Leseprobe_Three Men of Letters

The Letters
1
THE LETTERS
Of the three sets of correspondence with which we are concerned, to date only that
between Schönberg and Berg has been published; 14 both the others are currently being
edited for publication. 15 We wish to stress that the present book is not intended
to be a scholarly edition of the letters of these three men in translation. We do not
include nearly all the letters and, apart from a few exceptions, of those that are
included only portions are quoted. In most cases we have not seen the letters themselves,
but only scans or transcriptions of them, and we are not concerned with the
type of paper used, whether the letters are written in pen or pencil etc., etc., except
in those cases where these things impinge on the content, which is the only subject
of this study. And this book covers only the years up to 1921, after which the three
men’s lives took different directions. The book would not have been possible without
the good will and encouragement of the editors of the published letters and the
very kind generosity of those who are preparing the rest for publication.
Both of the correspondences involving Webern are unfortunately very
one-sided as the result of the destruction and corruption of a large number of
Webern’s papers when soldiers occupied the house that the Weberns had deserted
when they fled into the mountains near the end of World War II. 16 Of Schönberg’s
letters to Webern prior to 1922, all of which one can be sure Webern would have
kept, only three survive. Berg’s letters to Webern suffer in the same way, though
not quite as catastrophically. Compared with 232 letters and cards from Webern
to Berg – and evidence suggests that there were many more than this – only perhaps
91 or 92 letters or portions of letters from Berg to Webern survive, 27 of
these being small fragments that almost certainly represent fewer than 27 letters. 17
14 Briefwechsel and Correspondence.
15 Briefwechsel Arnold Schönberg – Anton Webern, ed. Regina Busch, and Briefwechsel Anton Webern –
Alban Berg, ed. Simone Hohmaier and Rudolf Stephan, Briefwechsel der Wiener Schule 2 and 4
respectively, both forthcoming from Schott in Mainz.
16 Dr Werner Riemerschmid’s account of his visit in December 1945 to the house in Maria Enzersdorf
where the Weberns lived just prior to their flight to Mittersill in the last days of the war is
reproduced in Kathryn Bailey (Puffett), The Life of Webern (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press), pp. 1–2. Most of Webern’s papers had been eaten by rodents, burned by soldiers to keep
warm or otherwise destroyed and defaced.
17 Berg often numbered sections of his letters, and 20 of the 27 fragments begin with a number,
usually centred, at the top: six with the number I, four with the number II (or in one case ‘–2–’),
five with III, four each with IV and VII, and one with V. A few of these can be tentatively placed
as coming from the same letter, but in most cases they cannot be grouped together with any certainty.
Many other fragments, unnumbered, either begin or end, or perhaps both, mid-sentence,
making it obvious that they come from the middle of a larger document.
21