The Doctor Faustus Dossier - (California Studies in 20th-Century Music) by E Randol Schoenberg (Paperback)

About the Book

Previously published in German as: Apropos Doktor Faustus.

Book Synopsis

Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, two towering figures of twentieth-century music and literature, both found refuge in the German-exile community in Los Angeles during the Nazi era. This complete edition of their correspondence provides a glimpse inside their private and public lives and culminates in the famous dispute over Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. In the thick of the controversy was Theodor Adorno, then a budding philosopher, whose contribution to the Faustus affair would make him an enemy of both families. Gathered here for the first time in English, the letters in this essential volume are complemented by diary entries, related articles, and other primary source materials, as well as an introduction by German studies scholar Adrian Daub that contextualizes the impact these two great artists had on twentieth-century thought and culture.

From the Back Cover

"The storied triangulation of Schoenberg, Mann, and Adorno in all its contentious glory, presented in the most comprehensive assemblage of primary documents ever gathered in English translation. Adrian Daub's introduction on California as the incubator for this controversy is essential reading."--Joy H. Calico, author of Arnold Schoenberg's "A Survivor from Warsaw" in Postwar Europe

"This is a splendid collection of letters and documents by two of the major figures in twentieth-century culture, Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann. It presents their correspondence and writings by their contemporaries about Mann's novel Doctor Faustus, still one of the great literary investigations of music, creativity, and madness. An impressive achievement that should be useful to scholars across many fields."--Edward Dimendberg, Professor of Humanities and European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine

Review Quotes

"Carefully conceived and beautifully edited, The Doctor Faustus Dossier invites readers to contemplate the limits of artistic freedom on the one hand, and of intellectual property on the other, especially in times of, as Adorno put it, 'damaged lives.'"
-- "The European Legacy"

About the Author

E. Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of the composers Arnold Schoenberg and Eric Zeisl and the winner of numerous awards in the field of litigation, is an expert in handling cases involving looted art and the recovery of property stolen by the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust.

Adrian Daub is Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies at Stanford University and the author of Four-Handed Monsters: Four-Hand Piano Playing and Nineteenth-Century Culture and Tristan's Shadow: Sexuality and the Total Work of Art after Wagner.