The Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg

Abstract

Arnold Schoenberg - composer, theorist, teacher, painter, and one of the most important and controversial figures in twentieth-century music. This Companion presents engaging essays by leading scholars on the central works, writings, and ideas over Schoenberg's long life in Vienna, Berlin, and Los Angeles. Challenging monolithic views of the composer as an isolated elitist, the volume demonstrates that what has kept Schoenberg and his music interesting and provocative was his profound engagement with the musical traditions he inherited and transformed, with the broad range of musical and artistic developments during his lifetime he critiqued and incorporated, and with the fundamental cultural, social, and political disruptions through which he lived. The book provides introductions to his most important works, and to his groundbreaking innovations of the emancipation of the dissonance and composition with twelve tones. Chapters also examine Schoenberg's lasting influence on other twentieth- and twenty-first century composers and writers.