Expressionism and Twelve-Tone Music 1910 - 1940

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Expressionism and Twelve-Tone Music1910 - 1940
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Expressionism - Arnold Schoenberg

• Originally influenced by Wagner, Mahler, Brahms
  and wrote high Romantic works
• Later works (1910 1920) were expressionist
• Expressionism representation of the inner
  experience (unlike Impressionism) term first
  used for painting
• Man as he exists in the modern
  worldisolatedinner conflict, tension, anxiety,
  fear (Grout, 650)
• Music is highly dissonant, with difficult
  melodies and rhythms and complex forms

Arnold Schoenberg, Variatonen fur Orchester, 1929
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Twelve-Tone Music

• After six years of no composing as a result of
  the extremes of expressionist music, Schoenberg
  came up with a new way of organising melodies and
  harmonies
• Rejected traditional triadic harmony
• The twelve notes of the chromatic scale are
  arranged by composer
• Piece is constructed by organizing repetitions
  and variations of the tone row. Variations
• Retrograde (backwards)
• Inversion (upside down)
• Retrograde inversion
• The music is usually atonal (no home key, no
  triads) and thus quite difficult for untrained
  listeners to appreciate

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Bergs Violin Concerto, 1930

• Twelve tone, but uses some traditional harmonies
  and structures (sonata cycle)
• Incorporates Bachs melody It is enough in last
  4 notes of row
• It is enough is a quite dissonant chorale
  quoted directly in the fourth movement by 4
  clarinets (sound like an organ)
• Concerto depicts death of young woman (To the
  memory of an angel)
• The first four notes played by the violin are
  GDAE (open strings)

Berg, painted by Schoenberg
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Berg Violin Concerto Tone Row
G Minor D Major A Minor E major Es ist Genug
(Bach)