The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters - Softcover

Harris, Donald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393336395 ISBN 13: 9780393336399

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987

Synopsis

Few figures have influenced 20th-century music as much as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. Their letters, one of the most important sources of information about the background to their music, are here published for the first time. The editors have transcribed, translated and annotated more than 800 letters and from this vast body of material have selected 370 that reflect the lives and times of these two great composers. The letters reveal much about the relationship between Berg and Schoenberg: first as pupil and teacher, then as friends and finally, after the premier of Wozzeck, as colleagues and peers. They also shed light on the reasons for Schoenberg's move to Berlin in 1911, the intrigue behind the early demise of the Society for Private Musical Performance, and Schoenberg's feigned indifference to the success of Wozzeck. Schoenberg describes his first years in America and the correspondence ends with Berg's death in 1935. The letters are fully annotated and supplemented with appendices, facsimiles and many photographs.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, German (translation)

From Publishers Weekly:

From 1906 to 1935, the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg and one of his two principle disciples, Alban Berg, corresponded about their needs, feelings and artistic motivations. Totally committed to Schoenberg's ideas, Berg feared and worshipped his hero and many of his letters are subservient and servile. Schoenberg, who hated reading letters and disliked writing them, wrote much less frequently and often complained about his need for money. Each maintained a reserve that prevented a truly candid exchange of ideas. Nevertheless, in providing an enlarged perspective on two great composers, this competently translated and annotated correspondence helps illuminate an era. It also reveals "that garrison mentality and snobbishness that belong to the less appetizing legacies of the Schoenberg circle." In this edition, a major work of musical scholarship, 338 of the 800-odd extant letters are published complete, and a further 39 are cut or summarized. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0393336395
• ISBN 13: 9780393336399
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528
• Editor: Brand Juliane, Hailey Christopher