# Early Schoenberg



## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

What do you think of schoenberg early works (verklertan nacht, string quartets 1 and 2 ect). I find theme quite mahlerian in the chromatic sense. What is your opinion on any of his early works?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

They are good works, that demonstratd that he was a good composer.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

MarkW said:


> They are good works, that demonstratd that he was a good composer.


And his later works don't?

He lapsed into late romanticism a few times during his life. Probably to confuse the people whose musical brains stall around 1900.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I like all his stuff. I don't listen to Verklarte Nacht very much, but I love the quartets and Gurrelieder.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I love the Early Schoenberg works, and don't forget Pelleas und Mellisande, and the Gurrelieder. They really exemplify that late-Romantic thinking. Very Wagnerian as well, in their scope and ambition, and in the way he thinks harmonically. You know, Wagner was quite advanced in his musical thinking, in that he had escaped the "diatonic box" and had moved on to free-floating tonally ambiguous harmonic structures, like Wagner used in the Tristan Prelude, in which triads are seen as "geometries" in a circle, and can travel and resolve freely in any direction, north, west, east or south, not just in a linear fashion like the old Schenkerian tonality. That straight-line, simple rational tonal diatonic thinking is so old-hat.

Those who are critical of 12-tone music should listen to and consider these early works, because they prove beyond doubt that Schoenberg was a master of tonal musical thinking. Who else but a tonal genius like Schoenberg was fit to move musical thinking to the next level? These early works prove it, and vindicate Schoenberg, because he "put his money where his mouth was", not only with these early works, but also by writing one of the greatest treatises on tonal music theory, his Harmonielehre.

The proof is in the pudding. These early works establish Schoenberg in the tradition of the greats, along with Wagner, Brahms, and Mahler, and they also prove his genius as a tonal musical thinker, which tends to "water down" the criticisms of his atonal and 12-tone music.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

As it happens, I'm in the middle of listening to Schoenberg's work. His early output (assuming we mean his totally pre-atonal work) is very enjoyable, but presumably he thought he could only go so far down that road, hence his alleged disdain for the gargantuan _Gurre-Lieder_ which he thought was passé by the time it was premiered. Of the early works I probably like the first chamber symphony the most - its self-contained structural continuity kind of strikes me as a precursor to Sibelius's 7th.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I like it all, but I like the Chamber Symphony No. 2 better than the first, because of the variations.

Also, connecting into this, listen to Richard Strauss' Metamporphosen; and his Sextet for Cappriccio. These were models for Schoenberg, I think. The first "Verkarte" was for a small string ensemble.
Speaking of early Schoenberg, the Cabaret songs are certainly early.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I like it all, but I like the Chamber Symphony No. 2 better than the first, because of the variations.
> 
> Also, connecting into this, listen to Richard Strauss' Metamporphosen; and his Sextet for Cappriccio. These were models for Schoenberg, I think. The first "Verkarte" was for a small string ensemble.
> Speaking of early Schoenberg, the Cabaret songs are certainly early.


Metamorphorsen was composed after WWII, not sure how that could have been a model for Schoenberg works written around the turn of the century


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2018)

Gurrelieder is an incredible work. Chamber Symphony no. 1 is fun. String Quartet no. 1 is phenomenal and probably my favourite of his early works.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

When I taught classes I had a lesson where I would play various selections by Schoenberg (from early tonal works to the later atonal ones), about six or seven selections, and have students rank them for preference. I didn't tell them all the works were by a single composer. (The lesson concerned defining/confronting "modern art".) Of course, most would somewhat "like" the _Gurre-Lieder _selection (I would generally play a few minutes of the opening) and those bits from _Verklärte Nacht_ and the Cello Concerto "after Monn's Concerto in D major for harpsichord". These they understood as "music". But the students had more trouble with the other selections, say that from _Pierrot Lunaire_, String Quartet No. 4, and the Piano Concerto. These were generally foreign and ranked lower on students' overall "like meters".

Of course I would eventually reveal that all of the works were by the same composer, Arnold Schoenberg, and the range displayed is due to the man's skills in composition. The point being that as an artist he was capable of creating "beautiful" sound structures like that of the _Gurre-Lieder_ and _Verklärte Nacht_ (and sometimes I would present his orchestration of a Strauss waltz!) but that he chose rather to purse a different path, a more unique one as an innovator, which brings on his "later" music which was generally the foreign sounding stuff.

Most students had little idea that modern artists are often capable of doing "traditional" art work with the best of them, but that the art they choose to undertake, though it is often in the fringe area of current appreciation, is what makes them artists to begin with. Schoenberg could compose in the style of anybody out there, but he chose rather to composer in the style of Schoenberg. (Just as, say, Picasso could draw anything, but chose to draw _Guernica_ images rather than those of the Sistine Chapel ceiling or the _Mona Lisa_.)

All of which means that the Schoenberg early works are just as good as the Schoenberg late works. Or, to put it another way: the tonal works are as good in their way as the atonal works are in theirs. Schoenberg was a highly skilled artist. But he had that something more, _that _genius which allowed him to move forward artistically with new visions of what art is. That is a quality even most competent artists lack, and is a major quality we seek in our most celebrated artists.

So listen to Schoenberg, his entire oeuvre. It's well worth your ears' time.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

The early Schoenbird catches the worm!


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