Adler, Guido (EN)

Adler Guido, *1 November 1855 Ivančice (Moravia), †15 February 1941 Vienna, Austrian musicologist. In 1874, he graduated from the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied with W. Schenner and J. Dachs (piano) as well as A. Bruckner and O. Dessoff (theory and composition). He then took up law studies at the University of Vienna, where he also developed his musical activities; in 1874, together with other students, he organized the Akademischer Wagnerverein; in 1875–76, he gave a series of lectures on The Ring of the Nibelung. In 1878, he received his doctorate in law, and in 1880, his doctorate in philosophy on the basis of his thesis Die historischen Grundklassen der christlich-abendländischen Musik bis 1600. In 1882, he habilitated (Studie zur Geschichte der Harmonie); in the same year, he participated in the liturgical singing congress in Arezzo. In 1885, he was appointed associate professor at the German University in Prague, and at that time, together with F. Chrysander and Ph. Spitta, he founded the first musicological journal, “Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft”. After E. Hanslick retired in 1898, Adler took up a professorship at the University of Vienna, where he organized an institute of music history, which he ran until 1927. From 1894, he edited the source edition «Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich» (DTÖ); from 1913, this series was accompanied by the annual “Studien zur Musikwissenschaft. Beihefte der Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich”. From 1892, Adler chaired the committee responsible for preparing the music section at the International Music and Theater Exhibition in Vienna. In 1908, he organized an international congress there dedicated to Haydn (100th anniversary of his death), and in 1927, a similar congress focused on Beethoven. In 1927, International Musicological Society was founded on Adler’s initiative. He was the honorary president until 1938. On the occasion of the professor’s 75th birthday, a commemorative book, Studien zur Musikgeschichte, was published. In addition to his organizational, publishing, and pedagogical activities, Adler conducted intensive, creative scientific work throughout his life. After the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, the elderly scholar was banned from further publication.

Adler laid the foundations for the development of musicological research methodology. In his article Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft (1885), he defined for the first time the subject area of musicology and its research methods. He developed this issue further in Methode der Musikgeschichte (1918), a work which constitutes the first attempt to specify the scientific tools of the music historian. His main division of musicology into historical and systematic parts has remained in place to this day; systematic musicology included the following fields: music theory, aesthetics, psychology, pedagogy, and ethnography. Adler saw musicology primarily as a historical discipline, but he closely linked historical research with theoretical research, arguing that “the task of music history is to study and present the sound object in the process of development” and emphasizing that the musical work should be the focus of the music historian’s attention. In Methode der Musikgeschichte, he addressed fundamental methodological issues: the formulation of research problem, types of musical sources, the importance of auxiliary sciences, stylistic-critical foundations, criteria for determining time and space, and the connections and contrasts between individual works. By emphasizing a broadly understood stylistic-critical analysis of a musical work, Adler opposed aesthetic interpretation, which is based on the relative criterion of beauty. Adler’s methodological considerations were linked to his concept of musical style (Der Stil in der Musik, 1911). By the concept of musical style, he understood the composer’s choice of sound material and the way it was used. While the definition of musical style itself shows progressive features, Adler remained an heir to 19th-century music theory in his treatment of motif and theme as the basic architectural units of a musical work of any era and in his preference for melody and rhythm as the main elements of musical form. However, this work highlighted various aspects of musical style, its various manifestations depending on the function of music, performance practice, musical genres, historical era, and technical means.

Adler demonstrated his methodological assumptions and research postulates in Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (1924) – a synthetic study of the history of music, which to this day remains one of the leading works of musicological literature. Rejecting extra-musical criteria for periodizing the history of music, Adler takes musical style as the basis for dividing the history of music, in which he distinguishes the following stylistic periods: the first covers various types of chant, the second – the development of polyphony (9th–16th centuries), and the third – the development of homophony based on accompanied monody (17th–19th centuries). Due to the difficulties posed by the analogous systematization of stylistically diverse contemporary music (after 1880), the last stage of music development was generally referred to as “die Moderne.” According to Adler, the essence of music history lies in the development of musical forms and compositional technique, which is why the authors of the individual chapters focus exclusively on this issue: H. Abert, A. Einstein, W. Fischer, R. Haas, Z. Jachimecki, A. Schering, P. Wagner, and others. Handbuch der Musikgeschichte is therefore one of the first examples of a comprehensive work by music historians in which their detailed knowledge is subordinated to the overarching concept of a synthesis of music history defined by the editor of the publication.

Recognizing source studies as the basis for a synthetic study of music history and monographs, Adler undertook a publishing initiative in this area. Drawing on the experiences of F. Chrysander and Ph. Spitta, Adler intended to organize, together with these scholars, an international series of source editions covering musical monuments (works, treatises, documents) from the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century located in areas belonging to Germany and Austria. As early as 1888, he presented a project for a source publication, Monumenta historiae musicae, which, however, did not come to fruition. In 1892, Adler’s compilation of the musical works of the Austrian emperors appeared as a proposal for a source-type edition, and in the same year, the first volume of the series Deutsche Denkmäler der Tonkunst, edited by Ph. Spitta, F. Chrysander, and O. v. Hasegawa was published. Directly inspired by the compilation of a catalog of musical monuments for the International Exhibition of Theater and Music in Vienna (1892), Adler began publishing a separate series entitled «Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich» in 1894; the individual volumes of the series were provided with revisionary comments and prepared for printing by eminent musicologists; Adler himself compiled 10 items in 15 volumes. Between 1894 and 1938, he edited 45 annuals of «Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich», comprising 83 volumes. This series abandoned the publication of music treatises, narrowed the territorial boundaries of musical monuments to objects located in Austria, and extended the time frame to the 19th century; revisionary commentaries and articles related to the subject matter of «Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich» were published in “Studien zur Musikwissenschaft”. There was not much of a publishing tradition in the field of music source studies, so the DTÖ became a model of scientific music source studies for future generations.

Adler is one of the scholars of fundamental importance for the development of musicology. By formulating the theoretical methodological foundations of this discipline and at the same time creating examples of practical solutions (Handbuch, DTÖ), he influenced the methodological awareness of music historians. At his institute of music history at the University of Vienna, he consistently pursued a broad concept of musical style research, which became a feature of the scientific “Vienna School,” also known as the “Adler School.” His students included musicologists such as H. Besseler, K. Geiringer, Z. Jachimecki, and composers such as A. Webern, A. Schönberg, and E. Wellesz. Adler possessed a rare combination of scientific ability and organizational talent. He was able to grasp the conditions for the development of musicology as a scientific discipline, which inspired his organizational activities (international congresses, DTÖ, International Musicological Society, “Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft”, “Studien zur Musikwissenschaft”). Adler was a scientist who thought and acted with an eye to the future. He appreciated the need to correlate individual research, established cooperation with musicologists of various nationalities, initiated comprehensive research on an international scale, and emphasized the inseparable interdependence of synthetic and source-based work, which contemporary music historians place such strong emphasis on.

Literature: W. Fischer, Guido Adlers „Methode der Musikgeschichte”, “Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft” VII 1924/25; Studien zur Musikgeschichte. Festschrift für Guido Adler zum 75. Geburtstag, Vienna 1930 (contains a bibliography of Adler’s works); R. von Ficker, Guido Adler und die Wiener Schule, “Österreichische Musikzeitschrift” I 1946; R. Heinz, Guido Adlers Musikhistorik als historisches Dokument, in: Die Ausbreitung der Historismus über die Musik, ed. W. Wiora, «Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts» XIV, Regensburg 1969; E. R. Reilly, G. Mahler and Guido Adler, “The Music Quarterly” LVIII 1972; V. Kalisch, Entwurf einer Wissenschaft von der Musik. Guido Adler, «Sammlungen musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen», Baden-Baden 1988; S. Żerańska-Kominek, Adlerowska synteza, in: Muzyka w kulturze, Warsaw 1995.