Footnotes

¹ Writing of this letter is not recorded in Schenker's diary.

² Ex. 173 quotes the Max Reger Piano Quintet, Op.64 in score, and belongs to footnote 1, beginning on p. 220 and continuing through to p. 226. (The footnote is entirely omitted from the published English translation, the corresponding place in which is p.174, line 9 at the phrase "step progression.") The footnote, which is preceded by a remark in the main text that modern music is at fault in lacking the scale-degree, reads as follows:

"As a deterrent example, I give below the opening of the Quintet Op. 64 by a modern composer. — This opening is by far the most shapely passage in the first movement ‒ what follows is exponentially more confused. But I ask: Do we really hear C minor, or is it not more likely Eę major? What in particular do measures 6‒8 signify in themselves and in relation to the whole? It's not just that the succession of harmonies is hard to understand (here it is ‒ considered from the standpoint of Eę major/minor ‒ something like the following: I ^ę3, ęII[phrygian], ‒ IV and lastly II ^Ě3 as if it wanted to go to the dominant. It raises the question: What is this succession of scale-degrees trying to say? Where has it come from? Where is it headed? In what way do these scale-degrees serve the alleged main key of C minor? And how does this acquired Eę major/minor stand in relation to C minor?
What is the solution to this problem? There is none. There isn't a passage in the whole work that informs us of the main key; only with difficulty does what ensues relate to what precedes it; and when by chance such a relationship emerges, it is too feeble, too trivial, too brief. [There is] no plan to the keys, no plan to the foreground keys ‒ all merely one singular big, irrationally proceeding mass. — And people in the German lands are preparing seriously to celebrate a composer such as this, who is devoid of all musical instincts, as a "master of musical composition" ‒ a few years after the death of Brahms ‒ Oh, what indolence on the part of the German public, what cowardliness on the part of writers and the powerful in the world of music!

(Despite the anonymity adopted here, the music example is clearly captioned "Max Reger, Quintet, Op. 64.") — See also CA 1-2, November 8, 1905, paragraph 4, for reference to Reger in his initial proposal to Cotta.

³ The proof must have had five lines of main text on p.220, since it now has two before the footnote begins.

⁴ "Strich" ("line"): the short horizontal rule separating the main text from the footnote on all seven pages. The footnote text continues through to p.224, the example to p.226.