"WHERE DEATH BECOMES ABSURD AND LIFE ABSURDER": LITERARY VIEWS OF THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918

Music Files

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AFTER A RATHER CONVENTIONAL START, ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874-1951) BEGAN TO COMPOSE ATONAL MUSIC IN 1908, A PERIOD OF CREATION WHICH LASTED UNTIL 1921. THE FIVE ORCHESTRAL PIECES OP. 16 (1909), ESPECIALLY I AND IV, WERE CHALLENGES IN THEIR RADICAL MODERNITY AND LED TO TURMOIL IN THE CONCERT HALL. THEY TOTALLY BREAK WITH 19TH CENTURY NOTIONS OF HARMONY, ACCORDS, CONSONANCE, AND REPLACE THEM BY ATONAL DISSONANCE, REPRESENTING THE INTELLECTUAL DISORIENTATION AND

PRESENTIMENT OF WAR FIVE YEARS BEFORE ITS OUTBREAK.

PIECE I. Vorgefühle (Premonitions)

Shrill dissonances as premonitions of a time of chaos, catastrophe, and total loss of order; fragmentation of partitura and sounds, isolation of the musical instruments; unpredictability of sounds that arise somewhere in the orchestra, taken up by other instruments somewhere else, and swell to final explosions, anticipating the firing and explosions of shells in the trenches; menacing and terrifying, no warmth or security.

PIECE II Peripetie (Peripeteia)

The title expresses the tragic and inexorable slide into catastrophe, of which Piece 1 is a premonition. Despite short deceptive instances of apparent harmony after a totally dissonant beginning (corresponding to the 'retardation' in classical tragedy), an irrevocable reverse into chaos follows, with a passionate outcry at the end.