SOME TWENTIETH-CENTURY COMPOSERS ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)

Vienna, cradle of some of the most eventful movements in music history, witnessed the inception of Schoenberg's twelve tone technique. The father of this theory and practice began his career as a romantic at the tail end of the Wagnerian hegemony.* His most frequently played piece, Verklarte Nacht* (1899), carries Tristan* to its ultimate conclusions.

After passing through Atonalism, Impressionism, and Expression­ism (Pierrot lunatre* (1912) is the high point of the last), Schoenberg evolved his twelve tone technique. His innovations were at­tacked at the time as making music unintelligible or "mathematical", but Schoenberg himself said: "In the formula, the method of compo­sition with twelve tones, the accent is not so much on the twelve tones as on the art of composing". In fact he was very much an in­stinctive composer who usually wrote very quickly, if he could not finish a work at once he often abandoned it altogether.

Practically an autodidact except for some formal lessons in counter-point with Alexander von Zemlinsky,* Schoenberg was a great teacher; consequently his enlightening exposition of twelve tone technique is of paramount importance. His essays on Brahms and Mahler, whom he greatly admired, are novel and penetrating, and his Harmonielehre* (1911) is one of the definitive textbooks on mod­ern music theory.

Schoenberg's innovations have influenced a whole epoch and have spread all over the world, so that he can truly be regarded as the father of modern music. His numerous books and articles were highly stimulating, and many of his pupils have carried on his work.

From: Composers on Music; The Dictionary of Composers

THE COMPOSER SPEAKS: ARNOLD SCHOENBERG

Form in the arts, and especially in music, aims primarily at comprehensibility. The relaxation which a satisfied listener experiences when he can follow an idea, its development, and the reasons for such development is closely related, psychologically speaking, to a feeling of beauty. Thus, artistic value demands comprehensibility, not only for intellectual but also for emotional satisfaction. However, the creator's idea has to be presented, whatever the mood he is impelled to evoke.

Composition with twelve tones has no other aim than compre­hensibility. In view of certain events in recent musical history, this might seem astonishing, for works written in this style have failed to gain understanding in spite of the new medium of organization. (...)

The method of composing with twelve tones grew out of neces­sity.

In the last hundred years the concept of harmony has changed tremendously through the development of chromaticism. The idea that one basic tone, the root,* dominated the construction of chords and regulated their succession - the concept of tonality - had to de­velop first into the concept of extended tonality. Very soon it became doubtful whether such a root still remained the center to which every harmony and harmonic succession must be referred.* Furthermore, it became doubtful whether a tonic appearing at the beginning, at the end, or at any other point really had a constructive meaning. Richard Wagner's harmony had promoted a change in the logic and constructive power of harmony. One of its consequences was the so-called impressionistic use of harmonies, especially practiced by Debussy. His harmonies, without constructive meaning, often served the coloristic purpose of expressing moods and pictures. Moods and pictures, though extra-musical, thus became constructive elements, incorporated in the musical functions; they produced a sort of emotional comprehensibility. In this way, tonality was already dethroned in practice, if not in theory. This alone would perhaps not have caused a radical change in compositional technique. However, such a change became necessary when there occurred simultaneously a development which ended in what I call the emancipation of the dissonance. (...)

What distinguishes dissonances from consonances is not a greater or lesser degree of beauty, but a greater or lesser degree of compre­hensibility. In my Harmontelehre I presented the theory that disso-

nant tones appear later among the overtones, for which reason the ear is less intimately acquainted with them. (...)

The term emancipation of the dissonance refers to its compre­hensibility, which is considered equivalent to the consonance's com­prehensibility. A style based on this premise treats dissonances like consonances and renounces a total center. By avoiding the establish­ment of a key, modulation is excluded, since modulation means leaving an established tonality and establishing another tonality.

The first compositions in this new style were written by me around 1908 and, soon afterwards, by my pupils, Anton yon Webern and Alban Berg. From the very beginning such compositions differed from all preceding music, not only harmonically but also melodically, thematically and motivally. But the foremost characteristics of these in statu nascendi* were their extreme expressiveness and their ex­traordinary brevity. (...)

After many unsuccessful attempts during a period of approxi­mately twelve years, I laid the foundations for a new procedure in musical construction which seemed fitted to replace those structural differentiations provided by tonal harmonies.

I called this procedure Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which Are Related Only With One Another.

This method consists primarily of the constant and exclusive use of a set of twelve different tones. This means, of course, that no tone is repeated within the series and that it uses all twelve tones in the chromatic scale, though in a different order (...)

From: The Composition with Twelve Tones

by A. Schoenberg // Composers on Music

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 890