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
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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