The Arnold Schoenberg Companion

Arnold Schoenberg – composer, theorist, teacher, painter, and one of the most important and controversial figures in twentieth-century music. This Companion presents engaging essays by leading scholars on Schoenberg's central works, writings, and ideas over his long life in Vienna, Berlin, and Los Angeles. Challenging monolithic views of the composer as an isolated elitist, the volume demonstrates that what has kept Schoenberg and his music interesting and provocative was his profound engagement with the musical traditions he inherited and transformed, with the broad range of musical and artistic developments during his lifetime he critiqued and incorporated, and with the fundamental cultural, social, and political disruptions through which he lived. The book provides introductions to Schoenberg's most important works, and to his groundbreaking innovations including his twelve-tone compositions. Chapters also examine Schoenberg's lasting influence on other composers and writers over the last century.

With language unencumbered by technical jargon, these scholarly writings bring to life the various facets of Schoenberg's creative process and its influence. Topics include biographical essays, surveys of the music from different periods in Schoenberg's career, and essays on the development of Schoenberg's style, on Schoenberg's attitudes toward music, composition and analysis, and the effect of and interpretation of Schoenberg's music. The contributors provide different points of view based on their unique specialties. The resulting breadth of information illuminates distinct aspects of Schoenberg's musical career. The Arnold Schoenberg Companion aims to introduce Schoenberg and his music to a nonspecialist audience. The chronological essays place Schoenberg and his achievements in the context of the past and present. The contributing authors include scholars and composers of different generations, including two of his American students. The companion also contains an annotated bibliography and discography, and is an invaluable resource to scholars and researchers.

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.

The most radical and divisive composer of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg remains a hero to many, and a villain to many others. In this refreshingly balanced biography, Mark Berry tells the story of Schoenberg’s remarkable life and work, situating his tale within the wider symphony of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. Born in the Jewish quarter of his beloved Vienna, Schoenberg left Austria for his early career in Berlin as a leading light of Weimar culture, before being forced to flee in the dead of night from Hitler’s Third Reich. He found himself in the United States, settling in Los Angeles, where he would inspire composers from George Gershwin to John Cage. Introducing all of Schoenberg’s major musical works, from his very first compositions, such as the String Quartet in D Major, to his invention of the twelve-tone method, Berry explores how Schoenberg’s revolutionary approach to musical composition incorporated Wagnerian late Romanticism and the brave new worlds of atonality and serialism. Essential reading for anyone interested in the music and history of the twentieth century, this book makes clear Schoenberg changed the history of music forever.

This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musical thought of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. One of the premises is that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s inner musical lives are inseparable from their inner spiritual lives. Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in much the same musical-spiritual place, yet musically they split while spiritually they grow closer. The reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work has sidestepped this paradox of commonality and conflict, instead choosing to universalize and amplify their conflict. Bringing to light a trove of unpublished material, Arndt argues that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict is a reflection of tensions within their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a particular conception of the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual eye of the genius. The tensions inherent in this largely psychological and material notion of the tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius shape both their musical divergence on the logical (technical) level in theory and composition, including their advocacy of the Ursatz versus twelvetone composition, and their spiritual convergence, including their embrace of Judaism. These findings shed new light on the musical and philosophical worlds of Schenker and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and spiritual questions with which they grapple.

Arnold Schoenberg's theory of music has been much discussed but his approach to music theory needs a new historical and theoretical assessment in order to provide a clearer understanding of his contributions to music theory and analysis. Norton Dudeque's achievement in this book involves the synthesis of Schoenberg's theoretical ideas from the whole of the composer's working life, including material only published well after his death. The book discusses Schoenberg's rejection of his German music theory heritage and past approaches to music-theory pedagogy, the need for looking at musical structures differently and to avoid aesthetic and stylistic issues. Dudeque provides a unique understanding of the systematization of Schoenberg's tonal-harmonic theory, thematic/motivic-development theory and the links with contemporary and past music theories. The book is complemented by a special section that explores the practical application of the theoretical material already discussed. The focus of this section is on Schoenberg's analytical practice, and the author's response to it. Norton Dudeque therefore provides a comprehensive understanding of Schoenberg's thinking on tonal harmony, motive and form that has hitherto not been attempted.

In Songs of the Second Viennese School: A Performer’s Guide to Selected Solo Vocal Works, scholar Loralee Songer outlines for singers and voice teachers critical information on selected solo vocal works by three major classical composers active during the first half of the twentieth century: Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. For too long, the remarkable vocal works of these composers have received insufficient attention because too many have assumed their works to be “unsingable” atonal pieces, musically impossible (or unrewarding) for performers and entirely unsatisfying for listening audiences. For each composer, Songer provides information about the composer's educational background and compositional style, as well as commentary on representative vocal works supported by musical examples. The discussion is bolstered by interviews with renowned singers who supply advice for practice and performance. A catalog of selected songs featuring information on each work's poet, key, range, and German-English translation is also provided. Voice teachers and singers of varying levels will benefit from this book's practical content and format, and the exposure to under-appreciated works will enhance recital performance repertoire substantially.

Arnold Schoenberg was a polarizing figure in twentieth century music, and his works and ideas have had considerable and lasting impact on Western musical life. A refugee from Nazi Europe, he spent an important part of his creative life in the United States (1933-1951), where he produced a rich variety of works and distinguished himself as an influential teacher. However, while his European career has received much scholarly attention, surprisingly little has been written about the genesis and context of his works composed in America, his interactions with Americans and other ?migr?s, and the substantial, complex, and fascinating performance and reception history of his music in this country. Author Sabine Feisst illuminates Schoenberg's legacy and sheds a corrective light on a variety of myths about his sojourn. Looking at the first American performances of his works and the dissemination of his ideas among American composers in the 1910s, 1920s and early 1930s, she convincingly debunks the myths surrounding Schoenberg's alleged isolation in the US. Whereas most previous accounts of his time in the US have portrayed him as unwilling to adapt to American culture, this book presents a more nuanced picture, revealing a Schoenberg who came to terms with his various national identities in his life and work. Feisst dispels lingering negative impressions about Schoenberg's teaching style by focusing on his methods themselves as well as on his powerful influence on such well-known students as John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Dika Newlin. Schoenberg's influence is not limited to those who followed immediately in his footsteps-a wide range of composers, from Stravinsky adherents to experimentalists to jazz and film composers, were equally indebted to Schoenberg, as were key figures in music theory like Milton Babbitt and David Lewin. In sum, Schoenberg's New World contributes to a new understanding of one of the most important pioneers of musical modernism.