Arnold Schoenberg on Music Theory Print

A Survivor from Warsaw

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Story#

The work narrates the story of a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Second World War, from his time in a concentration camp. The Nazi authorities one day hold a roll-call of a group of Jews. The group tries to assemble but there is confusion and the guards beat the old and ailing detainees who cannot line up quickly enough. Those left on the ground are presumed dead. The guards demand another count to determine how many will be deported to death camps. The guards repeatedly demand the group to count faster until the detainees break into sung prayer, the Shema Yisrael, ending with Deuteronomy 6:7, “and when thou liest down, and when thou riseth up”.

Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene

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Background#

Schoenberg had contradictory feelings about film and film music; he aspired to work on film projects, but abhorred the film industry. The artistic possibilities of film interested him, but its essentially collaborative creative process ultimately dissuaded him from exploring it as a vehicle for his own work. While composing Die glückliche Hand in 1910–1913, Schoenberg had the idea of directing a film that would have depicted the work’s drama. He would have had total control over the scripts, acting, music, and any needed edits. He contemplated commissioning Oskar Kokoschka or Wassily Kandinsky to design the sets, as well as using colorization in order to depict the work’s symbolistic use of color and light. He explained to Emil Hertzka: T he basic unreality of the events, which is inherent in the words, is something that they should be able to bring out even better in the filming (nasty idea that it is!). For me this is one of the main reasons for considering it. For instance, in the film, if the goblet suddenly vanishes as if it had never been there, just as if it had simply been forgotten, that is quite different from the way it is on the stage, where it has to be removed by some device. And there are a thousand things besides that can be easily done in this medium, whereas the stage’s resources are very limited. My foremost wish is therefore for something the opposite of what the cinema generally aspires to. I want: the utmost unreality! In 1927, Schoenberg wrote an essay for the Neues Wiener Tagblatt wherein he worried that the rise of film would result in the decline of opera: The opera … has less to offer the eye than the film does—and color film will soon be here too. Add music, and the general public will hardly need to hear an opera sung and acted any more, unless a new path is found. While participating in sound film experiments in September of that same year at the studios of Universum-Film AG in Berlin, Schoenberg was recorded on film stating: One should not consider the talking film to be simply a coupling of picture, language, and music. On the contrary, it is a completely new and independent instrument for innovative artistic expression. In this sense it has a great future. It is surely here through the force of the Idea that the word and art music will soon gain decisive influence. Therefore, the application of overall standards will become the rule, standards that up to now could only be reached by exceptionally gifted personalities like Chaplin. Namely: standards of artistic value! … N ow true German artists will be able to grant to film true and deep ideas and emotions: then marketability of broad mass appeal will certainly no longer alone determine production; then German film will achieve the position that corresponds to its poets and musicians! In a later essay written in 1940, he rebuked this speech, explaining that he had expected a “renaissance of the arts” with the advent of sound film. “How wrong I had been!”, he added. When Schoenberg emigrated to Los Angeles in October 1933, one of his primary reasons for choosing the city was to be near the film industry, where he hoped to influence film music through his work as a teacher. During a conversation with Dika Newlin on April 8, 1940, he told her that he believed film music could never be good.

Chamber Symphony No. 1 (Schoenberg)

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Structure#

The Chamber Symphony is a single-movement work which lasts approximately 20 minutes. Even though it is listed as one movement, the form can be considered as subdivided into as many as five continuous movements. Schoenberg himself outlined the following form using the rehearsal numbers as reference points: Schoenberg claimed in later years that the work “was a first attempt to create a chamber orchestra.” Schoenberg makes use of a “motto” theme constructed of fourths. The “motto” theme helps delineate the structural articulation points in the piece. : \relative c \clef bass \numericTimeSignature \time 4/4 \key e \major \set Staff.instrumentName = #“Hrn” \partial 41 d\ff \bar " " g c \clef treble f bes8. ees16 ees4 The “motto” theme first appears in measure 5 and is framed by two cadences which introduce the two main key areas. Cadence 1 in F major: : \new PianoStaff 2\fermata \ r2 bes,,\f ees1( e! f2.) » \bar " " \new Staff \relative c \clef bass \key e \major \time 2/2 _( 1 2.) » \bar " " » Cadence 2 in E major: : \new PianoStaff 4) \ 4\ff 2\fp> 4! 4\fp> ! r2 s4 » \bar "" \new Staff \relative c \clef bass \key e \major \numericTimeSignature \time 4/4 cis!8 r16 f a8 r \times2/3 a,->\ff d,-> d’-> gis!2-> \times 2/3 a8-> d,-> d’-> gis2-> \times 2/3 a,,8-> d,-> d’-> gis!4 \bar "" » Schoenberg’s concept of developing variation can be observed in the relationship of the Scherzo theme to the rising chromatic line in the 2nd Violin part in Cadence 1, : \relative c \clef treble \time 3/4 \key ees \major \tempo “sehr rasch” \set Staff.instrumentName = #“Ob” aes2.->\fff a-> \bar " " \numericTimeSignature \time 2/2 bes-> aes8 g bes4 aes8 g bes4 as well as in the relationship of the slow movement theme to Cadence 2. : \relative c \clef treble \numericTimeSignature \time 4/4 \key g \major \tempo “sehr langsam” \set Staff.instrumentName = #“1Vln” \partial 41 g!8.( fis16 f4 a8. f16 ees4)

Chamber Symphony No. 2 (Schoenberg)

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Background#

When Schoenberg began the work in 1906, he was on the verge of a major stylistic change. His Chamber Symphony No. 1, for 15 players, has a concise form in which the four movements of a traditional symphony are condensed into a single larger one and establishes the soloistic orchestral writing sporadically found in works such as Gurre-Lieder and Pelleas und Melisande. After completing it, Schoenberg thought he had reached his mature style, but he soon began to explore new avenues of expression. In 1939, he added 20 bars to the original first movement, wrote the latter half of the second movement, and revised and reorchestrated the earlier portions of the work. He considered adding a third movement, an Adagio, and sketched out 127 bars of it but then decided that the work’s musical and ‘psychic’ problems had already been presented thoroughly in the first two movements. He also expanded the ensemble to that of a classical-sized orchestra, with the available forces of Stiedry’s orchestra in mind. Compared to the 1906 version, the 1939 version demonstrates greater variety between the string, woodwind and brass sections of the orchestra, using distinct instrumental groupings in a style similar to that of Anton Bruckner. It avoids the doubling of instrumental lines in favor of a differentiation of individual parts, showing that Schoenberg’s later style placed greater emphasis on clarity of textures than did his earlier orchestral scores. In almost every instance in the 1906 draft, first violins are paired with flute, oboe I, and clarinet I, second violins are paired with second clarinet, and lower strings are paired with octave doublings.

Die glückliche Hand

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Background and creation#

Die glückliche Hand (The Lucky Hand) is a four-scene opera or “Drama with Music in One Act” by Arnold Schoenberg. A (artist-opera) and (I-drama or ego-drama), it bridges late-Romantic and experimental theater. He wrote it to his own libretto during a turbulent, productive time in his life, split between imperial Vienna, where artists turned inward amid the Habsburg monarchy’s decline, and more progressive Berlin (1901–03, 1911–15, 1926–33).

Die Jakobsleiter

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External links#

*Time.com: Schoenberg Revisited

Viewing#

*YouTube.com: World premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s (1874-1951) oratorio “Die Jakobsleiter” in Vienna, 1961 part I, and part II: discussion

Drei Klavierstücke (Schoenberg)

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Music#

The tempo markings of the three pieces are: The first two pieces, dating from February 1909, are often cited as marking the point at which Schoenberg abandoned the last vestiges of traditional tonality, implying the language of common-practice harmony that had been inherent in Western music, in one way or another, for centuries. The functionality of this language, to Schoenberg at least, had by this time become stretched to bursting point in some of the more chromatically-saturated works of Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss and indeed some of Schoenberg’s own earlier tonal works such as the string sextet Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, of 1899. Although there are vestigial, superficial remnants of tonal writing, such as lyrical melody, expressive appoggiaturas, and chordal accompaniment, tonal hearing, and tonal analysis are difficult to sustain. Nevertheless, at least three attempts at tonal analysis of the first piece have been made, by three respected authorities. One of them says it is in E, another says it is a prolongation of F as the dominant of B, and the third concludes that it is in G. While all three are persuasive in their own way, other keys may also be heard here, but all are insubstantial. Any complete analysis must take these ghostly remnants of tonality into account, but no one key reliably shapes the structure. Atonal analyses of this first piece are also divided in opinion. Allen Forte describes its pitch organisation as “straightforward” and based on hexachords. George Perle is equally certain that it is constructed instead from three-note “intervallic cells”. The three pieces are given a unity of atonal musical space through the projection of material from the first piece into the other two, including recurring use of motivic material. The first of the three motivic cells of the first piece is used throughout the second, and the first and third cells are found in the third. The third piece is the most innovative of the three. In its atomisation of the material and its agglomeration of the motivic cells through multiple connections, it isolates its musical parameters (mode of attack, rhythm, texture, register, and agogics) and employs them in a structural though unsystematic manner that foreshadows the integral serialism of the 1950s. Characteristic of these pieces is a lack of motivic repetition or development and a rejection of traditional notions of balance and cadential, goal-oriented movement, supposedly deferring the musical discourse to a kind of stream-of-consciousness, or subjective, emotional expression. In likening these developments to contemporary styles in visual art (Schoenberg was himself a painter), notably Kandinsky’s, with whom he had contact, the composer tellingly describes painting “without architecture … an ever-changing, unbroken succession of colours, rhythms and moods”. The violence and suddenness of this emancipation from tradition was influenced by turbulent events in Schoenberg’s life at the time: his wife Mathilde had recently eloped with the painter Richard Gerstl (who died by suicide when Mathilde returned to her husband), and in the professional sphere, his work was increasingly being met with hostility or incomprehension, as at the premiere of the Second String Quartet in 1908. However, Schoenberg at this time saw no contradiction in pursuing more seemingly traditional projects, such as the orchestration of his hyper-Wagnerian Gurre-Lieder (completed in 1911).

Erwartung

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Performance history#

had its British premiere on 9 January 1931, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. It was the first live opera shown on Times Square in New York City in a production by Robin Rhode in November 2015 (2 performances).

Roles#

The Woman (soprano)

Synopsis#

:Time: Night :Place: A forest A woman is in an apprehensive state as she searches for her lover. In the darkness, she comes across what she first thinks is a body, but then realises is a tree-trunk. She is frightened and becomes more anxious as she cannot find the man she is looking for. She then finds a dead body, and sees that it is her lover. She calls out for assistance, but there is no response. She tries to revive him, and addresses him as if he were still alive, angrily charging him with being unfaithful to her. She then asks herself what she is to do with her life, as her lover is now dead. Finally, she wanders off alone into the night.

Five Pieces for Orchestra

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Premiere#

The work had its world premiere in the Queen’s Hall, London at a Promenade Concert on 3 September 1912, conducted by Sir Henry Wood, a constant champion of new music. During rehearsals for Schoenberg’s suite he urged his reluctant players, “Stick to it, gentlemen! This is nothing to what you’ll have to play in 25 years’ time” The work was not well received; the critic Ernest Newman, who was receptive to Schoenberg’s music, wrote after the performance:

Five Pieces for Piano

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References#

Notes Sources * * * *

External links#

- Arnold Schönberg Center’s webpage (with recording) on Op. 23 (in German)

Four Orchestral Songs (Schoenberg)

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Composition#

The songs were composed separately, even though they were published as a set. The first song was finished on 6 October 1913; the second one was composed between 30 November and 3 December 1914; the third one was composed between 3 December 1914, and 1 January 1915; and, after a hiatus, the fourth one was composed between 19 and 28 July 1916. These songs were the last works that Schoenberg was to write in the freely atonal style. After finishing this composition, Schoenberg would complete no new works for seven years, at which point he composed the Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23. During this compositional hiatus, he would develop the twelve-tone technique; thereafter, he would compose mainly (though not exclusively) using the twelve-note method. The orchestral songs was premiered on 21 February 1932, in Frankfurt am Main, conducted by Hans Rosbaud with soprano Hertha Reinecke. The second movement was dedicated to student and fellow composer Anton Webern. It was eventually published by Universal Edition in Vienna, on 7 November 1917.

Gurre-Lieder

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Composition#

In 1900 Schoenberg began composing the work as a song cycle for soprano, tenor, and piano for a competition run by the Wiener Tonkünstler-Verein (Vienna Composers’ Association). It was written in a lush, late-Romantic style heavily influenced by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. According to Schoenberg, however, he “finished them half a week too late for the contest, and this decided the fate of the work.” Later that year, he radically expanded his original conception, composing links between the first nine songs as well as adding a prelude, the Wood Dove’s Song, and the whole of Parts 2 and 3. By the time he returned to the piece in 1910, he had already written his first acknowledged atonal works, such as the Three Pieces for Piano, Op. 11, Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, and Erwartung, Op. 17. He had also come under the spell of Gustav Mahler, whom he had met in 1903 and whose influence may be discernible in the orchestration of the latter parts of the Gurre-Lieder. Whereas Parts 1 and 2 are clearly Wagnerian in conception and execution, Part 3 features the pared-down orchestral textures and kaleidoscopic shifts between small groups of instruments favoured by Mahler in his later symphonies. In Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd, Schoenberg also introduced the first use of sprechgesang (or sprechstimme), a technique he would explore more fully in Pierrot lunaire of 1912. The orchestration was finally completed in November 1911.

Herzgewächse

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Background#

After his second move to Berlin, Schoenberg composed Herzgewächse with speed characteristic especially of his atonal period, completing it on 9 December 1911 for facsimile publication in the 1912 almanac Der Blaue Reiter, edited by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Berg sent “Warm die Lüfte”, Op. 2/iv. Scholars like Bryan R. Simms emphasize a stream-of-consciousness approach to musical form in Schoenberg’s works of this period, with atomization of material, or musical ideas, into a kind of athematicism.

Moses und Aron

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Compositional history#

Moses und Aron has its roots in Schoenberg’s earlier agitprop play, Der biblische Weg (The Biblical Way, 1926–27), a response in dramatic form to the growing anti-Jewish movements in the German-speaking world after 1848 and a deeply personal expression of his own “Jewish identity” crisis. The latter began with a face-to-face encounter with anti-Semitic agitation at Mattsee, near Salzburg, during the summer of 1921, when he was forced to leave the resort because he was a Jew, although he had converted to Protestantism in 1898. It was a traumatic experience to which Schoenberg would frequently refer, and of which a first mention appears in a letter addressed to Wassily Kandinsky (April 1923): “I have at last learnt the lesson that has been forced upon me this year, and I shall never forget it. It is that I am not a German, not a European, indeed perhaps scarcely even a human being (at least, the Europeans prefer the worst of their race to me), but that I am a Jew.” Schoenberg’s statement echoed that of Gustav Mahler, a convert to Catholicism, some years earlier: “I am thrice homeless: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among the Germans, and as a Jew throughout the entire world. I am an intruder everywhere, welcome nowhere.” The Mattsee experience was destined to change the course of Schoenberg’s life and to influence his musical creativity, leading him first to write Der biblische Weg, in which the central protagonist Max Aruns (Moses-Aaron) is partially modelled on Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism; then to proclaim in Moses und Aron his uncompromising monotheistic creed; and finally, upon his official return to Judaism in 1933, to embark for more than a decade on a relentless mission to save European Jewry from impending doom. Der biblische Weg should be considered as both a personal and political play. Moses, at the center of the biblical Exodus story, had become from the time of Heinrich Heine to that of Herzl and Schoenberg, the ideal incarnation of a national and spiritual redeemer. “Moses und Aaron” has 13 letters. Zoltán Kocsis (Hungarian conductor, composer and pianist) had received permission from Schoenberg’s heirs in 2009 to complete the last act. His version was premiered in concert at Budapest on 16 January 2010.

Pelleas und Melisande (Schoenberg)

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Instrumentation#

The symphonic poem is scored for a large orchestra with the following instruments. Woodwinds : piccolo : : : English horn : E clarinet : : bass clarinet : 3 bassoons : contrabassoon Brass : 8 horns in F : 4 trumpets in E and F : alto trombone : 4 tenor-bass trombones : tuba Percussion : timpani (2 players) : triangle : cymbals : tam-tam : large tenor drum : bass drum : glockenspiel Strings : 4 harps : violins I : violins II : violas : cellos : double basses

Piano Concerto (Schoenberg)

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Twelve-tone technique#

The piece features consistent use of the twelve-tone technique and only one tone row (“the language is very systematic, it’s the true dodecaphonic Schoenberg”,) though not as strictly as Schoenberg once required (for example, the ninth, tenth and eleventh tones of the series are repeated before the twelfth tone is first heard). The opening melody is 39 bars long and presents all four modes of the tone row in the following order: basic set, inversion of retrograde, retrograde, and inversion. Both of the inversions are transposed. Four different types of row partitioning are evident: linear, by dyads or tetrachords, free, and by trichords. Linear presentations are ordered, strict presentations of either complete rows or component hexachords, and dominate the Andante and Giocoso movements. The second type symmetrically divides the twelve-tone aggregate into either six dyads or three tetrachords, and is found in the Molto allegro. The third type consists of irregular presentations of segments or fragments of the row, and is used mainly in the Adagio section. The last type, trichordal partitioning, is found throughout the concerto, and is a two-dimensional design created from the discrete trichords of complexes made from pairs of inversionally combinatorial rows.

Pierrot lunaire

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History#

The work originated in a commission by Albertine Zehme, a former actress, for a cycle for voice and piano, setting a series of poems by the Belgian writer Albert Giraud. The verses had been first published in 1884 and later translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben. Zehme had previously performed a ‘melodrama’ by composer Otto Vrieslander based on the translated poems. But, according to Eduard Steuermann, student of Schoenberg and pianist of the premiere, “the music was not strong enough, and someone advised her to approach Schoenberg.” Schoenberg began work on March 12 and completed the piece on July 9, 1912, having expanded the forces to an ensemble consisting of flute (doubling on piccolo), clarinet in A (doubling on bass clarinet and clarinet in B), violin (doubling on viola), cello, and piano. After forty rehearsals, Schoenberg and Zehme (in Columbine dress) gave the premiere at the Berlin Choralion-Saal on October 16, 1912. Reaction was mixed. According to Anton Webern, some in the audience were whistling and laughing, but in the end “it was an unqualified success”. According to eyewitness Salka Viertel, the sister of the premiere’s pianist Eduard Steuermann, There was some criticism of blasphemy in the texts, to which Schoenberg responded, “If they were musical, not a single one would give a damn about the words. Instead, they would go away whistling the tunes.”

Pillar of Fire (ballet)

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Performance history#

The performance was first produced by Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre) at the Metropolitan Opera House on April 8, 1942. It played an important role in building the foundation for American Ballet Theatre’s future as a well-known company. The opening night cast included Nora Kaye as Hagar, Antony Tudor as The Friend, Hugh Laing as The Young Man From the House Opposite, Lucia Chase as the Eldest Sister, and Annabelle Lyon as the Youngest Sister; with Maria Karnilova, Charles Dickson, Jean Davidson, John Kriza, Virginia Wilcox, Wallace Seibert, Jean Hunt, Barbara Fallis, Sono Osato, Rosella Hightower, Muriel Bentley, Jerome Robbins, Donald Saddler, Frank Hobi, Balina Razoumova, and Roszika Sabo.

Sechs kleine Klavierstücke

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History#

After having written large, dense works such as Pelleas und Melisande, up until 1907, Schönberg decided to turn away from this style, beginning with his second string quartet of 1908. The following excerpt, translated from a letter written to Ferruccio Busoni in 1909, well expresses his reaction against the excess of the Romantic period: My goal: complete liberation from form and symbols, cohesion and logic. Away with motivic work! Away with harmony as the cement of my architecture! Harmony is expression and nothing more. Away with pathos! Away with 24 pound protracted scores! My music must be short. Lean! In two notes, not built, but “expressed”. And the result is, I hope, without stylized and sterilized drawn-out sentiment. That is not how man feels; it is impossible to feel only one emotion. Man has many feelings, thousands at a time, and these feelings add up no more than apples and pears add up. Each goes its own way. This multicoloured, polymorphic, illogical nature of our feelings, and their associations, a rush of blood, reactions in our senses, in our nerves; I must have this in my music. It should be an expression of feeling, as if really were the feeling, full of unconscious connections, not some perception of “conscious logic”. Now I have said it, and they may burn me. This work was composed at the same time that Schoenberg was working on his orchestration of his massive Gurre-Lieder. While he maintained a lifelong love of Romantic music, the extreme contrast between his Klavierstücke and his more romantic works comes from his modernist desire to find a new means of expression. For him, works like the Gurre-Lieder or Verklärte Nacht fulfilled the tradition he loved, but it was works like these Klavierstücke, or the Fünf Orchesterstücke that attempted to reach beyond it. The first five pieces were written in a single day, February 19, 1911, and were originally intended to comprise the entire piece. Schoenberg penned the sixth piece on June 17, shortly after the death of Gustav Mahler. Indeed, it is a, “well circulated claim that Schoenberg conceived op. 19/vi as a tombeau to Mahler”. It was first performed on February 4, 1912, in Berlin, by Louis Closson. The pieces have been arranged for a number of other instruments and ensembles. There is a guitar arrangement by Siegfried Behrend, and in 2006, Heinz Holliger arranged the pieces for instrumental ensemble, which he recorded with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne.

String Quartets (Schoenberg)

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String Quartet in D major#

This string quartet in four movements is Schoenberg’s earliest extant work of large scale: average duration of recorded performances is about 27 minutes. Completed in 1897, it was premiered privately on March 17, 1898, and publicly later that same year on December 20 in Vienna. It was published posthumously in 1966 (Faber Music, London). Schoenberg’s friend Alexander von Zemlinsky gave him much advice and criticism during the composition of this work. Zemlinsky even showed an early draft of it to Johannes Brahms, whom Schoenberg very much admired. It was given the old master’s approval. The string quartet is in four movements: The original second movement was the Scherzo in F which now exists as a separate piece. Schoenberg substituted the Intermezzo at Zemlinsky’s suggestion.

Suite for Piano (Schoenberg)

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Music#

In form and style, the work echoes many features of the Baroque suite. There are six movements: The basic tone row of the suite consists of the following pitches: E–F–G–D–G–E–A–D–B–C–A–B. 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 suggested that " t he choice of transpositions at the sixth semitone—the tritone—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 Gavotte movement contains “a parody of a baroque keyboard suite that involves the cryptogram of Bach’s name as an important harmonic and melodic device” and a related quotation of Schoenberg’s Op. 19/vi. Edward T. Cone (1972) has catalogued what he believes to be a number of mistakes in Reinhold Brinkmann’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’s concept of parapraxes (i.e., mental slips) to suggest a psychological context explaining the deviation from the note predicted from the tone row.

The Book of the Hanging Gardens

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Biographical and cultural context#

The Book of the Hanging Gardens served as the start to the atonal period in Schoenberg’s music. Atonal compositions, referred to as “pantonal” by Schoenberg, typically contain features such as a lack of central tonality, pervading harmonic dissonance rather than consonance, and a general absence of traditional melodic progressions. This period of atonality became commonly associated with the expressionist movement, despite the fact that Schoenberg rarely referred to the term “expressionism” in his writings. Whether or not he wanted to be associated with the movement, Schoenberg expresses an unambiguous positivity with his discovery of this new style in a program note for the 1910 first performance of The Book of the Hanging Gardens: Schoenberg’s libretto transcends the tragic love poems of George and becomes a deeper reflection of Schoenberg’s mood during this period when viewing his personal life. The poems tell of a love affair gone awry without explicitly stating the cause of its demise. In 1908, Schoenberg’s wife Mathilde left him and their two children for Richard Gerstl, a painter with whom Schoenberg was a close friend and for whom Mathilde often modeled. She returned to the family from her flight with Gerstl eventually, but not before Schoenberg discovered the poems of George and began drawing inspiration from them.

Variations for Orchestra (Schoenberg)

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Sections#

Introduction # Theme # Variation I: Moderato # Variation II: Adagio # Variation III: Mässig # Variation IV: Walzer-tempo # Variation V: Bewegt # Variation VI: Andante # Variation VII: Langsam # Variation VIII: Sehr rasch # Variation IX: L’istesso Tempo # Finale#

Music#

The instrumentation of the works consists of 4 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (4th doubling english horn), 4 clarinets (4th doubling bass clarinet), E-flat clarinet, 4 bassoons (4th doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, tam-tam, triangle, tambourine, glockenspiel, xylophone, flexatone), harp, celeste, mandolin, and strings The theme of the piece is stated in measures 34–57. The orchestration includes a flexatone. The piece features the BACH motif (B–A–C–B). The tone row in its four permutations (labeled Prime, Retrograde, Inversion, and Retrograde Inversion) are shown below. : #(set-global-staff-size 17) \override Score.TimeSignature #‘stencil = ##f \override Score.SpacingSpanner.strict-note-spacing = ##t \set Score.proportionalNotationDuration = #(ly:make-moment 3/1) \new StaffGroup > Schoenberg opened a lecture on the composition with the following tyranny of the majority defense of less common aesthetics: “Far be it from me to question the rights of the majority. But one thing is certain: somewhere there is a limit to the power of the majority; it occurs, in fact, wherever the essential step is one that cannot be taken by all and sundry.” The piece has been arranged for two pianos by Charles Wuorinen and this arrangement was set to a ballet, Schoenberg Variations (1996), by Richard Tanner of the New York City Ballet.

Verklärte Nacht

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Premiere#

The work was premiered on 18 March 1902 in the Vienna Musikverein by the Rosé Quartet with Arnold Rosé and Albert Bachrich (violins), Anton Ruzitska (viola), and Friedrich Buxbaum (cello), extended by Franz Jelinek (second Viola) and Franz Schmidt (second cello). The British premiere of the sextet was on 23 of January 1914 at the Bechstein Hall in the presence of the composer. It was played by the London String Quartet: Albert Sammons, Thomas Petre, Harry Waldo Warner and Warwick Evans, who were joined by James Lockyer on viola and Cedric Sharpe on cello. The composer’s first version for string orchestra received its premiere on 29 November 1916 in Prague, under the direction of Alexander von Zemlinsky. It received its British premiere in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1924, conducted by Schoenberg’s champion and former student Edward Clark.

Vier Lieder (Schoenberg)

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Poetry#

The first three of the poems that Schoenberg set in Vier Lieder were written by Richard Dehmel, while the last one was written by Johannes Schlaf. based on a single poem, “Venus Consolatrix”, which compared Mary Magdalene to the Roman goddess Aphrodite, the symbol of beauty, life, and sexuality. Schoenberg was inspired by Dehmel’s poetry to explore new forms of tonality.

Structure#

The four songs are: # Erwartung # Jesus bettelt (Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm) # Erhebung # Waldsonne The duration is given as 12 minutes.

Violin Concerto (Schoenberg)

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Premiere#

The concerto was premiered on December 6, 1940, by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski with Louis Krasner as the soloist (Krasner had previously given the premiere of the Violin Concerto by Schoenberg’s pupil, Alban Berg). Krasner later made a recording of the concerto, with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic. Teatro La Fenice, 6 September 1948 (XI Festival internazionale di musica contemporanea, Primo concerto sinfonico). , violin; Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma della Radio Italiana, Artur Rodziński, conductor.

Von heute auf morgen

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Performance history#

In 1930, after the Frankfurt premiere, the composer himself conducted a radio broadcast performance in Berlin. After that, the opera was never performed again during Schoenberg’s lifetime. Recent revivals include performances at the Leipzig Opera in 2008 and the Tyrolean State Theatre in 2025.

Synopsis#

:Place: A modern living room/bedroom. The husband and wife have returned from an evening out and recall the earlier flirtations of the night. During the conversation, the wife gradually changes into a lovely negligee. Their small child interrupts, and is put back to bed. The singer, from earlier in the evening, telephones, making the husband jealous. The wife changes into a cocktail dress, then back into the simple house-dress seen at the start of the opera. In the morning, the singer and the friend arrive for an early visit, and are served coffee. They champion all the latest trends in society. When they leave, the husband and wife realize, over breakfast, that their own relationship is based on love, not the mere latest fashion.

Wind Quintet (Schoenberg)

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History#

Schoenberg’s wind quintet was one of his first twelve-tone compositions. It was composed in 1923–24, and individual sketches in the composer’s sketchbook number 5 contain precise data on the progress of the composition. The world premiere took place on Schoenberg’s fiftieth birthday, 13 September 1924. The score’s dedication is “Dem Bubi Arnold” (To little Arnold), the composer’s grandson, his daughter Gertrud and Felix Greissle’s child.

Analysis#

The Quintet is in four movements: The work is laid out in the four-movement pattern of Classical chamber-music forms, using the thematic contrast usual in them. In this way, Schoenberg sought to restore the innate expressive qualities of the forms of tonal music, and so the Quintet, along with the Suite for piano, Op. 25, the Suite for septet, Op. 29, the Third String Quartet, Op. 30, and the Variations for Orchestra, represent the most extreme point of his neoclassicism. The first movement follows standard sonata-allegro layout, and “is perhaps the most notorious example of a twelve-tone movement imitating a tonal form”, with a repeated two-theme exposition, a development section, and a recapitulation in which the second theme is transposed up a perfect fourth, as if it were a tonal work with the second key area originally in the dominant. The mistaken impression is easily formed that this is “some sort of musical taxidermy—rondo and sonata-allegro skins stuffed and mounted with chromatic sawdust” but, despite superficial appearances, the structure is quite a different thing. The opening theme of the first movement, for example, is in two phrases. The first, antecedent phrase uses the first hexachord of the basic series; the second, consequent phrase uses the second hexachord. The opening melody of the scherzo movement starts with the fourth note of the basic series, the first three notes having already appeared in the accompaniment. Unlike some other passages in the Quintet, the accompaniment here uses the same tones as are found in the melody but not at the same time. Later in the same movement, different forms of the row are combined in contrapuntal elaboration (e.g., the inversion and retrograde inversion in b. 88–94)—a procedure also featured later in the Rondo. The third, slow movement is in an extended ternary form, with coda. A substantial transition section in bars 53–81, with a change of meter and faster tempo, connects the central section to the return of the opening material. The finale follows the expected pattern for a Classical seven-part rondo, with motivically distinguished sections in a design that may be designated as A–B––C–A––A–coda. These sections are also distinguished by the row forms used on the surface.

Zwei Gesänge, Op. 1 (Schoenberg)

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History#

In , Schoenberg set poems from Karl Michael von Levetzow’s , "" (“Thanks”) in the first song and "" (“Farewell”) in the other. In July 1898, Levetzow had given Schoenberg a copy of this volume inscribed: “Dedicated kindly to Mr Arnold Schönberg with the best wishes for success”. The two had met that year, perhaps at a Café Glattauer poetry reading. They later worked in together at Ernst von Wolzogen’s Überbrettl, where Levetzow may have helped Schoenberg get hired as a conductor in 1901. Schoenberg asked Levetzow to be his daughter Gertrude’s godfather in 1902.

Zwei Klavierstücke (Schoenberg)

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Composition#

Schoenberg’s Piano Pieces were just some of his smaller compositions that followed Von heute auf morgen and Moses und Aron. He started composing the first, Op. 33a, when the director of Universal Edition contacted him to publish the first piece in Op. 11 in an anthology of piano compositions. Schoenberg then decided to write a new piece on December 25, 1928, and finished it on April 25, 1929. The composition of the second piece, however, took only three days, from October 8 to 10, 1931, while he was staying in Barcelona. The impetus for Op. 33b was a request by Schoenberg’s former pupil Adolph Weiss for a new piano piece that Henry Cowell’s New Music Quarterly could publish as Op. 33b. Thus, Op. 33a and b were composed separately, but it is still unknown if Schoenberg had conceived them to comprise a unified composition. Both pieces were also premiered separately. The first piece was published by Universal Edition in July, 1929, and premiered in Berlin, on January 30, 1931, by Else C. Klaus. The second piece was published by The New Music Society of California Publisher, in April, 1932, and premiered in San Francisco’s New Music Society on January 11, 1934, by Douglas Thompson. Since then, it has also been published by Belmont Music Publishers and by Schott Music.