Arnold Schönberg Center, Music research center in Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna, Austria.
The Arnold Schönberg Center occupies the Palais Fanto at Schwarzenbergplatz 6 in Vienna's third district, Landstraße. It holds the composer's archive and a reference library, and Schönberg's study is displayed with its original furniture and working tools. The rooms also serve as exhibition and concert spaces.
Schönberg died in 1951 and his heirs kept the legacy, administered by his widow Gertrud until 1967. From the 1970s it went to the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, open to the public until 1997. A 1996 legal dispute over the heirs' condition that the institute be devoted exclusively to Schönberg led Vienna, his birthplace, to host the collection: the Arnold Schönberg Center Privatstiftung was founded in early 1997 by the City of Vienna and the Internationale Schönberg-Gesellschaft, and the center opened in 1998 in the Palais Fanto at Schwarzenbergplatz 6.
The center displays the composer's works and personal objects in a modern setting that helps visitors understand his creative process. You can see how he organized his working life and what influenced his artistic choices.
The center occupies the Palais Fanto at Schwarzenbergplatz 6, in Vienna's 3rd district, Landstraße. The archive and reading library are open year-round to scholars, composers, musicians and the general public. Schönberg's study with its original furniture and working tools can be viewed throughout the year. A fire in the Palais Fanto dome on 12 August 2015 damaged the rooms with extinguishing water, so exhibition rooms and library were closed for renovation.
The archive holds around 20,000 pages of music and text manuscripts, plus Schönberg's library, diaries and instruments. Since 2011 the legacy has been part of UNESCO's Memory of the World register. The Center also publishes a catalogue raisonné of his paintings and drawings.
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