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I see Schoenberg as:

Schoenberg: Bogeyman or Messiah of classical music?. . .

14K views 118 replies 27 participants last post by  millionrainbows 
#1 · (Edited)
Since the http://www.talkclassical.com/13778-what-point-atonal-music.html#post173424 thread has become a discussion around these issues (& they come up a lot here!) I decided to do this separate thread on it.

Semantic games aside, Bogeyman can mean a negative influence by Schoenberg on classical music, Messiah can mean a positive one. Those choosing the former may kind of see him as Devil incarnate, those choosing the latter as a God. These are the more polarised positions.

The Both option is an in between (maybe compromise or middle ground position?) one, and Neither I think is self explanatory. Don't Care is for those who obviously don't care about this issue, they don't give much thought to it, or maybe even to Schoenberg or his music (so its kind of a neutral position).

I put my basic positions in this post and this one on the above thread.

The aim of this thread is less about dogma and more about just your opinion. A controversial issue, yes, but its no excuse for judging others for their opinions. The aim is honest and open discussion/debate. Thus, its a public poll. For 'guidance' other than the rules of the forum, the quote by M.K. Gandhi in my footer below may be of use.
 
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#5 ·
He is definitely the bogeyman, lurking there at the edge of the 20th century, frightening people away from exploring further. I approached Schoenberg with much trepidation when first listening to classical music. This terrible monster destroying tonality and making everything ugly, so I was quite confused when I listened to him, it was quite nice and it didn't sound worlds away from other popular classical.

Messiaen is clearly the Messiah, prophesied in the book of Handel come to redeem the organ in the 20th century and teach us the language of birds.
 
#7 · (Edited)
Why is it that detractors of Schoenberg see him as "destroying" tonality? It's not like tonality and harmonic music "died," because, after all, that would mean we wouldn't have had The Beatles (Revolution No.9 excepted, of course). That would have been a real shame.

Tonality will always exist, and the larger umbrella of "harmonic music" will always exist, as long as people have ears and can suck milk instinctively (you can swallow, can't you?).

Bogeyman? Yes, most definitely! He embodies the fears and insecurities of those who fear the demise of the visceral, instinctive blanket-woobie of tonality. After all, what else could we listen to in the grocery store while purchasing cat food and coffee? It's all tonal. Tonality is as ubiquitous as God, as prevalent as Man's ego, as natural as having babies, as profitable as war. It has been, and always will be, forever and ever. Amen.

Now, I'm going to run a bath and listen to some Webern. Ahhhh...
 
#15 ·
After all, what else could we listen to in the grocery store while purchasing cat food and coffee?
Exactly right. Just the other day while purchasing some turnips at the supermarket I was pleasantly surprised to hear Messiaen's Turangalila, Adam's Harmonielehre, Britten's Serenade and Arc-En-Ciel from Ligeti's Etudes, all before I'd got around to the Wet Wipes.

Now, I'm going to run a bath and listen to some Webern. Ahhhh...
Perhaps for you the sound of running water helps with the appreciation of Webern. I would find it a distraction. Unfortunately you may have got through his complete works and still not have a full bath.
 
#12 ·
I tried hard not to make the poll a dichotomy. If it was a dichotomy, I would have settled with giving the first two options only.

[BTW, when I quoted your post, there was another long paragraph, but I am not addressing that cos I think you must have deleted it].
 
#13 ·
I think if the latest thing you've heard were Parsifal, and then you jumped right into Schoenberg's variations for orchestra, you'd probably think Schoenberg was an evil destroyer of music.

But if you traced Schoenberg's path, from his romantic Transfigured Night, to the super dense (yet still tonal) Pelleas and Melisande, to the probing atonality of his op. 11, and finally to his twelve-tone pieces, I think you'd be able to appreciate Schoenberg's journey and the evolution of his style.

At least I can't see any point at which he broke with tradition of revolutionized music. Instead, he carefully took it further and further, with each step of the way.
 
#27 ·
The ironic thing is that Schoenberg never regarded himself as an iconoclast and destroyer of musical tradition . He was neither rebelling against nor rejecting the great music of the past . On the contrary, no one had greater love and reverence for the great composers of the past , and few had such profound knowledge of and understanding of it .
I love his quote about his music : My music isn't avant-garde, just badly played ".
 
#30 · (Edited)
To those who think Schoenberg was a bogeyman (eg. took music in the wrong direction) - don't you think the plurality of music today - a lot (or most of it?) different to Schoenberg's - testament to how he did not destroy anything. He just gave composers options, they could take it or leave it. He actually balked at the bogeyman label. He did have a Messiah complex early on, but so did many big time innovators of the past (eg. Beethoven, Wagner). Later on, Schoenberg became more humble and actually said that the slings and arrows he got from people against him (call them what you will) actually encouraged him more to do what he was doing. To stick to his path, I suppose just like any other composer who could do that (eg. those living under totalitarian regimes did not always have that luxury).

A famous anecdote is that, listening to Grieg's piano concerto at a concert, Schoenberg turned to his friend next to him and said something like 'I wish I could compose music like that.' I think that's indicative of a dry and maybe bitter realisation that what he was doing was not easy to do. He was not composing music that was like the Grieg, with flowing melodies and a kind of natural beauty. He was worried of being labelled the destroyer of tradition and in some ways, of beauty and maybe innocence too. Hence the almost apologetic famous line 'I was a conservative who was forced to become a radical.'

He got no brownie points from conservatives and even kind of hard-core Modernists (eg. Adorno) criticised him for being too tonal at times (eg. ending the Ode to Napoleon in a fuzzy E-flat). Funny how early in his career, Schoenberg was pulled down by conservatives for the reason that Transfigured Night did not end in a resolved enough way, it ended in a fuzzy D major. So early on, he's being too radical according to some, at the other end of his career, he's not enough radical. You can't please everybody. All you can do is do your thing, play out your own visions. But I think that Schoenberg's music, some of it became accepted into the Modern repertoire during his lifetime - eg. Transfigured Night and Pierrot Lunaire as well. These I would not say where easy for me to grasp, but once I did come to appreciate them, they are among my favourite works of that early 20th century period.
 
#36 · (Edited)
Well and Schoenberg's contemporaries, esp. Ives and Scriabin, where doing similar things. But Arnie gets all the flack. There's also a guy who was said to have anticipated Schoenberg's serialist system, called Josef Matthias Hauer. In a way, its probably a good thing Hauer didn't get the title of 'inventor' of serialism. Even if Hauer did invent serialism before Arnie, Arnie got all the rotten tomatoes thrown at him, not Hauer, so maybe this other composer didn't know how lucky he was to not be crowned the anti-Christ of Modern music. In this case, maybe inventing something is not such a glorious thing after all. BTW I have only read about Hauer, I have never heard his music. What about you people?

You seem to have had such a focus on polarized positions, and from what I can see lately, folks such as stlukesguild haven't used language nearly as polarizing as you have suggested he has. And I like your writing. I just want to be honest with you. I look around here, and TC doesn't appear to be at odds like you've often depicted it.
Thanks for your compliment. I do admit I do tend to over dramatise.

...
I mean, bogeyman or messiah? There's not much of anyone in music that would receive that kind of a title, let alone someone a bit less well known like Schoenberg.

....
Its not only a reflection on online discussions of him but also what I've read in books. I could have used the word 'scapegoat' instead of 'bogeyman' but I settled for the latter. I actually remember one writer on music calling Schoenberg the biggest bogeyman of 20th century music. This writer was not criticising Schoenberg, merely underlining the point that he can be very controversial. I'd say he is more controversial than the other two 'big cheeses' of Modernism, Stravinsky and Bartok. If anything, Stravinsky is more criticised for not being 'Modern' enough (eg. what some call his regression into neo-classicism) rather than being too 'Modern.'
 
#32 · (Edited)
Forehead Eyebrow Photograph Jaw Adaptation


"Yes, I admit it; I chopped down the tonality tree, and I did it with my little theory."
 
#33 ·
"Yes, I admit it; I chopped down the tonality tree, and I did it with my little theory."
Arnold came to the party late. Of Wagner and his 'disciples', from London in 1855: "...madmen, enemies of music to the knife, who, not born for music, and conscious of their impotence... their being is to prey on the ailing trunk, until it becomes putrid and rotten."
 
#34 · (Edited)
You seem to have had such a focus on polarized positions, and from what I can see lately, folks such as stlukesguild haven't used language nearly as polarizing as you have suggested he has. And I like your writing. I just want to be honest with you. I look around here, and TC doesn't appear to be at odds like you've often depicted it.

I mean, bogeyman or messiah? There's not much of anyone in music that would receive that kind of a title, let alone someone a bit less well known like Schoenberg.

As for the man Schoenberg, he started a great school of composers. I think the word prolific is very appropriate. So many composers modeled themselves after him. A much written about artist.
 
#35 ·
I have admittedly struggled with Schoenberg... in spite of repeated efforts. I quite like Verklärte Nacht, Pelleas und Melisande, and the Gurrelieder (I recently picked up a second recording)... but I honestly far prefer Berg among the Second Viennese School (and considering the lyrical aspects of Berg's work... and the rich Romanticism of his early lieder, I quite wish he had fallen under Strauss or Mahler's spell rather than Arnie's).

Personally, I'm not overly fond of atonality or serialism... but I greatly appreciate the expressive capabilities wrought by slipping away from traditional tonality... I just feel this works far more effectively in a work that retains a certain tonality... just as abstractions and distortions strike me as far more effective in a painting that retains some semblance of figuration, as opposed to total non-objective/abstract painting.
 
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#37 ·
Well... I think Arnold gets a lot of flack because he is put forth as the great Modernist... often in contrast (as you suggest) to composers that as you suggest, were not seen as "Modern enough"... and whether it be Richard Strauss, Puccini, Barber, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, or even Stravinsky. Popularity is no measure of artistic merit... for or against... but there is just as much of an anti-populist prejudice as there is a prejudice against the avant-garde.
 
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#38 ·
I just honestly, genuinely cannot understand the furor over topics like this. I could post this in the post-1950 poll, the point of atonal music thread, and many others.

If you enjoy it, good; if not, let others enjoy it in peace and you go enjoy whatever music you enjoy.

It's so, so, simple. Why do we have to spend so much of our time justifying ourselves, or implying that people with different tastes are lacking something?
 
#39 ·
...
If you enjoy it, good; if not, let others enjoy it in peace and you go enjoy whatever music you enjoy.

It's so, so, simple. Why do we have to spend so much of our time justifying ourselves, or implying that people with different tastes are lacking something?
Well I think that the results of this poll show that most people think Schoenberg is neither a bogeyman or Messiah. There is moderation here for sure, the middle ground is the biggest. That's not saying people don't have a right to think of Arnie as a bogeyman or the saviour of music. Its just that I think that in terms of voting, the polarities Schoenberg's name often attracts in discussions concerning him (or atonality, or new music, other 'red rag to a bull' type topics) are not being shown in how this poll has panned out.

Surprising. But many unexpected things happen online, I've learnt (eg. I'd never thought Mozart would polarise people as much as he did when we had all those bunfights over him).
 
#57 ·
Bring more boots to my face! I still like Schoenberg, Crumb, Sciarrino!
Not boots, just the truth.

Except for Le marteau, Boulez is a different story. In youth I attacked that piece with all the fanatacism of a new convert: read Musique aujourd-hui (of which Boulez eventually autographed my copy for me), did what analysis I could, and even did an independent tutorial learning to conduct the piece. But here again, I eventually came back to the piece in the late 1980s and realized that, after so many years of devotion, I couldn't meaningfully tell one movement from another, aside from the instrumentation. If someone had come out with a recording of Le marteau with half the pitches transposed by half-steps one way or the other, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. (I also analyzed every note of the Boulez Second Sonata before hearing it, and was so brainwashed that, when I finally heard it, I cried over its beauty. Today I wouldn't recognize that piece in a blindfold test.) Ultimately, I think Boulez was trying to be very avant-garde in Le marteau, but didn't really know what he was doing yet, and made lousy pitch choices. I've run into a surprising number of composers who have exactly the same opinion, and who were afraid to mention it for years.

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclass...er_boulez.html
 
#64 ·
Neither. Schoenberg was more busy crafting 12-tone as a means, whereas others who understood it beyond that put it to even greater use, for example Alban Berg. Not boogeyman either, I leave that to others, who have alienated more classical music listerners and relying on philosophy to push the sale of their music. At least Schoenberg never really needed gimmicks.
 
#65 ·
Well, if Schoenberg's twelve-tone invention did not exactly ensure the dominance of German music for the next hundred years (as he had predicted), he probably did ensure a raging argument about it.
 
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#66 · (Edited)
Is Schoenberg popular in Germany, Andreas?

You're preaching to the choir. I'm persuaded. People who like that music suck. There's no other explanation for it.

Thing is, and here I will risk a moment of sincerity, things like this really make me want to like, in this case, Boulez' music. You are truly an apostle, but for your enemies' side!

On the other hand, your antagonists here, have the opposite effect on me.

I think this is normal actually. People don't like extremism. All the shouting turns them off.

Alright, back to as we were. I suck, it's all my fault, poor innocent you. Boo Boulez! Boo Schoenberg!
I have a few Boulez cds if you want them.

Bring more boots to my face! I still like Schoenberg, Crumb, Sciarrino!
I like Schoenberg too. I've made that very clear.
 
#69 ·
I think he was one of the greatest composers to ever live. I don't care what system he was composing in, who he had influenced and what he has done with music, whether he thought he was a radical or conservative. I think it's very useful to separate the influence of an artist or thinker in general (Locke is obviously more influential than Spinoza, but any philosopher would tell you how much Spinoza means to him) and just take him for his or herself; and I think with that criteria, Schoenberg is a great composer.
 
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