Baroque Music
The Classical Era
The Romantic Era
The Turn of the Century
Atonality
Fountain
Marcel Duchamp, 1917
The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh, 1889
The Scream
Edvard Munch, 1893
Composition VII
Wassily Kandinsky, 1913
The 20th Century
•Expressionism is the tendency of an artist to
distort reality for an emotional effect.
•Expressionistic music was composed by the
Second Viennese School
•Arnold Schoenberg
•Alban Berg
•Anton Webern
Arnold Schoenberg
1874-1951
• Born to a Jewish family in the
Leopoldstadt district of Vienna.
• Self taught-piano and composition
• In Vienna- orchestrated operas for
income while composing
• Joined artistic social circles (Mahler, Strauss)
• 1898-Converted to Lutheranism
• 1904-Began teaching harmony, counterpoint and
composition
– Students: Alban Berg, Anton Webern (Second Viennese
School)
Arnold Schoenberg
1874-1951
• 1908-Wife left him for lover
– Increased dissonance in compositions
– Increased compositional output
– Free Atonality
• 1910-”Theory of Harmony”
• WW1- Service in Army
– Many compositions left unfinished
• 1915-Recluse
• 1921- Debut of 12-tone technique (Emancipation
of dissonance)
Arnold Schoenberg
• 1933-Forced into exile by Hitler, moved to US
• First teaching position in Boston, then LA
– USC, UCLA
– Conflict with Stravinsky
• Compositional output:
– Initially Tonal
– Free Atonality:
• Pierrot Lunnaire
– Setting of 21 poems for voice and chamber ensemble
– Sprechstimme- “Spoken voice”
Arnold Schoenberg
• 12-Tone Technique (Serialism):
– Developed 1921
– All 12 tones are equal
– Basis of composition: “tone row”
• An ordered arrangement of the
twelve notes of the chromatic scale
– Rules for composition:
• The set is a specific ordering of all
twelve notes of the scale.
• No note is repeated within the set
• The set may be stated in any of its "linear aspects": prime,
inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion.
• The set in any of its four transformations may be stated upon any
degree of the semitonal scale.