Correspondence A.Schönberg–Universal-Edition. Hybrid Edition

Arnold Schönberg (born 1874 in Vienna, died 1951 in Los Angeles) composer, writer, painter and teacher was a central personality in the arts world of the 20th century. Before emigrating to the US in 1933 to escape the National Socialists, he published the majority of his works at the publishing house Universal-Edition in Vienna, which specialized in new music. The correspondence between the composer and his music publishers was exchanged over a period of almost four decades, and allows insights into the production of printed music ranging from manuscripts to printed scores and orchestral parts. It documents the communication between the creative artist and all persons/institutions involved in the performance of his works, and illuminates the complex procedures that prevailed in an international music publishing house. The letters span a period that includes the two world wars, and also enable conclusions to be drawn about contemporary events, ultimately creating a cultural panorama of an epoch known as musical modernism. Numbering around 1,600 documents, the correspondence between Arnold Schönberg and Universal-Edition will now be made available (edited) in a research project with two different media: a digital edition that will contain digital copies of the originals and a large quantity of supplementary material in addition to the transcription of the actual letters, some of which use barely legible Kurrent handwriting, and also a traditional printed edition with several volumes. This combined system will enable an ideal blend of the advantages offered by these two media in the form of a historical-critical hybrid edition. State-of-the-art technology and international standards will be employed in order to cover all aspects of the written documents, from pure reproduction of the content to the profundity with which the subject matter is treated. A key role is played by the music here, and the letters include musical notation in many intermediate stages between composing and performance material. This requires a special kind of digital encoding. Each letter will be viewed and presented based on the originals found in archives all around the world. The project will be conducted in cooperation with the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, where the composers Estate is preserved, with the music publishers Universal Edition (also still located in Vienna), whose archives offer important material for the researchers, and the State Institute for Music Research in Berlin (Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung), where the printed edition will be published in the Viennese School correspondence series entitled Briefwechsel der Wiener Schule.