ABSTRACT
The handwritten account by Heinrich Schenker is one of several numbered fragments in the Oster Collection, each concerning a single Schenker publication or project: a projected four-hand arrangement of the Handel organ concerti; Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue; the second edition of op. 109 in the Erlauterungsausgabe (EA); the complete edition of the Beethoven piano sonatas; and Der Tonwille. This was precisely the period in which Schenker's always fragile relationship with his publisher Universal Edition was reaching the point of breakdown, when Schenker would abandon UE for Drei Masken Verlag, who subsequently published the volumes of The Masterwork in Music. Schenker had tracked them down, and evidently asked Angi Elias to try to obtain photographs of them during a visit to Berlin. Schenker noted in his diary that this was an unexpectedly friendly response, but one clearly intended to 'soften him up'.
