SOURCE: "The Spiritual and The Material in Schoenberg's Thinking," in Music & Letters, Vol. 65, No. 4, October, 1984, pp. 337-44.

In the following essay, Christensen explains the system of philosophy underlying all of Schoenberg's work.

Preserved in the archive of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles is a collection of some 200 items, mostly unpublished and undescribed, consisting of drafts, sketches and casual notes left over when Schoenberg's more finished writings were selected for publication towards the end of his life and after his death. They are not in their original condition. Many hands have sifted through them searching for items of specific interest. Eventually what order remained was obliterated when the archivist, the late Clara Steuermann, dismantled Schoenberg's binders and folders as a consequence of her decision to preserve ideas rather than artefacts. But the composer's own annotations make it possible to restore his ordering and, to a large extent...