Second Viennese School - Roll Call

[Beef Oven!]

I have listened to a fair amount of Charles Wuorinen and Humphrey Searl over recent years. Unsurprisingly, I put these composers into the 2VS acolyte cluster.

But who else can we put there/in the 2SV school?

Can we make a list?

C'mon, we love a list!

Here goes ....

Starter for ten ....

Schoenberg
Berg
Webern
Wellesz
Ernst Krenek
Zemlinsky
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Elizabeth Lutyens
Alexander Goehr
Charles Wuorinen
Alistair Hinton (on account of his teachers and his string quintet (which has loads of LvB, too ))

And ....

Toch?
Anyone else?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Leopold Spinner
Roberto Gerhard
Nikos Skalkottas
Fritz Klein
Theodor Adorno
Erwin Stein
Stefan Wolpe
Dika Newlin
John Cage

... not sure why you include Wuorinen, but miss out Babbitt and Perle?

[Beef Oven!]

I listed off the top of me head!

I'm more surprised that I missed out Gerhard since I discovered him only a few years ago and his music has been regularly on my turntable over the last couple of years.

Wuorinen is soooo 2VS!!!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... and, if Zemlinsky, then also Schreker.
Paul Dessau


Hauer? (No, not Blade Runner! Josef, whose twelve-note Tropes were as influential on Berg and Krenek as Schoenberg's early Twelve-note Serialism.)


... and ... Stravinsky?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Wuorinen is soooo 2VS!!!!

Weeeeell - via Babbitt (who knew Arnie, Chuck didn't).

[Beef Oven!]

... and, if Zemlinsky, then also Schreker.
Paul Dessau

Tell me more, tell me more ......

Hauer? (No, not Blade Runner! Josef, whose twelve-note Tropes were as influential on Berg and Krenek as Schoenberg's early Twelve-note Serialism.)

Unknown to me ...

... and ... Stravinsky?

Behave!!!

[ardcarp]

I'm probably being thick, but can anyone explain the presence of Zemlinsky in the list? The Mermaid? Lyric Symphony? String Quartet?
I don't get it.

[Beef Oven!]

I'm probably being thick, but can anyone explain the presence of Zemlinsky in the list? The Mermaid? Lyric Symphony? String Quartet?
I don't get it.

I don't get it either, and I put him there ... (said in an Eric Morecambe voice)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Tell me more, tell me more ......

Paul Dessau was Brecht's collaborator after he parted company with Weill - he (Dessau) studied with Schönberg in the '20s, but Dessau - whilst revering Arnie - wanted to make explicit his anti-Nazi, pro-Socialist commitments, so adopted a more ... Weill-esque manner. Arnie wasn't pleased, believing at the time that Politics should be kept out of Music. (A few years later, when politics made a decisive interference in his own life, he changed his stance somewhat.) After the war, Dessau worked in East Germany - where he became, amongst other things, the teacher of David Blake.

My encounters with ...

Oh, crud!

I mean Hanns Eisler, don't I?!


It's late.

[Beef Oven!]

Paul Dessau was Brecht's collaborator after he parted company with Weill - he (Dessau) studied with Schönberg in the '20s, but Dessau - whilst revering Arnie - wanted to make explicit his anti-Nazi, pro-Socialist commitments, so adopted a more ... Weill-esque manner. Arnie wasn't pleased, believing at the time that Politics should be kept out of Music. (A few years later, when politics made a decisive interference in his own life, he changed his stance somewhat.) After the war, Dessau worked in East Germany - where he became, amongst other things, the teacher of David Blake.

My encounters with ...

Oh, crud!

I mean Hanns Eisler, don't I?!


It's late.

Thanks!

It's only half eleven!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm probably being thick, but can anyone explain the presence of Zemlinsky in the list? The Mermaid? Lyric Symphony? String Quartet?
I don't get it.

Well - he was Schönberg's only teacher, so the whole "School" begins with him!

Hauer isn't a very good composer, but he is important - initially a collaborator with Schönberg, they quickly fell out, each demanding to be recognized as the real "inventor" of Twelve-note composition - and associates of both had to keep their dealings with one secret from the other. (Daft; Schönberg was 70zillion times a better composer than Hauer - forgive the underestimation.) Nonetheless, real composers like Berg and Krenek were able to adopt Hauer's idea of "rotating tropes" into a much more useful system of rotating/permutating notes within a Twelve Note Series - and from Krenek, Stravinsky developed the vertical rotation of the individual hexachords of his late series, from which Babbitt, and Wuorinen ... and history. So batty old Jo (whose output in Opus numbers makes Segerstam's seem modest) deserves his place in history - if not the one that he thought he deserved.

[ardcarp]

I don't get it either, and I put him there ... (said in an Eric Morecambe voice)

Oh, I get it now! Zemlinsky wanted to use a tone-row but got them in the wrong order.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Opus 577???!!!"

[Beef Oven!]

"Opus 577???!!!"

I prefer his later works .....

[Serial_Apologist]

Eisler's "Palmstrom"* (1924)- the first 3VS work after Schoenberg's initiation of the 12-tone method to use it, even before Webern's. The piece is a satire on "Pierrot Lunaire", scored for the same instrumentation and using Sprechgesang.

*Umlaut? Computer says no.