“Music
is only metaphorically a language; a single work of music may transform and
even create an entire musical system, while no act of speech may do more than
marginally alter language. If an individual work of music may alter and even
create “language”, then the conditions for understanding it must – at least
partially – be made evident in the work itself.” (Rosen, 1996, p.19).“This free
play is easily to be found in Schoenberg, but the explicit reference to an exterior and relatively stable system of
meanings has almost vanished.” (Rosen, 1996, p.20). “Between Mozart and
Schoenberg, what disappeared was the possibility of using large blocks of
prefabricated material in music. The meaning of an element of form in Mozart
was given essentially by the structure of each work.” (Rosen, 1996, p.20).
“By
the end of the nineteenth century, these blocks of prefabricated material were
no longer acceptable to composers with styles as widely variant as Debussy,
Schoenberg and Skryabin.” (Rosen, 1996, p.21). “giving them up, however, led to
a kind of panic. It seemed as if music had to be written note by note (…) The
renunciation of the symmetrical use of blocks of elements in working out
musical proportions placed the weight on the smallest units, single intervals,
short motifs.” (Rosen, 1996, p.21).
“The
expressive values of these tiny elements therefore took on an inordinate
significance; they replaced syntax.” (Rosen, 1996, p.21). “And since they took
a preponderant role in composition it was obvious that a composer would choose
elements with the most powerful, even the most violent, values, as these small
elements had to do the work of much larger groups.” (Rosen, 1996, p.21). “The
structures that were most successful between 1908 and 1913 – for Stravinsky as
well as for the “Second Viennese School” – were those that made the greatest
use of the intervals most dissonant in traditional tonal terms: the minor
second, the seventh, the triton (or augmented fourth).” (Rosen, 1996, p.21).
Atonality
“The
primary means of musical expression is dissonance.” (Rosen, 1996, p.23). “There
are secondary factors, of course – rhythm, tone color, accent – but they are
all subordinate to dissonance.” (Rosen, 1996, p.23). “It is precisely this
effect of ending, this cadential function, that defines a consonance. A
dissonance is any musical sound that must be resolved, i.e. followed by a
consonance: a consonance is any musical sounds that needs no resolution.”
(Rosen, 1996, p.24).
“The
movement from dissonance to consonance is governed by procedures that
constitute the laws of harmony (which are like grammatical rules, and not laws
of nature.)” (Rosen, 1996, p.25). “The concept of dissonance must be applied
not only to notes that are sung or played together but also to those which
succeed each other in time.” (Rosen, 1996, p.25).
“”emancipation
of the dissonance” meant, and could only have meant, a freedom from consonance,
from the obligation to resolve the dissonance. It was not merely that any
combination of notes was to be admitted, but there was to be lo longer any
necessity to follow a dissonant chord with a consonance. (…) a release from the
basic harmonic conception of the cadence, the movement toward release of
tension, toward absolute repose, which had been fundamental to centuries of
music.” (Rosen, 1996, p.26).
“The
perfect triads are those based upon the primary overtones of a note (for
example, on C, the triad is C-E-G).” (Rosen, 1996, p.27). “Tonality is not, as
is sometimes claimed, a system with a central note but one with a central
perfect triad.” (Rosen, 1996, p.27). “The central triad, called the tonic,
determines the key of the individual piece of music. The dissonance of the
other triads from the tonic is a relation of dissonance – their place in the
hierarchy defines how far away they are from a final resolution. A tonal work
must begin by implying the central position of the tonic, and it must end with
it.” (Rosen, 1996, p.28).
“When music became triadic in nature, a new and powerful concept
of expression was added: to the idea of the dissonant interval was joined the
idea of the dissonant phrase or the dissonant section. Modulation is the name
given to this process: it is the setting up of a second triad as a sort of polarized
force or antitonic against the tonic; the second triad functions as a
subsidiary in that part of the piece where it holds sway and acts as a means of
creating tension. (…) modulation is dissonance on the large scale, it makes
expression for the first time an element of the total structure.” (Rosen, 1996,
p.29).
“The
dramatic power of tonality has begun to destroy it from within.” (Rosen, 1996,
p.30).
“”The
main thing to show – one may as well begin with the crucial point – is that the
melody, the principal part, the theme, us the basis, or determines the course
of this. As of all other, music.”” (Rosen quoting Alban Berg, 1996, p.34).
“individual
melodies themselves (…) are no longer conceived in terms of triads and
therefore demand a free-moving polyphonic texture. The melodies of early
Schoenberg (…) gain their expressive intensity largely through the dissonance
implied by the curves they outline, by the juxtaposition of notes which, played
together, form dissonant intervals. (…) From Bach to Brahms these dissonances
are always conceived as implying a context of triads within the melody itself.”
(Rosen, 1996, p.35).
“The
breakdown of the harmonic and tonal conception of large form has, therefore,
its analogue in the character of melodies. Western music, at least since 1500,
has been organized in terms of symmetrical correspondence and even a reciprocal
in influence between the largest aspects of form and the smallest details. A
lack of correspondence is either a sign of the composer’s incompetence, or else
a source of expression – a structural dissonance, in short, that can be
confirmed only by being resolved elsewhere in the work, by restoring the
correspondence.” (Rosen, 1996, p.36). “Schoenberg’s contemptuous phrase
“pseudo-tonal composers” was meant to indicate those of his contemporaries for
whom the lack of correspondence between detail and large form was a matter of
no concern.” (Rosen, 1996, p.36).
“Erwartung
is atonal in the sense that the tonal functions of tonic and dominant no longer
exist.” (Rosen, 1996, p.41).“What Schoenberg, consciously or unconsciously,
realized before anyone else is that the concept of themes and the system of
motivic construction were bound up with a symmetrical system of harmony clearly
oriented around a central triad.” (Rosen, 1996, p.42).
“Each
phrase can be given an entirely new instrumental color, and is consequently
characterized less by its harmonic content than by the instrumental combination
that embodies it.” (Rosen, 1996, p.48).
“Tone
color was released from its complete subordination to pitch in musical
structure, until this point what note was played had been far more important
than the instrumental color or the dynamics with which it was played.” (Rosen,
1996, p.48). “What is clear, indeed, is
that the simple linear hierarchy must give way to a new and more complex set of
relationships in which pitch is only one element among others, and not by any
means always the most important.” (Rosen, 1996, p.50).
The
harmony implied by these motifs pervades the music completely: they are meant
to give any work composed by this method an individual and characteristic
sonority.” (Rosen, 1996, p.52). “The method is an old one, going back to Bach
and even to the late fifteenth-century Netherlandish composers and it received
the greatest expansion of its range before Schoenberg in the late music of
Beethoven and in a new and striking form in Brahms.” (Rosen, 1996, p.52).“only
Beethoven was able to relate the development of the smallest details directly
to the larger elements and this by deriving the motivic kernel immediately from
the most basic elements of tonality, by which large forms were organized. These
tonal prinicples no longer governed Schoenberg’s musical language: the
construction of large forms was therefore an overriding problem.” (Rosen, 1996,
p.52).“This technique is that of motivic construction, in which a small kernel
provides the complete material for the work.” (Rosen, 1996, p.54).
Pierrot
Lunnaire has the form of a cannon “In complicated forms the original line may
be introduced backward, upside-down, twice as fast or slow, etcetera.” (Rosen,
1996, p.55). “While the ingenuity of design of Schoenberg’s canons may dazzle
and charm, the virtuosity, however, has vanished with the disappearance of
tonal harmony. The difficulty of the tonal canon consisted almost entirely in
the proper resolution of dissonance and most of all in the correct placing of
the final absolute cadence.” (Rosen, 1996, p.55).
“As
long as no substitute had been found for the absolute final consonance of tonal
music, the creation of large forms would
remain a problem.” (Rosen, 1996, p.55).The last page of Erwartung: “This massed
chromatic movement at different speeds both up and down and accelerating, is a
saturation of the musical space in a few short seconds; and in a movement that
gets ever faster, every note in the range of the orchestra is played in a kind
of glissando. The saturation of musical space is Schoenberg’s substitute for
the tonic chord of the traditional musical language.” (Rosen, 1996, p.57).
The
weak form of this ending: “this is the filling out of chromatic space by
playing all twelve notes of the chromatic scale in individual order determined
by the composer.” (Rosen, 1996, p.58).
Harmonielehre
of Schoenberg uses six-note chords: “Schoenberg remarks that a first chord of
this type is generally followed by a second chord that contains as many notes
as possible that are, in Schoenberg’s words, “chromatic heightenings” of the
first – that is, that are a minor second above those of the first and that fill
out the rest of the chromatic scale.” (Rosen, 1996, p.60). “Schoenberg, who
confeses to not understanding why, they do not sound like minor seconds – that
is, they do not sound like dissonances, and they imply no need for resolution.
In short, in tonality, the piling up of seconds creates tension; in
Schoenberg’S music after 1908, however, the filling out of the chromatic space
is clearly a movement toward stability and resolution.” (Rosen, 1996, p.60).
“The
condition for resolution was the filling ut of the chromatic scale: a
redundancy, a note played twice, was beginning to seem like a dissonance, a
disturbance of order. “I had the feeling,” Webern wrote, “that when the twelve
notes had been played, the piece was over.” (Rosen, 1996, p.62).
Serialism and neoclassicism
“All
five pieces are governed by two long-familiar principles of composition: the
principle of unity of musical material, and the principle of motivic
development and variation. From these two is derived – by extension and
systemization – the technique of twelve-tone composition. These principles were
expanded to fill the void left by the disappearance of tonality and to take
over its functions.” (Rosen, 1996, p.74).
“As
for the first piece, nine notes of the chromatic scale are introduced at once
before any is repeated, and the remaining three follow without dealy.) Almost
all the accompanying figures as well as the main voices spring from the opening
motif.” (Rosen, 1996, p.75).“From this method of motivic development filling
all the chromatic space almost immediately, it is only a small step to the
strict serial technique of opus 23 no. 5. In this waltz, the motif has twelve
notes and now covers all the notes of the chromatic scale. The principle of
derivation has been made absolutely rigorous: every note of the piece,
accompanying voice or main part, comes from the twelve-note motif. The order of
the notes within the motif – which may now be called a ‘series’ – has also been
made rigorous: few liberties are taken with the order fixed at the opening.”
(Rosen, 1996, p.76).
“Everything
in this piece depends on three kinds of variation: different rhythmic groupings
(and the dynamics implied by these), octave displacement (playing two
continguous notes of the series in different registers), and chordal groupings
(playing several continguous notes simultaneously instead of one after the
other as they are first presented).” (Rosen, 1996, p.76).
“except
at the beginning, the order of twelve notes is not a melody, but a quarry for
melodies.” (Rosen, 1996, p.77).
“The
only transposition that Schoenberg uses in opus 25 is an augmented fourth, in
order to take advantage of the character of this particular series, which
begins on an E and ends on a B-flat, a tritone apart. In this way both the
retrograde form of the original series and the transposed form begin with the
same note.” (Rosen, 1996, p.80). “This suggests the basic rule for Schoenberg’s
serial aesthetic: the large form of a piece – its transformations and
developments – should arise from the character of the particular series
chosen.” (Rosen, 1996, p.81).
“There
is no reason why a note (…) should not have two places in a motif. But a note
that occurs at two separate points of a motif will generally have a different
function each time.” (Rosen, 1996, p.83).
“By
partitioning the series into well-defined motifs and by using transpositions to
bring the character of the motifs into sharp relief, many of the functions of
tonality could be reconstructed within serialism.” (Rosen, 1996, p.84).
“For
Schoenberg, on the contrary, the forms are not imposed on the music, but
realized through it: they are, in a sense, to be identified with the
expression. Schoenberg, steeped in tonality and still in love with it, used
these forms as if they had innate expressive properties. If these properties,
Schoenberg must have thought, were being lost through degenerate pseudo-tonal
procedures, they could be restored by serialism.” (Rosen, 1996, p.88).
“Combinatoriality
allows the same few pitches to be given very different shapes.” (Rosen, 1996,
p.91).
“Like many of his later works, it is based on
a series that permits the introduction of the perfect triads associate with
tonality. (…) Schoenberg uses these perfect triads for what might be called
their latent aspects of sweetness and repose, but he avoids using them for any
sense of cadence; they initiate but do not close.” (Rosen, 1996, p.95).
“In one respect, it (serialism) was a grave
step backward from the vision of his early work, when he had seen that timbre,
tone color, and texture were not merely accessories but could be as fundamental
to music as pitch.” (Rosen, 1996, p.96). “In Serialism as Schoenberg conceived
it, it is not pitch itself that becomes tyrannical, but intervallic relations.
Through all the transformations of the row, the intervallic relations remain
absolutely unchanged, pre-empting all relationships of rhythm, dynamics, and
timbre.” (Rosen, 1996, p.97).
“Serial
technique was invented to sustain this expressivity when tonality had grown so
weak and so diffuse. (…) By its toughness, serialism restored expressivity at
first – literally by being so difficult to use for that purpose. The attempt to
create “melodies” against the grain of serialism restored the necessary tension
that had gone out of tonality. Motif generated melody: that is the traditional
relation between them. Nevertheless, the generative powers of a motif means
that it already contains a melodic structure in miniature.” (Rosen, 1996, p.100).
“Beethoven,
one of the greatest melodists of all time, could often concentrate on this
motivic power to the exclusion of all other linear orders, and the melody is
bypassed as we move from the motif directly to the largest aspects of musical
form.” (Rosen, 1996, p.101).
