I want to share a couple of my favorite quotes from Schoenberg.
From his essay, "My Evolution":
- "One must not forget that—theory or no theory—a composer’s only yardstick is his sense of balance and his belief in the infallibility of the logic of his musical thinking.”
"Art is the cry of distress uttered by those who experience at firsthand the fate of mankind. Who are not reconciled to it, but come to grips with it. Who do not apathetically wait upon the motor called ‘hidden forces’, but hurl themselves in among the moving wheels, to understand how it all works. Who do not turn their eyes away, to shield themselves from emotions, but open them wide, so as to tackle what must be tackled. Who do, however, often close their eyes, in order to perceive things incommunicable by the senses, to envision within themselves the process that only seems to be the world outside. The world revolves within—inside them: what bursts out is merely the echo—the work of art!"
From his essay, "Problems with Teaching Art":
- "So the genius really learns only from himself, the man of talent mainly from others. The genius learns from nature—his own nature—the man of talent from art."
- "Form in the arts, and especially in music, aims primarily at comprehensibility. The relaxation which a satisfied listener experiences when he can follow an idea, its development, and the reasons for such development is closely related, psychologically speaking, to a feeling of beauty. Thus, artistic value demands comprehensibility, not only for intellectual, but also for emotional satisfaction. However, the creator’s idea has to be presented, whatever the mood he is impelled to evoke."
- “[the diminished seventh chord] was the ‘expressive’ chord of that time. Whenever one wanted to express pain, excitement, anger, or some other strong feeling—there we find, almost exclusively, the diminished seventh chord. So it is in the music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, etc. Even in Wagner’s early works it plays the same role. But soon the role was played out. This uncommon, restless, undependable guest, here today, gone tomorrow, settled down, became a citizen, was retired a philistine. The chord had lost the appeal of novelty, hence, it had lost its sharpness, but also its luster. It had nothing more to say to a new era. Thus, it fell from the higher sphere of art music to the lower of music for entertainment. There it remains, as a sentimental expression of sentimental concerns. It became banal and effeminate. Became banal! It was not so originally. It was sharp and dazzling. Today, though, it is scarcely used any more except in that mawkish stuff (Schmachtliteratur) which sometime later always apes what was formerly, in great art, an important event. Other chords took its place, chords that were to replace its expressiveness and chords that were to replace its pivotal facility. These were the augmented triad, certain altered chords, and some sonorities that, having already been introduced in the music of Mozart or Beethoven by virtue of suspensions or passing tones, appeared in that of Wagner as independent chords. None of these chords, however, was quite the equal of the diminished seventh—an advantage for them, actually; for they were thus better protected against banality, since they were not open to such excessive use. Yet, these too were soon worn out, soon lost their charm; and that explains why so quickly after Wagner, whose harmonies seemed unbelievably bold to his contemporaries, new paths were sought: The diminished seventh chord provoked this movement, which cannot stop before it has fulfilled the will of nature, and not before we have reached the greatest possible maturity in the imitation of nature: so that we can then turn away from the external model and more and more toward the internal, toward the one within us.”
Here is a quote from Schoenberg's good friend, Wassily Kandinsky in his book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art:
"there has never been a time when the arts approached each other more nearly than they do today…In each manifestation is the seed of a striving towards the abstract, the non-material. Consciously or unconsciously [the arts] are obeying Socrates’ command—Know thyself. Consciously or unconsciously artists are studying and proving their material, setting in the balance the spiritual value of those elements…A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end."
- “Schoenberg made his radical break with musical tradition in 1908, full of confidence in his intuitive powers—his ear for unorthodox pitch combinations and his instinct for rhythm and form—and with the conviction that he was genuinely inspired, that he was composing as if under the compulsion of some mysterious (inner) force…that inspiration is the beginning and end of authentic artistry.”
"we ourselves are also among those realities or entities we require to know, that we ourselves are the thing-in-itself. Consequently, a way from within stands open to us to that real inner nature of things to which we cannot penetrate from without. It is, so to speak, a subterranean passage, a secret alliance, which, as if by treachery, places us all at once in the fortress that could not be taken by attack from without."
My note on Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer's claim is that knowledge of the self leads to knowledge of the “real inner nature of things” because the only source of immediate knowledge available to us is the self. This is a curving in toward the self to gain knowledge about the inner essence of the world, and God (if there is a transcendent category); that knowledge of the self actually provides a secret passage into the deeper mysteries of the world—the self, in Schopenhauer's model and Schoenberg's after him, is incurvatus in se.
I'll play some of Schoenberg's music in our next class session to give you a feel for his construal of tonality and musical form and unity.
Peace,
Chelle
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