Heinrich Schenker´s Diaries 1918-1925: An Annotated Edition

Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) is regarded as one of the most influential music theoreticians of the 20th century. Many of his Jewish students emigrated to the United States, where they successfully implanted Schenker`s ideas on the structure of tonal music into the academic world. This contrasted with Schenker`s own position in Vienna, where as a freelance author and private teacher he never attained an academic post. His diaries, written between 1896 and his death, not only afford us insight into his private circumstances, but into the development of his theories, the network of his ramified professional contacts and of cultural life of Vienna, in which Schenker participated vigorously. In the three year research project, one academic member of the project staff will compile a commentated edition of the diaries from 1918-1925. Together with their English translation, the texts will be continuously published on the database of the international Schenker Correspondence Project, so that after one year a third of the text can already be consulted online. The early Interwar Years are significant in various respects. Besides publishing books and Urtext-editions of printed music, in 1921 Schenker first published his own journal analysing individual pieces of music, inspired by Karl Kraus` Die Fackel. With the introduction of the concepts of the Urlinie (fundamental line) and the Ursatz (fundamental structure), his theories underwent far-reaching change and clarification. Additionally, after the First World War, Schenker was pre-disposed to air his political views in print. With this he was obviously reacting to the political re-orientation of Austria after the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, to the controversial effects of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain and to an increase in anti-Semitism through the massive immigration of Jewish refugees from the East of the Habsburg monarchy. The project has a relevance not only for musicology but for other historical disciplines. Schenker`s diaries provide material for, and points of intersection with, the social and modern history of the final war year 1918 and the first post-war years, and facilitate a cultural and social analysis of the Viennese artistic network of which Schenker was an integral part. They illuminate interesting facets of Jewish identity in the Interwar Years and provide a wealth of information for Jewish Studies, Cultural Studies, as well as Histories of Thought and Identity. The overarching project is a large-scale Schenker Online Documentation, encompassing the diaries, correspondence, newspaper articles and didactic works. Through their dense interconnectivity, the sources will compliment and illustrate each other reciprocally. The project promises to be exemplary in its relevance and impact.

Heinrich Schenker`s diaries, written between 1896 and his death, not only offer valuable insights into his private circumstances, but also into the chronology of his writings, the network of his professional contacts and of cultural life of Vienna. The central aim of the research project was to compile a commentated edition of the diaries from 1918-1925, together with their English translation. The project is part of an overarching large-scale online documentation (SDO-Schenker Documents Online, http://www.schenkerdocumentsonline.org/), encompassing the diaries, correspondence, and lesson books. Through their dense interconnectivity, the sources on SDO compliment and illustrate each other reciprocally. The handwritten text of more than 1.000 manuscript pages, has been transcribed and contextualized. The creation of more than 2.500 profiles of persons, places, institutions, organizations, companies, works by Schenker as well as journals and newspapers named in the diaries made up a main portion of the work. These data constitute a kind of Schenker encyclopedia. In his diaries, Heinrich Schenker presented himself as a music theoretician, as an observer of culture and politics, as a protagonist in Vienna`s aesthetic life and as a German-speaking Jew as well. The now published part of Schenker`s diaries provides an in-depth view of his private circumstances in an economically difficult time. With many biographical details the diaries offer new and exhaustive information about Schenker`s students and family members. There is detailed information about the chronology of Schenker`s writings from the first sketch, clear copy, and corrections to the printing process. Interestingly and contrary to what we expected, the diaries contain only poor information about the development of Schenker`s theoretical ideas and concepts. He obviously did not use the diary to reflect his work, instead, he used it as a kind of production log. However, we find data on the background of his very stable aesthetic and political views, which do not seem to have developed during the time considered. Schenker`s correspondence plays a major role in his diaries. He carefully reported all letters and postcards he sent and received, often with short summaries and some comments. As the correspondence is not fully extant, these reports are of special interest. Schenker took part in Vienna`s musical life that after the post-war break-down was intensively resumed in the 1920ies. He used to attend concerts and opera performances and visited art exhibitions, all of which he commented on in the diaries. The Austrian radio station RAVAG started broadcasting on October 1, 1924 and soon after that Schenker owned the equipment and, according to reports in the diaries, listened to the radio regularly. Finally, the diaries offer an overview of the cultural network of which Schenker was an integral part and may clarify the Jewish contributions to that network. It is a remarkable fact that Schenker and his wife were hiding their Jewish identity from many people, foreigners as well as friends, some of them themselves Jewish. Only in a very small circle Schenker confessed his Jewish belief.