Die Skizzenbücher von Richard Strauss aus dem Richard-Strauss-Archiv in Garmisch by FranzTrennerReview by: Charlotte E. ErwinNotes, Second Series, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Mar., 1978), pp. 599-601Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/898107 .

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cepts of division and progression. Seidel characterizes most treatments of rhythm found in writings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance as being concerned with the symmetrical division of a large unit of time into smaller units, and he compares this concern with that of the architect of the period, who divided space in a similar way. The treatment of rhythm as the division of time, he says, continues to be found in many treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the nineteenth century, however, a significant change has taken place. Hauptmann and others no longer adhere to the concept of rhythm as division; instead, they treat rhythm as progression, process, motion, or evolution. In his discussion of transitional phenomena, Seidel deals with music and theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that reveal a gradual change from the concept of division to that of progression. These sections of the chapter are among the few places in his book in which Seidel treats historical periods earlier than the one with which he is particularly concerned. Here he deals in broad generalizations, and he may have oversimplified the relationships among the rhythmic views of the Middle

Ages, the Renaissance, and more recent times. But the distinctions between concepts of division versus those of progression in the history of rhythmic theory are impor- tant and would be well worth developing at greater length in another study.

A few questionable aspects of the book must be mentioned. It is strange that the rather full bibliography includes only two writings in the English language; omitted are two American dissertations that have a direct bearing on Seidel's subject-Carl Allete's "Theories of Rhythm" (Ph.D., Uni- versity of Rochester, 1954) and the present writer's "Theories of Rhythm in the Nine- teenth and Twentieth Centuries" (Ph.D., Cornell University, 1960). Also omitted are a number of other writings in English that relate to the study in a more general way. The lack of an index was a source of frustration to me. An index at least of names of persons would have been helpful. Despite its few shortcomings, however, Seidel's book is a significant contribution to the literature on the history of rhythmic theory.

HOWARD E. SMITHER University of North Carolina,

Chapel Hill

Die Skizzenbuchet von Richard Strauss aus dem Richard-Strauss- Archiv in Garmisch. By Franz Trenner. (Ver6ffentlichungen der Richard-Strauss-Gesellschaft, 1.) Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1977. [276 p.; DM78.00]

The single largest collection of the sketchbooks of Richard Strauss-144 in number-has recently been unveiled by Franz Trenner's Die Skizzenbiicher von Rich- ard Strauss. Until its publication, extreme- ly little information was available on this remarkable holding, Strauss's own hoard of sketchbooks, now the property of the family-operated Richard-Strauss-Archiv in Garmisch. The first two volumes of the Richard Strauss Thematisches Verzeichnis, edited by Erich Mueller von Asow (AV I-II, 1955-62), confirm the existence of sketch- books in the Garmisch collection only for isolated works, two such being Ein Heldenle- ben and Die Frau ohne Schatten (AV I, 243, and II, 677). The third and final volume of the Asow Verzeichnis, completed after the editor's death by Alfons Ott and Franz Trenner, appeared in 1974. It includes only the barest reference to the Garmisch

sketchbooks: tucked away in Part V, "Frag- mente einschliesslich unverwirklichter Pla- ne und Anregungen," an enigmatic "An- hang: Skizzenbiucher" (AV III, 1485-88) presents a numbered list of sketchbooks, presumably in chronological order (though no dates are given), with a brief identifica- tion of the work or works contained in each. No information on the whereabouts of these sketchbooks is provided. The editors' after- word (AV III, 1679) does, however, lament the inadequacy of treatment of Strauss's sketchbooks and promises a detailed study in a separate publication. Thus Trenner's new volume can be considered a pendant to AV III, superceding the latter's sketch- book appendix.

The book is in essence an index to or catalog of the Garmisch sketchbook collec- tion. It is not a study of the contents of the sketchbooks. Furthermore, it excludes

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from consideration sketch materials on single unbound leaves now in the Garmisch archive. In so limiting himself for the pres- ent, Trenner has made a prudent decision. In his estimation, Strauss may have given away as many sketchbooks as he kept during his long and prolific career. The arduous task of tracking down widely disseminated sketch materials was begun by Asow, who managed to pinpoint Strauss sketches in locales as widely scattered as Paris, London, New York, and Stanford. Unfortunately, Asow seems often to have lacked the requi- site information for describing these docu- ments precisely. His terminology ranges without clarification from the general "Skizze" and "Entwurf" to the more precise "Skizzenblatt" and "Skizzenbuch." Hence, present day identification and cataloging of many of these manuscripts, in addition to the numerous Strauss autographs that have come to light since Asow's time, remain an ongoing project.

Trenner divides his book neatly into three sections-short preface, Textteil or main catalog, and Bildteil or facsimiles. The preface raises a number of significant ques- tions about Strauss's compositional proce- dure, the most important of which is What stage of work do the sketchbooks represent? Strauss himself described his work in three principal stages: sketches, short score or Particell, and full score. Trenner expands the sketch category to encompass, in order, Vorskizzen, Skizzen, Rohskizzen, and Rein- schriftskizzen, but he leaves vague the precise distinctions between these various types. One thing that the preface-and the vol- ume as a whole-seems to prove conclu- sively is that for his entire life, at least after 1886, Strauss used pocket sketchbooks which he carried with him everywhere. All but 9 of the 144 Garmisch sketchbooks are in pocket-sized format.

The Textteil is the heart of the book. One hundred forty-four entries in chronological order clearly identify each sketchbook, supplying data on size, format, type of binding, and use of pencil or ink, and citing the pieces represented. In addition, Tren- ner has deciphered numerous textual an- notations from the sketchbooks and pre- sents excerpts of these as the major portion of the Textteil The reader is treated to glimpses of Strauss's "program" for such pieces as A Iso sprach Zarathustra: "Tanz- hymnus/Kolossal steigern zum Schluss

Morgenrothe Es dur erstes Sonnenthema . . . Magnificat/As dur/Credo in unum deum . . . Sehnsucht/Thema c g c (univer- sum) immer beweglich, starr, unvera- ndert/bis zum Schluss" (no. 2); to moments of self-doubt: "zu Tristanahnlich" (Jo- sephslegende, no. 28); or to Frau Pauline Strauss's critique of Till Eulenspiegel: "ent- setzliches Componieren! . . . infam! verriickt!! . . . scheusslich . . . schlechtes Geschmier!" (no. 3). The reader learns that Strauss often wrote out passages of text to be set in the inside covers and flyleaves of his sketchbooks. He was also apt to include there descriptions of walks around Garmisch or names of dentists. The Textteil is unquestionably provocative, even amus- ing reading, yet the scholar will be frustrat- ed in an attempt to gain a complete picture of any one sketchbook. Strauss's text is sometimes heavily excerpted. More limiting is the impossibility of matching up his annotations with their pertinent musical text.

A general question might be raised about the chronology offered in the Textteil. Far too many sketchbooks bear dates qualified by "?" to indicate uncertainty. Does the inclusion of a particular work determine the date of a sketchbook, or might the commencement of a new work be deter- mined instead by the date of the sketch- book? Although the chronology of Strauss's works has never been seriously questioned, a more precise dating of the sketchbooks would no doubt bear significantly upon the genesis of his compositions.

The Bildteil consists of 144 facsimiles representing the first pages of all of the sketchbooks. After a famine of information, this is a true feast. The serious scholar is again frustrated in the attempt to examine any one sketchbook as a whole, but there are many interesting tidbits to be gleaned. To cite only a few-page 1 of sketchbook number 1 1, showing roughly the first eight bars of Salome, presents after measure 3 a substantially different version from the finished one in both the rhythm and the melodic line of the vocal part and in the supporting harmony; sketchbook number 25 shows that the overture to Ariadne auf Naxos originally began at measure 9 of the final version. The facsimiles show in general a good deal about Strauss's different modes of sketching, his idiosyncrasies of notation, and, with regard to opera and lieder, his

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scrupulous attention to text setting. Trenner's book is a distinguished and

timely contribution to Strauss scholarship. To anyone working on the sketchbooks it is an indispensable guide. Microfilms of the Garmisch sketchbooks are available in

Munich in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The sketchbooks themselves are available on a limited basis to serious scholars through the Strauss-Archiv.

CHARLOTTE E. ERWIN Los A ngeles

Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-1920. By Jim Samson. new York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977. [ix, 242 p.; $12.95]

This general study of pitch organization in early twentieth-century Western music is intended to be, to some extent, systematic and "theoretical," as the author eschews the "comprehensive survey" approach in favor of what his preface terms "detailed analyti- cal study" of several works by a few com- posers (including, predictably, Debussy, Bart6k, Stranvinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, as well as Busoni, Scriabin, and Szymanowski). However, Music in Transi- lion is as much a historical as a theoretical work, in that Samson relies more on asser- tions of the significance of pieces (as well as of their historical backgrounds) than on determinate demonstrations of exactly what it is that he hears as significant in them. Furthermore, perhaps because of this am- bivalent pursuit of the "theoretical," Sam- son's historical observations are often not as carefully considered as one might expect, while most of his explicit analyses are poorly reflective of the depth and sophistication of the pieces analyzed.

The book's most pervasive "historical" problem is Samson's confusion between relatively straightforward observations of event chronologies, including the many possible interpretations of each such chro- nology by means of historical theories of "cause," "influence," and/or "motivation"; he never acknowledges or takes into account the extent to which such theories (even if only implicitly formulated) can influence the recognition and categorization of the events themselves. Specifically, and most problematically, the observation that within the period from 1850 to 1920 later pieces tend to be less susceptible to "tonal" pro- cessings of certain kinds does not entail any particular "motivational" interpretation; that composers of that time in some way "rejected" their earlier methods of struc- turing pieces and that those methods had been "exhausted" is merely the interpreta-

tion favored by Samson (under the label "tonal expansion") for reasons of his own. Such an interpretation, however, suggests that post-tonal pieces are the culmination of an extended "structure-rejecting" pro- cess, offers no reasonable motivations for such a willful abandonment, and leads di- rectly to the all-too-common view of these pieces as conceptually opaque.

A book which attempts to give a positive account of these "developing" ultrachro- matic and "atonal" pieces would do well to build upon a historical theory which more persuasively argues their merits, and which thereby portrays the "tonality-rejecting" composers of such pieces as something other than capricious. For example, among other alternatives, one might hypothesize that increasingly complex chromatic con- texts were devised as elaborate motivic fill- ings in of large-scale tonal structures; that is, the motivic web of more traditionally "tonal" pieces, which can be heard to both articulate and connect points of relatively clear tonal affiliation, was stretched to such an extent that composers such as Schoen- berg and Webern came to realize that their primary compositional interest lay in that motivic domain rather than in continuing to construct even more oblique and elab- orately filled-in tonal complexes. Thus what Samson considers the "abandonment" of tonality can be portrayed rather as a change of compositional focus, from pre- sentations of certain kinds of configurations suggesting tonality to presentations and counterpoints of ordered and unordered pitch collections in general, i.e., from what might be described as a relatively "conven- tionalized" to a relatively "contextual" sort of music. (Such a theory is in fact suggested in many places by Samson, but never syste- matically pursued or isolated from its more negative counterparts.) Thus it is less rele- vant that Mussorgsky, say, can be claimed

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