Five Pieces for Piano, (German: ), Op. 23, is a set of five pieces for solo piano by

Arnold Schoenberg 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 as ...

, which he partly composed in 1920 and completed in 1923. The five pieces are: A typical performance of all five pieces takes around 12 minutes. Each of the pieces explores a different approach to serializing pitch. The first piece simultaneously unfolds series of 21, 20, and 13 pitches, which later recur in the same order, but changed in rhythm and octave to generate a different, contrasting musical texture. Its initial impetus was a June 1920 solicitation from

Henry Prunières Henry Prunières (24 May 1886, in Paris – 11 April 1942, in Nanterre) was a French musicologist, and international proponent of contemporary art in various forms, including music, dance and painting. He occupies an important place in the art wor ...

, editor of the French music magazine "

La Revue musicale ''La Revue musicale'' was a music magazine founded by Henry Prunières in 1920. ''La Revue musicale'' of Prunières was undoubtedly the first music publishing magazine giving as much attention to the quality of editing, iconography, and illustrat ...

," for contributions to a proposed "Tombeau de Claude Debussy," although Schoenberg ultimately decided not to submit it for inclusion in that project. The brief second piece, also written in 1920, is strongly contrasting. The third, composed in 1923, is based on a motive of five notes, and the fourth, started in 1920, then resumed in 1923, features four recurring pitch constellations. Piece number five, the waltz, uses a series of all twelve equal-tempered pitches, although with no transpositions or inversions. It is sometimes described as the first 12-tone work, but Schoenberg wrote it in February 1923, and he had previously composed portions of the entirely 12-tone Suite for Piano as early as 1921. The Five Piano Pieces were first performed in their entirety in Autumn of 1923, in Hamburg, by

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 ...

, who had also premiered the first two pieces in 1920, in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. They have been commercially recorded by pianists such as Glenn Gould,

Claude Helffer Claude Helffer (18 June 1922 – 27 October 2004) was a French pianist. Early life Helffer was born in Paris, and began piano lessons at the age of five and from the age of ten until the outbreak of World War II he studied with Robert Casa ...

, Paul Jacobs,

Maurizio Pollini Maurizio Pollini (born 5 January 1942) is an Italian pianist. He is known for performances of compositions by Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy, among others. He has also championed and performed works by contemporary composers such as Pierre Boulez ...

, Eduard Steuermann, and

Peter Serkin Peter Adolf Serkin (July 24, 1947 – February 1, 2020) was an American classical pianist. He won the Grammy Award for Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist in 1966, and he performed globally, known for not only "technically pristine" pl ...

. Kathryn Bailey devoted a monograph to the Five Piano Pieces, "Composing with tones": A Musical Analysis of Schoenberg's Op. 23 Pieces for Piano (Royal Musical Association, London, 2001).

References

Notes Sources * * * *

External links

Arnold Schönberg Center's webpage (with recording) on Op. 23 (in German)
{{Authority control Twelve-tone compositions by Arnold Schoenberg Solo piano compositions by Arnold Schoenberg 1920 compositions 1923 compositions