The Oswald Jonas memorial collection combines the papers of the Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) with the papers of Oswald Jonas (1897-1978), a distinguished Schenker pupil and loyal disciple. Added to these are the papers of Moriz Violin (1879-1956), concert pianist and Schenker's closest friend, including the monumental Schenker-Violin correspondence extending from 1896 to 1935. The total collection comprises about 75,000 leaves of manuscript largely unpublished, including music manuscripts, theoretical and analytical studies, critical essays, letters, Schenker's Tagebücher kept over forty years (1896-1935), biographical materials and printed scores from Schenker's working library, often heavily annotated. In addition there are books, pamphlets, periodical publications, corrected galley and page proofs, notebooks, drafts and fragments from Schenker's work table, photographs and other memorabilia, together with related correspondence and research materials assembled by Jonas.

After Heinrich Schenker's death his widow, Jeanette Schenker, divided portions of his Nachlass among his circle of pupils and disciples-Wilhelm Furtwängler, Anthony van Hoboken, Jonas, Felix Salzer, Otto Vrieslander, and others. A major portion, including many of the manuscript analytical studies, was entrusted in 1938 to Ernst Oster, a Jonas pupil, when Oster left Vienna for New York. Most of the remainder, faithfully preserved by Frau Schenker, eventually passed after the war to Jonas; it is this portion, with later additions, that forms the present Schenker materials in the Oswald Jonas memorial collection at the University of California, Riverside. The Oswald Jonas memorial collection and the Oster collection, now in the New York Public Library, are the two largest surviving collections of Schenker manuscript and research materials.

A portion of this collection remains unprocessed. Please contact Special Collections & Archives for additional information regarding this material.

At various stages of his career Schenker was a composer, concert pianist and accompanist, music critic, musicologist, research scholar and editor of authoritative editions of composers (notably Beethoven), diarist and shrewd observer of contemporary Viennese life, and teacher, with a devoted circle of pupils and friends who became scholars and performers in their own right. All these phases are illuminated in the collection. But above all Schenker was a giant among music theorists; his concept of musical structure and his analytical method may be seen taking shape in the Archive's manuscripts. A brief overview follows, arranged according to the order of contents of the Checklist.

I a. Schenker's Diary. The Tagebücher, written daily between 1896 and Schenker's death in 1935, are preserved on more than four thousand leaves of manuscript. Up until 1912, when Jeanette became his amanuensis, Schenker hastily scribbled diary notes on odd scraps of paper in his special mixture of Sütterlinschrift and Lateinschrift; later, Jeanette's precise script takes over and the entries are far more detailed. Often there are working drafts of diary pages in Heinrich's hand, later recopied by Jeanette (the same process occurs in the correspondence).

In the diary Schenker writes of his trip to Berlin in 1903 for the first performance of his Syrische Tänze, orchestrated by Schoenberg. We read of Schenker's struggles to achieve recognition within the Viennese musical establishment, particularly from the Akademie für Musik, and of his lean years during the devastating inflation of the 1920s. At the same time Schenker writes of his often difficult relations with Emil Hertzka and the powerful Universal-Edition, as well as his relations with other publishers. Yet with the aid of patrons an almost constant stream of his essays, monographs and editions came from the press; the progress of these publications is documented in the diary.

Schenker comments on hundreds of performances in the concert hall (by Caruso, Casals, Rubenstein, Schnabel, and many others) and on the radio. He remarks on the events of the day, news and weather, but most expansively on his visitors and his mail. His diary reports on conversations with other musicians, such as Furtwängler, are often more significant and more trenchant than comments in his correspondence or other writings. Schenker talks of his work, of the theatre, art, and his reading-ranging from the classics (Goethe and Shakespeare) to contemporaries such as Hauptmann, Ibsen, Kraus, Mann, Shaw, and Wedekind. In later life Schenker stayed in Vienna, retreating only in the summer heat to his beloved Galtür in the Austrian Tyrol. Afflicted with then-uncontrolled diabetes, Schenker labored to complete the last of his theoretical works; his fervent "Mit Gott!!!" (flanked by a drawing of two lighted menorahs), written on the last manuscript page of Der freie Satz (Free Composition), is pasted to the diary leaf for September 5-6, 1932. Two years later the diary ends abruptly with Schenker's death, January 22, 1935.

I b,c. Correspondence. Beginning about 1888 and continuing until 1935, Schenker's more than three hundred correspondents include Eugen d'Albert, Ignaz Brüll, Ferruccio Busoni, Walter Dahms, Otto Erich Deutsch, John Petrie Dunn, Wilhelm Furtwängler, August Halm, Eduard Hanslick, Maximilian Harden, Paul Hindemith, Anthony van Hoboken, Paul von Klenau, Wanda Landowska, Arnold Schoenberg, and Karl Weigl. In most cases we do not have Schenker's replies, a notable exception being the massive correspondence with Violin already mentioned, but other significant examples are preserved, most notably the Schenker-Busoni and Schenker-Hindemith exchanges. Other instances of prolonged epistolary friendships include the substantial numbers of letters from Felix von Cube (1923-1934), Reinhard Oppel (1919-1935), Herman Roth (1912-1933), and Hans Weisse (1911-1935). Editors of critical reviews, like Harden, Ludwig Karpath, and Hermann Rinn, also wrote many letters to Schenker about his proposed essays.

Other interesting letters include those from the typographer and printer Victor Hammer (Schenker's replies are also preserved); bass Johannes Messchaert, with whom Schenker toured as accompanist; pianist Moriz Rosenthal; and poet Detlev von Liliencron, whose Wiegenlied Schenker set to music.

I d. Schenker's Publications: Critical and Analytical Works. The Archive contains manuscripts, corrected galley and page proofs, and published versions of many of Schenker's critical works, beginning with the excerpt from his dissertation, "Der Geist der musikalischen Technik" (1895), and including most of his writings on Beethoven: the Erläuterungsausgaben der letzen fünf Sonaten Beethovens (1913-1920); analysis of the Third Symphony; Beethovens Neunte Sinfonie (1912); and Schenker's final edition of the Beethoven piano sonatas with his manuscript corrections (filed in section I f). Of his major theoretical works, Schenker's Harmonielehre (1906) is represented by manuscript material for Jonas's English edition and Der freie Satz (1935) by typescripts (incomplete) for Jonas's second edition; the Generalbasslehre, never published and described as an earlier version of Der freie Satz, is present in a typescript prepared by Felix Salzer. Other theoretical studies are substantially represented by original manuscripts, notably Der Tonwille (1921-1924) and Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, Band II (1926). There are also the draft manuscript and notes for revisions of Schenker's planned major work on performance, Die Kunst des Vortrags. Finally, there are Schenker's reviews and periodical essays, written largely when he was a music critic in the 1890s, and here collected in printed versions and photocopies.

I e. Schenker as Composer. In the fervor of youth Schenker was an active composer. He wrote more than thirty songs, a number of piano pieces including the Syrische Tänze (actually Hassidic dances) for four hands; chamber music; and incidental music and songs for Hamlet (possibly sketches for an opera). A few songs and piano works were published, but most of his compositions exist only in manuscript and are found in the Jonas Collection.

I f. Schenker as Editor. When Schenker embarked on his editing of Beethoven's last piano sonatas in 1912-13 he turned to the holograph manuscripts for an authentic reading of Beethoven's intention, seeking to eliminate corrupt readings while paying special attention to the smallest markings and refinements of notation-details previously misunderstood or ignored though often intended by the composer to carry performance indications. Schenker pioneered among modern editors in his recognition that among the performing arts music is uniquely able to convey in manuscript far more of the composer's creative vision, again through performance directions. Here Schenker's theories of musical structure also play a role; many of his studies and annotations in published scores convey his ideas of the composer's deeper intention, to be revealed in performance.

Schenker took practical steps to give other scholars access to the best manuscript scores. His friend and pupil Anthony van Hoboken, a scholar and wealthy man, established with Schenker's blessing the Archiv für Photogramme musikalischer Meisterhandschriften, where photocopies of rare manuscripts were assembled for study in Vienna's Nationalbibliothek.

Schenker's modern critical approach is abundantly demonstrated in the early Beethoven editions (see I d). Later, in the 1920s, Schenker republished all the Beethoven sonatas; this is the edition that remains in print today. Here in Schenker's own copies of those scores are preserved his manuscript corrections, revised in proof as soon as they came from the printer (section I f); the revisions were incorporated in a later printing only after Schenker's death in 1935.

Other Schenker editions, notably Bach and Brahms, exist in the archive; almost equally important are his extensive annotations, often in multi-colored pencil and ink, in his copies of scores, not only of Beethoven and Brahms, but also of Chopin, Handel, and Haydn among others.

I g. Biographical Documents. Past controversy has obscured the date and place of Schenker's birth; the archive, however, provides documentation. Heinrich Schenker was born in Galicia in 1868 (1867, some sources state), within the largely Polish-speaking province of Lemberg (now Lvov), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in Ukraine; his parents were German-speaking Jews.

Other documents relate to Schenker's later career; these include autobiographical sketches in his own hand; his academic studies at the University of Vienna; itineraries of concert tours he undertook as accompanist to Messchaert; concert programs where Schenker appeared as composer or pianist, and the sale catalogue of Schenker's library dispersed after his death.

Oswald Jonas, pupil and friend of Schenker from the early 1920s, had the almost unique opportunity, as Schenker's private student of piano and theory for six years, thoroughly to absorb Schenker's musical ideas. Jonas was born in Vienna in 1897 and took his J. D. degree at the University in 1921. At an early age he was passionately devoted to music and in 1915 became a piano student of Moriz Violin, Schenker's intimate friend and confidant. After attending the University Jonas began to take private lessons from Schenker, continuing to see him frequently until in 1930 he moved to Berlin, the center of German musical life. Before long Jonas was teaching at Berlin's Stern Conservatory, at the same time beginning to write, with rare empathy and clarity, an introduction to Schenker theory. This first book-length exposition of Schenker's ideas, Das Wesen des musikalischen Kunstwerks (1934), won Schenker's warm approval and led to Jonas's abiding friendship with Wilhelm Furtwängler, another of Schenker's admirers. After Schenker's death in 1935 Jonas and others founded a Schenker Institute at the University of Vienna, and in partnership with another pupil, Felix Salzer, established a periodical, Der Dreiklang, based upon Schenker theory. Der Dreiklang lasted less than a year; the Anschluss soon brought Hitler to Vienna. Pressure on Jews was increasing and ominous war clouds were gathering. Jonas, Salzer, Violin, Oster and many others were soon to make their way to America.

In 1941 Jonas became a professor of music theory at Roosevelt University in Chicago and in 1965 Regents' professor and adjunct professor at the University of California, Riverside, where he remained until his death. After the war Jonas frequently returned to Europe, and it was on these trips that he began to collect his library of early editions, facsimiles and photocopies of music manuscripts. While he always asserted that he was not a collector and acquired manuscripts and rare editions only for their scholarly value, he managed to obtain autograph manuscripts of Brahms (mainly corrected proofs and Stichvorlagen; these are not part of the Jonas Memorial Collection) and, of course, the Schenker materials which came to light in Vienna after the war. Though continuing to teach Schenker theory, Jonas increasingly turned his attention to the study of manuscripts, contributing scholarly articles to music journals and editing the texts of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn as well as new editions of Schenker.

Oswald Jonas always thought of himself as a musician rather than musicologist or pure theorist, perhaps a philosopher of the language of music, as Rothgeb says, and a highly original thinker whose ideas were thoroughly compatible with Schenkerian theory. Trained as a pianist as well as theoretician and, like Schenker, interested above all in performance, Jonas brought new depth of understanding of the repertory especially to pianists and singers (his classes in German song were famous). Besides reediting two of Schenker's theoretical works, Jonas followed Schenker's lead in his research into the autograph intentions of the great composers. All these aspects of Jonas's career, including those relating directly to Schenker, are represented in group II of the collection.

The arrangement of Jonas's papers in group II generally follows the outline observed in group I, the Schenker materials. This in turn reflects Jonas's own ordering of the material.

II a,b. Correspondence. Jonas's correspondents are primarily musicians, musicologists and editors. Among nearly two hundred names there are first of all those who knew Schenker, pupils and other members of the Schenker circle: Paul Breisach, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Anthony van Hoboken, Reinhard Oppel, Felix Salzer, Moriz Violin, and Hans Weisse. Then there is a later generation of musicians and scholars, many associated with Schenker studies or with Jonas's research interests, including Paul Badura-Skoda, Milton Babbitt, Franz Eibner, Heribert Esser, Hellmut Federhofer, Imogen Fellinger, Walter Gerstenberg, Günter Henle, Greta Kraus, Jan La Rue, Ernst Oster, and Erwin Ratz. Many other distinguished names will be found in the list.

II c. Publications. This section contains Der Dreiklang as well as most of Jonas's scholarly articles, though not his editions of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schenker and others, some of which are located in sections I d, I f, and II d. Source material and notes relating to his research will be found in II d.

II d. Jonas Research Materials. When Jonas visited research libraries he collected films or other photocopies of manuscripts he had examined, and these, together with his research notes, are filed under composer's names in this section. The source of some of these photocopies, owing to the dispersal of library collections in Germany, may be difficult to identify; others are incomplete and a few were obtained from private collections with certain restrictions attached. Still others have been superseded by published facsimiles. Nevertheless this section, which also includes some early editions (see also group VI), represents a considerable gathering of source material for those composers, notably Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, of special interest to Jonas. There are also annotations and extensive notes for Jonas publications, including the Schenker editions, and for projected publications about Schenker as well as Brahms. The material about Schenker, which includes most of Jonas's writings on the subject as well as secondary sources, supplements group I.

II e. Biographical Materials. Besides essential documents and a curriculum vitae, included here are obituaries, bibliographies, data about other scholars and colleagues of Jonas, reviews and publicity clippings, and letters of recommendation, notably those from Furtwängler.

From 1896, when Schenker first met Moriz Violin, a brilliant seventeen-year-old pianist making his debut in Vienna, until Schenker's death in 1935, Schenker and Violin were fast friends, often writing daily postcards or letters whenever they were apart. Schenker's diary begins the year they met; Violin received the last page of the diary at Schenker's deathbed.

At fifteen Violin won the coveted Brahms prize for composition at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (1894) and went on to a career as a concert pianist and teacher, both at the Gesellschaft and the Akademie. Arnold Schoenberg considered his artistry "truly remarkable"; Violin also performed in Berlin with Erich von Wolzogen's Überbrettl and later was a private teacher in Hamburg, 1922-1933. He was a founding member of two chamber groups, the Violin-Fischer-Klengel trio in Vienna and the Violin-Van den Berg-Buxbaum trio in Berlin. In 1939, as the Jewish persecution in Vienna grew more intense, Violin at the age of sixty abandoned his career, made his way to America and settled in San Francisco, where he conducted occasional master classes but never was able fully to resume his brilliant pianism. Schoenberg sought to help him as he did other expatriates, but for Violin there were few performance opportunities in America. He died in San Francisco in 1956.

III a,b. Correspondence. Schenker's letters to Violin, the most extensive part of Violin's correspondence, are filed in the Schenker materials under I b, Boxes 6-8. Next to the Tagebücher, the Schenker-Violin letters provide the most complete record of Schenker's daily life and activities from 1896 to 1935. Other correspondents in III a,b include Eugen d'Albert, Ignaz Brüll, Friedrich Buxbaum, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Johannes Messchaert, Pierre Monteux, Arnold Schoenberg, Otto Vrieslander, Bruno Walter, and Hans Weisse. Letters of recommendation written for Violin are filed in III c.

III c. Works by and about Violin. Writings by Violin include an attack on the Akademie written at the time of his resignation (1912), reminiscences of Brahms, and eulogies of his friend Schenker. Biographical materials include documents from the Akademie für Musik and Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, together with reviews of performances (some with Schenker) in Vienna, Berlin, and Hamburg. Letters of recommendation are from or to such figures as Busoni, Furtwängler, Goldschmidt, Nikisch, Schalk, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, and Bruno Walter.

Group IV. The letters in this section exclude Schenker, Jonas or Violin as primary correspondents, though there are a few postscripts addressed to Schenker. Among the names included here are Deutsch, Eibner, Hanslick, Harden, Hoboken, Oster, Reményi, Weisse, and Vrieslander.

Group V. Besides snapshots and studio portraits, this section includes two mezzotints by Victor Hammer and a bronze plaque of Schenker by Alfred Rothberger. In all there are twenty-five portraits of Heinrich Schenker, ca. 1900-1935, plus photos of Jeanette and of Schenker's relations, as well as six interior views of the Schenker apartment in the Keilgasse, Vienna. Photos found in the correspondence have been transferred for better preservation to this section. Among others these include portraits of d'Albert, Brahms, Deutsch, Dunn, Jonas, Roth, Weisse, Violin, and Vrieslander.

Group VI. Supplementing Oswald Jonas's research materials, gathered largely in II d, is a separately catalogued group of 430 early editions of the work of eighteenth and nineteenth century composers. A summary describes the scope of Jonas's collections of the printed scores of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Handel, Haydn, Liszt (one item only), Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, and Robert and Clara Schumann.