they follow a pillar of fire towards the Promised Land. To Moses, however, this is just another image. Aron has falsified God’s revelation to Moses. Personalities | Arnold Schoenberg | Modern Era | Opera ...
(Är’-nolt Shön’-bârg) 1874–1951 Austrian composer Together with Stravinsky, Schoenberg has become the most influential figure in twentieth-century music. In his youth he wrote music in a ripe and sumptuously orchestrated late-Romantic style, but came to believe that the later music of Wagner, and that of Mahler and Richard Strauss, as well as his own, was undermining ...
1874–1951, Austrian One of the most important and controversial figures of twentieth-century composition, Schoenberg was a true visionary who paved the way for serialism – a system that, while abandoning traditional western harmony and melody, gave direction to the chaos of atonality. In so doing, he attracted plaudits and outright vitriol, for although serialism has ...
of the First World War Romanticism’s hegemony was breaking down, as evidenced by a moving away from traditional harmony and rhythm in expressionistic music of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Béla Bartók (1881–1945). The inter-war period saw the return of smaller-scale music that harked back to Classicism, while in America, jazz was fast becoming a popular ...
body of solo and chamber music. In the twentieth century, the clarinet came into its own as an orchestral instrument. It was vitally important to composers such as Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), Stravinsky, Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and George Gershwin (1898–1937). New playing techniques and extreme expressive demands were also ideally suited to the clarinet’s wide pitch range and variety of ...
the same impact, much to the composer’s annoyance. Other important guitar music has been written by Britten, Walton and Arnold. In addition, composers such as Mahler and Schoenberg have included it in chamber ensemble or orchestral works. The guitar was a central part of the personal iconography of Pablo Picasso. The most famous example of this, from ...
music. Varèse includes hand-cranked sirens and anvil in Ionisation (1930), which is written for 13 percussionists. He uses chains dropped into a metal box in Intégrales (1920), as did Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) in Gurrelieder (1910). Compositions for Found Objects John Cage (1912–92) challenged the listener to focus on the placement of sounds in his music for prepared piano and music using ...
A trombone is a brass instrument sounded by buzzing the lips into a mouthpiece. It is peculiar amongst brass instruments in using a double ‘U’-shaped slide to alter its pitch. The early history of the trombone is confused, mostly due to a lack of clarity in naming instruments. It is generally accepted that the immediate precursor to the trombone was ...
(‘Earth Spirit’, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (‘Pandora’s Box’, 1904). Following the composer’s death, controversy arose as to the fate of the incomplete third act. Berg’s widow asked Schoenberg, Webern and Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) to complete the opera but they all refused. From this point on, she withheld all of Berg’s supporting materials. It was not until ...
First performed in Venice on 14 September 1954 at Il Teatro La Fenice, this chilling ghost tale is based on Henry James’s short story, with a libretto written by Myfanwy Piper. The action ignites as a new governess arrives at Bly House to take care of two children, Miles and Flora. Depending on the stage director’s interpretation, ...
1902–83 English composer After singing in the choir at Christ Church, Oxford, Walton became an undergraduate there, his talent attracting the attention of the Sitwell family (the poets Edith and Osbert and their writer brother Sacheverell). They supported him for 10 years, enabling him to write music at leisure until he earned enough to become independent. At ...
he was strongly influenced by Stravinsky and began using jazz elements in early works such as the Piano Concerto (1926). He then developed a tougher style, with affinities to Schoenberg in the austere and masterly Piano Variations (1931, later scored as ‘Orchestral Variations’). His next and most familiar phase was a more popular style, using folk music (including ...
confidently uses a multiplicity of themes in a manner that strongly recalls Mahler, but in his next work, the Four Songs op. 2 (1909–10), he is already following Schoenberg in his explorations of atonality. In the remarkable String Quartet op. 3 (1910) he went further than his teacher had yet done in combining atonality with large-scale formal structures. With ...
a formal musical education. He wrote his first composition in 1901, and three years later, after a short spell as a civil servant, he began studying under Schoenberg, whose style was advancing rapidly towards atonality. Berg’s studies formed and crystallized Schoenberg’s theories of harmony and serialism as laid out in Harmonielehre (‘The Theory of Harmony’, published 1911). ...
(A-lek-san’-der Zem-lin’ske) 1871–1942 Austrian composer Zemlinsky was a friend, teacher and (for a while) brother-in-law of Schoenberg; unlike him he never severed his stylistic roots in the music of Strauss and Mahler. His work was long neglected or ignored, but recent interest in his four string quartets, his operas – notably Eine florentinische Tragödie (‘A Florentine Tragedy’, 1917) ...
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