To the occasional listener of symphony concerts, Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) is generally known as one of the boldest modernists in music history. What surprises many people who take a closer look at his biography, however, is that he was anything but politically progressive.
His biographer Willi Reich once described him as a “conservative revolutionary” and Hanns Eisler, a student of the Viennese composer, said even more pointedly: “He is the true conservative: he even created a revolution in order to be a reactionary.” The admittedly misguided dichotomy of conservatism and reaction can probably be attributed to Eisler’s political position; however, the keywords “conservative” and “revolution” undoubtedly describe Schönberg’s work and character very precisely. Schönberg was socialized in the era of the end of the Danube Monarchy and was shaped by it to such an extent that its end—which, of course, came about over a longer period of time—was perceived as a deeply incisive experience. He was probably also fully aware of the historical significance of the year 1918; this is indicated not least by a note that refers to questions of musical aesthetics, but with its reference to the founding year of the First Republic makes it clear that social changes are also being addressed here. He notes:
The age of Romanticism came to an end in November 1918. As is well known. From then on, several brand new eras began: that of folklorism, that of rhythm, that of anti-romanticism, that of the new classicism and (apart from a few others) that of the new objectivity. And you have to be glad that the one (bad) romantic age was followed by so many better, unromantic ones. At least we know: maybe everything stops sometimes, but at least time doesn’t stop.
This speaks not least of the contempt that Schönberg harbored towards the convergence of current fashions. In his oeuvre, he also gave musical expression to this disapproval, namely in the Three Satires op. 28, all of which deal with compositional idioms of the 1920s and their respective representatives. The fate of some composers who continued to cultivate a certain Romantic idiom after the end of the First World War is well known: Franz Schreker, one of the most successful opera composers at the beginning of the 20th century, increasingly lost the favor of his once numerous listeners. Even Richard Strauss no longer enjoyed the success of earlier times.
Instead, Ernst Křenek’s Johnny spielt auf, a work with jazz-like sounds, Paul Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage and, of course, Kurt Weill’s music theater were among the most popular works on the opera stages of the time. At the same time, the so-called Opéras-Minute were created in France, the dimensions of which admittedly represent a rejection of the operatic works of the late 19th century.
In its maxims and postulates, Arnold Schönberg’s school seems to completely contradict these composers and their works—despite the “twelve-tone operetta” Von Heute auf Morgen. Although it did not follow the fashionable trends of its time, it was regarded as the foremost avant-garde and its composers as representatives of a music whose time did not seem to have come yet. Indeed, Schönberg and his pupils saw themselves as a conspiratorial elite and their comments on their contemporary colleagues once again clearly demonstrate this. What set them apart was a type of conservatism that is hardly to be found today, which sought to unite radical modernist artistic positions with tradition. The earliest dodecaphonic works are certainly musical examples of this attitude: In the Serenade op. 24, the new compositional technique is applied to classical forms such as the minuet and the march—and even the folk song Ännchen von Tharau is included here in numerous variations.
Schönberg never gave up his connection to the music of the masters of past eras; for him, who cited composers such as Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, and Reger in his composition lessons, it would have been unthinkable to bypass the Romantic era, as some composers proclaimed after the end of the First World War.
He would only have marveled in disbelief at a complete rejection of music history, as proclaimed by the Darmstadt avant-garde of the 1950s—probably also because they themselves soon no longer recognized him as an authority and tended to view him with suspicion precisely because of his proximity to classical forms.
It is particularly significant that Schönberg included the music of past eras in his teaching. As he confessed in his great textbook, the enormously influential Harmonielehre, he did not want to teach “bad aesthetics,” but rather “good craftsmanship.” However, he not only regarded precise knowledge of the musical past as essential, he also saw himself as part of a historical continuity and repeatedly referred to having learned from the classics. His essay “Brahms the Progressive” and other texts on Bach, Liszt, and Mahler make this abundantly clear.
This is not only an essential element of Arnold Schönberg’s understanding of music, but it also characterizes the work of his most important students Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Berg’s music in particular contains numerous echoes of Gustav Mahler’s oeuvre—just think of the numerous folk song quotations in Wozzeck and the music of the Violin Concerto, which sounds from afar. The allusions to the familiar major-minor tonality—both works mentioned also stand for this—secured him the greatest success of the composers of the Viennese School during his lifetime. After the end of the Second World War, Webern was regarded as the only point of contact for the younger generation; his works were recognized as an approach to structure-oriented composition, an “objectification of the sound complex,” as Karel Goeyvaerts described it. Webern’s oeuvre is still puzzling today and his personality has also remained enigmatic. On a musical level, he combined compositional techniques of medieval provenance with a particularly strict interpretation of Schönberg’s twelve-tone technique and an extremely selective instrumentation. The texts he set to music included folk poets such as the Styrian Peter Rosegger, as well as those belonging to the forefront of the avant-garde: Georg Trakl, Karl Kraus, and Rainer Maria Rilke. His music points both to the distant past and to the future, in which Schönberg and Webern firmly believed: “My melodies will still be whistled by the letter carrier,” the latter remarked according to his short-lived pupil Karl Amadeus Hartmann. The head of the Viennese School was more ambivalent: “The second half of this century will make bad by overestimating what the first half left good in me by underestimating.”
Schönberg’s biographer Alexander Ringer pointed out that he always found the future in the past; he described himself as a conservative, adding that he “preserved progress.” Socially, such progress cannot be recognized in him; he remained attached to the idea of the Danube monarchy. When Prince zu Fürstenberg (a patron of contemporary music and founder of the Donaueschingen Music Festival, which still exists today) invited him to perform one of his works, Schönberg responded in April of 1924 with a message of devotion:
I have long admired the splendid undertaking in Donaueschingen; this undertaking, which is reminiscent of the most beautiful, unfortunately bygone times of art, when the prince placed himself protectively before the artist and showed the mob that art, a matter for the prince, eludes common judgment. And only the authority of such persons, by allowing the artist to participate in the special position given by a higher power, is able to demonstrate this demarcation to the senses to all those who are merely educated and trained, and to show the difference between those who have become and those who have been born; between those who have indirectly attained a position and activity and those who are directly born to it. May I therefore, Your Serene Highness, express my greatest admiration for the great deed that the Donaueschingen chamber music performances represent in cultural life, and I do so not without being proud of the flattering reputation by which you honor me.
This was not a one-off opportunity; he declined an invitation from a pupil to give a concert at the Hofburg because this could only be issued by the emperor. He was highly skeptical of the newly achieved democracy and perhaps this can also be understood against the background that many intellectuals of the time associated the defensive reaction to new art with liberalism. In his essay ‘Fortschritt und Reaktion’ (‘Progress and Reaction’), Ernst Křenek explains by way of example that it is “significant that even in the heyday of liberalism, Wagner’s progressive art can be pushed through with the help of feudal factors against the authority of liberal critics, even though in retrospect it appears to us to be a particularly perfect expression of its time.”
Furthermore, he draws attention to a phenomenon that is still noticeable today: It was only in this bourgeois period that the standing repertoire that predominates today developed in opera and concerts. Until then, i.e., until the pre-March period, new works were always performed and old works only exceptionally, whereas today the reverse is true at best.” It seems reasonable to assume that Schönberg was referring to this situation when he once wrote: “For at least a hundred years, I am certainly the only composer of my rank who has not yet been able to live from the proceeds of his work without having to earn his living by teaching.”
Schönberg was not only a composer, but also a painter. Indeed, he achieved some recognition in this role; his works were shown in the exhibitions of the Blauer Reiter and he was in correspondence with Kandinsky. As an author, he wrote many of the texts he set to music himself, including the libretto to his opera Moses and Aron. He was also a speculative mind who came up with a number of inventions, including a coalition chess set for four people, a music typewriter, and a transfer card for the streetcar. The musicologist Constantin Floros, well acquainted with the Viennese School through his studies of Alban Berg, once described Schönberg as a genius, comparable to Richard Wagner and Leonardo Da Vinci. Perhaps such approaches are suitable for revisiting the connection between conservatism and the artistic avant-garde, perhaps even rethinking it completely.
This article was originally published in delibratio. It appears here by kind permission.
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951): Conservative and Radical
Portrait of Arnold Schönberg (1905), a 182 x 130 cm oil on canvas painting by Richard Gerstl (1883-1908), located at the Vienna Museum, Vienna
To the occasional listener of symphony concerts, Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) is generally known as one of the boldest modernists in music history. What surprises many people who take a closer look at his biography, however, is that he was anything but politically progressive.
His biographer Willi Reich once described him as a “conservative revolutionary” and Hanns Eisler, a student of the Viennese composer, said even more pointedly: “He is the true conservative: he even created a revolution in order to be a reactionary.” The admittedly misguided dichotomy of conservatism and reaction can probably be attributed to Eisler’s political position; however, the keywords “conservative” and “revolution” undoubtedly describe Schönberg’s work and character very precisely. Schönberg was socialized in the era of the end of the Danube Monarchy and was shaped by it to such an extent that its end—which, of course, came about over a longer period of time—was perceived as a deeply incisive experience. He was probably also fully aware of the historical significance of the year 1918; this is indicated not least by a note that refers to questions of musical aesthetics, but with its reference to the founding year of the First Republic makes it clear that social changes are also being addressed here. He notes:
This speaks not least of the contempt that Schönberg harbored towards the convergence of current fashions. In his oeuvre, he also gave musical expression to this disapproval, namely in the Three Satires op. 28, all of which deal with compositional idioms of the 1920s and their respective representatives. The fate of some composers who continued to cultivate a certain Romantic idiom after the end of the First World War is well known: Franz Schreker, one of the most successful opera composers at the beginning of the 20th century, increasingly lost the favor of his once numerous listeners. Even Richard Strauss no longer enjoyed the success of earlier times.
Instead, Ernst Křenek’s Johnny spielt auf, a work with jazz-like sounds, Paul Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage and, of course, Kurt Weill’s music theater were among the most popular works on the opera stages of the time. At the same time, the so-called Opéras-Minute were created in France, the dimensions of which admittedly represent a rejection of the operatic works of the late 19th century.
In its maxims and postulates, Arnold Schönberg’s school seems to completely contradict these composers and their works—despite the “twelve-tone operetta” Von Heute auf Morgen. Although it did not follow the fashionable trends of its time, it was regarded as the foremost avant-garde and its composers as representatives of a music whose time did not seem to have come yet. Indeed, Schönberg and his pupils saw themselves as a conspiratorial elite and their comments on their contemporary colleagues once again clearly demonstrate this. What set them apart was a type of conservatism that is hardly to be found today, which sought to unite radical modernist artistic positions with tradition. The earliest dodecaphonic works are certainly musical examples of this attitude: In the Serenade op. 24, the new compositional technique is applied to classical forms such as the minuet and the march—and even the folk song Ännchen von Tharau is included here in numerous variations.
Schönberg never gave up his connection to the music of the masters of past eras; for him, who cited composers such as Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, and Reger in his composition lessons, it would have been unthinkable to bypass the Romantic era, as some composers proclaimed after the end of the First World War.
He would only have marveled in disbelief at a complete rejection of music history, as proclaimed by the Darmstadt avant-garde of the 1950s—probably also because they themselves soon no longer recognized him as an authority and tended to view him with suspicion precisely because of his proximity to classical forms.
It is particularly significant that Schönberg included the music of past eras in his teaching. As he confessed in his great textbook, the enormously influential Harmonielehre, he did not want to teach “bad aesthetics,” but rather “good craftsmanship.” However, he not only regarded precise knowledge of the musical past as essential, he also saw himself as part of a historical continuity and repeatedly referred to having learned from the classics. His essay “Brahms the Progressive” and other texts on Bach, Liszt, and Mahler make this abundantly clear.
This is not only an essential element of Arnold Schönberg’s understanding of music, but it also characterizes the work of his most important students Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Berg’s music in particular contains numerous echoes of Gustav Mahler’s oeuvre—just think of the numerous folk song quotations in Wozzeck and the music of the Violin Concerto, which sounds from afar. The allusions to the familiar major-minor tonality—both works mentioned also stand for this—secured him the greatest success of the composers of the Viennese School during his lifetime. After the end of the Second World War, Webern was regarded as the only point of contact for the younger generation; his works were recognized as an approach to structure-oriented composition, an “objectification of the sound complex,” as Karel Goeyvaerts described it. Webern’s oeuvre is still puzzling today and his personality has also remained enigmatic. On a musical level, he combined compositional techniques of medieval provenance with a particularly strict interpretation of Schönberg’s twelve-tone technique and an extremely selective instrumentation. The texts he set to music included folk poets such as the Styrian Peter Rosegger, as well as those belonging to the forefront of the avant-garde: Georg Trakl, Karl Kraus, and Rainer Maria Rilke. His music points both to the distant past and to the future, in which Schönberg and Webern firmly believed: “My melodies will still be whistled by the letter carrier,” the latter remarked according to his short-lived pupil Karl Amadeus Hartmann. The head of the Viennese School was more ambivalent: “The second half of this century will make bad by overestimating what the first half left good in me by underestimating.”
Schönberg’s biographer Alexander Ringer pointed out that he always found the future in the past; he described himself as a conservative, adding that he “preserved progress.” Socially, such progress cannot be recognized in him; he remained attached to the idea of the Danube monarchy. When Prince zu Fürstenberg (a patron of contemporary music and founder of the Donaueschingen Music Festival, which still exists today) invited him to perform one of his works, Schönberg responded in April of 1924 with a message of devotion:
This was not a one-off opportunity; he declined an invitation from a pupil to give a concert at the Hofburg because this could only be issued by the emperor. He was highly skeptical of the newly achieved democracy and perhaps this can also be understood against the background that many intellectuals of the time associated the defensive reaction to new art with liberalism. In his essay ‘Fortschritt und Reaktion’ (‘Progress and Reaction’), Ernst Křenek explains by way of example that it is “significant that even in the heyday of liberalism, Wagner’s progressive art can be pushed through with the help of feudal factors against the authority of liberal critics, even though in retrospect it appears to us to be a particularly perfect expression of its time.”
Furthermore, he draws attention to a phenomenon that is still noticeable today: It was only in this bourgeois period that the standing repertoire that predominates today developed in opera and concerts. Until then, i.e., until the pre-March period, new works were always performed and old works only exceptionally, whereas today the reverse is true at best.” It seems reasonable to assume that Schönberg was referring to this situation when he once wrote: “For at least a hundred years, I am certainly the only composer of my rank who has not yet been able to live from the proceeds of his work without having to earn his living by teaching.”
Schönberg was not only a composer, but also a painter. Indeed, he achieved some recognition in this role; his works were shown in the exhibitions of the Blauer Reiter and he was in correspondence with Kandinsky. As an author, he wrote many of the texts he set to music himself, including the libretto to his opera Moses and Aron. He was also a speculative mind who came up with a number of inventions, including a coalition chess set for four people, a music typewriter, and a transfer card for the streetcar. The musicologist Constantin Floros, well acquainted with the Viennese School through his studies of Alban Berg, once described Schönberg as a genius, comparable to Richard Wagner and Leonardo Da Vinci. Perhaps such approaches are suitable for revisiting the connection between conservatism and the artistic avant-garde, perhaps even rethinking it completely.
This article was originally published in delibratio. It appears here by kind permission.
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