|
Home | Archive
| In memoriam
Arnold Schoenberg 1874–1951
by Hubert Foss
Arnold Schoenberg,* who died at his home in
Los Angeles on 13 July at the age of seventy-six, stands out as
unique among musicians of the twentieth century, problematical,
even paradoxical. As composer, theorist, and teacher he won and
still retains a wide and highly intellectual following. Though acknowledged
by all, of whatever personal taste in music today, as of great importance,
he has never appealed to the wider public of concert-goers, nor
has his music ever won, in truth, that personal affection and delighted
study which lie between popularity and fanatical belief, though
the latest works have found a wider hearing. It would appear to
be more than a possibility that this music, with its disdain of
traditional sonority and its high mental purposes, will never find
its way to the larger public’s heart. Hostile demonstrations
dogged his concerts during many years. He may well be accounted
the most controversial composer of his time, and few have been the
subject of more literature since Wagner. As a theorist he is of
no less stature than as a composer; and the names of his pupils
and followers include outstanding musicians like Anton Webern, Alban
Berg, Egon Wellesz, Heinrich Jalowetz, Erwin Stein, Paul A. Pisk,
and Hans Eisler. Roberto Gerhard also studied with him for a time.
Arnold Schoenberg was born in Vienna on 13 September 1874 into
a family of Jewish faith. He early showed musical talent, but the
death of his father when he was sixteen years of age prevented all
further study, until Alexander Zemlinsky became interested in the
boy-composer. So close became his friendship and working association
with this far-sighted, practical conductor that in 1901 Schoenberg
married Zeminsky’s sister. The String Sextet ‘Verklärte
Nacht’, and the ‘Gurre-Lieder’ for vast choral and
orchestral forces (including a speaker) were composed in these early
years; but the latter was not scored finally and heard till some
years later (1913). They were not easy years for him, these two
in Berlin from 1901 to 1903; but he wrote on, amongst a daily round
of hack-jobs, and then went to Vienna to take up teaching. The early
string quartet and the choral piece ‘Friede auf Erden’
come from this time, and also the second string quartet and the
song-cycle ‘Das Buch der hängenden Gärten’.
The beginning of Schoenberg’s second period is heralded by
the quartet (op. 10), the monodrama ‘Erwartung’ (1909,
performed fifteen years later), and the outlining of another drama,
‘Die glückliche Hand’ (performed 1924). His famous
theoretical discussion, ‘Harmonielehre’, begun in 1910
or so, has been published in America but has hardly yet reached
an English public.
The American composer, Roger Sessions, has written: ‘music
stands under the signs of a crisis’ and later adds, ‘the
situation has been developing for decades’. Schoenberg’s
music has always shown this to be true, for it began with a post-Mahler,
somewhat morbid romanticism, and thence developed through various
intellectual strata to a height of remotely Alpine thought in purely
musical terms. We need not accept those terms artistically, but
we cannot ignore them.
The next important work was ‘Pierrot Lunaire’, a strange
but convincing cycle of twenty-one poems set for semi-spoken voice
(Sprechstimme) and five instruments. Here we meet a frank
Expressionism, which Schoenberg pursued also in the other medium
of painting.
By the 1912 Schoenberg had become a figure of international discussion
and debate. His ‘Five Orchestral Pieces’, for example,
were performed at the Promenades under Sir Henry Wood; The Times
found the work ‘like a poem in Tibetan’, the Globe
‘the wailings of a tortured soul’, the Musical
Times ‘vague and disjointed’ with matter ‘ugly
enough to suggest nothing but the distracting fancies of delirium’.
Not all later discoveries by critics of the original mind’s
out-pourings were equally condemnatory.
With freedom from conventional tonality and with a new, highly
organized technique, the composer embarked upon his second period,
of which ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ is an introductory sample.
The wind quintet and the third are characteristic, with other less
important works. The year 1918 saw Schoenberg back in Vienna, and
from 1920 onwards he was again prominent in the world of music.
This is no place to attempt the exposition of Schoenberg’s
conception of the twelve tones of the scale, ranged in equality,
both in counterpoint and harmony. Not only he himself, but many
of his followers, have given full account of his musical theories,
and later in his life he added considerably to those which are mostly
considered by his earlier followers; particularly on the question
of form, which was the main preoccupation of his third period.
Tribute of some length and importance was paid to Schoenberg on
his fiftieth birthday in 1924. He returned to Berlin as a Professor
of Composition at the Meisterschule of the Academy of Arts
about this same time; he also produced his third string quartet
and various other pieces. We find here an interesting turn to religious
subject for works, including ‘Der biblische Weg’ and the
oratorio ‘Die Jacobsleiter’. The latter was left unfinished,
but it has been announced that Dr. Karl Rankl was entrusted by the
composer with the task of its completion. Schoenberg, we are told,
abandoned the Jewish faith in 1921; but events in Germany were to
throw him back into its arms. On the advent of Hitler to supreme
power in 1933, Schoenberg (with others of his race) was forced to
leave Berlin, and once more followed his natal faith. A first retreat
through Paris led him to a successful reception in the New World,
where he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1934. His first
appointment was at the Malkin Conservatory, Boston. Ill-health made
him move to the more clement climate of Los Angeles, where he had
hopes and intentions of writing film music. He was, instead, appointed
professor of music in the University of Southern California. His
stay here was brief, and he was appointed to U.C.L.A. (University
of California at Los Angeles), where he attracted around him a strong
following of pupils and disciples. Distance combined with war conditions
and a natural self-sufficiency of temperament removed him far from
Europe, and even his old friends have had little contact from the
Master (for such he indubitably is) in latter years. Nor have his
later works, so important to the cognoscenti of his new world,
received enough performances on this side of the Atlantic for their
proper judgment. The first work to be written in America was a string
suite (1934), tonal in character, intended for use in school orchestras
and first played by Klemperer with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra.
This was followed by a violin concerto (1936), the fourth string
quartet (1936, given by the Kolisch Quartet in Los Angeles in 1937
and the B.B.C. in 1938), a second chamber symphony (1940) completing
the ‘Kammer-sinfonie’ of thirty-four years earlier, ‘Kol
Nidrei’ for chorus and orchestra (1938), Variations on a Recitative
for organ (1942), and a piano concerto (1942), performed by Steuermann
with Stokowski and the N.B.C. orchestra in 1944 and at the London
Promenades of 1945 by Kyla Greenbaum. The Theme and Variations for
Military Band (1943) was re-scored for orchestra and was played
at a B.B.C. symphony concert, where it aroused an unexpected warmth
in the audience. There is a string trio of 1946. Byron’s ‘Ode
to Napoleon’ Schoenberg set for reciter, string quartet and
piano; later he made a version for string orchestra which Rodzinsky
gave in 1944 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Karl Rankl
over here with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the late Cuthbert
Kelly speaking the verse. Another work for spoken voice is ‘A
Survivor from Warsaw’, composed in 1947 to the commission of
the Koussevitzky Foundation. The text was written by the composer
himself, and is based on a story told to him by a young man who
escaped from the battle of the Warsaw Ghetto; the work ends with
a Jewish hymn sung by male chorus. More than one performance has
been heard in England, with much public interest.
It is recorded in The Times that Schoenberg completed his
opera ‘Moses and Aaron’ not long before his death. He
retired from his University professorship at the age of seventy
in 1944, to devote himself entirely to composition; there seems
to be little doubt that he left some uncompleted manuscripts.
Two theoretical books by Schoenberg have been published in English,
the ‘Theory of Harmony’ (translated by Adams for the New
York Philosophical Library), and ‘Style and Idea’ (Williams
& Norgate 1951); the latter has caused considerable critical
discussion and dissent.
As his second wife Schoenberg married in 1923 the sister of the
well-known violinist, Rudolf Kolisch; he is survived by a son and
a daughter.
Of the greatness of Schoenberg’s mind, there can be no doubt.
The aesthetic value of his compositions and his ultimate position
in musical history, only future generations (more receptive and
less complacent than ours, perhaps) will be able to assess.
* In deference to American practice the composer
abandoned his spelling of the name as Schönberg in favour of
Schoenberg. [back]
Musical Times, September 1951
|
