The Piano Music of Arnold Schoenberg

The Piano Music of Arnold SchoenbergAuthor(s): Patricia CarpenterSource: Theory and Practice, Vol. 30 (2005), pp. 5-33Published by: Music Theory Society of New York StateStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054364 .

Accessed: 31/10/2013 18:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Music Theory Society of New York State is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toTheory and Practice.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:37:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mtsnys

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054364?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Piano Music of Arnold Schoenberg Patricia Carpenter

Arnold Schoenberg has stood, during the first half of this century, at the center of one of the most violent controversies of our musical world. On his head fell the brunt of both the agony and the salvation of modern music. Today, however, well past our half-century mark, he is the "classic" master of the so-called twelve-tone music - a musical language which modern musicians now take for granted. Although his fame has sprung from rebellion and revolution, his achievement is actually a harmony, a profound balance between old and new. His great place in our contemporary musical world rests upon this synthesis.

There is no other musician of our time more intimately in touch with his past, more deeply perceptive of the problems fundamental to music, in general, and to his own German- Viennese tradition, in particular. His stylistic development is marked by two contradictory attitudes towards this tradition: the one, destructive, for in coping with the problems it presented to him, he pushed tonality beyond the limits it could withstand, thus shattering it; the other, constructive, for by utilizing all the remaining resources of organization available to him, he formulated a new kind of musical order.

Like many composers, Schoenberg first worked out his innovations in the medium most readily available - at his fingertips, so to speak. The first step - that towards atonality - was taken in 190[9], in the Three Piano Pieces, op. 1 1, and epitomized in the Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19(1911). The second step came after a long period of silence in 1923, with the last movement of the Five Piano Pieces, op. 23, the first attempt at [a] com- pletely twelve-tone composition. These new techniques were consolidated in the Suite for Piano, op. 25 ([1921-3]). The two pieces of op. 33, written in 1932, are a synthesis of his piano music. Thus Schoenberg's piano pieces

5



6 Theory and Practice

mark the crises in his artistic growth, mirror its course, and clarify the problems with which he wrestled. For this reason alone - aside from their great richness and beauty - they hold an important place in the musical world of each young musician, furnishing him a key to the difficult and sometimes not very accessible musical language of his own time.

The difficulties of this music seem to be twofold: its novelty and, paradoxically, the sheer complexity of traditional resources, now released from the limitations of the tonal system. Without our accustomed frame of reference, we are at a loss simply to hear, to grasp, to make any sense, to judge any value at all: what, in this music, is "right" or "wrong"? There is no felt tonality, and therefore, no felt harmony - everything is dissonant. But when we are able to listen past this loss of system, past the total "dissonance," we begin to feel other means of balance, of organization, articulation, unity - means which are often truly "classic." It is these principles which Schoenberg has crystallized in his method of composing with twelve tones related, not to a single, predetermined tonic, but only to one another."[1]

In this article, I want to look at some of the piano pieces with these two aspects of his music in mind. Its novelty is self-evident; I think it is important to see, and to hear, its continuity with our musical tradition.

PART I. SCHOENBERG' S BREAK WITH TRADITION: "ATONALITY"

The crucial step in the development of Schoenberg 's artistic style appears to be an act of destruction. What was destroyed was no less than our system of musical meaning itself: tonality. This was not a sudden step, in his own progress or in the history of our music, but a logical response to the problems confronting the composer at the end of the nineteenth century.

What is tonality? In its broadest sense it can be taken to mean the organization of the material of music - the single tones - of any system around a functional center, as for instance the various structures of the modes of Gregorian chant. But the "classic" tonality which has served as unifying principle of our music for the past two or three centuries is the diatonic major-minor system, according to which each tone is defined by a specific function in two dimensions: horizontally, by its place in the tonal scale; and vertically, by its relationship within a chord and in the harmonic progression of chords. Each produces elements out of itself, yet they are interdependent, two aspects of the "key," which thus not only articulates the overall structure of a piece of music, but generates the motivic and melodic detail as well.

But tonality contains the seeds of its own destruction in chromati-



The Piano Music 7

cism, which tends towards the equality of all twelve tones of the tempered scale. The potency of tonality lies in differentiation. It is an hierarchical system, depending upon the inequality of tones and their differing relationships to a fundamental tonic. Chromaticism diffuses the specific functional organization of the diatonic system, and as chromatic possibilities were exploited, tonal meanings were weakened and obscured.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the tension between these two forces was extreme. Wagner had stretched the harmonic structure to the point where, although still functional, its elements were prolonged, deco- rated, inflected, displaced, until the cadence points and key relationships, the chords themselves, were often no longer recognizable. Each composer dealt with this problem in his own way. Debussy, for example, reacted in one direction: he used the new harmonic and melodic forms - ninth chords, fourth chords, the whole-tone scale - for their own sake, thus laying open the question of whether the tonal root was necessarily the center of the tonal world. But Schoenberg moved in the line of his own tradition. Although he also used these chord forms per se, he expanded the limits of tonality far beyond the diatonic "key" and its related areas, to include all such relationships possible to all of the twelve tones, what he called "monotonality." He increasingly exploited ambiguous, "roving" chords - the diminished fifth and augmented triads. In non-triadic harmonies, the single notes are less integrated and freer for the possibilities of polyphony. He reactivated old contrapuntal techniques, developing them to the point where vertical relationships no longer held. Finally, in his attempt to free chromaticism from any diatonic residue, he suspended and eventually dissolved the relationships of tonality altogether. He was composing with notes, not chords.

This, then, is "atonality": the total possibilities of chromaticism. All notes are equally valid. Therefore the single tones are freed from any system, for their own existence. Every tone can take on its own significance; nothing is merely part of the context; and the composer's musical material consists of "twelve tones related only to one another." Secondly, therefore, there is no predetermined distinction between consonance and dissonance. All relationships between tones are equally possible and consonance depends not upon beauty, but upon comprehensibility.[2] "Rightness" is thus no longer pre-established, as in tonality, but depends upon broader compositional factors.

*

And herein lies our first problem. Without our customary frame of reference, how are we to grasp this music? Without our traditional means of differentiation, it all sounds alike. When tonality is renounced as organizing principle, what can take its place? How are we to separate - section from section, primary from subsidiary; and how are we to join?

We remember that in tonal music two fields of force are at work: the harmonic structure, by means of which the overall "skeleton" of the musi-




cal space is built up, from chord to chord and from key to key; and the web of melodic relationships, both intervallic and rhythmic, which impel the movement along. Giving up the first set of relationships, Schoenberg exploited the second with an unprecedented concentration.

Profoundly exciting in his teaching was his illumination of these two musical energies at work, his penetration to the "idea" of a piece of music. He spoke in terms of the most classic conception of beauty, that of unity in variety; or, as he dealt with it technically, the means for "contrast and coherence." He taught the techniques of composition as an unfolding of these two fundamental procedures, repetition and variation - procedures which are meaningful, of course, far beyond the limits of tonality.

Let us turn to one of the piano pieces ofthat experimental op. 11, once notorious for its cacophony - or, as the word was coined, "a-tonality!"[3] In the second piece, for example, it is exactly that aspect of form which has traditionally depended upon tonal relationships which is most easily accessible, its overall structure. This is a clearly classic ABA form, with an exposition of two contrasting themes, a transition repeated exactly on a different degree, a recurring developmental theme, a transition which is - as usual - the climax, and a recapitulation. However, these structural functions are defined not by harmony, but by other, yet traditional, means.

I would like to approach this piece on a more immediate level. My own first impression of it was of growth - a miniature world which grows, little by little taking shape; scarcely glimpsed at first - more felt, as a kind of quiver, than heard - but gradually becoming clear; an organism which begins to come alive, find its balance, keep itself in equilibrium.

How is this done? Just as it sounds - by the gradual development of the entire piece from a basic musical cell.

This is an idea similar to that of the sonata. And this particular piece, as a matter of fact, reminds me a little of the Waldstein or Appassionata sonatas of Beethoven, by the manner in which the idea gradually comes to life - from a sonority, as in the Waldstein; by the crystalliza- tion of motivic elements, as in the Appassionata; by the stabilizing of a semitonal triad relation, in both.[4] (The Beethoven sonatas were Schoenberg's textbook, incidentally.) In the Appassionata, for instance, as in Schoenberg's piano piece, the basic elements are all contained in the first four measures; and they are similar: (a) the upbeat figure, carved out of a mere thread of sound, sharpened, developed to become the dominating motif; and (b) the semitone, used melodically, but derived from a triadic relationship. These first four measures are what Schoenberg has called the Grundgestalt, the basic shape or idea, the "first creative thought" from which everything else is derived. Such an idea, he said, is immediately rhythmical; but it contains all the ingredients of the work - key, character, possibilities of exposition and development. "Wait patiently until such an idea shall come to you. You will be surprised at the strength of impulse it will bring with it."[5]

Beethoven's idea, of course, is tonal, so he had other resources than



The Piano Music 9

Example 1. Beethoven, Sonata op. 57. A

BASIC IDEA

Allegro assai, i = 126

(b) 2 2

(b)

i^ir====Ti.=:==j ,,/"g. -

(b) 2 2

' 2

"

B TRANSITION

(b) (£>

¡i r

iij i^ |J - ^^

'&r ■ > i i:^8r 7 ■ ! rrr, (a) Sa * (a) (a)

Jj/fJLj^.^.ltlfl.1..^ ,,.;vkff|t8: |f

C CONTRASTING THEME A(b)

p (a) A | | [< I

F 36 37 35 ' ^- - , «. legato posibile

' -~^^^

< ^" áo/ce tranquillo con molto expressione ma senza affectione



1 0 Theory and Practice

Schoenberg, other interests. His idea takes more space and more time, and it takes for granted the whole complex of meanings conferred by tonality. The atonal piece takes nothing for granted; it is a highly-concentrated world of musical meanings, newly constructed, for their own sake.

Example 2. Schoenberg, op. 11, no. 2.

A Basic shape /a Mäßiget 2 _^Jf777ril^_ trff^

T kT~7^^¥ ftff " "j^pr^'K7 lypr j-Ji't t If77 m ' pp ̂ ^ ^ - ~¿L" ; ^-- __ "t.- -

^ -* , , * *

B V- MOTir» I I»!» ^ ''^ | ')ty r l'p y | J+5 +4 ~ 3+ } I I.

^ta _^# ^ ^b ^ c c^^ If i^ri ^

H ij'p ̂ | ' -5 +5

The Grundgestalt of the piano piece consists of the melody itself, a beautifully balanced movement away from and back to Dl>, and the pedal of a minor third on which it is grounded, and which acts throughout as pivot. This basic shape yields three motifs; (a) two intervals, an augmented fifth and [augmented] fourth; (b) a characteristic rhythmic form, the upbeat (which, subtly emphasized by the cessation of the pedal, molds one of the fourths to make the first sharp impression upon the ear); and (c) a cadential figure, the turn of a third, which falls away from attention to be used later. These intervals are in turn derived from the essential harmonic form, an ambiguous major/minor triad which pivots on the fundamental F of the pedal.

These first four measures are the germ, the basic cell of the piece - obscure at first, but each of its tones is gradually given its own place and meaning, and its embryonic rhythmic motif, developed.

This rather tremulous initial form of the idea is at once crystallized in a new idea, set off by a fermata, separated by its very sonority: a high



The Piano Music 1 1

Example 3. Contrasting idea.

y m ^ j " pt r r =^

J L.y.._.J "t^vä T ¿_' ̂^ v hp y

+4 (

register, a relief from the trembling pedal, a stirring in the steady pianissi- mo level of the first idea, a striking thickness of sound. But chiefly it is crystallized - and contrasting - because of the "density" of the idea itself.

A contrasting theme is also coherent.. How are these two related? The second is a compression of the first. The contour is the same, for the whole movement is itself a contraction of the original, a movement now channeled and propelled by a sharpened and elaborated upbeat, which also condenses the semitone of the outline into an old neighbor-note formula and chisels out, for further use, the perfect fourth. The condensation is espe- cially striking in the conclusion, where both tones which had been placed in relation to El? - A and C - are combined to form another pivotal minor third, a link between the two contrasting registers.

But there is a further relationship set up in this contrasting phrase which implies a later development in Schoenberg's music. If we look merely at the musical material itself, at the new tones used, we find that they are not only new - those notes missing from the original cell - but they are also an inversion of the cell, around the fundamental and pivotal third; so that the tonal structure of this particular musical "world" looks something like this:




Example 3A. Original j

ii jtjt *y ~ i jj I.J 'j jjj

'* kf T >r *r r <,t Ir t ̂ r >r v r r m Inversion

As in tonal music, where the melodic and harmonic forms consist of chords, broken chords, scale fragments, characteristic intervals, here also the forms are similarly derived from this "scale" and "harmonic progression."

Fundamental compositional procedures

Example 4. Reduction, cadence and "liquidation."

^ ^f ^ iiJ L- J ^f ^n>JJÍ77J J.^ligi'-^Tc .r>r""iü"í"'"J' = » ' / TTTT7T7T7! '~7 ? T « QJ I ' TT^ R~r~" (1) '

Y /

_^ '~7 b ? ~"c _ ,7b 6 6 6 6 R~r~"

6)

(2) ̂FJ ^ ™^q " iiJ^n^-j-^-

p^ #-- i __ - -L -- ' ' ^

iiJ l'j''- T ' V. ^1 ^ 1 =

#-- __ - ' T T T f ^

c ^ ^^____ __^^^

^^^^^^: r^ r;^: ̂ » ^^^^

b ¡ " r _ bT^-rrr^*"^ , î__c , ! r " _

pip ̂ J1 , j

,' , ^^^Z_ ht|il - L- Tf- ^ bp :M -



The Piano Music 13

The contrasting phrase which has so sharply emerged focuses the relationships of the basic idea into a theme well-defined enough to be sub- jected to the traditional procedures of reduction, "liquidation" and cadence. Its continuation is a series of reductions leading to a "half -cadence on Ek which functions as a kind of dominant. [Ex. 4a,b] This continuation also serves, much in the manner of a modulation, to establish the meaning and function of each new tone. For example, the GÌ? (equivalent in the inversion of the original D^) is related to the fundamental F as [a] neighbor-note, then to the Ek as [a] minor sixth - first unobtrusively in the pedal, the[n] more prominently as third added to the motif, and finally expanded, in both voic- es, to Ak [Ex. 4a] This G'> will become part of a new pedal, a major third in conjunction with Bk in the contrast section. The Gt| goes through a similar process of clarification to become the basis of both half- and full- cadences, [Ex. 4a, b, c] and the Bt| extracted from the inverted upbeat, to produce the transitional [and expanded] form of the motif (c).

The original impression of organic movement - diastole and sys- tole, expansion and contraction, inhalation and exhalation - permeates every moment of this section: the dynamics express it, the rise and fall of phrases, the increasingly emphatic impulses in the accompaniment. It is reflected as well in the symmetrical structure of the musical material itself, a symmetry obtained by utilizing inversion and by mirroring the beginnings and ends of phrases. [Ex. [4(2)] The result is a sensation of perpetually developing expansion. The shape of the movements is still the same - around DÌ? and A)? - but the amplitude is greater, the impulses more complex, the characteristic motifs richer and more emphatic. And the intervals have expanded to new forms: the minor sixth/augmented fifth has unfold- ed to major, the diminished fourth to perfect, the minor third to major. Also the structure of the little world has shifted: the Ak merely an upbeat in the beginning, emerging imperceptibly in the bass, has become the dynamic climax and the center of the movement [Ex. 4b]; and the fundamental nature of the F has been weakened, in favor of a new aspect of the triad on Dk the major third (Et|/Fk-At>) [Ex. 4b], which will generate the second theme.

[Ex. 4c] This snowballing growth is brought to a halt by a "liquidation" of the "obligations of the motif." In the same manner in which Beethoven, for instance, prepares for a cadence by reducing his material to sequences, scale fragments, arpeggios - neutral material - here Schoenberg cancels out the rhythm by an augmentation of the motif and piles the tones up in chords which come to a stop from their own increasing resistance.

The first theme is restated in a symmetrical aba exposition.




Example 5. Transition.

BASIC CELL fließender ____^

INVERSION |

I*» '}.- j%j ^ '

^= ! ! 4 ¡é I "T ''f m} ,'y b^ 1 ^ ud ^ ^ I|J

The basic musical idea develops in myriad ways. In the second section, for instance - a transition [Example 5] - a new theme is formed out of the first by the simultaneous combination of original cell and inversion, and the texture becomes a veritable web of upbeat figures. The structural function of a transition is to get rid of the old and prepare for the new, and this one accomplishes it in several ways: it reduces the original melody to a form of the cadential figure (c) and finally to a "new" semitone, A-Bb (the pivot point of the "tonal" structure); it prepares for and emphasizes the Bip, which will become the new "contrasting" tonal center; it renews the rise and fall in tonal structure which is essential to the piece; and it establishes the new intervallic forms, foreshadowed in the previous section and the basis of the next: the major third and perfect fourth.



The Piano Music 15

Example 6. "Perpetual variation."

Subsidiary theme fi 20 21 h*L 22 L.H. , ,rjfeLJ a 1 4 fi 20

I 21

^'-i- h*L

ij^j^p* ======~

22 L.H. , ,rjfeLJ = < iJPP^~~ -^ f

======~ ~ cresc. etc.

r^ fl |J '"rT'P'"""" rt

b b

c DEVELOPMENTAL ,

*" /^^Ïsn"

MOTIF r...A.., .-^L. ,

lJ ii., , ù » LjJpiri^ t^T> I iy

^ = f f tVr

,

*3 j^p y ' i5» etwas flichtiger

b

4 iJ-.AJ:>Jl |J'I I J ̂ 4 a b c l'>; r a

I r b I

ORIGINAL THEME

The subsidiary theme is itself a simplification of the main idea, con- tracting the melody to a major third, augmenting the pedal to it [Ex. 6a]. It generates, in its turn, a third motif, a further variation. [Ex. 6b] This principle of "perpetual variation" is the means for unity upon which Schoenberg will develop his revolutionary approach to composition, the twelve-tone method.[6]




The Piano Music of Arnold Schoenberg: Part II The first part of this article had to do with Schoenberg as a revolutionary, engaged at a point in time where traditional means for musical logic and coherence - tonality - had been called into question, and pursuing his own necessity, first to push it to its limits, then to destroy it. And I remind you of the enormity of what he thus did! He deliberately sought to annihilate our entire framework of musical meaning. He did not simply cope with the problem - as did many others - by composing around or beside the point; rather, he stood forth and declared, in effect: "There is no pre-established harmony in the musical world; there are no 'givens'; I will create anew each new musical cosmos." No wonder he brought down the heavens on his head!

But we also saw that, paradoxically, he - more than any other contemporary composer, I think - used his past and built upon its acquisitions. The means by which he constructed his new music were distilled from a profound experience of his tradition, by a mind used to penetrating to essence. Because each different piece is a new world of tones per se, these means are diverse. We have seen how the musical world is fragmented, in a sense; how the separate components of a minute musical cell - a rhythm, a contour, a melodic interval, a single pitch- are isolated, in order to be utilized for re-integration; how such integrative elements are expanded, trans- formed, freely combined with permutations, transpositions, or independent détails; how they are made to yield up chords or melodic patterns; in short, how all the procedures formerly available in our music are brought to bear on motivic relationships. The result is an enormous complexity of such relationships when they are no longer contained by the tonal system, but allowed instead by the infinite possibilities of twelve tones "related only with one another."

Thus this music is doubly difficult: first, the renunciation of our frame of reference jeopardizes the meaning of single tones - i.e., there is no distinction between consonance and dissonance, no "given" direction, no felt "pull" from one tone to another; secondly, the complexity of musical relations deriving only from motif is overwhelming. The need was for limitation.

Much was lost - and much was gained. I want now to look at Schoenberg as builder rather than destroyer - and at the novelty of his work.

PART II. COMPOSITION WITH TWELVE TONES RELATED ONLY WITH ONE ANOTHER

The chief gain was concentration. Every note is now itself significant, urgent, crucial. "The foremost characteristics of these pieces," said Schoenberg, "were their extreme expressiveness and their extraordinary brevity." [Schoenberg's quotations are from a lecture delivered at the



The Piano Music 17

University of California at Los Angeles in 1941, "Composition with Twelve Tones," published in Style and Idea, 1950, by the Philosophical Library in New York.] The piano pieces of op. 19 epitomize this compression of idea and achieve a clarity and logic seldom reached before. In the last piece, for instance, allegedly written under the influence of Mahler's funeral and recalling that gray and deathly dismal day, when at the moment the coffin was lowered into the earth, a ray of sunlight broke through - in this piece everything is derived from the memory of bells. [7] It is difficult for me to speak of these pieces, in the face of their perfection - perfection in its ancient meaning of absolute wholeness, harmony. I can certainly no longer speak separately of what is said and how it is said, or make the usual distinctions between form and content, form and matter, style and idea. I am instead acquiescent to a totality.

But this wondrous last piece is nine measures long. The musical microcosm has contracted to a point of bright white light! What has been lost is the means to master, to oversee, the great spaces of the musical realm. Atonality had negated not only the frame of reference which tonality provides, but also its forces for building form. "Formerly the harmony had served not only as a source of beauty, but, more important, as a means of distinguishing the features of the form.. . . Hence, it seems at first impos- sible to compose pieces of complicated organization or of great length. A little later I discovered how to construct larger forms by following a text or poem." Thus, at this point, a third difficulty - and this for the composer himself - was the need for the possibilities of formal extension. The motif was not strong enough to bear the entire burden of construction.

Schoenberg has himself said that his twelve-tone method grew out of necessity. The new style carried to such exquisite expression in op. 19 was not an end, but rather the beginning, of the struggle - a struggle for Schoenberg, apparently, not only with his tradition, but also with himself. For these pieces marked the beginning of a twelve-year period of silence. This was a silence due only in part to the War, and it was not a period of inactivity. His irrepressible productivity found outlet in teaching, in performance - and in formulation. The Harmonielehre published in 1911 is a theory of harmony, yes, but it is also a discourse on the creative impulse. It would seem that Schoenberg had reached a point of stasis, faced with the need, common to all revolutionaries, to formulate the grounds upon which he stood. "The use of the fundamental harmony . . . had grown into a subconsciously functioning sense of form which gave a real composer an almost somnambulistic sense of security in creating, with utmost precision, the most delicate distinctions of formal elements. Whether one calls oneself conservative or revolutionary, whether one composes in a conventional or progressive manner, whether one tries to imitate old styles or is destined to express new ideas - whether one is a good composer or not - one must be convinced of the infallibility of one's own fantasy and one must believe in one's own inspiration. Nevertheless the desire for a conscious control of the




new means and forms will arise in every artist's mind; and he will wish to know consciously the laws and rules which govern the forms which he has conceived ' as in a dream.' ... After many unsuccessful attempts during a period of approximately 12 years, I laid the foundations for a new procedure in musical construction which seemed fitted to replace those structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmonies. ... I called this procedure Method of composition with twelve tones related only with one another ?m

This was then a search not only for formulation, for laws, but for the satisfaction of a new "sense of form" itself.

*

This is an elusive notion, "form." Must we get involved with it? It is difficult, as musicians, to avoid it! For it is what is at stake - as the artist labors with his material, as the performer wrestles to create it anew, as the observ- er seeks creatively to come into tune with it. We all have first-hand experience of the resistance ofthat piece of material which lies between pupil and teacher, inert and stubborn, until its form becomes lucid enough to grasp. It is only by its form that we can catch at all the "idea" - the "message to humanity."

Schoenberg was urgently concerned with making himself under- stood, and he spoke of form in terms of the understanding. "Form," he said, "aims at comprehensibility." "Alas, human creators, if they be granted a vision, must travel the long path between vision and accomplishment. ... Alas, it is one thing to envision in a creative instant of inspiration and it is another thing to materialize one's vision by painstakingly connecting details until they fuse into a kind of organism. And alas, suppose it becomes an organism, a homunculus or a robot, and possesses some of the spontane- ity of a vision; it remains yet another thing to organize this form so that it becomes a comprehensible message 'to whom it may concern. '"[9]

Formerly, tonality had been the ground for both the form and matter of music. Its structural functions articulated the extended features of form; and its inherent melodic relations provided cogent motivic content. The classic sonata-allegro is an extraordinary equilibrium of these two aspects of classic tonality. The "idea" of the sonata - reconciliation of opposition, working-out of dramatic conflict - is itself a perfect expression of the dual dimensions of tonality. But until the 19th century there are no "correct" sonata-allegro movements, no two alike. And in the 19th century the idea was lost; the "symphonic form" had become a vehicle to be filled with content. The Classicism of Vienna is the tradition from which Schoenberg sprang, and he was confronted, with respect to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with the same problems as were Brahms and Mahler - and any other post-Classic composer who ever wrote a sonata-allegro movement. And he was thinking in these same terms of organism, development - condensation, perhaps, instead of dualism - a new kind of symme-



The Piano Music 19

try, rather than synthesis. When he renounced tonality there was more at stake, of course, than consonance and dissonance and the meaning of tones per se. The "necessity" of the twelve-tone method is grounded here; it was the issue of a particular struggle between form and content.

*

The twelve-tone method, too, "aims only at comprehensibility." It is a def- inition, a limitation - a limitation imposed on the infinite possibilities of "free" atonality, for the purpose of making the idea clear. What are these restrictions which Schoenberg imposes upon himself, restrictions "so severe that they can only be overcome by an imagination which has sur- vived a tremendous number of adventures." Simply the "constant and exclusive use of all twelve tones" - the total organization of the total resources of chromaticism. We remember that chromaticism, in contrast to diatonic structure, posits all tones as equally valid. Therefore none is to be repeated or doubled - and thereby given extra weight - until each has had its turn. As in the "free" pieces, where each new construction was organized in its own way, so here the principles of order are created anew for each piece and set forth in its "tone row," the basic arrangement of tonal relations which will govern that piece.

Thus the tone row has to do with both form and content. It is not so much a series of tones as a series of intervals, and these intervallic relations constitute the "matter" of the piece. The row is not a scale, Schoenberg says; yet all the harmonic and melodic forms of the piece are drawn from it, in much the same manner as from a scale. It also provides for the principles of formal organization, in various ways: (1) it is, first of all, entirely responsible for the unity of the piece: everything which happens comes from it; (2) secondly, it expresses this unity in another sense (as did tonality): it generates both harmony and melody, two different dimensions of the same musical reality; and whereas in former styles the musical space had been "filled" first in one of these directions, then in the other, now they are equally significant; (3) it can be utilized to define and map out the large areas of the musical space, in ways which correspond to, or at least substi- tute for, the structural functions of tonal harmony; (4) and finally, it is itself the "theme" upon which the entire piece is a kind of perpetual variation, no matter what super-structure of "form" may have been superimposed. It is therefore both material formed and formative principle.

On what basis, and to what extent, is this procedure "fitted to replace those structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmony?" Theoretically it is grounded on one of Schoenberg's most penetrating formulations: the unity of the musical space.

Ordinarily we conceive of music as proceeding in time, as continu- ous, evanescent, never-recurring, therefore essentially an intangible and impalpable art, an art given successively, not simultaneously. But this is misleading. That music which is most meaningful to us is the music we




know best - not only "best," but well enough to know what is coming, what has just passed - that is to say, which we know well enough to know all at once, to comprehend, to grasp, as a whole. For example, in the Eroica sym- phony, the "false" entrance of the horns excites us only when our expectan- cy is attuned to its place in the piece as a whole; or the iridescence of a single tone, in op. 1 1 only catches light when we are able to hold in our ears the entire web of associations so intricately put together. This is the "given" in Schoenberg's musical thought - the wholeness of the musical work. This is what is assumed as necessary for our comprehension, and what is essential to the complexity of his style. Our satisfaction depends upon our abili- ty to apprehend the musical idea as a whole. "Because the musical space is a unified whole it demands an absolute and unitary perception."

In tonal music, as we have said, the relationships given by the system itself lay out the structure of the musical space, define it and limit it. Tonality as such, as a matter of fact, requires a unified, organized, "simultaneous" space - much like perspective in painting. Historically, the two developed at about the same time, as outward, .systematic organizations of such a space inwardly intuited. But in the twentieth century, space has become extended, fragmented, and we are sometimes disoriented.

Schoenberg wills the reintegration of space. "The two-or-more- dimensional space in which musical ideas are presented is a unit. Though the elements of these ideas appear separate and independent to the eye and ear, they reveal their true meaning only through their cooperation, even as no single word alone can express a thought without relation to other words. All that happens at any point of this musical space has more than a local effect. It functions not only in its own plane, but also in all other directions and planes, and it is not without influence even at remote points. . . . This is why ... a basic set of twelve tones can be used in either dimension, as a whole or in parts. ... A musical creator's mind can operate subconsciously with a row of tones regardless of their direction, regardless of the way in which a mirror might show their mutual relations." A musical idea, like a chair or a table, is not destroyed by changing its aspect or one's point of view. Like a chair, it is a "whole" whether we look at it from in front, from behind, or above our heads upside down. In fact, we only know it - as chair or musical idea - because we have perceived it in its different profiles.

Granted the wholeness of the musical space, there still remains the question of the validity of such tonal relationships, established per se. Are they cogent? Do tones set in relation arbitrarily, without the meanings conferred on them by a pre-established order, generate their own meaning? Or is this an arbitrary construction of a musical "engineer?" (This is an accu- sation Schoenberg often faced. He calls for support on the example of Beethoven who in answering a letter from his brother, signed "land-owner," signed his own reply "brain-owner.")



The Piano Music 21

Actually, not theoretically, each of us will of course have to answer this question in reference to his own experience, as best he can. And to this purpose, let us look at the music itself.

*

Again Schoenberg worked [o]ut his new ideas first in his piano music. Although the new method is applied in the last movement of op. 23, the first large-scale work in this style is the Suite for Piano, op. 25, written in 1921-23. These are the pieces I should like to turn to now.

First of all, let us see how the tone row embodies the basic idea. Example 1 shows the row itself, the "basic set" (BS) and its three mirror

Example 1.

b) a) a) [ _b_ J^Z

^~^

Dsj¿r_rr^r U iL.hr 'ß [

rüT/T^Jr hß ir ü iJ l'y Y T'T Ir

' [ ^"""" î) ' fJjj.M'r*f riiii'i^4J^[jJJiilJrHi.iyir'ri"

forms: the inversion (I), retrograde (R) and inversion of the retrograde (RI). Everything that happens in the Suite will be drawn from these. Thus they correspond to the minute basic cell of the earlier piece of op. 11, but any ambiguities have been stabilized; the infinite possibilities are "set"; we now begin with a consolidation, a formulation - a structure instead of a cell. The mysteriousness of the "given" is crystallized. In this particular set there are several striking features: a) two diminished fifths; b) semitones at beginning and end; c) a more complicated relation, which will be explored only late in the work, the two fourths with connective third.

These inherent characteristics are brought into different shades of focus in the various movements. Here are some of the diverse forms the row takes as "theme."




Example 2. 1.

Rasch (J. = 80) /' . ^

'j$' _*. [ir i*, I l>f¡|j i J K ^ -¿- |Jj '

I. The opening measures of the Praeludium show one way of differ- entiating theme from accompaniment: the use of a transposition of the row - here, a transposition at the diminished fifth, which is related by a common pivotal interval, the crucial diminished fifth, G-Dk The characteristic intervals are emphasized: a) the initial semitone is set out in the foreground and reflected in the accompaniment; b) the diminished fifths are strongly articulated by two-note phrasing and extended by an upbeat figure. The row falls naturally into four-note segments, the final one being left undefined, to be developed later.

II. The Gavotte shows a different technique for distinguishing theme from accompaniment. Here the segments are used independently, some for melody, some for accompaniment [A]. The construction of the

Example 2. II. Etwas langsam (¿ = ca 72) nicht hastig

. g' *^-r .i>- - Jr-rîlf . W

r-irn.L>

, I*) . /r-"111^^ etc.

(a) BS: 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 (a,} j«*. , 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

fi Jjl ,J U iJ^i . J [I 1 1 1 br

A 9 10 11 12 n 10 9 '9 /o n 12

b ¿L r^ 1 ̂f 1, j m 1 bJiiV ^=



The Piano Music 23

consequent phrase (a1) from the inversion of the row, and the mirror repetition of the first segment of the accompaniment give rise to the kind of symmetry we saw so often in op. 11. The mirror repetition in the accompaniment, incidentally, also reflects the previously undefined closing segment of the row, articulating and finishing it [x]. The characteristic intervals have been negated: the semitones wrenched apart by octave transpositions, E-F, B-C, Bb-A; the diminished fifths now more structural than motivic [B]. The chief motivic interest is rhythmic: the elaboration of the upbeat figure, which is the classic gavotte motif [C].

Example 2. III. Rascher (J = 88)

if.^lllT-frflitEL < A /-) L j ^L-^^ f^==- etc.

BS: 1 2 4 I°5 2 1 4

tj i J ]7TI

13 '^J ¡HL i-- - - tj 13 i-- - - A etc.

9 10 11 12 5 6 7 8 ^^_^

I ^ J J hJ 1 bJ J ̂ J l,J J b,J I ''JUjl ^^_^

9 10 11 12 5 6 7 8

I "^ Lh

I1' 1,1 it I1'

^ ^^ * I i j» ̂ jï » 1 I î ^

t

III. The "trio" of the Gavotte is a Musette, with its typical drone and music-box sonority. The segmentation of the row is the same as in the Gavotte [A], but the G, by now established as the "fundamental" is extracted for the drone, and the diminished fifth is vertical, outlining a "chord"




[B]. Again the inversion of the row is utilized to yield symmetrical phrases, and the entire fabric is regularized.

Example 2. IV. (J = 40) • • • • • • • P9corit- *

A espress ^_ i i lJPJ ^^|

0 ,2 5 6 7 8

A é 0

j

' | >f '[ jj. Ijn'r1 Ty

>IP

3 9 10 11 12

IV. The Intermezzo uses still another device for differentiation: 1) the row is broken up into chord of accompaniment, based on the fundamental dI>-G; and 2) fragmented into two-note segments, the seconds and thirds which had been crystallized in the Musette and the important diminished fifth.

*

As we see, the possibilities for variety are endless. But how does the use of the row unify a piece? How does it itself make everything happen? To see this I should like to explore one of the movements more closely.

The Prelude, for example, is cast in the classic AB form of the suite - two large sections, contrasting but both beginning with the same material, and separated by a fermata. The first section itself consists of two parts, the main and contrasting themes. I should like to look more closely at this main theme to see, first of all, what is going on, and secondly, how it is generated by the basic set [Ex. 3]. The theme is a period, nine measures long with the caesura in m. 5. Its motivic content is dense and richly elaborated, yet extraordinarily lucid in articulation. The antecedent phrase [3 A] "exposes" the elements which will be answered in the consequent. (I have laid these out in several staves, for the sake of clarity):



The Piano Music 25

1) a sharply articulated statement of the row as "theme" (a);

Example 3. Präludium. A ANTECEDENT PHRASE

(see Example 2: 1) , x .

1)BS 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12

^ 7 i°5

2)°5 1 234 5678

(b')_ 9 10 11 12 j

(c) n - s/> i>. . p

I°5 5 6 7 8 R°5 3 2 1

-g- j i [J [~] » ^^J 1,. r-

9 10 11 12 4X /o -, ¿ c

^ 1 ^===== I ft ^^ 1111 E 1 2 3

12 11 10 9

2) two accompaniment figures - similar in function, differentiated in character (b), (bf);

3) a rhythmic figure (c) beginning on a pivotal Bt>, which carries a condensation of motifs from the theme through to the half-cadence - a




cadence to the Bkand the secondary diminished fifth, Fjj-C- What happens in the consequent phrase?

Example 3. Consequent phrase. 7

B CONSEQUENT PHRASE " e-a J?k

^ ̂ /^^T^f^ e-a

^ y U y y ̂ 2I _

BS: 4 3 2

^ ^ 5 7 6 5 I: 1

17 ii J 9 P^l1 2 3 3 5 4 3 2 1

BS: l 2 3

« ^^^_____ . _^^=_ ^ -

* ^^p ̂ | ̂ . I 'F^ | - j» "^--- - - - * _

3 4

6 7 8 5 6 7 8 '

/

9 10 11 12

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1) the entire first measure is revealed as upbeat, thus illuminating the core of the theme (which is therefore a regular 4 + 4 measure period);

2) the theme itself is now taken in the left hand and enriched in anal- ogy to the accompaniment figure (bf), which it incorporates; but the main



The Piano Music 27

motif itself (D-A[?-Et>-F}t) is a mirror of its antecedent; 3) the "tail" element of the first phrase is elaborated and made

explicit: it becomes the model for a sequence which sets off a chain of reductions, corresponding to those in the antecedent phrase; the cadence, again to B'> and C-Gip, is a dense web of these condensations.

I am going to ask you now to count through with me, in these first two phrases, the twelve tones of the row, in order to see how it both is and forms the musical material [Ex. 4]. The antecedent phrase (a) is constructed from the four forms of the basic set:

Example 4. Structural functions of the row.

I°5: BS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Q 1Q n 12 5 6 7 S

a- LLXJ aaw> Yrf Y ax }

' 9 10 11 12 etc. } i L 5 6 7 8 .

I'll pffp Y q^ i 2^ 3 4^

BS°5: 12 3 4 9 10 11 12 I? 11 10 9

?• = = T 1 ^ " 'rP a1) 8 7 6 5' ^rc.

BS:4 3 2 1 12 10 11 9 7 6 5




1) the BS for the theme itself; 2) its transposition to the diminished fifth for the accompaniment,

BS5; 3) its inversion for the "reductions" of the motifs, P, thereby pro-

ducing the "mirroring" of contour we recognize by now; and 4) RI°5, the retrograde of this inversion, which pulls together the cadence. All are connect- ed by the pivotal diminished fifth, G-Db.

The consequent phrase (af) answers with segments of these forms, depending also on the pivot:

1) melodic and accompaniment elements are consolidated and both are shaped from a fragmented form of the transposed BS: 4321 8765 12 11 10 9;

2) the "tail" of the motif (9 10 11 12 in m. 2) is condensed in a similar fragmented form of the inversion: 12 11 10 9 makes up the accompaniment figure; 4 3 2 1 is an added element,

3) which is mirrored in sequence (BS°5 12 3 4) and continued through to the cadence;

4) the reductions of the consequent phrase (P 8 7 6 5) parallel those of the antecedent (P 5 6 7 8);

5) and the rhythmic figure of repeated notes which in both phrases leads to the cadence begins here on the initial E of the BS, corresponding to its original El? of I05.

*

Such note-counting is, of course, tedious - much like marking out root-pro- gressions - and not a procedure we ordinarily resort to. Nevertheless, it illuminates the symmetry, the structural parallelisms and mirror-like phrases, the difficult voice-leading and complicated relations which we may only half-hear at first. The symmetrical construction is obviously inherent in the technique itself, stemming from the use of analogous forms of the row to produce analogous formal features, and thus an earmark of the style. But other relationships- for example, between a' and the accompaniment figure bf; between the parallel rhythmic figures on El and E; the motivic reductions - these become transparent in the light of the serial construction.

I should like to explore in this regard, i.e., structuring by the use of the row, the difficult problem of contrast in this style - which sometimes "all sounds alike." Example 5 shows the contrasting theme (B), again laid out in several staves. What is happening here?



The Piano Music 29

Example 5. Contrasting theme. etwas ruhiger

^ -_ Œ» ' poco rit.

_0 lJ . J I 1 BS:4 3 b¿ . li O fe ^ h

. hJ- J K ■ b/l 1

. T

1 ' / !-«-■■-■-

8 12 7 11 6 10 5 9

7 H J M 7 : - ^ 9 10 11 12

! i r "1 2 ffl 3 -i i 4) V:

K Mir1

r "1 , K

M 'iJ -i

rn i

» j i »j lu ufi ij'°'v;^ a' (Consequent phrase) / '

6) |nhJ =8 7 6Jlp - - I U- jli» 12 11 10 9

(Antecedent phrase)

9) II ^'^^■1 ̂P 1^ hJ- 1"*,J I =

1) the melody in the right hand ¿s contrasting, yet based on the characteristic C-DÌ?, on the rhythm of (a) [Staff 9], and the upbeat figure of (af) [Staffò]. The contrasting motif bears, in fact, the same relation to the row as do (a) and (af): it is the initial segment (4 3 2 1) which has been extracted [Staff 5].

2) an accompaniment motif emphasizing minor 6ths. Where, before, have we heard this interval?

3) and 4) reductions of the motif to two-note phrases, echoing their parallel forms in the main theme.

5) By now the row has all but lost its identity in the fragmentation; the accompaniment figure [Staff 2], is derived from a remote permutation




of the vertical segments of (a'), a relationship which sounded to me only by virtue of the striking effect of the major third in that phrase.

This second theme is "contrasting," yes; but also a further variation in this perpetually varying explication of the basic idea.

Finally, I want to look at one of the other movements of the suite, apart from the serial procedures of construction.

Again, I attempt to recapture my first and immediate response to this music - and it is an impression of clarity, the clarity of prose, perhaps - not the brilliance of a perfectly focused poetic image - not iridescence, which includes ambiguity and the mysterious quality of the piece from op. 11 [A]; but rather the black-and-white illumination of prose explication. This is partly a consequence of Schoenberg's particular use of form in this work: he has superimposed on the inherent "perpetual variation" of his method the pre-given formal pattern of an eighteenth-century dance suite. If there is, in the history of our music, any prescribed "form" to be "filled," this is it - stylized, clearly structured, "closed," symmetrical - as to the kind of forming which gradually evolves in op. 11.

I want to look briefly at one of these highly stylized movements. The theme of the Minuet, for example, scarcely reflects the clarity of a dance theme [Ex. 8]. It is strikingly pianistic - no line, only sonority, and an intricate complex of motifs. Yet it is stated in what Schoenberg present-

Example 8. Menuett.

""TONIC" FORM "DOMINANT" FORM

- Moderato (J = ca. 88) L ̂S _ . 1 T, ,N f^^^ - J^TH

REDUCTIONS r

,,.7J- -

-^ t =^y L=i,y *rt,' ,^



The Piano Music 3 1

ed as the most usual expository form, the "sentence," which he analyzed as consisting of a "tonic form," a "dominant form," reductions of the motifs and cadence (for example, the first theme of Beethoven's first piano sonata).

The theme of the Minuet unfolds three motifs [Ex. 8A]: 1) a minor third (a); 2) the half-step (b) and upbeat figure (c), which push the third to its

expansion; 3) and a rhythmic modification of these, in the form of the disjunct

ninth, which produces a fascinating - and frustrated! - form of the minuet short-long rhythm.

Example 8. A, B, C.

TF DF

B 1<ÁJ

i"J i ^ # "ijTJi J ji . S" . (a) (c) ' V1 ^_h ,, - ^ ,'

(*ì=| , (b) (b)

(b) L~â~J

3) V''1 ' !li ^p

ni, i i »io n ,2 i i i, 'y'10,9

^^ ^^ ni,

u j i ^J- , i

i ^ ri iP 'f=f br|i.J i>j j, i 'ifT'T r ^^ u ^J- , ri 'f=f . . "^=^±3= r BS: 5 6 7 8 8

, L_ W- - 1 I 1 3 IV' , 'ir »i» y

L_ It W- V Ur -

f Ur . = »i» ;^

' III r . 12 3 4 ' III



32 Theory and Practice The classic structure of the sentence takes as its axis the two funda-

mental tones which have been established as quasi-tonic and -dominant, G and Db [Ex. 8B] and the use of basic set and inversion again enhances the symmetrical structure [Ex. 8C]. The sentence concludes with a semitonal cadence which recurs, to punctuate the formal pattern.

I wonder if, at this point, these procedures have added to our understanding of this music? This "aim for comprehensibility" does sound para- doxical, in the face of its enormous complexity - a complexity we must confront without our traditional means of help. It would seem that Schoenberg is working for clarity against great odds - or perhaps, creating difficulties in order to overcome them!

I think it is important that it is the understanding which Schoenberg emphasizes - not beauty, but a feeling akin to it: "the relaxation which a satisfied listener experiences when he can follow an idea . . . " - in other words, both intellectual and emotional satisfaction.

This is not beauty, in the sense of former times which have carried an ideal of Tightness or wrongness of form, beauty as opposed to ugliness. But it is an equilibrium, a harmony of forces, in the face of the greatest odds: the fragmented, chaotic, incomprehensible world of the twentieth century. It is somehow a balance of old and new, tradition and rebellion, "heart and brain," the nihilism of atonality and the total organization of the twelve-tone procedure. Schoenberg 's sense of form has been described as "willed form" - which, I think, is the point. It is form willed in the face of the destruction and absurdity of our own times. And if he has succeeded, the validity of his message to humanity is unquestionable.

The above excerpts were copied from Universal Edition Nr. 7627, which was copyrighted in 1925 by Universal and renewed in 1952 by Gertrude Schoenberg.

Miss Patricia Carpenter, who is teaching music history and theory at Barnard College, studied theory and composition with Arnold Schönberg, piano with Mme. Leginska. She played the first performance of Schönberg's piano concerto in Los Angeles.



The Piano Music 33 NOTES

Additions and corrections to this essay were compiled by Séverine Neff.

1. Compare Arnold Schoenberg, "Composition with Twelve Tones (1)" in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 218.

2. For discussions of Schoenberg's notions of beauty and comprehensibility see Schoenberg, "Composition with Twelve Tones (1)" in Style and Idea, 215; and Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 30-31.

3. Compare Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, 432-33.

4. Compare Patricia Carpenter, "Grundgestalt as Tonal Function," Music Theory Spectrum 5 (1983): 15-38.

5. This is perhaps a quotation from Carpenter's class notes from '9A2-AA.

6. "Perpetual Variation" is another term for "developing variation": See "Concordance of Terms" in Arnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea, and the Logic, Technique and Art of Its Presentation, ed. and trans. Patricia Carpenter and Séverine Neff (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 365-66.

7. Schoenberg's painting "Burial of Gustav Mahler," also captures the events and feel- ings of this sad day: See Arnold Schönberg, Catalogue Raisonné, ed. Christian Meyer and Thérèse Muxeneder (Vienna: Arnold Schönberg Center, 2005), plate no. 153. Also see Eric Mckee's contribution in this volume oí Theory and Practice.

8. Schoenberg, Style and Idea, 218.

9. Ibid., 215.



The Piano Music of Arnold Schoenberg

Documents

Transcript of The Piano Music of Arnold Schoenberg