Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg stands among the most divisive personalities in music history. Spanning the close of the nineteenth century through the years after World War II, his output encompassed an extraordinary range of styles, eliciting fervent loyalty from his pupils, respect from colleagues such as Mahler, Strauss, and Busoni, furious protests from traditionalist listeners in Vienna, and outright animosity from numerous critics.

Schoenberg entered the world in Vienna on September 13, 1874, into a household with little musical inclination, and he acquired his skills largely on his own. Though he played the cello as an amateur, he displayed an early gift for writing music. Oskar Adler supplied basic training in harmony and counterpoint, while Alexander Zemlinsky, who later became his brother-in-law, provided brief lessons in composition. At the outset of his professional life he earned income by arranging operettas, yet the greater part of his existence centered on instruction, whether private or institutional, alongside the creation of his own scores. Relocations from one teaching post to another arose equally from the need to recover from recurring health problems that beset him and from opportunities that arose.

His initial compositions carry the clear imprint of elevated German Romanticism, nowhere more pronounced than in his first major score, Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899). Through pieces such as the Five Orchestral Pieces (1909) and the groundbreaking Pierrot lunaire (1912), Schoenberg entered a profoundly consequential period. Reviewers condemned this “atonal” music, a term he himself rejected in favor of “pantonal,” because it dispensed with conventional tonal organization. At the same time, the music’s intense expressive force and innovative techniques attracted a devoted circle of supporters. Foremost among his followers were Alban Berg and Anton Webern, each of whom rose to a stature comparable with that of their celebrated teacher. Together the three principals of the so-called Second Viennese School drove the evolution of atonal and twelve-tone composition throughout the first half of the twentieth century and afterward.

The Suite for Piano (1921–1923) holds pivotal status in Schoenberg’s catalogue as his earliest work written entirely in the twelve-tone method. Although that method formed only one element, and never the dominant one, of his broader language, it remains the trait most frequently linked to his name. He applied the technique, with considerable variety, across numerous genres, among them chamber scores such as the String Quartet No. 4 (1936) and the Fantasy for Violin and Piano (1949), orchestral works such as the Violin Concerto (1935–1936) and the Piano Concerto (1942), and choral pieces such as A Survivor from Warsaw (1947).

In 1933 Schoenberg escaped the toxic political climate of Europe and lived chiefly in the United States for the rest of his life, acquiring citizenship in 1941. During this period he occasionally reverted to explicit tonality, as in the Theme and Variations for band (1943), thereby confirming his allegiance to the great German musical lineage that reached back to Bach. He regarded the abandonment of tonality as a necessary and unavoidable stage in the development of Western music. Despite persistent hostile criticism, the composer whose career supplied the basis for one of the twentieth century’s major novels, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, continued to pursue his goals, maintaining that an irresistible creative force shaped his music. While controversy surrounding both the man and his works continues, Schoenberg is now recognized as one of the decisive figures in the history of music. A well-known triskaidekaphobe, he died in Los Angeles, California on July 13, 1951.