In his 1986 article entitled “The Americanization of Heinrich Schenker,” William Rothstein explores the development of Schenkerian theory and analysis in North America in the decades following the Second World War. Reflecting on how Schenker’s ideas had been absorbed, disseminated, and, to a certain extent, adapted by the English-speaking academic community in the United States, Rothstein remarks:

I do not really imagine that there exists a secret room – somewhere at Mannes, for example, that being the Mecca of our movement – in which fanatical Schenkerians plot new conquests. Nor do I believe that there is a map in that room with pins stuck in it, each pin representing a music department or conservatory at which Schenkerianism is propagated. But it is at least not too difficult to imagine what such a map would look like; and, wherever it might be, it is certain that the number of pins in it is steadily increasing. Clearly, the Schenkerian empire is still in its expanding phase.[2]

The tone of Rothstein’s evaluation is playful and tongue-in-cheek, but his characterization nevertheless captures a sense that at least some academics at the time were alarmed – and perhaps also threatened – by the spread of Schenkerian theory in music departments across the country.[3] This conquering of intradisciplinary territory, however, did not occur without incurring significant casualties: even as Schenker’s ideas were gaining acceptance among theorists, certain adjustments had to be made in the way American academics discussed and applied Schenker’s ideas. Rothstein writes that “Schenker’s voice is that of the prophet, pronouncing sacred mysteries from on high,”[4] while the “American academic dialect” is “sober and dispassionate” and requires that “no tenet should be too fiercely held.”[5] Rothstein notes that such cultural adjustments, though they facilitate the American reception of Schenker’s ideas, lead to subtle, but fundamental, changes in Schenkerian theory and the claims it may make.[6] Extending and expanding Rothstein’s observations, Robert Snarrenberg argues that even more was lost in the transatlantic journey of Schenker’s thought. For Snarrenberg, the Americanization of Schenkerian thought abandons one of Schenker’s central aesthetic ideals: the notion of organicism.[7] Schenker’s ideas are Americanized when they are adjusted to more closely conform to the values, practices, and priorities of American music theory discourse. Schenker’s thought is thus not only Americanized, it seems, but also transformed.

Discussions of Arnold Schoenberg’s theoretical writing in English are often laced with comparisons to Schenker’s work. Jonathan Dunsby, for instance, refers to Schenker in remarking that “one cannot speak of Schoenberg as the ‘above all’ in music theory without returning to Vienna and that other ascendant – but not, I believe, transcendent – theorist.”[8] In fact, according to Dunsby, the expansion of Schenkerianism in England and the United States has “distracted the attention of a large community of potential students of Schoenberg’s theories.”[9] More than a decade earlier, Walter Frisch observed that “the Schoenberg critical tradition has been slow to establish itself in the United States” and that “one reason undoubtedly is the dominance of Schenkerian analysis and theory.”[10] Whatever role Schenkerianism may have played in the marginalization of Schoenberg’s theoretical work in North America over the past several decades, the notion that Schenker’s ideas were altered in their intercontinental translation raises questions about the American reception of Schoenberg’s work. Have Schoenberg’s ideas also been adapted to fit North American academic culture? And if so, have they too been transformed? In this sense, has there been an “Americanization” of Arnold Schoenberg?

In considering the reception of Schoenberg’s theories in the American academy, it will be useful to make several distinctions about the focus of our investigation. While Schoenberg is most often celebrated primarily as a composer – indeed as one of the most consequential composers of the twentieth century – his compositions will be considered only peripherally in what follows. We will instead explore the impact of his theoretical writing, and most of the music Schoenberg considers in these texts is, in fact, music composed by others (or even music that might potentially be composed, either by himself or others). We will also not focus on the substantial body of theoretical and analytical scholarship concerning Schoenberg’s music when that scholarship is not centrally based in Schoenberg’s theoretical works. Certainly the logical unfolding of musical material plays a central role in Milton Babbitt’s theories of twelve-tone music, just as the unity of musical time and space regarding pitch relationships is crucial to Allen Forte’s (pitch-class sets) and George Perle’s (intervallic cells) theories of atonal music.[11] Likewise, the importance of motivic unity can be observed in the work of David Lewin and Andrew Mead.[12] But while these writings ground themselves in important aspects of Schoenbergian musical values, they are developed more from Schoenberg’s compositional practice than from his theoretical works. That is, they are grounded more on what he did as a composer than on what he wrote as a theorist.[13] Questions of Americanization in what follows are also not primarily concerned with possible changes or adjustments in Schoenberg’s personal, intellectual, or professional life during his years in America, nor in the ways he may have adjusted his own theoretical writing to address contexts in his new homeland – his “self-Americanization.” These matters have been explored by Dika Newlin[14] and most recently and comprehensively by Sabine Feisst,[15] among others. Our primary concern will be to track how Schoenberg’s theoretical ideas were adopted and developed in English by others (primarily in North America), as well as to determine how these ideas might have been adapted, adjusted, and even transformed in the process.

1. English Translations of Schoenberg’s Writings

As we begin, let us briefly survey how much of Schoenberg’s writing has been available in English over the decades, and even how Schoenberg’s theoretical ideas might have been transmitted through others. While an English translation of Egon Wellesz’s biography of Schoenberg was published in 1925, and Frederick Martens’s brief biography had appeared in 1922, technical writing about Schoenberg’s music and thought in English was less common in the period before the late 1940s.[16] While we often think of Erwin Stein’s 1924 essay “Neue Formprinzipien” as an important early description of Schoenberg’s compositional practice leading up to the twelve-tone method (and as having a certain authority by virtue of coming from inside the Schoenberg circle), the English translation of this essay did not appear until 1953 when it was included in Stein’s Orpheus in New Guises. Stein did, however, publish a substantial essay on Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music in the New York-based periodical Modern Music in 1930. Other early treatments of Schoenberg’s music can be found in texts by Hugo Leichtentritt, Richard S. Hill, Ernst Krenek, and Karl Eschman, among others.[17] Dika Newlin’s translation of René Leibowitz’s Schoenberg and His School appeared in 1949, only two years after the original edition in French and with Newlin remarking that it was “the book those of us who consider the Schoenberg tradition the most fruitful trend of today had been wanting for years.”[18] Schoenberg himself had published only two essays in English before the publication of Models for Beginners in Composition in 1943: “Tonality and Form” in 1925 and “Problems of Harmony” in 1934.[19] By 1950, however, there was more of Schoenberg’s theoretical and aesthetic writing in print: an abridged translation of Theory of Harmony was published in the US in 1948, the first version of Style and Idea in 1950 (published in 1951 in the UK),[20] and Structural Functions of Harmony appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in 1954.[21]

In the decades since 1950, more and more of Schoenberg’s theoretical writing became available. An expanded edition of Style and Idea was published in 1975 and included additional theoretical essays,[22] while a full translation of the Harmonielehre (third edition) appeared in 1978.[23] Scholars now have two of Schoenberg’s previously unpublished theoretical works, Coherence, Counterpoint, Instrumentation, Instruction in Form (Zusammenhang, Kontrapunkt, Instrumentation, Formenlehre, or “ZKIF”)[24] and The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation (“The Gedanke Manuscript”),[25] both in authoritatively annotated editions.[26] In addition, J. Daniel Jenkins provides scholars with a comprehensive collection of additional texts by Schoenberg.[27] Much as with Schenkerian scholarship in English, which has also witnessed the publication of several authoritative English translations over the last two decades, Schoenberg scholarship today is well positioned in terms of source material.[28]

2. The Reception of Schoenberg’s Theoretical Writings in American Music Theory

As we survey the range of Schoenberg’s theoretical writing, then, it is possible to organize it – provisionally and for the sake of discussion – into four categories: 1) tonal harmony and counterpoint; 2) form; 3) thematic and motivic analysis; and 4) aesthetics. While these categories exist together in Schoenberg’s thought, they have tended to develop along separate paths in American scholarship in the period since 1950.[29]

2.1. Harmony and Counterpoint

Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony has the longest history in American music theoretical writing.[30] Among the first engagements with Schoenberg’s theoretical thought in English is the 1915 review by Edward Kilenyi of the original 1911 German-language edition of the Harmonielehre.[31] Kilenyi’s description of Schoenberg’s ideas gave rise to published critical responses, including one from composer and theorist Percy Goetschius.[32] More recently, Graham Phipps,[33] Murray Dineen,[34] Howard Cinnamon,[35] and Patricia Carpenter[36] have employed Schoenberg’s ideas, drawn both from Theory of Harmony as well as Structural Functions of Harmony, to produce Schoenbergian analyses of pieces by Schoenberg, Webern, and others. While Dineen and Carpenter restrict their application of Schoenberg’s ideas to tonal music, Phipps also applies Schoenberg’s harmonic theories to twelve-tone works (Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra op. 31 and Webern’s Variations for Orchestra op. 30),[37] while Cinnamon employs these ideas to analyze atonal music (Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces op. 11). Dineen engages Schoenberg’s ideas on counterpoint, employing examples by J. S. Bach to illustrate his points.[38] Schoenberg’s harmonic theory has also been studied in a historical context, with Robert Wason providing the authoritative English-language interpretation of Schoenberg’s theories in terms of the history of theory.[39] While Schoenberg’s harmonic theories are powerful –especially so in grappling with chromatic harmony and with passages where tonal centers become ambiguous – his ideas in this area have remained at the margins of American music theory, especially in comparison with those of Schenker.

2.2. Form

If Schoenberg’s ideas on harmony are more often acknowledged than adopted, his ideas on form are a different matter. Published posthumously in 1967, Schoenberg’s Fundamentals of Musical Composition arises from materials he used in teaching university courses in Southern California. As Severine Neff has detailed, however, Schoenberg had planned such a book as early as 1911, intending it as a project that would follow up on the publication of Harmonielehre.[40] Schoenberg’s European student Erwin Ratz extended and expanded Schoenberg’s theories,[41] and in 1998 William Caplin gave these concepts their fullest and most extended treatment in English. Over the last two decades, Caplin’s Classical Form has become required reading for most graduate students in music theory in North America. Along with James Hepokoski’s and Warren Darcy’s Elements of Sonata Theory from 2006 (a work that is not particularly Schoenbergian), it has propelled the study of form to the center of the discipline. Caplin writes that his book “is intended to revive the Formenlehre tradition by establishing it on more secure and sophisticated foundations” and that “this study strives to realize ideals implicit in the writings of Schoenberg and Ratz by formulating a comprehensive theory of formal functions.”[42] While Caplin’s book has its detractors – Hepokoski and Darcy, for instance, declare that “in the end, what was provided was an elaborate taxonomy of different kinds of phrase-and-section juxtapositions”[43] – it has probably impacted current American music theory at least as strongly as any other aspect of the Schoenbergian theoretical legacy.[44]

2.3. Thematic and Motivic Analysis

Of the various aspects of Schoenberg’s theoretical thought, his thoughts on thematic and motivic analysis have probably been the most often engaged, while also being the most controversial among English-language scholars.[45] The notions of “developing variation” (entwickelnde Variation), “basic shape” (Grundgestalt), and “musical idea” (musikalischer Gedanke) have been used individually and in combination by a wide range of scholars since the early 1950s.[46] The first book committed to the topic of thematic unity and organicism to make a significant impact on English-language readers was Rudolph Réti’s The Thematic Process in Music.[47] Though it does not claim Schoenberg’s ideas as a foundation, Réti’s book is, according to Hans Keller, “unthinkable” without Schoenberg.[48] Réti’s volume focuses on tonal music, with Beethoven as the central figure. Keller’s own analyses, which were certainly more influential in England than in America, depend heavily on thematic and motivic elements. Keller, like Réti, fully embraces the organic aesthetic, writing in a chapter devoted to Mozart’s chamber music that “in a great piece there are always the elements of unity, not diversity, because a great piece grows from an all-embracing idea”.[49] Alan Walker continues this focus on unity amid contrast, placing an emphasis on the perception of thematic relationships and the workings of the musical unconscious.[50]

In 1954, Schoenberg’s close student Josef Rufer published Composition with Twelve Notes in English translation, providing not only a detailed study of twelve-tone composition, but also an extended thematic analysis of Beethoven’s op. 10/1 piano sonata.[51] Erwin Stein describes the book as “authentic,” and writes that Rufer’s “ingenious” Beethoven analysis “proves that certain features of formal unity, thought to be characteristic for compositions with twelve notes, have similarly occurred in classical compositions with seven notes. A basic shape (Grundgestalt) is operative throughout the four movements – and this sonata is by no means an isolated case”.[52] The 1960s saw the posthumous publication of Réti’s third book, Thematic Patterns in Sonatas of Beethoven (1967), assembled from a manuscript left unfinished at the time of his death in 1957.[53] Keller remained an important figure in England and Schoenberg’s Fundamentals of Musical Composition (1967) appeared, as did a translation of his 1932 radio lecture, “Analysis of Four Songs, Op. 22” – an essay that Jack Boss would later expand upon to produce a more in-depth analysis of op. 22, extending Schoenberg’s own application of developing variation in an atonal context.[54]

The publication of two books grounded in Schoenberg’s thematic and motivic theories, David Epstein’s Beyond Orpheus[55] and Walter Frisch’s Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation,[56] stimulated new interest in Schoenberg’s theories among American musical scholars. Both authors carefully distance themselves from Réti, with Epstein building especially on Rufer’s book and placing much more emphasis on the basic shape (Grundgestalt) than Frisch does. Frisch understands developing variation primarily as a melodic technique, with less emphasis on larger-scale aspects of the idea, and as a consequence his analyses tend to trace thematic and motivic development.[57] Epstein, who blends Schoenberg’s thinking with that of Schenker, traces thematic development but is also concerned – in a way that follows Rufer but also echoes Réti, Keller, and Walker – with issues of overall unity and coherence. Epstein’s analysis of Beethoven’s Third Symphony provides an excellent example of how effective his particular blend of Schoenberg and Schenker can be. Appearing at about the same time as the Epstein and Frisch books, Patricia Carpenter’s article “Grundgestalt as Tonal Function”[58] provides a comprehensive analysis of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, completing a trio of publications that positioned Schoenberg’s theoretical writing more centrally in the field of American musical scholarship than ever before. Other important work based on Schoenberg’s thematic and motivic theories from these years came from Martha Hyde,[59] who focused on Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music, and Severine Neff,[60] who provides an analysis of Schoenberg’s First String Quartet op. 7. Together, they reinforced the rekindling of American interest in Schoenberg’s theoretical thought fueled by Frisch, Epstein, and Carpenter.

2.4. Aesthetics

As Schoenberg’s theoretical ideas moved from the specifics of harmony, form, and thematic/motivic development to address issues of compositional unity – especially on a large scale – his concerns tended toward the aesthetic and philosophical. Perhaps one of the most problematic elements of Schoenberg’s writing is his use of the term “musical idea” (musikalischer Gedanke). It seems clear that Schoenberg meant to refer to something beyond – or behind – the motives, themes, harmonies, and forms in the music with this concept, but precisely what that something is remains open to interpretation. Patricia Carpenter,[61] Severine Neff,[62] and Charlotte Cross[63] have offered interpretations of the musical idea and its role in Schoenberg’s thinking, and the publication of the Gedanke Manuscript has made even more of Schoenberg’s remarks on this subject available to scholars.[64] Neff has offered convincing analyses[65] that – like Carpenter’s from 1983[66] – build more comprehensively and thoroughly on Schoenberg’s theories than those of Epstein or Frisch.

Carl Dahlhaus’s interpretations of the musical idea, developing variation, and other aspects of Schoenberg’s thought appeared in English translation in 1987 and offered perhaps the most convincing insight into Schoenberg’s poetics and aesthetics. Dahlhaus especially takes account of the more philosophical and even spiritual aspects of Schoenberg’s approach to music and composition, referred to by Dahlhaus as Schoenberg’s “aesthetic theology” in one of these essays.[67] While Dahlhaus’s work marks a somewhat rare appearance of German-language scholarship on Schoenberg’s theories in the American music theory discourse (a topic to be discussed in more detail below), his writing has found only limited resonance among American Schoenberg scholars. Recalling Rothstein’s observations about the “sober and dispassionate” character of American academic discourse, it is possible that many of Schoenberg’s remarks on the musical idea are considered too “prophetic” for many American scholars. Whatever the reason, these philosophical and aesthetic aspects of Schoenberg’s theoretical writing have mostly been ignored in favor of the more technical-analytic aspects.[68]

3. Americanization?

Having surveyed the four categories of Schoenberg’s theoretical thought, we may now return to one of the principal questions that launched this discussion: Has Schoenberg’s theoretical thought been Americanized? Has its reception been shaped by the same forces in academic culture that Rothstein identifies in regard to Schenker? The answer lies, at least in part, more in the “why” than in the “how” of Schoenbergian theory and analysis. In what proved to be a controversial essay entitled “How We Got into Analysis and How to Get Out,” musicologist Joseph Kerman writes that “in his relatively limited body of writings on music, Schoenberg showed himself to be a brilliant theorist and critic”.[69] Kerman considers Schoenberg’s ideas in a discussion of organic unity, and after asserting that “from the standpoint of the ruling ideology, analysis exists for the purpose of demonstrating organicism and organicism exists for the purposes of validating a certain body of works of art,”[70] he goes on to remark that “Schoenberg’s really decisive insight […] was to conceive of a way of continuing the great tradition while negating what everyone else felt to be at its very core, namely, tonality. He grasped the fact that what was central to the ideology was not the triad and tonality, as Schenker and Tovey believed, but organicism.”[71] According to Robert Morgan, Kerman’s formulation regarding analysis, organicism, and ideology has been employed to condemn organicism’s “stranglehold on analytical practice”[72] – a stranglehold that has prompted several theorists to question the dominance of unity as a primary value in musical analysis.[73] Kerman’s interpretation of Schoenberg’s theoretical thought is insightful, but flawed. He is quite correct to identify organic unity as a value that is separable from tonality in Schoenberg’s thought; it is, in fact, separable from atonality and the twelve-tone method as well. An important aspect of developing variation, basic shape, and the musical idea is that they are modes of construal and presentation that are not bound to specific musical vocabularies or even styles. Yet Kerman’s notion that organicism, as demonstrated in analysis, serves only to validate certain works of art (and thus reinforce the ideology he identifies) is too limited and worldly, too grounded in the everyday. For Schoenberg, engagement with the musical idea is a kind of spiritual, or at least moral, experience. Ultimately, analysis is a means and not an end: it lifts us up so that we may catch a glimpse of something that transcends our usual experience. To borrow a term from 1960s popular culture, music has the power to “raise our consciousness.”[74]

The American reception of Schoenberg’s theoretical writing has tended to avoid its most philosophical elements. There are indeed scholars such as Charlotte Cross,[75] Patricia White,[76] Alexander Ringer,[77] Michael Cherlin,[78] and Matthew Arndt,[79] who have engaged the more aesthetic, spiritual, and moral aspects of Schoenberg’s thought. Most often, however, American scholars have directed Schoenberg’s theories toward how a piece is structured and not so much marshalled his ideas to address why that structure might be meaningful. In this sense, and very much in parallel with the reception of Schenker’s work, Schoenberg has been Americanized. It is not that these writers abandon Schoenberg’s organicism, it is rather that they tend not to engage with Schoenberg’s concept of how organicism might reach for something beyond masterful musical designs.

One difference with the reception of Schoenberg’s theories compared to Schenker’s, however, is that the most “prophetic” of Schoenberg’s utterances have been available to English readers since the publication of the first version of Style and Idea in 1950.[80] That volume, for instance, contains the essay “Composition with Twelve Tones” – one of the first essays, one might expect, that readers would have turned to considering the composer’s stature and reputation in 1950. The first words of that essay set the tone for what follows. Schoenberg tells readers that “[t]o understand the very nature of creation one must acknowledge that there was no light before the Lord said: ‘Let there be Light.’”[81] After a technical discussion including more than two dozen musical examples, during which Emanuel Swedenborg’s description of Heaven and Schoenberg’s understanding of the unity of musical space also arise, Schoenberg ends the essay by asserting that “in music there is no form without logic, no logic without unity. I believe that when Richard Wagner introduced his Leitmotiv – for the same purpose as that for which I introduced my Basic Set – he may have said: ‘Let there be unity’.”[82] The reference to Wagner at the end conveys a certain friendly humor, but the framing of the essay, with references to the Bible and the centrality of the unity of musical space in Schoenberg’s technical discussion, make it clear that more is at stake in these matters than an understanding of his twelve-tone method.[83]

On the contrary, a similar argument about Americanization cannot be made as regards the American research on Schoenbergian harmony and form. This research – which is by its nature already fairly technical – has not been subject to the same kinds of Americanization as the work on thematicism and aesthetics. In fact, it is probably fair to say that – whatever one may believe its shortcomings to be – the writing of Réti, Rufer, and Keller on thematicism and aesthetics, fervent as it is in its faith to the organicist ideal, is closer to the original spirit of Schoenberg’s thought than most of the American work on these topics has been.

As stated at the outset, this study has focused on the reception of Schoenberg’s theoretical ideas in English-language musical scholarship. The term “Americanization” is used here only loosely and primarily as a way of gauging how Schoenberg’s ideas have changed in the journey from pre-World-War II Germany and Austria to the post-war United States. As mentioned above, it could also be argued – since Schoenberg himself was forced to make this journey to America, first to Boston and then ultimately to California – that the composer reshaped his theoretical thinking to better address a new cultural environment (or at least a new teaching situation). Yet a third account would trace the reception of Schoenberg’s theoretical ideas primarily in England (and only secondarily in the United States). Of course, one could also trace the reception of Schoenberg’s theoretical ideas in continental Europe during the post-war years, especially in German-language scholarship. Though a comparison of the English- and German-language receptions lies beyond the scope of this study, some preliminary observations arise from comparing two relatively recent works that chronicle Schoenberg’s writing and its legacy. Norton Dudeque’s Music Theory and Analysis in the Writings of Arnold Schoenberg and Andreas Jacob’s Grundbegriffe des Musiktheorie Arnold Schönbergs.[84] While these two books both focus on Schoenberg’s theoretical writing, they diverge when it comes to the secondary literature.[85] As one might expect, Dudeque relies primarily on English-language scholarship while Jacob cites mostly German sources. This difference does not suggest any shortcomings in the excellent work of these scholars. Rather, it indicates a bifurcation of Schoenberg scholarship into two discourses, each directed to a distinct professional community. Of course, there can be – and always has been – important interaction between the German- and English-language communities in Schoenberg scholarship. The recent (and significant) volume dedicated to Schoenberg’s writing edited by Hartmut Krones,[86] for instance, includes a chapter by Severine Neff, and the Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center regularly includes English-language contributions. Perhaps (and hopefully) the exchange between these two communities will continue to grow. Nevertheless, the English-language reception of Schoenberg’s theories in the post-war years has not been significantly impacted by German-language scholarship from the same period.

***

In a recent review of Carl Schachter’s The Art of Tonal Analysis (2016), Kofi Agawu writes that “Schachter is described on the dust jacket of his new book as ‘the world’s leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis,’ a description that prompts reflection on why Schenker (still) matters.”[87] Agawu quickly affirms that Schenker does (still) matter, but by posing the question he gives some sense of how American music theory has changed since Rothstein’s article in 1986. In a discipline that now employs a wide range of approaches to theory and analysis, and that routinely investigates musical styles and practices well outside of the eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century classical masterworks, Schenker and Schoenberg might be perceived as less relevant than they once were. Perhaps they may even be regarded more as figures in the history of theory than as models for current theoretical and analytical practice. Alan Street remarks that his survey of articles in leading music theory journals over a recent ten-year period found only 3–5 % of these were devoted to Schoenberg, prompting him to conclude that theorists “have […] more pressing research priorities to attend to.”[88] Yet, recent work by Matthew Arndt,[89] Áine Heneghan,[90] Severine Neff,[91] Gordon Root,[92] and others suggests that Schoenberg’s theoretical legacy remains strong. In his review of Jack Boss’s Schoenberg’s Twelve-Tone Music: Symmetry and Idea (2014), for instance, Zachary Bernstein remarks that “the world of music theory seems to be experiencing something of a Schoenberg moment,” with a new recognition of “Schoenberg as a theorist.”[93] He continues: “Long overlooked, marginalized by the Schenkerian revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, Schoenberg’s writings now provide the groundwork for a number of modern theoretical preoccupations”.[94] Indeed, Boss’s book, which approaches Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music from the perspective of Schoenberg’s own theories, received the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory in 2015, while Schachter’s volume was awarded the Citation of Special Merit from SMT in 2017. Schenker and Schoenberg, it would seem, do still matter in American music theory – though perhaps not in the ways they have in the past nor in complete conformance with their original articulations. It is possible, in fact, that they still matter not in spite of certain adaptations, but precisely because they have been transformed.