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Schoenberg's ‘Atonality’: Fused Bitonality?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
Extract
The early years of Arnold Schoenberg's career as a composer were marked by much opposition. Apparently very few people could tolerate his music's strange new sounds or seemingly incomprehensible organization for any length of time, and the performance of a Schoenberg work frequently resulted in scandal. Then, of course, his introduction of the so-called ‘atonal’ style of writing must have seemed to some to be an assault upon the very foundations of music itself, a blasphemy demanding the strongest condemnation.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974
References
1 Internationale Schönberg-Gesellschaft, c/o Oesterreichische Musikzeitschrift, A-1010 Vienna, Hegelgasse 13/21, Austria. General Secretary: Walter Szmolyan.
2 The term ‘fused bitonality’, is the present writer's own, and first appeared in his ‘Structure and Prolongation: Tonal and Serial Organisation in the “Introduction” of Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra (Ph.D. dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1970)Google Scholar.
3 In a talk broadcast over Frankfurt Radio (1931), Schoenberg harmonized a substantial portion of the Theme's principal melodic line, in F major. He maintained, however, that ‘tying the theme down’ to this key went ‘against its nature’; that the theme did not occur to him ‘with this kind of harmonization’; and that a theme in which the note-order did ‘not already express a key in some way’ was ‘not really in that key’. Later in the talk he indicated that the accompaniment found in the Theme was ‘based on a simple system’. (The text of this talk, with a musical example illustrating the F major harmonization, was printed in The Score no. 27, July 1960, pp. 2 7–4°-)
On the basis of the Theme's fused-bitonal organization, I would suggest that the theme is fused bitonal rather than simply tonal in nature, the keys expressed ‘ in some way’ by its note order being F and B. Accordingly, restriction of the theme to any single key certainly would go against its nature. On the other hand, if for any reason the theme were to be confined to a single key, all else being equal, that key, in order to be least incompatible with the theme's nature, should be F or B.
The composer's choice of one of these keys for his tonal setting, his reference to the ‘simple system’ upon which the accompaniment in the Theme was based, and the meticulous fused-bitonal craftsmanship which the reader will shortly see manifested in the Theme's harmonic organization lead one to ask two questions: (1) Was Schoenberg really unaware that in this music he was not composing with ‘twelve notes related only to one another’ (Rufer, Josef, Composition with Twelve Notes Related Only to One Another. London: Rockliff, 1954)Google Scholar, but rather with twelve notes related to one another via two simultaneous tonal centers separated by the interval of the tritone? (2) Did he not realize that what he was doing in this context in the Theme amounted to an extension and not a rejection of traditional tonal compositional practice?
4 January 1974.
5 In the ‘Introduction’ of op. 31 the fused-bitonal organization has been found to exist at the Schenkerian background level as well. In the other examples the investigation thus far has taken place at the foreground level.
6 Fused-bitonal organisation in the Introduction of op. 31 is discussed in detail in the present writer's Ph.D. dissertation. See footnote 2, above. Previously, a somewhat analogous discovery in early works of Webem was made by Bradshaw, Merrill K.. Hisfindingsappear in his ‘Tonal Structure in the Early Works of Anton Webern’ (D.Mus.A. thesis, University of Illinois, 1962)Google Scholar.