Heinrich Schenker

Heinrich Schenker was an Austrian music theorist whose writings have had a profound influence on subsequent musical analysis. His approach, now termed Schenkerian analysis, was most fully explained in a three-volume series, Neue musikalische Theorien und Phantasien (New Musical Theories and Phantasies), which included Harmony (1906), Counterpoint (1910; 1922), and Free Composition (1935).

Born in Wiśniowczyk, Austrian Galicia, he studied law at University of Vienna and music at what is now the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna where his teachers included Franz Krenn, Ernst Ludwig, Anton Bruckner, and Johann Nepomuk Fuchs. Despite his law degree, he focused primarily on a musical career following graduation, finding minimal success as a composer, conductor, and accompanist. After 1900 Schenker increasingly directed his efforts toward music theory, developing a systemic approach to analyze the underlying melodic and harmonic material of tonal music.

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