SCHOENBERG, ARNOLD

SCHOENBERG, ARNOLD (1874–1951), Austrian composer.

Arnold Schoenberg was one of the greatest composers, theorists, and teachers of the twentieth century. Even had he not survived World War I—and thus without regard for his major innovation of the twelve-tone method, which he unveiled in 1923—his musical achievements up to 1914 alone would have caused him to be numbered among the most significant composers. But he is also one of the most controversial, and from very early in his career to the early twenty-first century, performances of his works have been met with incomprehension and even riot. The so-called Skandalkonzert of 1913 ended in brawls that involved the police and subsequent legal proceedings. Such opposition was frequently highlighted by Schoenberg as well as by his later champions, such as the philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), who made Schoenberg's isolation and difficulty an article of faith. But there is an increasing awareness that Schoenberg had a much more complex and ambivalent stance toward the public and popularity, evident in the considerable number of successful performances he had, as well as in the continuing attraction of his music to those willing to listen through, and to, its difficulties.

Born in 1874 into a Viennese Jewish family of modest means, Schoenberg's formal education ended at age sixteen when he began working in a bank following his father's death. He started composing when he was eight and taught himself violin and cello. His musical education was limited to informal studies with Alexander von Zemlinsky (1872–1942), who also introduced Schoenberg to the circle around Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). In 1895 Schoenberg left the bank and survived by orchestrating operettas and by composing and conducting for several workers' choruses.

An early String Quartet in D Major (1897), which showed the influence of Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) and Antonin Dvorak (1841–1904), marked his first major public performance. The following year, as with many Viennese Jews who sought a musical career, he converted, though atypically becoming a Lutheran. He did not reconvert to Judaism until 1933. In a number of songs as well as with the programmatic string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured night, composed 1899), he was inspired by the naturalistic poetry of Richard Dehmel (1863–1925), to whom he wrote, "from you we learned the ability to listen to our inner selves." He began work on the massive Wagnerian choral cantata Gurrelieder in 1900, though it was not completed until 1911. Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde became Schoenberg's first wife in 1901 (they had two children by 1906). The same year saw his first move to Berlin, where he taught theory and conducted at Ernst Ludwig von Wolzogen's "Buntes Theater," for which he wrote his Brettl-Lieder cabaret songs. He returned to Vienna in 1903.

Although Schoenberg had hundreds of students, his two most important were Anton von Webern (1883–1945) and Alban Berg (1885–1935), who both started lessons in 1904. The three composers were later known as the Second Viennese School, in reference to the earlier Viennese School of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), and thus emphasizing their claim to represent the musical mainstream. Also in 1904 Schoenberg undertook with Zemlinsky the first of many initiatives to further the performance of modern music with his Society of Creative Musicians. The major compositions of these years were extended single-movement forms modeled on the tone poems of Franz Liszt (1811–1886) and Richard Strauss (1864–1949), including Pelleas und Melisande, op. 5 (1903) based on drama by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949); the First String Quartet, op. 7 (1905); and the Chamber Symphony no. 1 (1906), which he later described as marking the end of his first period. These works are still tonal, but use extremely chromatic harmony, intricate counterpoint, and exemplify Schoenberg's idea of developing variation through which the melody evolves continually with little repetition.

In 1907 and 1908 he composed the Second String Quartet, op. 10; Schoenberg wrote of its two vocal movements, based on poems by Stefan George (1868–1933): "the overwhelming multitude of dissonances cannot be counterbalanced any longer by occasional returns to such tonal triads as represent a key." This was followed by a remarkable series of atonal works, including the song-cycle The Book of the Hanging Gardens, op. 15 (1908–1909), also based on Stefan George; The Three Pieces for Piano, op. 11 (1909); the programmatic Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16 (1909); and the monodrama Erwartung (Expectation, 1909), libretto by Marie Pappenheim, in which he pursued an ideal of composition as the direct representation of the constantly changing and irrational unconscious. Writing to the painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) in 1911, he proclaimed the "elimination of the conscious will in art" to preserve what was "inborn and instinctive." Accordingly, Schoenberg composed very rapidly and with an avoidance of traditional structural devices. The brevity of many of the atonal works reflects his remark in a letter to musician Ferruccio Benvenuto Busoni (1866–1924), "My music must be brief. Concise! In two notes: not built, but 'expressed!!'" Scholars have linked these works to the artistic movement of expressionism, a range of contemporary psychological theories by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and others, and the emotional aftermath of a traumatic affair in 1908 between Schoenberg's wife and the painter Richard Gerstl (1883–1908). Coming to terms with the atonal compositions has been a major project of music theory, and while there have been significant insights from "pitch class set theory," there are still disagreements about how best to understand and hear these works.

Despite his achievements, the feelings of liberation soon gave way to anxiety and doubt as the difficulty of living up to his creative ideal emerged, coinciding with a sharp reduction in his compositional output. In 1910 he started work on the opera Die glückliche Hand (The lucky [or fateful] hand), op. 18, which features elaborate staging with colored lights coordinated to the action; he did not complete it until 1913. Along with another move back to Berlin, 1911 saw the completion of only two small works, the Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19, and Herzgewächse (Foliage of the heart), op. 20. Together with his compositional difficulties, Schoenberg experienced a profound crisis of faith in himself and his music. One manifestation of this was the Harmonielehre (Theory of harmony; 1910–1911), which served both to demonstrate his competence to the critics and to try to make things clear to himself; another was his interest in painting, which in the years 1910 and 1911 served as a major creative outlet.

The cycle of twenty-one short pieces for chamber ensemble and the half-sung, half spoken "Sprechstimme" in Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (1912), pointed to a new direction in his development marked by a return to more conscious control and traditional compositional techniques, evident as well in Die glückliche Hand. In May 1914, while working on a never-completed choral symphony, he sketched a theme using all twelve-notes, an idea he had already experimented with Die glückliche Hand. He later identified this as the "first step" in the path to twelve-tone composition, a development that would occupy much of his energy until his death in 1951.

See alsoMahler, Gustav; Modernism; Music; Vienna.

bibliography

Primary Sources

Schoenberg, Arnold. Theory of Harmony. Translated by Roy E. Carter. Berkeley, Calif., 1978.

——.Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg. Edited by Leonard Stein, translated by Leo Black. Berkeley, Calif., 1984.

Secondary Sources

Arnold Schönberg Center. Archive and library. Available at http://www.schoenberg.at. A huge range of archival materials housed at the in Vienna center are available online.

Auner, Joseph. A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life. New Haven, Conn., 2003.

Frisch, Walter. The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893–1908. Berkeley, Calif., 1993.

Shawn, Allen. Arnold Schoenberg's Journey. New York, 2002.

Simms, Bryan R. The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 1908–1923. Oxford, U.K., 2000.

Joseph Auner