{"id":7762,"date":"2024-09-09T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T06:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/?p=7762"},"modified":"2024-09-03T12:13:49","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T10:13:49","slug":"arnold-schonberg-on-his-150th-birthday-the-truth-in-the-music-and-in-the-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2024\/09\/09\/arnold-schonberg-on-his-150th-birthday-the-truth-in-the-music-and-in-the-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg on his 150th birthday \u2013 the truth in the music (and in the edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For me, this Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg quotation expresses the composer\u2019s attitude towards music \u2013 not just towards his own, but towards music in general. The seriousness with which he was striving for truth in music is without parallel. The fact that this attitude also meant a certain lack of compromise will be further discussed below…<\/p>\n

In a few days the world will be celebrating Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s 150th<\/sup> birthday \u2013 and the G. Henle publishing house will of course also be joining the celebration! Reason enough to pause for a moment to highlight Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s significance for our catalogue.<\/p>\n

When I joined G. Henle publishers as a trainee in 2004, the house programme then looked very different: Lacking were composers of classical modernism. This is because, with very few exceptions, our catalogue only includes copyright-free works. Whenever a copyright is about to expire, we prepare for that in good time. In 2004 I was therefore involved in helping the editorial team find sources for Maurice Ravel\u2019s works (which we were then able to welcome into our catalogue in 2008). Quite a few such major events followed over the next few years: Alban Berg became available in 2006, Sergei Rachmaninoff was added to the programme in 2014, B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k and Anton Webern followed in 2016, Richard Strauss in 2020, and most recently, in 2024, Sergei Prokofiev also became a Henle composer. By the 2020s, we were therefore proud to be able to offer a number of core New Music works in Henle Urtext quality. But one name was missing: Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg. It was always clear to us that, as a \u2018classical music publisher\u2019, we would also include the modern classical composer Sch\u00f6nberg in our Urtext catalogue, a step that we were able to take in 2022, when the copyright expired in many parts of the world.<\/p>\n

A few years earlier, I myself had travelled to Vienna to plan the project, where Therese Muxeneder welcomed me to the Arnold Sch<\/em>\u00f6<\/em>nberg Center <\/em>(ASC<\/a>) and took me straight to its treasure vault, the source archives. Priceless documents are preserved here. And the ASC team\u2019s unique attitude and that of the Sch\u00f6nberg heirs ensure that these are not kept behind closed doors: They deliberately facilitate access to both the sources and the music itself, preparing ideal conditions for researchers to overcome any fears of contact (which some people may perhaps have towards this music). The ASC thus became the ideal collaboration partner for our source work (and I would like to take this opportunity to say a big \u2018thank you\u2019 to Therese Muxeneder and the whole team). She incidentally placed on the table this business card during my very first visit:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So, it was clear: we were to have not only Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s inclusion in the Henle catalogue on our radar, but also his 150th<\/sup> birthday in 2024. This initial spark gave rise to a number of projects in the following years, Urtext editions, a magnificent facsimile and much more to come. For an overview, please take a look at the Sch\u00f6nberg birthday tile<\/a> on our website. We are delighted to be able this way to celebrate Sch\u00f6nberg and his music \u2013 especially this year, but he will of course be a permanent pillar of our programme.<\/p>\n

But now I\u2019m putting on editor\u2019s glasses to shed light on the question: What does it actually mean to edit Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s music? My colleagues Annette Oppermann and Peter Jost have dealt with this question in previous blog posts concerning the editions of \u2018Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht\u2019<\/a> and the 2nd<\/sup> String Quartet<\/a>. I myself supervised the new edition of the piano pieces. The anthology with all the piano pieces<\/a> \u2013 editions available both paperbound and clothbound; the only one of its kind, by the way! \u2013 was a labour of love that allowed me rapidly to expand my horizons. Who would have thought, for example, that in his youth the New-Music Sch\u00f6nberg would have begun with three entirely Brahmsian piano pieces? Pieces that he never published himself, but which we have printed in our volume\u2019s appendix (audio examples are available here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I would like to emphasise three aspects making the editorial work on Sch\u00f6nberg very special.<\/p>\n

1. With those pieces composed using twelve-tone technique, the aim was to find out whether Sch\u00f6nberg really applied his method consistently. Just as we initially mistrust the sources when an illogically dissonant, non-harmonic tone is to be found in Mozart\u2019s music, we have to ask ourselves whether it is intentional in Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s music when, for example, the 9th tone in a row is not followed by the 10th, but instead by the 11th. But what consequences can be drawn from such a discovery? Was Sch\u00f6nberg simply mistaken? Is the deviation from the row intentional? What could be the reasons for this? In cases of doubt, the Henle Urtext edition now contains footnotes indicating such findings and thoroughly weighing the pros and cons so that pianists can decide for themselves which reading is more convincing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

op. 33a, mm. 21\u201322 with footnote<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Comment for op. 33a, m. 22<\/p><\/div>\n

2. An important source type for Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s piano pieces are the so-called personal copies. These are copies, usually of the first editions, in which entries and corrections can be found. Many other composers in music history do, of course, also have personal copies. What is unusual in his case, though, is that there are often several extant copies whose entries rarely coincide. Some also have entries in other handwritings, sometimes by students or pianists who rehearsed the works in question with the master. Assessing the status of these entries is tricky and difficult: Are they valid corrections that should be taken into account in a new edition? Are they merely \u2018internal\u2019 annotations and echoes of discussions that do not indicate a deliberate change to the text? The \u2018lacking\u2019 tones from the twelve-tone row mentioned above are often addressed in the personal copies; in some cases, Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s entries are ennobled as authentic with initials, i.e., a short signature \u2013 thus claiming a high level of authority. The following example shows such an initialled entry, though it does not clearly help us later generations:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Personal copy of the first edition of op. 33a with autograph annotation: \u201ewahrscheinlich weg\u201c (probably to be omitted)
Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center, call number: H 3<\/p><\/div>\n

Should the upper note d<\/em>3<\/sup> now be \u2018omitted\u2019 or not?<\/p>\n

3. This last aspect (Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s signing of corrections) is followed by a final observation: He wanted to have the greatest possible control over his works\u2019 published music text. Initialling his corrections seems pedantic, almost obsessive, as well as transferring changes introduced only in the printing process back to all earlier stages of the sources. His instructions to the publishing house and engravers are often meticulous, with every aspect to be regulated down to the smallest detail. If his ideas were not realised, Sch\u00f6nberg reacted indignantly and irately and did not spare any words in his complaints. The autograph engraver\u2019s model for the Suite op. 25 (see here<\/a>) contains angry entries on the first page of the score, including: \u2018I urgently request that you let me know who has taken it upon themselves to make changes to my manuscript that are clearly against my intentions!\u2019 And later, in a letter to the publisher, he complained about these interventions\u2019 \u2018lack of taste\u2019 \u2013 even though he had wanted to steer the engraving meticulously in the right direction with instructions:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center, call number: T22.04G<\/p><\/div>\n

You might think that music texts prepared with such precision would be easy to edit. In fact, as a modern editor, all you have to do is follow his instructions \u2013 right? Here, too, things are more complex. It is almost a bit of a relief to realise that Sch\u00f6nberg (very humanly) repeatedly fell short of his own standards. He did not, after all, transfer corrections to all source layers, did overlook details, did not enter changes in all affected spots, etc., etc. So, we editors also had some tough nuts to crack, as you can see from the examples above. Decisions had to be made, and we often had to admit honestly our perplexity and pass our uncertainty on to the musicians.<\/p>\n

I would like to conclude this striving for the best possible textual basis, by recalling the quotation opening this blog post. For Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s music and his struggle for it is always characterised by this seriousness, even lack of compromise, that is alien to anything merely decorative or ornamental: it should always be \u2018true\u2019. And we endeavour to live up to this high standard with our Urtext editions.<\/p>\n

Congratulations, Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg! We are proud now to have this classical composer of modernity also in the Henle catalogue!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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