Unit 8- Professor Laura Koenig PDF

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Professor Laura Koenig...

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The focus of Unit 8 is the music and biographies of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. You are responsible for the material on blue linked external sites unless I state otherwise. You do not, however, have to follow any further links on these external sites. Red links will take you to source material. Red is also the default color for this blackboard style for attachments and menus. The blue links will be underlined in red. I will introduce important terms with bold face print. I have stopped using blue for the listening excerpts, as these can no longer be embedded the same way as last semester on blackboard. Unit aims 1.

To study the “Emancipation of the dissonance” or atonality as it arose in the music and aesthetics of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. 2. To study the biography, musical style, and influence of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Learning objectives By the end of this unit: 1.

Students will have familiarity with the Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern within the context of the early 20th century. 2. Students will be familiar with the major causes and ramifications of Word War I (and particularly on the biographies of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern)

Mystery Pieces This page explores two string quartets by the same composer. Mystery Piece #1: a single-movement work written in 1905, Webern, Lansamer Satz, slow movement Texture: string quartet; parts balanced; wide variety in dynamics and tone

colors, but they in the late 19th century tradition of Brahms or Mahler: arco vs. pizzicato, adding mutes to change tone quality, tremolos. Harmony: expanded (exemplified at the end of exposition and at 7:20 ), but functional tonality; many pedal points (such as 1:28 and 2:27) Rhythm: wide variety of rhythmic values; clear meter, but

some hemiolas and many triplets adding metric interest (as in Schumann and Brahms) Melody: melodic shape tends to sequence upwards whether P T or S; clear phrases although ideas sometimes elide (phrases ending overlaps with the start of a new phrase) (Brahms)

This work also demonstrates what the composer and theorist Arnold Schoenberg called, "developing variation": “Music of the homophonic-melodic style of composition, that is, music with a main theme, accompanied by and based on harmony, produces its material by, as I call it, developing variation. This means that variation of the features of a basic unit produces all the thematic formulations which provide for fluency, contrasts, variety, logic and unity, on the one hand, and character, mood, expression, and every needed differentiation, on the other hand—thus elaborating the idea of the piece.” (Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea) Form: Sonata Form with no development P (Principal Key) is Eb Major; opening theme is repeated in the same key, but completely reworked. In fact, the reworking of this opening theme throughout the piece makes this in excellent example of Schoenberg's "developing variation" concept. T (Transition) at 1:58 is also an upward sequence. S (Secondary Key) is C Major or VI at 2:34. The Recapitulation begins at 4:40 in the home key, and at 6:32, the S theme returns in the home key.

Mystery Piece #2: the first of five short movements written in 1909, Webern, Fünf Sätze (or Five Movements) Op. 5, mvt I Heftig Bewegt (intensely/fiercly emotional/moving)

Texture: string quartet; parts balanced; even greater variety in dynamics and

tone colors than the first piece, including pointicello, col legno, and harmonics. These are techniques used as early as Beethoven and Brahms, but now they are absorbed into the piece as opposed to being used for special effects.

Harmony: no tonal center; highly dissonant

Rhythm: changing and obscured meters; polyrhythms (different rhythms superimposed over one another); silene

Melody: short (“snippets”) of melodic idea; wide range; angular; motives often presented in imitative counterpoint

Form: through composed; very little frame of reference

Webern and Alban Berg were two of Schoenberg's earliest and most famous students. The three composers comprised the Second Viennese School of composition, although they were recognized as simply the Viennese School as all three had roots in Vienna. The distinction of "second" is in comparison to the grouping of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven into the "First" Viennese School. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, however, did not think of themselves as a single aesthetic group, and they spanned three generations. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern were close in age. Berg and Webern embraced Schoenberg's expansion of tonality to the point of losing all tonal reference. Eventually, all three adopted Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. In fact, we shall see how Webern became even more influential than Schoenberg to young European composers after World War II. Listenings 35: Anton Webern, Langsamer Satz 1905 Listening 36, Webern, Fünf Sätze (or Five Movements) Op. 5, mvt I Heftig Bewegt (intensely/fiercly emotional/moving) 1909

Emancipation of the dissonance Bernstein uses "atonality" to describe music with no tonal center. This was often a negative label placed on this style. Schoenberg preferred "the emancipation of the dissonance." Make note of how Bernstein compares a piece by Schoenberg to Wagner's Tristan: "no escaping the past." Thus, Schoenberg sought a method to remove tonal references. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern and others who explored high dissonance and disjoint melodies are often called musical expressionism: "Early-twentieth-century term derived from art, in which music avoids all traditional forms of 'beauty' in order to express deep personal feelings through exaggerated gestures, angular melodies, and extreme dissonance." (Norton Online Glossary)

World War I who was fighting whom, causes of the Russian Revolution, harsh reality of trench warfare, losses to civilian lives and property, impact of the United States entering the war, basics of the Treaty of Versailles. This documentary is short and every aspect of the war is oversimplified including the narrative that the Treaty of Versailles single-handedly paved the way to World War II. While this was certainly the view of Hitler, the Nazi Party, and many Germans and Austrians, the outbreak of World War II was not the inevitable outcome of the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles itself was never fully implemented. The United States under President Warren Harding also refused to participate in the League of Nations, taking pressure off Germany's rebound as an economic and military force. This was compounded by the world-wide depression of the late 1920s through the 1930s.

Arnold Schoenberg

1874: Arnold Schönberg is born on 13 September, the son of Samuel and Pauline Schönberg (née Nachod) in Vienna 1883: ”As a child of less than nine years, I had started composing little, and later large pieces for two violins, in imitation of such music

as I used to play with my teacher or with a cousin of mine. When I could play violin duets of Viotti, Pleyel and others, I imitated their style." ("Introduction to My Four Quartets" 1949) 1891: Leaves school at 22 January and begins an apprenticeship with the private bank of Werner & Co. "All my compositions up to about my seventeenth year were no more than imitations of such music as I had been able to become acquainted with – violin duets and duet-arrangements of operas and the repertory of military bands that played in public parks." ("My Evolution" 1949) 1898: Converts from the Jewish religion to Protestantism. 1899: Writes the String Sextet "Verklärte Nacht" op. 4 ["Transfigured Night"] after a poem by Richard Dehmel. 1901: On 18 October Schönberg marries Mathilde Zemlinsky in Vienna‘s inner city Lutheran church. 1902: Birth of his daughter Gertrude on January 8. At the recommendation of Richard Strauss, Schönberg is invited to teach harmony at the Stern conservatory in Berlin. 1903: Meets Gustav Mahler who became Schoenberg’s mentor, although he would later take issue with Schoenberg’s shift away from tonality. Mahler told Schoenberg he could not create sounds in his head from the score to Five Pieces for Orchestra (1908).

1904: During the winter semester of 1904/05, Schönberg teaches at the "Schwarzwald School" located in the Wallnerstrasse of the Kohlmarkt. Since fall, Alban Berg and Anton Webern are among his students. 1908: His wife Mathilde has an affair with Schoenberg’s close friend, painter Richard Gerstl. After Mathilde returns to her husband, Gerstl commits suicide. 1912: World première of the Fünf Orchesterstücke [Five orchestral pieces] op. 16, under the direction of Sir Henry Wood, in London on 3 September. World première of "Pierrot lunaire" op. 21 in Berlin on 16 October. 1911: Schoenberg dedicates Harmonielehre, his first reatise on harmony, to the memory of Gustav Mahler.

World War I 1916: From March to May, attends the Reserve Officers School in Bruck and is transferred to the Alternate Company in July due to breathing difficulty. Temporarily released from duty in October upon a request by the Viennese Composers’ Union. 1917: Called up into the army again in September and released from duty definitively in December because physically unfit for duty. 1923: Schönberg’s [first] wife Mathilde dies on 18 Oktober. 1924: On 28 August, weds Gertrud Kolisch, sister of his pupil Rudolf Kolisch, in the Mödling Lutheran Parish Church. Special concerts in honor of his 50th birthday. 1925: In August is appointed Director of a Master Class in Composition at the Berlin Arts Academy. Antisemitic protests in the Zeitschrift für Musik in reaction to Schönberg‘s professorship. 1930: In October gives a lecture in Prague on "New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea." 1932: Primarily for political reasons postpones his return to Berlin. Anti-semitic resistance on the part of the Prussian Academy is disguised as formal problems with him. 1933: Leaves Berlin. Excluded from the Academy by the Nazis. Reconverts to Judaism in Paris in July. Travels to the United States with his wife and daughter. Arrives in New York on 31 October. Teaches in Boston and New York at the Malkin Conservatory. 1935: Lectures at the University of Southern California. Teaches privately. John Cage becomes his pupil. 1936: Is named professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Settles in Brentwood Park, West Los Angeles, where he lives for the remainder of his life. Befriends George Gershwin. 1943: Teaches at summer courses. Works on music-pedagogical texts. Designs model of a mechanism for drawing musical staves.

1944: Schönberg is named professor emeritus of the University of California at Los Angeles. He continues to teach privately. 1951: Is named Honorary President of the Israeli Academy of Music in Jerusalem. Arnold Schönberg dies on 13 July in Los Angeles.

Klangfarbenmelodie In his string sextet Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night") of 1899, Arnold Schoenberg sought to meld the complex harmonic language of Richard Wagner with the melodic development of Johannes Brahms. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Schoenberg further explored the possibilities of unifying pieces with timbre motives or klangfarbenmelodie (literally tone color melody). In his first harmony text written in 1911, Schoenberg wrote: ”A tone has three qualities: pitch, color, and volume. A tone is now measured only in one of these three—in what we call pitch. Measurements in the other dimensions have been till now virtually unknown, and their organization into a system has not been attempted at all. The value of tone color, the second dimension of a note, thus languishes in an even more undeveloped and unordered state than the aesthetic valuation of the aforementioned harmonies. Still, we continue to link or juxtapose these sounds purely on the basis of feeling, and it has never occurred to anyone to demand a theory to establish laws behind these usages. We cannot have a theory yet, even provisionally, and we see that things continue without one. Perhaps we could differentiate more finely if attempts at measuring this second dimension could produce tangible results. Perhaps not. In any event, our attention to tone color becomes ever sharper, and the possibility to order and describe it moves ever closer. With this, restrictive theories also approach. Preliminarily we judge the artistic effect of these relations only by feeling. How this relates to the essence of nature’s sounds we don’t know, but we suspect it does, and we write series of tone colors without concern, successions that still somehow satisfy our feeling for beauty. What system underlies these series?" "I cannot completely accept a differentiation between tone color and pitch, as it is customarily called. I find that a tone defines itself by its color, of which pitch is a dimension. Tone color is thus the larger region, and pitch only a district. Pitch is nothing more than tone color measured in a different direction. If it is possible to create shapes from tone colors that are distinguished according to pitch, what we call melodies (successions whose coherence resembles that of ideas), then it must also be possible to create such successions from tone colors in the other dimension, from that which we simply call tone color per se, whose interrelation has a kind of logic that is entirely equivalent to the logic that suffices in pitch melody. This seems a futuristic fantasy and may be one. But I firmly believe that it can be brought about. I firmly believe that it is capable of enormously enhancing the sensual, spiritual, and intellectual delight that art affords. I firmly believe that it will bring us to the stuff of dreams and expand our contact with that which seems inanimate by giving life from of our lives to that which seems dead since we have so slender a connection with it.

"Tone color melodies! What refined senses can perceive them; what highly developed spirit can find pleasure in such subtle things! Who dares to ask here for theory!"

Written for large symphony orchestra with expanded woodwinds and percussion; added celeste. I. ”Vorgefühle", Sehr rasch ("Premonitions", very fast) II. ”Vergangenes", Mäßige Viertel ("The Past", moderate quarter notes) III. ”Farben", Mäßige Viertel (“Colors”) Schoenberg later added “Summer Morning on a Lake” to the movement’s title. IV. ”Peripetie", Sehr rasch ("Peripeteia", very fast) V. ”Das obligate Rezitativ", Bewegte Achtel ("The Obbligato Recitative", moving eighth notes) “Schoenberg first introduced the Five Pieces (premiered in 1912, three years after their composition) without any programmatic titles. As Allen Shawn points out in Arnold Schoenberg's Journey (a wonderfully sympathetic survey of the artist and his world), many of his other experimentations in these crucial years involved texts that to some extent determined the musical shape (e.g., Pierrot Lunaire); of his compositions of the time without texts, Five Pieces ‘are unique in approaching traditional concert length.’ “‘However, Schoenberg was later reluctantly persuaded by his publisher to provide brief titles. ‘Premonitions’ (No. 1) ushers in the language of unrelenting tension and continual development that the composer was at this point following instinctively. ‘Things Past’ (No. 2), with its morereadily recognizable motif of yearning and hint of a key (D minor), looks back to the cultural and personal past (the celesta's filigree later in the piece conjures the innocence of childhood) - but with sober melancholy. Schoenberg balances a kind of stasis against subtly shifting movement in ‘Colors' (No. 3), foregrounding timbre itself as the essential parameter and blending instrumental colors like a painter. The violent motion of ‘Premonitions' returns in the incessant variety of ‘Peripeteia' (No. 4) - classical Greek for the ‘point of no return’ in ancient tragedy, which here perhaps signifies Schoenberg's awareness of the significance of his musical experiments. Enigmatically titled, ‘The Obbligato Recitative’ (No. 5) suggests the interplay between ‘leading voice’ and accompaniment that characterizes Schoenberg's intense style of polyphony.” Listening excerpt 37: Schoenberg, No. 3 "Farben" from Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909) Texture: generally explores very soft dynamics; klangfarbenmelodie Harmony: no tonal center, but this is not twelve tone. Rhythm: wide variety and often highly complex

Melody: short snippets of ideas; many canons (motives in imitation), but not easy to hear; ostinatos Form: A B A' (broad ternary with returning A section more of a change of mood than exact return) Youtube video with a score--difficult to read exact notes, but this will give you an idea of the orchestration and buried contrapuntal sections often in canon (exact imitation)

Interview with Arnold Schoenberg -the changing definition of consonance vs. dissonance.

-the works of past composers such as Bach and Beethoven.

-his process of composing

-the expressive capabilities of music

-folk and jazz music

-Soviet composers (we will be studying this in a future unit)

-the concept of the "starving" artist

Pg 12 interview

While, the Waltz that ends Opus 23 is his first movement using the 12-tone system, Suite for Piano, Op. 25 (1921-23 ) is Schoenberg's first piece using 12-tone technique throughout. After Word War I, many composers opted for neo-classicism or a return to older forms or tonal systems. While this piece certainly does not do the latter, it recalls a baroque suite: I. Präludium II. Gavotte

III. Musette IV. Intermezzo V. Menuett. Trio VI. Gigue Listening 38: Schoenberg, Suite of Piano, Op. 25 Menuett/Trio Schoenberg: Suite for Piano, Op.25 (Boffard) The form follows a traditional menuet: A B A with each large section divided into two sections. The first has a literal repeat of the first section, and the B section repeats both. Schoenberg even sets the A section predominantly in 3/4 meter like the traditional dance. The short B section contrasts greatly in dynamics and rhythm. The left and right hand form a canon, the melodies inverted from one another. ______________________________________________________________________________ Alan Berg (1885-1935) was the youngest of three composers, along with his teacher Arnold Schoenberg and colleague Anton von Webern, known as the “Second Viennese School.” The three are most closely associated with the musical stylistic-compositional succession from late chromatic tonality to “atonal” (from 1908) through “serial” and “twelve-tone” music (from 1923). Living most of his life in Vienna, Berg was little known until the success of his first opera, Wozzeck (premiered in 1925). His fourteen major compositions fall into three periods: the first including the Piano Sonata, op. 1, and the first three of Four Songs, op. 2 (1904–1910); the second encompassing the atonal final song of Opus 2 through Wozzeck, op. 7 (1910–1925); and a final period of works without opus numbers (1925–1935) incorporating serial and twelvetone techniques, from the Chamber Concertothrough his second opera Lulu and his last work, the Violin Concerto.

He adapted Schoenberg’s innovations to a language based on interval cycles and symmetry as described by George Perle in “Berg’s Master Array of the Interval Cycles” (1977), and his music combines autobiographical tendencies recalling those of Mahler and Schumann, including public and private references, a strong lyric and dramatic sensibility from the German Lieder and opera traditions, and a deep concern with symbols, numerology, cryptograms, and fatalistic elements. His student, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno in his monograph, Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, defined the paradox of Berg’s obsessive attention to the details of the “smallest” linking passages that continually dissolve yet function within expansive gestures and forms. A brilliant writer, polemicist, and analyst of his own and

others’ music—particularly that of Schoenberg—as well as a p...