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.

Ernst Kurth as Theorist and Analyst is the first book length study devoted to the writings of one of this century's most important music theorists. In contrast to previous discussions, Lee A. Rothfarb's study explains Kurth's theories in light of his analyses of specific musical examples. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kurth approached music primarily from a cognitive rather than a purely technical viewpoint. In a unique kind of experiential analysis, he examined the psychological foundations of counterpoint, harmony, and form, and considered the affective, as opposed to solely structural or syntactic, effects of melody, chord, interval, and tone. The introduction provides a biographical sketch of Kurth, based on archival research and personal interview with his widow, son, and many of his doctoral students. Rothfarb also discusses the intellectual currents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both musical and nonmusical, which shaped Kurth's outlook. Eight chapters summarize the main ideas of Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts and Romantische Harmonik and show the directions Kurth took in his later works, Bruckner and Musikpsychologie. A final chapter identified his influence on several of his well-known contemporaries. Ernst Kurth as Theorist and Analyst will interest music theorists, musicologists, and advanced students of music theory.

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.