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[Sun. morning, 6 Dec., 9:00-12:00: Schenker and Oppel: paper 2 of 3]
THE SCHENKER-OPPEL ANALYSES OF BACH CANTATAS
Among the letters to Schenker in the Oswald Jonas Collection (Riverside,
California) is an especially large group (approximately 250 letters comprising
roughly 500 pages) from Reinhard Oppel. A composer, composition teacher,
musicologist, and organist, Oppel (1878-1941) was a close friend of both
Heinrich and Jeanette Schenker from 1913 to 1939 when Mrs. Schenker was
deported to her death in a concentration camp. In the summers of the early
1930s, the Schenkers would meet with Oppel accompanied by his sons in the
resort town of Galtuer. In 1995, while teaching in Germany, I was finally
able to trace Oppel's son, Kurt, serving as the Lutheran pastor of a group
of small villages in the mountains near Heidelberg. With Kurt's assistance,
I began to explore the close collaboration between Oppel and Schenker. Most
of the "new" analytical material in Schenker's hand dates from
c. 1929-35; since it comes from Schenker's later period, it is of enormous
importance for our understanding of the final development of his ideas on
Baroque music and his approach to analysis. Additionally, Kurt discovered
Oppel's extensive transcription and commentary on Brahms's study of "Octaves
and Fifths," which contains detailed information regarding Brahms's
sources. Oppel made this detailed transcription for Schenker, who then used
Oppel's research as the basis for his publication (although he did not credit
Oppel). Oppel and Schenker continued to communicate about the problem of
fifths and octaves, even after the study was published. The other centerpiece
of the newly discovered analytical materials is Schenker's extensive unpublished
late analysis (c. 1933) of voice-leading and structure in Oppel's realizations
of Handel solo cantatas, Bach keyboard music, and Oppel's own music, some
of which will be performed in the session. In essence, Schenker was teaching
analysis and composition simultaneously. At present, Kurt and I are preparing
a study of the Schenker-Oppel "Austausch." This session will be
a preliminary report on our research.
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