# Schoenberg's opinion on serialism



## matsoljare (Jul 28, 2008)

I'm wondering, did Schoenberg ever voice any opinions about the later developments in serial composition, such as "total" serialism?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I think he thought it was rather baffling.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

He died in 1951, so he didn't get to see many of the most important developments. But I'm reminded of this quote about the great pianist and piano teacher Artur Schnabel, who composed twelve-tone music in his spare time. It's from Stravinsky's book _Dialogues_:




Stravinsky said:


> My encounters with Schnabel in Berlin in the 1920's and in New York during the 1939 war were pleasant enough, and I always had the greatest respect for Schnabel as a pedagogue. (I even tried to persuade him to take my younger son as a pupil.) But my encounters with his music were another matter. All the examples I have met with were timeless in the wrong sense (Schoenberg is reported to have told him that 'rests are also permitted in twelve-tone music') and one of them, a solo cello sonata, was probably the unloveliest lucubration I have ever heard.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Judging from his music, or at least some things I've heard by him, Schoenberg may have seen "total" serialism as a bit of a straightjacket. I'm just surmising here, also based on my general reading, what I've heard in a public lecture on the c20th Vienna School last year, etc.

Eg. in his _Violin Concerto_, Schoenberg brings back a phrase, which sounds exactly if not almost the same, that appears at the opening of the work played by the violin soloist, he brings it back right at the end of the work. In "total" serialism, isn't repetition of that sort a total no-no?

I think it may be that Schoenberg was more flexible in his application of serial technique than Webern, but not as easygoing and "tonal" as Berg (who was the "softie" of the group, he didn't take the rules of serialism very seriously, as they existed before they became more rigid later, anyway).

I can go on but I won't bore people. I'm raising more questions rather than answering the question, really...


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Sid James said:


> Judging from his music, or at least some things I've heard by him, Schoenberg may have seen "total" serialism as a bit of a straightjacket. I'm just surmising here, also based on my general reading, what I've heard in a public lecture on the c20th Vienna School last year, etc.
> 
> Eg. in his _Violin Concerto_, Schoenberg brings back a phrase, which sounds exactly if not almost the same, that appears at the opening of the work played by the violin soloist, he brings it back right at the end of the work. In "total" serialism, isn't repetition of that sort a total no-no?
> 
> ...


That about sums it up.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Serial technique delivers a more or less chromatic product depending on the tone row selected.

Do listen to Andrew Rudin's piano concerto (avaiable on Spotify), particularly the slow movement, for an extraordinarily euphonious serial work - one which cannot but remind you of a well known tonal concerto!


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## matsoljare (Jul 28, 2008)

Time to bump this. I'm also wondering what his views in his last years were on John Cage's work, as he was highly critical of Cage's ideas while he was studying for him.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Judging from his music, or at least some things I've heard by him, Schoenberg may have seen "total" serialism as a bit of a straightjacket.


I'm with Arnie on that one.

RE: Schoenberg and Cage: there's a paper on the subject called "John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg" by Michael Hicks, if you have a way around academic paywalls. The bottom line is that Schoenberg had no opinion of Cage, at least not in public. The only thing in print is that Schoenberg is meant to have said that Cage was "An inventor! An inventor of genius. Not a composer, no, not a composer, but an inventor. A great mind", but that's hearsay by way of Peter Wells.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Well, "total" serialism (mostly) post-dates Schoenberg, so I'm sure he didn't have much of any opinion. I think he would have rejected Boulez's works of that period just as Boulez rejected Schoenberg's music at that time. They didn't see eye to eye about the way the 12-tone method should be used (and Boulez didn't even fully approve of the more traditional elements in Webern, I believe).


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

matsoljare said:


> I'm wondering, did Schoenberg ever voice any opinions about the later developments in serial composition, such as "total" serialism?


The topic of this thread should be *Pierre Boulez's Opinion and School on Serialism*


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