Although deeply traditional and concerned with organic evolution rather than with revolutionary overthrow, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was instrumental in helping to shape and reshape 20th-century music with his innovative compositions. It is common knowledge that he met not just with the approval of his contemporaries but, quite often, also with bitter opposition. Nevertheless, almost all observers were aware that there was an extraordinary and important artist at work whose oeuvre could not be passed over in silence. The present publication takes a look into this impact of Schoenberg on the basis of 59 selected reception documents altogether (music and text manuscripts, but also concert programmes, records, among others) from the collections of the Paul Sacher Foundation, thus focussing not on sources by Schoenberg himself but on documents written by composers, interpreters and publicists of different provenance and character who have studied Schoenberg's oeuvre over the course of the past 100 years.
