 Autograph sketch of the Second String Quartet, op. 10
The sketch, likely from 1908, is a draft for the fourth movement, the setting of the first verse of Stefan George’s poem Entrückung for string quartet and soprano: Mir blassen durch das dunkel die gesichter / Die freundlich eben noch sich zu mir drehten. The sheet cannot be allocated to any of the bundles of papers described in the Critical Complete Edition. The autograph’s provenance is warranted by an authentication from the singer Marya Freund, who received the manuscript as a token of friendship from the composer himself. Freund began to appear in Schönberg’s circle in 1912 as an interpreter of some of his Lieder; she went on to sing the Wood-Dove in Gurre-Lieder and perform Pierrot lunaire, the latter conducted by both Darius Milhaud and Schönberg. In January 1923, Freund was also the soloist in the chamber version of The Wood-Dove’s Song when Schönberg conducted its first performance in Copenhagen. She was committed to his work in other ways as well – organizing the Paris Schönberg Festival in 1927, for example, where she was also a prominent soloist.
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 Schönberg’s Harmonielehre (the third, enlarged and revised edition, February 1923),
dedicated to his pupil Anton Webern
The book was recently discovered in a private collection. The dedication reads:
Dear Webern,
Since I cannot share the words of some Mohammedan Omar of the Alexandria Library saying that “everything that is not in the Koran is superfluous” – everything that is not inside here is wrong – or the like, I would have to write something special for you outside it as well. But would that make it more than it is, or better? More correct?
Sincere belated Christmas greetings from
Your Arnold Schönberg |
 Two postcards which Schönberg wrote to his pupil Leopold Watza in 1913
and to Watza’s younger brother Bruno, an Alban Berg student, in 1919.
Leopold Watza’s attendance card for courses in harmony theory in 1904/05 is a document hitherto unknown evincing Schönberg’s work at the Schwarzwald schools in Vienna, where he began teaching in 1904. Further biographical documentation augmenting our collection includes a thankyou note written on a letter of condolence from Gustav Mäurer, president of the Austrian Music and Singing Association, after Schönberg’s first wife Mathilde died in October 1923.
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