Arnold Schoenberg

Fundamentals of Musical Composition represents the culmination of more than forty years in Schoenberg's life devoted to the teaching of musical principles to students and composers in Europe and America. For his classes he developed a manner of presentation in which 'every technical matter is discussed in a very fundamental way, so that at the same time it is both simple and thorough'. This book can be used for analysis as well as for composition. On the one hand, it has the practical objective of introducing students to the process of composing in a systematic way, from the smallest to the largest forms; on the other hand, the author analyses in thorough detail and with numerous illustrations those particular sections in the works of the masters which relate to the compositional problem under discussion.

A composer's study and celebration of a difficult but influential artist, his work, and his time Proposing that Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) has been more discussed than heard, more tolerated than loved, composer Allen Shawn puts aside ultimate judgments about Schoenberg's place in musical history to explore the composer's fascinating world in a series of "linked essays--soundings" that are more searching than analytical, more suggestive than definitive. In an approach that is unusual for a book of an avowedly introductory character, the text plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg works, while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvement in music, painting and the history through which he lived. Emphasizing music as an expressive art of rhythms and tones, Shawn approaches Schoenberg primarily from the listener's point of view, uncovering both the seeds of his radicalism in his early music and the traditional bases of his later work. Although liberally sprinkled with musical examples, the text can be read without them. By turns witty, personal, opinionated and instructive, "Arnold Schoenberg's Journey" is above all an appreciation of a great musical and artistic imagination in a time unlike any other.

The original essays in this collection chronicle the transformation of Arnold Schoenberg's works from music as pure art to music as a vehicle of religious and political ideas, during the first half of the twentieth century. This interdisciplinary volume includes contributions from musicologists, music theorists, and scholars of German literature and of Jewish studies.

In this book, Bojan Bujic sets into an appropriate cultural context the immensely rich life of a composer who is, arguably, the key musical personality of the twentieth century. A major force in the development of modern music, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is famous for abandoning tonality and introducing the 12-tone 'serial' method of composition. There can be no agreement as to whether Schoenberg is the greatest composer of his time, especially as his innovative musical language did not appeal to all who came after him, but directly or indirectly, he affected so many musicians and listeners of his own and of subsequent generations that his centrality cannot be disputed. In addition to his work as a composer, Schoenberg was an important theorist of tonal music and an enormously influential teacher, with Anton Webern and Alban Berg among his most famous pupils. Brought up in the rich and cosmopolitan cultural life of Vienna, Schoenberg started to play the violin at the age of nine and began experimenting with composition almost immediately, but his education was cut short by the death of his father in 1889. Schoenberg had no formal training in music until he was in his late teens, and throughout his life he remained proud of the fact that so much of what he had absorbed as a youth about music and literature derived from his own tenacity and sense of purpose. Schoenberg first composed in the late Romantic tradition, and his earliest acknowledged works, including the string sextet "Verklarte Nacht", date from the turn of the century. Following a brief interlude in Berlin, where he worked as a cabaret musician and teacher and also wrote the symponic poem "Pelleas und Melisande", he returned to Vienna. Here, he began taking on pupils such as Webern and Berg, and further developed his musical style, in due course causing a sensation with the dissonance of his 'serial' technique and the greater harmonic strangeness and complexity of his material. Schoenberg only returned to something approaching his tonal style decades later, with his "Suite in G" for strings. In 1925, a couple of years after having turned down an offer to become director of the Bauhaus music school because he had been informed of antisemitic tendencies at the institution, Schoenberg moved back to Berlin to take up a post as director of a master class in composition at the Arts Academy, in spite of antisemitic protests appearing in the Zeitschrift fur Musik in reaction to his professorship. Later, when he situation of Jews in Germany became clear to him, Schoenberg increasingly spent time away from Berlin, and finally decided to move to the US in 1933, where he taught in Boston and New York at the Malkin Conservatory. In 1934, Schoenberg moved to Los Angeles, taking up a teaching post at USC and a professorship at UCLA. He lived in Los Angeles, where John Cage became one of his pupils and George Gershwin a good friend, until his death in 1951. There are those who contend that Schoenberg's uncompromising search for an individual voice led him to create music which is too difficult to follow, since many familiar features, which normally enable listeners to find their way through a piece of music, have been removed or radically re-shaped. This is often perceived as the main cause of the isolation of avant-garde music in the late twentieth century, but Bujic argues that these accusations are frequently made before Schoenberg's music has even had a chance to present itself - its difficulty and strangeness are uncritically evoked, often preventing the music from being appreciated in its own right. In this book, Bujic sets out to win more listeners to Schoenberg's music, by introducing his life, work and theories in an accessible, sympathetic manner.

"There cannot ever be too many good books about Schoenberg, and so it is a special pleasure to welcome Constructive Dissonance, which is far beyond just 'good.' These essays cover a generous range in style and idea. Many of them also are deeply moving, and nothing could be more appropriate for the composer of our century's most fiercely intense music."--Michael Steinberg, author of The Symphony: A Listener's Guide "Although much has been written about Schoenberg, no group of essays examines his life and work in such a broad context. Here we find Schoenberg's matrix: the social, cultural, political, and artistic currents that helped shape him, and to which he made his own extraordinary contribution."--Robert P. Morgan, author of Twentieth-Century Music "As we approach the turn of this century, it is clear that Arnold Schoenberg must becounted as one of the most important figures in Western art music during the last one hundred years. Schoenberg's influence on art-music culture has not only worked its effects through his music, but also through his thinking and writing about music. This collection makes a fitting tribute to Schoenberg and does an admirable job of presenting the many facets of Schoenberg the composer, music theorist, and thinker. These thought-provoking essays present a broad range of approaches to a rich variety of topics within Schoenberg scholarship, and readers will find both familiar and not-so-familiar issues arising during the course of the volume. Constructive Dissonance is certain to become an important book for those interested in twentieth-century art music and culture, and seminal reading for anyone interested in Arnold Schoenberg and his work."--John Covach, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

One of the most influential collections of music ever published, Style and Idea includes Schoenberg’s writings about himself and his music as well as studies of many other composers and reflections on art and society.

Between 1908 and 1923, Schoenberg developed a compositional strategy that moved beyond the accepted concepts and practices of Western tonality. This study synthesizes and advances the state of knowledge about this body of work.