Download chamber symphony no. 1, op. 9 composed from 1905

CHAMBER SYMPHONY NO. 1, OP. 9
COMPOSED FROM 1905-06
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
BORN IN VIENNA, SEPTEMBER 13, 1874
DIED IN LOS ANGELES, JULY 13, 1951
Although Schoenberg is commonly viewed as one of the most radically disruptive
composers in the history of western music, few before or after him matched his intense
awareness of that history or his technical mastery of tradition. They are not unrelated
issues—he knew the musical past well and felt his innovations would help secure the
future of German music. The First Chamber Symphony exemplifies Schoenberg’s desire
for both continuity and change in its exploration of modernist trends arising out of late
Romanticism.
MUSICAL POLITICS
The path to Schoenberg’s modernist musical adventures was already evolving
independently during the final decades of the 19th century. In the mid-1870s, when he
was born, composers tended to ally themselves with one of two distinct camps: One was
either a Brahmsian, a Classical Romantic committed to “absolute music,” or a
Wagnerian, a progressive associated with opera and program music. Brahms had by this
time lived in Vienna for years and become a revered figure. In 1875 Wagner made a
triumphant visit, enthralling composers such as Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf, while
the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick and others mainly saw degeneracy.
By the end of the century, Schoenberg, being of a younger generation, felt little
pressure to choose between the warring camps. He loved Wagner’s music and went to see
his operas repeatedly. He loved Brahms’s music as well and learned much from it. In a
famous essay called “Brahms the Progressive,” Schoenberg later argued that Brahms was
not quite so conservative after all, especially in the way that he manipulated small groups
of notes—melodies or musical cells—so as to constantly develop into new ideas, what he
called “developing variation.” Schoenberg sought to merge Wagnerian and Brahmsian
traditions in his own compositions, and also to draw upon more recent inspirations, such
as the music of Mahler and of his teacher (and eventual brother-in-law) Alexander
Zemlinsky.
UNCONVENTIONAL WORKS
Given audience expectations at the time, the hostility Schoenberg encountered toward his
music during the first decade of the 20th century may not be unexpected, even if most of
these early works seem rather tame today. The date the 25-year-old composer affixed to
his first instrumental masterpiece, the string sextet Transfigured Night, is nicely
symbolic: December 1, 1899, the end of a century and, in a sense, of a musical era.
Schoenberg’s compositions became increasingly complex over the next few years as their
harmonic language took tonality to its limits. By 1909 he was writing works such as The
Book of the Hanging Gardens, Five Pieces for Orchestra, and Erwartung that were no
longer recognizably tonal. Commonly known as “atonal,” Schoenberg preferred the name
“pan-tonal” and talked of how he had “emancipated” dissonance.
Besides songs, chamber, and keyboard music, Schoenberg wrote few large-scale
pieces during this period of his career. He may have been reluctant to produce
symphonies that would have competed with Mahler’s, but did write the large symphonic
poem Pelleas and Melisande in 1902-03.
Schoenberg seems to have begun sketching his Chamber Symphony No. 1 in late
1905 and completed it in July 1906. He would tell friends concerning it: “Now I have
established my style. I know now how I have to compose.” The celebrated Rosé Quartet
and members of the Vienna Philharmonic gave the premiere in Vienna in February 1907.
Although it did not win the success he expected, Schoenberg stated that he had “enjoyed
so much pleasure during the composing, everything had gone so easily and seemed to be
so convincing, that I was sure the audience would react spontaneously to the melodies
and to the moods and would find this music to be as beautiful as I felt it to be. And
besides, I expected much from the sound of the extraordinary combination of 15 solo
instruments—that is, five strings, eight woodwinds, and two horns.” This chamber
scoring is indeed a distinctive feature of the work, although Schoenberg himself later
wrote a version for full orchestra that he conducted for the first time in Los Angeles in
1935. (We hear the original instrumentation tonight.) A few years later, in 1939, he
completed his Second Chamber Symphony, which he had begun decades earlier, just
after he finished writing the First.
A CLOSER LOOK
The extravagant lyricism, broad melodies, and lush harmonies of Schonberg’s fin-desiècle works may seem to be of a different world from his later atonal and serial
compositions. Yet from a purely technical perspective, many of his aesthetic and
compositional concerns remained remarkably consistent throughout his career. In the
Chamber Symphony No. 1 Schoenberg continued to explore a structural plan that he had
used in the String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7, which casts a multi-movement format into one
uninterrupted sonata form. He acknowledged Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp
minor, Op. 131, as a model, as well as works by Liszt. Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy,
which had in turn been Liszt’s model, may have been another inspiration.
In the unusually lively and ebullient Chamber Symphony No. 1 there are five
continuous movements (rather than the usual four) that can be thought of as exposition,
scherzo, development, slow movement, and recapitulation or finale. Schoenberg viewed
the work as the “climax” of his early tonal period and remarked: “Here is established a
very intimate reciprocation between melody and harmony, in that both connect remote
relations of the tonality into a perfect unity, draw logical consequences from the problems
they attempt to solve, and simultaneously make great progress in the direction of the
emancipation of the dissonance.”
—Christopher H. Gibbs
Program note © 2007. All rights reserved. Program note may not be reprinted without written
permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.