The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Aesthetics No.16 (2012): 53-65

Heinrich Schenker’s “Intramusical” Hermeneutics:
A Comparison of the Hermeneutics of Hermann Kretzschmar
and Wilhelm Dilthey
NISHIDA Hiroko

Kyushu University, Fukuoka

Introduction: Schenker’s Musical Hermeneutics and Musical Analysis
This study compares the concept of hermeneutics proposed by Heinrich Schenker (1868–
1935) with that proposed by Hermann Kretzschmar (1848–1924) on the basis of Schenker’s
criticism of Kretzschmar. Furthermore, it aims to re-examine Schenker’s discourse on musicalworks within the framework of hermeneutics through the concept of hermeneutics formulatedby Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911).
Kretzschmar, a German musicologist, was famous for “Führer durch den Concertsaal[Guide through the concert hall]” (1887–1890), a series of musical analyses for audience, which
led to modern concert program notes. He was also regarded as the founder of musicalhermeneutics, the principle of which he formulated in “Proposals to Encourage Musical
Hermeneutics (AH)” in 1902 and “New Proposals to Encourage Musical Hermeneutics (NA)” in
1905. Schenker was born in Galicia, on the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy,
and was an active Jewish music theorist in Vienna. He earned a living mainly by giving private
lessons in piano and music theory, and also by writing and publishing articles on music. Afterthe Second World War, his Jewish pupils emigrated to America. Subsequently, the so-called“Schenkerian analysis” came to be put into practice there [1].
First, we should identify the conflict that is the focus of this paper. An Americanmusicologist K. Agawu outlines the “hermeneutic approach” and “theory-based analysis” anddiscusses the characteristics of these contrasting positions. Hermeneutics is the approachtaken by American musicologists since the 1980s who once again began to address the
problems in the field of musical hermeneutics, which Kretzschmar founded in early 20thcentury Germany. In contrast, “theory-based analysis” means Schenkerian analysis, which wasestablished in Vienna in the first half of the 20th century and was reorganized and developed in
postwar America [2]. The modern hermeneutic approach shares ideas with Kretzschmar’s
criticism of formalism, because the former criticizes Schenkerian analysis as a “formalistic”
analysis.
Not only in America but also in music criticism since the early 19th century Europe, suchan opposition between hermeneutics and analysis has been employed, although partly
sublated [3]. However, what is desired here is not to keep this superficial understanding of theconflict between hermeneutics and analysis and to reinforce it, but rather to reconsider such ahistorical phenomenon from a new perspective. In addition, although Kretzschmar andSchenker have been referred to as representatives of these two poles, the relationship between

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them in their lifetime has been seldom investigated. For, although both men published ananalytic series of musical works, it might be difficult to compare them on the same level
because Kretzschmar’s series tended to be gauged as more popular, while Schenker’s wereregarded as more professional. However, the fact that Schenker severely attacked Kretzschmar
in his writings can be a good starting point to scrutinize the substance of this dichotomy.
Therefore, this paper cuts off one section of the conflict history that Agawu describes: we goback to these two German-speaking musical theorists who lived in the early 20th century.
Now, we turn our attention to Schenker, a key person in the history of this conflict. In
America, since the 1980s, where positivistic Schenkerian analyses have been condemned, astudy by R. Snarrenberg has brought forward a new perspective [4]. Snarrenberg used the term
“interpretive practice” instead of “analysis” to characterize Schenker’s discourse [5]. One canunderstand this “interpretation” as a concept, so as not to restrict Schenker’s discourse to
analysis in a more limited sense, namely to the framework of “purely technical analysis.” Insuch a way, Snarrenberg, instead of reinforcing the opposing perspectives, sheds light on thefact that Schenker interprets musical works even using imagery and programmatic ideas.
Conversely, as a concept of analysis in a more extensive sense that is not restricted to semanticinterpretation, S. Mauser suggests the term “hermeneutics” [6]. Certainly, if one grasps“analysis” as an act that engages solely the structure and does not go further into the area of
semantics, and “hermeneutics” as an act that construes feelings and imaginary events frommusical works, we have to say that such an understanding is superficial because of its limited
idea that semantic interpretations are extramusical. Such a shallow definition arises because
the conflict between “hermeneutics” and “analysis” is linked to another distinction peculiar tomusic: “extramusical” and “intramusical.” However, what is intramusical and what is
extramusical cannot be determined clearly, and it depends on each interpreter. In the next
section, following Snarrenberg’s as well as Mauser’s arguments, we shall compare
Kretzschmar’s and Schenker’s discourses about musical works in light of the concept ofhermeneutics in the broader sense in order to decipher on which hermeneutic attitude
Schenker’s discourse was grounded.

1. Schenker’s Intramusical Hermeneutics
This section reveals through Schenker’s criticism of Kretzschmar that Schenker himself
called his own interpretation a “hermeneutics” and clarifies how Schenker definedhermeneutics. The key here is what the object is in his interpretation of works. Schenker
denounced Kretzschmar’s principle of hermeneutics repeatedly, and one can read the mostcondensed statement of his position in the following passage:
But there is only one indispensable premise to elucidate the life of tone, that is, the very
premise of believing what Mr. Kretzschmar and his comrades deny: the musicalcontent! . . . The formal aesthetics can never explain or refute what rests on its own laws,
like the life of tone! . . . Rather, the refutation [of Kretzschmar’s hermeneutics] will be
carried out by a better and true hermeneutics which tries to make clear the purely musicalHeinrich Schenker’s “Intramusical” Hermeneutics

55

content above all! (ES, 57)
The musical content that Kretzschmar rejected was, conversely, what the “true hermeneutics”
that Schenker proposes had to tackle. Then, what was intended with the expression of the“purely musical content”? And which kind of hermeneutics was the “true hermeneutics”?
Schenker frequently referred to the “musical content.” As illustrated in the above citation,
this term almost always appears in a context in which Schenker condemned interpretations ofworks by other theorists. From the fact that Schenker put “the last necessities of the content”
and “the necessities of the life of tone” in parallel, it turns out that the content is deemed as the“life of tone (Tonleben)” (BS, VIII, IX). Moreover, one can read in the preceding citation thatthe content, in other words the life of tone, hinges on “its own laws.” Consequently,
Kretzschmar’s interpretation, which does not comprehend musical works from the perspectiveof tonal context but rather connects the life of tone with extramusical elements such as events
that happened to the composer or were written about in letters and so forth, was criticized by
Schenker because they incorporate extramusical factors into interpretation: “But, a fault is tobelieve that one adversely has to understand the tones especially by the life. No! The tones arein the first place to be understood only by the tones themselves” (ES, 24). Schenker relies on
the premise of the independence of the tonal world where the tones relate only to each other,and separates the tones from the extramusical “life.” To put it plainly, Schenker distinguishes
the intramusical from the extramusical and regards the composer’s life as extramusical. Yet, aslong as the content is called the “life of tone,” tones should not be irrelevant to the life, which
also means the “human life.” Thus, a question arises: how are the tones and the life related in
Schenker’s true hermeneutics?
The “life of tone” can be understood as the unification of the world of tone and the world oflife on the basis of their inseparability. Schenker’s belief that to understand tones from the“human life” is a fault that appears in the contexts in which he attacked others’ interpretations.
In such a critical context, the tonal world and the human life are separate from each other.
However, in Schenker’s own hermeneutics, such a segregation of the tones and the life must be
impossible. As an example, the following descriptions suggest that the tones and the life for
Schenker do not postulate the separation of the intramusical world from the extramusical one,but instead the life is brought into music: “Beethoven could actually experience (erleben) his
life, not only outside the tones but also inside the tones (innerhalb der Töne), and if it [his life]
occurred inside the tones, two worlds, the world of life and the world of tone, flew for him
without losing their characters for each other” (ES, 50) and “in the linear progressions thecomposer lives his own life as that of the linear progressions” (FS, 18). Put another way, the lifeof the composer is extramusical in the context in which Schenker found fault with others, but
in Schenker’s true hermeneutics, the human life can also belong inside the tones, as when he
maintains that “the composer lives also inside the tones.” Music for him is the “image ofmovement of our life (Abbild unserer Lebensbewegung)” (FS, 19) in the sense that the
movement of tones and that of life are corresponding. Furthermore, when Schenker insists that“our own drive of life is one which we also bring into the movement of the Urlinie progression
in such a way that the movement reveals a full consonance to our psychic life (ein völliger

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Gleichklang mit unserem Seelenleben)” (FS, 16), the movement of the tones united with the life
is paraphrased as “a full consonance with our psychic life.” The drive of life is consideredsomething human.
Well then, how is the life internalized inside the tones or how are the tones in which thelife is internalized verbalized in Schenker’s interpretation? For example, in the interpretationof Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Schenker spoke of the unification of music and life throughassociations:
Only the above described falling of the rhythm gives our ears the image of that psychic
drive (das Abbild jenes psychischen Dranges) which has operated in the soul of thecomposer himself, when he put the strong accent just on a weak beat (BS, 18).
The falling of the rhythm is the image of the psychic drive that has operated in the soul of thecomposer, and it can also be perceived by our ears. That is, when the psychic drive is brought
into the field of rhythm as a movement of falling, the tones, the composer, and the listeners are
combined with each other in this life of tone. More direct verbal expression in Schenker’s
discourse to unify the tones and the human life through movement includes the personificationof tones, which is an attempt to express the movement of tones as a psychic one. For instance,“tonicization (Tonikalisierung)” treats a brief modulation as a “drive (Trieb)” of tone tobecome a tonic. The movement of the tone and the movement of life are both embedded into
this term by the expression “–ation (–ierung).”
In summary, the difference between the terminology in Schenker’s true hermeneutics andin the context in which he criticized others’ interpretations can originate in the difference
between the context of the life and its connotation: when he censured the interpretation that
understands the tones as based on the human life, this life means the human life in the actual
world in which Beethoven lived, while the life in Schenker’s true hermeneutics is the “life” thatis the drive of the soul brought inside the tones, and this drive of the soul inside them, that is,
the life of tone appears within musical works as an “inner nexus (innere Zusammenhänge)”(FS, 16). In this way, Schenker tried to develop his own true hermeneutics as grounded in theintramusical life.

2. Kretzschmar’s Human-Internal Hermeneutics
In contrast, Kretzschmar prescribed the concept of musical hermeneutics in 1902 in thefollowing way:
The task of musical hermeneutics is as follows: to draw the affects from the tones and put
the skeleton of their development into words. . . . The forms are a means of the expression.
What should be expressed is something spiritual (etwas Geistiges). In the sense of themerely musical content, there is no absolute music (AH, 173-175).
For Kretzschmar, what is expressed in the tones are “affects,” namely “a generally spiritual

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content (ein allgemein geistiger Inhalt)” (AH, 173). The tones and forms themselves areconversely nothing but a “way station” or a “means.” What he proposed was basically a “theoryof feelings and perceptions” to “transpose what was listened to into the psychic and spiritual(Übertragen des Gehörten ins Seelische und Geistige)” (AH, 179-180).
In order to understand the meaning of Kretzschmar’s definition of musical hermeneutics,
one has to investigate the circumstances of musical interpretation in that period. Just as
Schenker disparaged Kretzschmar, Kretzschmar, who attempted to differentiate his own
standpoint from that of others, also criticized the two modes of interpretation of works: first, “apoetic head which goes toward works with enthusiasm, instead of proceeding soberly andobjectively,” and second, the interpretive mode that satisfies only with the “description of theouter form of works,” “brings the technical details regardless, instead of explaining thedevelopment of the affects,” and consequently, cannot make readers understand the works
spiritually (AH, 178-179). Examples of both — the “poetic” and the “mechanical” (NA, 290) —interpretations are those by Carmen Sylva and Carl van Bruyck.
In Sylva’s interpretation of J. S. Bach’s Fugue in C major, she employs the character“Sacuntala” from a drama from ancient India. However, such an excessive fantasy and poetic
program was not acceptable for Kretzschmar because it seemed to have little relation to thetones in themselves. According to him, it is possible to introduce poetic images, but they play
only a secondary role. On the contrary, the “affects” he advocated are an indispensable concept
for pursuing the “whole” process of a work [7]. On the other hand, van Bruyck in his
mechanical and formalistic interpretation gave this fugue a negative judgment because, seenfrom the aesthetic viewpoint, it was monotonous and rigid. Kretzschmar reacted to thisjudgment by saying “van Bruyck is not sufficiently trained in the aesthetics of music to be able
to listen out (heraushören) the inner sense (innerer Sinn) from Bach’s notes” (NA, 291).
In this respect, Sylva’s as well as van Bruyck’s interpretations cannot dominate the view ofthe development of the theme “as a whole” correctly. As if Kretzschmar were correcting theseinadequacies, he himself in 1905 interpreted this fugue along with the affects and demonstrated
his own musical hermeneutics by pursuing the whole process of the piece. As he said that“neither the poetic divination nor the formal analysis is enough” (NA, 287), his musicalhermeneutics tries to advance both from an interpretation based solely on images and from thepurely formal description. From this, one can observe that both Kretzschmar and Schenker
claimed originality and validity for their own hermeneutics.
Next, we shall turn our attention to Kretzschmar’s above-cited view: “van Bruyck is not
sufficiently trained in the aesthetics of music to be able to listen out the inner sense from
Bach’s notes.” What does the adjective “inner” of “the inner sense” indicate specifically, andhow does it relate to the category of Schenker’s “intramusical”?

3. Inner and Outer: Hermeneutics and Analysis Re-examined
Kretzschmar’s criticism of mechanical analysis corresponds with arguments that haveappeared recently in America, in that both oppose “formalism.” However, if we re-examine theconflict between the two types of interpretation in this section by paying attention to the58

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category “inner,” we cannot juxtapose Kretzschmar’s musical hermeneutics with thehermeneutic approach in America on the same lines. For, while the latter criticizes the“intramusical” and formalistic Schenkerian analysis and turns its eyes to the “extramusical”
elements willingly [8], the former views its own musical hermeneutics as “inner,” arguing thatthe mechanical interpretation is “outer” formalism. In short, the meaning of “inner” and “outer”
imposed by hermeneutics and analysis varies in each context. One can infer that this disparity
corresponds to the discrepancy between Kretzschmar’s and Schenker’s terminologies. This may
be because Kretzschmar’s distinction between inner and outer is different from that of
Schenker. In addition, Schenker’s terminology would be congruent with one in the conflict pairin postwar America.
The musical aesthetics that attempts to “listen out the inner sense from the tones” points
to the musical hermeneutics that Kretzschmar himself advocated. Consequently, one can seethat the content with which his musical hermeneutics deals is inner for him. In addition, he
considers the musical form as outer, as seen in his criticism of van Bruyck for describing only
the outer form. Kretzschmar shares this distinction with Schenker, in that both refuted theprevailing formalistic analysis. For Schenker also clearly distinguished his own formal theory
from the existing formalism and refuted the latter. However, Kretzschmar in the first place
regarded the tones and the form in itself as outer, and the term “inner” can be seen, forexample, in such a remark: “one goes to an inner understanding (Verständnis) of musicalworks through gradual unregularized listening into (Hineinhören)” (NA, 281). He defined atask of musical hermeneutics as “the ability to listen to tones internally (innerlich hören) anddetermine the content” (AH, 190). Hence, Kretzschmar’s “inner” means the human internal. In
contrast to this, the tone in itself is “outer.” If we consider that the word “inner” is usedsynonymously with the word “spiritual,” listeners should transfer the listened to tones into theinside—listening into the internal and spiritual of the composer.
Thus, it turns out that Kretzschmar and Schenker use the words “inner” and “outer” indifferent ways. For Kretzschmar, the tones in themselves are outer and the human spirituality
drawn from them is inner. On the other hand, when Schenker uses the word “inner,” he means
intramusical. This difference coincides with the distinction between the “intramusical”
structural analysis and the “extramusical” hermeneutic approach in the later period.
However, it must not be overlooked that Kretzschmar, like Schenker, linked the tones withthe human life.
One [listener] can determine the affects and, at the same time, it is what he has to do at thevery least. Only he who thinks that music is merely music, that is, abandons theconnection with the human spiritual life (ihr Zusammenhang mit dem Geistesleben der
Menschheit) can escape from the duty to progress hither (AH, 174) [9].
Kretzschmar asserts that only he who has the ability to relate music with the human spiritual
life can work out this inner listening. This statement overlaps with Schenker’s concept of “a fullconsonance with our psychic life,” cited in the first section, in that both assume the connection
between music and human spiritual life. In the case of Schenker, the “consonance” of the tonal

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world and the human life becomes the assumption on which his own hermeneutics is based,
while Kretzschmar puts the connotation of the “connection” with the human life into the term
“affects.”[10]The comparison between the tones and the life found in both Kretzschmar and Schenker isquite important from the standpoint of this paper. For this connection leads us to re-examine
the prevailing contrast in the perspective that views the former as “hermeneutics” and thelatter as “theory-based analysis.” The difference in the terminology related to “inner” and“outer” could bring out the difference between them within the framework of hermeneutics. In
order to deepen our examination in this respect, we will now employ Dilthey’s concept ofhermeneutics. If we consider this paper’s conclusion in advance, Kretzschmar’s as well as
Schenker’s hermeneutics show a certain affinity to Dilthey’s hermeneutics in each way: thedifference between the thoughts of both theorists corresponds to the difference between
Dilthey’s general hermeneutics and musical hermeneutics.

4. General Hermeneutics and Musical Hermeneutics: A Comparison to Dilthey
The possibility that Kretzschmar’s musical hermeneutics depended on Dilthey’s
hermeneutics has often been pointed out because Kretzschmar and Dilthey both taught
Friedrich Wilhelm University [11] at the same time. Nevertheless, many scholars have raised
doubts about to what extent Kretzschmar was based on Dilthey in a practical sense [12]. In my
opinion, regarding the scheme by which one “understands” the inside on the basis of its
external signs, that is, the terminology of the inside as well as their superficial vocabulary, it iscertain that Kretzschmar’s concept accords with Dilthey’s concept of general hermeneutics. For
instance, the practice of hermeneutics that Dilthey took over from Friedrich Schleiermacher isdivided into the grammatical interpretation and the psychological interpretation, as follows:
Grammatical interpretation proceeds through the text from connection to connection up
to the highest relations that dominate the whole. Psychological interpretation starts byprojecting into the creative inner process (innerer Vorgang), and proceeds onward to theouter and inner form of the work, and beyond that to grasp the unity of an author’s works
in relation to his development and spiritual tendencies. (EH, 331; 250 [English
translation])
The dichotomy between the grammatical interpretation and the psychological life and thedistinction between the outer process and the inner process in hermeneutics as a humanscience are also observed in Kretzschmar’s musical hermeneutics, as seen in the criticism ofSylva and van Bruyck. To be specific, one can recognize this division fully in the criticism
against Sylva, whose grammatical interpretation is not enough, and in the criticism against van
Bruyck, who pursues an inner and a psychological interpretation.
This classification is based on Dilthey’s prescription that the given signs are external andthat to recognize the inside of them is to understand. This requirement appears in the sentence“Understanding is what we call this process by which an inside is conferred on a complex of

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external sensory signs” (EH, 845; 236 [English translation]) in “Hermeneutics” in 1900. That is,
Dilthey and Kretzschmar coincide in that they aim to understand external signs and an insidethat is separate from them. In the background of this distinction was Dilthey’s intention to
proclaim a human science that establishes the “understanding” and “interpreting” of an inside
as its mission, as opposed to the natural sciences that explain (erklären) external phenomena
exclusively [13]. Moreover, some of Kretzschmar’s vocabulary seems to be derived from
Dilthey’s general hermeneutics. For example, Dilthey’s wording “[to] express something
spiritual (der Ausdruck eines Geistigen)” (VP, 205; 226 [English translation]) coincides verballywith the abovementioned description by Kretzschmar: “What should be expressed is something
spiritual” [14].
While the relationship between Kretzschmar and Dilthey has been discussed up to thispoint, it would also be possible to show the similarity between Dilthey’s later thoughts andSchenker’s musical thoughts. In fact, a resonance can be seen in the later Dilthey, especially inthe manuscript titled “The Musical Understanding (MH),” probably written around 1906, andSchenker’s “true hermeneutics.”
In Dilthey’s “The Musical Understanding,” something different from his general
hermeneutics is unfolded, as to the relationship between “music” and “life,” and between the“outer expression” and the “expressed internal.” The peculiarity in Dilthey’s thought aboutmusic has long been observed in fields outside musicology. For example, F. Rodi, a scholar of
Dilthey, sees a paradigm shift in “The Musical Understanding” that influences the entire
thought of Dilthey. Rodi pays attention to Dilthey’s musical thought as a factor in explaining
why the dichotomy of “lived experience-expression (Erlebnis-Ausdruck)” in “Studies toward
the Foundation of the Human Sciences” in 1905 switched to the framework of the “expressionof lived experience (Erlebnisausdruck),” in which lived experience and expression are unified
internally in “The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences” 1910 [15].
Then, how does such a new concept appear in “The Musical Understanding”? We shallfollow Dilthey’s description of his thinking:The object of the historical study of music is not some mental or psychic process behindthe composition, but something objective, namely, the tonal nexus that appears in theimagination as expression (Tonzusammenhang als Ausdruck). . . . Not psychological, butmusical relationships form the object of the study of musical genius, works, and theory.
(MV, 221-222; 242-243 [English translation])
Note that the object to study becomes the context of tones as expression. For Kretzschmar, thestudied object is the spiritual and inner affects, namely, to “transpose what was listened to into
the psychic and spiritual”; in other words, which should be expressed in tones. This must be
different from Dilthey’s context of tones in itself. Moreover, what Dilthey intended for thecontext of tones also conflicts with Dilthey’s own general hermeneutics. For to understand
Dilthey’s general hermeneutics, it is necessary in the first place to recognize an inside and aspiritual that are expressed through the outer manifestations. However, in “The MusicalUnderstanding,” the former, what is expressed seems at first glance to be excluded. It is not

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excluded, but it could be said that the relationship between this “expression” and “what isexpressed” changes through the unification of lived experience and expression (as we shall see
later), and as a result, expression and what is expressed become unified.
Dilthey’s depiction, according to which, in instrumental music, life appears in its highest
form, must be also convincing for Schenker:
Instrumental music has no determinate object, but one that is infinite, i.e., indeterminate(ein unbestimmter Gegenstand). Such an object is provided only by life itself (das Leben
selbst). Thus in its highest forms, instrumental music has life itself as its object. A musicalgenius such as Bach is inspired by each sound in nature, by each gesture, even byindeterminate noises, to create corresponding musical forms—moving themes, as it were,that have the attribute of speaking about life in general terms. (MV, 224; 245 [English
translation]) [16]In music, the context of tones, to further “life in itself” in its highest form, should be the object.
This statement is based on the unification of lived experience and music. Namely “There is no
duality of lived experience and music, no double world, no carryover from one to the other.
Genius is simply living in the tonal sphere (das Leben in der Tonsphäre) as if it alone existed”(MV, 222; 242 [English translation]). This view that the genial composer is a life in the tonal
world is similar to the indivisibility between the tonal world and the world of life, as seen in
Schenker’s utterances: “if it occurred inside the tones, two worlds, the world of life and thetonal world, flew for him without losing their characters for each other” as well as “in the
progressions the composer lives his own life like the life of the progressions.”
If music is different from the general hermeneutics, then how can lived experience andexpression, the life of composer and music, be identical in music? Here is the difference inquality between poetry and music. For example, Dilthey’s statement that “The idea is as an
unconscious nexus that is operative in the organization of the whole and on the basis of which
inner form is understood” (ZH, 335; 255 [English translation]) explains the interpretive methodof poetic works. For Dilthey, the “idea (Idee)” that the interpreter has to extract here does notexist as what one has to understand in purely instrumental music. In instrumental music,
instead of the ideas, “the dynamic relationship (das dynamische Verhältnis)” becomes what
has to be extracted:
every relationship to a musical work . . . deals with something objective. . . . It moves
imperceptibly in the obscurity of the psyche, and the dynamic relationship that existed inthese depths is first expressed in the work. (MV, 222-223; 243 [English translation])
In short, in the context of dynamic relationship, the dynamic relationship of tones in itself
becomes “significant (bedeutsam)” and the ideas are unnecessary. Then, in this article, how is
the relationship between “the expressed inner” and “the expressed outer” grasped? If theexpressed lived experience and the expression are inseparable, would Dilthey’s understandingof music also belong to the framework of the “inner musical life” as Schenker presented it?

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Such thinking about music as making lived experience and expression belong together
within a single world like Dilthey’s is not observed in Kretzschmar’s musical hermeneutics. As aconsequence, Kretzschmar’s concept of “an inside” is compatible not with the concept inDilthey’s musical hermeneutics in particular but one in the general hermeneutics; however, forDilthey, the musical hermeneutics is different from his general hermeneutics. In theinterpretation of music, which differs from verbal expression, its object is the dynamic
relationship as the intramusical life. As a result, the term “an inside,” as used in Dilthey’s
musical hermeneutics in particular and in Schenker’s true hermeneutics, becomes identical.

Conclusion
Dilthey’s thought in “The Musical Understanding” can be characterized by his uniqueapproach to “the expressed internal” and “the expressing external.” Through the unification of
lived experience and expression in which the composer is incorporated into musical works, thedistinction between the human internal and the human external does not function any more,
and the context inside a musical work becomes an object. In consequence, the elucidation of
the “dynamic relationship” in which life is expressed internally becomes a task. In addition, toengage in the intramusical context is Schenker’s true hermeneutics, differentiated fromKretzschmar’s “human-internal” one. Thus, we have portrayed two modes of hermeneutics,
that is, Kretzschmar’s musical hermeneutics and Dilthey’s or Schenker’s hermeneutics. The
antagonistic discussions in those days about what the content of music represented, which thispaper has examined, could have been because of the differences in the natures of the general
hermeneutics and the musical hermeneutics in particular. Yet, it also becomes clear that bothtypes of hermeneutics, competing with each other, share the concept of connection between thehuman life and the tones to some degree.
Schenker attempted to give an account of the life of tone and later chose a means ofanalysis (the so-called “Schenkerian graph”) that did not employ verbal ideas. In his later years,
under the framework of the “Ursatz,” he represented the dynamic relationship in musicalworks by the universal matrix of a graph. This graphic representation of the life of tone
established in his last period, after it had been introduced into the positivistic academic worldin postwar America, had been reinforced merely as the static and objective structuralism insidemusical works, while its original connotation of the human life had been abridged. Following
this, the musical “hermeneutics” that could unify the human life and the tones inside music,
which Schenker himself tried to realize, metamorphosed into the formalistic “analysis” thatengages exclusively with the intramusical structure. Yet, when the hermeneutic approach,popular since the 1980s, emerges against such an inner structuralism and tries to turn ourattention to the “outside” of the works and to interpret context and ideology outside them
actively, there exists the terminology of the inside and outside of music (structure) that
Schenker relied on. In the sense of “intramusical” interpretation, with or without theconnotation of the human spiritual life, one could understand Schenker’s “hermeneutics” andSchenkerian “analysis” on the same plane.
This paper has examined the difference in the usage of the term “inner” and has focused,Heinrich Schenker’s “Intramusical” Hermeneutics

63

as examples, on Kretzschmar’s and Schenker’s hermeneutics linked to Dilthey’s hermeneutics.
Through this discussion, one can discover a context that has never been observed from theperspective of hermeneutics and analysis: hermeneutic thinking particular to music in
Schenker’s discourse. In conclusion, we should continue to shed new light on Schenker’s
interpretation of musical works by reflecting on his vocabulary.
Abbreviations(BS) Heinrich Schenker, Beethovens neunte Sinfonie: eine Darstellung des musikalischen Inhaltes
unter fortlaufender Berücksichtigung auch des Vortrages und der Literatur (Vienna and Leipzig:
Universal Edition, 1912).
(ES) —, Erläuterungsausgabe der letzten fünf Sonaten. Sonate E-dur op.109 (Vienna: Universal
Edition, 1913).
(FS) —, Der freie Satz (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1935).
(AH) Hermann Kretzschmar, “Anregungen zur Förderung musikalischer Hermeneutik,” Gesammelten
Aufsätzen über Musik und Anderes aus den Jahrbüchern der Musikbibliothek Peters, Vol.2(Leipzig: C.F. Peters, 1911 [1902]), 168-192.
(NA) —, “Neue Anregungen zur Förderung musikalischer Hermeneutik: Satzästhetik,” Gesammelten
Aufsätzen über Musik und Anderes aus den Jahrbüchern der Musikbibliothek Peters, Vol.2(Leipzig: C.F. Peters, 1911 [1905]), 280-293.
(EH) Wilhelm Dilthey, “Die Entstehung der Hermeneutik,” Die geistige Welt. Einleitung in die
Philosophie des Lebens. Erste Hälfte: Abhandlungen zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften(Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1968), 317-331; “The Rise of Hermeneutics,” Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected
Works, Volume IV: Hermeneutics and the Study of History, translated by F.R. Jameson and R.A.
Makkreel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 235-250.
(ZH) —, “Zusätze aus den Handschriften,” Die geistige Welt. Einleitung in die Philosophie desLebens. Erste Hälfte: Abhandlungen zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften (Wilhelm
Dilthey Gesammelte Schriften, Band 5, 1957), 5th edition (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1968), 332-338;“Abbenda from Manuscripts, ” Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Works, Volume IV: Hermeneutics andthe Study of History, translated by F.R. Jameson and R.A. Makkreel (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996), 251-258.
(VP) —, “Das Verstehen anderer Personen und ihrer Lebensäußerungen,” Der Aufbau dergeschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (Wilhelm Diltheys gesammelte Schriften Band7.), edited by B. Groethuysen (Leipzig and Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1927), 205-220; “TheUnderstanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life,” Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected
Works, Volume III: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, translated by
R.A. Makkreel and W.H. Oman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 205-241.
(MV) —, “Das musikalische Verstehen,” Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (Wilhelm Diltheys gesammelte Schriften Band 7.), edited by B. Groethuysen(Leipzig and Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1927), 220-224; “Musical Understanding,” Wilhelm Dilthey,
Selected Works, Volume III: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences,translated by R. A. Makkreel and W.H. Oman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 241245.

Notes
[1]

In general, Schenkerian theory views musical works as those which are derived from the

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[2]

[3]

[4]
[5]
[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]
[12]

NISHIDA Hiroko

archetype called “Ursatz.” The analytic procedure is reductionistic: one extracts structurally
important notes from all notes on the score, step-by-step through several layers.
K. Agawu, “Music Analysis versus Musical Hermeneutics,” The American Journal of Semiotics 13(1996), 9-24. A. Forte and J. Kerman are mentioned as a representative of “theory-based analysis”
and as a representative of the “hermeneutic approach,” respectively.
In America since the 1980s, as the criticism against formalistic analysis has arisen, the conflict
between hermeneutic interpretation and formalistic analysis in the German-speaking world sincethe 19th century has been studied from various perspectives. Cf. S. Burnham, “The Criticism ofAnalysis and the Analysis of Criticism,” 19th-Century Music 16/1 (1991), 70-76; B. Hoeckner,
Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of theMoment (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2002.
R. Snarrenberg, Schenker’s Interpretive Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1997.
On the other hand, “interpretation” in music also means “performance,” but Snarrenberg defines
it here as an understanding of musical works or behaviors in listening to them.
“In the field of music, it is particularly difficult to distinguish strictly among ‘hermeneutics,’‘analysis,’ and ‘interpretation.’ As long as one grasped the concept of analysis in a narrow sense,
which focuses exclusively on form and structure, hermeneutic understandings were fixed andrefined in the perspective of the interpretation of content. The dichotomy of analysis andinterpretation has long been deemed as anachronistic.” S. Mauser, “Hermeneutik,” Die Musik inGeschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, Band 4, (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1996), 262.
Kretzschmar’s affects are different from those in the Baroque period. The latter indicates only
individual “emotions,” and they are never contextualized in the nexus of a work as a whole. In
contrast, the former, as seen in Kretzschmar’s passages and also in his analysis of Bach’s Fugue inC major, in his essay published in 1905, is considered as a “spiritual feeling of tone (geistige
Tonempfindung)” to interpret the “whole” process of a work. Here like the musical content that
Schenker defines, spirituality is secured.
For example, J. Kerman, whom Agawu regards as representative of the hermeneutic approach,states: “Analysis sets out to discern and demonstrate the functional coherence of individual works
of art, their ‘organic unity,’ as is often said, and that is one of the things . . . that people outside ofmusic mean by criticism” (J. Kerman, “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,” Critical
Inquiry 7/2 (1980), 312). In this way, when Kerman criticizes intramusical structural analysis, hedepends on the criterion of “intramusical” and “extramusical.”By the way, Kretzschmar uses both Seelenleben and Geistesleben, and these words are not clearly
distinguished by Kretzschmar. However, for Dilthey, as discussed later, there is a great difference
between “soul (Seele)” and “spirit (Geist).”If Kretzschmar’s affects are to be drawn from tones, one could also regard his affects as ones “inthe tones.” But, if we lay stress on the fact that Kretzschmar described the relation between thetones and the spiritual life only as a “connection,” he must be distinguished carefully from
Schenker, who sought the unification of both.
Yet, it is not clear whether there was direct contact between Kretzschmar and Dilthey. On theother hand, Schenker apparently never mentioned Dilthey.
For instance, A. Nowak observes “What Dilthey kept in mind in his unfinished ‘The Phantasy of
the Poetic (Die Einbildungskraft des Dichters),’ was to discern the psychological laws in the
poetic creation, but not to describe it as a process of affects,” and he points out the gap between
Dilthey’s hermeneutics and Kretzschmar’s musical hermeneutics based on affects. Furthermore,
Nowak states that Kretzschmar’s hypothesis that in music, there is a psychological relationshipbetween the psychic states and their expression is incompatible with the later Dilthey (A. Nowak,“Dilthey und die musikalische Hermeneutik,” Beiträge zur musikalischen Hermeneutik, edited by

Heinrich Schenker’s “Intramusical” Hermeneutics

[13]

[14]
[15]

[16]

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C. Dahlhaus (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1975), 16). And Mauser, referring to the affinity between
Kretzschmar und Dilthey regarding the concept of lived experience, argues that Kretzschmar
related the concept of lived experience with “too narrow Affektenlehre to be deciphered
semantically” (S. Mauser, “Zu den philosophischen Grundlagen des Kretzschmarschen
Hermeneutikbegriffs,” Hermann Kretzschmar. Konferenzbericht Olbernhau 1998, edited by H.
Loos and R. Cadenbach (Chemnitz: Gudrun Schröder Verlag, 1998), 128). In general, scholars
have pointed out that Kretzschmar understood Dilthey’s intention of human science in terms thatare too narrow. As another example of the gap between both, one can also enumerate thedifferences in terminology. See note 9.
In the process of this understanding, the procedure of “transposing oneself (Sichhineinversetzen),”namely “transfer of one’s self into a given complex of manifestations of life” (VP, 214; 235 [English
translation]) is employed. There is a scholar who assumes that this term is translated as “listen
into (hineinhören)” by Kretzschmar. Cf. L. Rothfarb, “Hermeneutics and Energetics: Analytical
Alternatives in the Early 1900s,” Journal of Music Theory 36/1 (1992), 43-68.
From the manuscript titled “The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations ofLife” in ca. 1910.
F. Rodi, “Das Paradigma der Musik in Diltheys Verständnis des Lebens,” Philosophischer
Gedanke und musikalischer Klang. Zum Wechselverhältnis von Musik und Philosophie, edited by
C. Asmuth, G. Scholtz, and F.-B. Stammkötter (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 1999),
131; idem, Das strukturierte Ganze. Studien zum Werk von Wilhelm Dilthey (Weilerswist:
Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2003), 126. However, an examination about the position of Dilthey’s
musical thought within his entire thought is beyond the scope of this paper.
The facts that Dilthey himself played the piano and had contact with Clara Schumann andJohannes Brahms and underestimated Richard Wagner might have had no small effect on suchthought about instrumental music as absolute music.

* This paper is based on the Japanese version published in Bigaku (Aesthetics) No.235 (Vol.60, No.2),
on December 31, 2009, pp.30-43.
* This paper is partly supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research granted by Japan Society for
the Promotion of Science.