A Schoenberg Reader

Arnold Schoenbergs close involvement with many of the principal developments of twentieth-century music, most importantly the break with tonality and the creation of twelve-tone composition, generated controversy from the time of his earliest works to the present day. This authoritative new collection of Schoenbergs essays, letters, literary writings, musical sketches, paintings, and drawings offers fresh insights into the composers life, work, and thought. The documents, many previously unpublished or untranslated, reveal the relationships between various aspects of Schoenbergs activities in composition, music theory, criticism, painting, performance, and teaching. They also show the significance of events in his personal and family life, his evolving Jewish identity, his political concerns, and his close interactions with such figures as Gustav and Alma Mahler, Alban Berg, Wassily Kandinsky, and Thomas Mann. Extensive commentary by Joseph Auner places the documents and materials in context and traces important themes throughout Schoenbergs career from turn-of-century Vienna to Weimar Berlin to nineteen-fifties Los Angeles.