Seventy-five years ago today... Schoenberg and Reality have a rare meeting.
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A letter to Schoenberg
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robcat2075
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A letter to Schoenberg
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CheeseTray
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Re: A letter to Schoenberg
There is a great book about Arnold Schoenberg by Harvey Sachs. (Arnold Schoenberg: Why He Matters). Its not a long read (275-ish pages) and really paints and interesting portrait of his struggles to stay true to his vision and deal with people's dislike of his music. Interestingly, he inspired a great deal of loyalty in some very prominent musicians. Enlightening read.
https://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Why-M ... C76&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Why-M ... C76&sr=1-1
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robcat2075
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Re: A letter to Schoenberg
I've not read the book but I think I've seen the movie version. I recall a last scene where he's shaking his fist at the audience...CheeseTray wrote: Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:56 am There is a great book about Arnold Schoenberg by Harvey Sachs. (Arnold Schoenberg: Why He Matters). Its not a long read (275-ish pages) and really paints and interesting portrait of his struggles to stay true to his vision and deal with people's dislike of his music. Interestingly, he inspired a great deal of loyalty in some very prominent musicians. Enlightening read.
"Stop laughing at me! STOP LAUGHING!! I'll show you! You'll be sorry you didn't recognize my genius!
"I and my minions will descend upon the music world like toxic spores... into every university music faculty... every prize jury... every grant committee! We will enforce new music-making so awful that no one will be able to headline a concert as a "world premiere" anymore! Audiences will learn to run screaming from the words "living composer"! Record companies will be so desperate for new classical music to sell that they'll start mining 500-year old Renaissance music!
"Yes, you'll be sorry you didn't recognize my genius!! You'll be sorry... YOU'LL BE SORRY...
"YOU... WILL... BE... SORRY!!!"
(maniacal laughter continues over fade-to-black)
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Kbiggs
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Re: A letter to Schoenberg
Off topic, but tangentially related:
I wonder sometimes why there’s so much distaste, disgust, and hate (?) thrown at Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Boulez, et al. Ditto with any sort of “modern” music, e.g., just about anything that’s not tonal and doesn’t have a V-I or IV-I cadence at the end. “Ew! That sounds so harsh!” “Ew! That’s too hard to play!” “Ew! Why can’t we play some Haydn or Mozart or [insert any pre-Modern composer here].”
Musicians and audiences alike approach modern music with so much angst. In college, and even a few years after, I spent some time listening to “The Trio” and other atonal composers. Just listening to it and becoming familiar with it really opened my ears at the time.
Yes, it’s different. Yes, it’s dissonant. It’s supposed to be: it’s expressive of the inter-war years in Europe with its’ ups and downs in culture, politics, economics, and art. Allow your mind and your ears to expand. Get familiar with the history of the times, then tell me it’s not representative of the age.
Rant over…
I wonder sometimes why there’s so much distaste, disgust, and hate (?) thrown at Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Boulez, et al. Ditto with any sort of “modern” music, e.g., just about anything that’s not tonal and doesn’t have a V-I or IV-I cadence at the end. “Ew! That sounds so harsh!” “Ew! That’s too hard to play!” “Ew! Why can’t we play some Haydn or Mozart or [insert any pre-Modern composer here].”
Musicians and audiences alike approach modern music with so much angst. In college, and even a few years after, I spent some time listening to “The Trio” and other atonal composers. Just listening to it and becoming familiar with it really opened my ears at the time.
Yes, it’s different. Yes, it’s dissonant. It’s supposed to be: it’s expressive of the inter-war years in Europe with its’ ups and downs in culture, politics, economics, and art. Allow your mind and your ears to expand. Get familiar with the history of the times, then tell me it’s not representative of the age.
Rant over…
Kenneth Biggs
I have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.
—Mark Twain (attributed)
I have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.
—Mark Twain (attributed)
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James
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Re: A letter to Schoenberg
Thank you for the post! Times change - It reminds me of an extremely bad review of "Moby Dick", a book which is now a "classic". Then there was Van Gogh whose paintings were not wanted...
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Matt K
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Re: A letter to Schoenberg
I did not appreciate the third Vienesse when I had to study it in school, but it has grown on me now that I'm not longer graded on my ability to analyze it. 
There's also an off-shoot of this that I find very interesting. In the 1950s Soviet Union, there was a bit of a thaw after the death of Stalin, and a very unusual mix of cultural events caused a small counter-culture that revolved around atonal music. THis is going a bit off memory so might not be totally accurate, but the short story is that scores from the third Vienesse school were able to be imported (Berg, Schoenberg, etc.), but without the accompanying texts, or even if the texts were imported, they weren't able to be read by the composers who were being influenced by the same works. So a sort of reverse-engineering of works like those of Schoenberg was done by the likes of Andrey Volkonsky, who sort of super-imposed traditional, functional harmony over these atonal works and then likewise followed these rules in making their own composition.
The result is a very unique style that is neither wholly in the traditional functional harmony but also still quite distinct from the likes of Schoenberg, etc.. Especially when you start to get around 1955, a year after Stalin's death:
There's also an off-shoot of this that I find very interesting. In the 1950s Soviet Union, there was a bit of a thaw after the death of Stalin, and a very unusual mix of cultural events caused a small counter-culture that revolved around atonal music. THis is going a bit off memory so might not be totally accurate, but the short story is that scores from the third Vienesse school were able to be imported (Berg, Schoenberg, etc.), but without the accompanying texts, or even if the texts were imported, they weren't able to be read by the composers who were being influenced by the same works. So a sort of reverse-engineering of works like those of Schoenberg was done by the likes of Andrey Volkonsky, who sort of super-imposed traditional, functional harmony over these atonal works and then likewise followed these rules in making their own composition.
The result is a very unique style that is neither wholly in the traditional functional harmony but also still quite distinct from the likes of Schoenberg, etc.. Especially when you start to get around 1955, a year after Stalin's death: