I would recommend to anyone who has some basic musical education (like can play tunes or improvise a little on the piano/guitar) to try playing with tone rows. It's a brain expander on its own -- the discipline of tone rows makes evident the obscure role that tonality or even common chord progressions play even in something by e.g. Eric Dolphy or Sonic Youth (different brands of "experimental music")
Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
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Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#12Schoenberg's music is admittedly hard to get into. But it is well worth spending some time with it because there is nothing quite like it. For a bit of context, Schoenberg's atonal style was the culmination of centuries of development of Western harmony. From the Baroque/Classical era onward, the direction of Western music was towards greater chromaticism extending harmonies further and further away from the simple m…
I’ve found Charles Rosen’s book _Arnold Schoenberg_ to be an excellent introduction to the composer. It’s a short, well-written book. Not so much a biography, as an exploration of the music and the various phases of the Schoenberg’s musical language; from the early tonal works, through free atonality, and finally serialism. And the most valuable part for me was the way in which it contextualized serialism in light of everything that had come before in western music, and some of what was to come after, and the way it presents it as a kind of an inevitability for Schoenberg. It’s not heavy on theory and people with only a cursory knowledge of music could get something out of it.
Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#13This music will destroy you. He barely survived it himself. Very skilled though... Hit it a time or two on YouTube, then move on. Don't linger!
That sounds like a challenge. Are there any particular pieces you would recommend I don't spend too long on?
The early works alone were enough to gain him a loyal and devoted gang of students.
Start at opus 1, no encore. Terrible philosophy--like cyanide in a candy shell.
Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#14Schoenberg's music is admittedly hard to get into. But it is well worth spending some time with it because there is nothing quite like it. For a bit of context, Schoenberg's atonal style was the culmination of centuries of development of Western harmony. From the Baroque/Classical era onward, the direction of Western music was towards greater chromaticism extending harmonies further and further away from the simple m…
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Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#15As a music student, I was always amazed at the irony of Schoenberg's thesis about the "Liberation of the Dissonance", when 12 tone Equal Temperament is an arbitrary intonation system that limits the actual potential for freedom when creating harmony.
Ben Johnston, an American composer who studied with Harry Partch, used extended Just Intonation, which is a system of unlimited harmonic capabilities, for several serialist pieces [1][2]. I feel like he was able to achieve striking dissonance unlike anything capable within the confines of Equal Temperament.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ujeXlFP7p0
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5HIPRuYdjA&list=OLAK5uy_mn3...
Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#16I'd like to speak in support of Schoenberg's (only) piano concerto as a genuinely enjoyable piece of music to listen to.
Although strictly atonal using a tone-row method, it uses quite traditional phrasings that are fairly easy to latch on to mentally, resulting in something quite sympathetic, almost hummable, only one step ahead of your mind, and it's a light step. Nothing portentous or self-regarding about it.
There's an excellent recording of it played by Mitsuko Uchida, with Boulez conducting the Cleveland orchestra.
Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#17I spent several years studying and playing the piano works of Schoenberg. I loved it, so much so that I got the barcode from a CD of his piano concerto tattooed on myself (Emanual Ax was the pianist).
I remember thinking early on, how can anybody possibly memorize this? But the more I listened to it, the more the "melodies" stuck, and this was a break through for me. There is beauty in his music, and the more time spent with it, the more it really shines. Still to this day I can hum along to Op. 25 (the Suite for piano) -- something I never thought possible upon first listening.
I believe this is what distinguishes Schoenberg from later "atonal" composers.
As a pianist, my recommendations for approachable Schoenberg are the Piano Concerto (the first movement is a waltz!), Op 19, and Op 25, the two latter works being digestible in small pieces. Op. 33 is magical, and Op 11 is just plain difficult.
Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#18For those who don't know who Schoenberg is: he's a composer of "abstract" music. Think of a musical equivalent to the abstract art. https://youtu.be/2V-qmC6xUW8
In the "abstract art" sense, isn't most music "abstract"? Does a Brahms symphony (or Knopfler solo) attempt to reference natural sounds?
"Abstract music" is actually an existing term [1], and it simply means non-program music, which is far older than Schoenberg.
That recording you link to is Webern, which sounds to me completely different than Schoenberg. How about linking to one of the compositions mentioned in the article, like [2] or [3]?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_music
Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#19For those who don't know who Schoenberg is: he's a composer of "abstract" music. Think of a musical equivalent to the abstract art. https://youtu.be/2V-qmC6xUW8
In the "abstract art" sense, isn't most music "abstract"? Does a Brahms symphony (or Knopfler solo) attempt to reference natural sounds? "Abstract music" is actually an existing term [1], and it simply means non-program music, which is far older than Schoenberg. That recording you link to is Webern, which sounds to me completely different than Schoenberg. How about linking to one of the compositions mentioned in the…
Re the link: my bad! I searched for "serial music Schoenberg" and grabbed the first Google result, without even looking at the title. I did listen to it before posting though, and found it representative of atonal music. It's not that far from Schoenberg, e.g. compare with https://youtu.be/voyLno0HdoA (I do like that "echo" effect in the Webern piece though!)
Re "abstract music" - how would you call a musical equivalent of abstract art? I think this term conveys the meaning (at least for regular people).
Re: Arnold Schoenberg: Beauty and horror
#20For those who don't know who Schoenberg is: he's a composer of "abstract" music. Think of a musical equivalent to the abstract art. https://youtu.be/2V-qmC6xUW8
It is worth noting that Wassily Kandinsky reached out to Schönberg because he saw parallels in Schönberg's music to his own abstract art. But I think this parallel only exists in terms of breaking with the conventions and traditions of the medium, i.e. mimesis in visual arts and tonality in (Western) music. One could argue that music is always "abstract" in the sense that there is no real model in nature which it can…
music is always "abstract"
To me, the difference between the atonal or serial music and traditional classical music is in the amount of structure or order (that I can recognize and process). Bach's or Chopin's music has a lot more of it than Schönberg's. Also, classical music feels "natural", and is pleasant to listen to (for the most part), while atonal music feels "artificial" or "weird", and for the most part is not pleasant.