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Introduction to Schoenberg II: Waldesnacht
Sometimes a little bit goes a long way. A little Lied can say more than something of epic proportions. When I first heard Schoenberg's Waldesnacht, I was straight away quite smitten by it. At the time,...
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Introduction to Schoenberg III: Gurrelieder
If a little song can sometimes say everything, the opposite of this is Schoenberg's monumental cantata, Gurrelieder. This is a masterpiece on an epic scale. Schoenberg started on this work in 1900, but...
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Introduction to Schoenberg IV: Pelleas und Melisande
Along with Gurrelieder, this is the most ardently Wagnerian of all of Schoenberg's works. It is rarely played in symphonic halls around the world, but despite this, I must say I really do adore this...
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Introduction to Schoenberg V: Passacaglia Opus 1 by Webern
I know that this series of posts is supposed to be "an introduction to Schoenberg", but I think it perfectly appropriate for me to use the music by his pupils, Anton von Webern and Alban Berg, as a way...
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Introduction to Schoenberg VI: The Second String Quartet
We now find ourselves at a most critical stage of our journey into the world of Schoenberg's music. Once again, I had to really think long and hard to come up with a suitable piece to recommend as the...
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Introduction to Schoenberg VII: Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11
With the last post in this series on Schoenberg, we find ourselves yet again at an extremely critical juncture of our journey into the world of Schoenberg's music. Around about the time he completed...
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Introduction to Schoenberg VIII: Five Orchestral Pieces, Opus 16
For those who spent a little time familiarising themselves with the Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11, I have chosen the Five Orchestral Pieces (Fünf Orchesterstücke), Opus 16 (1909) as the next step in the...
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Introduction to Schoenberg IX: the Defender of Tradition
I mentioned once before that Anton Webern wrote his PhD thesis on Heinrich Isaac's Choralis Constantinus. Isaac's dates (c. 1450 – 1517) coincide remarkably with those of Leonardo da Vinci's (1452 –...
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Introduction to Schoenberg X: The Lulu Suite by Alban Berg
I previously likened the freely atonal works by Schoenberg to the free abstractionist works of the same period by Wassily Kandinsky:Out of this chaotic abstractionism emerges a greater order imposed by...
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Introduction to Schoenberg XI: The Violin Concerto, Opus 36
Schoenberg started his life as a Brahmsian, and when Brahms died in 1897, Schoenberg was already 22 years old. Verklärte Nacht was written only two years later in 1899. As late as 1948 Schoenberg...
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Introduction to Schoenberg XII: Moses und Aron—a Kabbalistic...
This is the twelfth and final post in this series on Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. As there are twelve notes in the chromatic scale, so there should be twelve posts in this series. For...
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Adorno and Wagner
In December of 1949, Arnold Schoenberg wrote to the famous musicologist Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt about Adorno's book, Philosophie der neuen Musik:I have never been able to bear the fellow [Adorno] ......
View ArticleCurrent Top Ten Posts
Here are the top ten most popular posts on the blog at the time of writing:1. My Critique of Joachim Köhler's Wagner's HitlerThe most in-depth and important post in the whole blog. It's a bit on the...
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Hate and Self-Hate
In a later commentary on his book A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, Norman Finckelstein distinguishes, in his critique of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners,...
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Richard Wagner and the Divine Feminine: Wagner and Feminism
Nietzsche was wrong. God is far from dead. Our world is ruled by Yahweh Elohim—He rules over a patriarchal world-order of masculine hate and war. Through a web of deceit, tribe is set against tribe in...
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Book Review Part I: The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans
The Coming of the Third Reich by Sir Richard J. Evans.This book, which narrates the story of the background to the rise of National Socialist Germany, first appeared back in 2004. My excuse for reading...
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Gramophone Article on Tonality Today
While you are awaiting for the appearance of Part II of the series of musicologically oriented critiques of The Rise of the Third Reich, I simply had to comment on the following article by Philip Clark...
View ArticleA Small Update for 2013
All right, I have had a bit of break from blogging over the holiday season. We all need that.The other problem is that I tend to be a bit flighty in my interests. I have suddenly been gripped with an...
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What Your Music Says About Your Personality
I really should be working on my draft of Part II of the series about the Evans Rise of the Third Reich. But it's heavy stuff, and time consuming, as my approach is quite academic with lots of...
View ArticleBeta Blockers?—Big Deal
This article seems to be causing a minor splash on the internet at the moment:http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/Article/329982,simon-says-i-admit-to-doping.aspxThe term "doping" is being applied to...
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