The Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) is one of the most important thinkers in the history of Western music, and one of its most original minds: his achievements have been compared to those of Freud in psychology and Einstein in physics. His influence, modest (though not negligible) in his own lifetime, has grown steadily since the middle of the twentieth century; he had become a paradigmatic figure in the USA by the 1960s, and soon afterwards in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Interest in his life's work is, in many respects, equal to that shown in the leading modernist composers of his time, and shows no signs of abating.