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 ...

's Suite for Piano (German: ), Op. 25, is a 12-tone

piece Piece or Pieces (not to be confused with peace) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Games * Piece (chess), pieces deployed on a chessboard for playing the game of chess * ''Pieces'' (video game), a 1994 puzzle game for the Super NES * ...

for

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

composed between 1921 and 1923. The work is the earliest in which Schoenberg employs a row of "12 tones related only to one another" in every movement: the earlier ''5 Stücke'', Op. 23 (1920–23) employs a 12-tone row only in the final waltz movement, and the ''Serenade'', Op. 24, uses a single row in its central ''Sonnet''. The basic

tone row In music, a tone row or note row (german: Reihe or '), also series or set, is a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets ...

of the suite consists of the following pitches: E–F–G–D–G–E–A–D–B–C–A–B. In form and style, the work echoes many features of the Baroque suite. There are six movements: A typical performance of the entire suite takes around 16 minutes. In this work, Schoenberg employs transpositions and inversions of the row for the first time: the sets employed are P-0, I-0, P-6, I-6 and their retrogrades. Arnold Whittall has suggested that " e choice of transpositions at the sixth semitone—the

tritone In music theory, the tritone is defined as a musical interval composed of three adjacent whole tones (six semitones). For instance, the interval from F up to the B above it (in short, F–B) is a tritone as it can be decomposed into the three adj ...

—may seem the consequence of a desire to hint at 'tonic-dominant' relationships, and the occurrence of the tritone G–D in all four sets is a hierarchical feature which Schoenberg exploits in several places". The suite was first performed by Schoenberg's pupil Eduard Steuermann in Vienna on 25 February 1924. Steuermann made a commercial recording of the work in 1957. The first recording of the ''Suite for Piano'' to be released was made by

Niels Viggo Bentzon Niels Viggo Bentzon (Copenhagen, 24 August 1919 – Copenhagen, 25 April 2000) was a Danish composer and pianist. Biography Bentzon was the son of Viggo Bentzon (1861-1937), Rector of Copenhagen University and Karen Hartmann (1882-1977), con ...

some time before 1950. The Gavotte movement contains, "a

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...

of a baroque keyboard

suite Suite may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Suite (music), a set of musical pieces considered as one composition ** Suite (Bach), a list of suites composed by J. S. Bach ** Suite (Cassadó), a mid-1920s composition by Gaspar Cassadó ** ''Suite ...

that involves the

cryptogram A cryptogram is a type of puzzle that consists of a short piece of encrypted text. Generally the cipher used to encrypt the text is simple enough that the cryptogram can be solved by hand. Substitution ciphers where each letter is replaced by ...

of Bach's name as an important

harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', t ...

and

melodic A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combinat ...

device and a related

quotation A quotation is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is introduced by ...

of Schoenberg's Op. 19/vi. Edward T. Cone (1972) has catalogued what he believes to be a number of mistakes in

Reinhold Brinkmann Reinhold Brinkmann (21 August 1934, Wildeshausen, Oldenburg, Lower Saxony – 10 October 2010, Eckernförde, Rendsburg-Eckernförde, Schleswig-Holstein) was a German musicologist. Brinkmann was born in Wildeshausen and studied at Freiburg im Breis ...

's 1968 revised edition of Schoenberg's piano music, one of which is in measure number five of the Suite's "Gavotte", G instead of G. Henry Klumpenhouwer invokes

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

's concept of parapraxes (i.e., mental slips) to suggest a psychological context explaining the deviation from the note predicted from the tone row.

References

Notes Sources * * * * * * *

External links

Arnold Schönberg Center's webpage (with recording) on Op. 25
{{Authority control Twelve-tone compositions by Arnold Schoenberg Compositions for solo piano Suites (music) Neoclassicism (music) 1923 compositions