Music Book Review: Schoenberg - Why He Matters by Harvey Sachs

Schoenberg: Why He Matters
by Harvey Sachs (Music 780.92 Sch)

There have been a series of books about pop artists lately that include something about them “mattering” in the title. We have a couple of them: Why Sinead O’Connor Matters, Why Patti Smith Matters, and Why Bushwick Bill Matters come to mind. But I never expected to see one about one of the most well-known composers of the 20th Century. That’s why I was a little amused to see the title of Harvey Sachs’ latest book, Schoenberg: Why He Matters. It addresses some serious questions about the Schoenberg legacy, though, and I think it’s an important book, which you can borrow from the Polley Music Library.

 

Sachs lays out the meaning of his title, and the necessity for the book, in his prologue. Although Schoenberg is remembered for being a very influential composer, his music is rarely played today. The 12-tone system of music that he is most known for was interesting and influential in its time, but today it is almost never used, and the atonality it produces is largely out of style again in a general sense, much less by way of Schoenberg’s formal considerations. Sachs also discusses his choice to proceed with this book in as non-technical a manner as possible. This isn’t a book that will require readers to understand music theory and follow formal analysis of 12-tone pieces, perhaps a first for writing about the composer. I found this refreshing: this is a body of work that has mostly been set aside for its reputation as being technical in nature and wholly dissonant in its approach, but I must admit that I have long been an enthusiast of Schoenberg’s music, and what I find to be most notable in his best works is a tremendous feeling for melody. His posthumous reputation stands somewhat at odds with the sound of his actual music, in my opinion. Perhaps this is the only kind of approach to a book about the composer and his music that can realistically help to correct that record.

 

It’s an unusual book. For the most part, Sachs has written a traditional biography here, following Schoenberg’s life chronologically. However, when he traverses into the more “controversial” periods of Schoenberg’s music, all surrounding his gradual shift toward atonality and the 12-tone technique, he pauses for moments of layperson musical analysis and also focuses on the social and interpersonal implications of the pieces, their performances, and their early reception by audiences. The musical analysis tends to be easy to follow, and often focuses on elements of performance practice around this music that have frequently conspired to obscure Schoenberg’s musical intentions.

 

What are these intentions? Reading between the lines here, I really see them as having a very advanced and moving knack for melody, and for writing the kinds of textures beneath melodies that can really highlight their sometimes unusual, fragile natures. As Sachs proceeds through Schoenberg’s life and major works, I can’t help but to put together a bit of a secondary narrative around the music, some of which is explicit in the text, but some of which is more implicit once one starts to think about the musical evolution that happened over Schoenberg’s lifetime. His early works were still very much rooted in German Romanticism, which despite its increased reliance on chromaticism, was still a solidly tonal form of writing. The early works were often larger in scale, too, such as the tone poem “Pelleas and Melisande.” The transitional pieces like his celebrated “Pierrot Lunaire” are a kind of free atonality, and generally written for small ensembles. The lightness of orchestration often helps to clarify his emphasis on melody to my way of listening — check out his string quartets for a great example of this in action that you can compare across his long career, too. We finally arrive at the 12-tone period, from 1921 onward, where again the most representative pieces tend to be for smaller chamber ensembles or for the piano, and though there is a somewhat more strict kind of atonality — Schoenberg really strives to obscure any kind of tonal gravity taking form — the pieces are still somewhat free, too. 12-tone or “serial” composers, at least among this first generation, weren’t so strict as some of their successors like Babbit or Stockhausen.

 

Yes, Schoenberg and some of his contemporaries like Berg and Webern were looking for new kinds of sounds not so grounded in tonality, but this isn’t noise music. Harmonic function may be blurred beyond recognition, but in its wake, the gravitas of melody seems to take on an even deeper role. One problematic area, though, is that musicians simply aren’t trained to play atonally — the exercises and other music played over time all reinforce tonal performance habits. This means that in performance, musicians often find these pieces more difficult than other repertoire, and as a result many performances take place at slower tempos than Schoenberg intended. Sachs makes reference to this phenomenon several times throughout the book, and each time there is a detrimental effect on the feeling of the piece, the grace of the melodies. For example, in reference to Schoenberg’s Minuet from the ”Serenade,” Sachs notes that performances all take place around 20 bpm slower than specified in the music, “And this eliminated not only the ‘singing’ quality that the composer specifically requested but also the whole notion of the minuet as a dance: at too slow a tempo, the music plods, beat by beat.” Much of the misunderstanding of this music, then, may be related to performances that simply don’t match the musical intention. Where Schoenberg aimed for light, airy textures, we often hear these plodding performances.

 

Sachs does a great job of humanizing the composer as well. His long-term frenemy relationship with Stravinsky, for example, makes occasional appearances in the book, as well as Schoenberg’s occasionally prickly opinions about other composers as well. His complicated relationship with his Jewish background and Christian faith are explored, as well as his struggles with anti-Semitism and difficult audiences in his native Vienna. His economic difficulties later in life are discussed. He lived a deeply fascinating life, and knowing more about it will hopefully compel some readers to give his music another listen, too.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Schoenberg and his World by Walter Frisch or Arnold Schoenberg by Bojan Bujić.)

 

( Wikipedia page about Arnold Schoenberg ) | ( official Harvey Sachs web site )

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

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