Talk:Second Viennese School

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[edit] Schönberg's teaching

• "though Schoenberg's teaching (as his various published textbooks demonstrate) was highly traditional and conservative, and did not include discussion of his serial method."

I think that in his Vienna period, Schönberg did teach the twelve tone method. Isn't there an anecdote of Schönberg correcting a piece of Berg's, commenting that the row is "wrong" - or something to that extent... Selfinformation 12:57, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

(i) What is Schoenberg's 'Vienna period' supposed to be? (ii) Why would Schoenberg have 'corrected' a 12-tone piece of Berg's when Berg's lessons with Schoenberg ended 10 years before the discovery of serial technique? (iii) If you think there is an anecdote about Schoenberg finding something 'wrong' in Berg's use of a row, please provide a cite. Pf.

(i) The Vienna period as opposed to the Hollywood period. (ii) Berg adapted the Schönberg's 12-tone technique (iii) I can't provide a cite, I was hoping that somebody else can, or at least support my claim that Schönberg did teach the 12-tone method. Best, Selfinformation 18:52, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

You need to learn something about this subject before you try to contribute to an encyclopaedia: what you imagine to be Schoenberg's 'Vienna period' actually included three sojourns in Berlin (the last being from 1926 to 1933). Your other replies are equally vacuous. Pf.

As mentioned above, Schoenberg had more than one ‘Vienna Period’; he also had three ‘Berlin Periods’, the third of which (1926-33) is most interesting in this connexion as it occurred in the early years of developing the 12-note method. As to the question of his criticising Berg, I believe this was to do with the row of Berg’s Lyric Suite – Schoenberg questioned his love of what Sch felt to be ‘unnecessary’ retrogrades and mirror forms. (I haven’t got the reference for this to hand.) In any case, this was long after Berg had ceased to be a pupil of Schoenberg. In his Berlin Masterclass Schoenberg didn’t teach 12-note technique as such but it was clearly known about by his pupils, some of whom were composing in their own versions of the method and bringing works to him for criticism in class. Norbert von Hannenheim was one of whom Schoenberg seems to have approved. He is said to have criticized Nikos Skalkottas for using several rows in one work rather than just one, but the details of this dispute are obscure. Erich Schmid recalled showing Schoenberg a 12-note string quartet in which Schoenberg immediately started suggesting melodic improvements – when Schmid pointed out that the suggestions would violate the order of the row, Schoenberg said ‘Well, you’ll just have to change the row, won’t you?’. Schmid also recalled Schoenberg discussing his Wind Quintet and Orchestral Variations, both 12-note works, in the Masterclass, but entirely from the point of view of his adaptation of classical formal principles, never mentioning the operation of the 12-note method in them. See ‘ ”… my duty to defend the truth”: Erich Schmid in Schoenberg’s Berlin Composition Class’ by Chris Walton, Tempo No.218, October 2001. Cenedi 09:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Listen, Pf., this is not the way to treat one another on Wikipedia. Bear in mind that I never made any actual changes to the article; I merely suggested something - in retrospect it was a stupid and uninformed remark. In any case, Cenedi's excellent reply enlightened me, not your (sexually?) frustrated ranting. You must have nothing better to do. Hence, get a life. Selfinformation 12:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Cenedi, your contributon was, as usual, highly informative; but there are one or two things that are nagging me w.r.t. Schoenberg's supposed criticism of Berg's "love of ... 'unnecessary' retrogrades and mirror forms". In the 'Lyric Suite', it so happens that the symmetrical all-interval series with which the first movement mostly operates doesn't have an independent retrograde: the R is the same as the tritone transposition of the P (and the same goes for the R and RI). And if Schbg's criticism was actually aimed at the 12-tone movements and sections (with their modified rows...) that come after the 1st mvt, there's the issue that Schbg himself explicitly described retrograde and inverted forms as appropriate in the later stages of a work (even though he himself usually had no compunction about using them very early on!). What's more, Berg tends to associate rows with thematic contours, with the result that his mirror-forms are (i) rare, and (ii) usually much closer to the 'surface' than Schbg's; and in any case, the R and RI forms of the 12-note series of the 3rd mvt and the two 12-note series of the 6th mvt never appear independently of actual written-out palindromes! So what on earth was Schbg objecting to?!? I think we need to ask you to try and remember where this story comes from: it needs the most careful examination! With all good wishes, Pf.

Pf, I am not 100% certain (ie I'm certain Schoenberg somewhere questioned Berg's attachment to retrogrades and mirror-forms in 12-note composition 'just for the sake of it', but I'm not wholly sure it was to do with the Lyric Suite). I thought I had it in the Schbg-Berg-Webern quartet correspondence published by DG in the early 1970s, but don't now find it there. Possibly the exchange was about the Chamber Concerto...? I have the Schoenberg-Berg correspondence ed Hailey et al and will check when I have time - I just have a distinct impression I read this particular letter before the ed Hailey volume came out. Cenedi 09:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the above. I've had a quick (and dog-tired...) trawl through the volume of Berg-Schbg correspondence: can't see anything on this topic in any of the passages indexed under 'Lyric Suite' -- unless there's a clue in the letter from B. to S. (1 Sept 1928) on pp.372-3...?? Pf.

[edit] Cleanup

How does this article need to be cleaned up? Hyacinth (talk) 01:31, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe it does! It seems absolutely fine to me! Pfistermeister (talk) 04:28, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

It does not cite sources. The information appears to be anywhere between original research (as it has been tagged) and based in Leibowitz (1947). Hyacinth (talk) 21:02, 12 April 2008 (UTC)