Variations for Orchestra, Opus 31

By Arnold Schoenberg

BORN : September 13, 1874, in Vienna

DIED : July 13, 1951, in Los Angeles

Ω COMPOSED : 1927–28

Ω WORLD PREMIERE : December 2, 1928, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler

Ω CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE : March 18, 1971, with Pierre Boulez conducting

Ω ORCHESTRATION : 4 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (4th doubling english horn), 4 clarinets (4th doubling bass clarinet), E-flat clarinet, 4 bassoons (4th doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, tam-tam, triangle, tambourine, glockenspiel, xylophone, flexatone), harp, celeste, mandolin, and strings

Ω DURATION : about 20 minutes

THE PERIOD BEFORE World War I saw the creation of giant orchestral pieces, such as those by Strauss and Mahler, when many composers enjoyed and took advantage of the vast sonic possibilities that the expanded orchestra made possible. Arnold Schoenberg had himself contributed the huge Gurrelieder, first performed in 1913 with nearly 150 instrumentalists and 200 vocalists, to this splendidly robust body of music.

Since then, Schoenberg had focused his attention more on piano music and chamber music, wrestling with problems of modern style and searching for a way out of the traditional paths of tonality.

His efforts proved to be divisive with the Viennese public, but resistance to the alarming modernity of his new pieces strengthened his determination to press forward. In 1925, Schoenberg was invited to Berlin to teach composition at the Berlin Academy. He moved there at a time of seething artistic experimentation in the chaos of the post-World War I period, so he found many students to follow in his footsteps. He was also encouraged to reach out further in his creative work.

In addition to writing music, Arnold Schoenberg was a respected painter. His Blue Self-Portrait (1910) shows the hallmarks of German Expressionism.

The Variations for Orchestra, Opus 31, was the first full-scale work from this period, having been started in 1927 and finished during a holiday on the French Riviera in September 1928. While the style of the music was radically new, his choice of a huge orchestra was a throwback to the prewar period of Strauss and Mahler. Contemporaries such as Stravinsky, Hindemith, and others had already moved on to more parsimonious groupings of instruments in the spirit of Neoclassicism.

But Schoenberg needed this immense range of colors, just as he needed the full range of pitches from the lowest doublebass to the highest piccolo, the full range of expression from whispers to roars, and an infinite variety of rhythm. This was because he had turned his back on all the assumptions and traditions of tonality. There were no more major or minor scales, no more functional intervals, no more tunes governed by singability, no more dominant sevenths or triads in his music. The notes themselves were now subject to the rule of the 12-note row, but if that had been the sole element of interest, the composer would have been left with little individual choice. Schoenberg always insisted that it was what the composer did with the notes that mattered, not the notes themselves. He also wanted the listener to take in the rich emotional and dramatic sense of the music without needing to know the intricate manipulations of the composer’s workbench.

Variation form was a good choice, since the music can be heard in short sections, distinct in character and color. In addition, Schoenberg brings in the four-note motif on the letters B-A-C-H, first heard on the trombone in the Introduction, and gradually assuming greater importance throughout successive sections.

The set of variations includes an introduction, a theme, nine variations, and a longer finale, which unfold in the following manner:

INTRODUCTION: an atmospheric start, as if feeling its way, with hints of the theme to come. It rises to a climax and falls back.

THEME: heard first on the cellos, consisting of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale and displaying the unusual intervals that characterize this music.

VARIATION I: jumpy and staccato.

VARIATION II: gloomy in character, with a violin solo and chamber-like textures. The trombone repeats the B-A-C-H theme.

VARIATION III: loud and aggressive. Alongside the xylophone is a flexatone, an instrument popular in the 1920s in which wooden knobs strike a metal plate and, when shaken, produces a cartoonish tremolo.

VARIATION IV: a delicate waltz, featuring the mandolin and celeste.

VARIATION V: the intervals are now gapingly wide and the sonorities ugly and grim. The violins reach up to stratospheric heights.

VARIATION VI: chamber music again, featuring a group of solo cellos.

VARIATION VII: soft and wispy, ethereal, like falling leaves.

VARIATION VIII: hurried and brief.

VARIATION IX: thin textures and exposed instruments.

FINALE: It starts with shimmering violins and repeatedly changes texture and tempo, as if to embrace all the moods displayed by the variations. A huge dissonant chord is followed by a brief adagio and then a brisk rush to the final thump.

Anyone curious to know the intricacies of this piece may like to identify the 12-note row and its three transformations: inverted, backwards, and inverted backwards. Whatever the mood or texture may be, every note can be accounted for somewhere in those four series, and since a note, say C, may be sounded at any octave, the rows never sound the same. Schoenberg would not expect nor want his listeners to be concerned with all this, but nonetheless it can do no harm to show the row itself: