It is very possible that if one could transport a person from the Enlightenment to modern times, his initial question would be “what happened?” When one compares the literature of Alexander Pope to that of James Joyce, the visual art of Jacques- Louis David to Jackson Pollock, or the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Arnold Schoenberg, there is an obvious difference. The three modern artists were initially greeted with harsh criticism, and the admiration of a few. Is this a progression, devolution, or just plain insanity? It is safe to say they just pushed expressionism to its extreme. In Finnegan’s Wake, once one can get past and decipher the abstract use of language, it is a story about the dream world of HCE. Jackson Pollock believed that art came from the unconscious and judged his work based on personal expression. And Arnold Schoenberg, in his Pierrot Lunaire, similarly used music as a medium for the expression of feelings, and telling the tale of the dream- like world of Pierrot.

The first song I heard by Schoenberg was “Der Mondfleck,” one of the Pierrot Lunaire pieces. I was confused, thinking “this is music?” I did not know that classical music could take such form as this. Our class learned about his 12-tone method of composition, and it dawned on me that, just like other works of art, it takes time and analysis to understand what is going on. The following is an essay on the life of Arnold Schoenberg, a brief description of his 12-tone method, and a description of his Pierrot Lunaire.

Arnold Schoenberg was born in Vienna, Austria on September 13, 1874. He received violin lessons at the age of eight, and started composing at an early age, although for the most part, he was largely self-taught until his late teen years. Later he received lessons from Alexander von Zemlinsky, who would become his future brother-in-law (Arnold). His first works include the string sextet Verklärte Nacht. His earlier works show influences from Brahms, Wagner, and Wolf. He worked as a cabaret musician and teacher in Berlin around 1901, and then returned to Vienna, where he taught pupils Webern and Berg (Sadie). The first piece without any reference to any key was Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide (You lean against a silver willow). He wrote this after his wife Mathilde left him in 1908. In the same year he also composed String Quartet No. 2, which starts out using traditional key signatures in the first two movements, but in the final two movements weakens the links with traditional tonality. In 1912 he composed the famous Pierrot Lunaire. He developed his 12-tone method of composition later, and this grew into serialism, though Schoenberg is not considered a serialist. The technique was adopted by other musicians of what is called the second Viennese school, among them Anton Webern, Alan Berg, and Hanns Eisler (Arnold). He founded the Society for Private Musicians in 1919, where his pupils could present new music. In 1933, due to growing anti-Semitism in Berlin, he moved to Paris. Later that year he moved to Los Angeles. He returned to tonal compositions, and in 1936 began teaching at UCLA (Sadie). In his final years (1933-1951) he composed several other notable pieces including the Violin Concerto op. 36, Kol Nidre op. 39, Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte op 41, and his memorial to the victims of the Holocaust A Survivor from Warsaw op 46.

When Schoenberg developed the 12-tone method, he said himself “I have today made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years,” (Arnold). His 12-tone technique uses a series of 12 notes on the chromatic scale, carefully arranged in a series. The first row serves as the basis of the movement or entire work. The notes then can be inverted (if a note moves up a step in the first row, it would go down a step in the second row) in retrograde (backward), or in retrograde inversion (inversion of the backward form) (Cunningham). Along with what it says in the book, there is another way that one can arrange the notes in the following rows. If row one was something like A, A sharp, B, C, C sharp, and so on…Then you could move the letters to the left on the next row, so row two would start out with A sharp, B, C, C sharp, D…. And the third row would start out with B, C, C sharp, D, D sharp… This 12- tone method works if one plays the notes in succession as they are on the grid. In music class we also learned that the notes could be played up, down, or diagonally, and it would still work. I think the secret of why it works lies somewhere in mathematics, but that would be another essay.

Pierrot Lunaire is a melodrama, consisting of poetry spoken against an instrumental background. It describes the bizarre experiences of Pierrot, a figure portrayed in many stories and paintings as a clown. It was the last great work of Schoenberg’s expressionist period. This piece is considered expressionist, because it puts an emphasis on emotion, rather than the traditional form of music. Schoenberg invented Sprechstimme, or speaking the lyrics in certain pitches (Winiarz). The work consists of flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano, and a solo soprano, and the eight instruments are arranged differently in every number to produce an amazing variety of sound. The work is atonal, but not 12-tone, since Schoenberg did not experiment with it until his later works. He uses a variety of older techniques too, such as canon and fugue, rondo, passacaglia, and free counterpoint (Pierrot). Pierrot Lunaire means “moonstruck Pierrot.” In part one, the main character Pierrot is intoxicated by the moon, fantasizes about love, sex and religion. In part two, he is in a violent nightmare. And in part three he journeys home, haunted by memories of his past experiences. The Pierrot Lunaire was premiered on October 16, 1912 in Berlin. With the spoken lines, and the play-like writing, it is as much a work for a stage as it is for a concert-hall (Winiarz).

While many of his students saw him as an innovator, many critics of his day hated his work. Even today there are some people who refuse to consider his methods as music. Along with music, Schoenberg also painted, wrote poetry, plays, and political essays. Schoenberg suffered from triskaidekaphobia, which is the fear of the number 13. Ironically, it is believed he died on Friday, July 13, 1951 (Arnold).