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The Young Schoenberg (1955)

LECTURE 1

Schoenberg’s innovations already present in the early works – No laudatio temporis acti, but the question of the musical sense of every event – The concept of the young Schoenberg – The musical material – Three periods of the young Schoenberg – op. 1, ‘Abschied’ – Proximity to Debussy – Op. 2 songs and art nouveau – Richard Dehmel’s poem ‘Erwartung’ and Schoenberg’s op. 2, no. 1 – op. 2, no. 2, ‘Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm – Relationship with tonality – Basic characters – Analysis of op. 2, no. 2; harmony in early Schoenberg – Contrast with Wagner and Strauss – op. 2, no. 3, ‘Erhebung’; note-row technique – op. 2, no. 4, ‘Waldsonne’

LECTURE 2

Metric irregularity in Schoenberg: beginning of an analysis of Verklärte Nacht, op. 4 – Metric design and thematic progression – Duet idea; Adorno’s concept of ‘axial rotation’ (I) – Sequencing – Problematics of adagio movements – Relationship between development and exposition – Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung – Verklärte Nacht: new themes in the second part – Wagner’s leitmotifs – op. 3, no. 3, ‘Warnung’; precision – Verklärte Nacht as a transfer of the idea of the symphonic poem to chamber music, form and organization – comparison with the Chamber Symphony – Question from the audience about the arrangement for string orchestra – Gurrelieder part 1, first song and song of Tove

LECTURE 3

‘The Aging of the New Music’: misunderstandings and questions of musical sense – Gurrelieder, ‘So tanzen die Engel vor Gottes Thron nicht’ – Scale degree awareness and individual weight – Experiences from Webern’s op. 5 string quartet movements – Principle of balance in Waldemar’s song; innovations – Valéry’s concept of refus – The aspect of consistency in Schoenberg – The idea of the large interval: ‘Du wunderliche Tove’ – ‘Lied der Waldtaube’ – New harmony and counterpoint – End of Gurrelieder: chorus – Thematic combination as the origin of Schoenberg’s polyphony – Connection to Mahler – Clarity of musical events, the principle of construction – Thematic combination and note-row technique – Problem of tonality in the op. 6 songs

Schoenberg’s Counterpoint (1956)

LECTURE 1

Artistic idea and technique – The idea of integral composition, the intertwining of contrapuntal thinking and thematic work in Schoenberg – Melody in songs; primacy of counterpoint over polyphony, special status of choruses – The reawakening of the contrapuntal spirit – Counterpoint and harmony – Relation between the voices – Unity through simultaneity of voices; bindingness – Multiple counterpoint and musical space – Relationship of Schoenberg’s counterpoint to harmony – Rhythm – Instrumental texture – Relationship with form

LECTURE 2

Different types of counterpoint – Free counterpoint – Complementary counterpoint – Accompanying counterpoint – Contrapuntal invention of themes – Motivic fragmentation – Thematic combination – The counterpoint of opposing harmonic complexes – Schoenberg’s First String Quartet, op. 7; organization of large-scale form by contrapuntal means

LECTURE 3

Contrapuntal corner points; the ‘energetic’ idea of counterpoint; op. 7 (continued) – Interpretation and shaping – Relationship of two contrapuntal passages to each other – ‘Axial rotation’ (II) – The unification of relatively independent voices; determinate negation – Form as the result of counterpoint; op. 7 (conclusion) – Shortening and balance – op. 9 Chamber Symphony

LECTURE 4

Pierrot lunaire, transition to the twelve-note technique – The ‘roots’ of counterpoint: the need for polyphony and integration – Dodecaphonic counterpoint as a mediation of these aspects, unity within diversity – Model: ‘Der Mondfleck’ from Pierrot lunaire; the transition to the twelve-note technique as an ‘organic necessity’

Criteria of New Music (1957)

LECTURE 1

Method – Fixed values or relativism – The dialectical approach – Immanent critique – The concept of judgements of taste in Kant – The objectivity of aesthetic judgements and the immanent ‘correctness’ of the matter – Against pluralism of aesthetic judgement – The attitude of musical historicism – How can one actually formulate the question of the musical criterion? – Aesthetic questions are technical questions, questions of procedure – Once again: ‘The Aging of the New Music’, the dialectic of the progress of artistic rationality – The relationship between science and art; aesthetic necessity and ‘effect without cause’

LECTURE 2

Critique of definition, the concept of musical sense – The concept of the development – Misunderstandings of the concept of musical sense, the so-called poetic idea – Problematics of categories of sense, Dilthey – Sense and senselessness historically mediated – Discussion with Eduard Steuermann about the Leonore Overtures, the stringency of the work of art – Discussion: can there be several solutions to a problem? – Discussion about Hindemith – Discussion about Schoenberg’s supposed calculation errors in Accompanying Music for a Film Scene – Conversation about it with Gertrud Schoenberg – Spiritual content and subjective reception – The concept of musical material – Discussion with Erich Doflein about the polemic against Hindemith

LECTURE 3

The question of musical quality, the formal level – Primitivity and complexity; inadequacy of technical categories – Craft and control over material – The danger of entire layers of composition withering away through a fixation on craft – Pierre Boulez, new characters and technical correlates – Originality – Misconceptions about originality – The intensification of the problem: the aim of uniqueness today – Convention and expression; reception of the twelve-note technique – Discussion about the problem of stylistic inconsistency

LECTURE 4

Musical character; danger of rationalization and quantification – Preservation of characters in Boulez and Stockhausen – Two approaches to composition: symphonic type and character-piece type – Schoenberg: the concept of gestalt – Totality – Pointing beyond the gestalt; progression over time – Determination and function – Insistence on the full functional crafting of every detail – The criterion of formal level: abundance of forms – Clarity – The concept of development, musical time – Irreversibility of time – Simultaneity of memory and expectation; balance and homeostasis in Schoenberg

Vers une musique informelle (1961)

LECTURE 1

Personal experiences with the ‘Darmstadt school’ – Musique informelle does not obey outside laws and forms – First tendencies as early as 1910, but not followed up consistently – Critique of ‘expression’ and subjectivity – Progress in control over the material – Loss of tension – Dodecaphony as a consequence of this development, aversion to repetition – Reason for the current controversy, the pitch material – Webern’s demand for as many ‘connections’ as possible; no guarantee of truth content – Freedom and ‘large forms’ – Need for order, the semblance of necessity – Schoenberg: the polarity of the thoroughly organized and the free – Serial and motivic-thematic composition

LECTURE 2

Serial and motivic-thematic composition (continued) – The relational concept and critique of the element concept – No hypostasis of relation, danger of automation – Serial music accused of being mechanical – The mechanical in traditional music – The possibility of liberation from the mechanical, the concept of time – Hatred of the subject, John Cage and his school – Abstract negation of domination of nature, positivism in music, critique – The concept of musical material – Histoire oblige; the subject of music – Music does not communicate – Reconstruction of aesthetics – Demands on a musique informelle – Musique informelle as anticipation of freedom

The Function of Colour in Music (1966)

LECTURE 1

Colour is historically the ‘latest’ dimension of music – Excursus: Riegl’s conception of artistic will – Qualitative differences between musical dimensions – The twofold meaning of the ‘technical’ in composition – Instrumental ‘realization’ of earlier music (Bach) – The sound of the Classical orchestra, Viennese Classicism (I) – The idea of the balanced sound surface – Infinitude of the string sound – The spiritual dimension of orchestration (Beethoven) – The art of orchestration and differentiation – The idea of humanity and starkness of sound; poverty and abundance in instrumentation – The primacy of thematic-motivic work over Klangfarbenmelodie – Emancipation of the sonic dimension – How does one move beyond tonal instrumentation?

LECTURE 2

The Classical orchestra, Viennese Classicism (II); Webern and Berg – The twofold character of constructive instrumentation – Berlioz: the separation of colour from composition – The compositional concept of the melodic and of rhythm – Study of instruments and instrumentation; the functional nature of instrumentation – Problems of instrumentation; relation to the other dimensions of composition – The critics’ catchphrase of ‘brilliant orchestration’ – Critique of instrumentation – Incorporation of colour into composition: Wagner – Tendencies towards disintegration in Strauss, Mahler, Debussy – Rupture of unity, the disenchantment of the orchestra

LECTURE 3

Refunctioning of sound in the Second Viennese School – The structural change in instrumentation in Schoenberg – Chamber Symphony, op. 9 – Five Orchestral Pieces, op. 16 – Mobility of colour, colours are used like thematic shapes – Change in the function of sound – Antagonistic desiderata: clarity and Klangfarbenmelodie – Erwartung, op. 17 – Die glückliche Hand, op. 18: constructive instrumentation as a technique for large-scale form – Pierrot lunaire, op. 21 – Berg’s Wozzeck – Instrumentational variation – ‘Programming from above’; performance instructions in Berg’s Lyric Suite – Musical interpretation and constructive instrumentation – Colour retains something accidental, it is not absolute – The emancipated sonic dimension and the primacy of imagination – Colour is a function of the other dimensions – Polyphony as a condition for productive instrumentation; voice and sound – Current relevance of the sonic dimension – Unity of construction and colour is unity of something internally differentiated