As part of a research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), a team of researchers led by Katharina Bleier and Therese Muxeneder is cataloguing the correspondence between Arnold Schönberg and the music publishers Dreililien and Universal Edition, and is digitally processing a total of 1,600 letters.

The correspondence conveys a relationship marked by common interests and endeavours, but also by conflicts, which spanned almost Schönberg's entire professional career and touched on spheres of activity and life on two continents. The correspondence provides insight into the production of music, from the manuscript to the printed score and parts for the musicians. The initiation of performances, questions of principle and detail of interpretation and performance practice are discussed, as are questions of the modernisation of music education.

In their correspondence, the publishers also functioned as a projection screen for Schönberg's aesthetic views, world views and polemics. Last but not least, cultural-political mechanisms and aspects of public and critical reception are discussed.

In the first phase of publication, letters, telegrams, postcards, documents and other correspondence appeared in three forms: A digitised version of the edited source, a text-critical version and an edition-philologically slimmed-down reading version. The digital edition, with its flexible structures and multiple navigation paths, offers the possibility of tracing traditional dynamic processes and networks. Links between letters, documents and registers reveal relationships between people and organisations from Vienna to Los Angeles, connections between works and writings, and links between different lines of communication.