Schoenberg Problem

[Dr. Dread]

***WARNING***CONTROVERSY AHEAD*** ***WARNING***CONTROVERSY AHEAD***

Schoenberg.
What is it about Schoenberg?  You know, I only have Pellias und Mellisande by him, only listened to once a long time ago, so maybe I have to dig it out of that old digital collection of mine.  My problem is that he is known as the father of 12 tone and atonal music, which to me is as silly as trying to get everyone to speak esperanto.  I just don't dig what he and his second Viennese cronies did with music, manipulating it in a clever but fairly pointless way and being indirectly responsible for the rarely musical avant garde kak that flourished after his death.
Please someone put me out of my misery and explain what is so good about someone who made up his own laws of music.  What big and interesting piece of music should I get by him to switch me on instead of avoiding him as I have done (and Berg, etc.)??

Why must you like EVERY composer? Aren't there ENOUGH of them to go around? Jeez.

[sul G]

Re - 'today I have discovered something that will ensure the supremacy of German music....'

Even this unfortunately infamous statement, so often held against Schoenberg, and seemingly with good reason, can be understood in more than one light - and in fact it can be persuasively interpreted as an anti-German statement! Schoenberg came out with it in private, during a walk with his friend and pupil Josef Rufer, right in the throes of the development of the technique. At this time his feelings were distinctly anti-German. A quick Google search (this is from Malcolm MacDonald, a man who always knows what he's talking about):

[mahler10th]

Why must you like EVERY composer? Aren't there ENOUGH of them to go around? Jeez.

I don't have to like every composer thank God. I can't listen to Messiaen without having unsuspecting passers by nail me to a cross.  Can't stand his stuff, and I HAVE listened to a lot of it.   
It's just this Second Viennese thing has never sat right with me since I heard a Schoenberg piece on Radio 3 in 1988 and thought "What the hell was that all about?  Call that music?"
Well Dave, I'm listening to some Webern right now...and it IS music..eh...kind of...but I'll listen to it again, then again, then again, as has been suggested, because I want to figure out what he's saying.  This stuff isn't music for musics sake, methinks, there's more to it and I want to know what the 'more' is so I can actually enjoy it.

Schoenberg was a severe looking old pumper, wasn't he?

[Dr. Dread]

I don't have to like every composer thank God. I can't listen to Messiaen without having unsuspecting passers by nail me to a cross.  Can't stand his stuff, and I HAVE listened to a lot of it.   
It's just this Second Viennese thing has never sat right with me since I heard a Schoenberg piece on Radio 3 in 1988 and thought "What the hell was that all about?  Call that music?"
Well Dave, I'm listening to some Webern right now...and it IS music..eh...kind of...but I'll listen to it again, then again, then again, as has been suggested, because I want to figure out what he's saying.  This stuff isn't music for musics sake, methinks, there's more to it and I want to know what the 'more' is so I can actually enjoy it.

Schoenberg was a severe looking old pumper, wasn't he?

Good luck to you. Happy listening.

As for me, I've decided to pretend the 20th century never happened.  0:)

[Franco]

I just don't dig what he and his second Viennese cronies did with music, ...
Please someone put me out of my misery and explain what is so good about [his music].

Pass.

If you don't like it, who cares?  I'd guess that it is true for most people that there is something "that is supposed to be good" they they just don't get.  For me it's Richard Wagner.  But I sure don't want people to try to explain to me why I should like it.

Relax.  And listen to the music that you love.

[sul G]

Great pieces, James - just to add for John's information that, FWIW, the middle two are not 12 tone, though they are atonal. The op 11 piano pieces are a perfect introduction to Schoenberg, actually - they come from that exploratory free atonal phase, and each displays a different facet of Schoenberg's art. The first is questing, but rather open and classical in tone, with a Brahmsian focus on motive and harmony. The second is retrospective, a melancholy look back at the past; it teeters on the edge of tonality and atonality hauntingly and is full of strangely familiar shapes, fantastic colourings and chiaroscuro. The last is a blaze of freely-associated ideas, ferociously difficult to play, the sort of how-does-he-do-that compositional feat - like the op 16 pieces and above all, like Erwartung - which eventually exhausted him, I think.

[sul G]

Oh, and BTW - Chamber Symphony op 9. It's not atonal, though it's at the edge of what tonality can do. But - again - it's a blaze (I keep using that word here, but it seems suitable for so much Schoenberg), absolutely white-hot music and one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century. It's a riot of action, full of life, packed with great things, memorable from beginning to end and just - so - tight! It's so strongly held together by the force of Schoenberg's brain, complex webs of counterpoint throughout. And at its centre, one of the great lyrical moments in romantic music. I used to listen to this central portion repeatedly when I was at university.

EDIT - yes, I think to expand on this for a minute, I'd recommend this as a first port of call because it possesses all the key qualities of Schoenberg's 12 music - the speed of thought, the motivic intricacy, the counterpoint - but is still just about in a recognisable tonal language, with memorable melodic material. Holding it in mind and then listening to later 12 tone pieces, the latter may make more 'sense'.

[mahler10th]

FRANCO: If you don't like it, who cares? ... But I sure don't want people to try to explain to me why I should like it.

I don't either.  But I do appreciate hearing what others think themselves so I can come to a greater understanding of the subject myself.  It stops me from being a musical bigot and enriches listening experience.

Who cares?  I do.  That's why I put the post up my friend.

[Guido]

Thanks Luke and James - these have been useful recommendations for me too.

You can listen to any and all of his works for free here: http://www.schoenberg.at/6_archiv/music/works/compositions_e.htm

John, just out of interest, do you like any 'modern' music?

[mahler10th]

Thanks Luke and James - these have been useful recommendations for me too.

You can listen to any and all of his works for free here: http://www.schoenberg.at/6_archiv/music/works/compositions_e.htm

John, just out of interest, do you like any 'modern' music?

Guido, Rautavaara is my favourite living composer.

Meanwhile, if it looks like I'm locked in here, it's because I'm listening to all the YouTube posts!
Variations for Orchestra is getting me.

[Kuhlau]

I find I need to be in the mood for Schoenberg. When I'm receptive, it all makes some kind of strange and beautiful sense. When I'm not - like today (I have a crippling headache) - it's faintly irritating. This, of course, says everything about me and nothing about Schoenberg, whose music would once have had me running screaming into the streets crying, 'MY EARS! MY EARS!' But I've since trained those ears to more accepting, rather than excepting.

Note to self: Must review something by Schoenberg (or Berg) for my blog ...

FK

[Franco]

I don't either.  But I do appreciate hearing what others think themselves so I can come to a greater understanding of the subject myself.  It stops me from being a musical bigot and enriches listening experience.

Who cares?  I do.  That's why I put the post up my friend.

Oh.  Because I detected something else from this language

"My problem is that he is known as the father of 12 tone and atonal music, which to me is as silly as trying to get everyone to speak esperanto.  I just don't dig what he and his second Viennese cronies did with music, manipulating it in a clever but fairly pointless way and being indirectly responsible for the rarely musical avant garde kak that flourished after his death."

which indicated, to me at least, less about a real interest in learning what others thought and more about expressing a negative judgment on atonal music.

[haydnguy]

I personally would start with something like Transfigured Night. Listen to his early works a bit before jumping into the 'harder' stuff. It gave my ears a little time to adjust that way and the transition was pretty smooth.

My opinion, (for what it's worth), is that what Schoenberg came up with was going to happen anyway. Had it not been Schoenberg it would have been someone else. 

[sul G]

Know that stuff Luke (good cursory info for those who don't though!), just trying to pick out some highlights for John to hear. Chamber Symphony #2 from late in his output is tonal too in fact, proving that Arnie never felt that tonality was rendered obsolete by his 12-tone method of composing. Ultimately, he felt great music was about substance not method. And whichever idiom he chose to write, substance can be found, as the various examples posted in this thread illustrate.

He started the 2nd Chamber Symphony shortly after finishing the first, though - that goes some way to explaining why it's still tonal (though of course he was still composing tonal music in the 30s and after). It's interesting that he gave up on the 2nd Chamber Symph for a long time - the finished piece is a beautiful work, of course, but I don't think it has the vitality and urgency of the first, that special tautness that holds you breathless even in the still passages. To my mind it's this unique urgency combined with the total coherence and strength (expressive strength, formal strength....) which makes the first Chamber Symph such a standout piece, one which I think is among the most spectacular pieces of the century.

[mahler10th]

Oh.  Because I detected something else from this language  which indicated, to me at least, less about a real interest in learning what others thought and more about expressing a negative judgment on atonal music.

Yes.   I had to express the judgement because without doing so, response would be poor and I would be none the wiser.  So you're right Franco, it was about expressing a deeply negative held view, but by putting it up for scrutiny I knew there would be some response that would help me come to terms with what I've always seen as a musical abnormality (Second Viennese output).
I'm happy to say its worked, and I've got a lot of stuff do investigate!   

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Re - 'today I have discovered something that will ensure the supremacy of German music....'

Even this unfortunately infamous statement, so often held against Schoenberg, and seemingly with good reason, can be understood in more than one light - and in fact it can be persuasively interpreted as an anti-German statement! Schoenberg came out with it in private, during a walk with his friend and pupil Josef Rufer, right in the throes of the development of the technique. At this time his feelings were distinctly anti-German.

This is interesting, but McDonald admits that he is just speculating about Schoenberg's feelings at the time he made that statement. His argumentation strikes me as fuzzy as well. I'm not a Schoenberg scholar, but my understanding is that before and during World War I, he was a firm believer in the superiority of the German musical tradition, as well as being a monarchist and a sometimes noisy "patriot." His growing identification with his Jewish origins was mostly a reaction to the rise of Nazism after the war (I believe he re-converted to Judaism after Hitler came to power).

[Bulldog]

This is interesting, but McDonald admits that he is just speculating about Schoenberg's feelings at the time he made that statement. His argumentation strikes me as fuzzy as well. I'm not a Schoenberg scholar, but my understanding is that before and during World War I, he was a firm believer in the superiority of the German musical tradition, as well as being a monarchist and a sometimes noisy "patriot." His growing identification with his Jewish origins was mostly a reaction to the rise of Nazism after the war (I believe he re-converted to Judaism after Hitler came to power).

Sounds like a flip-flopper in the John Kerry tradition.

[sul G]

Well, further on Macdonald addresses that point, by arguing that Schoenberg was well aware of his Jewishness and his uncomfortable position in German society by the early 20s - as the first of my posted pages shows. Here's a footnote from further down the next page:

[karlhenning]

Guido, Rautavaara is my favourite living composer.

My work is never done 

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

While we're at it (& since a bit was posted above), can anyone give an opinion of Gould's recordings of Schoenberg?