Otto Erich Deutsch

born Vienna, September 5, 1883; died Vienna, November 23, 1967

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Austrian musicologist. Although he is chiefly known as a Schubert scholar, Deutsch’s publications include important studies of Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; he ranks among the leading music bibliographers of the twentieth century.

Career Summary

Deutsch studied history of literature and art at the Universities of Vienna and Graz, and worked as an art critic 1908–09. He served in the Austrian Army during World War I, before working for a time in the book trade, first as an employee of Seidl’s Buchhandlung, then from 1919 as its owner. In 1926 he became music librarian to the private collector and musicologist Anthony van Hoboken, a position he held for nearly a decade, which included the preparation and maintaining of a card-file for what was the largest private collection of musical prints. His first major publication was a two-volume documentary biography of Franz Schubert (1914). This was followed by further studies of Schubert, which led to Deutsch being given the title of Professor in 1928, the centennial year of Schubert’s death.

Less than a year after the annexation of Austria by Germany, Deutsch, who was Jewish, left Vienna (July 1939) for England, becoming a British citizen in 1947; but he returned to Vienna in 1952. While in England, he co-authored the standard catalogue of Schubert’s works and applied the principles of the documentary biography to Handel (1955) and Mozart (1961). Many offprints and clippings of articles by Deutsch are preserved among Schenker’s papers (OC File C), including several on Schenker’s desk at the time of his death (OC File 30).

Not only did Deutsch’s music scholarship range widely, but he was also on friendly terms with music scholars, antiquarian dealers and publishers in Europe, especially in England, Germany, and Switzerland. He frequently took part in broadcasts on Radio Vienna, as organizer and presenter, and was a regular reviewer of events at the Salzburg Festival.

Deutsch lived from 1913 at Nibelungengasse 13, Vienna I; from 1920 at Valeriestraße 26, Vienna II; and then at Böcklinstraße 26, Vienna II, from 1921 until 1939.

Deutsch and Schenker

Deutsch shared Schenker’s belief in the ability of original documents to speak for themselves, as is exemplified by his volume on the original editions of Schubert’s Goethe songs (1926), his facsimile of Schubert’s diary (1928), and his edition of Mozart’s handwritten catalog of his works (1956), as well as the transcriptions in his documentary biographies. He was the general editor of a series of "connoisseur prints" (Liebhaberdrucke) published by Universal Edition, to which Schenker contributed a facsimile edition of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata (1921) with reproductions of three sketches, and a Foreword (contract: OC 52/238). (For the series list, see below.)

The earliest document linking Deutsch and Schenker is a press announcement by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, dated September 15, 1912, announcing a series of public lectures, the list of speakers including both men (OJ 11/22, [4]). The first reference to him in Schenker’s diary appears on February 24, 1913, when, after attending a lecture by Schenker’s pupil Mrs. Sofie Deutsch (no relation to Otto Erich), Heinrich and Jeanette (Kornfeld) spent the evening in company with Sofie and Otto Erich (diary). Thereafter, Schenker met him not infrequently at the houses of Sofie Deutsch and her brother Fritz Mendl. From the mid-1920s onwards, Schenker and Deutsch often invited each other (with their spouses) to afternoon snack (Jause) or the evening meal in their homes; they also met in the Café Aspang to discuss urgent matters.

Correspondence with Schenker

The Schenkers’ correspondence with Deutsch and his wife Hanna, of which the earliest items date from 1913, continued to 1939. Over 320 items of correspondence are known to survive, in the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Vienna, Manuscript Division, the New York Public Library, Oster Collection (files 12, 18, 24, 39, 44, 50, 54, and A), the University of California, Riverside, Oswald Jonas Collection ( files 5/9; 10/3, 14/21, 71/19, and 71/ 21), the University of California, Berkeley, Hargrove Library (BerkAE, [4]), and in private hands. From 1927 until Schenker’s death, Deutsch was involved in some intermediary capacity in nearly all of his friend’s publications. He helped Schenker with the contracts for these, and often smoothed the relationship between author and publisher with carefully worded letters. He advised on the formatting and printing of music examples and proofread the texts for the second and third Meisterwerk yearbooks and the Foreword to the Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln/Five Analyses in Sketchform . As late as 1934 he was advising Schenker on the contract for Der freie Satz and offering to read the proofs when they were ready.

The last eight years of their voluminous correspondence thus provides considerable insight into the genesis of some of Schenker’s most important publications. But it is actually dominated by another topic: the difficulties both men encountered in their dealings with Anthony van Hoboken. Both men felt betrayed, at times, by Hoboken’s cavalier lifestyle and his wavering attitude toward a number of things that affected their lives in significant ways: piano studies with Schenker, financial support for Schenker’s publications, the fee for Deutsch’s services as Hoboken's librarian, interest in and support for a journal to promote the Photogram Archive and a proposed collected edition of the works of C. P. E. Bach; the maintenance of Hoboken’s music library, and even of his Viennese residence. The correspondence from 1927 onward documents these vicissitudes in considerable detail.

Selective Bibliography (to 1951 only)

  • Franz Schubert: Die Dokumente seines Lebens und Schaffens: II/1 Die Dokumente seines Lebens (Munich: G. Müller, 1914), III Sein Leben in Bildern (ibidem, 1913); Eng. transl. Schubert: A Documentary Biography (London: Dent, 1946)
  • Franz Schuberts Briefe und Schriften (Munich: G. Müller, 1919)
  • Die historischen Bildnisse Franz Schuberts (Vienna, 1922, 2/1928)
  • Die Originalausgaben von Schuberts Goethe-Liedern (Vienna: Heck, 1926)
  • Franz Schuberts Tagebuch (Vienna: Heck, 1928)
  • with D. R. Wakeling, Schubert: A Thematic Catalogue of All his Works in Chronological Order (London: Dent, 1951)

Musikalische Seltenheiten: Wiener Liebhaberdrucke, gen. ed. Otto Erich Deutsch:

  • [Note: Only the first six are known to have been published.]
  • I: L. van Beethoven, Sonate op. 27 Nr 2 in Cis Moll, ed. H. Schenker (UE 7000: 1921)
  • II: Joseph Haydn, Zwölf schottische Volkslieder, ed. E. Mandyczewski, German transl. Hugo Engelbert Schwarz (UE 7001: 1921) (English edition: Twelve Scotch Popular Songs for one voice with the accompaniment of pianoforte, violin and violoncello) [not facsimile]
  • III: Johannes Brahms, Drei Lieder, ed. M. Kalbeck (UE 7002: 1921)
  • IV: Franz Schuberts fünf erste Lieder, ed. O. E. Deutsch (UE 7003: 1922)
  • V: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Zwei Rondos, ed. H. Gál (UE 7004: 1923)
  • VI: Johann Sebastian Bach, Präludium und Fuge H moll für Orgel, ed. G. Kinsky (UE 7005: 1923)
  • VII: Richard Strauss, Tod und Verklärung (UE 7008)
  • VIII: J. S. Bach, Kaffeekantate (UE 7009)
  • IX: Mozart, Jupiter-Symphonie (UE 7010)

Sources

  • Festschrift Otto Erich Deutsch zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Walter Gerstenberg, Jan LaRue, and Wolfgang Rehm (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963)
  • NGDM2 (2001 and online)
  • MGG1 (1954)
  • Oster Collection (OC): Finding List
  • Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection (OJMC): Checklist

Contributors

  • William Drabkin and Ian Bent

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Correspondence

Diaries