Die Zukunft
The Future
Documents associated with this entity:
Literary and political weekly founded by the German cultural critic Maximilian Harden, to which Schenker contributed regularly from 1892 through 1897.
Harden, sole editor of Die Zukunft, began his career as a theater critic in the 1880s and became intensely occupied with political and social issues after 1890. Regarding contemporary German cultural criticism as lacking in integrity and pandering to advertisers, he founded Die Zukunft as a financially independent paper, financed by the Harden family, in October 1892. In his lead essay, he invited contributors to the journal by declaring that "in Germany and in Europe there must still be . . . fifty or so men who have the courage to proclaim the truth here unreservedly, without fear of excommunication by party bigwigs and advertisers, and to interpret the signs of the future."
Die Zukunft and Schenker
Schenker began his work for Die Zukunft in its inaugural year with a series of articles critical of the Viennese enthusiasm for the operas of Mascagni and other verismo composers. Between then and 1897, he contributed a total of eighteen essays to the journal, mostly short reflections on contemporary musical life. Harden and Schenker remained on good terms until the autumn of 1896. Their falling-out revolved around aesthetic differences, brought to a head over Schenker's review of Karl Goldmark's Das Heimchen am Herd and an unpublished essay on Engelbert Humperdinck, rejected by Harden and now lost. Schenker's last article for Die Zukunft, an obituary for Johannes Brahms, appeared in May 1897.
Correspondence with Schenker
Thirty items of correspondence to Schenker from Maximilian Harden, more than half under the Die Zukunft letterhead, are preserved as OJ 11/42 (transcripts of excerpts from these typed by Oswald Jonas exist also at OJ 59/8), and one letter from Hermann Wolff to Harden concerning an article by Schenker as OJ 71/42; no letters from Schenker to Harden are known to survive. Photocopies of all eighteen of Schenker's articles, with annotations and detailed notes by Oswald Jonas are preserved as OJ 20/2.
Bibliography:
- Federhofer, Hellmut, ed., Heinrich Schenker als Essayist und Kritiker ... (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1990) [all eighteen of Schenker's articles]
- Rast, Nicholas, ed., "A Checklist of Essays and Reviews by Heinrich Schenker," Music Analysis 7/2 (July 1988), 121-3
Sources:
- Apostata [Maximilian Harden], "Von Bel zu Babel," Die Zukunft 1/1 (1892), 33-40
- Young, Harry F., Maximilian Harden, Censor Germaniae. Ein Publizist im Widerstreit von 1892 bis 1927 (Münster: Regensberg, 1971)
Contributor:
- Kevin Karnes