Beethoven’s sonatas are the very bedrock upon which Schenker erected his theory. In addition to a complete performing edition that still is in print and well-respected today,Footnote ¹ Schenker planned a series of individual volumes of commentary and analysis on the last five sonatas. Universal Edition of Vienna published four of these Erläuterungsausgaben (‘Explanatory Editions’) which were devoted to Opp. 109, 110, 111 and 101, and which appeared in 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1921, respectively. However, the volume dealing with Op. 106, the ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata, was never published. Marston’s book traces the history of the Erläuterungsausgabe project from the initial contract of 1912 to the final years of Schenker’s life and provides a detailed account of the unfinished work. His thorough and cogent report is based on a wide range of source materials including diary entries, lesson plans, correspondence, and various drafts and sketches (mostly from the Oster Collection in New York, the Jonas Collection in California, and Schenker Documents Online).Footnote ² In his Preface, Marston emphasizes that his book is not an attempt to realize Schenker’s unfinished work or to ‘replace what he might have written’ (p. xvi). Rather, he intends to ‘perform a kind of autopsy on what survives’ (p. xvi). Marston modestly avers that the book offers not a ‘definitive statement’, but an ‘invitation to further enquiry’ (p. xvi). This slim volume is an admirable and important contribution to both Beethoven scholarship and to Schenker studies.Footnote ³

In his Introduction, Marston notes that the ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata – despite its towering stature – receives surprisingly little attention in Schenker’s published writings (pp. 1–3). There are only two instances: a brief reference to the key scheme of the first movement in Harmonielehre shows the deep-level arpeggiation of the subdominant (B♭–G–E♭)Footnote ⁴; and a single analytical illustration (a bass sketch of the fugal finale with no explanatory comments) near the end of Der freie Satz.Footnote ⁵ As Marston will show, these two illustrations, published nearly 30 years apart, hint at Schenker’s deep and ongoing engagement with this monolithic sonata. Marston marshals primary source materials to show in detail how Schenker’s understanding of Op. 106 intersected with the development of crucial elements of his evolving theory.

Chapter One, ‘The Erläuterungsausgabe Project and Op. 106: 1912–1926’, describes the sometimes stormy relationship between Schenker and Emil Hertzka, director of Universal Edition. Marston’s meticulously documented account complements the description provided by Ian Bent and William Drabkin in the English translation of Der Tonwille.Footnote ⁶ Marston leads readers through and beyond the tumultuous war years, as Schenker struggled to balance private teaching with his ambitious agenda for publishing musical editions, analysis, criticism and cultural commentary. Marston shows that Schenker’s unsuccessful attempt to locate Beethoven’s autograph score of Op. 106 was only one contributing factor in the eventual abandonment of the final Erläuterungsausgabe volume. Financial, editorial and philosophical disputes between Schenker and his publisher led to a breakdown and legal squabbles. Although Schenker held out hope for its eventual completion and publication, this was not to be.

Around the time Schenker completed the final issues of Der Tonwille for Hertzka, and was beginning work on essays that would appear in Das Meisterwerk in die Musik Footnote ⁷ (to be published by Drei Masken Verlag in Munich), his piano student Angelika Elias began to study Op. 106. Under Schenker’s close supervision, Elias completed multi-level graphic analyses of all four movements of the sonata. Marston provides the schedule for these lessons, from October 1924 to February 1926, in an Appendix (pp. 147–8). These analytical graphs are provided on a DVD supplied with the book, which allows readers to zoom in for a close look at the details in these elaborate and beautifully drawn illustrations. Although these graphs are the main focus of Marston’s attention, additional documents – mostly, but not exclusively drawn from the Oster Collection – contribute some of the most valuable insights, for they show how Schenker radically revised his thinking as he worked on Op. 106. Marston traces early evidence for the emerging concepts of the Ursatz, the Urlinie, and the role of Unterbrechung (interruption) in sonata form, as well as Schenker’s developing terminology and graphic procedures for displaying analyses on multiple systems of staves in varying numbers of voices and employing varying degrees of reduction.

Marston devotes his central four chapters (2 through 5) to the four movements of Op. 106. In each, he identifies the supplementary documents (sketches, diary entries, and other evidence) he will use in constructing a provisional chronology for work on each movement. Marston does not attempt to provide a full exegesis of Schenker’s analysis. Rather, he selects particular features and details to explore. His aim is to show how Schenker’s engagement with Op. 106 affected the maturation of his theories of formal, harmonic and motivic analysis as well as their portrayal.

In the first movement, Marston highlights Schenker’s striking depiction of a descending octave line guiding the top voice of the entire movement. This reading coordinates perfectly with Schenker’s earlier recognition of large-scale tonicizations of the submediant (G major, in the exposition) and the subdominant (E-flat, in the development). Marston reminds us that Schenker never published an analysis of a movement in sonata form based upon an octave line. He did however publish octave-line readings of four works by Bach in Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, and his work on these analyses was ‘exactly contemporaneous with Schenker’s work on the first movement of Op. 106’ (p. 43). Even more suggestive is the fact that Elias also studied Bach’s Partita in B-flat major (BWV 825) at this time, according to the lesson books. Marston briefly explores Schenker’s unpublished analyses of the Prelude and Allemande, both of which feature octave lines (pp. 56–8), and draws out parallels between these analyses.Footnote ⁸

Marston also explains how Schenker’s analysis of Op. 106 reflects important changes in Schenker’s view of interruption. Although in Free Composition Schenker adopts the position that only an interruption will engender a sonata form, he clearly did not yet believe this in the mid-1920s. Marston states that Schenker’s first published analysis to display a first-order interruption was that of the Eroica symphony, in the third volume of Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (1930), but he also notes that diary entries from 1928 indicate Schenker dictated passages about interruption for Der freie Satz to his wife in 1928 (p. 142). The octave-line reading in the Elias graphs of the first movement show division – not interruption – at scale degree $$\hat 5$$ , which occurs at the beginning of the recapitulation. One remarkable feature of this movement is that the retransitional dominant is sensationally undercut. The tonic return at bar 227 is prepared by two bars in which scale degree $$\hat 2$$ (C♮) does not appear in any register. Whether one plays A♮ (as Schenker recommends) or A♯ (as others including Schnabel have done), the dominant function is distinctly attenuated. For this reason, some analysts might balk at the inclusion of an implied C serving here as the upper voice supported by an interrupting dominant. Indeed, Marston points out that none of Schenker’s various other readings of the first movement call for a traditional interruption (p. 143); the ‘double return’ at the beginning of the recapitulation is not read in the same manner as the opening of the movement. Before dismissing this unorthodox reading out of hand, readers should consider the abrupt appearance of the main theme, and the subsequent tonal adventures in the movement.

Schenker’s analysis of the second movement of Op. 106 is less provocative than that of the first, yet Marston finds numerous interesting details to tease out. Marston supplements his discussion of Elias’s graphs with commentary about several undated items from the Oster Collection. One states (in characteristic Schenker fashion) that ‘The Trio can only be understood in accordance with the voice leading’ (p. 68). This remark appears alongside a demonstration that potential parallel fifths (between the roots and fifths of B-flat minor and D-flat major) are avoided by the interpolation of a six-four sonority. But Marston also notes that Schenker’s observation is closely tied to a subtle remark about how the high F in the melody is dynamically undercut by a decrescendo that appears to work against the metrical and hypermetrical stresses that accrue to the downbeat of bar 53. Schenker’s exacting attention to a negative correlation between dynamics and voice leading is traced through additional drafts in the Oster Collection. According to Marston, this example of ‘dynamische Fälschung’ (dynamic falsification) is unique in Schenker’s work (p. 69).

Marston’s presentation of the Elias graphs for the third movement is supplemented by references to seven additional items in the Oster Collection. He notes that neighbouring motions are far more in evidence than are linear progressions in this movement, and that there is really no plausible way to conjure anything like an Urlinie in the graphs of this movement. Marston surmises that Schenker’s later (and somewhat controversial) description of ‘four-part form’ (in Der freie Satz) might be adumbrated by the formal labels used for the Adagio. It is interesting to see that one of Schenker’s jottings explains the remote key relation between B-flat major and F-sharp minor via enharmonic spelling (the latter key is notated as G-flat minor, with an exclamation point). While such hexatonic relations are not unique in Beethoven, the one in Op. 106 is truly ‘uncanny’ to my ear.Footnote ⁹

The transition to the final fugue is a genuine wonder that has perplexed countless analysts. Marston records Schenker’s strong disagreement with von Bülow’s assertion that the Fugue could be played directly after the slow movement (pp. 102–3) and supplies transcriptions of Schenker’s sketches for the transitional material and for the fugue’s subject – both of which make extensive use of chains of descending thirds, which Schenker had already identified as the ‘seed’ of the opening movement and an important motive in the two inner movements as well.Footnote ¹⁰ Even so, Marston notes that ‘Schenker’s own analysis is perhaps striking precisely for the relative lack of prominence given to descending third progressions’ (p. 119). Instead, the Grundplan he and Elias eventually worked out traces the controlling bass arpeggiation B♭–D–F at a very remote distance from the musical surface (p. 111; see Figure 5.2). In so doing, Schenker distances himself from the traditional enumeration of surface motives, and more nearly approaches his later preference for ‘concealed repetitions’ (verborgene Wiederholungen) which operate on diverse structural levels.

Marston is careful to remind us that, in 1926, Schenker had not yet consolidated his thinking about the Ursatz and the Urlinie. But a draft in Schenker’s hand that clearly predates Elias’s Grundplan for the fugue includes a tentative sketch that aligns the B♭–D–F–B♭ structural bass arpeggiation with a melodic descent from D through C to B♭, with the opening D given an Arabic 3 with a caret (pp. 114–25, and especially Figure 5.7). Marston will have more to say about this notable sketch in the Epilogue.

The brief Chapter Six, ‘After 1926’, provides references to further correspondence with Hertzka, diary entries, and other evidence that the Op. 106 Erläuterungsausgabe remained a ‘live’ project almost to the final days of Schenker’s life.

Chapter 7, ‘Epilogue’, brings us back to Schenker’s bassline sketch for the Fugue (Figure 156, 2 in Free Composition), aligned beneath another Oster Collection sketch – another single staff draft Ursatz for the final movement (Example 7.1, p. 136). The bass of the draft is virtually identical to that of Figure 156, 2; the top voice descends from D by steps reaching closure at bar 367. In both illustrations, Schenker locates the structural dominant at bar 279, suggesting that it is prolonged for almost 80 bars. This reading stands in stark contrast to the normally brief final dominants most of Schenker’s later analyses. Marston also refers to other Oster Collection documents in which Schenker explored other details, including some fascinating octave couplings that draw attention to the importance of the high register B♭s on the final pages of the sonata (p. 137). Marston discusses another voice leading graph of the first movement (Example 7. 2, p. 141), in which Schenker suggests scale degree $$\hat 3$$ as Kopfton, progressing up to scale degree $$\hat 5$$ by the end of the development. Again, there is no sign of interruption here; the recapitulation simply restores the original D and then descends by step to the tonic. Marston proposes that this reading probably dates from about 1927, since shortly after that Schenker would adopt a less flexible attitude about interruption and sonata form (p. 143).Footnote ¹¹

One of Marsten’s stated aims is to shed light on Schenker’s dismissive reference to Op. 106 in the final pages of Free Composition, which in Oster’s translation reads ‘Haydn and Mozart were unable to maintain the high state of fugal art achieved in the works of Bach and Handel. Neither was Beethoven, despite the fugue in Op. 106, whose bass progression is briefly indicated in Figure 156’.Footnote ¹² Citing documents in the Oster Collection, Marston shows that the idea of including the bass sketch was an afterthought, and that at one point, it was introduced with the phrase ‘… despite the fugue in Op. 106, the bass progression of which I could not resist at least indicating’ (pp. 2–3). Marston detects here an ‘unexpectedly personal, confessional tone’ (p. 3). Ultimately, he concludes that it was perhaps not weakness on Beethoven’s part, but a growing inflexibility in Schenker’s analytical approach that may explain his censorious attitude toward Beethoven’s fugue (pp. 135–6 and 146). Other readers might interpret this differently: perhaps Schenker ‘could not resist’ including his bass sketch precisely because he believed it provided an elegant account of the movement’s harmonic plan and subtle references to motivic parallelisms (the aforementioned rising and falling thirds) as well.

In the course of his brief book, Marston shows compellingly that Op. 106 occupied Schenker’s thoughts far more than his brief published references suggest. Schenker worked relentlessly to produce a performing edition, and he continued to hope he would complete the planned Erläuterungsausgabe as well, almost to the end of his days (p. 134). With his pupil Angelika Elias, he produced detailed, multi-level graphs of all four movements, and numerous additional sketches and commentary preserved in his diaries and other archives show that he revisited and importantly revised his analysis many times as he developed his theoretical viewpoints. Marston’s work gives us the welcome opportunity to survey a rich trove of evidence that chronicles Schenker’s thoughts and second thoughts about important theoretical issues: the Ursatz (including octave lines, as well as alternatives and predecessors of the Urlinie), Unterbrechung, and how both relate to formal and fugal procedures. Marston’s commentary engages (but by no means exhausts) Schenker’s attention to register, rhythm, dynamics and motivic parallelisms as well as structural counterpoint and voice leading. We are invited to continue his investigation and to celebrate the beautiful complexities of Schenker’s analysis and the many marvels of Beethoven’s most challenging sonata.