Schönberg works for piano

[Lance Morrison]

I thought a lot before posting this; I'm hoping I'll get some responses and that those I may get will not be negative

I'd like to discuss these piano works. We have the 3 piano pieces op. 11, which I find to be just brilliant....the first two are in that mysterious language that he discoved without ever knowing Debussy's work, and the third one is his first  *abrasively* atonal work....I also like the six little piano pieces, which in their concision and brevity were likely inspired by Webern and probably influenced him as well. It is the 5 piano pieces and the suite for piano that I find to be a bit problematic. He is not yet used to his newly adopted serialism, and I think this makes the pieces a bit lacking, though I may be wrong. Then there are the final two pieces for piano, which were written when he had internalized serialism, and I love them as well.

Along with the 5 pieces and suite, what I find to be problematic about Schönberg's piano writing is that he seems to have written so much differently for it when it is not a solo instrument. Pierrot Lunaire (chamber work), Ode to Napoleon  Bonaparte (chamber work), and the Piano Concerto all I think have amazing piano writing to which his solo pieces simple in comparison. I've often thought that his solo piano works alienate listeners from liking him because of their stark usage of atonality and lack of ornamentation, but that maybe that would find a way to like him if they heard certain chamber or orchestal works.

I was wondering if anyone agreed or disagreed or had any other comments

[matticus]

Interesting post Lance. I don't think the 5 pieces are properly serial (except for the waltz), although there are techniques which point towards serialism especially in the 1st and 3rd pieces. There's a weird contrast between these pieces and the suite... while the op 23 is still mostly very expressionistic, the op 25 isn't at all. At least not overtly. In fact the overt expressionism goes out as soon as he starts with the "strict" serial method, in the waltz at the end of the op23. Not sure exactly where I'm going with this but I've always thought it a little odd... it's not as if serialism appeared from nowhere and I'd have thought he wouldn't change his expressive focus like that.

I've always thought that the best of Schoenberg's piano writing (op11 and 19) is amongst the best of his music and the best piano music. Maybe it's just very difficult to play? I'm not quite sure what you mean by referring to the stark atonality and lack of ornamentation as this is fairly typical of Schoenberg's non-piano works.

[Lance Morrison]

Thanks for the response

I looked it up, and you are right, only the waltz is serial, im silly for forgetting. The more I listen to the 5 pieces, they are quite contrasting with the suite, but somehow I sense a further contrast between both of those works and the previous piano pieces. There is some difference in opinion regarding whether the works immediately preceding the serial works are still expressionistic, I havn't really formed an opinion as far as that goes, but maybe that is the difference that I am hearing...

I would agree with you that his piano music is some of his best music; I know I made it sound like they are lesser works, but I didn't intend that. I still feel they differ greatly from his non-solo works which feature piano. Listen to Pierrot Lunaire and all the interesting and colourful ornamentation and figurations that he uses on the piano, and compare that to the solo piano works. Schönberg just generally does so much texturally but with the solo piano is much simpler, closer to Webern. I guess I can't explain it more than that because I am quite an infantile musician, and I probably shouldnt have started the topic or even registered, sorry

[matticus]

No, please, your post was very interesting. I do see what you mean about works like Pierrot being much more colourful in their piano writing with things like the opening Pierrot motif tinkle, combining tremolos on the keyboard with fluttertonging piccolo, all sorts of bits spring to mind. And then the solo pieces are much more Brahms than Ravel, and certainly the lack of flashy surface could be offputting to some. Maybe Schoenberg didn't feel that the solo piano was an appropriate enviornment for klangfarben experiments and didn't even try? Maybe he did investigate it (I guess the resonance-play in op. 11 nr 1 suggests he thought about the idea) but the results didn't make their way into the music he wrote?

It's a fascinating idea (and well more interesting than what passes for thought amongst most musicians, so I certainly wouldn't worry about any kind of immaturity on your part)

[Lance Morrison]

thanks for the second response....I think you really are right about the Brahms influence there. I have never really listened to Brahms, so I don't from experience know what his music is like, but I know how big of an influence he was on Schönberg, and it would make a lot of sense that he would try to follow in his tradition. I think your comment is so accurate that I'm not sure what to say in response. I'll try to think of more stuff to add though---I don't want this topic, which very few people have even looked at, to die so quickly. I'm at least glad that I found a fellow traveler who likes his music.

I tried starting a thread on the second viennese school at the chopinfiles forum quite a while ago, and the only decent response I got was someone saying how they preferred Milton Babbitt (which is rather surprising in itself; Babbitt is much harder to like than Schönberg)....I proceeded to never go there again....... so your responses are really fresh air to me. It is kind of upsetting that someone who risked so much in his music career and did so against his natural instincts did so only to alienate himself, while many more popular composers never took a risk so great and as such owe their popularity to it. For the way he innovated, and how he did it with such skill and while still following in tradition, I would rank him higher than several of the so-called "great" composers

[Lance Morrison]

I've been reading more about Schönberg and Brahms, and I found that the former adopted a development process inspired by the other. This is constant variation, in which themes are returned each time in a different varied form. I found references to this on allmusic.com in regards to the 5 piano pieces, as well as to his use of serialism (albeit in simplified form other than the waltzer) in them. I apologize that the bulk of my post is a quotation, but I always appreciate these kinds of analysis

"The first of the Five Pieces, Op. 23, marked Sehr langsam (Very slow), demonstrates Schoenberg's approach to the principle of developing variation. When the opening melody reappears, the pitches are the same, but they have been moved to different octaves, changing the shape of the phrase, and are presented in a different rhythmic configuration. The retention of the pitches alone is enough to constitute a return to the theme, and through this piece we can gain insight into how Schoenberg uses pitches, not rhythms or melodic shapes, at the core of a composition. This concept lead directly to his formation of the 12-tone method.

Variation procedures continue in the second movement, Sehr rasch (Very fast), although some analysts have uncovered a sonata form structure. In this brief piece, the vertical aspect of the music is a result of the linear melodic movement.

The third piece of the set, Langsam (Slow) — sometimes referred to as a fugue because of the alternating entrances at the beginning — is again driven by variation technique. A five-note motive is put through metamorphoses so intense that at times it seems a single pitch could be considered part of any one of several forms of the motive.

Rhythmic freedom characterizes the fourth piece, Schwungvoll (Full of vitality). Here, Schoenberg juxtaposes sections of dense and sparse textures, separated by brief pauses.

Although the first four works of Op. 23 exhibit 12-tone techniques to a limited degree, these apply to smaller collections of pitches, not the entire 12 of the chromatic scale. The fifth and final work of the set (Walzer), however, is based on the repetition of a series or row of all 12 pitches. Everything that happens in this piece, both vertically and horizontally, is derived from the same series of pitches appearing in the same order. This is Schoenberg's most transparent and straightforward usage of these techniques. Schoenberg's next works, particularly the Suite for Piano, Op. 25, and the Quintet for Winds, Op. 26, would witness an expansion of the method and a greater self-assuredness on the part of the composer."

Somehow I disagree with the last comment; right now I don't see his use of serialism in the suite as being self-assured by any means. The more I listen to the 5 pieces, the more they reveal themselves to me as being beautiful pieces ever the equal of his previous keyboard works. However, my favourite piece by the composer is still definately his Serenade, followed by Pierrot Lunaire and his 3 piano pieces.

I hate admitting that I require more experience with the "classics" of classical music, but I suppose that someday I'm going to have to listen to Brahms so I can futher  understand his influence on Arnold.

[Lance Morrison]

It seems to me that it is the third of the 3 piano pieces op.11 which first fully cemented Schönberg's reputation as an "expressionist" composer. In the artform of painting, expressionism meant that artists tried to convey in their artworks their state of mind rather than objective reality via various methods of abstraction. With that definition, it is hard to see how a composer could be "expressionist", but it must be remembered that the expressionists chiefly were interested in the more tormented states of mind. It seems to me that people probably heard in Schönberg's music what I do (expressions of the innately psychological), and therefore saw his music as exploring those same darker areas of the mind as the painters, especially in the violence of that piano piece. In discussing this topic with my esteemed colleague Ian Wilkinson, he hypothesized that the psychological nature of Schönberg's works emerged directly from the conflict between his modernism and his conservatism, just how in Freud's theory of personality the desires of the id conflict with the superego (conscience). Ian believed that the id in this comparison represents Arnold's conservatism, since the id consists of  instinctual desires, and it was presumably Arnold's instinct to be traditional but his assumed responsibility to be a modernist. I admire this theory, but I hesitate to adopt it verbatim because of my opinion that Schönberg's music reflects the deeper parts of the psyche, as if it emerges from ones shattered unconscious. These parts are, naturally, id-related, and indeed Freud proposed that the unconscious was where the desires of the id thrived, so that shows me that his modernist aesthetic is in fact somehow id-driven. Therefore, the psychological nature arises not from a conflict between the conservatism and modernism, but directly from the nature of the modernism itself. He still lets the superego be his conscience and allow for conservative influence, but it is still subservient to the id expressions which leak out in ever concentrated form. This concentration of expression I believe makes his music often very difficult to perform well. Beginning with the second string quartet, every gesture of musical writing becomes filled with a wealth of meaning, yet the conservatism is still there in just appropriate enough guise to fool the performer into playing his music as if it was that of Schönberg’s forefathers. I believe they must on some level realize the unconscious id nature of his music and then create each musical phrase with the understanding of its full distillation. He no longer had time for the "inspiration" of fanciful Romantic weavings. Webern would take this and go further than even his teacher had, grinding down the essence of expression even further, and tempering his modernism with traditionalism that is both less domineering and more alien (due to its antiquity) .

(writing a paper on his extremely productive compositional period from 1908-1913, fine tuning this paragraph)

[ted]

I am the equivalent of a "naive" painter in music, but I rather like them. To me they embody expressive means we could all use to write piano pieces if we wanted to. The trouble is that most of us will never bother starting because we are so used to "inspiration" derived procedures that perhaps we feel any other approach is somehow "wrong". We feel we COULD do it but we never do, so to speak. That is a pity, and I intend to make a point of exploring the promising direction indicated in his pieces.

[Lance Morrison]

  I'm glad to hear that