Heinrich Schenker

Heinrich Schenker (19 June 1868 – 14 January 1935) was an Austrian music theorist whose writings have had a profound influence on subsequent musical analysis. His approach, now termed Schenkerian analysis, was most fully explained in a three-volume series, Neue musikalische Theorien und Phantasien (New Musical Theories and Phantasies), which included Harmony (1906), Counterpoint (1910; 1922), and Free Composition (1935).

Born in Wiśniowczyk, Austrian Galicia, he studied law at University of Vienna and music at what is now the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna where his teachers included Franz Krenn, Ernst Ludwig, Anton Bruckner, and Johann Nepomuk Fuchs. Despite his law degree, he focused primarily on a musical career following graduation, finding minimal success as a composer, conductor, and accompanist. After 1900 Schenker increasingly directed his efforts toward music theory, developing a systemic approach to analyze the underlying melodic and harmonic material of tonal music. His theories proposed the presence of fundamental structures (Ursatz) occurring in the background (Hintergrund) of compositions, which he illustrated with a variety of new specialized terms and notational methods.

Schenker's view on race has come under scrutiny and criticism in the 21st century.

Read more about this composer on Wikipedia.