Arnold Schönberg: My Evolution
(1949)

Of the seventy-five years of my life I have devoted almost ninety per cent to music. I began studying violin at the age of eight and almost immediately started composing. One might accordingly assume that I had acquired very early a great skill in composing. My uncle Fritz, who was a poet, the father of Hans Nachod, had taught me French very early; there was not, as has happened in many child-prodigy-producing families, any music-enthusiast in mine. All my compositions up to about my seventeenth year were no more than imitations of such music as I had been able to become acquainted with – violin duets and duet-arrangements of operas and the repertory of military bands that played in public parks. One must not forget that at this time printed music was extremely expensive, that there were not yet records or radios, and that Vienna had only one opera theatre and one yearly cycle of eight Philharmonic concerts. Only after I had met three young men of about my own age and had won their friendship did my musical and literary education start. The first was Oscar Adler, whose talent as a musician was as great as his capabilities in science. Through hirn I learned of the existence of a theory of music, and he directed my first steps therein. He also stimulated my interest in poetry and philosophy and all my acquaintance with classical music derived from playing quartets with hirn, for even then he was already an excellent first violinist. My second friend at that time was David Bach. A linguist, a philosopher, a connoisseur of literature, and a mathernatician, he was also a good musician. He greatly influenced the developrnent of my character by furnishing it with the ethical and moral power needed to withstand vulgarity and commonpiace popularity. The third friend is the one to whorn I owe most of my knowledge of the technique and the problems of composing: Alexander von Zemlinsky. I have always thought and still believe that he was a great composer. Maybe his time will corne earlier than we think. One thing is beyond doubt, in my opinion: I do not know one composer after Wagner who could satisfy the dernands of the theatre with better musical substance than he. His ideas, his forrns, his sonorities, and every turn of the music sprang directly from the action, frorn the scenery, and from the singer's voices with a naturalness and distinction of supreme quality. I had been a "Brahmsian" when I met Zemlinsky. His love embraced both Brahms and Wagner and soon thereafter I became an equally confirmed addict. No wonder that the music I composed at that time mirrored the influence of both these masters, to which a flavour of Liszt, Bruckner, and perhaps also Hugo Wolf was added. This is why in my Verklärte Nacht the thematic construction is based on Wagnerian "model and sequence" above a roving harmony on the one hand, and on Brahms' technique of developing variation – as I call it – on the other. Also to Brahms must be ascribed the imparity of measures, as, for instance, in measures 50–54, comprising five measures, or measures 320–327, comprising two and one-half measures. [...] True, at this time I had already become an admirer of Richard Strauss, but not yet of Gustav Mahler, whom I began to understand only much later, at a time when bis symphonic style could no longer exert its influence on me. But it is still possible that his strongly tonal structure and his more sustained harmony influenced me. There were not many unusual melodic progressions demanding ciarification through the harmony in my work. Qualities of this kind may be found in my First String Quartet, Op. 7, and in the Six Songs with Orchestra, Op. 8, while the earlier symphonic poem Pelleas and Melisande suggests a more rapid advance in the direction of extended tonality. Here are many features that have contributed towards building up the style of my maturity, and many of the melodies contain extratonal intervals that demand extravagant movement of the barmony. [...] The climax of my first period is definitely reached in the Kammersymphonie, Op. 9. Here is established a very intimate reciprocation between melody and harmony, in that both connect remote relations of the tonality into a perfect unity, draw logical consequences from the problems they attempt to solve, and simultaneously make great progress in the direction of the emancipation of the dissonance. This progress is brought about here by the postponement of the resolution of "passing" dissonances to a remote point where, finaily, the preceding harshness becomes justified. This is also the place to speak of the miraculous contributions of the sub-conscious. I am convinced that in the works of the great masters many miracies can be discovered, the extreme profundity and prophetic foresight of which seem superhuman. In all modesty, I will quote here one example from the Kammersymphonie. I have discussed it thoroughly in my lecture "Composition with Twelve Tones", solely in order to illustrate the power behind the human mmd, which produces miracies for which we do not deserve credit. If there are composers capable of inventing themes on the basis of such a remote relationship, I am not one of them. However, amind thoroughly trained in musical logic may function logically under any circumstances. Externally, co-herence manifests itseif through an intelligible application of the relationship and similarity inherent in musical configurations. What I believe, in fact, is that if one has done his duty with the utmost sincerity and has worked out everything as near to perfection as he is capable of doing, then the Almighty presents hirn with a gift, with additional features of beauty such as he never could have produced by bis talents alone. My Two Ballads, Op. 12, were the immediate predecessors of the Second String Quartet, Op. 10, which marks the transition to my second period. In this period I renounced a tonal centre – a procedure incorrectly called "atonality". In the first and second movements there are many sections in which the individual parts proceed regardless of whether or not their meeting results in codified harmonies. Still, here, and also in the third and fourth movements, the key is presented distinctly at all the main dividing-points of the formal organization. Yet the overwhelming multitude of dissonances cannot be counterbalanced any longer by occasional returns to such tonal triads as represent a key. lt seemed in-adequate to force a movement into the Procrustean bed of a tonality without supporting it by harmonic progressions that pertain to it. This dilemma was my concern, and it should have occupied the minds of all my contemporaries also. That I was the first to venture the decisive step will not be considered universaly a merit – a fact I regret but have to ignore. This first step occurred in the Two Songs, Op. 14, and thereafter in the Fifteen Songs of the Hanging Gardens and in the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11. Most critics of this new style failed to investigate how far the ancient "eternal" laws of musical aesthetics were observed, spurned, or merely adjusted to changed circumstances. Such superficiality brought about accusations of anarchy and revolution, whereas, on the contrary, this music was distinctly a product of evolution, and no more revolutionary than any other development in the history of music. In my Harmonielehre (1911), I maintained that the future would certainly prove that a centralizing power comparable to the gravitation exerted by the root is still operative in these pieces. In view of the fact that, for example, the laws of Bach's or Beethoven's structural procedures or of Wagner's harmony have not yet been established in a truly scientific manner, it is not surprising that no such attempt has been made with respect to "atonality". What a composer can contribute to the solution of this problem, even if his mmd is capable of research, is not of much consequence; he is too much preju-diced by the intoxicating recollection of the inspiration that enforced production. Nevertheless, just such psychological details might open an avenue of approach towards an explanation. I have mentioned before that the accompanying harmony came to my mmd in a quasi-melodic manner, like broken chords. A melodic line, a voice part, or even a melody derives from horizontal projections of tonal relations. A chord resuits similarly from projections in the vertical direction. Dissonant tones in the melody, that is, tones of a more remote relationship to the occasional centre, cause difficulties of comprehension. Such remotely related tones are likewise an obstacle to intelligibility. The main difference between harmony and melodie line is that harmony requires faster analysis, because the tones appear simultaneously, while in a melodic line more time is granted to synthesis, because the tones appear successively, thus becoming more readily graspable by the intellect. In other words, melody, consisting of slowly unfolded progressions of tones, offers more time for comprehension of the relationships and logic than harmony, where analysis has to function many times as fast. This may be at least a psychological explanation of the fact that an author who is not supported by traditional theory and, on the contrary, knows how distasteful his work will be to contemporaries, can feel an aesthetic satisfaction in writing this kind of music. One must not forget that – theory or no theory – a composer's only yardstick is his sense of balance and his belief in the infallibility of the logic of his musical thinking. Nevertheless, since I had been educated in the spirit of the classical schools, which provided one with the power of control over every step, in spite of my loosening of the shackles of obsolete aesthetics I did not cease to ask myself for the theoretical foundation of the freedom of my style. Coherence in ciassic compositions is based – broadly speaking – on the unifying qualities of such structural factors as rhythms, motifs, phrases, and the constant reference of all melodie and harmonie features to the centre of gravitation – the tonic. Renouncement of the unifying power of the tonic still leaves all the other factors in Operation. Usually when changes of style occur in the arts, a tendency can be observed to overemphasize the difference between the new and the old. Advice to followers is given in the form of exaggerated rules, originating from a distinct trend "pater le bourgeois", that is, "to amaze mediocrity". Fifty years later, the finest ears of the best musicians have difficulty in hearing those characteristics that the eyes of the average musicologist see so easily. Though I would not pretend that my piano piece Opus 11, No. 3, looks like a string quartet of Haydn, I have heard many a good musician, when listening to Beethoven's Great Fugue, cry out: "This sounds like atonal music." I now find that some of the statements in my Harmonielehre are too strict, while others are superfluous. Intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackies of tonality, I had thought to find further liberty of expression. In fact, I myself and my pupils Anton von Webern and Alban Berg, and even Alois Hába believed that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nevertheless. True, new ways of building phrases and other structural elements had been discovered, and their mutual relationship, connection, and combination could be balanced by hitherto unknown means. New characters had emerged, new moods and more rapid changes of expression had been created, and new types of begin-ning, continuing, contrasting, repeating, and ending had come into use. Forty years have since proved that the psychological basis of all these changes was correct. Music without a constant reference to a tonic was comprehensible, could produce characters and moods, could provoke emotions, and was not devoid of gaiety or humour. Time for a change had arrived. In 1915 I had sketched a symphony, the theme of the Scherzo of which accidentally consisted of twelve tones. Only two years later a further step in this direction was taken. I bad planned to build all the main themes of my unfinished oratorio, Die Jakobsleiter, out of the six tones of this row. [...] When I took the next step in this transition towards composition with twelve tones, I called it it "working with tones". This became more distinct in some of the piano pieces of Op. 23. [...] The closest approach happened in the Serenade, Op. 24, which, besides, already containes one really twelve-tone piece, the Sonett Nr. 217 von Petrarca, the fourth movement. [...] Still closer to twelve-tone composition is the variation movement. Ist theme consists of 14 notes, because of the omission of one note, B, and the repetition of other notes. [...] Here, for the first time, the "consequent" consists of a retrograde repetition of the "antecedent". The following variations use inversions and retrograde inversions, diminutions and augmentations, canons of various kinds, and rhythmic shifts to different beats – in other words, all the technical tools of the method are here, except the limitation to only twelve different tones. The method of composing with twelve tones substitutes for the order produced by permanent reference to tonal centres an order according to which, every unit of a piece being a derivative of the tonal relations in a basic set of twelve tones, the "Grundgestalt" is coherent because of this permanent reference to the basic set. Reference to this set offers also the justification of dissonant sounds. Contemporary music has taken advantage of my adventurous use of dissonances. Let us not forget that I came to this gradually, as a result of a convincing development which enabled me to establish the law of the emancipation of the dissonance, according to which the comprehensibility of the dissonance is considered as important as the comprehensibility of the consonance. Thus dissonances need not be a spicy addition to dull sounds. They are natural and logical outgrowths of an organism. And this organism lives as vitaily in its phrases, rhythms, motifs and melodies as ever before. In the last few years I have been questioned as to whether certain of my compositions are "pure" twelve-tone, or twelve-tone at all. The fact is that I do not know. I am still more a composer than a theorist. When I compose, I try to forget all theories and I continue composing only after having freed my mmd of them. lt seems to me urgent to warn my friends against orthodoxy. Composing with twelve tones is not nearly as forbidding and exclusive a method as is popularly believed. lt is primarily a method demanding logical order and organization, of which comprehensibility should be the main result. Whether certain of my compositions fail to be "pure" because of the surprising appearance of some consonant harmonies – surprising even to me – I cannot, as I have said, decide. But I am sure that a mind trained in musical logic will not fail even if it is not conscious of everything it does. Thus I hope that again an act of grace may come to my rescue, just as it did in the case of the Kammersymphonie, and unveil the coherence in this apparent discrepancy.