Schoenberg's Sheen

[vers la flamme]

Maybe someone more educated than I am can elucidate me. What's the difference between what Schoenberg is doing here (ie. occasional deviations from the strict order of the tone row) and a composer like Wagner or Chopin or Mozart venturing outside of the diatonic scale (ie. chromaticism)?

[Mandryka]

Maybe someone more educated than I am can elucidate me. What's the difference between what Schoenberg is doing here (ie. occasional deviations from the strict order of the tone row) and a composer like Wagner or Chopin or Mozart venturing outside of the diatonic scale (ie. chromaticism)?

I'm not sure there is. I suspect most composers who use systematic methods do it. Stockhausen did it. Boulez did it. Xenakis did it. And common practice tonality is a system like various forms of serialism, so yes you may be right.

John Cage is a counterexample, though obviously the striking difference is that so many of his scores used time brackets and other notations which gave the performers huge amounts of discretion. James Tenney may have been the strictest of them all.

[staxomega]

That essay was later included in his Music, Sense and Nonsense. Here's a copy of the relevant section: https://we.tl/t-cwC0x8kv4U

Huge thank you petrarch, I am looking forward to reading this.

About the Violin Concerto, I admire Schönberg's ambitious exploration of the timbres, whose rich variety and expressive search are certainly impressive; it shows great brilliance and mastery, and I love how the deep, hauntingly beautiful atmospheres grab the ear: the solo violin is able to be very intense and powerful in the impact of its thrilling phrasing, but also incredibly strident and raw; it passes from low, tense registers to very high ones, using glissandi, tremoli and vertiginous pizzicati, till the point of expressing an abstract sound, almost without timbral colour, in front of which there are the mutable sonorities of the orchestra, at times expanded in a vibrant, striking way, at times rarefied, but extremely changing.

Am I wrong, or like the Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto is not always strictly rigorous of the dodecaphonic method?

Here is Hilary Hahn on the Violin Concerto, with Schoenberg's grandson who is a splitting image of him! https://youtu.be/gjW4aDQa0Vg

I love this work and all its variety of moods and sounds. I listen to it more than several of the most famous violin concerti where the violin writing can not uncommonly come off as too syrupy.

[Jo498]

He looks much more friendly (maybe because of the rounder face compared with Arnold's stern and gaunt features) but remarkably similar to Arnold, yes. And Hahn looks incredibly young in that video, she was around 29 and looks like a teenager.

I admittedly never really listened to the violin concerto; the only recording I have is Zeitlin/Kubelik but I doubt that I heard it more than twice.

[Lisztianwagner]

Here is Hilary Hahn on the Violin Concerto, with Schoenberg's grandson who is a splitting image of him! https://youtu.be/gjW4aDQa0Vg

I love this work and all its variety of moods and sounds. I listen to it more than several of the most famous violin concerti where the violin writing can not uncommonly come off as too syrupy.

Very nice video! That's true, the resemblance is striking!

I can share the feeling about Schönberg's Violin Concerto, I've listened to it more than other very famous violin concerti too (but I tend to prefer piano to violin) and I love it; that work is full of contrasts and tensions, it may sound harsh, but it's absolutely mesmerizing.

[staxomega]

Very nice video! That's true, the resemblance is striking!

I can share the feeling about Schönberg's Violin Concerto, I've listened to it more than other very famous violin concerti too (but I tend to prefer piano to violin) and I love it; that work is full of contrasts and tensions, it may sound harsh, but it's absolutely mesmerizing.

I'm going to listen to Piemontesi's recording of the Piano Concerto, thanks for reminding me about that. Then hear Brendel/Gielen for the first time, the recording I have of Brendel is with Kubelik.

[Lisztianwagner]

I'm going to listen to Piemontesi's recording of the Piano Concerto, thanks for reminding me about that. Then hear Brendel/Gielen for the first time, the recording I have of Brendel is with Kubelik.

Great choice, Piemontesi's recording is superb and so is the Brendel/Kubelik; though my favourite version of the Piano Concerto remains the Pollini/Abbado. Pollini is a marvelous interpreter also for Schönberg's solo piano music.

[staxomega]

Great choice, Piemontesi's recording is superb and so is the Brendel/Kubelik; though my favourite version of the Piano Concerto remains the Pollini/Abbado. Pollini is a marvelous interpreter also for Schönberg's solo piano music.

Piemontesi's is a superb performance, but I will probably skip buying it as I'm not too fond of Ravel's Piano Concerto. Pollini and Uchida are my favorite performances for Schoenberg's Piano Concerto. Through box sets I have managed to acquire both Peter Serkin, Gould, and Ax as well.

[Lisztianwagner]

Lately I've been blown away very much by Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht: it is an absolutely beautiful and striking composition, not yet the atonal or dodecaphonic Schönberg with free dissonances and sharp, strident chords (though in this tone poem the tonality is certainly bent and pushed to limits, with bold harmonic tensions), but anyway very immersive, thrilling and suggestive, of a great inventiveness and trimbric variety; all the sections are brilliantly juxtaposed and developed, and despite the dense, logical countrapuntal structure, with the thematic lines which flow on without solution in continuous transformations of the melodic material, sometimes growing in powerful climaxes, sometimes depicting floating, ethereal textures. The orchestration doesn't have all the colours of a full instrumentation, nonetheless it gives the impression of being able to successfully concentrate the poetry in a smaller shape; it also uses all the expressive possibilities of the strings and evokes splendid atmospheres (especially the string orchestra version), so full of passion and intensity, using such a rich chromaticism, that completely capture and impress; as a matter of fact, in many passages, it reminds me the love duet of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, indeed besides from the subject (the meeting of two lovers in a nocturnal landscape), Schönberg's work is very similar for the overwhelming chromatic whirls, the sense of suspension and the power of expression; while the pace of the ending reminds me a little the fire spell of Die Walküre.
The version for string orchestra is my favourite, I think it has a more strongly evocative effect, but the sextet version is very marvelous too.

[Karl Henning]

Lately I've been blown away very much by Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht: it is an absolutely beautiful and striking composition, not yet the atonal or dodecaphonic Schönberg with free dissonances and sharp, strident chords (though in this tone poem the tonality is certainly bent and pushed to limits, with bold harmonic tensions), but anyway very immersive, thrilling and suggestive, of a great inventiveness and trimbric variety; all the sections are brilliantly juxtaposed and developed, and despite the dense, logical countrapuntal structure, with the thematic lines which flow on without solution in continuous transformations of the melodic material, sometimes growing in powerful climaxes, sometimes depicting floating, ethereal textures. The orchestration doesn't have all the colours of a full instrumentation, nonetheless it gives the impression of being able to successfully concentrate the poetry in a smaller shape; it also uses all the expressive possibilities of the strings and evokes splendid atmospheres (especially the string orchestra version), so full of passion and intensity, using such a rich chromaticism, that completely capture and impress; as a matter of fact, in many passages, it reminds me the love duet of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, indeed besides from the subject (the meeting of two lovers in a nocturnal landscape), Schönberg's work is very similar for the overwhelming chromatic whirls, the sense of suspension and the power of expression; while the pace of the ending reminds me a little the fire spell of Die Walküre.
The version for string orchestra is my favourite, I think it has a more strongly evocative effect, but the sextet version is very marvelous too

Good post, thanks!

[Lisztianwagner]

Good post, thanks!

Thanks, Karl.
Out of curiosity, a question for all Schönberg's admirers arises to me: if there's one, which Schönberg's creative musical period do you prefer, late-Romantic, expressionist or dodecaphonic? Schönberg is one of my favourite composers and I appreciate all his musical evolution, since every phase is connected to the others and helps to understand better his composing development; but I've often read and heard contrasting comments about Schönberg's works.

[Karl Henning]

Thanks, Karl.
Out of curiosity, a question for all Schönberg's admirers arises to me: if there's one, which Schönberg's creative musical period do you prefer, late-Romantic, expressionist or dodecaphonic? Schönberg is one of my favourite composers and I appreciate all his musical evolution, since every phase is connected to the others and helps to understand better his composing development; but I've often read and heard contrasting comments about Schönberg's works.

I really enjoy his work throughout his career, too.

[Cato]

Thanks, Karl.
Out of curiosity, a question for all Schönberg's admirers arises to me: if there's one, which Schönberg's creative musical period do you prefer, late-Romantic, expressionist or dodecaphonic? Schönberg is one of my favourite composers and I appreciate all his musical evolution, since every phase is connected to the others and helps to understand better his composing development; but I've often read and heard contrasting comments about Schönberg's works.

I really enjoy his work throughout his career, too.

Amen!   0:)

From the Gurrelieder and Pelleas und Melisande through the Five Pieces for Orchestra and Jakobsleiter to the Violin Concerto and Moses und Aron, just one masterpiece after the other!

[Lisztianwagner]

Amen!   0:)

From the Gurrelieder and Pelleas und Melisande through the Five Pieces for Orchestra and Jakobsleiter to the Violin Concerto and Moses und Aron, just one masterpiece after the other!

Well said!

[Karl Henning]

Rose Hegele, who sang the première of my The Orpheus of Lowell so beautifully, is going to perform Pierrot on 29 Oct.

[krummholz]

Thanks, Karl.
Out of curiosity, a question for all Schönberg's admirers arises to me: if there's one, which Schönberg's creative musical period do you prefer, late-Romantic, expressionist or dodecaphonic? Schönberg is one of my favourite composers and I appreciate all his musical evolution, since every phase is connected to the others and helps to understand better his composing development; but I've often read and heard contrasting comments about Schönberg's works.

All of the above, of course, but I've always been most attracted to those early expressionistic pieces, especially the 1st Chamber Symphony and the String Quartet #2, where he stretches tonality to its limits without quite breaking the mold. In fact, his entire post-tonal but pre-dodecaphonic output I've always found thrilling for the sense that the possibilities were endless, that anything could happen at any time. Though he certainly wrote masterpieces after establishing the 12-tone system, I've never found those pieces as exciting as the ones he wrote under the rubric of "free atonality": the Five Pieces for Orchestra, the Five Piano Pieces, Pierrot Lunaire...

[Lisztianwagner]

All of the above, of course, but I've always been most attracted to those early expressionistic pieces, especially the 1st Chamber Symphony and the String Quartet #2, where he stretches tonality to its limits without quite breaking the mold. In fact, his entire post-tonal but pre-dodecaphonic output I've always found thrilling for the sense that the possibilities were endless, that anything could happen at any time. Though he certainly wrote masterpieces after establishing the 12-tone system, I've never found those pieces as exciting as the ones he wrote under the rubric of "free atonality": the Five Pieces for Orchestra, the Five Piano Pieces, Pierrot Lunaire...

Interesting point; as a matter of fact, if pitches and chords mustn't necessarily turn around the relation with a specific note, that gives an impression of unpredictability and unexpected developments of the melodies that can surprise, at the same time the possibilities of a wider range of colours; striking and powerful effects. I've always found incredible the quality of Schönberg's music of being very inventive and metamorphic, as well as emotional, without loosing logic and unity, whether it was Romantic, expressionistic or dodecaphonic.

[krummholz]

Interesting point; as a matter of fact, if pitches and chords mustn't necessarily turn around the relation with a specific note, that gives an impression of unpredictability and unexpected developments of the melodies that can surprise, at the same time the possibilities of a wider range of colours; striking and powerful effects.

True that, and there is also the fact that he (and Webern and Berg) were, in those early post-tonal years, exploring a very new and hitherto unimagined sound world, and no doubt reveling in their journey of discovery of new possibilities. I get that same sense of discovery and excitement from listening to Webern Op. 3 through what, 16? or 17? Even Op. 18, which I'm pretty sure was dodecaphonic, carries some of this sense of newness, as does Op. 20 (the String Trio). Then with the Symphony Op. 21 things start feeling more settled and sedate... which is not to detract from Webern's later works at all, only to say that they are less works of exploration and more of creating new and viable music in a now-established idiom. To stay on topic: I feel similarly about Schoenberg's later 12-tone works.

[Lisztianwagner]

True that, and there is also the fact that he (and Webern and Berg) were, in those early post-tonal years, exploring a very new and hitherto unimagined sound world, and no doubt reveling in their journey of discovery of new possibilities. I get that same sense of discovery and excitement from listening to Webern Op. 3 through what, 16? or 17? Even Op. 18, which I'm pretty sure was dodecaphonic, carries some of this sense of newness, as does Op. 20 (the String Trio). Then with the Symphony Op. 21 things start feeling more settled and sedate... which is not to detract from Webern's later works at all, only to say that they are less works of exploration and more of creating new and viable music in a now-established idiom. To stay on topic: I feel similarly about Schoenberg's later 12-tone works.

Agreed, I have the same impression about Schönberg's late dodecaphonic works, he was certainly less rigorous in applying the twelve-tone method, as he was less eager to take his own system to extreme, to move further and further and reach completely new paths; on the contrary, it seems as he wanted to explore what he had already created from different points of view, to find unused expressive possibilities, as you said, in a now-established structure; in fact, for example, the Piano Concerto is softer, more restrained in innovation (although it is a masterpieces, no doubt), there are repetitions in the rows, use of cadenza and typical Romantic chords, and it shows almost tonal passages that make the piece sound in some sections almost like a late-Romantic composition.
Whether it was because Schönberg was urged to do so by inner inspiration, or because, after becoming well established, dodecaphony like every technique could be subject to evolution too, or because the composer felt he couldn't go further, anyway Schönberg himself never denied he felt a longing to return to the older style and that, time to time, he had to yield to that urge, but even when there was a loosening in the twelve-tone technique, he experimented new approaches to tonality, without simply returning to it.

[Mirror Image]

Agreed, I have the same impression about Schönberg's late dodecaphonic works, he was certainly less rigorous in applying the twelve-tone method, as he was less eager to take his own system to extreme, to move further and further and reach completely new paths; on the contrary, it seems as he wanted to explore what he had already created from different points of view, to find unused possibilities, as you said, in a now-established structure; in fact, for example, the Piano Concerto is softer, more restrained in innovation (although it is a masterpieces, no doubt), there are repetitions in the rows, use of cadenza and typical Romantic chords, and it shows almost tonal passages that makes the piece sound in some sections almost like a late-Romantic composition.
Whether it was because Schönberg was urged to do so by inner inspiration, or because, after becoming well established, dodecaphony like every technique could be subject to evolution too, or because the composer felt he couldn't go further, anyway Schönberg himself never denied he felt a longing to return to the older style and that, time to time, he had to yield to that urge, but even when there was a loosening in the twelve-tone technique, he experimented new approaches to tonality, without simply returning to it.

And this is what I particularly loved about Schoenberg. He never repeated himself or simply rested on his laurels. He continued to push himself into new creative directions. Were the results always successful? Not for me, but I tip my hat to his ability to change and find new avenues of expression. The period of his music I return to the most is his middle period: the 'Free Atonal' works. For me, this is Schoenberg at his Expressionistic best.