Tag: Schoenberg
The Case for Challenging Music
On December 1, 1900, at an intimate concert hall in Vienna, a respected local baritone gave the premiere of some early songs for voice and piano by Arnold Schoenberg. Today this music, though written in an elusive harmonic language, comes across as exuding hyper-Wagnerian richness and Brahmsian expressive depth. But the audience in Vienna broke into shouts, laughter, and jeers. From that day on, as Schoenberg ruefully recalled two decades later, “the scandal has never ceased.”
The author Harvey
Book Review: ‘Schoenberg: Why He Matters,’ by Harvey Sachs
His first mature pieces were in a moody, emotionally turbulent post-Wagnerian style. “Transfigured Night,” “Pelleas und Melisande” and “Gurrelieder,” all written around the turn of the century, are tonal and share many traits with Mahler and Richard Strauss: extended musical forms, restless, roving harmonies, explosive climaxes and a rich, prodigious use of the orchestra. “Gurrelieder,” a 90-minute oratorio-like work for a gigantic conglomeration of orchestra, choruses and solo voices, is the ne plus ultra of extravagant last-gasp Germanic Romanticism.
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