Schoenberg: String Quartet no. 3

Well, this blog started as "The 1930s culture blog", so occasionally I will go back to that subject.

Here's Schoenberg's 3rd string quartet, in a historic recording from the 1930s. It's the Kolisch quartet supervised by Schoenberg himself. he first movement in particular is just awesome.

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4

I own this quartet in a more recent recording with the New Vienna String Quartet

Anton Webern

Anton Webern took his teacher Arnold Schoenberg's twelve tone technique and and pared it down to the bare essentials - his pieces tend to be short, minimalist and quite unsettling. They are also probably nearly incomprehensible to the unschooled ear (including mine), but in a cool kinda way. It's really weird music, quite austere and beautiful.

Webern was shot at the end of World War II by an unhinged American soldier. There's a Thomas Pynchon quote from "Gravity's Rainbow" that kinda makes this into an epic conspiracy to keep advanced European music down. It kinda worked, in the end the more simple minded easy listening minimalist music of Philip Glass became the bestselling classical music.

"Shot in May, by the Americans. Senseless, accidental if you believe in accidents -- some mess cook from North Carolina, some late draftee with a .45 he hardly knew how to use, too late for WWII, but not for Webern. The excuse for raiding the house was that Webern's brother was in the black market. Who isn't? Do you know what kind of myth that's going to make in a thousand years? The young barbarians coming in to murder the Last European, standing at the far end of what'd been going on since Bach, an expansion of music's polymorphous perversity till all notes were truly equal at last. . . . Where was there to go after Webern? It was the moment of maximum freedom. It all had to come down. Another Götterdämmerung."

Drei Kleine Stücke Opus 11




Symphonie Opus 11:

Glenn Gould

Here's a Google video of legendary pianist Glenn Gould playing first two traditional pieces, and then three modernist 1930s pieces by the composers of the Second Viennese school (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg).

Gould was known as a passionate interpreter of Bach, but he also occasionally composed abstract atonal pieces himself in the style of the Viennese composers.



the pieces are:

- Lords of Salisbury Pavan by Orlando Gibbons
- Galliard No.6 by William Byrd
- Suite, Op.25, Intermezzo by Arnold Schoenberg
- Variations, Op.27 by Anton Webern
- Sonata, Op.1 by Alban Berg

And here's a video of Gould and Yehudi Menuhin playing the uncompromising bleak piece "Fantasie opus 47".

Hilary Hahn does Schönberg

Currently listening to Hillary Hahn's new recording of Schoenberg's violin concerto (composed in 1935-36). When Schoenberg wrote it, famous violinist Jascha Heifetz declared that it could only be played when violinists started to grow 6 fingers. It's never become part of the standard repertoire, but a few later violinists have managed to wrap their hands around it.

You can listen to some of Hahn's version at her myspace page. (NOTE: At some point clicks start to appear for copyright reasons). This is the andante, so I presume it's not the most difficult part of the concerto. It does get pretty wild towards the end though.

The concerto is also an example of 12-tone music that's actually very accessible.... or FAIRLY accessible at least. It reminds me a bit of Bernard Herrmann's Hitchcock scores and parts of Howard Shore's David Cronenberg scores. I like it very much. There's also a Sibelius thingie on the disc, but I haven't gotten round to listening to it yet, I have the Schoenberg on repeat.

Arnold Schönberg videos

Schönberg was one of the founding fathers of 20th century music.

Schönberg's 12-tone technique explained:



Pianist Mitsuko Uchida on Schönberg's Piano Concerto (1942)



Many more Schönberg related videos posted by the Arnold Schönberg Center are available on youtube. This is a great resource that I've got to explore further.

Schönberg's paintings and drawings are also very good. You can look at them at this site.

I particularly like these two, so I'll post them even though they're somewhat earlier than the 30s:

Webern, variations for piano opus 27

Lately I've finally begun to actually enjoy serial/12-tone music (no, honest! I actually find it pleasant as long as there aren't too many instruments involved at the same time) - this youtube clip has Glenn Gould in a 1964-recording the first part of Piano Variations opus 27 (1936) by Anton Webern. Webern (1883-1945) was taught by Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) and extended his serial technique.