Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern: A Companion to the Second Viennese School (review)

Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern: A Companion to the Second Viennese School. Edited by Bryan R. Simms. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. [xiv, 410 p. ISBN 0-313-29604-9. $98.50.]

Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern: A Companion to the Second Viennese School is a treasure trove of information. Editor Bryan R. Simms describes the book as "a broad . . . study of the works of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, the artistic milieu that produced them, the influence they exerted upon musical culture . . . and their enduring importance to serious music to the present day" (pp. ix-x). Simms, David Schroeder, and Anne C. Shreffler offer, respectively, biographical-musical essays on Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Margaret Notley and Dagmar Barnouw focus on major artistic and intellectual figures and general political and societal values of fin de siècle Vienna. Joseph Auner and Jonathan W. Bernard deal with aspects of the Second Viennese legacy. The excellent bibliography includes a particularly valuable interdisciplinary section, "General Studies on Music, the Arts, and Science at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" (pp. 394-97).

The lead article, Auner's "The Second Viennese School as an Historical Concept," elucidates the meaning of "Second Viennese School" with regard to Schoenberg as a teacher and in light of the reception of the school's techniques, "namely, the emancipation of the dissonance and twelve-tone composition" (p. 5). Auner's first-rate essay acts as an effective catalyst for cross-references throughout the whole. For example, focusing on the psychological realm, Auner points out Schoenberg's concern that Webern "immediately uses everything I do, plan, or say" (p. 10). Shreffler's expert essay on Webern describes this as the result of Schoenberg's demands for excessive allegiances. "All of Schoenberg's students were expected to display devotion and subservience to a degree that seems excessive today" (p. 263). Ultimately such "unhealthy emotional dependence" (ibid.) resulted in Webern's seeking psychoanalytic treatment from Alfred Adler (p. 266).

David Schroeder's engaging, beautifully written essay on Berg brings up the notion of Berg's "ambivalent" (p. 186) attitudes toward his teacher. Schoenberg's criticisms of Berg's dress and behavior, his lack of support for Berg after a horrific critical attack on the Altenberg Lieder in 1913, and his jealousy of Wozzeck's triumph all led to a subtle but powerful retaliation by the younger composer. In his Chamber Concerto, Berg makes subtle allusions to the 1907 affair of Schoenberg's wife with the painter Richard Gerstl--an event humiliating to Schoenberg. Simms's excellent biography of Schoenberg also recounts the Gerstl affair but emphasizes its musical rather than psychological consequences: the Second String Quartet, op. 10, and an unset Requiem text from 1920-21.

Though Auner's essay deals with historicity, it does not readily complement Bernard's "The Legacy of the Second Viennese School." Auner discusses the "Trinity's" historical impact in light of their theoretical writings and the critical reception of their nontonal works. Bernard rejects the idea that the theoretical works, "emancipation of the dissonance," or atonality are the primary aspects of the legacy of the Second Viennese School. Instead, he emphasizes the twelve-tone compositional lineage in Western Europe and America that originated with Schoenberg and his pupils.

Bernard's essay is impressive in scope, the most detailed comparison to date of theoretical approaches to twelve-tone music. Rejecting Auner's concept of "school," Bernard focuses on a comparison of twelve-tone structures in works of Wallingford Riegger, Ernst Krenek, Walter Piston, Aaron Copland, Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono, Henri Pousseur, Roger Sessions, and others. He raises major theoretical issues such as the row as an abstract precompositional entity, the problem of vertical row construction, the serialization of rhythm and dynamics, and rotational procedures.

Bernard's work is philosophically positivist in the tradition of Babbitt. Thus, unlike Auner, he creates intellectual dissonance between himself and the philosophical...