Letter from Schenker to Otto Erich Deutsch, May 15, 1930 (OJ 5/9, [3])
Page of Schenker's diary, late January and early February 1907
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Schenker left behind approximately 130,000 manuscript and typescript leaves comprising unpublished works, preparatory materials, and personal documents, preserved in two dedicated archives, numerous libraries, and private possession.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 2023?
- CORRESPONDENCE: This has been a bumper year! A rich new offering of correspondence from the earlier period – 1894 to around 1913, featuring Schenker’s closest friend, Moriz Violin, composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni, bass vocalist Eduard Gärtner, violinist Fritz Wahle, artist and critic Adalbert Seligmann, and publisher Breitkopf & Härtel, yielding a clearer picture of Schenker as successively journalist, composer, and theorist, and his professional aspirations; also the final period, 1927 to 1934, featuring the publishers and printers of The Masterwork in Music, vol. 3 and Five Graphic Music Analyses, and a remarkable epistolary collaboration with the music bibliographer Otto Erich Deutsch.
- LESSONBOOKS: We now have a complete sweep of ten years, from 1912 to 1922. The 1912/13 teaching year provides a particularly detailed and comprehensive record of the 708 lessons he gave in that time. Some pupils took lessons only on piano, others took a combination of piano and theory, the most committed taking three hour-long lessons a week, one of which was exclusive to the study of form, and of counterpoint up to four or more voices in all five species. One pupil, Hans Weisse uniquely took lessons in composition and theory. This was the year in which Schenker completed the first volume of his Beethoven’s Last Piano Sonatas, on Op. 109, and its influence on his teaching at the time is clear to see.
- DIARIES: Just a reminder that since 2022 we have had the full range of Schenker’s diaries, from 1896 to 1935, available on the site, offering a rounded picture of Schenker as a professional, social, and family man, revealing his innermost thoughts.
