Heinrich Schenker´s Diaries 1912-1914 and 1931-1935: An Annotated Edition

Heinrich Schenker (18681935) is regarded as one of the most influential music theorists of the twentieth century. Many of his Jewish students emigrated to the United States, where they successfully implanted his ideas on the structure of tonal music into the academic world. This contrasted with Schenkers own position in Vienna, where as a freelance writer and private teacher he never attained an academic post. His diaries, written between 1896 and his death, afford insight not only into his private circumstances, but also into the development of his theories, the network of his ramified professional contacts, and Viennese cultural life in which he participated vigorously. Based on previous projects that edited the diaries from 19181930 and have made them accessible on the website Schenker Documents Online, one academic member of the project staff will now compile a critical edition of the diaries from 19121914 and from 19311935. Together with their English translation, the texts will be published online. The pre-war and interwar years are significant in various respects. In the periods covered by the project Schenker published ground-breaking works, including the first volumes in the series of Erläuterungsausgaben (Elucidatory Editions) of Beethovens late piano sonatas (1913, 1914), the Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln (Five Analyses in Sketch-Form, 1932) and Der freie Satz (Free Composition, 1935). The diaries promise to provide insight in the genesis of these writings. Further they comprise Schenkers comments on artistic, political and institutional events from those years and thus enable us to see the development of Schenkers aesthetic and political views. (The artistic scandals of 1913, the outbreak of the First World War, the National-Socialist takeover in Germany, and the creation of a corporative state in Austria (1934) readily come to mind. The earliest efforts to institutionalize Schenkerian theory outside Austria especially in Germany and the USA also date from the 1930s.) The project has a relevance not only for musicology but for other historical disciplines. Schenkers diaries provide material for, and points of intersection with, the social and modern history of the pre-war years and the early 1930s, 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, and histories of thought and identity. The overarching Schenker Documents Online, encompassing the diaries, correspondence, newspaper articles and didactic works, promises to be exemplary in its relevance and impact. Through their dense interconnectivity, the sources complement and illustrate each other reciprocally.

Heinrich Schenkers diaries, written between 1896 and his death in 1935 not only afford us insight into his private circumstances, but also into the chronology of his writings, the network of his ramified professional contacts and of cultural life of Vienna, in which Schenker participated vigorously. The research project is part of an ongoing large-scale Schenker online documentation (SDO Schenker Documents Online, http://www.schenkerdocumentsonline.org/), encompassing the diaries, correspondence, and lesson books. The central aim of the project was to compile a commentated edition of the diaries in the pre-war years from 19121914 and in the last years of Schenkers life 19311935, together with their English translation. With the completion of this work, most of Schenkers diaries are now available on SDO. The handwritten text of over 1.000 manuscript pages has been transcribed and contextualized. The creation of another more than 1.000 profiles of persons, places, institutions, 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 encyclopaedia, which is accessible to the public on the World Wide Web. The pre-war and interwar years are significant in various respects. In the periods covered by the project, Schenker published ground-breaking works, including the first volumes in the series of Erläuterungsausgaben (Elucidatory Editions) of Beethovens late piano sonatas (1913, 1914), the Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln (Five Analyses in Sketch-Form, 1932) and Der freie Satz (Free Composition, 1935). The diaries provide insight in the genesis of these writings. Further they comprise Schenkers comments on artistic and political events from those years and thus enable us to see the development of Schenkers aesthetic and political views. The earliest efforts to institutionalize Schenkerian theory outside Austria especially in Germany and the USA also date from the 1930s. With their many biographical details, the diaries offer new and exhaustive information about Schenkers students and family members. Schenkers correspondence plays a major role in his diaries. He carefully noted 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. 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 remarkable 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.)