Life and Important Facts about Composer Arnold Schoenberg from our Know the Great Composers and Classical Musicians Series.
Arnold Schoenberg was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He revolutionized music with his innovative methods of composition, such as atonality, serialism and the 12-tone technique. He was also a prolific teacher, writer and painter, who had a profound impact on many artists and thinkers of his time and beyond. In this blog post, we will explore some aspects of his life and work, and what we can learn from him.
Schoenberg was born in 1874 in Vienna, Austria, into a lower middle-class Jewish family. He showed an early interest in music and began composing at the age of eight. He taught himself violin, piano and harmony, and later studied with some prominent musicians, such as Alexander von Zemlinsky and Max Reger. He was influenced by the Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner, but also by the expressionist movement in German poetry and art.
A few interesting fun facts about Schoenberg:
- He was a self-taught painter who created many expressionist paintings and drawings. He also invented a notation system for painting with musical symbols.
- He was an avid chess player who often played with his friends and students. He even composed a musical piece based on a chess game he played with his son.
- He was superstitious and had a fear of the number 13. He believed that he would die in a year that was a multiple of 13, and he was right: he died on Friday the 13th of July, 1951, at the age of 76.
- He was a pioneer of electronic music who experimented with tape recorders and synthesizers. He also invented a musical instrument called the Trautonium, which could produce sounds similar to a theremin.
- Schoenberg was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works as degenerate music and forbade them from being published. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, becoming an American citizen in 1941.
Some of Schoenberg’s most important achievements are:
- He developed the concept of atonality, which means that music is not based on any fixed key or tonal center. He used this technique to create expressive and dissonant musical languages that reflected his emotions and ideas.
- He invented the 12-tone technique, which is a method of composing with an ordered series of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. He used this technique to create complex and coherent musical structures that avoided repetition and symmetry.
- He founded the Second Viennese School, which was a group of composers who followed his musical innovations and theories. The most famous members of this group were Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who were also his students.
- He composed many masterpieces in various genres and forms, such as orchestral works (Gurrelieder, Pelleas und Melisande), chamber music (Verklärte Nacht, String Quartets), vocal music (Pierrot Lunaire, A Survivor from Warsaw), opera (Erwartung, Moses und Aron), piano music (Piano Suite), and choral music (Kol Nidre).
What we can learn from Arnold Schoenberg:
- He was a visionary who challenged the conventions and traditions of his time. He created new musical possibilities and opened new horizons for future generations of composers.
- He was a versatile artist who explored different modes of expression and communication. He combined music with poetry, painting, drama, philosophy and religion.
- He was a lifelong learner who never stopped experimenting and developing his musical skills and knowledge. He constantly sought new sources of inspiration and information.
What music students can learn from Schoenberg:
- They can learn to appreciate the diversity and richness of musical styles and cultures. They can listen to Schoenberg’s music with an open mind and ear, and discover its beauty and meaning.
- They can learn to develop their own musical voice and creativity. They can use Schoenberg’s techniques as tools for composing their own original music.
- They can learn to analyze and understand music in depth. They can study Schoenberg’s scores and writings, and learn how he constructed his musical ideas and forms.
Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating operettas, while composing his own works, such as the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”) (1899). He later made an orchestral version of this, which became one of his most popular pieces. Great composers Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler recognized Schoenberg’s significance as a composer; Strauss when he encountered Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, and Mahler after hearing several of Schoenberg’s early works.
Arnold Schoenberg was a remarkable composer who changed the course of music history. His life and work offer us many lessons and insights that we can apply to our own musical endeavors. Schoenberg had developed the most influential version of the dodecaphonic (also known as twelve-tone) method of composition, which in French and English was given the alternative name serialism by René Leibowitz and Humphrey Searle in 1947. This technique was taken up by many of his students, who constituted the so-called Second Viennese School. They included Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and Hanns Eisler, all of whom were profoundly influenced by Schoenberg. He published a number of books, ranging from his famous Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony) to Fundamentals of Musical Composition, many of which are still in print and used by musicians and developing composers.
Images: From Public Domain
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