Schoenberg vs. Webern vs. Berg

[greg]

I'm voting for Schoenberg. Berg possibly could've won if he wrote a LOT more, but he didn't so Schoenberg gets my vote.

[dtwilbanks]

Dunno. I'd have to subject myself to them first. 

[EmpNapoleon]

Boulez

[Mark G. Simon]

My reaction to them is somewhat like that of Goldilocks to the 3 bears' porridge. One (Berg) is too hot, the other (Webern) is too cold and the third (Schoenberg) is just right.

With Webern I feel as if he started with a big Romantic score and subtracted all but a few of the notes. I find I can't derive the kind of musical meaning he expects you to find with what he's given.

With Berg I feel as if he started with a big Romantic score, and added 50% more notes to it. He overwhelms you with meaning to the point of exhaustion. Fortunately, his two operas work wonderfully on stage (I have been fortunate to see both of them at the Met with Levine in the pit) and the Lyric Suite is drop dead gorgeous. And he wrote those nice pieces for clarinet and piano. So what am I complaining about anyway? Gee, I don't know.

But Schoenberg, the mature Schoenberg anyway*, always seems to strike the right balance. Somehow Schoenberg speaks to me more than the other two.


(* I have a hard time sitting through those early songs, op. 1-3)

[Larry Rinkel]

Neither of the three was especially prolific (even thinking in these terms of Webern is a joke), so I can't vote on that score. Webern is too reticent to be truly satisfying, and the pieces I most love by Schoenberg (the early atonal period, from op. 10-22, and Moses und Aron) are offset by the works I dislike - such as the early Gurrelieder and such neoclassic 12-tone works as the Septet and Wind Quintet. But I have next to no reservations about anything Berg wrote, thus my vote.

[bhodges]

A really tough one, since I love all three, but Berg by a tiny margin for Lulu and Wozzeck.  I recently bought the score to Wozzeck and am even more amazed, after browsing it and then following along while listening.

--Bruce

[quintett op.57]

I prefer Schönberg but it's possibly because I still don't know very much about his two main pupils.

especially as he develops his techniques from the commonly misnamed "atonality" (there's no such thing)

don't really agree

[karlhenning]

From among these three, my answer is likely to be the one to whom I've been listening most recently.

[Josquin des Prez]

Webern > All. 

[Josquin des Prez]

With Webern I feel as if he started with a big Romantic score and subtracted all but a few of the notes.

Subtracted all but the most relevant notes while eschewing everything that was superfluous or redundant. This isn't as new as you think. Bach does the same thing, except on a lesser scale. Still, if you took one of his fugues and milked every particle of musical invention in a romantic fashion you may be surprised just how huge those works really are. Likewise for Webern, except he refines the process to it's extreme. The thing you need to keep in mind is that his polyphony works in a spiral, so even during rests there's still all sorts of implied counterpoint and harmony going all linked in a constant loop.

To be frank i don't really think the serialists really understood the true essence of Webern which is why their work is a bit of a failure in my eyes, starting with Boulez. The development of western harmony ends with Webern and that's that. Everything that happened afterwards is pure redundancy (though i guess Ligeti's micropolyphony was a pretty clever way to get around this, at least partially).

[Montpellier]

A really tough one, since I love all three, but Berg by a tiny margin for Lulu and Wozzeck.  I recently bought the score to Wozzeck and am even more amazed, after browsing it and then following along while listening.

--Bruce

Jeez, I'd LOVE to be able to afford the score for Lulu - and once the business of Northern Rock has quietened down I might apply for a mortgage to buy it.  I borrowed it but the library only allows 3 weeks if someone else reserves it.   A beautiful work - I have it on DVD in its original version.   Wozzeck is as great.   A heart-wreching ending.   Somehow, by nifty arrangement of his tone rows Berg managed to preserve an individuality so easily lost in Schoenberg's system.  (Yes, I concede that Webern was unique too but the serial output from many following composers sounds too samey).

So, Berg...
 

[Mark]

Schoenberg. The original and therefore the best.


(How's that for blatant, ignorant subjectivity? )

[not edward]

From among these three, my answer is likely to be the one to whom I've been listening most recently.

Seconded.

[Larry Rinkel]

Jeez, I'd LOVE to be able to afford the score for Lulu - and once the business of Northern Rock has quietened down I might apply for a mortgage to buy it.  I borrowed it but the library only allows 3 weeks if someone else reserves it.

Scan it! (We won't tell.)

As a college freshman in 1967 I bought the vocal score to the as yet incomplete Lulu - a huge, oversized volume - for $20, a decent sum at the time. I bought my study score to Wozzeck a year earlier for the same amount. Maybe ten years ago I found the 2-volume study score to Lulu second-hand for about $100. No, you can't have it! 

[Larry Rinkel]

A really tough one, since I love all three, but Berg by a tiny margin for Lulu and Wozzeck.  I recently bought the score to Wozzeck and am even more amazed, after browsing it and then following along while listening.

--Bruce

Vocal score or study score?

[bhodges]

Vocal score or study score?

It's the study score (see cover below).  I think I found it for around $25 on eBay. 

--Bruce

[Larry Rinkel]

It's the study score (see cover below).  I think I found it for around $25 on eBay. 

--Bruce

You did very well. A new copy today costs over $80.

[DavidW]

Webern > All. 

Agreed.  His music is lyrical, compact, complex and beautiful.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

All three, but with Webern I'm glued to my chair. Will let up for a potty break with the others...

[MDL]

Schoenberg's output was far larger and more varied than either Berg's or Webern's. I accept that some people find some of his work dry and academic, but many of his works are wildly emotional and exciting. Gurrelieder, the two Chamber Symphonies, the Second String Quartet, the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Erwartung, Jacob's Ladder, the Piano Concerto, Music for an Imaginary Film, A Survivor From Warsaw and of course the astounding Moses und Aron are, to my ears, every bit as thrilling and beautiful as Stravinsky, Mahler or Nielsen.