Schoenberg the Romantic?
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Prior to developing this system, however, Schoenberg continued in and expanded upon the styles of his immediate predecessors in Austria - Wagner, Mahler, Strauss, and Brahms. One of his best-known and most widely performed works is Transfigured Night, an early composition for string sextet/string orchestra, written when Schoenberg was 25.
Transfigured Night is romanticism at its best. Based on a story of love, tragedy and forgiveness, the work includes lush chromaticism; ever increasing waves of harmonic tension and release; and oodles of delicious, soupy violin writing in the extreme upper register.
Interestingly enough, my recording of Transfigured Night is paired with an equally wonderful piece from Schoenberg’s 12-tone period, his Variations for Orchestra. I’ve always been a fan of the Variations, so much so, that even after grad school was over, and no one would have cared, I spent several days one summer analyzing the rows upon which it was constructed.
But earlier this week, I had the good fortune of listening to these pieces back to back and, though they were constructed with completely different methods, I was struck by the similarities between the works. In fact, I heard some nearly identical melodic gestures in the strings that seemed to be imbued with the same romantic underpinnings and yearnings for something beyond this world. It made me begin wonder, was Schoenberg a romantic all along?
Listen to the excerpts below. In both cases, I've placed similar melodic gestures from both works back to back. In both examples, the sample from Transfigured Night precedes the sample from Variations for Orchestra.
isn’t the same sense of drama, and romantic spirit present in both? Both works share similarities in their usage and treatment of half step melodic resolutions and in general, I get the same sense of sturm und drang in both. The difference between the two, is in the harmonic and textural content, where the Variations seems busier and much less settled harmonically.
The fact that Schoenberg returned to tonality in the latter stages of his life is often overlooked by music criticism. In the thirties and forties, he completed the Suite in G for strings, the 2nd Chamber Symphony, and a Theme and Variations for Band, all works based on tonality.
Of course, historians like figures that can be categorized into nice and neat boxes, so Schoenberg is often cast as part of the Second Viennese or twelve tone school. And, while this is a true categorization, it also ignores some of the important works he completed before and after his purely dodecaphonic period.
Composing takes a lot of time, and at the end of our life, when we sense that at any given point, we could be composing our last work, we only have time to write in the styles we truly believe in. The time for exploring is essentially over and the rush to make final musical arguments is on.
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Of course, historians like figures that can be categorized into nice and neat boxes, so Schoenberg is often cast as part of the Second Viennese or twelve tone school. And, while this is a true categorization, it also ignores some of the important works he completed before and after his purely dodecaphonic period.
Composing takes a lot of time, and at the end of our life, when we sense that at any given point, we could be composing our last work, we only have time to write in the styles we truly believe in. The time for exploring is essentially over and the rush to make final musical arguments is on.
Doesn’t the fact that Schoenberg returned to tonality for some of his later works illustrate that he never truly disavowed tonality as a viable and equally effective compositional system to dodecaphony? Otherwise, why return to it at the final stage, when time is running out?
Is it possible, he was a romantic all along?
Is it possible, he was a romantic all along?
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I've always kind of felt this way about Schoenberg. His whole career is a ball of contradictions and I love the fact that you point out it's difficult to neatly categorize him as acomposer.
Several years back we went to a performance of Verklaerte Nacht and the conductor took nearly 20 minutes explaining the work to the audience. I think that to a certain degree you have to do this. We're going on one hundred years since he first began to formulate his ideas of the twelve-tone method ofcomposing and the name of Schoenberg still conjures up deeply-rooted feelings of inner turmoil (even wailing and gnashing of teeth, oh my!) and most people tend to react solely to what they've been told rather than what they have experienced.
I've never been terribly high on his music, but I've also never really understood what the negative hubbub is all about. Good music is good music no matter how it's written.
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Thanks Brad. I am a fan of some of his works and I really dislike others, but I will say this for him, his art makes a strong enough statement that there is no sitting on the fence. I think it's also important for composers to give some consideration to his ideas, they may embrace them, they may shun them, but they'll know more about what they truly believe by listening to him. I have a lot of other thoughts about Schoenberg and 12 tone music, but I'll save them for a later post. Appreciate your comments very much!
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I’m a fan of some of his earlier works and I think the man really was a master of orchestral color. It’s too bad that so many of his truly outstanding works get overlooked just because of the Name at the Top of the Score rather than its contents. For my money, if you want a big, intense, Expressionist musical experience, you can forget that Mahler fella. There are few better than Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder.
As acomposer, I’ve never been shy about employing certain aspects of twelve-tone technique. Usually I only use it to “set the stage,” if you will, and then I feel free to break with any system I’ve constructed at any point. I suppose this is what also attracts me to some of Stravinsky’s later works.
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That's right my friend... composing is about freedom. If the 12 tone system works for part of a piece, use it, but it's great to have the aesthetic flexibility to switch to a different method for a different section of the piece.
I am not familiar with Gurrelieder, but now I've got a great reason to get familiar with it. Thanks for sharing!
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