Controversial paths of Modernism: The exiled composer and Pianist Edward Steuermann (1892-1964) in his letters. The correspondence with Arnold Schoenberg, Theodor W. Adorno, Rudolf Kolisch, René Leibowitz, Michael Gielen, Max Deutsch and Erwin Ratz. A commented critical Study-Edition

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Zenck
• Subject Area: Musicology ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; History of Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 400686826

The object of the research project is a commented critical study edition of mostly unpublised letters of the exiled composer and pianist Edward Steuermann (1893-1964), whose life’s journey and oeuvre comprise essential trajectories of 20th century musical history.Very important composer, interpreters, philosophers and musicologists correspond with each other in these letters, so looking at these correspondences in detail, which are for the most part deposited in various American and Swiss archives and can only be accessed with great difficulty, could open up completely new perspectives upon publication of this research. The planned edition shall overcome this painful desideratum. Among Steuermann’s correspondents is his composition teacher Arnold Schoenberg, with whom Steuermann was intensively in touch with until his death in 1951. Further correspondents were Theodor W. Adorno, who was Steuermann’s piano student and became an important friend later on, the famous violin player Rudolf Kolisch, musicologist and Primarius of the Kolisch-String-Quartet, than the eminent conductor, composer and music theoretician René Leibowitz and finally the musicologists Erwin Ratz and Max Deutsch. Furthermore, parts of the family correspondence between Steuermann and his nephew Michael Gielen shall be regarded too. These letters are to be commented and to be flanked by substantial introductory essays, in which the mostly unpulbished compositions by Steuermann, discussed in the letters, shall be intensely dealt with this edition, taking a new path in philological edition. The subjects of these envisaged essays shall deal with a much wider range than just musicological questions and shall take aspects of literary studies and socio-historical exile research into account.In terms of these detailed questions the following topics shall be discussed: first questions of the history of music are of significance: The consequences on the Schoenberg-School whose continuity was interrupted, which might make it difficult to speak of a single-sided identity-establishing pressure group; this aspect of a transatlantic perspective between Europe and USA could show a fundamental new conception of musical history under different cultural preconditions, especially in the USA with the prominent cultural expression of Jazz, of the culture industry and the neo-classcism; second the lifelong or limited situation of exile regarding the different ways to live and to cope with the situation chosen by Steuermann, Adorno and Kolisch after 1945 and their considerations on the possibility of returning to Germany or becoming a substantial and recognized part of American musical life; third the importance of certain writers and poets like Thomas Mann, Berthold Viertel, Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka for the correspondents. The goal of this research project is to open up a comprehensive and international discourse on these important stated questions based on this edition.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants