Schoenberg (Master Musicians Series)

401 Pages·2008·2.75 MB·English

by  Malcolm MacDonald

m/m/m/m/m/
T H E M A S T E R M U S I C I A N S
SCHOENBERG
S e r i e s e d i t e d b y R. L a r r y T o d d
F o r m e r s e r i e s e d i t o r t h e l a t e S t a n l e y S a d i e
T H E M A S T E R M U S I C I A N S
Titles Available in Paperback
Bach (cid:1) MalcolmBoyd Monteverdi (cid:1) DenisArnold
Beethoven (cid:1) BarryCooper Puccini (cid:1) JulianBudden
Berlioz (cid:1) HughMacdonald Purcell (cid:1) J.A.Westrup
Handel (cid:1) DonaldBurrows Schumann (cid:1) EricFrederickJensen
Liszt (cid:1) DerekWatson Tchaikovsky (cid:1) EdwardGarden
Mahler (cid:1) MichaelKennedy
Mendelssohn (cid:1) PhilipRadcliffe
Titles Available in Hardcover
Mozart (cid:1) JulianRushton Rossini (cid:1) RichardOsborne
Musorgsky (cid:1) DavidBrown Schu¨tz (cid:1) BasilSmallman
m/m/m/m/m/
T H E M A S T E R M U S I C I A N S
SCHOENBERG
M a l c o l m M a c D o n a l d
1
2008
1
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
MacDonald,Malcolm,1948–
Schoenberg/Malcolm,MacDonald.—2nded.
p.cm.—(Mastermusiciansseries)
Includesbibliographicreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-19-517201-0
1. Schoenberg,Arnold,1874–1951. 2. Composers—Biography.
I. Title. II. Series.
ML410.S283M152007
780.92—dc22
[B] 2006053526
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
onacid-freepaper
To David, Judy,
Lucy, Flora,
and Thomas
and in remembrance
of Ann
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Whether to right or left, forward or
backward, uphill or downhill—you must
go on, without asking what lies before
or behind you. It shall be hidden; you
were allowed to forget it, you had to,
in order to fulfil your task!
(Die Jakobsleiter, 1915)
But there is nothing I long for more
intensely...than to be taken for a
better sort of Tchaikovsky—for heaven’s
sake; a bit better, but really that’s all.
or if anything more, then that people
should know my tunes and whistle to them.
(Letter to Hans Rosbaud, 1947)
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Preface to the Revised Edition
Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerari
animi.
—(Leibniz)
This book was first published twenty-five years after
Schoenberg’s death, and now reappears in modified guise more
than thirty years on. Itsoriginal edition strikes metoday as something of
ahistoricaldocument.Whena‘MasterMusicians’volumeonSchoenberg
wasfirstmooted,thecomposerwasstillafigureofcontroversyinanon-
goingideologicalwarbetweenmodernistandtraditionalistcriticalcamps.
Schoenberg was seen by the former—rightly—as the principal father-
figureofmusicalmodernismand—lesslegitimatelybutunderstandably—
as the forerunner whose achievements demonstrated the historic inevi-
tability of the post-war serialist avant-garde, who took their cue from his
pupil, Webern,and hadsincebecometheofficiallysanctioned leadersof
the New Music of the 1960s and ’70s. For those of a more reactionary
disposition,orsimplytemperamentallyantipathetictomuchofthatNew
Music, Schoenberg was the misguided genius whose ‘unnatural’ ap-
proachtocompositionboreheaviestresponsibilityforthepresentgulfin
communication and comprehension between modern composers with
their supporting coteries and the general concert-going public (whose
understandingandappreciationwasassumedtobelimitedtomusicwrit-
ten in a traditional tonal idiom).
Much of the writing on Schoenberg then available in the United
Kingdom was both partisan and analytical, concentrating on his inno-
vations in compositional technique, especially the twelve-note method
anditslaterdevelopments.Evenbooksostensiblyaimedatnon-specialist
readers, such as Anthony Payne’s admirable little monograph in the
Oxford Studies of Composers series, or Arnold Whittall’s BBC Music