors," in which mention is made 
of Katz's prior "articles on the Schenker method" (3). Still, the book's 
Schenkerian foundations are manifest. Although no actual graphing is 
included, the authors introduce various surrogates. In chapter 2, there are 
"direction lines," which signify "the approximate path of the tones of a 
melody as they move upward or downward" (13); an example represent­
ing the beginning of the English folk song "0, Give Thanks" is reproduced 
in figure 9a. In chapter 3, these yield to "motion sketches," which provide 
a "more accurate way of picturing a melody" by showing "both the direc­
tion and the numbers [i.e., scale degrees] of the tones" (19); an example 
representing a Spanish melody (set to the words "Let's Go Fishing") is 
reproduced in figure 9b.79 Later, students are asked to design a "'skeleton' 



134 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

motion sketch" and compare it with the "actual melody" (46). 
Furthering the interpretation of melody, in chapter 6 ("Melodic Mo­

tion") the authors consider its "starting" and "target" tones (45), and their 
discussion of neighboring motion (48) is definitely of a Schenkerian bent. 
Here and elsewhere it is emphasized that the same pitch may serve differ­
ent functions in different contexts (see, e.g., p. 48). In chapter 9 ("Power 
Tones and Melodic Goals"), the authors present the tonic-triad scale de­
grees as "power tones" that "have the strength to attract other tones" (68). 
Students are, however, cautioned that within a local context these notes 

f\ 
may serve a more decorative role; as the authors advise, "It is possible for 3 
to appear as a power tone, a passing tone, and a neighbor tone in the same 
melody" (71).80 Chapter 14 ("The Horizontal Chord") is devoted to ways 
in which the tones of a chord may be presented melodically (i.e., succes­
sively), but with the interpolation of various embellishing (e.g., passing 
and neighboring) tones. In one example (120), using an excerpt from 
Mozart's Piano Sonata in F, K 547a (first movement, mm. 1-4), the au­
thors illustrate "neighbor tones around a horizontal chord" and ask the 
student "what chord is prolonged throughout the ... passage?" Elsewhere, 
the concept of "interruption" is presented and defined in a manner con­
sistent with Schenker's usage (see, e.g., pp. 73-74, 78, and 104); and the 
authors also make reference to "transfer of register" (42) and voice ex­
changes (94) .81 

As the focus is gradually shifted from purely melodic to harmonic 
materials, the various roles of chords are considered. In an earlier example 
(119) , Katz and Rowen had shown a melody that passed from g to § above 

f\ 
a tonic chord, with the gap filled by a dissonant passing tone (4); the same 
melodic motion had then been altered so that the passing 4 was "sup­
ported by a V chord." Other chords are likewise shown in their passing, 
neighboring, and truly "harmonic" functions, and the nature of the 
"cadential~" is also considered (147-48). The authors' summary reveals 
an interpretive sophistication rarely encountered in elementary musician­
ship books even today: 

[T]he terms "harmony" and "chord" sometimes are regarded as 
synonymous, [but] there is a real distinction between a chord that 
serves as a neighbor or passing chord and a chord that shows a 
fifth association either with I or with V. Since the strongest 
connection between any two chords is the fifth association, all such 
chords will be called "harmonic chords." On the other hand, those 
chords which arise as a result of voice-leading, such as a passing 
chord or neighbor chord, will be indicated according to the specific 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 135 

functions they demonstrate. All harmonies are chords, yet not all 
chords express harmonic relationships ... (152) 

To know the name of a chord and its position in each key is a 
necessary aid to hearing and reading music. Yet true musicianship 
and interpretation require more of the ear. To understand the 
meaning of motion demands that we not only know the chord we 
hear, but also the purpose it serves, that is, the specific kind of 
chord it is in the phrase, the part, or the entire composition. Such 
ability to differentiate between the use of a chord in a passing or 
in a neighbor capacity and its place in a harmonic progression is 
the difference between active and passive listening. (161) 

According to Rowen, Katz considered writing a sequel to Heanngthat would 
have continued on a more advanced level. Unfortunately, the co-authors' 
different obligations prohibited another collaboration, and the book never 
came about. 82 

IV. Summary 
"Analysis or Synthesis?" and Heanngare Katz's most obscure publications­
the former because the journal in which the article appeared is not widely 
held, and the latter because it circulated in numbers perhaps only a third 
of those of her 1945 book.83 Their unfamiliarity is most unfortunate be­
cause, in many ways, they reflect the primary focus of Katz's work: music 
pedagogy via Schenker. Recall that the 1936 private course she advertised 
(fig. 5) was billed as a "course for teachers." Likewise, her courses at Co­
lumbia Teachers College demonstrated how the Schenkerian approach 
could affect "the hearing, teaching, and performance of music." Her in­
terest in proselytizing other teachers and in developing a Schenker peda­
gogy was likely due, in part, to the influence of her own teacher Hans 
Weisse, who, as I have argued in Berry (2003), was also primarily inter­
ested in teaching. Even Weisse's one English-language article, "The Music 
Teacher's Dilemma," was intended for an audience of other teachers, hav­
ing been delivered originally at a meeting of the MTNA. Like Weisse, Katz 
seems to have been more interested in directly communicating Schenker's 
ideas to others than in publishing articles or analyses. However, due to the 
places at which Katz taught-which were mostly separate from mainstream 
conservatories and colleges or universities-she was able to reach students 
of much more diverse backgrounds (and ages) than those with whom most 
of the other early Schenkerians in this country would have had contact. 
From middle-aged workers at the Rand School to teenage instrumentalists 
at the SME, she introduced Schenker to countless people in and around 
New York, for nearly four decades. 



136 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

In contemplating Katz's many activities as a music teacher, analyst, 
and author, a remaining focus comes to mind. Beca.use it seems atypical, 
we must explicitly acknowledge that the person involved in all of these 
activities was a woman. Music theory was then and remains today a male­
dominated field in the U.S.84 This may be especially true of Schenkerian 
analysis,85 which, moreover, has even been labeled by some as a "mascu­
line" theoretical system-one that emphasizes (helterosexual) male dis­
course and corresponds to a male sexual metaphor.81i It may be surprising, 
then, that in the course of the preceding study the names and roles of 
several women (in addition to Katz herself), have emerged, all of whom 
who were invested in the early promotion of Schenker's ideas in this coun­
try. Anne Holden and Lyn Egli, co-founders of the SME, learned of 
Schenker in the early 1930s while in Vienna, and subsequently studied the 
approach in New York (Egli with Weisse and, later, Holden with Salzer); 
through employing Katz at the SME, they certainly facilitated the spread 
of Schenkerian analysis. Herta Schweiger gave a 1938 paper on Schenker 
and other theorists. Felix Salzer's scholarship course at the YMHA was es­
tablished in 1943 in Dora Fineberg's memory, due to the fact that 
Schenkerian analysis was "so close to [her] heart." And Ruth Halle Rowen 
learned of Schenker from Weisse in 1939-40, and in 1959 co-authored 
with Katz a book that introduced implicitly Schenkerian concepts to young 
musicians.87 

Within this context, it should also be noted that Schenker himself 
taught many female students, including Agnes Becker, Toni Colbert, Sophie 
Deutsch, Angelika (Angi) Elias, Anna Fried, Marianne Kahn, Maria 
Komorn, Trude Kral, Grete Kraus, and Evelina Pairamall.88 At least two of 
these-Deutsch and Elias-helped support Schenker's work financially.89 
In terms of their analytic work and other types of assistance, some of these 
also ranked among Schenker's most important pupils of either sex. For 
example, the legendary analysis seminar that met weekly in Schenker's 
apartment in the early 1930s, from which FunfUrlinie-Tafeln resulted, was 
comprised of equal numbers of women (Kraus and Kral) and men (Salzer 
and Willfort). An especially significant student was Elias. She began study­
ing with Schenker by 1912-1390 and later, apparently as his assistant, "she 
prepared the final copies of his completed analyses, perhaps for publica­
tion" (Cadwallader and Pastille 1999:31). Moreover, according to Schenker's 
student Felix-Eberhard von Cube, Elias was responsible for first conceiving 
of an important convention: 

Schenker was evidently having difficulty devising a notation [that] 
would show hierarchical relationships among notes in a single 
analytical graph: attempts to use a variety of not e·· head shapes and 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 137 

sizes proved far too cumbersome. It was ... [Elias] who suggested 
to her teacher that the fundamental notes of a graph could be 
hollow, and beamed together. Thus the visual representation of 
Schenker's most celebrated theoretical concept, the Ursatz ... 
must be partly credited to ... [her]. (Drabkin 1984-85:185-86) 

In both Schenker's Vienna and Katz's New York, women were active in 
studying and promoting the theory. Most of them have remained largely 
unknown, perhaps because, due to unfortunate societal forces, they were 
not encouraged to publish the results of their work; accordingly, their con­
tributions were not transmitted in written form, but instead subsisted less 
tangibly in the memories of their colleagues or students.91 Even Katz, who 
achieved more within music theory than the other women named above, 
has not been fully recognized for her many activites. Through this essay, I 
hope to have corrected that oversight-to have greatly amplified our knowl­
edge about an important early Schenkerian who has previously been little 
more than a name in bibliographies. Along the way, I hope to have also 
raised awareness of the several women who had roles in the early Schenker 
community, especially in its American incarnation. Without recognizing 
all of these contributions, one has an incomplete picture of the true na­
ture and extent of its development. 

Notes 
1. In a letter dated June 1,1927, from Schenker to his student Felix-Eberhard 

von Cube, the former affirms that his ideas continue "to be felt more widely: 
Edinburgh (also New York), Leipzig, Stuttgart, Vienna ... , [Otto] Vrieslander in 
Munich ... , you [von Cube] in Duisburg, and [August] Halm etc. ... " (quoted 
and translated in Drabkin 1984-85:182). All references are to Austro-German cit­
ies except two. John Petrie Dunn, a Scottish pianist who had studied with Schenker 
before the First World War, was a professor at the University of Edinburgh when 
these words were written. The reference to New York is not so easily explained, 
although I address possible connections in Berry (2004). 

2. These two schools, in Princeton, New Jersey, and New Haven, Connecticut, 
are within a roughly eighty-mile radius of New York City. However, it was due not 
to proximity per se but to New York-trained Schenker disciples-Milton Babbitt 
and Allen Forte, respectively-through whom these universities came to embrace 
Schenkerian ideas. Babbitt learned of Schenker during private lessons with Roger 
Sessions, and Forte from studies with Alvin Bauman (a student of Hans Weisse's) 
at Columbia University. 

3. For more on the development of Schenkerian concepts in the U.S., see 
Austin (1974), Berry (Forthcoming-a, 2003), Hinton 1998, Rothstein (1986, 1990), 
and Willner (1985). 

4. There are no entries on Katz in any musical reference work of which I am 
aware, including any edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary or the New Grove Dic-



138 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

tionary of Music and Musicians. 
5. Katz had no direct descendants. The executor of her estate was her nephew, 

Eugene Katz, whose daughter, Barbara Eisold, has told me that she knows of no 
personal papers or music-related materials that might have been kept. 

6. She had two brothers and a sister. 
7. Katz would later make references to Casella (1883-1947) in two of her 

publications. She referred (in disagreement) to Casella (1924) in Katz (1945:39), 
and in the chapter on rhythm in Hearing-Gateway to Mus;ic she included an eight­
bar excerpt from his composition Pupazzetti (Katz and Rowen 1959:63). Inciden­
tally, given the connection between Katz and Casella, and later between Katz and 
Schenker's theories, it is interesting to note that Schenker had disparaged Casella 
upon hearing a work of the latter on a radio concert of October 18, 1929, con­
ducted by Joseph Szigeti. In a diary entry of that date, Schenker eschewed descrip­
tion of the Casella composition (unidentified by Schenker), writing "whatever 
[words] one uses, they would have more coherence than this music" (welche [Wartel 
man auch gebraucht, sie hiitten mehr Zusammenhang als diese Musik) (Federhofer 
1985:228). 

8. She also did the same for the Packer Alumnae Dramatic Association. 
9. The Alumnae Association of Packer contributed to the formation of what 

became the School Settlement, and over the years many alumnae volunteered 
their time to this community service. It was perhaps due to this connection that 
Katz became involved. 

10. The former school was located on East 3rd Street, the latter on West 121st 
Street. For more on the role of music in settlements, see McFarland (1935). Re­
flections on and details of David Mannes's involvement in the settlement houses 
are offered in Mannes (1949). 

11. Music is not indicated as among the activities of the School Settlement 
Association in Kennedy et al. (1935: table 1, inserted between pp. 6 and 7). How­
ever, that survey was taken in the late 1920s; the Settlement may have been more 
active musically during Katz's time there. 

12. According to Packer records, her family addres~: was 308 MacDonough 
(Brooklyn); the settlement was located at 120 Jackson. The latter was roughly four 
miles from Packer's address, 170 Joralemon. 

13. Scalero had taught for six years at Mannes before accepting an offer at 
Curtis in 1928, "at four times the [Mannes] salary." When he left, Mannes agreed 
that students who wished to continue under him should follow him to Philadel­
phia (Mannes 1949:258-59). 

14. Leopold Mannes temporarily left the school and the music profession (to 
become the co-developer of Kodak's Kodachrome process of color photography) 
immediately before the arrival of Weisse, who was hired to fill the position. Weisse 
taught both composition and analysis, but it is unknown whether Katz continued 
studies in composition under him, or abandoned compositional studies after 
Leopold Mannes's departure in order to concentrate on the "Schenker approach." 

15. An undated "teacher's agreement" (perhaps from 1935) in the Rand School 
archive reads: "Financial arrangement: Minimum of$5.00 a session for each class. 
Income above $5.00 per session is to be divided 50-50." 

16. This supposition is based on a description of the school given later, in the 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 139 

main text of this article. 
17. For example, subventions were given for both volumes of Kontrapunkt by 

Baron Alphons von Rothschild, for Meisterwerk II and Der freie Satz by Anthony van 
Hoboken (both of whom had studied with Schenker), and for Meisterwerk III by 
conductor-colleague Wilhelm Furtwangler. Schenker also received support from 
such students as Sophie Deutsch and Angelika (Angi) Elias. (See various com­
mentary in Federhofer 1985.) 

18. "Schwere, schwerste Irrtiimer und Verbrechen sind es somit, deren sich 
gleichermaB en Wagner wie Marx an der deutschen Menschheit schuldig gemacht 
haben." Ever proud of what the German mind could produce, Schenker went on 
to add that "even as mistakes they are, in their German-ness, still more magnifi­
cent than any other people can boast" (e[bst als Irrtiimer noch so deutsch-erhaben, wie 
sie iihnlich kein Volk auft.uweisen hat). In a somewhat more humorous vein, Schenker 
suggested that a composer like Jacques Offenbach should be called in to "drive 
away today's delusions by putting all the false gods of the West and their German 
imitators, including Marx and comrades, onto the operetta stage for the purpose 
of general ridicule" (1987, 2:xvi). 

19. The cited Marxist course was offered at Rand in the same Spring 1936 
term as a course by Katz entitled "Music of the Masters," about which evidence 
suggests that a Schenkerian approach may have been partly taken (as will be ad­
dressed later). 

20. For more on the school, see Cornell (1976). This monograph, however, 
ignores musical instruction at the school; my comments on that topic have been 
derived from studies of the Rand archive itself. 

21. The story of Ruggles's involvement with the Rand School is reported in 
Ziffrin (1979:13-17). 

22. The other peak of interest in the school came during the first World War. 
23. From Katz's handwritten outline (in the Rand archive); also duplicated in 

a published course bulletin for 1934-35. In the latter, the course is described as 
continuing for twenty-seven sessions, from September 25, 1934, through April 23, 
1935, with a fee of $6.00 for the whole season or $4.00 for the half season. 

For part of 1936 through 1938, the Rand School Chorus was under the direc­
tion of Ada Rifkin. By January 1939 it was under William Parson (perhaps the 
same [?] William Parson who did the musical direction and vocal arrangements 
for Cole Porter's 1943 Broadway musical, Something for the Boys). The post-Katz 
form of the Rand School Chorus was not listed as a "course" and did not charge a 
fee for participants. 

24. The brochure went on to indicate that "It is planned to have our High 
School graduates continue their studies in the Rand School for two additional 
years in the 'Workers Training Course.' There is every reason then, to believe that 
these students with six years' study at the Rand School behind them, will be able to 
serve the Socialist Movement intelligently and well." 

25. Weil's name underwent some changes in the Rand listings: in Fall 1931 he 
appears as "Hyman Kurzweil," in Spring 1932 as "H. Kurz Weil," and then in Fall 
1932 as "Kurz Weil." 

26. Katz had analyzed the subject of this fugue the year before in Katz (1935), 
which, in turn, stemmed from its consideration in Schenker (1996c). 



140 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

27. The graph was associated with Schenker (1923). 
28. In Der freie Satz they appear as part of figure 43. For more on Schenkerian 

interpretations of this prelude, see Drabkin (1989), which considers analyses by 
Schenker, Westergaard, Forte and Gilbert, and NeumeyeJr. 

29. The lettering of each level, beginning with the foreground as "A," was also 
followed in Katz (1935). 

30. The school seems to have first opened in Fa1l19~\7. 
3l. The abstract is published as Schweiger (1940). 
32. According to Rutkoff and Scott (1986:39), 65% of students were women 

during the 1920s. I am assuming that a female majority persisted at least into the 
early 1930s. 

33. In 1933-34, Thompson also served as Katz's pianist at Rand for "The So­
nata and the Symphony" and "National Tendencies in Modern Music." 

34. I would like to thank Steve Siegel, archivist at the 92nd Street Y, for his 
help in finding information about the courses cited below. 

35. These were to have been titled "From the Folksong to the Symphony" 
(Fall 1935) and "The Re-Creation of Music" (Spring 1936). The latter was to have 
been under the auspices of the education department, not the music school. 

36. Around that time, Dessau had moved to Southern California, where he 
began writing music for the movies. 

37. In 1989, Mannes became an independent division of the The New School 
for Social Research (later renamed New School University). It was unaffiliated in 
Katz's time. 

38. In a letter to Rand's Educational Director William E. Bohn, in the school's 
archive, Katz refers to the Roerich Museum as the "Institute of (Adult) Advanced 
Education." In her response to a questionnaire (see n. 39), Katz indicates that she 
lectured at the "Inst[itutel of Adult Education." Given these two sources in con­
junction, it is clear that she is referring to the same place. 

39. References to all of these organizations (except DX the Woman's Club of 
Brooklyn and the Woodmere Music Club) come from a "Questionnaire for Bio­
graphical Notes in Rand School Bulletin," in the Rand ar,chive. It is undated, but 
a reference to Katz's teaching at the Westchester Branch of the Mannes School 
suggests 1936 as the terminus post quem. I assume that the citation of her lecturing 
at the "Women's Club of The Oranges" refers to the Oranges of Essex County, 
New Jersey, which was roughly twenty miles from Katz's Manhattan apartment. I 
am unaware of the particular organization identified as the Drama Study Club. I 
assume that the Briarcliff Manor School is a school in the affluent Village of Briarcliff 
Manor, which was about twenty miles from Katz's Manhattan apartment. The Unity 
House was likely a resort owned by the International Ladies' Garment Workers 
Union (ILGWU). This summer retreat for members was situated in the Pocono 
Mountains (Bushkill, Pa.); it offered lecture series, among other activities, and 
thus Katz would have had a forum. Furthermore, Katz's involvement there would 
be in keeping with the Rand School's involvement with the union, and it would be 
consistent with the fact that the cited source also indicates that Katz lectured at 
"The LL.G.U.," surely a reference to the ILGWU. 

40. I have found references to her directing the Woodmere Choral Club as 
well as The Choral of the Five Towns; I assume these chorales are identical, as 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 141 

Woodmere is one of the communities referred to as "The Five Towns" (along with 
Cedarhurst, Hewlet, Inwood, and Lawrence). They are located in southern Long 
Island and are among Long Island's oldest and wealthiest communities. It is inter­
esting to note that Katz's involvement with this chorus came immediately after her 
attempts at organizing a Rand Chorus; apparently, choral conducting was very 
much on her mind at the time. 

41. It has been reported that Salzer emigrated to the U.S. in 1939 (see, e.g., 
Page 1986). His activities in this country prior to assuming Weisse's position, in 
early 1940, are unknown to me. 

42. During this time, Katz also was in contact with Ernst Oster, a student of 
Oswald Jonas's (and the eventual translator of Schenker's Der freie Satz) , who is 
thanked for "his careful examination and checking of the graphs throughout the 
book" (vii). In a personal communication to me, Allen Forte has said that he had 
been told by Oster that some of the Haydn graphs in Katz's book were actually by 
Oster. Nonetheless, Katz apparently did not have the same degree of contact and 
rapport with Oster as she did with Salzer; indeed, Carl Schachter has told me that 
Oster was paid (by Katz) for his services. 

43. Katz also provided an endorsement for the dust jacket of the book's first 
edition, in which she wrote that she could "think of no other person, interested in 
the ideas of Schenker, who would have been equally capable of giving such a clear 
and well-authenticated presentation of these fundamental musical truths." 

44. Obviously, with]. S. Bach as the earliest selected composer in Challenge, a 
seventeenth-century label is questionable, although a few of Bach's works may 
have been composed before or around 1700 (e.g., BWV 749, "Herr Jesu Christ, 
dich zu uns wend"; BWV 750, "Herr Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht"; BWV 756, 
"Nun ruhen aBe Walder"; and some of the earliest chorales from the]. G. 
Neumeister manuscript). I have found no materials that indicate which seven­
teenth-century composer(s) might have been included in the course; based on 
the 1932 Rand outline of figure 3a, Monteverdi is a possibility. 

45. Allen Forte (who received his B.A. and M.A. from Columbia in 1950 and 
1952, respectively) has told me that Murphy regularly invited Katz to lecture on 
Schenker at Teachers College. These lectures could have been independent of 
her Schenker course, or they could have been the same (Forte did not attend 
them, so he is unsure). Incidentally, in the preface to Forte (1955), which offers 
Schenker-influenced analytic sketches of twentieth-century compositions, he also 
acknowledges an "indebtedness to ... Murphy for his sustaining interest" (vi). 

46. See commentary under "Weisse at Columbia" in Berry (2003:114-15). 
47. In addition to his "sustaining interest" in Forte (1955), Murphy also served, 

along with William]. Mitchell, as a member of the dissertation committee of 
Silberman (1949). Silberman's titular "four theories" are those of Riemann, 
Schenker, Hindemith, and Schillinger; the chapter on Schenker (pp. 28-72) is 
twice the length of those devoted to the other three. Among Murphy's unpub­
lished teaching materials is a handout on the melodic sequence, in which he ana­
lyzed a sequential passage from the finale of Brahms's Second Symphony. He pro­
vides a "reduction" that is more a rhythmic simplification than a Schenkerian re­
ductive graph; but he nonetheless indicates the directed harmonic motion from I 
to Vi, and he connects with a beam the J and 5 of the whole-tone-infused bass. 



142 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

Given Murphy's awareness of the "Schenker approach," it is not unreasonable to 
conjecture that he was influenced by it when designing his own "reduction." The 
handout is reproduced in Olsen (1973:235). It is undated but, based on surround­
ing handouts, it is likely from 1960. It is headed "Manhattan School of Music / 
Theory 22"; Murphy was a theory instructor there from 1923 (when it was known 
as the Neighborhood Music School) until 1962. 

48. At some point after the mid-1950s, the institution changed its name to the 
School of Musical Education. The dust jacket of Challenge already cites her in­
volvement with the SME. The SME newsletter for June 1953 (see n. 56) suggests 
an even longer association when it proclaims that Katz "has found time to teach 
the S.M.E. courses in musical analysis since the beginning of our existence." This 
would seem to mean "since 1934," but that early a date is Ulnlikely, given that Katz 
did not mention the school in her Rand questionnaire (see n. 39). 

49. The school was very successful in training its younger students: over 60% 
of SME graduates were accepted into the High School of Music and Art (now the 
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts), some 
concurrent with their final years at SME (reported in Holden 1986:213). 

50. In addition to other activities, Holden studied flute under Friedrich 
Schoenfeld, the principal flutist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and com­
position under Mark Brunswick, an American then living in Vienna. 

51. Around this time (dateline "Vienna, June 2 [1933]"), Holden wrote an 
article for the Nation entitled "Austria is Not Germany." In it, she commented 
about what seemed on the surface to be an all-too-nonchalant attitude by the 
Austrians toward Hitler's persecution of Jews in Germany. However, she ultimately 
asserted that Nazi claims of a "united Germania" were overstated, because "Aus­
tria is not Germany" and "the Austrian divisions of the Hitler storm troops" are a 
"shocking anomaly in a suave and civilized state." Holden (credited as "O.W. 
Holden," in reference to what was apparently her birthname, Orrilla Wood Holden) 
is cited in the "contributors" section as "a former social worker who is now study­
ing music in Vienna" (20). 

52. In 1939, Holden and Egli were joined as co-directors of the SME by Eliza­
beth "Betty" Sheinwold (later Elizabeth Sheinwold Kaplan), author of a duct-flute 
tutorial (Sheinwold 1950) that may have been used at the school. That same year­
perhaps in conjunction with Sheinwold's book-the same publisher issued a fun­
damentals book by Holden, which was also likely used by SME students: "A work­
book for mastering the complete theory and notation of pitch, intervals, chords, 
scales, and key signatures" (Holden 1950:1). I am unaware of whether or not 
Sheinwold had any Schenkerian training. Two other SME co-directors served 
shorter terms: Frances Cowles for the first ten years of the school, and Gertrude 
Davis for a period beginning in 1949. 

53. I am indebted to Paula Eisenstein Baker, a student who was at the SME 
from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, for sharing this handout with me. 

54. The provenance seems likely, due not only to the manifest associations 
between Humperdinck's and Katz's melodies, but also to the "fairy-tale" opera's 
appeal to children-i.e., those of the ages taught by Katz. 

55. Here there is an inconsistency in her labeling: the G
4 

of m. 9 is a lower 
voice as it is ultimately graphed, and yet she labels it as a middle voice in both the 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 143 

textual description and the earlier graph. 
56. I am indebted to Paula Eisenstein Baker for sharing her copy of the news­

letter with me. 
57. Personal interview with Barbara Eisold. It should also be recalled that 

Katz's long-time associate at the SME, Anne Holden, had majored in psychology 
at Barnard College; perhaps she had inspired Katz's appreciation of the field, to 
some degree. 

58. "Deaths," New York Times (May 11,1979): A25. 
59. Lytle's connection with Weisse and Schenker, and various aspects of his 

article, are addressed in Berry (Forthcoming-b). 
60. Katz's article was followed shortly thereafter by another learned 

Schenkerian outline, Waldeck and Broder (1935), in which these concepts were 
also considered. 

6l. Anbruch: Osterreichische Zeitschrift fur Musik 17/5 (May 1935) contains an 
advertisement for the newly released Der freie Satz; an article about Schenker by 
one of his students (Zuckerkandl 1935) appeared in the same issue. 

62. Katz also makes reference to Neue musikalische Theorien und Phantasien, the 
collective heading under which Harmonielehre, the Kontrapunkt volumes, and Der 
freie Satz appeared. But it seems clear (for the reasons cited) that the last compo­
nent either had not yet been published or had not yet made its way to America 
when Katz wrote the article. As further evidence, consider Sessions (1935); its 
issue is dated May-June, and yet Sessions refers to Schenker's "still unavailable 
treatise on form, entitled Der Freie Satz" (175). 

63. See Tonwille 8/9 (1924): 49-5l. Reprinted in Tonwille 10 (1924): 40-42, 
Meisterwerk I (1925): 203-5, and Meisterwerk II (1926): 195-97. 

64. The set of analyses (originally published as a collection of unbound, large 
folded graphs) was intended primarily for Weisse's classes at Mannes, and was 
published jointly in Vienna (by Universal) and New York (by the David Mannes 
Music School) in late 1932. It was reissued in book form as Schenker (1969). A 
sense of how Schenker's analysis of the prelude evolved before its publication in 
FunfUrlinie-Tafeln may be gleaned from letters he sent to his student Felix-Eberhard 
von Cube in 1930, discussing his then-new analysis of the Prelude; see Drabkin 
(1985). 

65. As Schenker put it: "What a barbarian in the representation of content! 
Need I prove, for example, that these 'basic lines' (,melody peaks' he calls them 
elsewhere) have nothing to do with my Urlinie? How could Riemann, if he had 
uncovered only a small piece of the veil over this fundamental secret, have led his 
lines in such Japanese, jagged fashions as we find here?" ("Welch ein Barbar in der 
Darstellung des Inhalts! Brauche ich da etwa zu beweisen, daB diese 'Grundziige' 
(,Melodiespitzen' nennt er sie andernorts) mit meiner Urlinie nichts zu schaffen 
haben? Wie hatte denn sonst Riemann, wenn er nur ein Endchen vom Schleier 
dieses Urgeheimnisses geliiftet hatte, seine Linien in so japanischen Winkelziigen 
fiihren konnen, wie wir sie hier finden?") (1921a:45). 

Incidentally, unlike Schenker, Katz excerpted Riemann's analysis incompletely, 
in that his idiomatic chord symbols were omitted from their proper placement 
underneath the melodic part. Thus, his melodic analysis was severed from a 
contextualizing component; such a presentation would be roughly analogous to 



144 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

presenting Schenker's Urlinie without its counterpointed Grundbrechung. 
66. It is preserved in the Oster Collection, file 17. That the essay was intended 

as a lecture-or oral presentation-is clear from not only the title-page subhead­
ing, "Vortrag" ("lecture"), but also references to "meine geehrten Zuhorer" ("my 
dear audience"). 

67. It seems much more likely that Katz's citation of these works stems from 
Weisse than from Schenker because, prior to Der freie Satz, Schenker had only 
considered Mozart's "Dissonance" Quartet briefly, in Ha:rmonielehre (1906), and 
thus before he developed voice-leading graphs; and the second movement of 
Beethoven's op. 101 had only been considered in Schenker's relatively early ex­
planatory edition of that work (1920). 

68. In September 1936, it assumed a more national focus and was renamed 
Music Teachers' Review; it was later again renamed Music Teachers' Quarterly, and 
ceased publication in winter 1948. I would like to thank Stephen Soderberg of the 
Library of Congress (Music Division) for helping me obtain a copy of this obscure 
article. 

The supposition that Katz's article (and the journal in which it appeared) was 
aimed at a largely female audience is given support when Katz refers to a hypo­
thetical teacher as "she" (3), and when Katz asks "Can [Schenker's] synthetic 
method be used by the teacher in herwork ... " (5; emphasis mine). In other 
writings, Katz uses the "masculine generic," i.e., male pronouns when referring 
generally to people whether male or female; she even uses it in the 1936 article 
when referring to students. In such a context, the use of female pronouns when 
referring to teachers is striking, as is her reference to those who teach "small chil­
dren as well as adults." It is possible that Katz was addressing an audience of prima­
rily female music teachers, who perhaps gave private piano lessons at their homes, 
a type of teacher that was common at the time, in communities both large and 
small across the U.S. 

69. The 1936 article's examples 1, 2, and 3, come from (respectively) the 
1935 article's exam~les 1/2/3 (combined), 6 (modified to show a ~ - ~ - i top 
voice instead of g - 4 - ~), and 11. 

70. The remark resonated with the disdain Schenker himself expressed about 
the rise of "science" (Wissenschaft) over art within the music academy. The opinion 
is expressed succinctly by Schenker when he writes: "Music is always an art-in its 
composition, in its performance, even in its history. Under no circumstance is it a 
science" (l979:xxiii). 

71. It must be noted that the extent to (and manner in) which a recognition 
of functional vs. non-functional harmonies should influence performance is not 
without debate, even among Schenkerians. See, for example, commentary in 
Rothstein (1995). 

72. Katz expressly cited Walter Piston as an exponent of this approach; Weisse 
likewise condemned a Piston analysis in his 1936 article (but without naming the 
source of the excerpt). For Katz, it was the analyses found in Piston (1941); for 
Weisse, it had been an analysis in the book's precursor (Pi:;ton 1933). 

73. "Des letzten Meisters deutscher Tonkunst." This reference to Brahms comes 
from the dedication of Schenker (1912). 

74. Schenker graphed Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds (composed 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 145 

1923-24) in 1996a; and Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of]. S. Bach 
(composed 1904) in 1996b. In various writings, Schenker also made references to 
another work by Reger (the Piano Quintet of 1901-2) and a few works by Richard 
Strauss, of which only Salome (1903-5) dates from the twentieth century. However, 
graphs were not provided; for that matter, he also never graphed Wagner's music. 

75. This circumstance surely accounts for Allen Forte's characterization of 
Katz's writing style in Challenge as "pugnacious" and "gladiatorial" (1998:8). 

76. Only in the chapter on Beethoven does Katz tread on ground covered by 
Schenker, specifically when she addresses the "Eroica" Symphony (as covered by 
Schenker in Meisterwerk III) and the "Appassionata" Piano Sonata, op. 57 (as cov­
ered by Schenker in Tonwille 7 and Der freie Satz). Even there, however, the graphs 
appear to be chiefly her own. 

77. Rowen had also completed an undergraduate thesis at Barnard, for which 
William]. Mitchell had been the advisor (a fact communicated to me in a per­
sonal interview). 

78. The book was published by Summy-Birchard, for whom Schenker's stu­
dent OswaldJonas had edited several collections of keyboard music in the mid-to­
late 1950s. However,Jonas's connection with the company apparently had noth­
ing to do with Katz's publication there. According to Rowen, they began work 
without a publisher in mind; after the book's completion, one of Katz's (former?) 
students, who was then working for Summy-Birchard, contacted the company on 
her behalf. 

79. Because a primary pedagogical component of the book is to induce per­
formances or singing of everything to be analyzed, the authors provide English 
lyrics for almost all melodies; some are their owu translations of the customary 
texts, while others are original words by the authors-e.g., "Let's Go Fishing" (p. 
19, ex. 15), which is not identified beyond the designation "Spanish." 

80. This caveat seems to have been lost on one of the few reviewers of the 
book. Regarding the presentation of "power tones," Leroy Baumgartner wrote: 
"Although the term is picturesque and apparently new, it rests on the rather old 
and questionable assumption that the tones of the tonic triad necessarily create a 
feeling of finality, while all the remaining scale steps have the function of moving 
directly in predictable ways to these components of tonic harmony (collectively 
designated as 'inactive scale steps' or 'rest tones'). This concept, though defen­
sible in some very simple phrases, breaks dowu as soon as a chord other than the 
tonic becomes a goal of motion, and it may therefore be highly misleading to 
mention it at all without pointing out that its applicability is extremely limited" 
(1960). Baumgartner must have also missed the connection between Katz's and 
Rowen's formulations and Schenker's theories, as it was never mentioned. In a 
striking coincidence, the review happened to be of three books, one of which was 
by another former Weisse student, Alvin Bauman. This latter book was Bauman 
and Walton (1959), the precursor of which (Bauman 1947) had incorporated 
some elementary Schenkerian ideas. 

81. However, the authors' endorsement of modes (see chapter 15, "Mode," 
especially p. 133) is certainly at odds with Schenker's opinions! 

82. Personal interview with Ruth Halle Rowen. 
83. As an indication of the obscurity of "Analysis or Synthesis?" consider the 



146 CURRENT MUSICOLOGY 

following comment in a 1949 survey of Schenkerian literature: "Katz also speaks of 
some articles on Schenker in the Teacher's Review [sic] which we have not been able 
to identity" (Mann 1949:4, n. 4). According to my late-2003 query of the OCLC 
Online Union Catalog (WorldCat), 492 of the participating libraries hold the origi­
nal edition of Challenge while only 157 hold Hearing. 

84. In the early decades of Katz's work, music theory had yet to emerge (as it 
has since) as a more distinct species of musicology. Still, it is fair to say that "musi­
cology" (more broadly defined) was then also a male-dominated field. As evidence, 
consider that the composer Ruth Crawford was excluded from the 1930 meeting 
at which the New York Musicological Society (precursor to the American Musico­
logical Society) was founded, because Charles Seeger (her future husband) "wanted 
to avoid the incipient criticism that musicology was 'women's work'" (Hisama 
1995:291, n. 7). As for the present-day (under)representation of women in the 
music-theory community, consider the following facts reported by the Society for 
Music Theory in the SMT Newsletter 28/1 (2003). In a report of the Publications 
Committee, submitted by Martha Hyde, it was noted that the committee "remains 
concerned about the small number of acceptances of articles by women [for the 
journal Music Theory Spectrum] and has asked the Editor to explore possible rea­
sons" (8). In a report of the Program Committee about the SMT's 2002 confer­
ence in Columbus, Ohio, submitted by Lora Gingerich Dobos, statistics were pro­
vided that showed women authors to represent only 17-25% of submitted and 
accepted papers of regular and special sessions (9). Finally, in a report of the 
Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) , submitted by Janna Saslaw, the pre­
ceding facts are summarized as follows: "The CSW is concerned about representa­
tion of women in the Society, on conference programs, in our publications, and 
on committees. The good news from this year's conference is that the percentage 
of women whose papers were accepted was the same as the percentage of those 
who submitted proposals. However, the bad news is that women sent in only 17% 
of the total regular submissions" (9). For personal reflections of a female music 
theorist trained in the 1990s, see Hisama (2000). 

85. For example, consider five prominent and often-cited anthologies of 
Schenker-related essays:Yeston (1977), Beach (1983), Cadwallader (1990), Siegel 
(1990), and Schachter and Siegel (1999). Together, these volumes represent thirty­
six unique authors, nineteen of whom are represented more than once. There is, 
however, but a single female author among them: Hedi Siegel, who appears in 
both Siegel (1990) and Schachter and Siegel (1999). 

86. For example, Fred Everett Maus has argued that mainstream music theory 
emphasizes (heterosexual) male discourse-what he terms "Schenker and Sets"­
as a way of countering the feminizing or passive role assigned to listeners Q. Michele 
Edwards, in the ILWCJournal [October 1993]: 36--39, reporting on Maus, "Mascu­
line Discourse in Music Theory," a paper delivered at the plenary session of "Femi­
nist Theory and Music II: A Continuing Dialogue," a conference held June 17-20, 
1993, at the Eastman School of Music; see also a published article of the same title, 
Maus 1993). Sally Macarthur has argued that some common analytical models, 
including Schenkerian analysis, "tend to have the function of revealing music to 
be great (and worthy of canonization) if it conforms to a notion of the so-called 
ideal structure, which, in turn, is based on a male/masculine sexual stereotype" 



DAVID CARSON BERRY 147 

(2002:6; see also her comments on p. 71). 
87. Other women could be added to this list, for example (albeit more tan­

gentially), the American philosopher Susanne K. Langer, who refers to such 
Schenkerian concepts as the Urlinie, auskomponierung, and diminution and repeti­
tion (1953: 120-32). 

88. Names are taken from Schenker's lesson books in the Oster collection. 
89. Schenker's diary entry of January 28,1916, notes that Deutsch bequeathed 

3000 Marks annually to him. According to the April 11, 1917, entry, Elias provided 
him with 10,000 Kronen, having professed that she had "unnecessary money" 
(uberflussiges Gelrl) through an annual income of 50,000 Kronen. In the diary entry 
of June 1, 1918, Schenker acknowledged that Elias had provided more funds. 
Diary entries are taken from Federhofer (1985:38). 

90. See Schenker's lesson books in file 3 of the Oster Collection. There are 
also references to herin Schenker's diaries, some of which are quoted in Federhofer 
(1985). 

91. Indeed, of Schenker's own female students, only Elias seems to have pub­
lished Schenker-related work, and even she issued just one article (Elias 1937). 
Within the larger musical community, Greta (Grete) Kraus is probably one of the 
best known of Schenker's students, though as a performer, not theorist. Mter the 
annexation of Austria by Germany, she settled in Canada and eventually taught at 
the University of Toronto. She became a highly regarded solo harpsichordist and 
chamber musician, as well as an esteemed teacher and coach of German lieder. 

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