Placing Korngold : Erich Wolfgang Korngold's place in the twentieth century and in the great tradition

This thesis investigates the way Korngold's reception and reputation changed during the twentieth century. In 1930 Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Arnold Schoenberg were composers cited respectively as second and fourth "most famous" Viennese musicians of their time. They shared a common starting point within the tradition of high Western art music since both emerged from the German-Viennese classical musical world of the later nineteenth century. In the 1920s their musical paths diverged, and while Schoenberg was regarded by many as retaining a leading position in music at least until the 1970s, Korngold's position was much less certain and consistent. While Schoenberg was revered by art music connoisseurs and musicologists as emblematic of twentieth-century music, Korngold lost his reputation among this group and only regained high profile during the last quarter of the century. The changing fortunes of Korngold' s reputation forms the material of this dissertation, which seeks to explain why his reception should have been so variable by focusing on the attitudes and thinking lying behind the articles and reviews written about him during this period. This process reveals the shift in Western musicological thinking which before the World Wars sought to evaluate what was valuable in art music according to elitist hierarchy, but which by the end of the twentieth century determined that value in music might lie more in its function and context and that the Western tradition continued in a way quite unforeseen