Learn about Arnold Schoenberg

SCHOENBERG IN VIENNA

A portrait of Arnold Schoenberg C. 1905 by Richard Gerstl.

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Born September 13, 1874, in Vienna, Austria, the capital of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire, Arnold Schoenberg remains one of the most influential 20th-century composers. Schoenberg grew up in a predominately Jewish district of Vienna with his father, a shoe shopkeeper, and mother, a piano teacher. His father passed away when he was 16, so Arnold worked as a bank clerk through his teens to help with household expenses for his mother and brother. Schoenberg left the Jewish faith he had grown up in and converted to Protestantism in his early 20s, partly because he identified more deeply with Western culture and music, and partly due to the rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.

A portrait of Mathilde, Arnold Schoenberg’s first wife. Wikimedia Commons. Date unknown by Richard Gerstl.

A primarily self-taught musician, he began composing for strings at the age of 9. In his 20s, Schoenberg was already earning money orchestrating operettas, and it was only then he began formal music lessons with the established Austrian composer, Alexander Zemlinsky. Soon, Alexander became Schoenberg’s brother-in-law as he married his teacher’s sister, Mathilde in 1901. They had two children together before Schoenberg discovered an affair between his wife and painter, Richard Gerstl. They remained married even while Mathilde left to live with Gerstl for several months. This infidelity marked a change in Schoenberg’s compositions even after Mathilde returned and they remained married until her death in 1923. Schoenberg remarried less than a year after Mathilde’s death to Gertrud Kolisch, and together they had three children. Amidst this, Schoenberg and his family moved to Berlin in 1911, where they lived until 1915, when he was called into the Austrian Army during World War I. War left little time to finish compositions, yet it also influenced Schoenberg considerably—giving him time and inspiration to develop his new twelve-tone method—a completely different way of thinking of music theory and composition practice.

Postcard from Schoenberg’s oldest son Georg to Arnold. 1940.

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In 1933, Arnold Schoenberg was at the height of his career, composing and teaching at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, when Adolf Hitler came to power. Though Schoenberg had converted to Christianity decades earlier, in Nazi ideology he was a Jew by birth, and moreover a composer of “degenerate” music. Hitler began to restrict Jewish public and private life in the country including banning Jews from all university positions. While vacationing in France, it became clear that returning to Germany would be dangerous. The Schoenbergs first tried to emigrate to Great Britain, but were denied access. Schoenberg converted back to Judaism in a Paris synagogue, pledging loyalty to the Jewish National cause, and moved to Boston with his family. The family lived in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, taught at the now-closed Malkin Conservatory, and often conducted for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was soon disillusioned by

the conservatory’s poor resources. In addition, Schoenberg—an asthmatic—never quite took to Boston’s severe weather, and Boston never quite took to his music. So, after a year, the family moved to Los Angeles, California, where he took up positions at UCLA and USC. Schoenberg remained in Los Angeles and continued to master his twelve-tone method until his death on July 13th, 1951.

A comic about triskaidekaphobia by Greg Williams 2007.

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Did you know that Schoenberg had triskaidekaphobia, which meant he feared the number 13? Though he was born on September 13th, Schoenberg avoided the number, for example, labeling the measures of his music between 12 and 14 as 12a instead of 13. Perhaps that fear was apt, as Schoenberg died on the Friday July 13, shortly before midnight, at age 76 (7 + 6 = 13)! In fact, he was not the only composer with superstitions; Gustav Mahler feared the number 9. Many composers who preceded him died after completing their 9 th symphony, and unfortunately he did die with his 10 th symphony left unfinished. In the Middle Ages, using triads (three notes played together in harmony that are generally 2 steps apart) were avoided by composers as they were thought to conjure up evil spirits.

DISCUSS: How did the places Schoenberg lived and the events that occurred throughout his lifetime contribute to his identity and how he expressed himself musically? What events, people, or places in your life have contributed to your identity?

Home of actor Clark Gable in Brentwood, the part of Hollywood where Schoenberg’s house was too. c. 1930-1945.

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TWELVE TONES

The Expressionist movement emerged in Germany, most potently in the visual art world, at the turn of the 20th century. Artists turned inward to subjectivity and the subconscious, creating distorted images with colors and brush strokes that represented emotions rather than realistic depictions of the world around them. The movement stemmed from widespread anxieties, as the turn of the century brought urbanization and World War I, disillusioning many. Art became deeply psychological, supported by the emergence of psychologist Sigmund Freud’s investigation into the mind. Expressionism spanned through all artistic media including literature, dance, theater, film (especially horror movies), and music, each expressing discomfort with the modern world. Like visual art, Expressionist music did not contain the traditional elements of sound and similarly expressed the composer’s subconscious feelings. Expressionist music was often marked by intense dissonance, extreme dynamics, and distorted melodies. It was a shift from the melodic, theme-based beauty hailing the natural world, and expansive orchestras of the Romantic Era. It’s also worth noting that Romantic Era music was written during a time of intense nationalism, while Expressionist music emerged and evolved through two World Wars that fractured nations entirely.

Schoenberg’s first work to be publicly performed, String Quartet in D Major, premiered in 1897, and like his other early works such as Transfigured Night, it was rooted in the traditions of the Late Romantic Era of music, influenced by composers such as Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss, and was well-liked by Viennese audiences. The composer later noted in his writings, “All my compositions up to about my seventeenth year were nothing more than imitations of such music as I could become acquainted with.” His next major work, String Quartet No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 7, in 1904, had a dense musical texture lasting 50 minutes straight. Audiences members had difficulty understanding the piece and critics condemned it.

Schoenberg noted, “Only when I had met three young men of about my own age and had obtained their friendship, my musical and literary education started.” What is now known as the Second Viennese School consisted of Schoenberg and his composition pupils in Vienna. This marked Schoenberg’s shift into transcending tonality, breaking away from the structures and ideas of the Romantic Era that he felt could no longer be expanded upon. It was also through this intellectual stimulation with the members of the school, including Alban Berg and Anton Webern, that Schoenberg published Theory of Harmony in 1911, which remains one of the most influential books on music theory.

Schoenberg began to write music that was atonal, lacking any melodic or harmonic framework. In fact, Schoenberg did not like the term atonality; he preferred pantonality, meaning all tones or keys, instead of "without tone" or "lacking a key." However, critics and music historians still use the term atonal when describing works including some of Schoenberg’s. One of his most famous atonal pieces, Pierrot Luniare, used sprechstimme, a German word for speak-singing, where the goal is neither natural speech nor melodic singing, but an amalgamation of the two, in line with Expressionist sensibilities. This piece is one of Schoenberg’s most celebrated works today, but its premiere was met with tepid audience reviews.

Searching for a clearer way to compose longer atonal pieces, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone method, or dodecaphony, that he is known for today and that other composers would build upon. Twelve-tone music was composed using twelve notes which are related only with one another, each given equal importance, rather than having a tonic or “home” from which to draw relational melodic context. This "home" is also known as a key signature. In much of Western music, this sense of rootedness in a tonic creates a feeling of resolution upon the return to that dominant note or chord, creating a hierarchy among the notes. Twelve-tone music is referred to as atonal because it lacks this kind of recognizable resolution and treats each note as equal.

A composition using Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method can be formed using a series of any of the twelve different chronological tones called a row. These tones can be played in their original order, inverted, backwards, or played backward and inverted. The twelve-tone method is rooted in assigning numbers to pitches and varying them, making for a mathematically based composition system that be visually explained creating a table (or matrix) providing all possible composition options. Sometimes this method is called serialism, as in music created from a series. Between 1921 and 1923,, Schoenberg composed his first twelvetone piece, Piano Suite, Op. 25. Schoenberg continued to compose in his twelve-tone method to varying degrees for the remainder of his life.

Twelve-tone composition framework from Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles, 1966.

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Schoenberg the Painter? In addition to composing, Arnold Schoenberg was also a painter. Like his compositions, he painted in a Expressionist style. Most often, he created distorted self-portraits. Schoenberg was inspired by his good friend, Wassily Kandinsky, a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, who also garnered inspiration from the composer’s music, as they both felt art was a place to express subjective perception and inner feelings.

Schoenberg self-portrait, 1910.

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Schoenberg strongly defended his music throughout his lifetime, as he believed he was called to take German music to the next level following legends including Mozart and Bach. Some of Schoenberg’s contemporaries, including Mahler and Strauss, considered his later work incomprehensible; and Stravinsky, who experimented with the technique himself, cited Schoenberg as a “musical chemist” and not an artist. In general, the Viennese and the American public did not take to Schoenberg’s atonal compositions either. Even as early as 1913, audiences rioted at a concert put on by The Second Viennese School and it had to be ended prematurely. The event resulted in a lawsuit.

Schoenberg took this in stride, believing that since his method was new, it needed time to become more familiar to audiences. Yet even decades after his death, many audiences still have difficulty with Schoenberg’s twelve-tone compositions and the sound-world never quite took hold as he’d imagined. Schoenberg’s students, however, in both Europe and America, were ardent followers and worked to expand upon his technique in the following decades. Some of these celebrated 20 th century composers who were greatly influenced by the work of Schoenberg included Anton Webern, John Cage, and later, Phillip Glass.

Today, Arnold Schoenberg is regarded as perhaps one of the greatest composers of the 20 th century, though he never became popular, even posthumously. Many artists are deeply influenced by the events of their own life, and Schoenberg saw two world wars, genocide, and was a refugee and immigrant. Perhaps his urge to create music without a “home” was a way of exploring and responding to the world around him, one that was ever-crumbling and being reconstructed. His twelve-tone method created order out of chaos: a new musical world that was completely different from the old.

DISCUSS: Why do you think Schoenberg’s music never popularly received?

Still confused? Watch this!

The Viennese School As Austria was the often epicenter of developments in Western music, the term The Viennese School is used by scholars to describe a group of musicians at the forefront of the field. The First School contained Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, who led the transition from the Baroque to Classical era. The Second Viennese School, with Schoenberg being the most memorable composer to date, had a similar commonality of purpose, moving from Romantic tradition into new forms of composition.

DARKNESS IN EUROPE

World War I, often referred to as the Great War, brought never-before-seen destruction and death, dissolved empires, and catapulted Europe into economic disaster. The Treaty of Versailles brought the fighting to an end in 1918, but had severe consequences for Germany including complete demilitarization, return of any land claimed during the war, and more consequently, massive economic responsibility on the already in-debt Germany to pay for the war’s cost. Schoenberg was living in Berlin at this time and was forced to pause his career and serve in the Austrian army; thus he was front and center to the destruction and devastation both on the Front and back home after the war. The instability and economic downturn led to a desperate population in Germany and thus the rise of Adolf Hitler, whose political views were anti-Semitic and racially charged at their core, and put the responsibility for Germany’s fall on the Jewish population in Europe.

The Nazi Party came to power in 1933, and ignited World War II in 1939 by invading Poland. From the party’s rise through the Holocaust—a genocide in which 6 million Jews were murdered in the name of the German state—Jews were targeted as threats to the Aryan nation Hitler desired. Laws were passed and acts of violence became increasingly more sinister, not just in Germany, but also in countries that Germany began to occupy. All Jewish peoples, as well as other minorities including people with disabilities, gypsies or the Roma peoples, black and other darkskinned people, and people with sexual or gender identities that were not heteronormative were required to identify themselves as such by wearing a yellow Star of David and were eventually forcefully placed into ghettos. Jews in positions of power were removed from the frameworks of German society. Jewish music was no exception. Schoenberg, though a converted Christian, was still ethnically Jewish in the eyes of the Nazi Party. Hitler regarded Schoenberg’s music as “degenerate.” Though he did not wish to leave, Schoenberg’s German home was no longer safe and he and his family were forced to join the ranks of other Jewish artists that fled Nazi persecution, such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Béla Bartók. Schoenberg’s conversion back to Judaism before his move to America was a formative moment in his life. Though he believed his twelve-tone method would revolutionize German music, his Jewish identity would later inspire compositions with overtly Jewish themes such as Kol Nidre, Moses und Aron, and A Survivor from Warsaw, as well as his active support of the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.

Chart explaining what qualifies a person a “Jew,” would eventually lead to Schoenberg being removed from his teaching post. 1935.

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DISCUSS: How did Schoenberg’s experience of religious persecution and immigration influence his music? Think of other artists who have had similar experiences and compare them to Schoenberg’s.