In addition to the music manuscripts in the Schoenberg’s legacy, are hundreds of text manuscripts. These include essays, lectures, poetry, letters, philosophical musings, analytical writings, drafts for books, critical commentary, etc. Most of this huge body of writings remain unpublished. Schoenberg himself published some of his writings during his lifetime. He listed and collocated many of these in his Gedruckte Aufsätze. A comprehensive list of his published writings appeared in the Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute (IV/2) as compiled by Walter B. Bailey. Philosophical Library, in cooperation with Schoenberg, published a collection of 15 essays in 1950 entitled Style and Idea. A second expanded collection including all but two of the essays (“A Dangerous Game” and “To the Wharfs”) in the Philosophical Library collection as well as 102 additional writings was edited by Schoenberg’s UCLA student and assistant Leonard Stein and published by Faber and Faber (London) in 1975 under the same title, Style and Idea. This latter collection has been reprinted many times and is widely available. Fischer Verlag, under the general editorship of Ivan Vojtech, began publishing all of Schoenberg's textual writings in 1976 as Gesammelte Schriften. The first volume is entitled Stil und Gedanke. Though Vojtech essentially finished organizing, transcribing, and annotating the texts to be included, only one volume was ever issued and contained 76 Schoenberg writings including the original 15. Copies of Vojtech’s notes are available in the Vojtech Satellite Collection. Arrangements were underway when the Institute closed to complete this massive publication project.
Josef Rufer first published a listing of the bulk of Schoenberg’s text manuscripts in 1959. A more detailed but abbreviated listing was published by Jean and Jesper Christensen in 1988. Other more incomplete listings, generally focussing on narrower areas of Schoenberg’s writings, have appeared in other sources (JASI, Preliminary Catalog, Lebensgeschichte).
Schoenberg’s text manuscripts (mostly excluding letters which are, by and large, owned by the Library of Congress) are arranged in seven series in the Archive.
- 39 boxes of manuscripts as arranged by Schoenberg himself in categories of his own device
- 39 boxes of manuscripts never categorized by Schoenberg
- 4 boxes of manuscripts not directly by Schoenberg
- 2 boxes of generally textual materials, some printed, but not fitting into any of the other categories
- 2 boxes of materials relating to the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances)
- 7 boxes of book manuscripts
- 1 box of teaching materials
They are written mostly in German or English, however a few French manuscripts also exist. They are handwritten, typed, and printed. They range in size from a sentence or two on a scrap of paper to works of hundreds of pages. Many of them exist in multiple drafts and they date from throughout Schoenberg’s creative career. Schoenberg abandoned the German gothic script in 1933 when he emigrated to the United States. Transcriptions of most of the manuscripts written in this script have been made and are generally filed with the manuscripts themselves. Also, English translations by third parties of many of Schoenberg’s non-English manuscripts are also available.
In addition to the published sources noted above, several finding aids, mostly derived from the Scriptorium Inventory, were available in the Institute and provided title, subject, and date access to the collection. Copies of many of the manuscripts were available for browsing in the Reading Room without the need to consult the Archivist. Similarly, the entire collection could be browsed on microfiche. Copies could be provided for a cost to interested researchers.
One text included in this site is Schoenberg’ play Der biblische Weg.