For the former German football player, see Erwin Stein. Erwin Stein (7 November 1885 – 17 July 1958) was an Austrian musician and writer, prominent as a pupil and friend of Schoenberg, with whom he studied between 1906 and 1910. He was one of Schoenberg's principal assistants in organizing the Society for Private Musical Performances. In 1924 it was Stein to whom Schoenberg entrusted the delicate as well as important task of writing the first article – Neue Formprinzipien ('New Formal Principles') – on the gradual evolution of what was soon to be explicitly formulated as 'twelve tone technique'. Until 1938 he lived in Vienna, where he was respected as a music teacher and conductor as well as a writer active on behalf of the music and composers he valued.