Ernst Kurth: Selected Writings

This book provides extensive annotated translations of the writings of the music theorist Ernst Kurth (1886-1946).

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.

Foreword Ian Bent
Preface
Notes on the translation
Introduction
Part I. Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts (Foundations of linear counterpoint): 1. Polyphonic structure 2. Thematic and motivic processes 3. Polyphonic melody
Part II. Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners 'Tristan' (Romantic harmony and its crisis in Wagner's 'Tristan'): 4. Details of Romantic harmony 5. Broader dimensions of Romantic harmony
Part III. Bruckner: 6. Bruckner's form as undulatory phases
7. Details of Bruckner's symphonic waves
Appendix: complete tables of contents for Kurth's Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts, Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners 'Tristan' and Bruckner
Select bibliography
Index of musical examples
General index.