Page 265 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Listening Cue
Arnold Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire (1912), Number 6, Madonna
Genre: Art song
Figure 15.11
Arnold Schoenberg, then not sure whether he wanted to be
a painter or a musician, painted Red Gaze in 1910. Notice that line six of the poem Madonna— “Gleichen Augen, rot und offen” (“Like eyes, red and open”)— seems to express Schoenberg’s own fears and anxiety. The
aim of Expressionist art was to convey the innermost feelings of the artist, even the subconscious. Perhaps it is not coincidence that both Schoenberg and Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psycho- analysis, lived in Vienna at the same time. <
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what to listen for: The dissonant harmonies and disjunct vocal melody delivered in an almost-hysterical style called
Sprechstimme. The accompanying chamber ensemble includes flute, clarinet, cello, and piano. Try to sing the tonic (home) pitch—impossible. This is atonal music!
reAD . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online. LiSTeN TO . . . this selection streaming online.
WATCH . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online.
Twelve-Tone Music
When Schoenberg created atonal music, as heard in Pierrot lunaire, he also created a serious artistic problem. Having removed the traditional building blocks of music (triads, tonal chord progressions, and tonal centers), what musical structures might replace them? If all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are equally important, as is true in atonal music, why choose any one pitch or another at a given moment? What was needed by was a system. As composer Leonard Bernstein said about Schoenberg and this moment in music history: “A German has to have a system!”
By 1923, Schoenberg had indeed solved this self-imposed problem of “for- mal anarchy” by means of a system. He perfected a process he called “compos- ing with twelve tones.” In twelve-tone composition, the composer sets out each of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale in a fixed, predetermined order. The resulting “tone row” may start on any pitch, and, although the pitches of the
WATCH . . . a biting satire of Schoenberg’s and Berg’s twelve- tone music, online.
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