Page 263 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
The second face of extreme musical Modernism was that of Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951). Ironically, his brand of radicalism emerged in Vienna, the city of Mozart and Brahms, long known for its cultural conservatism. In the early twen- tieth century, a trio of native Viennese musicians—Schoenberg along with his pupils Alban Berg (1885–1935) and Anton Webern (1883–1945)—stretched mu- sical Romanticism to and beyond the breaking point. The close association of these three innovative composers has come to be called the Second Viennese School (the first, of course, consisted of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven—see Chapter 7, “Vienna: Home to Classical Composers”).
Arnold Schoenberg, the leader of this group, almost single-handedly thrust musical Modernism upon a reluctant Viennese public. Schoenberg was from a Jewish family of modest means and was largely self-taught as a musician. He came to know the music of Brahms, Wagner, and Mahler mostly by playing their scores and attending concerts. Like many college students of today, Schoenberg reached the age of twenty-one still lacking a clear professional direction. He had a “day job” as a bank teller, but at night he satisfied his curiosity through the study of literature, philosophy, painting, and musical composition. Eventually, his musical scores began to be heard in Vienna, though they were usually not well received.
Schoenberg’s earliest compositions are written in the late Romantic style, with rich harmonies, chromatic melodies, and programmatic content. But by 1908, his music had begun to evolve in unexpected directions. Strongly influ- enced by Wagner’s chromatic harmonies, Schoenberg started to compose works with no tonal center. If Wagner could write winding chromatic passages that temporarily obscured the tonality, why not go all the way and create fully chro- matic pieces in which there is no tonic pitch? This Schoenberg did, and in so doing created what is called atonal music—music without tonality, without a key center.
Schoenberg’s contemporaries found his atonal music difficult—this was the period in which all of Vienna was dancing to the pleasing waltzes of Johann Strauss! Not only did Schoenberg’s music have no tonal center, but his melodies were highly disjunct, his harmonies exceedingly dissonant, and his rhythms un- danceable. Some performers refused to play his music, and when others did, audience reaction was occasionally violent. At one concert on March 31, 1913, the police had to be called in to restore order. Fortunately for Schoenberg, he possessed a characteristic typical of innovative geniuses throughout history: self-confidence. As he said, “One must be convinced of the infallibility of one’s own fantasy; one must believe in one’s own creative spirit.”
Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot, 1912)
Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot) is an exemplary work of Expressionism, an early-twentieth-century artistic style that seeks to convey the artist’s inner most feelings, even the subconscious (see “Modernist Painting
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