Review Colloquium of Carl Schachter, The Art of Tonal Analysis: Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory—Introduction

The Art of Tonal Analysis consists of a collection of lectures that Carl Schachter presented during a 2012 doctoral seminar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). During these classroom lectures, Schachter analyzed various works from the tonal repertoire and discussed related theoretic issues. Each lecture was recorded, and Joseph N. Straus, a CUNY colleague of Schachter, compiled and edited them. The book is based on transcriptions of these recordings, prepared for publication with what Straus describes as “relatively modest editorial interventions” (vii). The transcribed lectures are supplemented by musical examples that originally appeared in handouts or on the classroom chalkboard, along with annotated score excerpts that “convey visually material that Schachter presented and demonstrated from the piano” (vii). This was the last course Schachter taught at the Graduate Center, and given this significance, the Reviews Editors of MTO solicited two scholars with contrasting backgrounds to review the book, Poundie Burstein and David Temperley.

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