Warne Marsh on Schoenberg

[David Ayers]

This is the film music piece, along with the story:

 

https://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/joomla-license-sp-1943310036/begleitungsmusik-zu-einer-lichtspielscene-op-34-1929-1930

 

Pity they didn’t ask Warne about Picasso and Joyce. 

[mikeweil]

9 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Then there's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Suite

The composers list reads like a Who's Who of European exile composers .....

I can understand Marsh's antipathy - Schönberg wrote extremely expresionistic music at a certain period in his life, and then turned away from it. There seem to be some contradictions in his personality, and he must have treated some of his students rather badly. I was given a 500 page LP size book on Schoenberg by some friends with part Jewish family - they knew I was into music and saved the book from an aunt in Berlin who was not interested and wanted to dispose of it. I still need the time to dig a little deeper into it. 

Like in painting, there was a lot of discussion about the underlying principles of artistic work. With expressionistic style and harmonic sophistication. having reached a peak, they were searching for new rules for composing and took different ways - consider Cage, who, too, studied with Schönberg for a short while. There still is a lot of debate, and always was - Bach's way of composing waa criticized by his contemporaries. It depends of what fascinates you and how you try to figure it out how it works. Emotionalism vs. rationalism, and trying to get both to work together. Add to this personal traumas and a resulting skepticism, like the holocaust which played an important role in Schönberg's life - and it will get pretty comlpicated to deal with it all. Look at Milhaud's biohraphy, another composer with Jewish ancestry, teaching in California, and getting totally different feedback from his students. 

Yes, it says as much about Schönberg as it says about Marsh. Utterings of musicians about their peers are alway very interesting. It gets problematical when you consider your  own view of things as the only one that's right.

[soulpope]

17 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

The composers list reads like a Who's Who of European exile composers .....

I can understand Marsh's antipathy - Schönberg wrote extremely expresionistic music at a certain period in his life, and then turned away from it. There seem to be some contradictions in his personality, and he must have treated some of his students rather badly. I was given a 500 page LP size book on Schoenberg by some friends with part Jewish family - they knew I was into music and saved the book from an aunt in Berlin who was not interested and wanted to dispose of it. I still need the time to dig a little deeper into it. 

Like in painting, there was a lot of discussion about the underlying principles of artistic work. With expressionistic style and harmonic sophistication. having reached a peak, they were searching for new rules for composing and took different ways - consider Cage, who, too, studied with Schönberg for a short while. There still is a lot of debate, and always was - Bach's way of composing waa criticized by his contemporaries. It depends of what fascinates you and how you try to figure it out how it works. Emotionalism vs. rationalism, and trying to get both to work together. Add to this personal traumas and a resulting skepticism, like the holocaust which played an important role in Schönberg's life - and it will get pretty comlpicated to deal with it all. Look at Milhaud's biohraphy, another composer with Jewish ancestry, teaching in California, and getting totally different feedback from his students. 

Yes, it says as much about Schönberg as it says about Marsh. Utterings of musicians about their peers are alway very interesting. It gets problematical when you consider your  own view of things as the only one that's right.

Yep ....

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, mikeweil said:

Yes, it says as much about Schönberg as it says about Marsh. Utterings of musicians about their peers are alway very interesting. It gets problematical when you consider your  own view of things as the only one that's right.

Problem is ... that happens a LOT with critics and scribes too. And this is where it gets REALLY problematic IMO because after all they generally have more clout at getting their point across and out to the (listener and buyer) public whereas musicians' statements about fellow musicians are often treated as mere anecdotic views (though they often do provide an insight - though a rather subjective one, of course - into how those "fellow" musician was perceived by his peers - which might run contrary to the "acquired wisdom" that - again - often is a result of what the scribes published and therefore got into public view).

Edited August 3, 2019 by Big Beat Steve

[Larry Kart]

To be clear -- my thought is that while Warne did say that, it is a yawn to take what he said as settling anything other than that was Warne's personal opinion. Others share it; others do not. While Warne was a brilliant musician, he was not Moses or Buddha or St. Augustine. And , Sgcim,  I know of your history with S's music and its influence in the universities when you were coming up. BTW, I wonder who Warne's second worst crock of them all was. Hindemith? Yanni? Kenny G?

[JSngry]

Cannonball, maybe! 

[Guy Berger]

One day historians will look back at this thread as the turning point leading to evil tyrant Arnold Schoenberg’s downfall

[sgcim]

I just posted it as an amusing anecdote involving Warne. Imagine Warne pausing ten seconds after being asked the question, and then coming out with that!

However, I can't deny my hatred of the strict Twelve Tone Method. As Honegger said of it, "It is as if one was attaching a ball and chain to oneself!"

It represents the collision of Ear Music (which a composer like Honegger, and a musician like Marsh represent) with Eye Music (Schoenberg's strict Twelve Tone Method). 

[Rooster_Ties]

I've said it dozens of time over the last 10-15 years, but specifically Schoenberg's mid-20's opus numbered chamber works specifically with winds, are just divine...

This stuff (his Wind Quintet, Op 26 - for instance) literally half-makes me want to dance around the room, and always puts a big smile on my face.

(That said, I can't get with most of Schoenberg's string quartets -- or certainly not in the same way at least.  But his stuff with winds is just the bee's knees, far as I'm concerned.)

 

[JSngry]

This is all over the internet, but is it real?

Late in life Arnold Schoenberg,the boogeyman of the first half of twentieth century music, was asked by an interviewer, “Are you aware that young composers are now utilizing your twelve-tone method?” The reply was pure Schoenberg: “But are they making music with it?”

[Larry Kart]

38 minutes ago, sgcim said:

I just posted it as an amusing anecdote involving Warne. Imagine Warne pausing ten seconds after being asked the question, and then coming out with that!

However, I can't deny my hatred of the strict Twelve Tone Method. As Honegger said of it, "It is as if one was attaching a ball and chain to oneself!"

It represents the collision of Ear Music (which a composer like Honegger, and a musician like Marsh represent) with Eye Music (Schoenberg's strict Twelve Tone Method). 

sgcim: You are aware that Schoenberg himself didn't always follow the "strict Twelve Tone Method" after he had formulated it. In that light, check out this from the late George Rochberg, who as you probably know  dramatically and controversially transformed himself from a serial to a neo-tonal composer. Coming from Rochberg, the following would seem to me to have a good deal of weight, or at the least to suggest that blanket condemnations of Schoenberg and his sometime methods are as much or more a matter of cultural politics as they are of musical substance.

"True [Schoenberg] was unable to escape the pressure of an acute historical consciousness and all the problems it raised for a composer wishing to break new ground, but on all available evidence, it is fair to say that he actually embraced the past with its richness of musical thought, considering it completely consistent with his activity as a creative musician to [also] compose works in an older style. Viz, Schoenberg in a 1948 essay: 'But a longing to return to the older style was always vigorous in me, and from time to time I had to yield to that urge. This is how and why I sometimes write tonal music. To me, stylistic differences of this nature are not of special importance.'...

"Whether Schoenberg composed 'tonal' or 'twelve-tone' music, his signature remained the same. Only the approach to one spectrum or another of the pitch combination changed. Still, we can discern certain freedoms both in thought and gesture in the twelve-tone works that do not always inform the 'tonal' works of his American period.... If we compare a twelve-tone work like the String Trio, Op. 45 to the two 'tonal' works mentioned earlier [Variations on a Recitative Op. 40 and Theme and Variations Op. 43] we sre led an inescapable conclusion that Schoenberg was border and more daring. i.e. essentially more creative, in his twelve-tone works than in his 'tonal' works.  We can account for this partially on  the grounds of relative position of his musical consciousness to a closeness or a remoteness from past traditions. While in such twelve-tone works as the Fourth Quartet, the Violin Concerto, and the Paino Concerto, traditional precedents of formal design and articulation, phrase structure, melodic extension and continuation and metrics can be found, the String Trio is singularly free of them. The logic of a continuous through-composed music[ (of which Schoenberg was one of the last masters) is abandoned in favor of another kind of logic: a discontinuity of aborted gestures, some purely timbral, some powerfully visceral, some unbelievably lyric.  What is being projected is an aural mosaic of astonishingly vivid, sharply differentiated musical images that follow each other in a totally unpredictable pattern of succession. The wonder of this work after all these years the that the repetitions in Part 3  of events heard earlier still come to the expectant ear with new vigor and freshness, still produce the magic of joy in their recognition."  

I would add that the String Trio, composed in a white heat after Schoenberg recovered from a stroke that almost took his life, is (as Rochberg's account above may suggest) as much 'Ear Music" as any work I can imagine.

6 minutes ago, JSngry said:

This is all over the internet, but is it real?

Late in life Arnold Schoenberg,the boogeyman of the first half of twentieth century music, was asked by an interviewer, “Are you aware that young composers are now utilizing your twelve-tone method?” The reply was pure Schoenberg: “But are they making music with it?”

Don't know if it's real, but it sure sounds like something Uncle Arnold might have said and meant.

[sgcim]

3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

sgcim: You are aware that Schoenberg himself didn't always follow the "strict Twelve Tone Method" after he had formulated it. In that light, check out this from the late George Rochberg, who as you probably know  dramatically and controversially transformed himself from a serial to a neo-tonal composer. Coming from Rochberg, the following would seem to me to have a good deal of weight, or at the least to suggest that blanket condemnations of Schoenberg and his sometime methods are as much or more a matter of cultural politics as they are of musical substance.

"True [Schoenberg] was unable to escape the pressure of an acute historical consciousness and all the problems it raised for a composer wishing to break new ground, but on all available evidence, it is fair to say that he actually embraced the past with its richness of musical thought, considering it completely consistent with his activity as a creative musician to [also] compose works in an older style. Viz, Schoenberg in a 1948 essay: 'But a longing to return to the older style was always vigorous in me, and from time to time I had to yield to that urge. This is how and why I sometimes write tonal music. To me, stylistic differences of this nature are not of special importance.'...

"Whether Schoenberg composed 'tonal' or 'twelve-tone' music, his signature remained the same. Only the approach to one spectrum or another of the pitch combination changed. Still, we can discern certain freedoms both in thought and gesture in the twelve-tone works that do not always inform the 'tonal' works of his American period.... If we compare a twelve-tone work like the String Trio, Op. 45 to the two 'tonal' works mentioned earlier [Variations on a Recitative Op. 40 and Theme and Variations Op. 43] we sre led an inescapable conclusion that Schoenberg was border and more daring. i.e. essentially more creative, in his twelve-tone works than in his 'tonal' works.  We can account for this partially on  the grounds of relative position of his musical consciousness to a closeness or a remoteness from past traditions. While in such twelve-tone works as the Fourth Quartet, the Violin Concerto, and the Paino Concerto, traditional precedents of formal design and articulation, phrase structure, melodic extension and continuation and metrics can be found, the String Trio is singularly free of them. The logic of a continuous through-composed music[ (of which Schoenberg was one of the last masters) is abandoned in favor of another kind of logic: a discontinuity of aborted gestures, some purely timbral, some powerfully visceral, some unbelievably lyric.  What is being projected is an aural mosaic of astonishingly vivid, sharply differentiated musical images that follow each other in a totally unpredictable pattern of succession. The wonder of this work after all these years the that the repetitions in Part 3  of events heard earlier still come to the expectant ear with new vigor and freshness, still produce the magic of joy in their recognition."  

I would add that the String Trio, composed in a white heat after Schoenberg recovered from a stroke that almost took his life, is (as Rochberg's account above may suggest) as much 'Ear Music" as any work I can imagine.

Don't know if it's real, but it sure sounds like something Uncle Arnold might have said and meant.

I'm always careful to criticize AS' Strict Twelve Tone Method, and not Arnie himself. Warne was a bit less careful...