Style and Idea

This book is full of essays which Arnold Schoenberg wrote on style and idea. He talks about the relationship to the text, new and outmoded music, composition in twelve tones, entertaining through composing, the relationship of heart and mind in music, evaluation of music, and other essays. Arnold Schoenberg (13 September 1874 - 13 July 1951) was an Austrian and later American composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. He used the spelling Sch nberg until after his move to the United States in 1934 (Steinberg 1995, 463), 'in deference to American practice' (Foss 1951, 401), though one writer claims he made the change a year earlier (Ross 2007, 45). Schoenberg was known early in his career for successfully extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic traditions of both Brahms and Wagner, and later and more notably for his pioneering innovations in atonality. During the rise of the Nazi party in Austria,