# Whose Music Do You Prefer: Schoenberg or Bartok?



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Schoenberg's exploration of continuities between tradition and innovation (i.e. atonality) provided persuasive evidence of the power of tonality to retain a positive role even in the much less stable harmonic contexts of music since 1900.

Béla Bartók was one of many composers active during the first half of the 20th century to explore such continuities, and his _Concerto for Orchestra_ (1943, later revised in 1945) came at the end of a career devoted to a remarkably resourceful modernist rethinking (at that time of the mid-20th century) of the elements of tonality.

Both were contemporaries, Schoenberg was active between 1874 to 1951 and Bartok was active between 1881 to 1945. The mid-20th century was a pivotal time for the history of classical music.

That aside, whose music to you prefer?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I prefer Bartok's music, which I think is more accessible than Schoenberg's considering, both wrote extensively in atonal music.

Here is Bartok's _Viola Concerto_ (1945).





Versus Schoenberg's _Violin Concerto_ composed about a decade earlier in 1934 or so.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

I prefer Bartok, but I like Schoenberg as well:

Works I like from Bartok:
String Quartets (all 6)
Concerto for Orchestra
Cantata Profana
Piano Concerto Nos. 1 and 2
Out of Doors
Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Viola Concerto
Violin Duos
The Miraculous Mandarin
Piano sonata
Divertimento for Strings

Works I like from Schoenberg
Moses und Aron
Chamber Symphonies
Five Pieces for Orchestra
Piano Concerto
Gurrelieder
After Handel
Orchestration of Brahms' First Piano Quartet
String Quartets nos. 3 and 4
Variations for Orchestra
Jacob's Ladder
Violin Concerto


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Dear sirs

I voted 'both equally', although I don't know how I can prefer Bartok to Schoenberg and Schoenberg to Bartok in an equal way.

Yours 

confused

London April 2021


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I voted for Schoenberg because I think that Schoenberg was such a great craftsman, had a more powerful and revolutionary vision, and was also a more powerful teacher and influence. Berg and Webern were so devoted to Schoenberg, that the three practically come as a set that are often programmed together on LPs and CDs: _The Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern._ The names come together like a Vienna Law firm. Then you have all the other composers who went full-blown serial or adopted a near-serial method of atonal expression: Messiaen, Dallapiccola, Berio, Boulez, Sessions, Carter, Takemitsu; as well as, composers such as Stravinsky and Copland who jumped on the serial bandwagon late in their careers, or Bernstein and Rochberg who occasionally used serial elements within works that were otherwise tonal. Likewise, if we are to believe the words of Testimony to be accurate, even Dmitry Shostakovich identified Schoenberg's disciples, Berg and Webern among his favorite composers, and Shostakovich worked in a style that was basically tonal and traditional compared to what others of his times were doing.

Works I like by Schoenberg are _Transfigured Night_, which is NOT serial. Also, I like _Survivor from Warsaw_ and _Moses and Aaron_, both full scale 12-tone works that are very powerful, emotionally. The _Serenade_ is also a favorite of mine, and for a serial composition it is actually a bit easy-going and quite listenable, and demonstrates that master craftsmanship I was talking about earlier.

Now Bartok is also a very fine composer, roughly a contemporary of Schoenberg, and both escaped Europe and the Nazis and ended up here in the USA, where I wonder if they ever bumped into one another. As an influence, Bartok is the opposite of Schoenberg, leaving no dedicated disciples or heavy impact on the music scene that followed into the post-World War II era. Still, Bartok, is widely popular, curiously "Modern" but still fairly accessible to the masses. I read in a biography of the concert cellist, Jacqueline DuPre, that when asked about "Modern" music, she said that "Bartok is about as far as I go." Even so, there are some Bartok pieces that do get kind of thorny despite his basically tonal center.

I think of Bartok as the last of the great Nationalist composers. The were many great Nationalistic composers who relied heavily on the folk music and folklore of their native lands, among them: Janacek, Smetana, Grieg, Dvorak, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Though not usually identified as a "Nationalist" you could probably throw Tchaikovsky in there too, as despite a more cosmopolitan approach, the "Russian" in Tchaikovsky is integral. And what about Vaughan Williams whose style is also intertwined with English folk music? As different as Ives is from any of those (and as different as Ives is from any other composer in general), Ives can't be enjoyed without entering his American, Yankee/New England world of sound. There were many, many other American composers such as Copland, Virgil Thomson, Randall Thompson, William Schuman, Lukas Foss, Roy Harris and others who tried to create an "Americana" sound, which though very enjoyable, I think of as more-or-less contrived.

But I think that Bartok is the one that takes the incorporation of folk-elements to the limits of Modernism. He doesn't quote anything directly but it's all in the undercurrent of the music, and I while I think that the more popular Bartok works such as _Concerto for Orchestra_ and _Music for Percussion, Celeste and Strings_ what I really like by Bartok are the six _String Quartets_ where everything becomes more abstract and is boiled down to just a few instruments. You don't hear the gypsy violin or see the Hungarian folk dancers but the colors remain.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I prefer Schoenberg. Though I'm not huge on either.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Like both, forced to choose would go with Bartok


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Both in my top 5. Schoenberg told a student that Bartok was the 2nd greatest living composer (did he see himself as No. 1? Don't know). Bartok was a large influence on Ligeti. Agree with Coach G that Bartok was not as revolutionary as Schoenberg.

From an article:
In 1942, Bartók told an audience at Harvard University that he'd had an epiphany about the compression of diatonic melodies into chromatic melodies, a realization that *composition is more about evolution than revolution*. "When I first used the device of extending chromatic melodies into diatonic form, or vice-versa, I thought I invented something absolutely new, which never yet existed," he said. "And now I see that an absolutely identical principle exists in Dalmatia [in modern-day Croatia] since heaven knows how long a time, maybe for many centuries."


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Oh, shucks, I don't have time for an insightful comment, but in a contest, I would choose most of Bartok over Schoenberg (I can't get into the Mikrokosmos), but it's very close. It's a visceral thing more than compositional. 

A lot of people complain about Schoenberg's dodecacophony. It is true that Schoenberg wrote a lot of thorny music, but he also wrote very beautiful tonal music, and he even made arrangements of other composers' tonal music.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I like Bartok, the string quartets, the _Sonata for two pianos and percussion_ .... I can't think of any other works off the top of my head. I respect Schoenberg more than _like_ his music. I voted for Schoenberg based on my affection for his op. 11 piano pieces - but that is a small meal.

Neither composer figures large in my listening.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

2 of my favorite composers, no doubt. I think I listen to Bartók more because his highlights are much better than Schoenberg's. Those are: the miraculous mandarin; the wooden prince; duke bluebeard's castle; music for strings, percussion and celesta; the sonata for two pianos and percussion; the concerto for orchestra; the six incredible string quartets (which tied with Beethoven's cycle for the first spot on a recent game in this forum for the best string quartet composers); and many many more. Schoenberg has many works that I love, but not head over heels as with some of the works by Bartók that I listed. But that's also something that works in Schoenberg's favor: there are no works by him that I find uninteresting or uncaptivating, whereas Bartók has his fair share of those, albeit they're few of course. 

On the question of influence (which doesn't influence my regard for any composer), I want to dispute this notion that Bartók is not so influential: on the contrary I think he is among those composers who want to be adventurous, but don't want to align themselves with any dogma, that is the case of Ligeti, but it could also be the case for (off the top of my head) a Rautavaara, or composers who are "modern" but not serialist, or, let's say, "extremists". Of course Schoenberg founded a whole school of disciples and also a school of thought, and in that he has Bartók beat, no question about it, but let's not downsize Bartók's figure in this matter. Also, influences are most frequently indirect, and in that, I think Bartók has the upper hand over Schoenberg.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I like lots of pieces by Schoenberg - the piano music, Verklarte Nacht, Chamber Symphonies, Pierrot Lunaire, Variations for Orchestra, concerti, and Moses und Aron - and find him a more accessible composer than he is often made out to be, though I prefer Berg and Webern within the 2VC. However, Bartok is one of my absolute favorites, composing my favorite string quartet cycle of the 20th century, one of my favorite operas, orchestral works (Music for SPC) and some truly outstanding violin and piano concerti. Also, he was the composer that opened up my ears to more modern soundscapes, and I will be forever grateful for that.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

I like Schoenberg. But Bartok is probably my favorite composer of the 20th century, next to Ligeti.



ArtMusic said:


> I prefer Bartok's music, which I think is more accessible than Schoenberg's considering, *both wrote extensively in atonal music.*


Another instance of ArtMusic not knowing what he is talking about! This is happening very frequently.

Bartok wrote almost no atonal music if any at all. He dealt with extended tonality, folk music, and metatonality.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

chu42 said:


> I like Schoenberg. But Bartok is probably my favorite composer of the 20th century, next to Ligeti.
> 
> Another instance of ArtMusic not knowing what he is talking about! This is happening very frequently.
> 
> Bartok wrote almost no atonal music if any at all. He dealt with extended tonality, folk music, and metatonality.


Over the last two decades, maybe longer, there has been school of thought that teaches that there is no such thing as "atonality." They base this idea on the fact that the hallmark of tonality was the resolution of dissonance. However, atonal works also revolve around resolution, not from dissonance to consonance, but from heightened instability to more relative stability. Or to put it another way from relative hard dissonance to softer dissonance.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I like the early works of both: Bartok's Kossuth and Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande are just wonderful music. But as they progressed, Bartok I still like: Bluebeard, Concerto for Orchestra, Wooden Prince, piano concertos and more. As Schoenberg went on I like his works less and less: Pierrot Lunaire is godawful, so is Survivor in Warsaw. Some of the music is interesting, but that's all I can say for it. The best thing he wrote after Gurrelieder is the arrangement of the Brahms op. 25 quartet.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I enjoy both, and although I probably like more works by Bartok, the works I like the most are Schoenberg's (Verklarte Nacht, the Chamber Symphonies, and the Piano Concerto). I'm not sure who I would say is my favorite of the two.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

chu42 said:


> I like Schoenberg. But Bartok is probably my favorite composer of the 20th century, next to Ligeti.
> 
> Another instance of ArtMusic not knowing what he is talking about! This is happening very frequently.
> 
> Bartok wrote almost no atonal music if any at all. He dealt with extended tonality, folk music, and metatonality.


Bartok is not atonal, but he might sound that way to some. I could not make heads nor tails of some of the _String Quartets_ for some time though they are tonal works. William Schuman who was a great American composer wrote in a style that is theoretically tonal, but often very thorny. And, here again, for a long time, I couldn't warm up to Schuman, or even make sense of his more academic works, until fairly recently in the past five to ten years or so.

Someone once told me an anecdote on William Schuman where he visited some medium-size city down south, lets just say it was Jacksonville, Florida; and I'll try to paraphrase. A lady went up to William Schuman and said:

"So nice to meet you, Mr. Schuman. I just love your atonal music."

Schuman replied: "I'm glad you like my music, but it actually has melody, and is _not_ atonal."

The lady replied: "Maybe in New York, or London, or in Vienna, your music is not atonal; but here in Jacksonville, it is."

***
I have no source for this anecdote. I don't know if this anecdote is true or not; but if it isn't true, then it ought to be.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I voted for both equally.

Although I probably listen to Schoenberg more. But I have a long history with Bartok, and it was through him, in large part, that fueled my love for classical music.

Both are probably in my top 10 composers, or at least top 20.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Bartok. Bartok.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Difficult to choose. Both are favorites. Schoenberg's choral music is amongst the most beautiful ever conceived.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

I like them equally - they are both great composers, and major figures of 20th century music. Two of my favorites.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

I voted for Bartok despite the fact that Schoenberg was one of my compositional "grandfathers", i.e., my primary composition teacher when I was an undergrad (and who is now a close friend) studied with him. He has some very interesting stories about Schoenberg, all of them unpleasant.

But Schoenberg's personality has nothing to do with my choice. Aside from a few of his early works, his music does nothing for me. Bartok's does much more.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Coach G said:


> Bartok is not atonal, but he might sound that way to some. I could not make heads nor tails of some of the _String Quartets_ for some time though they are tonal works. William Schuman who was a great American composer wrote in a style that is theoretically tonal, but often very thorny. And, here again, for a long time, I couldn't warm up to Schuman, or even make sense of his more academic works, until fairly recently in the past five to ten years or so.
> 
> Someone once told me an anecdote on William Schuman where he visited some medium-size city down south, lets just say it was Jacksonville, Florida; and I'll try to paraphrase. A lady went up to William Schuman and said:
> 
> ...


This is a common reaction you will get with the more "thorny" works. It all depends on perspective and the experience of the ear.

If you are familiar with the contemporaneous reaction to Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and Liszt's Faust Symphony, one would have thought that they were dealing with Boulez or Perle rather than these two highly tonal composers!

Critics of the time complained that they weren't able to hear which notes were wrong or right-they wondered if Beethoven's deafness was affecting his ability to compose-they wondered if Liszt had gone mad-they genuinely believed many of the notes had been chosen at complete random.

Today, we listen to these works and they are tame and palatable (but still very effective) to those experienced with modern music. But once it was not so.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Haydn70 said:


> I voted for Bartok despite the fact that Schoenberg was one of my compositional "grandfathers", i.e., my primary composition teacher when I was an undergrad (and who is now a close friend) studied with him. He has some very interesting stories about Schoenberg, all of them unpleasant.
> 
> But Schoenberg's personality has nothing to do with my choice. Aside from a few of his early works, his music does nothing for me. Bartok's does much more.


Please, do share some of these interesting but 'unpleasant' stories!


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

On a side note: Schoenberg didn't like the term "atonal." It implies the music is without tones. He preferred "pan-tonal," because it incorporates every tone.



Coach G said:


> *Bartok is not atonal, but he might sound that way to some. I could not make heads nor tails of some of the String Quartets for some time though they are tonal works. *William Schuman who was a great American composer wrote in a style that is theoretically tonal, but often very thorny. And, here again, for a long time, I couldn't warm up to Schuman, or even make sense of his more academic works, until fairly recently in the past five to ten years or so.
> 
> Someone once told me an anecdote on William Schuman where he visited some medium-size city down south, lets just say it was Jacksonville, Florida; and I'll try to paraphrase. A lady went up to William Schuman and said:
> 
> ...


Many people misidentify ambiguous tonality as atonal.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Clearly Bartok, but I admittedly know his music much better. Schoenberg wrote great pieces both in the late romantic as well as in the expressionist-modern style and I like some of them (Verklärte Nacht, Chamber symphonies, first two string quartets, piano concerto, survivor, I also think that Pierrot lunaire is cool but the singing/recitation maybe impossible to get right without getting involuntarily comical or cringy) but a lot of this is really very thorny, considerably more so than Berg (of whom I like a few pieces at least as much as Bartok, e.g. Lyric Suite, 3 pieces for orchestra, violin concerto). But of all modern composers, Bartok for me is best combination of rather immediate expression and "classical" coherence that is comparably easy to follow for the listener, therefore overall my favorite.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

I think Schoenberg's music deserves more love, not more respect, and _especially_ not more attention as an object of aesthetic or philosophical debate. Just as classical music needs more love and understanding rather than respect, so does Schoenberg. Who cares that classical music is some elevated art form, or that Schoenberg accomplished so-and-so atonality, if so few get into it?

I think that some people put so much emphasis on the atonality because they could hardly imagine that people would like Schoenberg for the music. So if Schoenberg clearly didn't contribute much worthwhile music, he must have contributed some worthwhile atonality. Notice how no one who likes Schoenberg likes it either because of the atonality or in spite of it. Those who get into Schoenberg just recognize that the atonality is one foundational element of a complex artistic construction.

The important thing is to recognize what Schoenberg did as an artist - compose lyrical impassioned music. Often with spectacular chamber musical textures with every instrument singing, and yet a leading voice often predominating.

Speaking of chamber music, here's a nice recent performance of the string trio. 



 What a culmination of a career, and what a good performance! I enjoy the extended techniques and ensemble sound colors, and the rapidly changing textures and rhythms. The music is theatrical and event-driven, and rigorous and contrapuntal. The recapitulation/coda at the end brings a wonderful sense of resolution. Nobody wrote music like this before. It's simply one of the best.



ArtMusic said:


> Schoenberg's exploration of continuities between tradition and innovation (i.e. atonality) provided persuasive evidence of the power of tonality to retain a positive role even in the much less stable harmonic contexts of music since 1900.


Thankfully Schoenberg and many others didn't heed your persuasive evidence, and did what they felt was best to achieve their musical goals.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Good to see Bartok leading the poll, as I thought he would. It's an interesting poll, nothing more, nothing less.

Bartok also wrote one opera _Bluebeard's Castle_. It was his only opera, and also an atonal opera much like Berg's operas and Britten's operas. Those of you who like Bartok might like to listen to this opera where atonal music works reasonably well at dramatic instances. The opera is only an hour long.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Thankfully Schoenberg and many others didn't heed your persuasive evidence, and did what they felt was best to achieve their musical goals.


I wasn't born back then either to provide any in a position that we are now because we have studied much of music history before us.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

progmatist said:


> On a side note: Schoenberg didn't like the term "atonal." It implies the music is without tones. He preferred "pan-tonal," because it incorporates every tone.
> 
> Many people misidentify ambiguous tonality as atonal.


It doesn't matter if people misidentify or not. The music sounds atonal and that's what matters - how it hits the ears and mind.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> It doesn't matter if people misidentify or not. The music sounds atonal and that's what matters - how it hits the ears and mind.


For someone who is so caught up in objectivity in music, this is a suspiciously strong embrace of "subjectivist" values!


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> I wasn't born back then either to provide any in a position that we are now because we have studied much of music history before us.


Congrats. Speaking of history, has my point that Schoenberg contributed more than atonality gotten to you? That his music, just as that of any other composer, is a complex web of features whose end goal is to create an artistic experience? Schoenberg is more than just his atonality. Could you describe nontrivial features of Schoenberg's music beyond his atonality? What could you say, for instance, about his melody and the relationship of his melody and harmony? Or his rhythm or ensemble textures?

It's as if you went to some textbook and looked up Schoenberg and saw him as the atonal composer, and didn't put a shred of reflection into the other important aspects of his music. And these other aspects would even shed greater light on his harmonic/motivic development aka his, wait for it... atonality.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

SeptimalTritone said:


> It's as if you went to some textbook and looked up Schoenberg and saw him as the atonal composer, and didn't put a shred of reflection into the other important aspects of his music. And these other aspects would even shed greater light on his harmonic/motivic development aka his, wait for it... atonality.


It's funny because the info he got on Barber was directly copied from Wikipedia.

ArtMusic has the habit of doing this with pretty much all modern composers. I'm not sure he actually does much listening, just a lot of surfing the web.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Here is _Bluebeard's Castle_, written in 1913. Overall the music is not atonal, although it is often polytonal which is a characteristic in much of his music (or put simply, technically speaking not atonal but one can easily and might as well describe it as such for the musical effects used):


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> Here is _Bluebeard's Castle_, written in 1913. Overall the music is not atonal, although it is often polytonal which is a characteristic in much of his music (or put simply, technically speaking not atonal but one can easily and might as well describe it as such for the musical effects used):


Now you have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don't actually know what polytonal nor atonal actually mean.

To you, they are just buzzwords for music that isn't common practice.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Congrats. Speaking of history, has my point that Schoenberg contributed more than atonality gotten to you? That his music, just as that of any other composer, is a complex web of features whose end goal is to create an artistic experience? Schoenberg is more than just his atonality. Could you describe nontrivial features of Schoenberg's music beyond his atonality? What could you say, for instance, about his melody and the relationship of his melody and harmony? Or his rhythm or ensemble textures?
> 
> It's as if you went to some textbook and looked up Schoenberg and saw him as the atonal composer, and didn't put a shred of reflection into the other important aspects of his music. And these other aspects would even shed greater light on his harmonic/motivic development aka his, wait for it... atonality.


I'm not sure what you are trying to ask here. Can you please re-phrase? This thread is about whose music do you prefer? Schoenberg's or Bartok's? Yes, Schoenberg developed atonal music, while Bartok was keen to show that it was possible to remain tonal while rarely using the chords or scales of tonality, and so the descriptive resources of tonal theory are of limited use. It is a good example whereby strict atonality might have been avoided but the composer realizing the need for tonal balance and closure in his works.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> while Bartok was keen to show that it was possible to remain tonal


Oh, so now Bartok is a tonal composer. What happened to his alleged "extensive writing in atonal music?"


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

chu42 said:


> Oh, so now Bartok is a tonal composer. What happened to his supposed "extensive writing in atonal music?"


You're wasting your time!


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> I enjoy both, and although I probably like more works by Bartok, the works I like the most are Schoenberg's (Verklarte Nacht, the Chamber Symphonies, and the Piano Concerto). I'm not sure who I would say is my favorite of the two.


Schoenberg's _Concerto in B-flat major for string quartet and orchestra_ after Handel (1933) is an interesting arrangement. I am of course familiar with the original by Handel but the treatment makes interesting listening, almost comical in the musical effects and instrumentation:


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

This is maybe besides the point, but is there a specific music-theory term like "atonal" for music where development is done primarily by changes in timbre rather than in tone? I'm mainly wondering because that sounds all radical and unlistenable and associated with the artsy avant garde guys, but also describes a ton of dance/techno music!


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

SeptimalTritone said:


> I think Schoenberg's music deserves more love, not more respect, and _especially_ not more attention as an object of aesthetic or philosophical debate. Just as classical music needs more love and understanding rather than respect, so does Schoenberg. Who cares that classical music is some elevated art form, or that Schoenberg accomplished so-and-so atonality, if so few get into it?
> 
> I think that some people put so much emphasis on the atonality because they could hardly imagine that people would like Schoenberg for the music...


I think that one of the keys to understanding Schoenberg is to listen with your heart and not your head. Schoenberg himself identified his music as "Expressionistic" to go along with the Expressionist movement in painting, to which Schoenberg himself also belonged. He also saw his style as basically an expression of Romanticism, the next logical step in the German tradition of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner; all composers that were expressed feelings. While the craftsmanship in Schoenberg's music is exemplar, I think the best way to approach Schoenberg if one is new to the music is to just place the music theory aside and listen for the feelings.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

There are no words to describe the importance, beauty, ugliness, overall richness, austerity and variety one finds in say Erwartung or Pierrot Lunaire.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Coach G said:


> I think that one of the keys to understanding Schoenberg is to listen with your heart and not your head. Schoenberg himself identified his music as "Expressionistic" to go along with the Expressionist movement in painting, to which Schoenberg himself also belonged. He also saw his style as basically an expression of Romanticism, the next logical step in the German tradition of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner; all composers that were expressed feelings. While the craftsmanship in Schoenberg's music is exemplar, I think the best way to approach Schoenberg if one is new to the music is to just place the music theory aside and listen for the feelings.


I think many people do that (place music theory aside) as most listeners are not trained in atonality theory. I think atonal approaches work best in opera and many film scores and background music to documentaries (with narrator voice over) have such music.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> I think many people do that (place music theory aside) as most listeners are not trained in atonality theory. I think atonal approaches work best in opera and many film scores and background music to documentaries (with narrator voice over) have such music.


In that regard, I think this is why one of the most accessible Schoenberg pieces is _Survivor from Warsaw_, even though it is a 12-tone work. The narration makes it easy for any listener to follow. It's not a pleasant piece of music as the subject matter is horrific; but it is a powerful commentary on the realities of war, genocide and prejudice. For an eight minute piece it seems much longer.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> I'm not sure what you are trying to ask here. Can you please re-phrase? This thread is about whose music do you prefer? Schoenberg's or Bartok's? Yes, Schoenberg developed atonal music, while Bartok was keen to show that it was possible to remain tonal while rarely using the chords or scales of tonality, and so the descriptive resources of tonal theory are of limited use. It is a good example whereby strict atonality might have been avoided but the composer realizing the need for tonal balance and closure in his works.


Schoenberg wrote a lot of tonal music throughout his career, such as Gurrelieder, Weihnachtsmusik, and the chamber symphonies.

Did you listen to them? I get the impression that you did not listen to tonal Schoenberg based on you acting like he only composed atonal works. Gurrelieder especially is a must-listen.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

ORigel said:


> Schoenberg wrote a lot of tonal music throughout his career, such as Gurrelieder, Weihnachtsmusik, and the chamber symphonies.
> 
> Did you listen to them? I get the impression that you did not listen to tonal Schoenberg based on you acting like he only composed atonal works. Gurrelieder especially is a must-listen.


Please post examples here, in particularly the tonal Schoenberg.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> Please post examples here, in particularly the tonal Schoenberg.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I am indifferent to them, I seldom listen to their music, enough said


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

I am not a big fan of either Bartok or Schoenberg. I like Schoenberg's books on composition though (such as the fundamentals of musical composition).


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

It's good to see all the love for Schoenberg here. Personally, I can't stand atonal music...but I'm glad Arnold didn't waste his life writing music that nobody would appreciate.

I chose Bartok...because I don't dislike his music as much. But I'd prefer not to listen to either. I'm too old school.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I'm not that great a fan of either composer but there is twice as much Schoenberg in my collection as Bartok: both chamber symphonies, Gurrelieder, Verklarte Nacht, and several of the 12 tone pieces including the Wind Quintet. The only Bartok I listen to is the Divertimento for Strings and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

To me they were both among the most imaginary and creative 20th century composers. Schoenberg belongs with the likes of J.S. Bach, Beethoven and Wagner as musical revolutionaries. Bartok belongs to the group of composers that did the most with folk music -- Ralph Vaughan Williams and Bedrich Smetana among them.


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

I love both, but would go for Bartok in this pairing, purely because I find myself listening to more of his music more often. But I doubt I would go the same way if the comparison were between Bartok and Berg, or Bartok and Webern. I don't find Schoenberg's dodecaphonic music quite as compelling as his students', although his earlier freely-atonal expressionist stuff is some of my favourite music in the repertoire.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

MrMeatScience said:


> I love both, but would go for Bartok in this pairing, purely because I find myself listening to more of his music more often. But I doubt I would go the same way if the comparison were between Bartok and Berg, or Bartok and Webern. I don't find Schoenberg's dodecaphonic music quite as compelling as his students', although his earlier freely-atonal expressionist stuff is some of my favourite music in the repertoire.


I think Schoenberg was more driven purely on the dodecaphonic scale to write music but his students wanted more of a blend or at least be able to take that back to tonal with a unique blend.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Red Terror said:


> Please, do share some of these interesting but 'unpleasant' stories!


That teacher is now a close friend whom I see regularly. There are two stories I remember off the top of my head but I want to ask him to retell them so I can get all the details right. I will be seeing him next week and will post after our visit.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Bartok's _Romanian Dances for orchestra _(1917) is quote rich in tonal harmonies:


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> I think Schoenberg was more driven purely on the dodecaphonic scale to write music but his students wanted more of a blend or at least be able to take that back to tonal with a unique blend.


Certainly very true of Berg, but would you say that about Webern as well? His dodecaphonic music is pretty strict, and often goes further than Schoenberg's in terms of exploring the logical ends of the technique. I'm thinking of his use of intervallic palindromes and aggregate rows, but also his concern with row features like hexachordal combinatoriality. Schoenberg uses these too, but not quite as comprehensively or deliberately, it seems to me.

When I was doing my undergraduate degree I took private theory lessons from one of the composition professors, who was a student of a student of Schoenberg's. Essentially we spent our time poring over matrices from the SVS and their successors like Babbitt. One aspect of the assignments would be to try to discern what governing principles guided their composition of the rows. With Berg, one looked for vestigial tonal structures (like in the violin concerto), with Webern one looked for these sorts of quasi-mathematical features. I spent hours looking at a Schoenberg matrix -- I forget which now -- trying to figure out what the "gimmick" was. I was not as amused as my professor was when he told me there wasn't one and that it was "just" a row that Schoenberg had composed.

To some extent, these things are a bit silly to fret over as a listener, because even most really talented professionals can't hear all the row permutations going by without a score. In any case, it's far from the point of the music; Webern was very frustrated with the overly technical approach to his work that others took in his lifetime.

Bartok's method, insofar as we know what it was (he was notoriously tight-lipped about it), reminds me of Webern's in the sense that both had an abiding preoccupation with intervallic and harmonic symmetry and with maths as an organisational principle, but not an end in itself. The first movement of the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta is a good example of that in the Bartok oeuvre, with respect to the way it leverages Fibonacci numbers and its tonal layout. In the case of both composers, these ideas were often deployed in the service of "natural" music, which seems counterintuitive at first blush but makes a lot of sense, I think.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

^ That's the impression I got of Schoenberg, that there isn't a mathematical matrix or something behind the row. I feel he uses the row in service of other things he has in mind, while with Webern it's what music he can get out of that governing principle. Schoenberg's music sounds more organic, less 'serial' and warmer to me than Webern or Babbitt. I don't even feel his music is atonal like the others, hence I can see why he preferred the term pantonal instead of atonal. It doesn't sound like music avoiding a tonal center, but music that has more than one.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> with Webern it's what music he can get out of that governing principle.


It would be interesting to know whether this is true.

(I'm really keen to know whether Cage escaped from the governing principle in Music of Changes -- is it all totally determined by chance operations. But I've never found anything with enough detail about his praxis.)


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I can't imagine anyone not liking Bartok especially once they have absorbed the so-called French impressionists. I can, though, see some of the difficulties that some might have with Schoenberg. I suppose you have to love Romanticism so much that you can accept it being taken to an extreme. And if you do then you may find yourself allergic to the Serialism. For me it was this serial discipline that enabled me to take the Romantic excesses, excesses that at first acted as something of a barrier to me. But in the end if it were not for his unique personal voice I am sure I would find much of what I initially got from Schoenberg from other composers (although not all in one package) and might not love his music as I do now. I chose "equally", BTW.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

MrMeatScience said:


> Certainly very true of Berg, but would you say that about Webern as well? His dodecaphonic music is pretty strict, and often goes further than Schoenberg's in terms of exploring the logical ends of the technique. I'm thinking of his use of intervallic palindromes and aggregate rows, but also his concern with row features like hexachordal combinatoriality. Schoenberg uses these too, but not quite as comprehensively or deliberately, it seems to me.
> 
> When I was doing my undergraduate degree I took private theory lessons from one of the composition professors, who was a student of a student of Schoenberg's. Essentially we spent our time poring over matrices from the SVS and their successors like Babbitt. One aspect of the assignments would be to try to discern what governing principles guided their composition of the rows. With Berg, one looked for vestigial tonal structures (like in the violin concerto), with Webern one looked for these sorts of quasi-mathematical features. I spent hours looking at a Schoenberg matrix -- I forget which now -- trying to figure out what the "gimmick" was. I was not as amused as my professor was when he told me there wasn't one and that it was "just" a row that Schoenberg had composed.
> 
> ...


With Babbitt, his music is a good example of over-intellectualizing it. History has so far considered Babbitt for extending the serial technique to rhythm, duration of notes, and dynamics, making for music that was intellectually rigorous but, for many, emotionally limiting. I can see the rigor as an intellectual exercise but there has to be some degree of balance, I think that was Bartok's secret recipe.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> With Babbitt, his music is a good example of over-intellectualizing it. History has so far considered Babbitt for extending the serial technique to rhythm, duration of notes, and dynamics, making for music that was intellectually rigorous but, for many, emotionally limiting. I can see the rigor as an intellectual exercise but there has to be some degree of balance, I think that was Bartok's secret recipe.


Wow, are you really Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer? Because "Mr. Babbitt extended the serial technique to rhythm, duration of notes and dynamics, making for music that was intellectually rigorous, but, for many, emotionally limiting." is exactly what he said in his obituary of Babbitt in 2011.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Nereffid said:


> Wow, are you really Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer? Because "Mr. Babbitt extended the serial technique to rhythm, duration of notes and dynamics, making for music that was intellectually rigorous, but, for many, emotionally limiting." is exactly what he said in his obituary of Babbitt in 2011.


Hey, it's an improvement from ripping off Wikipedia!

And-huge surprise-the main topic description is taken right from this article:

https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-music/articles/tonality-in-crisis

I sometimes feel that ArtMusic is an alien/robot trying his best to blend in with humans.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Wow, are you really Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer? Because "Mr. Babbitt extended the serial technique to rhythm, duration of notes and dynamics, making for music that was intellectually rigorous, but, for many, emotionally limiting." is exactly what he said in his obituary of Babbitt in 2011.


It was a very well written article that summarized Babbitt's position in history.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> It was a very well written article that summarized Babbitt's position in history.


...that you tried to pass off as your own.


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

I’m shocked by the overwhelming favor for Bartók in the polls. I know Schoenberg isn’t the most palatable composer, but still.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Littlephrase said:


> I'm shocked by the overwhelming favor for Bartók in the polls. I know Schoenberg isn't the most palatable composer, but still.


I was expecting Bartok to lead but not by that huge margin. It is what it is, just interesting.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

To be completely honest I like both only in small doses. I like them equally, I'd say (although I voted for Bartok because there's nothing like Mikrokosmos in Schoenberg's output).


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

_Mikrokosmos_, Volume V 122-131, is probably my favorite. It is quite accessible and the intro is almost movie-drama like:


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

chu42 said:


> I sometimes feel that ArtMusic is an alien/robot trying his best to blend in with humans.


:lol::lol::lol::lol:


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

I love Gould's discussion of Schoenberg...but do not like the music at all. To me it sounds like a couple of cats walking across the keys.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

cybernaut said:


> I love Gould's discussion of Schoenberg...but do not like the music at all. To me it sounds like a couple of cats walking across the keys.


Well, the twelve technique is about using all 12 notes of the chromatic scale as often as one another without emphasizing any one note. The music avoids being in a key. It is theoretically more interesting as a concept than it really does when translated to actual music for listening, and you can see why it took composers a few hundred years after Medieval, Baroque, Classical and Romanticism to arrive at it when all have been exhausted before it.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Littlephrase said:


> I'm shocked by the overwhelming favor for Bartók in the polls. I know Schoenberg isn't the most palatable composer, but still.


I like Schoenberg, but not as much as Bartok, Stravinsky, or Shostakovich.


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

There is a similar kind of intensity of expression in both composers' work that really speaks to me, so I really can't choose between them. They are equal in my books, and belong to the very highest top tier along with only a few other composers.


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