Schoenberg and the New Music
Essays by Carl Dahlhaus

A collection of essays, by the leading German musicologist, on one of the most controversial composers of our century.

Carl Dahlhaus (Author), Derrick Puffett (Translated by), Alfred Clayton (Translated by)

9780521337830, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 January 1989

316 pages
23.4 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.525 kg

'The volume is among [Dahlhaus's] most thought-provoking … The translators deserve much gratitude for making this most rewarding book available in such clear and readable English.' Oliver Neighbour, Music & Letters

This book is a collection of essays, by the leading German musicologist of our day, on one of the most controversial and influential composers of our century: Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg is considered here as a historical figure, as a thinker and theoretician and as a composer whose works may be subjected to technical analysis and/or examined in relation to the history of ideas. Above all, he is considered in the context of the 'New Music', the historical and cultural movement of the first two decades of this century which embrace musicians such as Webern, Schreker and Scriabin (all of whom are allotted individual essays), as well as Schoenberg himself. In addition to historical and analytical essays there are essays of a broader cultural-historical and even sociological import which should interest all those involved with twentieth-century music and ideas.

Translators' introduction
1. 'New Music' as historical category
2. Progress and the avant garde
3. Avant garde and popularity
4. New Music and the problem of musical genre
5. Problems of rhythm in the New Music
6. Tonality: structure or process?
7. Schoenberg's poetics of music
8. Schoenberg's aesthetic theology
9. Schoenberg and programme music
10. Musical prose
11. Emancipation of the dissonance
12. What is 'developing variation'?
13. Schoenberg and Schenker
14. Schoenberg's Orchestral Piece Op. 16, No. 3 and the concept of Klangfarbenmelodie
15. 'The Obbligato Recitative'
16. Expressive principle and orchestral polyphony in Schoenberg's Erwartung
17. Schoenberg's late works
18. The fugue as prelude: Schoenberg's Genesis composition, Op. 44
19. Rhythmic structures in Webern's Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6
20. Analytical instrumentation: Bach's six-part ricercar as orchestrated by Anton Webern
21. Schreker and modernism: on the dramaturgy of Der ferne Klang
22. Structure and expression in the music of Scriabin
23. Plea for a Romantic category: the concept of the work of art in the newest music
24. On the decline of the concept of the musical work
25. The musical work of art as a subject of sociology
26. Form Translated by Stephen Hinton
27. Composition and improvisation
28. A rejection of material thinking?
Notes
List of sources
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6]