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Tag: Arnold Schoenberg

Schoenberg Riddle Mystery Enigma

Winston Churchill’s assessment of Russia in 1939 could have just as easily been applied to Arnold Schoenberg. He was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma – a man cloaked in irony and contradiction.

For one thing, his very name, “Schoenberg,” translates as “beautiful mountain,” yet those who would characterize his music as such are distinctly in the minority.

He was the greatest prophet of dodecaphonic music, who claimed an artistic kinship with Johannes Brahms.

He preached the death of tonality, even as he orchestrated his share of Viennese operettas and arranged Strauss waltzes for performance by his friends.

He was a Jew, who converted to Lutheranism, but swung back hard to Judaism, in defiance of Hitler, with the rise of the Nazis.

He was probably the least “popular” composer in the world, but his tennis partner was none other than George Gershwin. The two also shared a love of painting.

Schoenberg was a triskaidekaphobe, who died on Friday the 13th. It was all right to count to twelve, apparently, but never to thirteen.

Adding to this beautiful mountain of contradictions, Schoenberg, like that other titan of 20th century music, Igor Stravinsky, wound up living in Hollywood.

Both men were suspicious of the movies (and each other), yet both were hoping to break into films. Stravinsky wrote cues for “The Song of Bernadette,” “Jane Eyre,” and “The North Star” (ultimately scored by Copland). None of his music was used in the pictures – Stravinsky was too slow and demanded too much money – but some of it was recycled in his concert works.

Likewise, Schoenberg was courted for a film adaptation of “The Good Earth,” but his proposed $50,000 fee put an end to that.

Twelve-tone music did eventually make it into the movies, thanks to composers like Leonard Rosenman and David Raksin. Rosenman’s landmark score for “The Cobweb” (1955) is credited as the first predominantly twelve-tone score written for a motion picture. Raksin, the composer of “Laura,” also employed a tone row in the Edgar Allan Poe mystery, “The Man with a Cloak” (1951).

Interestingly, Schoenberg, the creator of “Pierrot Lunaire” and “Moses und Aaron,” was also a great fan of Hopalong Cassidy. Like Walt Whitman, an admittedly strange comparison, Schoenberg contained multitudes.

Happy birthday, Arnie!

“Variations for Orchestra,” conducted by Bruno Maderna

“Pierrot Lunaire”

With goats!

A kinder, gentler Schoenberg – the Suite for String Orchestra, given its premiere in Los Angeles in 1935:

Stravinsky in Hollywood

Schoenberg in home movies – on the tennis court, naturally – with Gershwin and others. (Gershwin appears around 2:20.)

Leonard Rosenman’s “The Cobweb”

September 13, 2021
Alban Berg’s Romantic Revolution

Had your fill of snow? Make an appointment today to sweat it out in the fin de siècle hothouse of Alban Berg.

Berg has always been regarded as the Romantic among serialists – one critic described him as “the Puccini of twelve-tone music” – so it’s hardly surprising to find a shimmering, unresolved longing in much of his music, linking him to the more traditional-minded among his Viennese contemporaries.

Berg’s operas, “Wozzeck” and “Lulu,” are in the standard repertoire. His “Lyric Suite” and Chamber Concerto are played with frequency. But it is his Violin Concerto of 1935 that has really entered people’s hearts.

In this work – a response to the death of Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius – Berg processes loss and grief with the kind of humanity that seems have eluded Arnold Schoenberg, his teacher, in his own dogmatic dodecaphony. Furthermore, Berg’s masterpiece offers identifiable signposts for the uninitiated, with allusions to a chorale melody employed by Johann Sebastian Bach and a Carinthian folk song.

The concerto is a fine example of a talented artist bending the rules of a particular system to achieve his own expressive ends. Berg dedicated the piece “To the memory of an angel.” Work on the concerto proved to be a cathartic experience for the composer. He confessed in a letter to violinist Louis Krasner, who commissioned the piece, that it had actually brought him joy.

Berg himself died of a blood poisoning, the result of an insect sting, later that year. He was 50 years-old. His output may be comparatively small, but he continues to stand tall as one of the most important musical voices of the early 20th century. He is certainly the most readily approachable of composers of the Second Viennese School.

Happy birthday, Alban Berg.

Lulu Suite

Violin Concerto

Seven Early Songs

PHOTO: Alban Berg, captured on canvas, if not in spirit, by Arnold Schoenberg

February 9, 2021
Kreisler & Schoenberg: Vienna’s Odd Couple

Fritz Kreisler, the sweet-toned confectioner and purveyor of violin bonbons, and Arnold Schoenberg, the dour high priest of twelve tone music. Vienna’s fin-de-siècle odd couple reunite on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”

Both artists were born in Vienna, only five months apart – Schoenberg on September 13, 1874, and Kreisler on February 2, 1875. Kreisler’s father was a doctor. Schoenberg’s sold shoes.

Both had Jewish parents. Kreisler, whose mother was Catholic, was baptized into the faith at the age of 12. Schoenberg converted to Lutheranism at 24. However, just when it would have been most dangerous to do so, he roared back to Judaism and – with the rise of Hitler in 1933 – defiantly embraced his heritage.

In general, Kreisler seems to have enjoyed the easier life. He had a more comfortable start and a happier disposition. As a musician, he was content to entertain.

Schoenberg was a revolutionary and probably a bit of a hard-nosed contrarian. He had a turbulent marriage, seldom smiled for photos, and indulged in expressionist painting. Also, he was superstitious. He especially suffered from triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13.

On the other hand, he did orchestrate his share of Viennese operettas, arranged Strauss waltzes for performance with his friends, played tennis with George Gershwin, and was a fan of Hopalong Cassidy.

Both men came to be regarded in some circles as mountebanks. Kreisler ruffled a few feathers when he let slip that many of the 18th century “rediscoveries” he had used to charm audiences, critics and musicologists were not in fact rediscoveries at all. Nor did they date from the 18th century. When the professionals complained, Kreisler made like Vinnie Barbarino. Wha-? Schoenberg triggered kneejerk reviews and outright hostility with his dismantling of tonality.

Nevertheless, both also acquired some serious musical credentials. Kreisler gave the world premiere of the Elgar Violin Concerto and became a favorite recital partner of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Schoenberg blossomed into one the most influential composers of the 20th century.

In 1941, Kreisler was hit by a milk truck, which fractured his skull and put him into a coma. Like something out of an early Woody Allen comedy, when he awoke he could only communicate in Latin and Greek. Thankfully, the effect was only temporary.

It is Kreisler’s music that continues to communicate most effectively. We’ll hear his String Quartet in A minor, from 1922, performed at the 2013 Marlboro Music Festival by violinists Danbi Um and Nikki Chopi, violist Sally Chisolm, and cellist Lionel Cottet.

That will be followed by Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 of 1906, a pre-serial work that nevertheless pushes harmony to the brink. It was presented at Marlboro in 1982 by an ensemble of fifteen players directed by Leon Kirchner.

Was the glass half empty or the milk truck half full? Kreisler lived a good long life. He died in 1962 at the age of 86. Schoenberg died on his 76th birthday, Friday the 13th, 1951. Earlier in the day, he had been informed by his astrologer that 7 plus 6 equals 13.

No matter how you tally, the performances will be top-notch on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Fritz Kreisler (second from left) and Arnold Schoenberg (cello) in 1900

October 9, 2019
Music for Casals Friends & Colleagues

It’s hardly surprising that anyone would be moved to write music for Pablo Casals. Regarded by many as the greatest cellist of his time, perhaps ever, he was certainly a giant-of-an-artist and of a man. Born in Catalonia, he stood up to the Franco regime, entering into self-imposed exile and refusing to perform in countries that recognized Franco’s authority. He rediscovered the Bach cello suites in a secondhand bookshop and made them famous. Over the span of his career, he played for both Queen Victoria and John F. Kennedy.

As a conductor and administrator, he founded the Prades Festival and Casals Festival. He established the Puerto Rico Symphony and Conservatory. He gave master classes, conducted and recorded at Marlboro. He was even a talented composer.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear works dedicated to Casals by three of his friends and colleagues.

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his seldom-heard “Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes” around the time he was at work on his Piano Concerto and “Job: A Masque for Dancing.” Casals performed the piece in 1930. It was not heard again until 1983, the year of its world-premiere recording (featuring Julian Lloyd Webber). The composer later undertook a full-scale concerto for Casals. It was never completed, but the sketches for its slow movement were realized for a 2010 performance at the BBC Proms, under the title “Dark Pastoral.”

Donald Francis Tovey, who would achieve fame as a musicologist and writer on music, wrote quite a lot of music himself, most of it now forgotten. In 1935, he composed a concerto for Casals. At nearly an hour in length, the work may be the longest cello concerto ever written.

In 1912, Tovey was a houseguest of Casals and cellist Guilhermina Suggia, at their summer home at Playa San Salvador on the Mediterranean coast. There, he played tennis, swam and performed chamber music with the likes of Enrique Granados and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. He also made great strides on his opera, “The Bride of Dionysus.” As a show of thanks, he composed for his hosts a Sonata for Two Cellos in G major, which became part of the evenings’ entertainments. The work’s second movement is a set of variations on a Catalan folk song. We’ll hear it performed by Marcy Rosen and Frances Rowell, from a Bridge Records, Inc. release.

Finally, Arnold Schoenberg, himself an amateur cellist, had done editorial work on three pieces by the 18th century composer Georg Matthias Monn for inclusion in the publication “Monuments of Music in Austria.” When Casals invited Schoenberg to conduct his orchestra in Barcelona, the composer set about arranging a “new” concerto, based upon a harpsichord work by Monn, written in 1746. We’ll hear Schoenberg’s transformation of the piece performed by Yo-Yo Ma.

I hope you’ll join me for “Casals’ Pals” – music written for Casals by notable composers, friends and colleagues – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 15, 2019
Schoenberg’s Birthday Celebrate 12-Tone Music

It’s Arnold Schoenberg’s birthday! Pour yourself a nice bowl of “serial” and celebrate with this collection of twelve-tone’s greatest hits!

September 13, 2018

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