Schoenberg, Webern

[Daniel Wolf, TD 219.6]

> Schoenberg's historical conjectures are not applied to any
> repertoire prior to this scale; indeed, he scarcely knew any
> repertoire prior to Sebastian Bach.

This is a point well worth emphasizing. Schoenberg's theoretical
ideas were based on a study of a very limited repertoire which
was almost entirely German (the only non-German piece I can
remember him referring to is one short Bartok example) and
included only the so-called 'common-practice' period.

Webern studied Renaissance music and combined Schoenberg's ideas
with techniques he learned principally from Heinrich Isaac
(on whose work he wrote his doctoral dissertation), but altho
this influence has been studied in terms of Webern's use of canon
and other rhythmic/motivic devices, as far as I know there has
been very little investigation of how these musicological studies
may have influenced his harmonic vocabulary.

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
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[me, monz, TD 220.8]
> Schoenberg's theoretical ideas were based on a study of a very
> limited repertoire which was almost entirely German (the only
> non-German piece I can remember him referring to is one short
> Bartok example)

Sorry - this is specifically true only of his _Harmonielehre_
[1911].

In _Structural Functions of Harmony_ [published after his death
in 1951], he also includes examples from Bizet, Chopin, Debussy,
Dvorak, Franck, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky (one each).

Even this book, however, uses predominantly German music examples,
and Schoenberg's harmonic theories, excluding the 12-tone method
itself, were already fully developed by 1911.

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
--------------------------------------------------

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