Talk:String quartets (Schoenberg)

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[edit] String Quartet No. 1, op. 7

We currently have this work introduced thus: "Schoenberg's first string quartet was his first assured masterpiece, and it was the real beginning of his reputation as a composer". This sounds a bit POV, or a bit under-informed, to me. Verklärte Nacht (op. 4, 1899) is surely the "first assured masterpiece", and the Quartet was also preceded by Gurrelieder (essentially composed 1900-1901, though admittedly not completed until afterwards) and Pelleas und Melisande, both of which may lack the Quartet's formal perfection but are arguably masterpieces at least as important. As for "the real beginning of his reputation as a composer" he already had a reputation, and its "real beginning" was probably with the premiere of Pelleas und Melisande in 1905. (Alma Mahler writes somewhere that this was when people relized he was a bigger figure than his teacher Zemlinsky, or words to that effect.) I haven't changed the text of the article at this point, but I submit these are grounds for considering changing it. Cenedi (talk) 19:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Contemporary music?

Does it really fall into Wikipedia contemporary music? The guidelines on the subject suggest only music post-1945. The last of these works was written in 1937. Cenedi (talk) 11:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What "guidelines on the subject" are you referring to? Have you read the description on the project page Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music (also linked from the tag)? If not, I suggest you do, and also see the talk page for the project, especially the section Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Contemporary_music#Um...the_bot_adding_the_template. The composer page Arnold Schoenberg is also tagged for this project.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:57, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I did read the description on the project page, and the links therefrom to "modern music", "experimental music" and "avant-garde music" didn't really any of them seem to fit for Schoenberg. The talk page has a lot of interesting stuff on it, but again I don't see anything that seems to be conclusive as to where Schoenberg falls. Sure, lots of people still have difficulty with his music, but I don't know that anything composed in the first half of the last century can any more be realistically called 'contemporary music'. That's all I wanted to say and, having said it, will hold my peace. Cenedi (talk) 19:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)