Download Schoenberg

Please take a
handout
Listening Quiz:
A. Piano Work by Arnold Schoenberg?
B. That crazy Saunders playing random notes?
Marcel Duchamp, Replica of a Bicycle Wheel
Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means
something, language of a flow. Was it a daisy?
Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass.
Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the
door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice
waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all.
James Joyce, Ulysses
Green Piece, performance art
by Johann Bjogvinsson
Arnold Schoenberg:
Trio from Suite for Piano (1924)
Arnold Schoenberg
Serialism
Serial Composition
Twelve-tone Composition
Arnold Schoenberg
I. Schoenberg’s Late Romantic (Tonal) Period
A. Until ca. 1908: Late or Post-Romanticism
1
2 3
4 5
6
7
8
I. Schoenberg’s Late Romantic (Tonal) Period
A. Until ca. 1908: Late or Post-Romanticism
B. Important Early Works: Verklärte Nacht
(Transfigured Night) & Guerrelieder
II. Expressionist or Free Atonal Period (1908-20)
A. Schoenberg Rejects:
1. Rules of Simultaneity (=music not based on triads or
traditional chords)
2. Rules for resolution of dissonance)
3. Rules of Progression
Kokoshka, “The Tempest”
“Madonna” from Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire
Arise, O Mother of all sorrows
On the altar of my verse!
Blood from your thin breast
Has spilled the rage of the sword.
You eternally fresh wounds
Like eyes, red and open,
Arise, O Mother of all sorrows
On the altar of my verse!
Instrumental Interlude
In your thin and wasted hands
You hold the body of your Son
To show him to all mankind
Yet the look of men avoids
You, O Mother of all sorrows.
“Madonna” from Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire
Arise, O Mother of all sorrows
On the altar of my verse!
Blood from your thin breast
Has spilled the rage of the sword.
You eternally fresh wounds
Like eyes, red and open,
Arise, O Mother of all sorrows
On the altar of my verse!
Instrumental Interlude
In your thin and wasted hands
You hold the body of your Son
To show him to all mankind
Yet the look of men avoids
You, O Mother of all sorrows.
Pierrot lunaire and
Sprechstimme
I. Schoenberg’s Late Romantic (Tonal) Period
A. Until ca. 1908: Late or Post-Romanticism
B. Important Early Works: Verklärte Nacht
(Transfigured Night) & Guerrelieder
II. Expressionist or Free Atonal Period (1908-20)
A. Schoenberg Rejects:
1. Rules of Simultaneity (=music not based on triads or
traditional chords)
2. Rules for resolution of dissonance)
3. Rules of Progression
B. The Gains:
1. Freedom and Originality
2. Musical Language apt for Expressionist texts
I. Schoenberg’s Late Romantic (Tonal) Period
A. Until ca. 1908: Late or Post-Romanticism
B. Important Early Works: Verklärte Nacht
(Transfigured Night) & Guerrelieder
II. Expressionist or Free Atonal Period (1908-20)
A. Schoenberg Rejects:
1. Rules of Simultaneity
2. Rules of Progression
B. The Gains:
1. Freedom from rules of tonal composition
2. Musical Language apt for Expressionist texts
C. The Tradeoffs:
1. Tonal Expectation, tricks don’t operate
2. No Tonality as organizing principle
Schoenberg:
“There is no form without logic, no logic without unity”
III. Serial Period ca. 1920A. Serialism (a.k.a twelve-tone composition)= Compositional
method developed by Schoenberg with students:
Alban Berg, Anton Webern
B. Second Viennese School = Schoenberg, Berg, Webern
C. Serial Composition Basics
1. Serial composition based on a 12-note series (row, set)
2. Series or row contatains all 12 pitches used only once
0 1 23
4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11
III. Serial Period ca. 1920A. Serialism (a.k.a twelve-tone composition)= Compositional
method developed by Schoenberg with students:
Alban Berg, Anton Webern
B. Second Viennese School = Schoenberg, Berg, Webern
C. Serial Composition Basics
1. Serial composition based on a 12-note series (row, set)
2. Series or row contatains all 12 pitches used only once
3. Series = 12 pitches ordered in particular order
4. Four forms of the row: original {P}, retrograde {R},
inversion {I}, retrograde inversion {RI}
5. Transposition does not change basic row (index numbers)
6. Set complex=48 possible forms of the row
7. Serial Composition = Decisions re: disposition of row
8 Result = Perpetual Variation on Forms of Row
Arnold Schoenberg:
Trio from Suite for Piano (1924)
Line 10 {I-6}
Line 2=original row
{P}
Line 9
{P-6}
Line 4
{I}
Line
3{R-0}
IV. The Appeal of Serial Composition:
(Ordering vs. Content)
•Tonal Music based on Content
sound possibilities similar for all pieces (sound familiar?)
•Serial Music based on Ordering
order fixes available intervals ∴ each row produces
a different sound world
IV. The Appeal of Serialism (cont.)
(Ordering vs. Content)
A. New Unique Sound Universe for Each Piece
B. Logic, System
C. Richness of Abstract Note Relationships
Serial work = continuous variation of the row
Arnold Schoenberg
Trio from
Suite for Piano, Op. 21
Listening Quiz:
A. Piano Work by Arnold Schoenberg?
B. That crazy Saunders playing random notes?
Schoenberg:Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 (no. 6)
Concert Programs
and Paper due
in Class Friday