Arnold Schönberg Center: A Shrine to Modern Music

The Arnold Schönberg Center, established in 1998, stands as a repository of Arnold Schönberg's archival legacy and a vibrant cultural center in Vienna. Schönberg, born in Vienna in 1874 and who died in Los Angeles in 1951, was a composer, painter, teacher, theorist, and inventor. The center is dedicated to preserving and promoting his contributions to music and other artistic achievements. The center's archive contains over 20,000 pages of music and text manuscripts, historical photographs, personal documents, diaries, concert programs, Schönberg's library, memorabilia, and instruments. Visitors can view Schönberg's study with its original furniture and work tools. The center also hosts exhibitions, concerts, lectures, workshops, and symposia. Schönberg's estate was inscribed on the UNESCO “Memory of the World” Register in 2011. Schönberg's legacy remained in the possession of his heirs after his death in 1951 and was administered by his widow Gertrud Schoenberg until 1967. In the 1970s, Schönberg's heirs decided to make the collection available to the Arnold Schoenberg Institute of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where a modern archive was established along with a concert hall and an exhibition hall. In early 1997, the Arnold Schönberg Center Privatstiftung was founded by the City of Vienna together with the Internationale Schönberg-Gesellschaft.