Preface to Volume 16, 1 B

The present volume contains the Critical Commentary to the full score of the Gurre-Lieder published in Series A, Vol. 16, 1 of the Schoenberg Complete Edition. It includes not only a detailed description of the sources used in preparing this edition (Chapter 1), a table listing all the errors, omissions and oversights in the main source whose emendation requires no further explanation and which, because of its length, occupies a chapter to itself (Chapter III) and the Critical Notes (Chapter V), but also a comparative list of the changes that Schoenberg later made to the main source and to the secondary sources used for this revision (Chapter II) and a line-by-line comparison between the two versions of Robert Franz Arnold’s translation of Jens Peter Jacobsen’s poems used by the composer, the version of the text found in the main source and the version published in the Complete Edition (Chapter IV).

I am grateful to numerous individuals and institutions for all the help that I have received during the lengthy process of preparing this edition and completing the Critical Commentary. I am especially indebted to the archivists of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna and its predecessor, the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles: Therese Muxeneder, Eike Fess, Iris Pfeiffer and Wayne Shoal have patiently answered all my questions and helped me in word and deed during my research. In particular I should like to take this opportunity to thank Allan Atlas, who made it possible for me to spend several months as Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, during which time I was able to undertake a detailed study of the different layers of revisions contained in the autograph full score in the Pierpont Morgan Library. For their friendly welcome and willingness to assist me I should also like to thank J. Rigbie Turner, the Curator of Music Manuscripts and Books at the Pierpont Morgan Library, and Inge Dupont, the library’s Head of Reader Services. I owe a further debt of gratitude to Richard Chesser (The British Library Music Collections), Wayne D. Shirley (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), Barbara Wolff (Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.) Josef Gmeiner and Thomas Leibnitz (Music Department of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna), Ilse Heinisch and Franz Werner Schembera-Teufenbach (Historical Archive of Universal Edition,Vienna), Otto Brusatti (Music Collection of the Vienna Stadt- und Landesbibliothek) and the team of restorers at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. All of them helped me in important ways by drawing my attention to missing sources, by making both these and other materials available and by resolving all outstanding questions.
Last but not least, I should like to thank Cynthia Beard, assistant librarian at the University of North Texas, Denton, who kindly placed at my disposal her detailed description of an important source in the Schoenberg-Nachod Collection lodged in Denton.
It goes without saying that many other unnamed individuals have also played a part in bringing this work to its successful conclusion. To list them all individually would go far beyond the confines of a preface. All, however, are explicitly included in the present acknowledgements.

Berlin, June 2006
Ulrich Krämer