Modernism - the correct way to approach it

[Quarky]

I guess my main objection to the criticism piece posted, is that, as has been pointed out by others, is that it lacks any specific analysis of a musical work. As a literary construct, it may have some value, but it merely amounts to an expression of opinion.

And in regard to Violence, Extravagance and Anarchy, this I think is in the mind of the listener. Cf. the discussion last night between Andrew and Tom Service of a piece composed in Northern Ireland. Tom could hear violence, but Andrew disagreed.

[Richard Barrett]

"Violence, Extravagance and Anarchy" is a great album title by the way !

For Sachiko M maybe.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And in regard to Violence, Extravagance and Anarchy, this I think is in the mind of the listener.

"Anarchy" being one of those "catch-all" epithets that some people reach for like a reflex when their own understanding is challenged. The use of structure of the Five Pieces, both individually and as a group, is quite clear after a couple of hearings: the First is a moto perpetuo with a 25-bar Introduction. The Introduction is in three statements with answers (statement 1 = bars 1 - 3, answered in bars 4 - 6; statement 2, bars 7 - 9, answered in bars 10 - 14; statement 3, bars 15 - 19, answered in bars 20 - 25. In other words, the three statements are themselves divided into three 3xbar phrases answered by three 5xbar phrases). The statements are unified by canonic imitation (set out right from the start when the oboe echoes the opening 'cello melody) and a recurring chromatic neighbour note figure (A - G# - A at first, transposed elsewhere). The moto perpetuo (some of the most exciting Music ever written) is underpinned throughout by a major seventh chord held throughout by the bassoons (well, the muted trombones take over for the last 16 bars). The instruments present the material of the moto perpetuo in a plethora of canonic ways and the Music culminates in a great, but brief wail of despair from the entire (and it's huge!) String section (bars 100 - 103).

The second piece is the first "slow movement", and (like many traditional symphonic slow movements) is in Ternary form: A - bars 1 - 21; B - bars 22 - 74; A1 bars 75 - 90. Sections A and B are themselves also divided into three subsections. The character of the piece is set out in the "Bye, Baby Bunting"-like tune in the solo 'cello at the very start (a connection with the First Piece) - the mode-like melody held together by a repeated F, and the remainder repeating the G# - A motif from the First Movement and extending it to a G natural (so it becomes a rising semitone followed by a falling whole tone). The "remembered Nursery" feel is also present in the "Music Box" instrumentation of Harp and Celesta, and in the gentler sense of meter. The middle section is characterized by a quadruplet rhythm (4 quavers in a 3/8 bar) which "spills over" into the varied repeat of the A section (which also re-presents other material from the B section).

The third piece is the second "slow movement", and is an elaborate orchestral canon on the rising semitone - falling whole tone motif from the second piece - with a short interlude or episode between bars 32 - 37. Music from this episode recurrs in the return of the canon, so the piece can be heard as another version of the Ternary structure that was used in the second piece. The mood and "colour" of this piece is unique - gentle, hazy; it reminds me of that strange feeling that you get just before you nod off. (The Ivesian subtitle Summer Morning by the Lake has always struck me as particularly apposite, with its atmosphere of sensuous shimmering). And I adore the way the "rude awakening" of the Fourth piece so shatters the mood. This fourth piece is the most difficult to pin down to a traditional formal procedure - it's a sort-of scherzo, but with the composer shuffling seven or so different motifs around like a dazzling conjuror's sleight-of-hand, but all the motifs are based on ideas we've heard before in the work - not least a reference back to the moto perpetuo idea from the main part of the first piece.

Long enough - but enough, I hope to suggest that there's plenty of Musical material (correspondences in rhythmic and harmonic/melodic material) that careful listening reveals and repeated listening makes clearer. The original writer couldn't be bothered to pay attention to what is there in the Music, preferring to earn his crust by appealing to the meaner aspects of what he expected his readers to believe. There's no demand that everyone ought to "like" this Music; but there's no justification or fairness in his lazy insulting what isn't there.

[hedgehog]

Top answer fhg.

[ahinton]

thank god we have Eric Whitacre to save us

Jesus saves, too. Even though I'm not actually a Christian, I think that, given the choice, I'd rather opt for Jesus (even if mis-spelt as on that recent papal coin)...

But to return to the topic; yes, fhg's excellent response above is certainly very much to the point, even though it arguably reads as undermining Schönberg's own notes on the work to the extent of showing that its formal construction is as clear and clear-sighted as the Schönberg that his listeners at the time would have come to know from Verklärte Nacht, the first two quartets and the first chamber symphony - yes, these five pieces undoubtedly break new ground, as had Erwartung (not so dissimilarly, perhaps), but they're still as firmly rooted in Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms and Mahler as anything that he'd written before.

I don't know what SG's purpose might have been in posting this antediluvian piece of non-criticism, the steadfast refusal of whose author to name any works in particular does indeed reveal its general paucity (and that's being kind) of expression and content as has already been noted here; its author's bald, arrogant and, of course, again unsupported assertion that it is unnecessary to speak of Futurist or Impressionist works conveys to the reader (assuming that anyone ever did actually read the piece) the likelihood that the hack who penned it knew no more of either than the names respectively of Russolo and Debussy.

Incidentally, Sorabji attended both Schönberg's performance of those five pieces and Wood's 1912 première of them; he was profoundly impressed not only by the music itself but, in the second instance, by the sheer brilliance of Schönberg's conducting. At around the time of the composer's performance came the great success of the world première of Gurrelieder (conducted not by the composer but by Schre(c)ker); Sorabji attended and reviewed its UK première, which Schönberg did conduct, some 13 years later and, again, recalling this experience some half-century afterwards, he opined that, had Schönberg prioritised conducting, he would easily have been recognised as the equal of Toscanini.

[Mr Pee]

Verklärte Nacht, the first two quartets and the first chamber symphony

I don't know the Quartets, but I do know both the other works you have mentioned, and I like them both. It's such a shame Schoenberg didn't continue in that vein instead of going all doolally. Just think what he might have achieved.

[ahinton]

I don't know the Quartets, but I do know both the other works you have mentioned, and I like them both. It's just a shame Schoenberg didn't continue in that vein.

When a composer feels that he/she's exhausted what can be done in a particular way it's always time to move on although, in Schönberg's case, his profound links with past traditions continued to inform everything that he did. Some might likewise bemoan the fact that Strauss didn't continue in the vein of Salome and Elektra or that Rachmaninov's later works tended largely to eschew the "big tune"...

Anyway, I can recommend that you do get to know Schönberg's first two numbered quartets; the first, in D minor, is cast in a single movement although a four-movement plan is still evident and it is arguably the most complex and ambitious of his chamber works. For me, it's one of the greatest quartets since Beethoven.

Oh and, by the way, "in the same (or at least similar) vein" might be said to cover Schönberg's second chamber symphony...

[teamsaint]

I don't know the Quartets, but I do know both the other works you have mentioned, and I like them both. It's such a shame Schoenberg didn't continue in that vein instead of going all doolally. Just think what he might have achieved.

the racing cars of the 1960s were beautiful, and doubtless incredible machines. But you wouldn't want to have watched them for the last 50 years surely?

If Five Orchestral pieces or the Piano Concerto, for example are the work of somebody who is "doolally", they are no more doolally than some of the modern rules of F1.

Try this and its commentary, as an alternative, or supplement to FHGs excellent piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2ZMnLENKVs

Fantastic stuff.

[Quarky]

I don't know the Quartets.

Lasalle is I believe the front runner for the quartets. I have it on Brilliant Classics:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schoenberg-Berg-Webern-String-Quartets/dp/B001MUJSXW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381736874&sr=8-1&keywords=schoenberg+quartets

Includes Webern's string pieces and Berg's Lyric Suite.

Going for a song!

[clive heath]

Unconventional, certainly, harsh in places but imaginatively scored (for baritone, clarinet, bass clarinet, guitar, mandolin, violin, viola, violoncello) and with a strange beauty, the adventurous could try
Serenade, Schoenberg's opus 24
which you will find here

http://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk/tapes.php

in a performance by the Vesuvius Ensemble, unavailable anywhere else as far as I know.

[Bryn]

Unconventional, certainly, harsh in places but imaginatively scored (for baritone, clarinet, bass clarinet, guitar, mandolin, violin, viola, violoncello) and with a strange beauty, the adventurous could try
Serenade, Schoenberg's opus 24
which you will find here

http://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk/tapes.php

in a performance by the Vesuvius Ensemble, unavailable anywhere else as far as I know.

Many thanks for upping the data rate of not only the Serenade, but Turangalîla-Symphonie, et al.

[Richard Barrett]

Just think what he might have achieved.

How very patronising.

The thing is that the evolution of Schoenberg's music is a completely logical progression given his musical personality and the historical moment in which it was formed, and in retrospect this "logic" is encapsulated also in the earlier works, where the tonal syntax that holds everything together and taps into a received sense of progression and eventual closure is already stretched almost to breaking point. Other composers, for example Strauss, arrived at a comparable point and drew back from it, but Schoenberg was already not the kind of composer to accept such a compromise, or to continue in any particular "vein" as opposed to searching for means of musical structuring which would serve to articulate the expressive priorities of his music. Compared to the work of succeeding generations, of course, the aforementioned evolution seems quite tentative, especially in the way many of his later compositions are "neoclassical" in all but harmony.

[amateur51]

Lasalle is I believe the front runner for the quartets. I have it on Brilliant Classics:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schoenberg-Berg-Webern-String-Quartets/dp/B001MUJSXW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381736874&sr=8-1&keywords=schoenberg+quartets

Includes Webern's string pieces and Berg's Lyric Suite.

Going for a song!

A great set and a fabulous bargain in this edition

[ahinton]

How very patronising.

The thing is that the evolution of Schoenberg's music is a completely logical progression given his musical personality and the historical moment in which it was formed, and in retrospect this "logic" is encapsulated also in the earlier works, where the tonal syntax that holds everything together and taps into a received sense of progression and eventual closure is already stretched almost to breaking point. Other composers, for example Strauss, arrived at a comparable point and drew back from it, but Schoenberg was already not the kind of composer to accept such a compromise, or to continue in any particular "vein" as opposed to searching for means of musical structuring which would serve to articulate the expressive priorities of his music. Compared to the work of succeeding generations, of course, the aforementioned evolution seems quite tentative, especially in the way many of his later compositions are "neoclassical" in all but harmony.

Quite (and I'd mentioned Strauss upthread in the very context in which you do here). The thought that a member here who, as far as I am aware, is not even a composer has the temerity openly to patronise Schönberg in this way says it all (for me, anyway). Even chapter 11 of The Big Society by Dr Jesse Norman is headed with the well known quotation from Schönberg that runs "I am not a radical...I am a conservative who has been forced to become a radical"; the particular source aside, the member might have been wiser to have borne this quotation in mind and given due consideration to its meaning before opining how much better it might have been had Schönberg continued to compose in the "vein" that he (said member) would evidently have preferred him to do...

[Mr Pee]

Quite (and I'd mentioned Strauss upthread in the very context in which you do here). The thought that a member here who, as far as I am aware, is not even a composer has the temerity openly to patronise Schönberg in this way says it all (for me, anyway). Even chapter 11 of The Big Society by Dr Jesse Norman is headed with the well known quotation from Schönberg that runs "I am not a radical...I am a conservative who has been forced to become a radical"; the particular source aside, the member might have been wiser to have borne this quotation in mind and given due consideration to its meaning before opining how much better it might have been had Schönberg continued to compose in the "vein" that he (said member) would evidently have preferred him to do...

How was he forced to become a radical, and by whom? He wasn't forced to do anything. He chose to set off down the musical dead-end of serialism.

And you're right, I'm not a composer. But not doing something doesn't mean one can't have an opinion about it. If it did, there wouldn't be much for anybody to talk about, would there?