Why Did Schoenberg do it?
It seems paradoxical that Arnold Schoenberg was simultaneously the originator of the most relentlessly dissonant style of music, 12-note serialism, and also a person with the most comprehensive mastery and knowledge of every permutation of tonal harmony.
I admire Schoenberg, take every chance I can to perform his music, and love doing so. I am in no way an opponent of his music. But that does not prevent my ears from understanding how Schoenberg’s music is baffling and hateful to most lovers of classical music. Not all; but his admirers are a distinct minority.
For such perceived hostility in artworks to endure for 100 years is a prodigious achievement. Most new music becomes familiar after a while. Sooner or later Stravinsky and Bartok don’t sound so bad; nor do Berio or Ligeti, Berg or Webern. Even Stockhausen has a sort of quaintness, and Boulez’s Le Marteau sans Maître is positively yummy. But people in general do not get used to Schoenberg. As Philip Larkin put it, writing of Charlie Parker, it sounds crazy when it is new, and then after you get used to it, it still sounds crazy.
To achieve that, Schoenberg must have hit upon the very taproot of normal musical meaning. The chromatic scale of 12 notes is the universe from which music from Monteverdi through Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, and Schoenberg is drawn. It is a product of nature, derivable entirely from the two intervals of octave and 5th. That is all you need, the ratios 1:2 and 2:3, plus a little practical fudging. The glory that is western harmony, (pre-Schoenberg,) involves selecting from these 12; never having all 12 of them in play at the same time. Chords, scales, modes; all these arise from excluding some of the notes for a while. Hence “wrong notes.” Schoenberg’s inspired depth-charge was to require that all possible “wrong notes” be in play all the time. That very quickly shatters any emerging harmony of a tonal or modal type. Why did he do this? It seems odd, perverse, especially considering his huge harmonic skill, as demonstrated in Verklärte Nacht, Gurrelieder, etc.
The standard explanation is historical determinism: - the argument that musical style inescapably evolves through time, and tonal music was “worn out”, not valid any longer.
A moment’s reflection shows that all this is pure nonsense. If tonality doesn’t work anymore, why do musicians and listeners (and even composers) still adore Mozart and Bach? Is Mozart a clear advance on Bach? Why do Wagner’s Music Dramas leave ever-increasing audiences spellbound and emotionally transported? Why are Schubert’s melodies still so perfect? Why does the three-chord trick still win hearts, and the chain of 7ths, effective in Corelli, still make us swoon in Mahler’s 6th?
From the point of view of a composer, however, there are pressures to innovate of quite a different type. It is not because we need to advance the art, but because, on a personal, private level, repeating things we already know everything about is boring. A cook changes the menu, a painter wants to paint new things. We take a walk along a different path. And these impulses are personal; normal needs of any individual. A creative artist is an explorer, and you cannot explore a place you already know too well.
My conjecture is that, although for most of us, tonal music still holds unplumbed mysteries, Schoenberg had, as a result of his unique talent, so internalized and codified virtually every procedure in tonal harmony that it was all, for him, cliché. For him! But he was convinced that his private diagnosis of cliché was a cosmic perception about the entire art of music, and its state in history. Not all that surprising perhaps, mixing in Vienna with Mahler, Zemlinsky, Strauss, at the assumed epicenter of Art Music. And he was a powerful polemicist, author, and teacher.
Historians and critics jumped on the bandwagon since, whatever proletarian audiences may have thought of the new music, it perfectly meshed with the evolutionary theory of music, and soon the standard doctrines of: - this is the music of the future – composers are ahead of their time – Beethoven was hated at first – listen to it more and you’ll grow to love it – music will die if we do not support living composers - : all these tired old propaganda slogans, clichés every one, started to swirl. I humbly submit that all these slogans are patently untrue. I also believe that Schoenberg was a composer of genius.
(first posted Jan 2005)
©ajm 2005
-----------------------------------------------------
Here are links to
My Web Home Page
"La Grenouille dans le fauteuil" which is my general Blog
My Agent's web page and even to
The Milwaukee Symphony
-----------------------------------------------------
I admire Schoenberg, take every chance I can to perform his music, and love doing so. I am in no way an opponent of his music. But that does not prevent my ears from understanding how Schoenberg’s music is baffling and hateful to most lovers of classical music. Not all; but his admirers are a distinct minority.
For such perceived hostility in artworks to endure for 100 years is a prodigious achievement. Most new music becomes familiar after a while. Sooner or later Stravinsky and Bartok don’t sound so bad; nor do Berio or Ligeti, Berg or Webern. Even Stockhausen has a sort of quaintness, and Boulez’s Le Marteau sans Maître is positively yummy. But people in general do not get used to Schoenberg. As Philip Larkin put it, writing of Charlie Parker, it sounds crazy when it is new, and then after you get used to it, it still sounds crazy.
To achieve that, Schoenberg must have hit upon the very taproot of normal musical meaning. The chromatic scale of 12 notes is the universe from which music from Monteverdi through Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, and Schoenberg is drawn. It is a product of nature, derivable entirely from the two intervals of octave and 5th. That is all you need, the ratios 1:2 and 2:3, plus a little practical fudging. The glory that is western harmony, (pre-Schoenberg,) involves selecting from these 12; never having all 12 of them in play at the same time. Chords, scales, modes; all these arise from excluding some of the notes for a while. Hence “wrong notes.” Schoenberg’s inspired depth-charge was to require that all possible “wrong notes” be in play all the time. That very quickly shatters any emerging harmony of a tonal or modal type. Why did he do this? It seems odd, perverse, especially considering his huge harmonic skill, as demonstrated in Verklärte Nacht, Gurrelieder, etc.
The standard explanation is historical determinism: - the argument that musical style inescapably evolves through time, and tonal music was “worn out”, not valid any longer.
A moment’s reflection shows that all this is pure nonsense. If tonality doesn’t work anymore, why do musicians and listeners (and even composers) still adore Mozart and Bach? Is Mozart a clear advance on Bach? Why do Wagner’s Music Dramas leave ever-increasing audiences spellbound and emotionally transported? Why are Schubert’s melodies still so perfect? Why does the three-chord trick still win hearts, and the chain of 7ths, effective in Corelli, still make us swoon in Mahler’s 6th?
From the point of view of a composer, however, there are pressures to innovate of quite a different type. It is not because we need to advance the art, but because, on a personal, private level, repeating things we already know everything about is boring. A cook changes the menu, a painter wants to paint new things. We take a walk along a different path. And these impulses are personal; normal needs of any individual. A creative artist is an explorer, and you cannot explore a place you already know too well.
My conjecture is that, although for most of us, tonal music still holds unplumbed mysteries, Schoenberg had, as a result of his unique talent, so internalized and codified virtually every procedure in tonal harmony that it was all, for him, cliché. For him! But he was convinced that his private diagnosis of cliché was a cosmic perception about the entire art of music, and its state in history. Not all that surprising perhaps, mixing in Vienna with Mahler, Zemlinsky, Strauss, at the assumed epicenter of Art Music. And he was a powerful polemicist, author, and teacher.
Historians and critics jumped on the bandwagon since, whatever proletarian audiences may have thought of the new music, it perfectly meshed with the evolutionary theory of music, and soon the standard doctrines of: - this is the music of the future – composers are ahead of their time – Beethoven was hated at first – listen to it more and you’ll grow to love it – music will die if we do not support living composers - : all these tired old propaganda slogans, clichés every one, started to swirl. I humbly submit that all these slogans are patently untrue. I also believe that Schoenberg was a composer of genius.
(first posted Jan 2005)
©ajm 2005
-----------------------------------------------------
Here are links to
My Web Home Page
"La Grenouille dans le fauteuil" which is my general Blog
My Agent's web page and even to
The Milwaukee Symphony
-----------------------------------------------------
posted by Andrew Massey at
8/16/2005 12:37:00 PM
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