Heinrich Schenker: selected correspondence

Bent, Ian, Bretherton, David and Drabkin, William (eds.) (2014) Heinrich Schenker: selected correspondence , Martlesham, GB. Boydell & Brewer, 584pp.

Abstract

The work of Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935), widely regarded as the most important music theorist of the twentieth century, has shaped the teaching of music theory in the United States profoundly and influenced theorists there, in Europe, and throughout the world. Living and working in Vienna, Schenker maintained a vigorous correspondence with a large circle of professional musicians, writers, music critics, institutions, administrators, patrons, friends, and pupils. A large part of his correspondence was preserved after his death: some 7,000 letters, postcards, telegrams, etc., to and from 400 correspondents. His diaries record the fabric of his personal life and his activities as a private music teacher and writer; they also provide a detailed commentary on historical and political events and offer a window on to the conditions of life in Vienna. Taken together, these documents contribute vividly to the picture of cultural life in Vienna, and elsewhere, from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual and his circle of musical and artistic friends.

Heinrich Schenker: Selected Correspondence represents a concise edition of some of the theorist's most important and revelatory letters and diary entries. It offers the full text of some 450 letters in English translation, organized into sections devoted to various aspects of his professional life: teaching, writing, administration, and maintaining contact with an ever widening circle including Ferruccio Busoni, Julius Röntgen, Otto Erich Deutsch, Alphons von Rothschild, Paul von Klenau, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Paul Hindemith, Moriz Violin, John Petrie Dunn, and Hans Weisse. Extracts from the diaries provide a summary of important parts of the correspondence that do not survive. The volume includes a detailed exposition of the editorial method, biographical notes on correspondents, and a substantial general introduction. Each of the sections is prefaced by an introduction which provides essential historical context, and the letters and diary entries are fully annotated.

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