Ernst Kurth: Selected Writings (Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis, Series Number 2)

This book provides a selection of annotated translations from Ernst Kurth's three best-known publications: Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts (1917), Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners 'Tristan' (1920), and Bruckner (1925). Kurth's contemporaries considered these books to be pioneering studies in the music of J. S. Bach, Wagner and Bruckner. Professor Rothfarb's extensive introductory essay discusses the intellectual and socio-cultural environment in which Kurth was writing, referring to aspects of the early twentieth-century cultural renewal movements and to intellectual developments of the day in phenomenology, aesthetics and psychology. By reading Kurth against the cultural-intellectual background provided in the essay and commentaries, today's music historians and theorists can round out their picture of music theory in the early twentieth century. This is the first publication to provide extensive annotated translations from the writings of the music theorist Ernst Kurth (1886-1946), who wrote three pioneering studies on the music of J.S. Bach, Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner. The book will familiarize today's English-speaking scholars with Kurth's theoretical ideas and innovative analytical strategies through his commentaries on the passages from these composers. An extensive introductory essay discusses the intellectual and socio-cultural background required for understanding Kurth's work. The passages translated in our chapter 1 are from Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts, 3rd ed., part 1, chapter 5 (pp.58-63, 66-67); part 2, chapter 4 (pp. 142-45); and part 4, chapters 1 (pp. 361-69, 372-73) and 2 (pp. 374-82).

this Book Provides Extensive Annotated Translations Of The Writings Of The Music Theorist Ernst Kurth (1886-1946).