A work of epochal significance for artistic efforts to confront the Holocaust – now for the first time in a facsimile edition.

With his cantata A Survivor from Warsaw, Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951) created “the aesthetic, musical manifest of our epoch” (Luigi Nono), a focus of National Socialist totalitarianism and how it was overcome by the collective (Jewish) identity in monotheistic faith. Theodor W. Adorno propagated that an “authentic artist” was one “after whose works the most extreme work trembles;” in Survivor he saw a unique creation in which, for the first time in the history of music, horror had found a voice. He wrote, “The core of Schönberg’s expression, i.e. fear, identifies itself with the fear of mortal agony of people living under totalitarianism.”

The new facsimile edition is prefaced with a detailed commentary and contains other documents and sketches by Schönberg’s hand, allowing the reader to become familiar with the work’s genesis and significance.

“My father once wrote: in all of my music there is something of myself. This can be seen even when looking at this beautiful facsimile of the manuscript of A Survivor from Warsaw: the emotions he felt are in the music and are already present in the writing of the text and of the music.” (Nuria Schoenberg Nono)

Arnold Schönberg
A Survivor from Warsaw op. 46
Facsimile of the autograph score from the collections of the Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. With selected documents and sketches by the hand of Schönberg 
With a preface by Nuria Schoenberg Nono and an introduction (German/English) by Therese Muxeneder. In association with the Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna
XXIV/36 pp. Color printing. Large format. Hardbound.
Laaber-Verlag
(Meisterwerke der Musik im Faksimile, vol. 29)
Laaber-Verlag
ISBN 978–3–89007–778–9