SCHÖNBERG, ARNOLD ( b. Vienna, Austria, 13 Sept. 1874;
d. Los Angeles, US. 13 July 1951 )
Like many innovative geniuses, Sch├╢nberg's own work is in danger of being obscured by that of less-talented imitators. Whatever direct appeal his music may have to audiences is also frequently blunted by received wisdom about the complexity of its construction. Nevertheless, he was the strongest influence on twentieth century composition; his work will doubtless survive and be reevaluated long after it's no longer seen primarily as "modern" and "difficult."
Even in his own time Sch├╢nberg was regarded as a musician's musician. His first lieder embody his most conventional work. But there was outrage and disruption at a concert of his songs as early 1900.
He was largely self-taught as a composer and at first experimented with a variety of forms, including popular cabaret songs and an immense cantata. By 1903 he was taking pupils, including the composer Alban Berg. The following year he was an organiser of the Society of Creative Musicians, whose president was Gustav Mahler. The society's aim was to present new music. It survived long enough to present Schönberg's own work, the symphonic poem Pelléas et Mélisande, with the composer conducting.
By 1909 Sch├╢nberg had infuriated and baffled many of his contemporaries by adopting atonality. Among his few powerful supporters was Mahler himself, who was criticised bitterly in the press and by fellow-professionals for championing what appeared to be musical anarchy.
A commission from a Viennese actress in 1911 resulted in Pierrot Lunaire, a setting of poems for voice and chamber ensemble. In it Schönberg developed sprechstimme, with which he'd experimented in his earlier cantata, Gurrelieder. This was a means of notating speech, somewhere between déclamation and singing. Both works received mixed response, though generally the critics hated them.
His principle work during the First World War was Die Jakobsleiter, an oratorio encompassing his beliefs about art. In the midst of this he turned to a new approach, which he called "composing in twelve tones." This amounted to abandonment of the diatonic scale. For it he substituted what he called a twelve tone row, setting up a new series of strictures within which to compose.
Thereafter he worked within these strictures himself, lectured on the twelve-tone approach and, despite continued opposition, found many followers.
In 1928 he composed the first twelve-tone opera, Von heute auf morgen, ( From today to tomorrow ), to a libretto by his wife, Gertrud. His largest opera, Moses und Aaron, was begun in 1930 and premièred in 1957, after his death. His other operatic works Erwartung (Expectation) and Die glückliche Hand, (The Lucky Hand), are works for single characters, with little thematic development.
In 1933 Sch├╢nberg was forced to resign from his job at the Berlin Academy because of his Jewish origins. He and his wife left Europe for America. There his work was even less understood, but he was offered teaching appointments and continued to take private pupils. He died while employed at the Music Academy of the West, in Santa Barbara. His wife declared that his dying word was "harmony".
