Schenker's admiration of the music of Johann Strauss and his efforts to promote it by providing voice-leading graphs of his more famous waltzes in Der freie Satz suggests that, his outright dismissal of jazz and other forms of popular music notwithstanding, he saw the difference between good and bad as greater than that between serious and popular. (838)
For this most capable historian and editor, whose guidance of the Cambridge editions of translations of Der Tonwille and two of the three volumes of Das Meisterwerk in der Musik was masterful, work for which we should all be grateful, a statement like this is, alas, a come-down. Drabkin sets Schenker up above the fray, as impartial arbiter of quality regardless of source. That's nonsense, as Drabkin certainly knows. Strauss squeaked into the pantheon because of his close friendship with Brahms, the Lion of Vienna and Schenker's idol -- and only for that reason.
How else, when Strauss represents better than anyone the post-Rossini generations that marry dance music with Italianate melody, a realm of foreground music (chains of waltzes) and larger works of spectacle (operettas) rather than Beethovenian "substance"? Schenker wrote several negative descriptions of Italian music: in brief, he thought that contemporary Italians could write melodies but couldn't build coherent compositions; that people's contribution had been historical, to find and explore counterpoint, which was then properly understood and developed only by Germans.
PS: "--and only for that reason": there is, of course, another, namely Schenker's loyalty to Vienna, his adopted home, great musical city, and seat of the monarchy.
Reference.
Drabkin, William. "Heinrich Schenker." In Thomas Christensen, ed. The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, 812-843. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
