Schoenberg's problems

Reread bits of Harvey Sachs' admirable and odd biography of Schoenberg, admirable for its extensive research, and odd for its continuous reservations which entirely undermine his obvious aim to place Schoenberg on the pedestal of musical greatness in the pantheon of the Great European Composers.

Relistened to some of S's works on YouTube - the rich library of recordings of anything that ever has been recorded in whatever way. Jacobsleiter, Moses and Aron, First and Second Chamber Symphony, Verklärte Nacht (ravishing recent recording by the Danish National Symphony under Fabio Luisi), Pierrot Lunaire (the best recording available is with Jan DeGaetano).

Schoenberg was a composer of genius, as can clearly be heard in his early works, and in his astonishing, expressive originality in his 'middle period' of 'expressionism'. He plumbed the depth of his own subconsciousness, and further down, the collective subconscious (the territory as described, later-on, by C.G. Jung), as he said it himself: the artist should delve into his subconscious to present to the world a reflection of what is going-on behind the façade. Well, what he found was a world of angst, destruction, hysteria, where the forces of coherence and order were loosened and finally abandoned (as in Erwartung). In the beginning of the 20th century, the world of 'Old Europe' was dissolving and a 'modern world' was born, beginning with a devastating war that the world had never seen before - thanks to technological progress. The utmost barbarism in combination with sophisticated technology was a signal that this modern world was not at all what the 19th century so optimistically had dreamed-up ('il faut être absolument moderne!' as Rimbaud claimed). 

In the sobering coolness of the twenties, a 'return towards order' became the new ideal for new music, reaching-back to pre-19C music which was seen as a haven of objective enjoyment instead of the cultivation of subjective emotion which got a bad name after the harrowing excess of emotion in the Great War. And Schoenberg invented his notorious 12-tone method of composition where dissonance was 'emancipated' and tonality, as a given by nature in the harmonic series, was supplanted by a very different system whereby individual notes no longer made audible sense in the way they made sense in earlier music. It is an entirely artificial approach and a human construct where the natural resonances of tones is denied. Hence the constipated, forced and fragmented effect of 12-tone pieces and the morbid effect of Schoenberg's only 'comic' opera 'Von Heute auf Morgen' where the only thing that is comical, is the intention to write a comic opera with that system. In fact, Schoenberg himself admitted to a friend after the premiere: 'I have to confess that these sounds make me quite depressed'.

Yet, it is clear to anybody with a musically-sophisticated ear that  Schoenberg was a genius in terms of talent, alas he seems to be the only great composer thus far who got stuck in intellectual frustration. As such, he remains a strong symbol of what went wrong in 20C music. At heart he was a traditionalist, admiring 'the masters'  to bits, and trying to save tradition from vulgarity, as he saw it, by taking distance from the 'normal chords' which - in his opinion - had become trivialised by the popular music of the time. But musical material is not vulgar in itself, it is the context that may trivialise chord, melodies, rhythms - his thinking was literal, materialistic, rationalistic. Also his claim that he emancipated the dissonance (as he called it) is a misconception because a dissonance is not a thing that can be emancipated, but is an effect within a musical context, dependent upon style, aesthetics, etc. etc. Reading Schoenberg's comments upon the great German tradition, one begins to see what his problem was: he looked at those brilliant works mainly in an intellectual manner, and concluded that it was their complex and sophisticated structuralism that made the music 'great'. And that is a nonsensical notion. But it shows that at heart, he wanted to be a classicist, but did not know how to manage that in a time saturated with ideas of progressiveness and modernity as inspired by science, which stood in stark contrast to the musical aesthetics of the 18th and 19th century. He could have discovered the nonsense of such ideas and follow his heart, but that went against his rationalism. And thus, he committed artistic suicide, and never became the Great Composer he always felt he had to be, or maybe already was. I think: that notion was a real potential, unexplored.

Premiere in Concertgebouw Amsterdam

On 29th of October 2025 the superb Italian/Slovene Alinde Quartett presented the Dutch premiere of my - thus far - only string quartet: 'Traum, Lenz, Verwandlung' in the Concertgebouw. The Alinde Quartett belongs to the international top level of chamber music ensembles, with great performances and recordings of the classics but also including new works into their programs. They are 'Ensemble in Residence' of the Philharmonie in Cologne and draw an enthusiastic audience to their concerts in various European venues.

 https://www.alindequartett.com/

I feel deeply honoured by the serious dedication of these young players, who have added the quartet to their repertoire, and who have asked me to write a short piece for one of their Schubert concerts - 2028 is the memorial year of the death of this great composer who worked in the shadow of Beethoven and yet found his own, authentic voice.

The concert in the Concertgebouw - the Alinde's debut in the country - was recorded for national radio, and was, in total, a success. There was no review, in the Netherlands such concerts don't draw much attention, and since I do not have a particular high opinion of Dutch criticism of classical music concerts I'm quite happy with that.

'Traum, Lenz, verwandlung' (1997) was written in a period of almost total isolation, without any performance or players in mind, and the result of finding a short sketch of years earlier for a film project of a young filmmaker (which did not come to fruition). The material invited for further elaboration and thus, the music wrote itself, so to speak, unhindered by any conscious consideration as to the musical world. Some 10 years later a Romanian immigrant quartet tried to play it in the chamber music series of the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum (museum for modern art) but that did not go well, and they complained (!) that the music was 'like late Beethoven'. A couple of years later a young British quartet tried it at a concert in London's Kings Place chamber music series but failed; I was not present but friends' stories reported something like a public rape. Later attempts to interest Dutch quartets all failed - no interest. What a contrast to find a quartet at an international top level who could manage their parts in a very impressive way and with great musical insight.... only now the music came into its own.

The music of the quartet, although not easy at all to play, is not 'difficult on the ear' and draws inspiration from the existent classical quartet repertoire, but transforms these influences into a language a bit reminiscent of early 20C music of the Germanic cultural sphere. I remember having thought at the time: what would Schoenberg have written if he had renounced his ideas of atonality and progress, and simply had followed his inclinations? All speculative of course, but I found it a fascinating idea which has stimulated me oftener.