Word: schoenberger
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...grammar of Boulez' works is serialization. From the compositions of Schoenberg, Boulez took the technique of serializing notes (technically, "areas of pitch"). There are 12 notes in an octave; to oversimplify, the composer arranges the 12 notes in time, that is, selects a series, and builds an entire composition from this series. The series may be played forward in time, backward in time, upside down in pitch, and upside down and backward. By choosing this series, the composer organizes the votes of the entire composition...
...work is powerful not because its progressions are "surprising" but because these shifts seem natural--and even quite necessary. What Schoenberg has done is to integrate musical emotions which in much music are usually separated or opposed to each other. Most important of all, he has linked pensive, "introspective" musical expression with a variety of other moods--violence, passivity, melancholy--and has thereby diffused the thoughtful tone throughout the music. The trio is profound because its expression is indirect, submerged; the work gives the listener its ideas not by pointing them out to him, but by shuffling him about through...
...performance succeeded--superbly--in taking the listener thorugh this variety of situations. Judith Davidoff, cello, Tison Street, violin, and William Hibbard, viola, performed brilliantly the savage bowing Schoenberg demands and made no attempt to give the piece an artificial form. They did not have any trouble with the important harmonies and their coordination was good...
...record's particular overlapping of the tapes gives the noises a consistent texture and rhythm and its addition of Cage's soprano Aria above them puts the sound to a real artistic purpose, making their strange noises and enigmatic direction seem perfectly chosen for the piece. As in the Schoenberg Trio, unusual sonorities appear out of nowhere, yet seem very much in place...
...Volumes winds voices together much in the manner of orchestral writing and was in places quite tasteful. But it too rested its expression primarily on obvious effects--sudden entrances and booming crescendos. Much electronic music like these three pieces has borrowed the formal freedom and dramatic quality of the Schoenberg school, but many composers of such electronic music have buried these techniques in pretentious display. Initiated as a medium of innovation, electronic music has in many cases created a reactionary style...