Schoenberg

As the twentieth century draws to a close, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is being acknowledged as one of its most significant and multifaceted composers. Schoenberg and His World explores the richness of his genius through commentary and documents. Marilyn McCoy opens the volume with a concise chronology, based on the latest scholarship, of Schoenberg's life and works. Essays by Joseph Auner, Leon Botstein, Reinhold Brinkmann, J. Peter Burkholder, Severine Neff, and Rudolf Stephan examine aspects of his creative output, theoretical writings, relation to earlier music, and the socio-cultural contexts in which he worked. The documentary portions of Schoenberg and His World capture Schoenberg at critical periods of his career: during the first decades of the century, primarily in his native Vienna; from 1926 to 1933, in Berlin; and from 1933 on, in the U.S. Included here is the first complete translation into English of the remarkable Festschrift prepared for the 38-year-old Schoenberg by his pupils in 1912; it presciently explored the diverse talents as a composer, teacher, painter, and theorist for which he was later to be recognized. The Berlin years, when he held one of the most prestigious teaching positions in Europe, are represented by interviews with him and articles about his public lectures. The final portion of the volume, devoted to the theme Schoenberg and America, focuses on how the composer viewed--and was viewed by--the country where he spent his final eighteen years. Sabine Feisst brings together and comments upon sources which, contrary to much received opinion, attest to both the considerable impact that Schoenberg had upon his newly adopted land and his own deep involvement in its musical life.

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.

Speechsong is a work of imaginative musicology that addresses the engimas of Schoenberg and Gould, of singing and speaking, of Moses und Aron, of technology and being. Its point of departure is Gould's last public performance, given at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, where a number of Schoenberg's works were performed during his California exile. It is here, after that last performance, that Gould encounters a spectral Schoenberg in a staged conversation that explores Schoenberg's travails in rethinking the fundamentals of Western music. This first part of Speechsong recalls Schoenberg's operatic masterpiece, Moses und Aron, in which the divinely inspired Moses seeks the help of his brother to relate his vision: Moses speaks and Aron sings. Written as a twelve-tone composition, the opera produces an involution of harmonics that was Schoenberg's response to Richard Wagner's diatribes about synagogue noise. For Gould, Schoenberg's is a formalist revolution; Schoenberg's life, however, suggests that it was a search for personal and political freedom.The second half of Speechsong is a critical essay in twelve "moments" that re-articulates the staged conversation as an inquiry into the intersections of music and mediation. Gould's turn to the recording studio emerges as a post-humanist inquiry into recorded music as a repudiation of the virtuoso tradition and a liberation from unitary notions of selfhood. Schoenberg's exodus from musical tradition likewise takes his twelve-tone invention beyond musical performance, where it emerges, along with Gould's soundscapes, as a prototype of acoustic installations by artists such as Stephen Prina and Cory Arcangel. In these works, music abandons the concert hall and the exigencies of harmony for an acoustic space that embraces at once the recordings of Gould and the performances of Schoenberg that have found their home on the internet. Richard Cavell has written extensively on Marshall McLuhan and on media theory generally. He is the co-founder of the Media Studies program at the University of British Columbia and the curator of the website Spectres of McLuhan. Speechsong, his second critical performance piece, was preceded by Marinetti Dines with the High Command (2014).

"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

Presents one of the most important documents in twentieth century musical thought.

In this text, Allen Shawn puts aside ultimate judgements about Arnold Schoenberg's place in music history to explore the composer's world in a series of linked essays that are searching and suggestive. Approaching Schoenberg primarily from a listener's point of view, Shawn plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg's works while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvements in music, painting and the history through which he lived.

This book is Schoenberg's last completed theoretical work and represents his final thoughts on the subject of classical and romantic harmony. The earlier chapters recapitulate in condensed form the principles laid down in his 'Theory of Harmony'; the later chapters break entirely new ground, for they analyze the system of key relationships within the structure of whole movements and affirm the principle of 'monotonality, ' showing how all modulations within a movement are merely deviations from, and not negations of, its main tonality.

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.

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 émigrés, 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.

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.