Product Description

Proposing that Arnold Schoenberg has been more discussed than heard, more tolerated than loved, Allen Shawn puts aside ultimate judgments about Schoenberg's place in music history to explore the composer's fascinating world in a series of linked essays--"soundings"--that are both searching and wonderfully suggestive. Approaching Schoenberg primarily from the listener's point of view, Shawn plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg's works while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvements in music, painting, and the history through which he lived.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #981931 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
There is not much that is reader friendly written about the great serialist composer just as many music lovers would argue that most of his music is not listener friendly. Composer Shawn has filled a real gap with this short, gracefully written introduction to the man and his music (what he disarmingly and correctly describes as "a mere handshake with its subject"). In alternating chapters that fill in the highlights of the life and encapsulate the composer's major works, Shawn helps readers listen anew to music that can be forbidding to an untutored ear; he is particularly eloquent on Pierrot Lunaire, Erwartung and Book of the Hanging Gardens, and, with his enthusiasm and judicious use of music examples, gives the composer as sympathetic a hearing as he has received in print. He also makes clear that Schoenberg was a difficult, if often admirable, man, who was deeply suspicious of others (often with reason), rigid in his beliefs, largely humorless, while at the same time principled, deeply honest and capable of great efforts in a noble cause: after he fled the Nazis to American refuge, he was tireless in his embrace of Jewish relief efforts. Shawn also examines Schoenberg's peculiar nonrelationship with Stravinsky the two great leaders of modern music virtually ignored each other for 40 years and notes the irony of the Russian's eventual conversion to the serialist persuasion. An intriguing final chapter, "Afterlife," analyzes Schoenberg's influence on his contemporaries and successors, and the course of 20th-century music. (Jan.)Forecast: Listeners of Schoenberg will welcome this valuable addition to scholarship on a still surprisingly neglected figure.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Much has been written about Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most important composers of the past century, but there is nothing quite like this remarkable little book. Pianist and composer Shawn has written a series of linked essays that effectively demystify and humanize Schoenberg, generally considered to be one of the most challenging of all modern composers. Shawn's ironic goal, stated at the conclusion of his introduction, is to give Schoenberg's work "a more superficial treatment than it has hitherto received." As Schoenberg's music has been analyzed far more than it has been listened to, Shawn presents, by contrast, a personal, nonanalytical, nonscholarly, but still learned appreciation of the man and his music. He discusses each of Schoenberg's works in chronological order, always within the larger context of his life and times. We learn of Schoenberg's numerological superstitions, embrace of Judaism and Jewish causes, complex relationship with Stravinsky, and often quaint domestic pursuits, such as carving his children's sandwiches into the shapes of musical instruments. Intended for the lay reader, the book is written in engagingly direct prose, and the few musical examples presented are not overlaid with obfuscating technical analyses. Recommended for all collections. Larry Lipkis, Moravian. Coll., Bethlehem, PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The compositions of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) are a bridge between Romantic music and difficult, dissonant "modern" concert music. The early Gurre-Lieder and Verklarte Nacht owed much to Brahms and Wagner in their use of complex harmonies, but around 1910 he began using intoned speaking--sprechstimme --in songs, and in Erwartung and Pierrot Lunaire he jettisoned key signatures. Not satisfied with the lack of structure in nontonal music, Schoenberg began using a defined sequence or row of the 12 semitones in an octave thematically. By starting the row on each of the twelve semitones and strictly following the intervals defining the original row along with the inverted, reverse, and reverse-inverted forms, he could construct 48 variations in his music. Detractors dismiss such music as being purely logical and lacking in emotion, but Shawn says that listening leads to appreciation. Employing many musical examples, Shawn demonstrates how Schoenberg's music changed, and he relates Schoenberg's life journey in an easily read style that illuminates the man in his music and the music in the man. Alan Hirsch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

a wonderful, sympathetic view
Allen Shawn's book is clearly a labor of love. This is remarkable, given that Schoenberg is notoriously difficult to love! I strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in one of the most influential composers of all time. Shawn is a composer, and presents careful treatments of several major compositions, complete with excerpts from the scores. He includes some fascinating biographical information, but the focus is the music. Schoenberg pioneered "atonal" music in the years right around 1910 parallel to Kandinsky's pioneering abstract painting, and in fact the two were friends and collaborators. Here is an amazing quote from Schoenberg:

"It has never been the purpose and effect of new art to suppress the old, its predecessor, certainly not to destroy it. ... The appearance of the new can far better be compared with the flowering of a tree: it is the natural growth of the tree of life. But if there were trees that had an interest in preventing the flowering, then they would surely call it revolution. And conservatives of winter would fight against each spring. ... Short memory and meager insight suffice to confuse growth with overthrow." (p. 141)

An attempt at a more "superficial treatment" of Schoenberg...
Schoenberg's music gets treated at times like no more than a necessary intellectual evil: "Ok! Ok! Tonal centers aren't the only musical expressive form! We get it! Now can we please get back to beautiful life-affirming melodies and harmonies?!?!" The music often gets treated from only a theoretical viewpoint, and many people read about Schoenberg, or worse, read opinions about his music, before really experiencing the music itself. In this sense the music doesn't get a chance to live and breathe on its own without an angorra-thick layer of theory and sometimes obscure and opaque musicology heaped over it. The author of this book states this idea very eloquently in the introduction: "...it is not entirely in a spirit of facetiousness that I have said to friends that I feel perhaps Schoenberg's work deserves a more superficial treatment than it has hitherto received." This theme runs throughout the book, and the reader actually has a chance to get to know Schoenberg's biography and how that biography potentially related to his music without being subjected to stifling theory.

The book as a whole is made up of short chapters some of which contain mostly biography and others of which contain mostly descriptions and reflections on some of Schoenberg's major works (there are chapters completely dedicated to the following works: Verklärte Nacht, Gurre-Lieder, Brettl-Lieder (from Schoenberg's suprising tenure with Berlin cabarets in 1901-1902), Five Pieces For Orchestra, Erwartung, Pierrot Lunaire, Die glückliche Hand, Moses Und Aron, and the String Trio). This book doesn't just cover his music, though. One chapter gets devoted to his very literary treatise on harmony, "Harmonielehre". Another chapter discusses Schoenberg's paintings (some of which Gustave Mahler purchased to help support his financially struggling colleague). Two interesting later chapters deal with his propensity to create games and practical inventions, and even a reflection on being short (a trait that the author confesses to share; Schoenberg himself was under 5'4" which ranks him heightwise beneath Napolean).

Some of the most fascinating biographical episodes involve the audience and critical reactions to Schoenberg's works (at a performance of Pierrot Lunaire an audience member supposedly pointed at Schoenberg and yelled "Shoot him! Shoot him!" other concerts prompted his friends to shield him from projectiles thrown by the audience, or to evacuate him from the theater, and many performances were literally shouted down - the vocalist at the premiere of his Second String Quartet apparently left the stage in tears). An entire chapter also gets dedicated to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique (often derogatorily subsumed as "overly intellectualist"); a technique he followed in his later works (most notably in "Music for a Film Scene", Op. 34, and the famous Piano Concerto, Op. 42).

Schoenberg also lived through major world events: World War I (in which he took a part) and World War II (which forced him to flee Germany and Austria in the rising tide of 1930s Anti-Semitism; "Ode To Napolean Bonaparte", Op. 41, stands as Schoenberg's musical lashing out at Hitler's tyranny). He also tried to help Jews in europe during Hitler's rise; he took anti-semitism as a given (one could arguably make the depressingly bizarre claim that anti-semitism was almost "fashionable" in the early part of the twentieth-century) and advocated a Jewish homeland.

Schoenberg's skills as a teacher (his most reliable source of income throughout his life) receives notice here, too. His pedogogical style apparently didn't encourage devoteeism. Some of his most famous students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and John Cage. All followed their own distinct directions following Schoenberg's instruction.

This book brings Schoenberg to life for those who know little about him. Those who have not heard any of Schoenberg's music should seek it out before reading this book. After all, the message of this book relates to finding meaning through active listening to, not intellectualizing about, the music of Schoenberg. Some passages might get a little thick for those with no musical background. And some contain actual musical notation. Nonetheless, a music theory background is not required to read or even to enjoy this book (though admittedly it would be helpful). The book overall opens up the expressive possibilities of Schoenberg's music to those whose spines curl at the mere mention of his name.

i like this book
This marvellous book evoked the sense of excitement/bemusement at encountering Schoenberg's music for the first time but also prompted me to investigate works which in the past i'd not given sufficent attention.
Here's a few scattered quotes of what he has to say about 'Die Gluckliche Hand':
'that the representation of the unattainable is embodied in music that is itself dense and tangled is no accident.Although it is beautifully imagined and so headlong in its progress that it seems shorter than it is......yet it is precise in its intricacy,and the orchestration is lush and full of colour' pg.158

The moments of analyis are always free of technical jargon and i like the attention given to Schoenberg's painting as a means of illumination.Altogether a compelling read and well illustrated.

The possible drawbacks are minor:
for my liking,there are too many references to Robert Craft, and i don't understand what Shawn means when he describes Wagner as being earthbound in comparison with early Schoenberg(the prelude to Parsifal being one of the most weightless pieces of music i know).Also,i have a special affection for that most ravishing of choral works 'Friede auf Erden' op.13 so was sad to find no reference to this little gem.

But please,go out and buy this book.It's got just the right tone of voice.Supplement with Rosen's more dense but equally thoughtful book.