Arnold Schoenberg: 02–05.01.2017; 09–13.09.2024

[doversoul1]

Originally Posted by Serial_Apologist

There is an extensive discussion on the other thread

Yes indeed! I do hope Schoenberg sceptics are listening in, because DM seems to be making a very good job of de-mystifying this music, aided by some of the best recordings to this end. Or maybe it's just me saying this - Schoenberg's musical vocabulary having become home territory in so many ways for me after many years of listening. Hearing the first two chords of the orchestral Variations just now: an unresolved chromatic chord followed by a simple open fifth. In no way is the latter a resolution of its predecessor: each chord exists on equal terms with its neighbour, and this is no different in theory than parallel developments since late 19th century harmonic thinking, whether it be Satie's "Vexations" or Messiaen's "Le banquet Celeste", other than in its musical cultural provenance.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?16266-Music-in-Time-Breaking-Free

... but I think this Composer of the Week deserves a thread of its own.

The programme is indeed excellently produced and presented. I find the music I have heard so far very engaging which makes me wonder what I was scared of.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b086tbz0

[teamsaint]

Originally Posted by Serial_Apologist

There is an extensive discussion on the other thread

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?16266-Music-in-Time-Breaking-Free

... but I think this Composer of the Week deserves a thread of its own.

The programme is indeed excellently produced and presented. I find the music I have heard so far very engaging which makes me wonder what I was scared of.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b086tbz0

I thought FDR had sorted out the fear thing .....

Anyway DS, there was also some excellent discussion and guidance on this thread, in case you missed it.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?7694-Extraordinary-Listening

Hope its warmer down your way than it is here.

[Serial_Apologist]

Originally Posted by Serial_Apologist

There is an extensive discussion on the other thread

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?16266-Music-in-Time-Breaking-Free

... but I think this Composer of the Week deserves a thread of its own.

The programme is indeed excellently produced and presented. I find the music I have heard so far very engaging which makes me wonder what I was scared of.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b086tbz0

Thanks for the additional plug, dovers.

Schoenberg replied in the affirmative when asked by his commanding officer if he was the composer people were talking about, adding with heavy irony that somebody had to be!

I was a bit worried in advance of the week's programmes that each programme was to be starting off with early works before proceeding to those in his mature idioms; but in the end this probably worked out for the best, showing the clear continuity that characterises his output, from the more familiar to the most innovatory, given the common tendency to rubbish it all.

[Serial_Apologist]

What was starkly missing on this morning's Music Matters on the Second Viennese School was discussion of important figures who took different lessons from Schoenberg's and American classes, which would have given an enriched dimension to the narrow interpretation of the legacy, notwithstanding Nuria Nono Schoenberg's insightful contributions, and hopefully would have led to something more meaningful than the strange and lame non-sequitur with which Tom Service concluded the programme. Nowhere during the week supposedly devoted to the SVS did coverage extend beyond the three famous leading lights, thus severely limiting a brief which could and should at the very least have included such important figures as Cage, Eisler, Skalkottas, Seiber and Gerhard, and gone on to mention others who were among the first to take up 12-tone serial composition outside the direct lineage, such as Dallapiccola, Lutyens, Searle and Sessions, offering aural evidence in contradiction with the clichéd view of the Method as restrictive of the creative imagination, and thereby questioning the slanted opinions expressed by contributers other than Ms. Nono Schoenberg.

5 out of 10.

[french frank]

Nowhere during the week supposedly devoted to the SVS did coverage extend beyond the three famous leading lights, thus severely limiting a brief which could and should at the very least have included such important figures as […]

I don't know that that's a justifiable criticism of the narrower focus of Breaking Free. 'I'd really have liked to hear … ' is a reasonable response, but to concentrate on the central figures in the expectation that many listeners are being persuaded to listen to music that they've hitherto ignored or rejected seems fair enough. Unless you have saturation coverage extending over several weeks, you simply risk shallowness, I'd have thought.

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't know that that's a justifiable criticism of the narrower focus of Breaking Free. 'I'd really have liked to hear … ' is a reasonable response, but to concentrate on the central figures in the expectation that many listeners are being persuaded to listen to music that they've hitherto ignored or rejected seems fair enough. Unless you have saturation coverage extending over several weeks, you simply risk shallowness, I'd have thought.

IMV it would be impossible fairly to present that field of composers in any shallow way - a month's worth of programmes interlaced among the schdule would probably serve the purpose.

[BBMmk2]

Did anybody hear that marvellous transcription that Schoenberg made of JSB's Prelude & Fugue in Eb, BWV552, St Ann", yesterday, I think on Breakfast? OK some people say that they think the composer's original intentions are the right ones etc, but I always think that surely, with Bach et al made many arrangements of other people's music, as did Stravinsky, it means a purely lack of imagination if the music just stayed in one kind of instrumentation?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Did anybody hear that marvellous transcription that Schoenberg made of JSB's Prelude & Fugue in Eb, BWV552, St Ann", yesterday, I think on Breakfast? OK some people say that they think the composer's original intentions are the right ones etc, but I always think that surely, with Bach et al made many arrangements of other people's music, as did Stravinsky, it means a purely lack of imagination if the music just stayed in one kind of instrumentation?

I don't think it does "mean" this, Bbm, but I totally agree that an honest arrangement of a piece of Music can be wonderful - just as Van Goch's reimaginings of Millet, Delacroix etc create new ways of seeing familiar paintings. One of the best Live performances of Bach I've ever experienced was the Badinerie from the B minor suite played by a school Steel Band in London in the early '80s.

I don't much care for Arnie's Bach arrangements (nor Elgar's for that matter) as it happens - a bit pompous and over-reverential without that sharp irony that enlivens his own Music. Webern and Stravinsky's leaner, keener rethinkings are more appealing to me; I find them much more imaginative. (Interesting coincidence that Igor's reworking of the Von Himmel Hoch Variations date from his embracing of Serialsim - as do his final, incomplete arrangements of four of the "48".)

[BBMmk2]

Yes, I rather like those too Ferney and I do see what you mean by the over pomposity of Schoenberg's and Elgar's visions. I have an incomplete transcription of Bach's BWV552 for concert band, which I will endeavour to complete, at some stage. Maybe that will be in line in what your saying?

[ahinton]

I don't think it does "mean" this, Bbm, but I totally agree that an honest arrangement of a piece of Music can be wonderful - just as Van Goch's reimaginings of Millet, Delacroix etc create new ways of seeing familiar paintings. One of the best Live performances of Bach I've ever experienced was the Badinerie from the B minor suite played by a school Steel Band in London in the early '80s.

I don't much care for Arnie's Bach arrangements (nor Elgar's for that matter) as it happens - a bit pompous and over-reverential without that sharp irony that enlivens his own Music. Webern and Stravinsky's leaner, keener rethinkings are more appealing to me; I find them much more imaginative. (Interesting coincidence that Igor's reworking of the Von Himmel Hoch Variations date from his embracing of Serialsim - as do his final, incomplete arrangements of four of the "48".)

How do you find Godowsky's "pianizings" of three each of the solo violin and solo cello works?

[BBMmk2]

How do you find Godowsky's "pianizings" of three each of the solo violin and solo cello works?

I've heard his Chopin ones but have to say, I've not heard those as yet.

[Richard Barrett]

should at the very least have included such important figures as Cage, Eisler, Skalkottas, Seiber and Gerhard, and gone on to mention others who were among the first to take up 12-tone serial composition outside the direct lineage, such as Dallapiccola, Lutyens, Searle and Sessions, offering aural evidence in contradiction with the clichéd view of the Method as restrictive of the creative imagination, and thereby questioning the slanted opinions expressed by contributers other than Ms. Nono Schoenberg.

It amazes me why people still come out with the idea that serial composition is restrictive, especially since those who do have usually chained themselves to something else instead.

As for Schoenberg's arrangements of other composers, which are after all a tiny and insignificant part of his output, I think he was somewhat too tied up in himself to do justice to the works of others in that way - compared for example to Webern who spent a lot more of his time performing other composers, with the result that his Ricercar is both pure Bach and pure Webern. Schoenberg couldn't have done a thing like that.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How do you find Godowsky's "pianizings" of three each of the solo violin and solo cello works?

Don't you dare!!! The last time I was rude about Godowski your comments shamed me so much that I spent a month chasing up examples on youTube to see if I could accommodate your enthusiasm. In all that time, I managed to hear one transcription that I thought was lovely - for the rest, it was a singularly painful effort, which I wouldn't want to repeat again - and, in fact, these days I have a note (and a prescription) from my GP excusing me from such dangerously high systolic encounters.

I tried - I really tried - but not nearly as much as I was tried; and subsequent encounters with his work on broadcasts have only confirmed that this repertoire and I cannot reach agreement at ACAS.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As for Schoenberg's arrangements of other composers, which are after all a tiny and insignificant part of his output, I think he was somewhat too tied up in himself to do justice to the works of others in that way - compared for example to Webern who spent a lot more of his time performing other composers, with the result that his Ricercar is both pure Bach and pure Webern. Schoenberg couldn't have done a thing like that.

Well, he was much better when working with Music he didn't revere as much as he did Bach - the "Monn" 'cello Concerto and (especially) the Handel S4tet Concerto - the irony and mischief so lacking from the Bach transcriptions is here in spades. And the Strauss arrangements, too - retaining the graceful lyricism, but with the acidity of the chamber ensemble to offset the sugar (and closer to both Johanns' own instrumental forces when they began their careers).

I prefer to listen to the Brahms Pno 4tet orchestration than to the Bachs, but don't enjoy the experience nearly as much as those from the Monn and Handel arrangements. I don't know the Schubert, Mahler, Reger, Busoni arrangements that he made for his Society for Private Musical Performance - but altogether, his arrangement add up to more than three hours of performance time - and I think they shed light on Arnie, if not on the works themselves (which is fine by me) and a bit more than a "tiny ... part of his output"?

(Agree totally that "serialism = restrictive" is bananas; I don't know anyone who has written using the variety of methods it offers who has this "opinion" - and the many excellent Serial works refute it beyond credibility. I suspect it translates as "I couldn't do anything with it", which is more honest - like with Fugue, if you can't get the sounds you want from it, you don't blame the proceedures.)

[Richard Barrett]

this repertoire and I cannot reach agreement at ACAS

It would be a shame though if a thread about Schoenberg and his music, being a rare thing in itself, were to be derailed by a discussion of such a fairly insignificant corner of the musical universe.

For me there's something difficult about the relationship of Schoenberg's music to the passage of time. The pieces I find myself most attracted to - for example the String Trio or the op.16 orchestral pieces, I find at the same time frustrating in not being given enough time to articulate themselves to the fullest extent, if that makes sense, while on the other hand there are other pieces, like the Wind Quintet and Piano Concerto, which I find chunter on endlessly without having a real musical centre like the first-named pieces. These are problems I don't encounter with Webern in the first instance or Berg in the second...