1. This rather casual statement was not, of course, intended as a reflection on the artistic stature of either composer—particularly that of Debussy, whose rich and unique achievement, throughout the whole length of his career, is incontestable. I add this note of caution simply because of an all too prevalent tendency (to which further reference will be made in the course of these notes) to confuse questions belonging to the realm of historical development and categorization—essentially arbitrary, though convenient and presumably unavoidable—with those of inherent artistic value.

2. Not ‘conventional’—which implies motivation through sheer convention—but rather simply ‘unadventurous’.

3. The situation has developed very considerably in the United States since 1944, of course. Were I discussing it today I would write somewhat differently. As of 1944 I find my remarks fairly accurate.

4. This final clause, and the following paragraph, need some clarification. First of all I have never regarded the Suite for Strings, the Variations op.43, or the Kol Nidrei as being in the mainstream of Schoenberg's development. The Second Chamber Symphony I find, on the other hand, a rather important piece, precisely because of what has sometimes been considered a flaw: the fact that it harks back—as it necessarily must—to an earlier Schoenbergian manner. It seems to me that it does so successfully, even though it does not fit into the ‘period’ of his work—as we have chosen to conceive it—during which it was completed. It is still unmistakably Schoenberg; and perhaps we should learn, now that he has passed the ‘controversial’ stage, to regard his work as a whole, laying less stress on its individual phases, and on what once seemed, fundamentally on purely technical grounds, sharp differences between them.

The organ Variations and the Ode I knew only slightly at the time of writing this article. They both still seem to me somewhat problematical, perhaps because I have not heard them or studied them in recent years. My remarks in the article apply principally to the Fourth Quartet, the Violin Concerto, and the Piano Concerto; but they apply also to Moses und Aron and to the Orchestral Variations op. 31, which were both composed several years before Schoenberg came to the United States; and they apply most emphatically to the String Trio, composed three years after this article was written. The Trio seems to me in some respects the most perfect embodiment of Schoenberg's essential musical character.

5. Not ‘style’, of course, but ‘vocabulary’; however, this question should be discussed only with reference to the tone row on which the work is based (see Joseph Rufer, The Works of Arnold Schoenberg, and especially the facsimile facing p.64).

6. I used the twelve-tone principle for the first time in 1953, in my Sonata for Violin Solo, and have used it to various degrees and in various ways ever since—always, of course, in my own terms. My first use of it was, at the beginning, quite involuntary. I had at various times, for my own self-enlightenment, carried out quite small-scale exercises with the technique, but I still envisaged it as not applicable to my own musical ideas. It was therefore a surprise to me when I found the composition of the Sonata flowing easily and without constraint in its terms. I used it consistently in several well-defined sections of the piece; but on several grounds I decided not to mention this to anyone. However, a colleague to whom I showed the piece immediately recognized the twelve-tone procedures, and afterwards observed, with some surprise, ‘But it's still your music’. This of course is the crux of the matter; I would not have adopted the principle had it been otherwise. It is a mistake to regard the adoption by an artist of a new technical procedure, or even a new ‘manner’, as in any way changing his essential artistic nature.

Once—in 1948, I believe—in the course of a long conversation with Schoenberg, I told him of my opinion that the ‘twelve-tone method’ had been over-publicized and, in the process itself as well as in the controversy which resulted, had become grossly distorted in the minds of many people; and that this had led to strained and artificial attitudes towards the music itself. He replied, somewhat glumly, ‘Yes, you are right, and I have to admit that it's partly my fault.’ After a pause he recovered his animation and added ‘But it's still more the fault of some of my disciples.’

I cite these incidents not in order to play down the importance of the twelve-tone principle—or ‘method’ as Schoenberg insisted on calling it—but rather to place it in its proper perspective as a means and not an end or—above all, at this late date—a ‘cause’. Obviously it is a fact relevant to the music of composers who adopt it—one fact among others, after all. But in no sense does it determine musical value, still less can it be regarded as a quasi-historical end to be pursued for its own sake. In my view it is an all too common error of our times to invoke a facile historicism as a valid basis for both musical effort and musical judgement. One should never forget that it is music, and music alone, that determines musical history; in Schoenberg's case, Moses und Aron and the String Trio and many other works are more important facts, historically as well as musically, than the discovery of the twelve-tone method. The same is of course true of the music of Berg and Webern, not to mention Stravinsky and many others.

7. This statement, as it stands, seems to me clumsy and self-contradictory. To be sure, the sentences which follow help to make my meaning somewhat clearer. The idea that twelve-tone manipulation as such can—and should—account for every factor that is embodied in a piece of music belongs possibly to the time, now fairly well past, when the ‘system’, or derivatives from it, aroused the kind of heated controversy that leads to overstatement and misunderstanding on both sides. However, the idea that ‘process’ and ‘form’ are separate and isolable elements strikes me as palpable nonsense, and one that I'm guilty of having perpetrated here!

8. Here too I would change the emphasis to some extent. The better I have learned to know Schoenberg's work as a whole the more I have become aware of the breadth and the power—and the uniqueness in character—of the larger lines, more pronounced in the later works but by no means limited to them. I have also realized that it is precisely this aspect of Schoenberg's work that has contributed strongly to the curious phenomenon of a very great composer, each of whose most distinguished—and devoted—disciples achieved general recognition before him, and each of whom (literally as well as figuratively over their dead bodies) has been used as a weapon against him. This has certainly been as basically unjust to Webern and Berg as to Schoenberg himself, and is mentioned here in full appreciation of the achievements, the individuality, and the stature of both composers. The point is that Schoenberg was a genuine and original master of large musical design, and that this becomes clearer as his work, in its totality, becomes better and more generally known.

One may note too that regardless of the musical vocabulary involved, the emphasis on large design as above detail is in some quarters held to be in itself a symptom of a ‘conservative’ trend. This reaction to the fact that the lines are necessarily broader and the relationships farther-flung than in works of smaller format and shorter duration, is just as superficial as the associated use of terms like ‘conservative’ and ‘radical’, which have little relevance to the development of a mature artist intent on the problem which the evolution of his own work sets for him. If one follows Schoenberg's development as an organic unit, it should be easy to see that, having established the twelve-tone method to his own satisfaction, he inevitably applied it to problems of genuinely large musical design, while avoiding the easy pitfall involved in regarding the tone-row, in and by itself, as (automatically, as it were) furnishing the whole and exclusive answer to these problems. Composers, after all, are primarily concerned with writing music, not in solving technical theorems.