Schoenberg Flashcards
Wassily Kandinsky
(1866-1944) On the Spiritual Art.
Inward turn that the role of the painter is not supposed to look outward to nature, but rather inward to ones own subjective response.
He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works.
Adolph Loos
1870-1933
Ornament and Crime.
Starts to advocate for a stripped down form of archetecture the rejects the ornamentation and excess around him in Vienna.
Karl Kraus
1874-1936 Die Fackel. For him the idea is to strip away the distortions of language to reveal the news as facts.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951. Tractates Logico Philosophicus. Trying to get past Language as see its limitations. He felt that language could not express everything.
was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
He published the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)
Dank, op. 1
Composed in 1898 Its a song More of less a through composed song. Text by Karl von Levetzow Premiered in 1900 Hostile reviews in the press Published in 1903 (dedicated to Alexander von Zemlinsky) Uses wide leaps that Wagner was fond of at the end of the line. But the accompaniment is more Brahmsian. Very extravagant accompaniment. Harmonically more advanced then either of them, but does have aspects of both. Wagnerian vocal line with contrapuntal Brahms accompaniment.
Gurre-Lieder
What: large cantata
When: 1900 and 1910
How: The cantata is divided into three parts. Whereas the first two parts are scored for solo voices and orchestra only, the third part introduces a further two soloists, a narrator, three four-part male choruses as well as a full mixed chorus.
Why: Whereas Parts One and Two are clearly Wagnerian in conception and execution, Part Three features the pared-down orchestral textures and kaleidoscopic shifts between small groups of instruments favoured by Mahler in his later symphonies.
Art Nouveau
What: is an international style of art, architecture and applied art, especially the decorative arts, that was most popular between
1890 and 1910.
Why: A reaction to the academic art of the 19th century.
How: it was inspired by natural forms and structures, particularly the curved lines of plants and flowers.
Jugendstil
Who: Named for an arts journal founded in Munich by Georg Hirth
Where: Germany
When: 1890-1910
What: Three elements: flowing lines, dynamic, flatness or two dimensionality (like Klimt, and art that places its emphasis on the surface) , profuseness of ornament.
Why: Ideas about music were a force behind the movements tendency toward abstract design. The visual arts is a model for music.
These characteristics are inherent to music. music’s nature is abstract, it is inherent to the medium. There is an argument to be made that visual artist looked to music for inspiration. (About one of the readings) he finds the template for this idea in Wagner.
How: Wagner’s music actually gave rise to Jugendstil. The prelude to Dad Rheingold represents a surface of sound, a Klangflache.
Erwartung op. 2
What: is a one-act monodrama in four scenes.
Musical example of Jugendstil
Who: Richard Dehmel
How/ why: Some textual qualities: decorative or action words (goalless mostion) through emphasis on adverbs, intransitive or reflexive verbs, and visual description. Deactivation of verbs.
The poem unfolds as a highly stylized, almost abstract play of color”; it manifests the kind of verbal deactivation…characteristic of Jugendstil.
Throughout the poem any human actions….tend to be surrounded or abscured by the delicate, ornamental play of colours. As a corollary to the poems colour play schoenberg created a distinctive five note chord colour
Frisch reading
Jugendstil is characterized by: dynamic flowing lines, flatness or two dimensionality, and profuseness of ornament.
Problem with music is that line, ornament, and symmetry are inherent to it.
What can Music do for Jugendstil not the other way around.
Kandinsky and colour similar to harmony
Lied comes closest to fulfilling Jugendstil because of its poetic text. Add a deactivation of action words for goalless motion.
Erwartung the poem uses a highly stialized abstract play of colour
Schoenberg created a colour chord to reflect this with the tonic note E-flat and four neighbor tones dissonant to the tonic triad.
This remarkable sonority, which appears initially with the word “meergriinen,” stands in place of the conventional dominant harmony, which normally tends toward resolution on the tonic. But the fact that
the tonic E-flat is itself present in the color chord tends to rob it of forward motion. Schoenberg thus manipulates harmonic syntax in a way that intimately mirrors the three static or goalless modifying
phrases of the first stanza: despite apparent motion, the music remains rooted firmly on the tonic E-flat. Schoenberg has transformed a traditional function of to music-that of dominant-tonic tension-into a non-progressive state.
Richard Dehmel
(1863-1920):
Controversial poet, left leaning poet in a conservative age
Poems often dealt with sexual themes.
German poet associated with Jugendstil aesthetics
Wrote Poem that Schoenberg’s piece Erwartung was based on.
was regarded by schoenberg as being very programatic. Schoenberg eventually includes the poem on the program of of this piece. (Premier did not have it)
First string quartet in D minor
What: Two dimension sonata form.sonata cycle and sonata form at same time.
Why: Idea of developing variation that he inherits from Brahms. Schoenberg is deeply impressed by devising a contrapuntal combination upfront that can serve as a sort of source material for everythign that follows.
How: In F# minor.
Sounds Brahmsian at first, then it becomes densely packed.
First group that it’s self beaks down into a little tertiary form. But also strophic.
uses different tonal relations.
Easy to hear the present of Brahms, contrapuntal, motivic.
There is a Chromatic fugato.
Thematically coherent
Verklarte Nacht
rondo ish: A (epic) B (woman) A’ (Epic) C (Man) A’ (epic
string sextet.
When: 1899
Has a Wagnerian face, but Brahmsian conscious. Surface is clearly inspired by wagner. Lots of emphasis on sonority, some tristan like chords. Brahms is in the counterpoint. Very pervasively developmental.
What: The first half of the program theyre prominading in the park, there’s a melancholy to it, and its all staging this announcement that the woman is going to make. She is going to tell the man shes married to another and pregnant with his child and shes fallen in love with the man and scared what his reaction iwll be. The second half of the piece, at section C, shifts from the prominatly minor mode to a very bright, redemptive D major in the second. The change is responding to the text again. After the woman has made her declaration. We will treat this child you’re bearing as if it is my own. The final A section is sort of outside the program. The C section is the man speaking. But the final A section is basically just a long coda. So this last refrain sounds even more remodeling from the B section.
15 min mark is when the C section. When the C section arrives its “like a sunrise”
E flat major to D major. Another one of these Wagnerian moves. Where one part is stationary and the others slides.
The Ninth Chord
In Verklarte Nacht
At 42 measures, or at 3:18. B section.
There is a deceptive like progression there was a inverted 9th chord.
There were very violent reactions to this chord. People hated it
This chord was not in any of the harmonic textbooks.
Schoenberg believed that this chord was the reason this piece was sort of black listed. Many critics said that this chord wasn’t sanctioned by anyone, it wasn’t proper music.
Leitmotif here supposed to reflect her loneliness and unhapppyness in her marriage
3:53
Dika Newlin
(1923-2006)
Went to university at age 12.
Started composing at 8
Started taking composition classes with schoenberg at 15
She had direct access to schoenberg
Wrote one of the first scholarly studies in North America on him
One of the themes on the dissertation she wrote (And we had to read) was that schoenberg had a stylistic conceptual consistancy in his work. He is already very obsessed with representing musical ideas in his works. Very much so a part of his compositional thought.
