Schoenberg's Development of Serialism: Historical Background

1905-String Quartet in d minor Op. 7

• Studied works by Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, and Brahms
• Moved towards chamber music
• Developing variation- starts with few motives and the rest of piece's themes and voices evolve from those motives through variation.
• First appeared in his tonal music, but is an important part of the creation of his 12 tone system.

1908-Book of the Hanging Gardens Op 15

1909-5 Orchestral Pieces Op 16

1912 Pierrot Lunaire

1921-Piano Suite Op 25

• Roadblock!
• Wanted atonal music to have same organization as tonal music.
• Developed the 12-tone method.
• The twelve tones are only related to one another.
• Each tone must be used before repeating it or any of its forms.
• Set theory was used and it allowed 12 tones to be grouped vertically, like tonal chords.
• Different forms of the sets are inversion, retrograde, or retrograde inversion.

1936-4th String Quartet Op 37

Timeline of Music

Created a timeline using some of Schoenberg's pieces to create a better understanding of the development of serialism with Schoenberg.

Schoenberg's life can be divided into three separate time periods.

1894-1907

Expressionist movement and focusing on the styles of Wagner and Brahms

1908-1922

Free Atonality and abandonment of key centers

1923

Beginning of twelve-tone compositional method and serialism

Schoenberg

String Quartet in d minor Op 7

Born in 1874 and died in 1951

Composition lessons from Alexander von Zemlinksky

Turned down by the Vienna Music Association due to unacceptably dissonant chords.

Considered by many to be as influential as Stravinsky on twentieth-century music.

Piano Suite Op 25

1900

1923-onward

Five Orchestral Pieces, Op 16 1909

Book of the Hanging Gardens Op 15

4th String Quartet Op 37

The Beginning

Non-repetition, set theory, pitch class sets

Modulating 12 Tones

Chromatic Saturation

Birth of Twelve Tones

• Piano was only in one key.
• Developed 12 tone regions that acted as keys
• Based on hexachords and their inversions to create modulations.
• Used to create classical forms in a non-tonal way.

• Chromatic saturation- all twelve tones are used within a section of music.
• Schoenberg is still composing in the free atonal style
• No organization of the pitches
• Combine with pitch sets and perpetual variation.

• Schoenberg took developing variation the next step.
• Perpetual variation- nothing is repeated exactly as the piece progresses.
• Pitch sets- "composed with the tones of the motive".
• Schoenberg treated pitch sets like tonal chords, allowing for transposition, inversion, and rearranging in any order.