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Composer Profiles
Arnold Schoenberg
Born: Vienna, Austria - 1874
Died: Los Angeles, California - 1951
Biography
Of all the composers living in the transition to the
twentieth century, none had the greatest impact in the
changing course of music than Arnold Schoenberg. Largely
self-trained, Schoenberg would redefine the nature of
music through his experiments into atonality and
serialism, creating a new school of musical thought that
would influence countless musicians. Born on September 13th, 1874, Schoenberg’s primary
influences were the paragons of German music: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner.
Like Wagner, he believed that music served as a message from the divine, elevating mankind to a
new level of spiritual awareness. While his early music reflects the influence of his heroes,
Schoenberg quickly turned away from any semblance of traditional structure that had been
written up to that point. His music became more unstable, intense, and dissonant. Eventually all
tonality was eliminated with The Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15 (1909). In 1912, he composed
one of his most significant works, Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21. This composition, involving a soprano
soloist and small chamber ensemble, redefined how emotion could be expressed by music,
particularly in the soprano’s Sprechstimme (half-singing, half-speech) technique. During his
lifetime, Schoenberg’s works were met with hostility, and though Schoenberg lamented his lack of
commercial success, he argued that audiences were not “mature” enough to appreciate his music.
During World War I, Schoenberg served between 1915 and 1917, not publishing another
piece until 1923. During this period of self-imposed silence, Schoenberg perfected his new
technique that he said would “insure the superiority of German music for the next hundred
years”. This innovation would be known as serialism, or the twelve-tone method, in which each
chromatic tone would be used in a sequence, called a “row”. The sequence could be altered in
various ways, including inverting the pitches, playing them backwards (retrograde), and
combining the last two methods to produce an inverted retrograde version. Each row could be
transposed, as long as the sequence remained intact for the duration. They could be used in
various ranges, instrumental combinations, and rhythms to produce an original row every
repetition. Soon afterwards, Schoenberg composed nothing but twelve-tone works. This was
extremely influential on his students, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who would
become master composers in their own right. Together, the three formed what is now called the
Second Viennese School, following the so-called First Viennese School consisting of Mozart,
Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert. In 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power, Schoenberg
quickly fled to America and eventually settled in Los Angeles, where he began teaching at the
University of California until his death in 1951 on his seventy-sixth birthday.
Works
Schoenberg’s earliest known works illustrate a gravitation toward complicated thematic
progressions, flowing in unbroken phrases directly opposite to the ideals of the late-Romantic
movement. Though retaining influences of Wagner, particularly in Transfigured Night, Op. 4,
Schoenberg quickly reached the outskirts of chromatic harmony. In the period between 1907 to
1909, Schoenberg departed from tonality altogether, producing works such as The Book of the
Hanging Gardens, Op. 15 and the Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16. In these works, there is no
resolution to any tonic note, nor is there any sense of tonal center entirely. Schoenberg called this
the “emancipation of dissonance”, where tones are “set free”, not relying on any kind of triadic
structure. This kind of music was labeled by critics as “atonal”, which is still in use to the present
day. Schoenberg’s melodies become more or less smaller, more compact, versions of themselves,
sometimes as few as three or four notes. These “cells” as they are called, are altered to produce
new pitch combinations that are related, yet can create individual phrases. This period of
Schoenberg’s work leading up to World War I is referred to as his Expressionist period.
Expressionism, the complete opposite of Romanticism, is the quality of dealing with the inner
nature of the human psyche. It is straightforward, intense, and distorted, resulting in a raw, bare
structure that reflects the complicated nature of the subconscious. Schoenberg’s most famous
work, Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, illustrates a disturbing insight into the nature of the mind in its
twenty-one songs. In 1911, Schoenberg published his Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony), which
has become one of the twentieth-century’s central texts on musical composition.
During World War I, Schoenberg wrote little, believing his previous work had not
achieved the grand design that he felt he was meant to create. The resulting twelve-tone method
that he pioneered divided composers into those who followed Schoenberg, such as Webern and
Berg, and another camp that favored the preservation of tonality, like Stravinsky and Prokofiev.
After this period of experimentation came a mass output of creativity, all relying on the twelvetone row. A three act opera, Moses und Aron, was started between 1930 and 1932, but remained
unfinished at the composer’s death. In 1933, Schoenberg’s music was denounced by the Nazi
Party, in part because of Schoenberg’s Jewish heritage. The composer was vacationing in France at
the time, and did not return to Germany but immigrated to America, where he changed his family
name from Schönberg to Schoenberg upon becoming an American citizen in 1941. During his final
years in America he developed a renewed interest in tonality, evident in the Theme and Variations
for Band, Op. 43. Though this may seem a contradiction to Schoenberg’s compositional ideology,
Schoenberg referred to himself as a “conservative revolutionary”, extending the current tradition
of music but not intending to replace it. In his music the world saw a completely new form of
musical composition, and Schoenberg’s seminal importance in the development of twentiethcentury music cannot be overstated.
Suggested Listening
Transfigured Night, Op. 4 (1899); The Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15 (1909); Five Orchestral
Pieces, Op. 16 (1909); Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (1912); Four Orchestral Songs, Op. 22 (1916); Violin
Concerto, Op. 26 (1936); Theme and Variations for Band, Op. 43 (1943); A Survivor from Warsaw,
Op. 46 (1947); Moses und Aron (unfinished, 1932)