Ludwig Thuille

born Bozen [Bolzano] (Tyrol), November 30, 1861; died Munich, February 5, 1907

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Austrian music theorist, composer, and pianist.

Career Summary

After being a pupil and chorister at the Benedictine monastery of Kremsmünster and studying privately with Josef Pembauer (a former Bruckner pupil), Thuille became a student at the Royal Music School in Munich, studying music theory, organ and composition with Joseph Rheinberger and piano with Karl Bärmann. In 1883 he was appointed a teacher of piano and harmony at the same school, in 1888 was given the rank of professor, and in 1893 succeeded Rheinberger as professor of composition, a position he retained until his death. In the 1880s he became associated with the "New German School" of composition and a focus for the young composers of that group, and founder of the "Munich School" of composers.

Thuille is better know today for the widely circulated and forward-looking Harmonielehre (Stuttgart: Carl Grüninger Nachf., 1907, 2/1908, 3/1910, 10/1933), written jointly with Rudolf Louis. Thuille contributed the general method and many of the music examples, Louis the aesthetic and theoretical sections of the work. The work devotes 200 pages to diatonic harmony and 200 pages to chromatic and enharmonic harmony, including 20 pages of examples from the music literature (excerpts from Liszt, Bruckner, Wagner, Richard Strauss, etc.) with multi-level Roman-numeral analyses and analytical commentaries. An important concept is that of "perceptual dissonances" (Auffassungsdissonanzen), which are "simultaneously both consonances and dissonances: the outer ('sensory') ear hears them as consonances, while to the inner ('mental') ear they are unquestionably entirely dissonant' (6th edn, pp. 46‒47).

Thuille and Schenker

Schenker showed some sympathy for Louis-Thuille: in his 1907 diary (p. 56) he remarked dryly that now that Thuille had died, leaving behind the Harmonielehre, "people suddenly knew that he had been a better theorist than composer." Certain recent theorists have claimed that Louis's and Thuille's interpretation of some harmonies as the result of complex linear motions rather than vertical constructions is closer to Schenker's approach. Schenker's library at the time of his death had a copy of the 1907 first edition of the Harmonielehre (Hinterberger, Musik und Theater ..., item 181).

Bibliography

  • MGG (1989), "Thuille, Ludwig" (Oskar Kaul)
  • Grove Music Online, "Thuille, Ludwig" [n.a.]
  • Damschroder, David and Williams, David Russell, Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker: A Bibliography and Guide (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1990), pp. 172‒73
  • Wason, Robert W., Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), pp. 116‒19, 121‒32
  • Wason, Robert W., "Musica practica; Music Theory as Pedagogy," The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 66‒67

Contributor

  • Ian Bent

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Correspondence

  • CA 68 Handwritten letter from Schenker to Cotta, dated September 13, 1907

    Schenker expects the press to be enthusiastic about Harmonielehre. — He comments of the "Riemann school."

  • CA 106-107 Handwritten letter from Schenker to Cotta, dated December 2, 1909

    Schenker explains the necessity for some late interpolations into Kontrapunkt I. — He may be able to include the title "Professor of Composition and Theory" against his name on the title-pages of his works, and debates the advantages of such an appointment at the Vienna Academy against the loss of independence. — Only anonymity has prevented Harmonielehre from success so far.

  • OJ 5/17, [1, vsn 1] Handwritten draft letter from Schenker to Hindemith, undated [November 3, 1926]

    In response to Hindemith's letter of October 25, 1926, Schenker's 15-page first draft states his preference for a meeting with Hindemith in Vienna. Schenker thinks differently from Hindemith: the notion of a "good musician" is a delusion; artistic property is comparable with material property; the music of today is quite different from that of the past, the rules of the masterworks do not govern it, hence it is not art at all. Schenker reserves the right to speak his own mind.

  • WSLB-Hds 191.563 Handwritten letter from Schenker to Deutsch, dated June 22, 1928

    Schenker thanks Deutsch for his birthday greetings, explaining that, although he feels alienated from the musical world of the present day, he is convinced that his work will have a lasting effect on future generations.

  • OJ 6/8, [1] Handwritten letter from Schenker to Violin, dated January 9, 1931

    In this long and wide-ranging two-part letter, which includes a graphic analysis of J. S. Bach’s Two-part Invention in E-flat major, Schenker praises the work of Hans Weisse, who has recently returned from lecturing in Berlin and may be offered a post there (on Furtwängler’s recommendation), emigrate to America (with the help of Gerald Warburg), or even found an institute that would give employment to Felix Salzer and other Schenkerian disciples under one roof. — A letter from Violin, which has just arrived in the morning post, speaks of Violin’s own intention to establish a Schenker Institute in Hamburg. For this, Schenker recommends Felix-Eberhard von Cube (in preference to Reinhard Oppel) and Otto Vrieslander as possible theory teachers, if not Weisse himself. — The letter concludes with a tirade against those who have caused him financial misery (including his brother Mozio), culminating in a cynical passage in which Schenker advises his friend to look after himself and engage some dull pedagog to teach conventional theory. In the end, he wishes Violin luck with the enterprise, and thanks him for having helped rescue him from Hertzka’s clutches.

  • OJ 10/18, [15] Handwritten letter from Elias to Jeanette Schenker dated February 27, 1938

    Mis Elias remarks that theory teachers tend to revert to the teaching of Ludwig Thuille for fear of Schenker. — She is eagerly awaiting issues 8/9 of Der Dreiklang, and recommends a radio relay of the St. Matthew Passion.

Diaries