Schoenberg

I've listened to "Transfigured Night," thought it was lovely...wasn't
that pre serial? I am no expert on the 12 tone row stuff, to be
sure...it's an interesting technique, and I've used it (in 19) for "The
Spider." I also played Webern's "5 Pieces for Orchestra" with the
Colorado Symph...interesting, but it didn't inspire me to listen to any
more Webern. Sure don't mean to try and scare anyone off listening to
anything...folks are all different, and need to come to their own
conclusions about what they like/don't like. Think for
themselves...Hstick

--- In tuning@y..., "Neil Haverstick" <STICK@U...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_21371.html#21371

> I've listened to "Transfigured Night," thought it was lovely
> ...wasn't that pre serial?

Yup. It's also pre-atonal, in fact, for Schoenberg, it's just
about pre-everything.

He had just assimilated Wagnerian style when he wrote
"Transfigured Night" (usually known by its German name
"Verklaerte Nacht"). Only two years before, he had finished
his String Quartet in D, which sounds very much like Dvorak.

Schoenberg assimilated the styles and techniques of his
contemporaries at an incredibly fast rate. His next big piece
after "Verklaerte Nacht" was "Gurrelieder", which takes
the Wagnerian style about as far as it can go.

The next after that was "Pelleas und Melisande", written while
he was close friends with Richard Strauss. In that piece, he
not only shows an assimilation of Strauss's style and
technique, but in fact already starts advancing beyond it
into uncharted harmonic territory.

A scant 3 years later, he wrote the "Chamber Symphony"
Joe recommended. That piece is permeated with chords
built entirely in perfect 4ths and motives based on the
whole-tone scale. Here he stretched tonality about as far
as it could go, and within two years was writing the first
atonal compositions.

It's no surprise that "Verklaerte Nacht" is the one Schoenberg
piece you liked - it's still by far his most popular piece.

> Sure don't mean to try and scare anyone off listening to
> anything...folks are all different, and need to come to their
> own conclusions about what they like/don't like. Think for
> themselves...Hstick

Hope you didn't take my other response to you in the wrong
spirit. It's just that Schoenberg's work is so often dismissed
by people who haven't really given it a chance. The guy was
a real genius, and an incredibly talented composer. That
he was able to fight the opposition he experienced in his
own lifetime and keep plowing ahead with his unique vision
says a lot for his character too.

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

--- In tuning@y..., "monz" <MONZ@J...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_21371.html#21381

>
> Hope you didn't take my other response to you in the wrong
> spirit. It's just that Schoenberg's work is so often dismissed
> by people who haven't really given it a chance.

Yes, and it's a shame that H'stick chose the _Violin Concerto_ as the
piece of Schoenberg he was trying to get "into." Fuhgeddaboudid.

_______ _____ _____
Joseph Pehrson