Schoenberg's Early Correspondence

Early in his career, the composer Arnold Schoenberg maintained correspondence with many notable figures: Gustav Mahler, Heinrich Schenker, Guido Adler, Arnold Rosé, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, to name a few. In this volume of Oxford's Schoenberg in Words series, Ethan Haimo and Sabine Feisst present English translations of the entirety of Arnold Schoenberg's early correspondence, from the earliest extant letters in 1891 to those written in the aftermath of the controversial premieres of his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7, and the Kammersymphonie, Op. 9. The letters provide a wealth of information on many of the crucial stages in Schoenberg's early career, offering invaluable insights into his daily life and working habits. New details emerge about his activities at Wolzogen's Buntes Theater in Berlin, his frequently confrontational interactions with his first publisher (Dreililien Verlag), the reactions of friends and critics to the premieres of his works, his role in the founding of the Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler, his activities as a teacher, and his (all too often unsuccessful) attempts to convince musicians to perform his music. Presented alongside the editors' extensive running commentary, the more than 300 letters in this volume create a vivid picture of the young Schoenberg and his times.

Ethan Haimo, theorist and composer, is Professor of Music at Bar Ilan University. He has written extensively on the music of Arnold Schoenberg including Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey (1990) and Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language (2006). He has also written about form in Classical music, including the book, Haydn's Symphonic Forms (1995).Sabine Feisst is Professor of Music at Arizona State University. Focusing on twentieth and twenty-first century music studies, she published the monographs Der Begriff "Improvisation" in der neuen Musik (1997) and Schoenberg's New World: The American Years (2011) which won the Society for American Music's Lowens Award. With Severine Neff, she co-edits the nine-volume set Schoenberg in Words (Oxford University Press).