Important User Announcement

Schenker Documents Online is in a transitional phase during which materials are split between this new site and the original Columbia website. All materials will eventually be moved to this site, but in the meantime our finding guidelines are:

Diaries: Use only this site.

Lessonbooks: Use only this site.

Correspondence: Broadly, items from 1918 to 1930 are on this new site; items pre-1918 and post-1930 are on the Columbia site.

The following correspondences have now been transferred to the new site and are no longer available on the Columbia site:

• Walter Dahms: 1913 and 1918-23.
• Anthony van Hoboken: 1924-28.
• Felix Salzer: 1930-38 (complete).
• Arnold Schoenberg: 1903-07 (complete).
• Moriz Violin: 1918-24.

Where correspondence temporarily exists on both sites, you should refer to the more up-to-date version on this new site. In particular, the following should be noted:

• Felix-Eberhard von Cube: this correspondence (97 items, 1924-34) is now complete on this site (music examples to be added). Some items on the Columbia site have music examples displayed.
• Oswald Jonas: 1918-30 covered on this site in revised versions.
• Universal Edition: 1918-20 is now covered on this site (much of pre-1912 is on the Columbia site).
• Hans Weisse: 1918-24 is now covered on this site.

Profiles: Use this site: profiles are more up-to-date, and more numerous.

Pages of general information: Use only this site.

The Collections

Schenker Documents Online is a digital edition of three large collections of documents — the voluminous correspondence between Heinrich Schenker and the members of his circle, together with the theorist's diaries and lessonbooks ; these are supported by additional documents relating to his life, and a set of "profiles" of people, places, and organizations with which he came into contact, the newspapers and journals that he read, and his own works.

SDO does not provide facsimiles; it is thus in no sense a digitization project, nor is it an archive in the strict sense. Rather, it is a scholarly edition, which aims to present near-diplomatic transcriptions of original texts, together with English translations, summaries, supporting commentary, and such interpretation as is necessary to relate these documents to Schenker's personal development and those of his correspondents.

Because it is digital, it provides direct hyperlinks between documents, facilitating rapid movement from document to document; and it offers the end-user a range of tools with which to search and browse documents, thus facilitating the task of understanding and contextualization.

Heinrich Schenker

Viennese musician and teacher Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) was the twentieth century's leading theorist of tonal music, producing a series of innovative studies and editions between 1903 and 1935, while exerting a powerful and sustained influence, directly and through his pupils, on the teaching of music from the 1930s onward in the USA, and since the 1970s in Europe and elsewhere. Today, Schenkerian theory and analysis constitutes a large and ever-growing field of vital academic study, with its own body of scholars, journals, book literature, institutions, and courses of instruction.

In addition to his published work, Schenker left behind approximately 130,000 manuscript and typescript leaves comprising unpublished works, preparatory materials, and personal documents, preserved in two dedicated archives, numerous libraries, and private possession. (For more information on these collections, see "Major Collections.") Of the personal documents, Schenker maintained a vigorous correspondence over nearly half a century, kept a meticulously detailed diary over 40 years, and recorded precise notes on the lessons that he gave over 20 years. It is these three collections of personal documents that constitute the core of SDO. (For a more detailed study of Schenker's life and work, see "Heinrich Schenker.")