Arnold Schoenberg's Journey (review)

In the early 1920s, after a ten-year period (1913-23) of compositional silence in which he devised a system of composing with twelve tones, Arnold Schoenberg claimed that his innovation would insure the dominance of German music for years to come. His misjudged remark, with its offensive chauvinistic tone, along with the truly shocking sound of much of the music that he produced, antagonized many listeners and started the reaction against Schoenberg's music that continues today. Consider the "Arts and Leisure" pages of the New York Times today, in which some critics still express their misgivings about serial music and readers sometimes rant against it, or the idea put forward in recent years (and refuted) that a sort of Mafia of twelve-tone composers controlled academic music departments in the 1960s and 1970s, stifling the creativity of students who did not conform to their method. It is fair to say that many younger composers today who compose tonal music in the hope that it will be easily accessible to audiences are part of a backlash against earlier directions in composition that began with Schoenberg.

In Arnold Schoenberg's Journey Allen Shawn describes the unfair burden that has been placed on Schoenberg's music:

The 'meaning' of Schoenberg to those who have sided with him or against him has always seemed to center on his historical influence. In listening to him one seems to be always asking oneself "What if all music from now on were like this?" (p. 299)

Shawn points out that the work of other important artistic innovators of the twentieth century—Jackson Pollock, James Joyce, and Vladimir Nabokov, among others—has not been subject to this rather frightening line of inquiry, nor have their methods been as carefully adhered to by those who have been influenced by them. (The psychoanalytic theories of Schoenberg's contemporary and fellow Viennese, Sigmund Freud—their strict adoption by his followers and the reactions against them—do present a striking parallel to Schoenberg's work and its reception.)

As a powerfully influential teacher, Schoenberg had staunch disciples. Much of the writing they have produced concerning his music has taken the form of highly technical analyses of twelve-tone procedures and has been aimed only at the most dedicated trained musicians. (Nor has the general public been entertained by any literature concerning Schoenberg comparable to the many volumes about Igor Stravinsky written by the composer with Robert Craft.) Arnold Schoenberg's Journey does not dwell on the procedures of the twelve-tone system, although it provides a clear explanation of how it came about in Schoenberg's development and how it works. Instead it emphasizes Schoenberg's need, throughout his career, to compose in a "white heat" of inspiration, and the role of serial technique in serving his expressive ends.

Arnold Schoenberg's Journey is notable for what it is not. It is not a full-fledged biography, although it does present biographical material and communicates a sense of Schoenberg's personality, the peculiarities of which are enhanced by photographs and self-portraits. (The image of Schoenberg's face is Pierrot-like, with exaggeratedly intense eyes.) Nor is it a survey of all of Schoenberg's important compositions, although there are detailed sections about most of them. Of particular interest are chapters on some of the least-performed works (masterpieces, according to Shawn) such as the operas Erwartung (1909) and Die Glückliche Hand (1910-13), and the song cycle Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten (1909). In his enthusiastic and detailed discussion of the 1945 string trio, Shawn presents a play-by-play analysis to a greater extent than he does for any of the other pieces.

Even though Allen Shawn is himself a composer and a student of an important Schoenberg pupil, composer Leon Kirchner, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey is not overly concerned with the testimony of former Schoenberg...