Arnold Schoenberg · section 2 of 30

Preface to the Third Edition

This new edition does not differ fundamentally from the first, although I have changed a great deal. In particular, I have improved the organization of many sections and chapters, as well as various details of style. The number of musical examples in the first half of the book has been considerably increased. Among the additions, special mention should be made of the guidelines placed at various points in the book to summarize the use of the means presented. Like that improvement, another arises from my teaching experience: some instructions that originally left the pupil a choice the teacher could not have wanted have been expressed more firmly and exclusively. Many other additions, including substantial ones and some of a fundamental kind, will be found in detail. On the whole, to my pleasure, the book could remain unchanged even where I have moved one or more steps closer to the truth than I was when writing the first edition. These are steps in the same direction.

Many printing errors, especially in the musical examples, which remained in the first edition despite the most careful proofreading, have been eliminated with the help of numerous friends and pupils. Nevertheless, I still wish that this edition may appear at least as well corrected as the first, if not better.

I offer my warmest thanks on this occasion to my former pupil Erwin Stein. He not only carried out exceptionally conscientious proofreading but used the opportunity, through acute and unsparing criticism, to induce me to remedy many serious shortcomings. If this book is on its way to becoming what I am entitled to demand of it, his initiative deserves much of the credit.

The sentences that accompanied the dedication to Gustav Mahler in the first edition could be omitted as unnecessary today. They were written in deep emotion immediately after Mahler’s death, and still trembled with grief for the man who had been taken away and anger at the disparity between his worth and the recognition he received. They were moved, passionate words, words of struggle. Today, when the younger generation has almost fulfilled its duty of placing his work beside that of our greatest masters, they seem almost diminishing. The assertion “He was one of the very greatest” gained, precisely because it was unproved, almost the power and standing of a prophecy. Yet it, which sought to gain so that it could give, gained more than it gave: to one who has everything, it can give so much and yet so little.

Mattsee near Salzburg, 24 June 1921

Arnold Schönberg