Review Article: Arnold Schoenberg’s Op 11/1, Friedrich Hartmann’s Fully-Chromaticised Scales and Analytical System, and the Henk Temmingh-Bernard van der Linde Debate

Abstract

This article reviews a debate that took place between Henk Temmingh and Bernard van der Linde over the course of three years in the discursive space of the annual conference hosted by the Musicological Society of Southern Africa. Concerning analytical approaches to Arnold Schoenberg’s piano piece Op 11/1, it revisits the arguments of the main protagonists of the debate. Both Temmingh and Van der Linde were ignorant of important international discursive contexts pertaining to their views, and the review situates their exchange ex post facto in these contexts. An important South African subtext to the debate was the position of Friedrich Hartmann’s analytical theory of fully-chromaticised scales, and the degree to which this theory was readily accepted in the South African musicological fraternity. The article notes the status of a disciplinary debate of this nature in the South African socio-political context of the time. Not only does this debate reveal something about the local and international insularity of musicological discourse in the South Africa of the time, but it also begs the question as to the ideological gains to be had by analytically positioning Schoenberg with respect to the nineteenth century as opposed to the twentieth century.