Part of the Rest Is Noise Audio Guide
Arnold Schoenberg in 1911, with photographs of Mahler on his wall. © Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
Just as painters of the early twentieth century abandoned representational images for abstraction, many composers of the same period abandoned the familiar harmonies of the tonal system for new combinations of tones. "Atonality," broadly defined as music that avoids those well-worn major and minor chords, may have begun as early as the final works of Franz Liszt, from the 1880s. The harmonically fogged-over landscape of Liszt's RW — Venezia was created in the wake of Wagner's death, in Venice in 1883:
Leslie Howard, Hyperion CDA66445 (more excerpts available at the link).
Just a few years later, Claude Debussy, in Paris, began feeling the pull of new harmonies. The Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun" (pp. 42-43 / pp. 46-47 of The Rest Is Noise) opens in an atmosphere of utmost calm, yet the tritone interval traversed by the flute — in quick downward chromatic steps — creates an enchanting and unsettling ambiguity, no clear tonality within earshot:
Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Boston Symphony, DG 469130.
Debussy's Preludes show the extraordinary versatility of the turn-of-the-century French master. "Voiles" ("Sails"), from Book I, makes almost exclusive use of the whole-tone scale and thereby floats away into a mysterious threshold realm (see p. 44 / p. 48 ):
Yet "La fille aux cheveux de lin" "(The Girl with the Flaxen Hair") employs a captivatingly simple and hummable melody, expressing the growing French taste for the sounds of cabaret and vaudeville:
Steven Osborne, piano, Hyperion CDA67530. By kind permission of Hyperion Records.
SCHOENBERG AND ATONALITY
Schoenberg's Book of Hanging Gardens, no. 13. From the Schoenberg Center.
The transformation of Schoenberg's style from 1899 to 1909 was rapid and dramatic. At the beginning of the process is Verklärte Nacht, a tone poem for string sextet, which ends in glistening D major (p. 46 / pp. 50-51):
Yo-Yo Ma, Walter Trampler, Juilliard String Quartet, Sony Classical 47690.
In the First Chamber Symphony, written in 1906, the harmony has grown more instable, with the whole-tone scale in operation (p. 48 / p. 52):
Pierre Boulez conducting the BBC Symphony, Sony Classical 48462.
The Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna has an astounding online archive relating to the chief revolutionary of early twentieth-century music. More or less every scrap of paper on which Schoenberg ever made a mark is being digitally scanned and made available to all curious eyes.For example, on a certain page of Schoenberg's Third Sketchbook, you can see his initial sketch for the song "Ich darf nicht denkend" (presently unavailable in the archive — Oct. 2010), in which the voyage toward atonality more or less begins (p. 49 / p. 53).
Helen Vanni, soprano, and Glenn Gould, piano, Sony Classical 52667.
Here is the extraordinary moment in Schoenberg's Second Quartet in which the soprano sings Stefan George's lines "I feel the wind of another planet" (p. 51 / p. 55):
Dawn Upshaw, soprano, with the Arditti Quartet, Naive MO782135.
Atonality blossoms violently in the fourth of Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, from 1909:
James Levine conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, DG 419781.
The Schoenberg Center has deposited numerous videos on YouTube, including a complete performance of the Five Pieces (Part 1, Part 2). The Center's online archive has the letter in which Richard Strauss declares that he cannot program the Five Pieces for his Berlin concert series on the grounds that they are too experimental for the public (p. 54 / p. 58). Many other works can be heard on the Schoenberg Jukebox.
Below is the entirety of the second of the Six Little Pieces Opus 19 for piano; it is described on p. 52 / p. 57 of the book.
Peter Hill, piano, Naxos 8.553870. By kind permission of Naxos Records.
SCHOENBERG'S PUPILS: BERG AND WEBERN
Schoenberg and Webern, late 1920s. From the Schoenberg Center.
Perhaps the consummate display of the expressionistic power of atonal harmony comes in the fourth of Anton Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra, also written in 1909 (pp. 62-63 / pp. 67-68):
James Levine conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, DG 419781.
In the final measures of Alban Berg's song "Hier ist Friede," from his Altenberg Lieder, you can hear a five-note chord that seems to have been borrowed from Salome (p. 65 / pp. 70-71)
Juliana Banse, with Claudio Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, DG 205102.
Compare the corresponding passage in Salome:
Below are some brief excerpts from significant points in the opera. First, the opening chords of the opera, as Wozzeck shaves the Captain's face ("Slowly, Wozzeck, slowly"):
This piano demonstration suggests the hidden tonal components of those chords:
Wozzeck hallucinates "Fire!" in the scene in the field:
With Marie's lullaby to her baby, the music takes a pronounced turn back toward tonality:
The one-note crescendo that follows Marie's murder, leading into the scene in the Inn:
All the above with Hildegard Behrens as Marie, Franz Grundheber as Wozzeck, and Claudio Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, DG 423587.
The climactic memorial interlude is derived from a sketch of a humidly Romantic Sonata in D Minor that Berg composed in his student days (p. 72 / p. 78), as the following samples show:
Jean-Jacques Dünki, piano, Jecklin-Disco JD 643-2.
Claudio Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, DG 423587.
The final sequence, with Bruno Maderna conducting: