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Letter from Schenker to Otto Erich Deutsch, May 15, 1930 (OJ 5/9, [3])
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Page of Schenker's diary, late January and early February 1907
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Page of Schenker's lessonbook for 1923/24
Heinrich Schenker
Viennese musician and teacher Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935), the twentieth century's leading theorist of tonal music, produced a series of innovative studies and editions between 1903 and 1935, while exerting a powerful and sustained influence, directly and through his pupils, on the teaching of music from the 1930s onward in the USA, and since the 1970s in Europe and elsewhere.
Schenker maintained a vigorous correspondence over nearly half a century, kept a meticulously detailed diary over 40 years, and recorded precise notes on lessons that he gave over a period of twenty years. It is these three collections of personal documents that constitute the core of Schenker Documents Online.
Schenker Documents and this Edition
Schenker left behind approximately 130,000 manuscript and typescript leaves comprising unpublished works, preparatory materials, and personal documents, preserved in two dedicated archives, numerous libraries, and private possession. (See "Major Collections.") The archived papers of several other scholars, among them Guido Adler, Oswald Jonas, Moriz Violin, and Arnold Schoenberg, also preserve correspondence and other documents relating to Schenker and his circle.
Schenker Documents Online offers a scholarly edition of this material based not on facsimiles but on near-diplomatic transcriptions of the original texts, together with English translations, explanatory footnotes, summaries, and contextual material relating the texts to Schenker's personal development and that of his correspondents.
Latest
What's new in August 2022?
- DIARIES: Schenker’s diaries are at last finished! The final 18 months (April 1916 to September 1917) are now up on the site, completing the 39-year run from 1896 to January 1935 in over 4,000 pages. A team of seven people, led by Marko Deisinger, carried out the work in 14 dedicated years. Congratulations to those contributors, and thanks to the Austrian Science Fund for financial support! The result is an indispensable foundation for all future biographical study of Schenker and his dealings with pupils, colleagues, friends, foes, and Viennese institutions.
- LESSONBOOKS: Schenker recorded details of almost every lesson he gave between 1912 and 1931 in four books, written out by his wife Jeanette. The all-important first book, covering just January to March 1912, is now on the site, and gives us a good idea of how Schenker had been teaching piano and theory in the decade before 1912.
- CORRESPONDENCE: This year completes all surviving correspondence with Schenker’s pupils, 64 pupils, 700 items in all. Correspondence with two senior figures in Schenker’s life, biographer/critic Max Kalbeck and composer/pianist Eugen d’Albert, illuminates Schenker’s career aspirations and dealings between the late 1880s and 1914. Correspondence with engraver/print maker Victor Hammer covers 1925, the year of his Schenker mezzotint; and that with Moriz Violin and Josef Marx portrays institutional politics in 1932–34. Schenker’s feisty exchanges with Emil Hertzka of Universal Edition for 1911 feature the production of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony monograph and the beginnings of the elucidatory editions of four of Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas.
- PROFILES: 25 new profiles featuring people, places, and institutions are now available, and many existing profiles have been revised.
