Word: schoenberg
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...Schoenberg began composing in an atmosphere of fin-de-siecle decadence with the ponderously rich chromatic harmonies of the post-Wagnerian idiom. He matured as a composer at a time when tonality, the structure which had supported music for over 300 years, was finally sinking under the bloated burden of its own chromaticism into an anarchic morass. The ferment which resulted from the destruction of the old order gave rise to Schoenberg's great expressionist compositions like the sextet Verklarte Nacht, which seems to breathe in that decaying, sickeningly rich atmosphere, and Pierrot Lunaire, which for many is the ultimate...
...disappeared. Large sections of music could no longer be draped on conventional cadential patterns or sequences. The composer was left with no rules and no guidelines-nothing but the twelve tones and the desperate need to organize them coherently. On the brink of what he saw as musical chaos, Schoenberg stopped composing until he could create a new system for organizing his materials and justifying his decisions, a new framework of music...
...after ten years without publishing a single work, Schoenberg produced his first compositions in the twelve-tone idiom. An intellectual creation of the highest order, this system is a logical outgrowth of 19th century chromaticism and turn-of-the-century atonality, which both moved toward giving an equal significance to each of the twelve tones. It is a method which has dominated the musical life of this century, eventually exercising a hold even on Igor Stravinsky, the man who had once seemed the great opponent of this serial technique...
...this system, so seemingly cerebral and unspontaneous, that has generated the greater part of the anti-Schoenberg feeling that is still so prevalent. Many denounce it as unnatural, arguing that the overtones of a note-the most important of which are the octave, the fifth and the third-necessitate a music based on these intervals. Anything else, they argue, will be incoherent and abrasive...
Other critics attack Schoenberg for negating the distinction between dissonance and consonance. They contend that music, like so many things, must operate through the alternation of tension and release. Serial music, they maintain, cannot supply this rhythm because when equal weight is given to all pitches, none can sound more tense or relaxed than others...