Browsing by Subject "Schoenberg"

Arnold Schoenberg’s theory of Klangfarbenmelodie (timbre-melody) is one of the most important yet least understood compositional innovations of the twentieth century. Critical reexaminations of his writings reveal that it is a textural principle, a way to combine the homophonic and polyphonic forms of presentation. In other words, Klangfarbenmelodie is another means to accomplish what Schoenberg eventually realized in composition with twelve tones—a way forward for new music.

In many respects, the twentieth century was the era of chromaphony: timbre-based music. In addition to chronicling the emancipation of timbre, this dissertation emancipates timbre in scholarly discourse by offering a new analytical method with the flexibility to be a powerful tool for all musical parameters—planal analysis. In conjunction with auditory scene analysis and music cognition, planal analysis enables new ways of studying musical elements by placing them in separate analytical planes.

Direct precedents of Klangfarbenmelodie can be traced to Gustav Mahler, whose music had a profound influence on Schoenberg. Clarity of musical line in Mahler’s massive orchestras was often accomplished through his refined control of timbre. In his music, we begin to see timbre treated as part of the thematic material—that is, timbre developed in similar ways as pitch content. While Mahler’s practice is still pitch-oriented, his functional orchestration represents a type of proto Klangfarbenmelodie.

Schoenberg’s “Farben,” the third of the Fünf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16 (1909), predates his discussion of Klangfarbenmelodie in Theory of Harmony. Nonetheless, this music is rightfully considered a seminal moment in the development of the technique. Through close analysis and sketch studies, timbral processes are revealed as part of the musical logic alongside pitch processes.

Anton Webern took up the mantle of Klangfarbenmelodie after Schoenberg’s early experiments with it. Contrary to popular reception, Schoenberg and Webern had similar approaches to this new way of composing music with timbre. In 1911, Webern elevated Schoenberg’s theoretical declaration of timbre’s independence to a fully realized practice in his compositions. Through analyses of Webern’s Opp. 9 and 10, this dissertation shows that Webern’s aphoristic works are governed by well-formed and logical timbral processes. His chromaphonic works of 1911 display fully formed Klangfarbenmelodie in both of its definitions: (1) a timbre-melody and (2) a textural style of presentation.

Much of our understanding of Schoenberg and his music today is colored by early responses to his so-called free-atonal work from the first part of the twentieth century, especially in his birthplace, Vienna. This early, crucial reception history has been incredibly significant and subversive; the details of the personal and political motivations behind deeply negative or manically positive responses to Schoenberg's music have not been preserved with the same fidelity as the scandalous reactions themselves. We know that Schoenberg was feared, despised, lauded, and imitated early in his career, but much of the explanation as to why has been forgotten or overlooked. As a result our own reception of Schoenberg's music is built upon inherited fears, hopes, and insecurities that are now nearly a century old. In order to more fully approach these musical works and their composer it is necessary to attempt to separate his reputation from the sound of the music.

This dissertation, which studies Schoenberg's reception from 1908 through 1924 in the United States, Britain, and Austria and German through select works (Opp. 10, 15, 16, 17), contributes to the field by uncovering additional primary sources, including previously unknown performances and reviews. My work interacts with larger trends in musicology, including questioning the narrative of atonality, assessing the value of social and artistic movements (i.e. expressionism) as applied to music, and examining how the reception of a work is the combination of many factors - from the aural to the political - which intertwine to form our idea of a musical text. Ultimately, through a study based on close musical analysis employing elements of set-class theory, the methodology of Rezeptionsästhetik, and a focus on historical context, I present an interpretation in which Schoenberg's reception is strongly determined by early critical responses from Vienna, where conservative views of music's role in society combined with undercurrents of anti-Semitic thought to brand Schoenberg as mentally unstable and his music as socially detrimental.