Heinrich Schenker’s Identities as a German and a Jew

During his lifetime the music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) was confronted with a variety of different cultures. After attending a Polish school in the eastern province of Galicia, he moved to Vienna, where he faced a cultural environment dominated by Catholicism, opening up for him, as a Jew, different options of assimilation. After the First World War he stayed in Austria, the small remnant of the Habsburg Empire, while considering himself a German. In the cultural studies perspective, the constructive character of identity is essential: people adopt different identities and develop them contingent on public perception, professional aspirations, and private traditions. This essay focuses not so much on Schenker’s discourse of Jewishness as on the traces and representations of identity in the practice of everyday life. Such an examination is now possible, as large parts of Schenker’s diaries are available. Pointing out the ambivalences, tensions, and perhaps even contradictions in Schenker’s construction of his self, I discuss diverse aspects of his identities—his Polish background, his denominational incognito, his political profession, and his practice of celebration—and how they relate to each other. As a reaction to Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism, Schenker sees himself as more German than the Germans; he, the Jew, wants to be the better German. His emphatic commitment to Germanness contrasts sharply with his quiet Jewish identity and underlines his clear decision to participate in German culture, his mission as a musician and music theorist to save German music, and his assimilation—all this, however, without abandoning his position as a self-imposed outsider and without allowing his Jewish identity in his remembrance and practice of celebration in everyday life to totally disappear

The early keyboard concertos in Ptuj: music composed for the Dornava court?

Zbirka 31 koncertov za glasbila s tipkami, ki jih danes hrani Knjižnica Ivana Potrča Ptuj, je edinstvena zbirka tovrstnih zgodnjih koncertov v srednji Evropi. V njej so dela dunajskih dvornih skladateljev Christopha Wagenseila (1714–1777) in Wenzla Bircka (1718–1763) ter dveh glasbenikov graške župnijske cerkve, Johanna Michaela Steinbacherja (pred 1710–po 1740) in Giovannija Antonia Sgatberonija (1708/09–1795). Ptujska zbirka muzikalij naj bi izvirala iz zasebnega fonda grofa Josepha Bernharda von Attemsa, ki je prebival v Dornavi med letoma 1754 in 1772. Glede na značilnosti prepisovalcev in kakovost papirja, na katerem so zapisani izvirniki, se zdi mogoče, da sta bila Steinbacher in Sgatberoni z Drnavskim dvorcem celo tesneje povezana, kot smo domnevali doslej.The 31 keyboard concertos now housed at the Knjižnica Ivana Potrča Ptuj represent a unique sample of early keyboard concertos in Central Europe, including works by the Viennese court composers Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1714–1777) and Wenzel Raimund Birck (1718–1763) as well as two musicians employed at the Graz parish church, Johann Michael Steinbacher (before 1710–after 1740) and Giovanni Antonio Sgatberoni (1708/09–1795). It is assumed that the Ptuj collection of keyboard music stems from the court of Count Joseph Bernhard von Attems, who resided at Dornava from 1754 to 1772. Considering the scribes and the paper quality of the sources, it seems possible that Steinbacher and Sgatberoni may have had a closer relationship to the Dornava court than has been assumed so far