Schoenberg’s early correspondence : 1891-May 1907

449 Pages·2016·4.13 MB·English

by  Arnold Schoenberg

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SCHOENBERG’S
EARLY
CORRESPONDENCE
ii
Schoenberg in Words
General Editors
Sabine Feisst and Severine Neff
Volume 1: Schoenberg on Form, including Fundamentals of Musical
Composition, edited by Áine Heneghan
Volume 2: Schoenberg’s Models for Beginners in Composition,
edited by Gordon Root
Volume 3: Schoenberg on Counterpoint, including Preliminary
Exercises in Counterpoint, edited by Severine Neff
Volume 4: Schoenberg on Performance, edited by Avior Byron
Volume 5: Schoenberg’s Program Notes and Musical Analyses,
edited by J. Daniel Jenkins
Volume 6: Schoenberg’s Correspondence with Anton Webern,
edited and translated by Benjamin Levy
Volume 7: Schoenberg’s Correspondence with Alma Mahler, edited
and translated by Elizabeth L. Keathley and Marilyn McCoy
Volume 8: Schoenberg’s Early Correspondence, edited and translated
by Ethan Haimo and Sabine Feisst
Volume 9: Schoenberg’s Correspondence with American Composers,
edited and translated by Sabine Feisst
iii
SCHOENBERG’S
EARLY
CORRESPONDENCE
1891—M ay 1907
EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY ETHAN HAIMO
AND SABINE FEISST
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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874–1951, author. | Haimo, Ethan, 1950—editor, translator, writer
of added commentary. | Feisst, Sabine, 1962—editor, translator, writer of added commentary.
Title: Schoenberg’s early correspondence : 1891–May 1907 / edited, translated, and with
commentary by Ethan Haimo & Sabine Feisst.
Description: New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. | Series: Schoenberg in words | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050037 | ISBN 9780195383720 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874–1951—Correspondence. |
Composers—Austria—Correspondence.
Classification: LCC ML410.S283 A413 2016 | DDC 780.92—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050037
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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Contents
Preface and Editorial Notes vii
Acknowledgments xvii
Frequently Used Abbreviations xix
I. Letters before 1900 1
II. Letters, 1900–1 901 17
III. Letters, 1902 61
IV. Letters, 1903 156
V. Letters, 1904 223
VI. Letters, 1905 295
VII. Letters, 1906 320
VIII. Letters, through May 1907 367
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vi
vi Contents
Appendix 1: Undatable Letters 399
Appendix 2: Items Not Included 405
Select Bibliography 409
Index 413
vii
Preface and Editorial Notes
Notwithstanding Arnold Schoenberg’s central importance for the music of
the twentieth century, relatively little of his early correspondence has been
published in German transcription, let alone translated into English. The
present book addresses that scholarly gap. By presenting English transla-
tions of and commentary on all known (and available) letters to and from
Schoenberg beginning with the first surviving letters (1891) and continuing
to the end of May 1907, this book sheds new light on Schoenberg’s early biog-
raphy and career.
The rationale behind the starting date may seem obvious, but our decision
to include all available letters and to stop at the end of May 1907 requires some
explanation. Since an edition of all the approximately 20,000 surviving letters
is well beyond the capacity of any single, or even, as here, pair of editors, prior
editions of Schoenberg’s letters have presented some subset of the total. Erwin
Stein was the first to prepare a volume of Schoenberg’s letters, Ausgewählte
Briefe (1958). For that volume he selected letters and excerpts thereof that he
found to be particularly interesting and important. He tended to choose let-
ters that Schoenberg wrote to prominent figures (Ferruccio Busoni, Richard
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viii
viii Preface and Editorial Notes
Dehmel, Vasili Kandinsky, Alban Berg, Thomas Mann, Anton Webern, and
so forth) or that addressed compositional or biographical issues he deemed
important. Moreover, he included only letters written by Schoenberg, not by
his correspondents. Other publications have dealt with Schoenberg’s com-
munication with a specific figure such as Berg, Busoni, Heinrich Schenker,
Alexander Zemlinsky, and so forth. In the Schoenberg in Words set (of which
the present book is a part), other subsets are chosen: Schoenberg’s correspon-
dence with Alma Mahler, Webern, and American composers.
In this volume we decided to take an alternative approach, one which
we found particularly advantageous. We present the complete text of every
available letter, both to and from Schoenberg, within the designated time
frame, including letters not only to and from famous figures but also let-
ters to and from less well- known correspondents. We believe that a full pic-
ture of Schoenberg and his milieu is best achieved by seeing not only what
Schoenberg wrote but what others conveyed to him.
Since the nineteenth century, one of the most popular (and enduring)
historiographical models has been Thomas Carlyle’s “Great Man Theory,” the
idea that history can largely be explained by the impact and influence of the
acts, decisions, and ideas of great figures. Books featuring only Schoenberg’s
correspondence with the leading lights of his day fit comfortably into Carlyle’s
historiographical model. But a competing model quickly emerged: Herbert
Spencer’s argument that great men and women are products of their
societies and cultures and that their actions flow out of the prevailing social
and cultural context. By presenting all the surviving letters, from both
prominent figures and far less well- known correspondents, we anchor our
work firmly in Spencer’s model of thought. These documents give us some
inkling of what it was like to be a young, aspiring, but controversial com-
poser in Vienna and Berlin just after the turn of the twentieth century. We
see Schoenberg’s interactions with musicians, publishers, contest commit-
tees, writers, family, benefactors, friends, and foes. We discover his reaction
to criticism, how he worked with (or against) his publisher, how he tried to
promote his works, how he earned his daily bread, and countless other bio-
graphical and historical details.
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Preface and Editorial Notes ix
Starting with the first extant letters is obvious, but why did we include
correspondence only through the end of May 1907? The period of time cov-
ered by this book begins with Schoenberg as an unknown, unpublished, and
untested composer who had few compositions in his catalogue, no publications
to his credit, and almost no public performances of his works. Schoenberg
was someone who, at the beginning of our story, was compelled to take a job
at a cabaret in order to support himself and his family. But within six years,
he had become famous, primarily as a result of the extraordinary reactions to
the premieres of his String Quartet, Op. 7, and his Chamber Symphony, Op. 9.
By the end of May 1907, the reactions to these premieres had tapered off. Thus
the end of May 1907 seemed like a logical point in time to stop, marking as
it did the end of one phase of his career and the beginning of the next. Any
ending point may seem arbitrary, halting the story in media res, but stopping
after the hubbub died down following the controversial concerts in early 1907
gave us as reasonable an endpoint as we were likely to find.
There is an added reason that an edition of the early letters is particularly
attractive. One of the consequences of Schoenberg’s early anonymity is the
frankness with which he and his correspondents could write, not suspect-
ing that the letters would ever be read by anyone else. Thus there is a fresh-
ness to the dialogue that is not often matched in the correspondence of later
years. From 1909 onward, Schoenberg made it a regular practice to create
carbon copies of all the letters he wrote. (By contrast, in the period covered
here, he made almost no copies, and thus letters of his survived only if the
recipients saved them.) When someone is famous and makes copies of his
letters, saving them for posterity, it is reasonable to assume that the author
is self- consciously aware that his words are no longer private. It follows that
letters can take on the feel of public manifestos, not private communications.
The same is true for Schoenberg’s correspondents. Before 1907, few of those
who wrote to Schoenberg could have imagined that their words would be
published (let alone translated) more than a century later. This too permitted
his correspondents to write with a directness that is unusual to find in the
correspondence of later years when his correspondents knew they were writ-
ing to a famous man.