Arnold Schoenberg, in full Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg, Schoenberg also spelled Schönberg, (born September 13, 1874, Vienna, Austria—died July 13, 1951, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), Austrian-American composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was also one of the most-influential teachers of the 20th century; among his most-significant pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

Early Life
Schoenberg’s father, Samuel, owned a small shoe shop in the Second, then predominantly Jewish, district, of Vienna. Neither Samuel nor his wife, Pauline (née Nachod), was particularly musical, although, like most Austrians of their generation, they enjoyed music. There were, however, two professional singers in the family—Heinrich Schoenberg, the composer’s brother, and Hans Nachod, his cousin. Nachod, a gifted tenor, was the first to sing the role of Waldemar in Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder (first performed 1900–01).

Before he was nine years old, Schoenberg had begun composing little pieces for two violins, which he played with his teacher or with a cousin. A little later, when he acquired a viola-playing classmate, he advanced to the writing of string trios for two violins and viola. His meeting with Austrian musician and physician Oskar Adler (later the famed astrologer and author of The Testament of Astrology) was a decisive one. Adler encouraged him to learn the cello so that a group of friends could play string quartets. Schoenberg promptly began composing quartets, although he had to wait for the “S” volume of Meyers Grosses Konversations-Lexikon (an encyclopaedia that his family was buying on the installment plan) to find out how to construct the sonata-form first movement of such works.

Schoenberg’s father died in 1890. To help the family finances, the young man worked as a bank clerk until 1895. During that time he came to know Alexander von Zemlinsky, a rising young composer and conductor of the amateur orchestra Polyhymnia in which Schoenberg played cello. The two became close friends, and Zemlinsky gave Schoenberg instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and composition. That resulted in Schoenberg’s first publicly performed work, the String Quartet in D Major (1897). Highly influenced by the style of Johannes Brahms, the quartet was well received by Viennese audiences during the 1897–98 and 1898–99 concert seasons.
















 

First Major Works
A great step forward took place in 1899, when Schoenberg composed the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”), a highly romantic piece of program music (unified by a nonmusical story or image). It was based on a poem of the same name by Richard Dehmel and was the first piece of program music written for such an ensemble. Its programmatic nature and its harmonies outraged conservative program committees. Consequently, it was not performed until 1903, when it was violently rejected by the public. Since then it has become one of Schoenberg’s most-popular compositions, both in its original form and in Schoenberg’s later versions for string orchestra.

In 1901 Schoenberg moved to Berlin, hoping to better his financial position. He married Mathilde von Zemlinsky, his friend’s sister, and began working as musical director at the Überbrettl, an intimate artistic cabaret. He wrote many songs for that group, among them, Nachtwandler (“Sleepwalker”) for soprano, piccolo, trumpet, snare drum, and piano (published 1969). Schoenberg found his position at Überbrettl insufficiently rewarding, both artistically and materially. German composer Richard Strauss helped him to get a job as composition teacher at the Stern Conservatory and used his influence to secure him the Liszt stipend awarded by the Society for German Music. With the encouragement of Strauss, Schoenberg composed his only symphonic poem for large orchestra, Pelleas und Melisande (1902–03), after the drama by Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck. Back in Vienna in 1903, Schoenberg became acquainted with the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, who became one of his strongest supporters.

Schoenberg’s next major work was the String Quartet No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 7 (1904). The composition’s high density of musical texture and its unusual form (the conventional four movements of a “classic” string quartet blended into one vast structure played without interruption for nearly 50 minutes) caused difficulties in comprehension at the work’s premiere in 1907. He used a similar form in the more-concise Chamber Symphony in E Major (1906), a work novel in its choice of instrumental ensemble. Turning away from the “monster” post-Romantic orchestra, Schoenberg wrote for a chamberlike group of 15 instruments.

During those years, Schoenberg’s activity as a teacher became increasingly important. The young Austrian composers Alban Berg and Anton Webern began studying with him in 1904; both gained from him the impetus to their notable careers, and Schoenberg, in turn, benefitted greatly from the intellectual stimulation of his loyal disciples. He stated at the beginning of his Harmonielehre (1911; “Theory of Harmony”), “This book I have learned from my pupils.” His great gifts as teacher are manifest in that work as well as in his textbooks—Models for Beginners in Composition (1942), Structural Functions of Harmony (1954), Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint (1963), and Fundamentals of Musical Composition (1967).
Evolution From Tonality
Until that period all of Schoenberg’s works had been strictly tonal; that is, each of them had been in a specific key, centred upon a specific tone. However, as his harmonies and melodies became more complex, tonality became of lesser importance. The process of “transcending” tonality can be observed at the beginning of the last movement of his Second String Quartet (1907–08). That work is innovative in another respect, too: it is the first string quartet to include a vocal part. The opening words of the Finale, “Ich fühle Luft von anderen Planeten” (“I feel air from another planet”), by the poet Stefan George, have often been symbolically interpreted in the light of Schoenberg’s breakthrough to a new world of sound.
On February 19, 1909, Schoenberg finished the first of three piano pieces that constitute his opus 11, the first composition ever to dispense completely with “tonal” means of organization. Such pieces, in which no one tonal centre exists and in which any harmonic or melodic combination of tones may be sounded without restrictions of any kind, are usually called atonal, although Schoenberg preferred “pantonal.” Atonal instrumental compositions are usually quite short; in longer vocal compositions, the text serves as a means of unification. Schoenberg’s most-important atonal compositions include Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16 (1909); the monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17 (1924; “Expectation”), a stage work for soprano and orchestra; Pierrot Lunaire, 21 recitations (“melodramas”) with chamber accompaniment, Op. 21 (1912); Die glückliche Hand, Op. 18 (1924; “The Hand of Fate”), drama with music; and the unfinished oratorio Die Jakobsleiter (begun 1917; “Jacob’s Ladder”).

Schoenberg’s earlier music was by that time beginning to find recognition. On February 23, 1913, his Gurrelieder (begun in 1900) was first performed in Vienna. The gigantic cantata calls for unusually large vocal and orchestral forces. Along with Mahler’s Eighth Symphony (Symphony of a Thousand), the Gurrelieder represents the peak of the post-Romantic monumental style. Gurrelieder was received with wild enthusiasm by the audience, but the embittered Schoenberg could no longer appreciate or acknowledge their response.

In 1911, unable to make a decent living in Vienna, he had moved to Berlin. He remained there until 1915, when, because of wartime emergency, he had to report to Vienna for military service. He spent brief periods in the Austrian Army in 1916 and 1917, until he was finally discharged on medical grounds. During the war years he did little composing, partly because of the demands of army service and partly because he was meditating on how to solve the vast structural problems that had been caused by his move away from tonality. He wanted to find a new principle of unification that would help him to control the rich harmonic and melodic resources now at his disposal. Near the end of July 1921, Schoenberg told a pupil, “Today I have discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years.” That “something” was a method of composition with 12 tones related only to one another. Schoenberg had just begun working on his Piano Suite, Op. 25, the first 12-tone piece.

In the 12-tone method, each composition is formed from a special row or series of 12 different tones. That row may be played in its original form, inverted (played upside down), played backward, or played backward and inverted. It may also be transposed up or down to any pitch level. All of it, or any part of it, may be sounded successively as a melody or simultaneously as a harmony. In fact, all harmonies and melodies in the piece must be drawn from that row. Although such a method might seem extremely restrictive, that did not prove to be the case. Using his technique, Schoenberg composed what many consider to be his greatest work, the opera Moses und Aron (begun in 1930).

For the rest of his life, Schoenberg continued to use the 12-tone method. Occasionally he returned to traditional tonality, for, as he liked to say, “There is still much good music to be written in C major.” Among those later tonal works are the Suite for String Orchestra (1934), the Variations on a Recitative for Organ, Op. 40 (1940), and the Theme and Variations for Band, Op. 43A (1943).

After World War I Schoenberg’s music won increasing acclaim, although his invention of the 12-tone method aroused considerable opposition. In 1923 his wife, Mathilde, died after a long illness, and a year later he married Gertrud Kolisch, the sister of the violinist Rudolf Kolisch. His success as a teacher continued to grow. In 1925 he was invited to direct the master class in musical composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin.

It seemed that Schoenberg had reached the peak of his career. His teaching was well received, and he was writing important works: the Third String Quartet, Op. 30 (1927); the opera Von Heute auf Morgen, Op. 32 (1928–29, first performed in 1930; “From Today to Tomorrow”); Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, Op. 34 (1929–30; “Accompaniment to a Film Scene”). But political events proved his undoing. The rise of National Socialism in Germany in 1933 led to the extirpation of Jewish influence in all spheres of German cultural life. Schoenberg was dismissed from his post at the academy. He immigrated to the United States via Paris, where he formally returned to the Jewish faith, which he had abandoned in his youth. In November 1933 he took a position at the Malkin Conservatory in Boston, and in 1934 he moved to California, where he spent the remainder of his life, becoming a citizen of the United States in 1941. He held major teaching positions at the University of Southern California (1935–36) and at the University of California at Los Angeles (1936–44).














 

Schoenberg’s major American works show ever-increasing mastery and freedom in the handling of the 12-tone method. Some of the outstanding compositions of his American period are the Violin Concerto, Op. 36 (1934–36); the Fourth String Quartet, Op. 37 (1936); the Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942); and the Fantasia for violin with piano accompaniment, Op. 47 (1949). He also wrote a number of works of particular Jewish interest, including Kol Nidre for mixed chorus, speaker, and orchestra, Op. 39 (1938)—the Kol Nidre is a prayer sung in synagogues at the beginning of the service on the eve of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)—and the Prelude to the “Genesis Suite” for orchestra and mixed chorus, Op. 44 (1945).

On July 2, 1951, Hermann Scherchen, the eminent conductor of 20th-century music, conducted the “Dance Around the Gold Calf” from Moses und Aron at Darmstadt, then in West Germany, as part of the program of the Summer School for New Music. The telegram telling of the great success of that performance was one of the last things to bring Schoenberg pleasure before his death 11 days later.