![Arnold Schoenberg la 1948](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Arnold_Schoenberg_la_1948.jpg)
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the
expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
. As a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
composer, Schoenberg was targeted by the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
, which labeled his works as
degenerate music
Degenerate music (german: Entartete Musik, link=no, ) was a label applied in the 1930s by the government of Nazi Germany to certain forms of music that it considered harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concerns about degenerate music were a ...
and forbade them from being published. He immigrated to the United States in 1933, becoming an American citizen in 1941.
Schoenberg's approach, bοth in terms of harmony and development, has shaped much of
20th-century musical thought. Many composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it.
Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German
Romantic styles of
Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
and
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in
atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
(although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of
20th-century classical music
20th-century classical music describes art music that was written nominally from 1901 to 2000, inclusive. Musical style diverged during the 20th century as it never had previously. So this century was without a dominant style. Modernism, impressio ...
. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the
twelve-tone technique
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered
series
Series may refer to:
People with the name
* Caroline Series (born 1951), English mathematician, daughter of George Series
* George Series (1920–1995), English physicist
Arts, entertainment, and media
Music
* Series, the ordered sets used in ...
of all twelve notes in the
chromatic scale
The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce the ...
. He also coined the term
developing variation
In musical composition, developing variation is a formal technique in which the concepts of development and variation are united in that variations are produced through the development of existing material.
The term was coined by Arnold Schoen ...
and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing
motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.
Schoenberg was also an influential teacher of composition; his students included
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
,
Anton Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stea ...
,
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
,
Egon Wellesz
Egon Joseph Wellesz CBE (21 October 1885 – 9 November 1974) was an Austrian, later British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.
Early life and education in Vienna
Egon Joseph Wellesz was ...
,
Nikos Skalkottas
Nikos Skalkottas ( el, Νίκος Σκαλκώτας; 21 March 1904 – 19 September 1949) was a Greek composer of 20th-century classical music. A member of the Second Viennese School, he drew his influences from both the classical repert ...
,
Stefania Turkewich, and later
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
,
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his for ...
,
Earl Kim
Earl Kim (1920–1998; née Eul Kim) was an American composer, and music pedagogue. He was of Korean–descent.
Early life, education, and training
Kim was born on January 6, 1920 in Dinuba, California, to immigrant Korean parents. He began p ...
,
Robert Gerhard
Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder (; 25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Spanish Catalan composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia as Roberto Gerhard.Malcolm MacDonald. 'Gerhard, Roberto' in ''Grove Music Onli ...
,
Leon Kirchner
Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 – September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won a Pulitzer Pr ...
,
Dika Newlin Dika Newlin (November 22, 1923 – July 22, 2006) was a composer, pianist, professor, musicologist, and punk rock singer. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University at the age of 22. She was one of the last living students of Arnold Schoenberg ...
,
Oscar Levant
Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906August 14, 1972) was an American concert pianist, composer, conductor, author, radio game show panelist, television talk show host, comedian and actor. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for reco ...
, and
other prominent musicians. Many of Schoenberg's practices, including the formalization of compositional method and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics were crucial to many significant 20th-century musicologists and critics, including
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...
,
Charles Rosen
Charles Welles Rosen (May 5, 1927December 9, 2012) was an American pianist and writer on music. He is remembered for his career as a concert pianist, for his recordings, and for his many writings, notable among them the book ''The Classical Sty ...
, and
Carl Dahlhaus
Carl Dahlhaus (10 June 1928 – 13 March 1989) was a German musicologist who was among the leading postwar musicologists of the mid to late 20th-century. A prolific scholar, he had broad interests though his research focused on 19th- and 20th ...
, as well as the pianists
Artur Schnabel
Artur Schnabel (17 April 1882 – 15 August 1951) was an Austrian-American classical pianist, composer and pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th centur ...
,
Rudolf Serkin
Rudolf Serkin (28 March 1903 – 8 May 1991) was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century.
Early life, childhood debut, and education
Serkin was born in t ...
,
Eduard Steuermann
Eduard Steuermann (June 18, 1892 in Sambor, Austro-Hungarian Empire – November 11, 1964 in New York City) was an Austrian (and later American) pianist and composer.
Steuermann studied piano with Vilém Kurz at the Lemberg Conservatory and Fer ...
, and
Glenn Gould
Glenn Herbert Gould (; né Gold; September 25, 1932October 4, 1982) was a Canadian classical pianist. He was one of the most famous and celebrated pianists of the 20th century, and was renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard works of Johann ...
.
Schoenberg's archival legacy is collected at the
Arnold Schönberg Center
The Arnold Schönberg Center, established in 1998 in Vienna, is a repository of Arnold Schönberg's archival legacy and a cultural center that is open to the public.
Activities
Archive and library, exhibitions, concerts, lectures, workshops and ...
in Vienna.
Biography
Early life
Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower middle-class
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in the
Leopoldstadt
Leopoldstadt (; bar, Leopoidstod, "Leopold-Town") is the 2nd municipal district of Vienna (german: 2. Bezirk) in Austria. there are 103,233 inhabitants over . It is situated in the heart of the city and, together with Brigittenau (20th distr ...
district (in earlier times a Jewish
ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
) of
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, at "Obere Donaustraße 5". His father Samuel, a native of
Szécsény, Hungary, later moved to Pozsony (Pressburg, at that time part of the Kingdom of Hungary, now
Bratislava
Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approxim ...
, Slovakia) and then to
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, was a shoe-
shopkeeper, and his mother Pauline Schoenberg (née Nachod), a native of
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
, was a piano teacher. Arnold was largely self-taught. He took only
counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
lessons with the composer
Alexander Zemlinsky
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky (14 October 1871 – 15 March 1942) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.
Biography
Early life
Zemlinsky was born in Vienna to a highly diverse family. Zemlinsky's grandfather, Anton ...
, who was to become his first brother-in-law.
In his twenties, Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating
operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its s ...
s, while composing his own works, such as the string sextet ''
Verklärte Nacht
''Verklärte Nacht'' (''Transfigured Night''), Op. 4, is a string sextet in one movement composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1899. Composed in just three weeks, it is considered his earliest important work. It was inspired by Richard Dehmel's p ...
'' ("Transfigured Night") (1899). He later made an orchestral version of this, which became one of his most popular pieces. Both
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
and
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
recognized Schoenberg's significance as a composer; Strauss when he encountered Schoenberg's ''
Gurre-Lieder
' is a large cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schoenberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen (translated from Danish to German by ). The title means "songs of Gurre", ref ...
'', and Mahler after hearing several of Schoenberg's early works.
Strauss turned to a more conservative idiom in his own work after 1909, and at that point dismissed Schoenberg. Mahler adopted him as a protégé and continued to support him, even after Schoenberg's style reached a point Mahler could no longer understand. Mahler worried about who would look after him after his death. Schoenberg, who had initially despised and mocked Mahler's music, was converted by the "thunderbolt" of Mahler's ''
Third Symphony'', which he considered a work of genius. Afterward he "spoke of Mahler as a saint".
In 1898 Schoenberg converted to Christianity in the
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...
church. According to MacDonald (2008, 93) this was partly to strengthen his attachment to Western European cultural traditions, and partly as a means of self-defence "in a time of resurgent anti-Semitism". In 1933, after long meditation, he returned to Judaism, because he realised that "his racial and religious heritage was inescapable", and to take up an unmistakable position on the side opposing Nazism. He would self-identify as a member of the Jewish religion later in life.
1901–1914: experimenting in atonality
![Gerstl - Die Familie Schönberg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Gerstl_-_Die_Familie_Sch%C3%B6nberg.jpg)
In October 1901, Schoenberg married Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of the conductor and composer
Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky (14 October 1871 – 15 March 1942) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.
Biography
Early life
Zemlinsky was born in Vienna to a highly diverse family. Zemlinsky's grandfather, Anton S ...
, with whom Schoenberg had been studying since about 1894. Schoenberg and Mathilde had two children, Gertrud (1902–1947) and Georg (1906–1974). Gertrud would marry Schoenberg's pupil Felix Greissle in 1921.
During the summer of 1908, Schoenberg's wife Mathilde left him for several months for a young Austrian painter,
Richard Gerstl
Richard Gerstl (14 September 1883 – 4 November 1908) was an Austrian painter and draughtsman known for his expressive psychologically insightful portraits, his lack of critical acclaim during his lifetime, and his affair with the wife of Ar ...
(who committed suicide in that November after Mathilde returned to her marriage). This period marked a distinct change in Schoenberg's work. It was during the absence of his wife that he composed "You lean against a silver-willow" (german: link=no, Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide), the thirteenth song in the cycle ''
Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten'', Op. 15, based on the collection of the same name by the German mystical poet
Stefan George
Stefan Anton George (; 12 July 18684 December 1933) was a German symbolist poet and a translator of Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Hesiod, and Charles Baudelaire. He is also known for his role as leader of the highly influential literar ...
. This was the first composition without any reference at all to a
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (map ...
.
Also in this year, Schoenberg completed one of his most revolutionary compositions, the
String Quartet No. 2. The first two movements, though chromatic in color, use traditional
key signature
In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp (), flat (), or rarely, natural () symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef at ...
s. The final two movements, again using poetry by George, incorporate a soprano vocal line, breaking with previous string-quartet practice, and daringly weaken the links with traditional
tonality
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...
. Both movements end on
tonic chords, and the work is not fully non-tonal.
During the summer of 1910, Schoenberg wrote his ''Harmonielehre'' (''Theory of Harmony'', Schoenberg 1922), which remains one of the most influential music-theory books. From about 1911, Schoenberg belonged to a circle of artists and intellectuals who included
Lene Schneider-Kainer
Lene Schneider-Kainer, born Lene Schneider (1885 – 1971), was a Jewish-Austrian painter, daughter of the painter Sigmund Schneider, noted for her illustration of "''Lucian, Lukian:Hetärengespräche. Mit Illustrationen von Lene Schneider-Kainer ...
,
Franz Werfel
Franz Viktor Werfel (; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and Poetry, poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of ''Th ...
,
Herwarth Walden
Herwarth Walden (actual name Georg Lewin; 16 September 1879, in Berlin – 31 October 1941, in Saratov, Russia) was a German expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines. He is broadly acknowledged as one of the most important discove ...
, and
Else Lasker-Schüler
Else Lasker-Schüler (née Elisabeth Schüler) (; 11 February 1869 – 22 January 1945) was a German-Jewish poet and playwright famous for her bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and her poetry. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressi ...
.
In 1910 he met
Edward Clark, an English music journalist then working in Germany. Clark became his sole English student, and in his later capacity as a producer for the BBC he was responsible for introducing many of Schoenberg's works, and Schoenberg himself, to Britain (as well as
Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...
,
Berg Berg may refer to:
People
*Berg (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name)
*Berg Ng (born 1960), Hong Kong actor
* Berg (footballer) (born 1989), Brazilian footballer
Former states
*Berg (state), county and duchy of the Holy ...
and others).
Another of his most important works from this atonal or pantonal period is the highly influential ''
Pierrot lunaire
''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a m ...
'', Op. 21, of 1912, a novel cycle of expressionist songs set to a German translation of poems by the Belgian-French poet
Albert Giraud
Albert Giraud (; 23 June 1860 – 26 December 1929) was a Belgian poet who wrote in French.
Biography
Giraud was born Emile Albert Kayenbergh in Leuven, Belgium. He studied law at the University of Leuven. He left university without a deg ...
. Utilizing the technique of ''
Sprechstimme
(, "spoken singing") and (, "spoken voice") are expressionist vocal techniques between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, ''Sprechgesang'' is directly related to the operatic ''recitative'' manner of singing (in which p ...
'', or melodramatically spoken recitation, the work pairs a female vocalist with a small ensemble of five musicians. The ensemble, which is now commonly referred to as the
Pierrot ensemble
A Pierrot ensemble is a musical ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. This ensemble is named after 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal work ''Pierrot Lunaire'', which includes the quintet of instruments abo ...
, consists of
flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
(doubling on
piccolo
The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...
),
clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
(doubling on
bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...
), violin (doubling on
viola
The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...
), violoncello, speaker, and piano.
Wilhelm Bopp, director of the
Vienna Conservatory from 1907, wanted a break from the stale environment personified for him by
Robert Fuchs
Robert Fuchs (15 February 1847 – 19 February 1927) was an Austrian composer and music teacher. As Professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory, Fuchs taught many notable composers, while he was himself a highly regarded composer in hi ...
and
Hermann Graedener
Hermann Graedener or Grädener (8 May 1844 – 15 September 1929) was a German composer, conductor and teacher.
Biography
He was born in Kiel in the Duchy of Holstein. He was educated by his father, composer Karl Graedener. He then studied ...
. Having considered many candidates, he offered teaching positions to Schoenberg and
Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker (originally ''Schrecker''; 23 March 1878 – 21 March 1934) was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, Schreker developed a style characterized by aesthetic plurality (a mixture ...
in 1912. At the time Schoenberg lived in Berlin. He was not completely cut off from the Vienna Conservatory, having taught a private theory course a year earlier. He seriously considered the offer, but he declined. Writing afterward to Alban Berg, he cited his "aversion to Vienna" as the main reason for his decision, while contemplating that it might have been the wrong one financially, but having made it he felt content. A couple of months later he wrote to Schreker suggesting that it might have been a bad idea for him as well to accept the teaching position.
World War I
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
brought a crisis in his development. Military service disrupted his life when at the age of 42 he was in the army. He was never able to work uninterrupted or over a period of time, and as a result he left many unfinished works and undeveloped "beginnings". On one occasion, a superior officer demanded to know if he was "this notorious Schoenberg, then"; Schoenberg replied: "Beg to report, sir, yes. Nobody wanted to be, someone had to be, so I let it be me". According to
Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
, this is a reference to Schoenberg's apparent "destiny" as the
"Emancipator of Dissonance".
In what
Alex Ross
Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which he collaborated wi ...
calls an "act of war psychosis", Schoenberg drew comparisons between Germany's assault on France and his assault on decadent bourgeois artistic values. In August 1914, while denouncing the music of
Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become on ...
,
Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
, and
Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
, he wrote: "Now comes the reckoning! Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God".
The deteriorating relation between contemporary composers and the public led him to found the
Society for Private Musical Performances
The Society for Private Musical Performances (in German, the ) was an organization founded in Vienna in the Autumn of 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg with the intention of making carefully rehearsed and comprehensible performances of newly composed mus ...
(''Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen'' in German) in Vienna in 1918. He sought to provide a forum in which modern musical compositions could be carefully prepared and rehearsed, and properly performed under conditions protected from the dictates of fashion and pressures of commerce. From its inception through 1921, when it ended because of economic reasons, the Society presented 353 performances to paying members, sometimes at the rate of one per week. During the first year and a half, Schoenberg did not let any of his own works be performed. Instead, audiences at the Society's concerts heard difficult contemporary compositions by
Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...
,
Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
, Mahler, Webern, Berg,
Reger
Reger is a German surname, derived from the Middle High German ''reiger'', meaning "heron", likely referring to a tall thin person.''Dictionary of American Family Names''"Reger Family History" Oxford University Press, 2013. Retrieved on 16 January ...
, and other leading figures of early 20th-century music.
Development of the twelve-tone method
![Arnold schönberg man ray](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Arnold_sch%C3%B6nberg_man_ray.jpg)
Later, Schoenberg was to develop the most influential version of the dodecaphonic (also known as
twelve-tone
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
) method of composition, which in French and English was given the alternative name
serialism
In music, serialism is a method of Musical composition, composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other elements of music, musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, thou ...
by
René Leibowitz
René Leibowitz (; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after ...
and
Humphrey Searle
Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoen ...
in 1947. This technique was taken up by many of his students, who constituted the so-called
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
. They included
Anton Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stea ...
,
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
, and
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
, all of whom were profoundly influenced by Schoenberg. He published a number of books, ranging from his famous ''Harmonielehre'' (''Theory of Harmony'') to ''Fundamentals of Musical Composition'', many of which are still in print and used by musicians and developing composers.
Schoenberg viewed his development as a natural progression, and he did not deprecate his earlier works when he ventured into serialism. In 1923 he wrote to the Swiss philanthropist
Werner Reinhart Werner Reinhart (19 March 1884 – 29 August 1951) was a Swiss merchant, philanthropist, amateur clarinetist, and patron of composers and writers, particularly Igor Stravinsky and Rainer Maria Rilke. Reinhart knew and corresponded with many artist ...
:
For the present, it matters more to me if people understand my older works ... They are the natural forerunners of my later works, and only those who understand and comprehend these will be able to gain an understanding of the later works that goes beyond a fashionable bare minimum. I do not attach so much importance to being a musical bogey-man as to being a natural continuer of properly-understood good old tradition!
His first wife died in October 1923, and in August of the next year Schoenberg married
Gertrud Kolisch (1898–1967), sister of his pupil, the violinist
Rudolf Kolisch
Rudolf Kolisch (July 20, 1896 – August 1, 1978) was a Viennese violinist and leader of string quartets, including the Kolisch Quartet and the Pro Arte Quartet.
Early life and education
Kolisch was born in Klamm, Schottwien, Lower Austria and ra ...
. They had three children: Nuria Dorothea (born 1932), Ronald Rudolf (born 1937), and Lawrence Adam (born 1941). Gertrude Kolisch Schoenberg wrote the libretto for Schoenberg's one-act opera ''
Von heute auf morgen
' (''From Today to Tomorrow'' or ''From One Day to the Next'') is a one act opera composed by Arnold Schoenberg, to a German libretto by "Max Blonda", the pseudonym of Gertrud Schoenberg, the composer's wife. It is the composer's opus 32.
The ope ...
'' under the pseudonym Max Blonda. At her request Schoenberg's (ultimately unfinished) piece, ''
Die Jakobsleiter
''Die Jakobsleiter'' (''Jacob's Ladder'') is an oratorio by Arnold Schoenberg that marks his transition from a contextual or free atonality to the twelve-tone technique anticipated in the oratorio's use of hexachords. Though ultimately unfin ...
'' was prepared for performance by Schoenberg's student
Winfried Zillig
Winfried Zillig (1 April 1905 – 18 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, and conductor.
Zillig was born in Würzburg. After leaving school, Zillig studied law and music. One of his teachers there was Hermann Zilcher. In Vienna ...
. After her husband's death in 1951 she founded Belmont Music Publishers devoted to the publication of his works. Arnold used the notes G and E (German: Es, i.e., "S") for "Gertrud Schoenberg", in the ''Suite'', for septet, Op. 29 (1925). (see
musical cryptogram
A musical cryptogram is a cryptogrammatic sequence of musical symbols, a sequence which can be taken to refer to an extra-musical text by some 'logical' relationship, usually between note names and letters. The most common and best known examples ...
).
Following the death in 1924 of composer
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary ...
, who had served as Director of a Master Class in Composition at the
Prussian Academy of Arts
The Prussian Academy of Arts (German: ''Preußische Akademie der Künste'') was a state arts academy first established in Berlin, Brandenburg, in 1694/1696 by prince-elector Frederick III, in personal union Duke Frederick I of Prussia, and late ...
in Berlin, Schoenberg was appointed to this post the next year, but because of health problems was unable to take up his post until 1926. Among his notable students during this period were the composers Robert Gerhard, Nikos Skalkottas, and
Josef Rufer Josef Rufer (1893–1985) was an Austrian-born musicologist. He is regarded as a significant figure mainly on account of his association with and writings on Arnold Schoenberg.
Rufer was a pupil of Alexander von Zemlinsky and Schoenberg in Vien ...
.
Along with his twelve-tone works, 1930 marks Schoenberg's return to tonality, with numbers 4 and 6 of the Six Pieces for Male Chorus Op. 35, the other pieces being dodecaphonic.
Third Reich and move to the United States
Schoenberg continued in his post until the
Nazi regime
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
Machtergreifung
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...
came to power in 1933. While on vacation in France, he was warned that returning to Germany would be dangerous. Schoenberg formally reclaimed membership in the Jewish religion at a Paris synagogue, then traveled with his family to the United States. This happened after his attempts to move to Britain came to nothing.
His first teaching position in the United States was at the Malkin Conservatory (
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...
). He moved to Los Angeles, where he taught at the
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
and the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
, both of which later named a music building on their respective campuses Schoenberg Hall. He was appointed visiting professor at
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
in 1935 on the recommendation of
Otto Klemperer
Otto Nossan Klemperer (14 May 18856 July 1973) was a 20th-century conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the US, Hungary and finally Britain. His early career was in opera houses, but he was later better known as a concer ...
, music director and conductor of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...
; and the next year was promoted to professor at a salary of $5,100 per year, which enabled him in either May 1936 or 1937 to buy a Spanish Revival house at 116 North Rockingham in
Brentwood Park, near the UCLA campus, for $18,000. This address was directly across the street from
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Black (born Shirley Jane Temple;While Temple occasionally used "Jane" as a middle name, her birth certificate reads "Shirley Temple". Her birth certificate was altered to prolong her babyhood shortly after she signed with Fox in ...
's house, and there he befriended fellow composer (and tennis partner)
George Gershwin
George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ' ...
. The Schoenbergs were able to employ domestic help and began holding Sunday afternoon gatherings that were known for excellent coffee and Viennese pastries. Frequent guests included
Otto Klemperer
Otto Nossan Klemperer (14 May 18856 July 1973) was a 20th-century conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the US, Hungary and finally Britain. His early career was in opera houses, but he was later better known as a concer ...
(who studied composition privately with Schoenberg beginning in April 1936),
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coined ...
,
Joseph Achron
Joseph Yulyevich Achron, also seen as Akhron (Russian: Иосиф Юльевич Ахрон, Hebrew: יוסף אחרון) (May 1, 1886April 29, 1943) was a Russian-born Jewish composer and violinist, who settled in the United States. His preoccu ...
,
Louis Gruenberg
Louis Gruenberg ( ; June 10, 1964) was a Russian-born American pianist and prolific composer, especially of operas. An early champion of Schoenberg and other contemporary composers, he was also a highly respected Oscar-nominated film composer in Ho ...
,
Ernst Toch
Ernst Toch (; 7 December 1887 – 1 October 1964) was an Austrian composer of classical music and film scores. He sought throughout his life to introduce new approaches to music.
Biography
Toch was born in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, into the family ...
, and, on occasion, well-known actors such as
Harpo Marx
Arthur "Harpo" Marx (born Adolph Marx; November 23, 1888 – September 28, 1964) was an American comedian, actor, mime artist, and harpist, and the second-oldest of the Marx Brothers. In contrast to the mainly verbal comedy of his brothers Grou ...
and
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before movin ...
. Composers
Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman (September 7, 1924 – March 4, 2008) was an American film, television and concert composer with credits in over 130 works, including '' East of Eden'', ''Rebel without a Cause'', '' Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home'', ''Beneath the ...
and
George Tremblay
George Amédée Tremblay (14 January 1911 – 14 July 1982) was a Canadian (and later, naturalized American citizen) pianist, composer, and author who was active in the United States. Although his works display a broad range of stylistic influenc ...
and the Hollywood orchestrator
Edward B. Powell studied with Schoenberg at this time.
After his move to the United States, where he arrived on 31 October 1933, the composer used the alternative spelling of his surname ''Schoenberg'', rather than ''Schönberg'', in what he called "deference to American practice", though according to one writer he first made the change a year earlier.
He lived there the rest of his life, but at first he was not settled. In around 1934, he applied for a position of teacher of harmony and theory at the
New South Wales State Conservatorium in Sydney. The Director,
Edgar Bainton
Edgar Leslie Bainton (14 February 18808 December 1956) was a British-born, latterly Australian-resident composer. He is remembered today mainly for his liturgical anthem ''And I saw a new heaven'', a popular work in the repertoire of Anglican ch ...
, rejected him for being Jewish and for having "modernist ideas and dangerous tendencies." Schoenberg also at one time explored the idea of emigrating to
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
. His secretary and student (and nephew of Schoenberg's mother-in-law Henriette Kolisch), was
Richard Hoffmann, Viennese-born but who lived in New Zealand in 1935–1947, and Schoenberg had since childhood been fascinated with islands, and with New Zealand in particular, possibly because of the beauty of the postage stamps issued by that country.
![Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - 10501](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Stroop_Report_-_Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_-_10501.jpg)
During this final period, he composed several notable works, including the difficult
Violin Concerto
A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...
, Op. 36 (1934/36), the ''
Kol Nidre
Kol Nidre (also known as Kol Nidrey or Kol Nidrei; Aramaic: ''kāl niḏrē'') is a Hebrew and Aramaic declaration which is recited in the synagogue before the beginning of the evening service on every Yom Kippur ("Day of Atonement"). Strictly ...
'', Op. 39, for chorus and orchestra (1938), the ''Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte'', Op. 41 (1942), the haunting
Piano Concerto
A piano concerto is a type of concerto, a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for a piano player, which is typically accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuoso showpiec ...
, Op. 42 (1942), and his memorial to the victims of the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, ''
A Survivor from Warsaw
''A Survivor from Warsaw'', Op. 46, is a cantata by the Los Angeles-based Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, written in tribute to Holocaust victims. The main narration is unsung; "never should there be a pitch" to its solo vocal line, wrote t ...
'', Op. 46 (1947). He was unable to complete his opera ''
Moses und Aron
''Moses und Aron'' (English: ''Moses and Aaron'') is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto is by the composer after the Book of Exodus. Hungarian composer Zoltán Kocsis completed the last act w ...
'' (1932/33), which was one of the first works of its genre written completely using
dodecaphonic composition. Along with twelve-tone music, Schoenberg also returned to tonality with works during his last period, like the Suite for Strings in G major (1935), the
Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 38 (begun in 1906, completed in 1939), the Variations on a Recitative in D minor, Op. 40 (1941). During this period his notable students included
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
and
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his for ...
.
In 1941, he became a citizen of the United States. Here he was the first composer in residence at the
Music Academy of the West
The Music Academy is a classical music training program in Montecito in Santa Barbara County, California.
Overview
The academy hosts an annual eight-week summer music festival, highlighted by concerts and workshops directed by famous composer ...
summer conservatory.
Superstition and death
![Zentralfriedhof Vienna - Schoenberg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Zentralfriedhof_Vienna_-_Schoenberg.JPG)
Schoenberg's superstitious nature may have triggered his death. The composer had
triskaidekaphobia
Triskaidekaphobia ( , ; ) is fear or avoidance of the number . It is also a reason for the fear of Friday the 13th, called ''paraskevidekatriaphobia'' () or ''friggatriskaidekaphobia'' ().
The term was used as early as in 1910 by Isador Coria ...
(the fear of the number 13), and according to friend Katia Mann, he feared he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13. This possibly began in 1908 with the composition of the thirteenth song of the song cycle ''
Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten'' Op. 15. He dreaded his sixty-fifth birthday in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and
astrologer
Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Dif ...
Dane Rudhyar
Dane Rudhyar (March 23, 1895 – September 13, 1985), born Daniel Chennevière, was a American author, modernist composer and humanistic astrologer. He was a pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology.
Biography
Dane Rudhyar was born in Paris on ...
to prepare Schoenberg's
horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal.
But in 1950, on his 76th birthday, an astrologer wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13.
[Nuria Schoenberg-Nono, quoted in ] This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. He died on
Friday, 13 July 1951, shortly before midnight. Schoenberg had stayed in bed all day, sick, anxious, and depressed. His wife Gertrud reported in a telegram to her sister-in-law Ottilie the next day that Arnold died at 11:45 pm, 15 minutes before midnight. In a letter to Ottilie dated 4 August 1951, Gertrud explained, "About a quarter to twelve I looked at the clock and said to myself: another quarter of an hour and then the worst is over. Then the doctor called me. Arnold's throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat and that was the end".
Schoenberg's ashes were later interred at the
Zentralfriedhof
The Vienna Central Cemetery (german: Wiener Zentralfriedhof) is one of the largest cemeteries in the world by number of interred, and is the most well-known cemetery among Vienna's nearly 50 cemeteries. The cemetery's name is descriptive of its ...
in Vienna on 6 June 1974.
Music
![Schoenberg - Variations for Orchestra op](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Schoenberg_-_Variations_for_Orchestra_op._31_tone_row.png)
Schoenberg's significant compositions in the repertory of modern art music extend over a period of more than 50 years. Traditionally they are divided into three periods though this division is arguably arbitrary as the music in each of these periods is considerably varied. The idea that his twelve-tone period "represents a stylistically unified body of works is simply not supported by the musical evidence", and important musical characteristics—especially those related to
motivic development
In music, a motif IPA: ( /moʊˈtiːf/) (also motive) is a short musical phrase, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition: "The motiv ...
—transcend these boundaries completely.
The first of these periods, 1894–1907, is identified in the legacy of the high-
Romantic composers of the late nineteenth century, as well as with "
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
" movements in poetry and art. The second, 1908–1922, is typified by the abandonment of
key centers, a move often described (though not by Schoenberg) as "
free atonality". The third, from 1923 onward, commences with Schoenberg's invention of
dodecaphonic
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
, or "twelve-tone" compositional method. Schoenberg's best-known students,
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
,
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
, and
Anton Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stea ...
, followed Schoenberg faithfully through each of these intellectual and aesthetic transitions, though not without considerable experimentation and variety of approach.
First period: Late Romanticism
Beginning with songs and string quartets written around the turn of the century, Schoenberg's concerns as a composer positioned him uniquely among his peers, in that his procedures exhibited characteristics of both
Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
and
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
, who for most contemporary listeners, were considered polar opposites, representing mutually exclusive directions in the legacy of German music. Schoenberg's Six Songs, Op. 3 (1899–1903), for example, exhibit a conservative clarity of
tonal organization typical of Brahms and Mahler, reflecting an interest in balanced phrases and an undisturbed
hierarchy
A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
of key relationships. However, the songs also explore unusually bold incidental
chromaticism and seem to aspire to a Wagnerian "representational" approach to motivic identity.
The synthesis of these approaches reaches an apex in his ''
Verklärte Nacht
''Verklärte Nacht'' (''Transfigured Night''), Op. 4, is a string sextet in one movement composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1899. Composed in just three weeks, it is considered his earliest important work. It was inspired by Richard Dehmel's p ...
'', Op. 4 (1899), a
programmatic work for
string sextet
In classical music, a string sextet is a composition written for six string instruments, or a group of six musicians who perform such a composition. Most string sextets have been written for an ensemble consisting of two violins, two violas, and ...
that develops several distinctive "
leitmotif
A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglici ...
"-like themes, each one eclipsing and subordinating the last. The only motivic elements that persist throughout the work are those that are perpetually dissolved, varied, and re-combined, in a technique, identified primarily in Brahms's music, that Schoenberg called "
developing variation
In musical composition, developing variation is a formal technique in which the concepts of development and variation are united in that variations are produced through the development of existing material.
The term was coined by Arnold Schoen ...
". Schoenberg's procedures in the work are organized in two ways simultaneously; at once suggesting a Wagnerian narrative of motivic ideas, as well as a Brahmsian approach to motivic development and tonal cohesion.
Second period: Free atonality
Schoenberg's music from 1908 onward experiments in a variety of ways with the absence of traditional keys or
tonal center
In music, the tonic is the first scale degree () of the diatonic scale (the first note of a scale) and the tonal center or final resolution tone that is commonly used in the final cadence in tonal (musical key-based) classical music, popular ...
s. His first explicitly atonal piece was the
second string quartet, Op. 10, with soprano. The last movement of this piece has no key signature, marking Schoenberg's formal divorce from
diatonic
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize Scale (music), scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, Interval (music), intervals, Chord (music), chords, Musical note, notes, musical sty ...
harmonies. Other important works of the era include his song cycle ''
Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten'', Op. 15 (1908–1909), his
Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16 (1909), the influential ''
Pierrot Lunaire
''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a m ...
'', Op. 21 (1912), as well as his dramatic ''
Erwartung
' (''Expectation''), Opus number, Op. 17, is a one-act monodrama in four scenes by Arnold Schoenberg to a libretto by . Composed in 1909, it was not premiered until 6 June 1924 in Prague conducted by Alexander von Zemlinsky, Alexander Zemlinsky wi ...
'', Op. 17 (1909).
The urgency of musical constructions lacking in tonal centers, or traditional
dissonance-consonance relationships, however, can be traced as far back as his
Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1906), a work remarkable for its tonal development of whole-tone and
quartal harmony
In music, quartal harmony is the building of harmonic structures built from the intervals of the perfect fourth, the augmented fourth and the diminished fourth. For instance, a three-note quartal chord on C can be built by stacking perfect fourt ...
, and its initiation of dynamic and unusual ensemble relationships, involving dramatic interruption and unpredictable instrumental allegiances; many of these features would typify the
timbre
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
-oriented chamber music aesthetic of the coming century.
Third period: Twelve-tone and tonal works
In the early 1920s, he worked at evolving a means of order that would make his musical texture simpler and clearer. This resulted in the "method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another", in which the twelve pitches of the octave (unrealized compositionally) are regarded as equal, and no one note or tonality is given the emphasis it occupied in classical harmony. He regarded it as the equivalent in music of
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
's discoveries in physics. Schoenberg announced it characteristically, during a walk with his friend
Josef Rufer Josef Rufer (1893–1985) was an Austrian-born musicologist. He is regarded as a significant figure mainly on account of his association with and writings on Arnold Schoenberg.
Rufer was a pupil of Alexander von Zemlinsky and Schoenberg in Vien ...
, when he said, "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years". This period included the ''
Variations for Orchestra'', Op. 31 (1928);
Piano Pieces, Opp. 33a & b (1931), and the
Piano Concerto
A piano concerto is a type of concerto, a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for a piano player, which is typically accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuoso showpiec ...
, Op. 42 (1942). Contrary to his reputation for strictness, Schoenberg's use of the technique varied widely according to the demands of each individual composition. Thus the structure of his unfinished opera ''
Moses und Aron
''Moses und Aron'' (English: ''Moses and Aaron'') is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto is by the composer after the Book of Exodus. Hungarian composer Zoltán Kocsis completed the last act w ...
'' is unlike that of his Phantasy for Violin and Piano, Op. 47 (1949).
Ten features of Schoenberg's mature twelve-tone practice are characteristic, interdependent, and interactive:
#
Hexachord
In music, a hexachord (also hexachordon) is a six-note series, as exhibited in a scale (hexatonic or hexad) or tone row. The term was adopted in this sense during the Middle Ages and adapted in the 20th century in Milton Babbitt's serial theor ...
al
inversional combinatoriality
In music using the twelve tone technique, combinatoriality is a quality shared by twelve-tone tone rows whereby each section of a row and a proportionate number of its transformations combine to form aggregates (all twelve tones). Whittall, Arnold ...
#
Aggregates
# Linear
set
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
presentation
#
Partitioning
#
Isomorphic
In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word is ...
partitioning
#
Invariants
# Hexachordal
levels
#
Harmony
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...
, "consistent with and derived from the properties of the referential set"
#
Metre
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
, established through "pitch-relational characteristics"
#
Multidimensional set presentations
Reception and legacy
First works
After some early difficulties, Schoenberg began to win public acceptance with works such as the tone poem ''
Pelleas und Melisande'' at a Berlin performance in 1907. At the Vienna première of the ''
Gurre-Lieder
' is a large cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schoenberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen (translated from Danish to German by ). The title means "songs of Gurre", ref ...
'' in 1913, he received an ovation that lasted a quarter of an hour and culminated with Schoenberg's being presented with a laurel crown.
Nonetheless, much of his work was not well received. His
Chamber Symphony No. 1 premièred unremarkably in 1907. However, when it was played again in the ''
Skandalkonzert'' on 31 March 1913, (which also included works by
Berg Berg may refer to:
People
*Berg (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name)
*Berg Ng (born 1960), Hong Kong actor
* Berg (footballer) (born 1989), Brazilian footballer
Former states
*Berg (state), county and duchy of the Holy ...
,
Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...
and
Zemlinsky
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky (14 October 1871 – 15 March 1942) was an Austrian composer, conducting, conductor, and teacher.
Biography
Early life
Zemlinsky was born in Vienna to a highly diverse family. Zemlinsky's grandfath ...
), "one could hear the shrill sound of door keys among the violent clapping, and in the second gallery the first fight of the evening began." Later in the concert, during a performance of the ''
Altenberg Lieder'' by Berg, fighting broke out after Schoenberg interrupted the performance to threaten removal by the police of any troublemakers.
Twelve-tone period
According to Ethan Haimo, understanding of Schoenberg's twelve-tone work has been difficult to achieve owing in part to the "truly revolutionary nature" of his new system, misinformation disseminated by some early writers about the system's "rules" and "exceptions" that bear "little relation to the most significant features of Schoenberg's music", the composer's secretiveness, and the widespread unavailability of his sketches and manuscripts until the late 1970s. During his life, he was "subjected to a range of criticism and abuse that is shocking even in hindsight".
![Watschenkonzert Karikatur in Die Zeit vom 6](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Watschenkonzert_Karikatur_in_Die_Zeit_vom_6._April_1913.jpg)
Schoenberg criticized
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
's new neoclassical trend in the poem "Der neue Klassizismus" (in which he derogates
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was ...
, and obliquely refers to Stravinsky as "Der kleine Modernsky"), which he used as text for the third of his ''Drei Satiren'', Op. 28.
Schoenberg's serial technique of composition with twelve notes became one of the most central and polemical issues among American and European musicians during the mid- to late-twentieth century. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing to the present day, composers such as
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music.
Born in Mont ...
,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
,
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music.
Biography
Early years
Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...
and
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music.
Biography
Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...
have extended Schoenberg's legacy in increasingly radical directions. The major cities of the United States (e.g., Los Angeles, New York, and Boston) have had historically significant performances of Schoenberg's music, with advocates such as Babbitt in New York and the Franco-American conductor-pianist
Jacques-Louis Monod. Schoenberg's students have been influential teachers at major American universities:
Leonard Stein
Leonard David Stein (December 1, 1916 – June 24, 2004) was a musicologist, pianist, conductor, university teacher, and influential in promoting contemporary music on the American West Coast. He was for years Arnold Schoenberg's assistant, mu ...
at
USC
USC most often refers to:
* University of South Carolina, a public research university
** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses
**South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program
* University of ...
,
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
and
CalArts
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...
; Richard Hoffmann at
Oberlin;
Patricia Carpenter at
Columbia; and
Leon Kirchner
Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 – September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won a Pulitzer Pr ...
and Earl Kim at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. Musicians associated with Schoenberg have had a profound influence upon contemporary music performance practice in the US (e.g.,
Louis Krasner
Louis Krasner (4 May 1995) was a Russian Empire-born American classical violinist who premiered the violin concertos of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg.
Biography
Louis Krasner was born in Cherkasy, Russian Empire. He arrived in the United Stat ...
,
Eugene Lehner
Eugene Lehner (1906 – 13 September 1997) was a violist and music educator.
Lehner, as he preferred to be addressed, was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1906. Originally named Jenö Léner, he performed as a self-taught violinist from th ...
and
Rudolf Kolisch
Rudolf Kolisch (July 20, 1896 – August 1, 1978) was a Viennese violinist and leader of string quartets, including the Kolisch Quartet and the Pro Arte Quartet.
Early life and education
Kolisch was born in Klamm, Schottwien, Lower Austria and ra ...
at the
New England Conservatory of Music
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a Private college, private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music Music school, conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The ...
;
Eduard Steuermann
Eduard Steuermann (June 18, 1892 in Sambor, Austro-Hungarian Empire – November 11, 1964 in New York City) was an Austrian (and later American) pianist and composer.
Steuermann studied piano with Vilém Kurz at the Lemberg Conservatory and Fer ...
and
Felix Galimir
Felix Galimir (May 20, 1910, Vienna – November 10, 1999, New York) was an Austrian-born American violinist and music teacher.
Born in a Sephardic Jewish family Vienna; his first language was Ladino.
Allan Kozinn,"Felix Galimir, 89, a Viol ...
at the
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most el ...
). In Europe, the work of
Hans Keller
Hans (Heinrich) Keller (11 March 19196 November 1985) was an Austrian-born British musician and writer, who made significant contributions to musicology and music criticism, as well as being a commentator on such disparate fields as psychoana ...
, , and René Leibowitz has had a measurable influence in spreading Schoenberg's musical legacy outside of Germany and Austria. His pupil and assistant
Max Deutsch
Max Deutsch (17 November 1892 – 22 November 1982) was an Austrian-French composer, conductor, and academic teacher. He studied with Arnold Schönberg and was his assistant. Teaching at the Sorbonne and the École Normale de Musique de Paris, he ...
, who later became a professor of music, was also a conductor. who made a recording of three "master works" Schoenberg with the
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) is a Swiss symphony orchestra, based in Geneva at the Victoria Hall. In addition to symphony concerts, the OSR performs as the opera orchestra in productions at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
History
Er ...
, released posthumously in late 2013. This recording includes short lectures by Deutsch on each of the pieces.
Criticism
In the 1920s,
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...
criticized a certain unnamed brand of contemporary music (presumably Schoenberg and his disciples) as "the self-gratification of an individual who sits in his studio and invents rules according to which he then writes down his notes". Schoenberg took offense at this remark and answered that Krenek "wishes for only whores as listeners".
Allen Shawn has noted that, given Schoenberg's living circumstances, his work is usually ''defended'' rather than listened to, and that it is difficult to experience it ''apart'' from the ideology that surrounds it.
Richard Taruskin
Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as ...
asserted that Schoenberg committed what he terms a "poietic fallacy", the conviction that what matters most (or all that matters) in a work of art is the making of it, the maker's input, and that the listener's pleasure must not be the composer's primary objective. Taruskin also criticizes the ideas of measuring Schoenberg's value as a composer in terms of his influence on other artists, the overrating of technical innovation, and the restriction of criticism to matters of structure and craft while derogating other approaches as vulgarian.
Relationship with the general public
Writing in 1977,
Christopher Small
Christopher Neville Charles Small (17 March 1927 – 7 September 2011) was a New Zealand-born musician, educator, lecturer, and author of a number of influential books and articles in the fields of musicology, sociomusicology and ethnomusicology ...
observed, "Many music lovers, even today, find difficulty with Schoenberg's music". Small wrote his short biography a quarter of a century after the composer's death. According to
Nicholas Cook
Nicholas Cook, (born 5 June 1950COOK, Prof. Nicholas (John)’, Who's Who 2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2011 ; online edn, Nov 201accessed 9 April 2012/ref>) is a British musicologist and writer born in Athens ...
, writing some twenty years after Small, Schoenberg had thought that this lack of comprehension
Ben Earle (2003) found that Schoenberg, while revered by experts and taught to "generations of students" on degree courses, remained unloved by the public. Despite more than forty years of advocacy and the production of "books devoted to the explanation of this difficult repertory to non-specialist audiences", it would seem that in particular, "British attempts to popularize music of this kind ... can now safely be said to have failed".
In his 2018 biography of Schoenberg's near contemporary and similarly pioneering composer, Debussy,
Stephen Walsh takes issue with the idea that it is not possible "for a creative artist to be both radical and popular". Walsh concludes, "Schoenberg may be the first 'great' composer in modern history whose music has not entered the repertoire almost a century and a half after his birth".
Thomas Mann's novel ''Doctor Faustus''
Adrian Leverkühn, the protagonist of
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
's novel ''
Doctor Faustus'' (1947), is a composer whose use of twelve-tone technique parallels the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg was unhappy about this and initiated an exchange of letters with Mann following the novel's publication.
Leverkühn, who may be based on
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...
, sells his soul to the Devil. Writer
Sean O'Brien comments that "written in the shadow of Hitler, ''Doktor Faustus'' observes the rise of Nazism, but its relationship to political history is oblique".
Personality and extramusical interests
![Blaues Selbstportrait (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Blaues_Selbstportrait_%28cropped%29.jpg)
Schoenberg was a painter of considerable ability, whose works were considered good enough to exhibit alongside those of
Franz Marc and
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...
. as fellow members of the
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
group
Der Blaue Reiter
''Der Blaue Reiter'' (The Blue Rider) is a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name, first published in mid-May ...
.
He was interested in
Hopalong Cassidy films
From 1935 to 1948, 66 American Western films were produced featuring the character Hopalong Cassidy, played in all the films by actor William Boyd. The films were at the time collectively known as "Hoppies". In the films, Hopalong, or "Hoppy", a ...
, which Paul Buhle and David Wagner (2002, v–vii) attribute to the films' left-wing screenwriters—a rather odd claim in light of Schoenberg's statement that he was a "
bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
" turned
monarchist
Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. ...
.
Textbooks
* 1922.
Harmonielehre', third edition. Vienna: Universal Edition. (Originally published 1911).
* 1943. ''Models for Beginners in Composition'', New York: G. Schirmer, Inc.
* 1954. ''Structural Functions of Harmony''. New York: W. W. Norton; London: Williams and Norgate. Revised edition, New York, London: W. W. Norton and Company 1969.
* 1964. ''Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint'', edited with a foreword by Leonard Stein. New York, St. Martin's Press. Reprinted, Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers 2003.
* 1967. ''Fundamentals of Musical Composition'', edited by Gerald Strang, with an introduction by Leonard Stein. New York: St. Martin's Press. Reprinted 1985, London: Faber and Faber.
* 1978. ''Theory of Harmony'', English edition, translated by Roy E. Carter, based on ''Harmonielehre'' 1922. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.
* 1979. ''Die Grundlagen der musikalischen Komposition'', translated into German by Rudolf Kolisch; edited by
Rudolf Stephan
Rudolf Stephan (3 April 1925 – 29 September 2019) was a German musicologist.
Life
Stephan was born in Bochum. After studying violin at the conservatory, he entered the Institute of Heidelberg, where he studied musicology at the University unde ...
. Vienna: Universal Edition (German translation of ''Fundamentals of Musical Composition'').
* 2003. ''Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint'', Reprinted, Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers.
* 2010. ''Theory of Harmony'', 100th Anniversary Edition. Berkeley: California University Press. 2nd edition.
* 2016. ''Models for Beginners in Composition'', Reprinted, London: Oxford University Press.
Writings
* 1947. "The Musician". In ''The Works of the Mind'', edited by Robert B. Heywood, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* 1950. ''
Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg'', edited and translated by
Dika Newlin Dika Newlin (November 22, 1923 – July 22, 2006) was a composer, pianist, professor, musicologist, and punk rock singer. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University at the age of 22. She was one of the last living students of Arnold Schoenberg ...
. New York: Philosophical Library.
* 1958. ''Ausgewählte Briefe'', by B. Schott's Söhne, Mainz.
* 1964. ''Arnold Schoenberg Letters'', selected and edited by Erwin Stein, translated from the original German by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
* 1965. ''Arnold Schoenberg Letters'', selected and edited by Erwin Stein, translated from the original German by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. New York: St.Martin's Press.
* 1975. ''Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg'', edited by Leonard Stein, with translations by Leo Black. New York: St. Martins Press; London: Faber & Faber. Expanded from the 1950 Philosophical Library (New York) publication edited by Dika Newlin (559 pages from 231). The volume carries the note "Several of the essays ... were originally written in German (translated by Dika Newlin)" in both editions.
* 1984. ''Style and Idea: Selected Writings'', translated by Leo Black. Berkeley: California University Press.
* 1984. ''Arnold Schoenberg
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...
: Letters, Pictures and Documents'', edited by Jelena Hahl-Koch, translated by John C. Crawford. London: Faber and Faber. ,
* 1987. ''Arnold Schoenberg Letters'', selected and edited by Erwin Stein, translated from the original German by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
* 2006. ''The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation'', new paperback English edition. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press.
* 2010. ''Style and Idea: Selected Writings'', 60th anniversary (second) edition, translated by Leonard Stein and Leo Black. Berkeley: California University Press.
* 2020. Kathryn Puffet and Barbara Schingnitz: ''Three Men of Letters. Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, 1906-1921''. Vienna: Hollitzer, 2020.
See also
* ''
Arnold Schönberg Complete Edition
The ''Arnold Schönberg Complete Edition'' (German: ''Arnold Schönberg Gesamtausgabe'') is a historical-critical edition of the complete compositional works of Arnold Schoenberg, which is intended to serve both scholarship and musical practice. Th ...
''
*
Arnold Schönberg Prize
The International Arnold Schönberg Prize was established in 2001, and named after the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg, on initiative of Kent Nagano, the former principal conductor and musical director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Ber ...
*
List of refugees
This is a list of prominent people who fled their native country, went into exile and found refuge in another country. The list follows the current legal concept of refugee only loosely. It also includes children of people who have fled. The peopl ...
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (Reprint of .)
*
*
* (Reissued in ''The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays''. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007, pp. 301–329. ).
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
Adorno, Theodor. 1967. ''Prisms'', translated from the German by
Samuel
Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bibl ...
and Shierry Weber London: Spearman; Cambridge, Massachusetts:
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
.
* Anon. 2002.
Arnold Schönberg and His God. Vienna: Arnold Schönberg Center (accessed 1 December 2008).
* Anon. 1997–2013.
. In ''A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust''. The Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida (accessed 16 June 2014).
* Auner, Joseph. 1993. ''A Schoenberg Reader.'' New Haven: Yale University Press.
*
* Berry, Mark. 2019. ''Arnold Schoenberg.'' London: Reaktion Books.
*
Boulez, Pierre. 1991. "Schoenberg is Dead" (1952). In his ''Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship'', collected and presented by Paule Thévenin, translated by Stephen Walsh, with an introduction by Robert Piencikowski, 209–14. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York:
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.
* Brand, Julianne, Christopher Hailey, and Donald Harris (editors). 1987. ''The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters.'' New York, London: W. W. Norton and Company.
* Buhle, Paul, and David Wagner. 2002. ''Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies''. New York:
The New Press
The New Press is an independent non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by André Schiffrin[Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...]
.
*
Byron, Avior. 2006
"The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting ''Pierrot lunaire'': Sprechstimme Reconsidered".''
Music Theory Online
''Music Theory Online'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed open access academic journal covering music theory and musical analysis, analysis. It was established in 1993 and is published by the Society for Music Theory. The initial issues were designat ...
'' 12, no. 1 (February).
* Cohen, Mitchell, "A Dissonant Schoenberg in Berlin and Paris," "Jewish Review of Books," April 2016.
* da Costa Meyer, Esther. 2003. "Schoenberg's Echo: The Composer as Painter". In ''Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider'', edited by Fred Wasserman and Esther da Costa Meyer, foreword by Joan Rosenbaum, preface by Christian Meyer. London and New York: Scala.
*
Everdell, William R. 1998 ''
The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
*
Eybl, Martin. 2004. ''Die Befreiung des Augenblicks: Schönbergs Skandalkonzerte von 1907 und 1908: eine Dokumentation''. Wiener Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte 4. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau.
* Floirat, Bernard. 2001.
Les Fonctions structurelles de l'harmonie d'Arnold Schoenberg'. Eska, Musurgia.
* Frisch, Walter (ed.). 1999. ''Schoenberg and His World''. Bard Music Festival Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (cloth); (pbk).
*
Genette, Gérard. 1997. ''Immanence and Transcendence'', translated by G. M. Goshgarian. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press
The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in th ...
.
* Gur, Golan. 2009.
Arnold Schoenberg and the Ideology of Progress in Twentieth-Century Musical Thinking. ''Search: Journal for New Music and Culture'' 5 (Summer). Online journal (Accessed 17 October 2011).
* Greissle-Schönberg, Arnold, and
Nancy Bogen.
.d.Arnold Schönberg's European Family' (e-book). The Lark Ascending, Inc. (accessed 2 May 2010)
* Hyde, Martha M. 1982. ''Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Harmony: The Suite Op. 29 and the Compositional Sketches''. Studies in Musicology, series edited by George Buelow. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.
*
Kandinsky, Wassily. 2000. "Arnold Schönberg als Maler/Arnold Schönberg as Painter". ''Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center'', no. 1:131–76.
*
Mahler, Alma. 1960. ''Mein Leben'', with a foreword by
Willy Haas
Willy Haas (6 July 1891 – 4 September 1973) was a German editor, film critic, and screenwriter. He wrote for 19 films between 1922 and 1933, and was a member of the jury at the 8th Berlin International Film Festival.
Biography
Willy Ha ...
. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, ''My Life, My Loves: The Memoirs of Alma Mahler'',
St. Martin's Griffin (1958) Paperback
*
* Orenstein, Arbie. 1975. ''Ravel: Man and Musician''. London: Columbia University Press.
*
* Petropoulos, Jonathan. 2014. ''Artists Under Hitler''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
* Ringer, Alexander. 1990. "Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew". Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.
* Rollet, Philippe (ed.). 2010. ''Arnold Schönberg: Visions et regards'', with a preface by Frédéric Chambert and Alain Mousseigne. Montreuil-sous-Bois: Liénart.
* Schoenberg, Arnold. 1922.
Harmonielehre', third edition. Vienna: Universal Edition. (Originally published 1911). Translation by Roy E. Carter, based on the third edition, as ''Theory of Harmony''. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978.
* Schoenberg, Arnold. 1959. ''Structural Functions of Harmony''. Translated by
Leonard Stein
Leonard David Stein (December 1, 1916 – June 24, 2004) was a musicologist, pianist, conductor, university teacher, and influential in promoting contemporary music on the American West Coast. He was for years Arnold Schoenberg's assistant, mu ...
. London: Williams and Norgate; Revised edition, New York, London: W. W. Norton 1969.
* Shawn, Allen. 2002. ''Arnold Schoenberg's Journey.'' New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.
* Stegemann, Benedikt. 2013. ''Theory of Tonality: Theoretical Studies''. Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel.
*
Weiss, Adolph. 1932. "The Lyceum of Schonberg", ''Modern Music'' 9, no. 3 (March–April): 99–107.
* Wright, James K. 2007. ''Schoenberg, Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle.'' Bern: Verlag Peter Lang.
* Wright, James and Alan Gillmor (eds.). 2009. ''Schoenberg's Chamber Music, Schoenberg's World.'' New York: Pendragon Press.
External links
*
*
Arnold Schoenberg Center in ViennaArchival records: Arnold Schoenberg collection, 1900–1951 Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
Schönberg. Linking two continents in sound.a web-based exhibition of Arnold Schönberg curated by
Österreichische Mediathek
The Österreichische Mediathek ("Austrian Mediathek") is the Austrian archive for sound recordings and videos on cultural and contemporary history. It was founded in 1960 as Österreichische Phonothek (Austrian Phonothek) by the Ministry of Educat ...
in cooperation with the
Arnold Schönberg Center
The Arnold Schönberg Center, established in 1998 in Vienna, is a repository of Arnold Schönberg's archival legacy and a cultural center that is open to the public.
Activities
Archive and library, exhibitions, concerts, lectures, workshops and ...
Recordingsat
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)videos compiled by
Randol Schoenberg on
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schoenberg, Arnold
1874 births
1951 deaths
20th-century American composers
20th-century Austrian composers
20th-century Austrian male musicians
20th-century Austrian painters
20th-century male artists
20th-century classical composers
20th-century American male musicians
American classical composers
American former Christians
American male classical composers
American music theorists
American opera composers
20th-century American painters
Austrian Christians
Austrian classical composers
Austrian emigrants to Germany
Austrian Jews
Austrian male classical composers
Austrian male painters
Austrian monarchists
Austrian music arrangers
Austrian music theorists
Austrian opera composers
Austrian refugees
Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I
Baalei teshuva
Ballet composers
Berlin University of the Arts alumni
Burials at the Vienna Central Cemetery
Composers for piano
Composers for pipe organ
Composers for violin
Composers from Vienna
Converts to Judaism from Christianity
Expressionist music
Jewish American classical composers
Jewish classical composers
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
Jewish painters
Jewish opera composers
Male opera composers
Music Academy of the West faculty
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
People from Leopoldstadt
Prussian Academy of Arts faculty
Pupils of Alexander Zemlinsky
Second Viennese School
Twelve-tone and serial composers