Schönberg: Man or Woman?

Schönberg: Man or Woman?Author(s): Jonathan HarveySource: Music & Letters, Vol. 56, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1975), pp. 371-385Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/734894 .

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SCHONBERG: MAN OR WOMAN? BY JONATHAN HARVEY

I HAVE always been fascinated by the (possibly spurious) remark of Beethoven that "to be emotionally stirred is only suitable for women . . . but the effect of music on a man should be to fire his mind". It fascinated Schumann too, who added: "the majority aim at emotional effects. They ought to be punished by being dressed in women's clothes".' The attractive young woman to whom Beethoven addressed it was apparently not offended by the view of her status implied by the Master, nevertheless I shall not be so rash as to use the statement as anything more than the anthropomorphic dramati- zation of an attitude of one part of the subject of this article towards another part.

Schonberg was first a late romantic, then an expressionist, then a neo-classicist (of sorts). In what does it consist, this metamorphosis so different from the non-metamorphoses of most of his contem- poraries, many of whom, before the First War, might have been the 'Sch6nberg' to come, such was their engrossment with the problems of the tonal system's exhaustion? Let us divide the discussion of this question into two parts. First a spiritual aspect, then a musical one.

The spiritual climate of early Schbnberg was one he shared with many others. There is a painting by Gustav Klimt depicting two lovers standing, looking into each other's eyes, surrounded by darkness. In the darkness hover eerie white faces, ghostly, looking down at the couple. One has no doubt about where the power of action lies. The lovers are controlled by 'unseen' forces; they are pawns. Something of the same spirit pervades Jacobsen's poems in 'Gurrelieder', and Maeterlinck's 'Pelleas et Melisande', not to mention the texts of many of the early songs, and Richard Dehmel's 'Verklirte Nacht', which-in Dehmel's case at least-produced in Sch6nberg "a new tone in the lyrical mood . . . simply by reflecting in music what [the] poemis stirred up".2 They are concerned with immense and powerful forces which move humiiians like chessmen (forces of 'Destiny', 'God', 'Spirits') or which connect mnen one with another on a level which is deeper than the normal, rational modus operandi. Characters remain shadowy, hut emotions are real enouglh to be trite personae of the works. The transfiguration of the lovers in 'Verklarte Nacht', for instance, is concerned witl sonmething deeper than their mere (and very meagre) individuality. Their spiritual

1 'On Music and Musicians', ed. Konrad Wolf, trans. P. Rosenfeld (London, 1947), f. 7I.

2 'Arnold Schoenberg: Letters' (Faber, I964), p. 35.

37'



union and the unity of this with their moonlit surroundings suggests that a connecting force, and membership of it, are the real things that touched Schonberg's inmagination.

A spiritual and musical affinity with Wagner is obvious in such works, and it is worth quoting Wagner's late views on the matter. "The rapture of the moment of revelation comes from the final perception of oneself as belonging to a species; this is so overpowering that it completely silences moral compassion; the most shocking sight, the most dreadful perception, moves us only so far as it is the intuition of the species, personally conscious sensibility having been overcome: in the joy of emancipation we cry 'Yes, that's what I am (species-idea)' ".'3 With such an attitude one would be ready to kill for the species, or to sacrifice one's life for the species; Hitler emphazised this when he said that whoever wanted to understand Nazism must know Wagner. The individual is no longer considered highly precious, but dispensable, and his value is con- sumed by the overriding value of the group, rather as in certain insect and animal communities the group soul is more real than indivkidual consciousness and the flock, shoal, swarm etc. acts "as if with one mind".

Such an attitude is essentially 'pre'-Christian. It was strongly represented in the tribal life of the Old Testament that Christ came to transform with his new I AM principle. It is, of course, still present in many parts of the world where, for example, individual life (let alone reasoning free from the force of superstition) is counted for very little, and in other, more civilised parts of the world where it erupts occasionally. It is also present in rmlusic and probably always will be (and there will always be Platos and Thomas Manns to call nmusic 'dangerous'). Stockhausen, a passionate anti-intellectual from certain points of view, leans towards group- soul principles in some of his spiritual ideas, for examiple in hlis theories about 'Intuitive Mtusic'.

With Schonberg, we have something different. He started in the group-soul ambit, retained the magical powers derived from it in one hand and with the other grasped all that the spirit of the scientific era had given birtlh to. He brought together in one life and in one niusical language the deep ancient truths of connected- ness and the very latest type of intellectual achievement that our civilization had attained-and integrated them. The achievements of post-Galilean civilization are certainly in the field of reasorl and measurement and shining through them we observe a sense of being freed from the clutchi of dark forces. When superstition started to disappear, freedonm grew stronger and cut loose from other forces, forces of institutions of church and state, of family pressures, and, with Freud, even (occasionally) of the pressures from the

'Richard Wagners Gesammelte Schriften', ed. Julius Kapp (Leipzig, 1914), xiv, p. 207.

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instincts. All these ancient forces, subjected to the scrutiny of reason, receded somewhat, and enliglhtened and free decisions became more possible. That elusive concept, free will, is only possible where there is unpressurized clarity of thought, and individuality is only in full bloom where there is free will. We know the danger, and there is always a Stockhausen to warn us of it: materialism without spirituality. But whereas there is now a tendency to go to the other extreme and throw over all the intellectual progress of the scientific era, Schonberg was not part of it. He was a shinirng example of a free man, acting for his 'honour', which he prized highly. He freed himself from being forced into anything, and then chose the world of spirituality. He was not a member of it who never knew of any other sort of existence, as are those 'members' of the group-souil. They are unknowingly there by force of 'Dionysian intoxication', or somne such powerful, irrational tie; they are there from emotional bondage, not because of their own freely-willed, loving decision. The difference is crucial. There are three basic possibilities: either to lean to the group-soul and lie secure in the magical force to which you have surrendered; or to be a materialist and a positivist in which case you are comparatively free, but dry and impoverished through lack of spiritual vividness: or else to accept the power of the last position and freely find your way to a non-contradictory position where you harness the power of the first position, transforming it from the menacing to the enhancing. The last position is to my mind the most admirable, and has of course only been aclhieved to any advanced degree by a few great men and women, at least among the famous. Schonberg belongs among them. Most of us, I think, occupy a somewhat less satisfactory point between the first two positions. Sch6nberg's spiritual position, then, seems to be not just a synthesis between the world of group-consciousness and individual consciousness, between, say, Wagner and Bertrand Russell, but the evolution of a higher type of spirituality. That is why he is still a paradoxical figure, as uncomfortable for the avant-garde as for the conservatives.

In 'Moses und Aron' we see a portrayal of the struggle such an evoltutionary step entailed. Moses, the thinking individual ('Ich kann denken, nicht reden') and Aron, the group-soul member, are both parts of Schonberg. They split, Moses to the one God when he goes up the mountain, Aron to the People with their many gods when he allows themi their Dionysian orgy. The universal synthesis, where the People and God are truly united in freedom is only hinted at in the last line of the libretto for the Third Act. "But even in the wasteland you shall be victorious and achieve the goal: unity with God". On a more personal level, Moses's victory in the Third Act is couched in terms of a reprimand to the now enchained Aron for wasting his gifts of rhetoric on 'false and negative ends', and it is at this point that one might suggest that Beethoven's

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remark is apposite: to use one's gift of rhetoric (music) to sweep people off their feet is an inferior activity, but to 'fire their mind' (implying a synthesis of the individuality of thought and the abandon of passion) is the aim. Perhaps Schonberg viewed the spiritual nature of his early works (if not the technical) as a misdirection of his gifts in just this way. Certainly there are many musical levels on which this is expressed: for instance, the timbral and rhythmic extravagance of Aron and the People's music-as near to Schumann's 'emotional effects' as Schonberg could permit himself to come- contrasted with Moses's speech and austere acompaniment, or the middleground use of concise set statements for Moses and diffuse, self-repetitive, flowery set-statements for Aron, or the background use of special transpositional areas and set-partitionings to characterize each protagonist. But though Moses certainly won inside Schon- berg's soul, the fact that Schonberg did not compose the music for Act III, though intending to as late as his last year, shows that perhaps the victory was not easy to understand, perhaps not clear enough to compel the creative processes into activity.

Let us now leave the spiritual aspect of Schonberg's achievement and turn to the musical aspect, or rather the former's manifestation in the latter. Anyone studying Schenker's or Benjamin Boretz's models of the tonal system might be forgiven for thinking that all levels of structure are equal. There is no sense in saying that background is in general more 'important' than foreground or middleground, or vice-versa. Schonberg's reaction to a Schenker analysis is reported to have been on the lines of: "Where are all the bits I love most? Oh there they are, those small black dots". Schbn- berg was right in what he implied: there is a sense in which the foreground, the local event, is more important than the less determ- inate setting of which it is an elaboration. Victor Zuckerkandl too was right when he wrote: "one thing all [laws of the tonal system] have in common: their manifestations are of a purely dynamic nature; they refer to states, not objects; to relations between tensions, not between positions; to tendencies, not magnitudes (there is nothing to measure in them)".4 In other words, a leading note (a Schen- kerian 9) is a force, a desire, a will-desiring, of course, its I. Unless we sense the pure dynamism of that ' we shall make nothing important of tonal music. Neither can it be argued, incidentally, that we are conditioned to project this dynamism onto the 7. How did it get there (out of the modal system) in the first place? It is a very intense thing to have arrived at by chance or by natural selec- tion, and in any case, the leading note, just as often as not, is immediately followed by a note other than . Be that as it may, the fact remains that 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7' and their inflected versions all resemble various states of desire and i resembles a state of equilibrium. These states use objects (physical sounds) as their medium,

'Sound and Symbol' (Pantheon Books, I956), p. 364.

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but when we talk about a ' or dominant we are talking about some-

thing 'out there', and it is not an object. It is only an object when we cease to concern ourselves with its membership of the tonal system.

In addition it is crucial to recognize that in a certain sense we can only feel one state at a time. Because of the peculiarly vivid emotional life of a degree or complex of degrees (chord) in the tonal system, one lives each change as it occurs. When we have resolved to the i we can no longer feel the tension of not having resolved to the i. Of course, we can remember the experience, and thereby hangs the tale of one of the most elaborate adventures of the mind of man, but that is not the same as the actual, local experience. However artisti- cally thrilling the elaborate prolongations of middleground and background which shine through the actual sounds, they too, because they are elaborated by many 'states' which are not the same as their own, are less strong in force than the smallest and humblest passing note which bears the unique vividness of being an actual manifestation of a dynamic force, clear and simple.

A work such as Sch6nberg's 'Pelleas und Melisande' (1903) is generally described as being at the end of the tonal system. It certainly does not invite meaningful analysis in the Schenker manner, though this is quite possible. My ears, at least, are prevented from exploring lengthy prolongation structures to quite the same extent that they like to in earlier tonal music by the absorbing nature of the foreground. It seems that structural depth in the tonal system had been undergoing a gradual decline since Beethoven, in whom it was both clear and complex. Schubert had already weakened it and started to lead towards key schemes suggesting equal division of the octave and complex, tonally multivalent harmony. Yet Schonberg's 'Pelleas' is one of the supreme masterpieces of tonal music-written by a man to whom the language was so familiar, so absolutely at his fingertips, that he could write counterpoint perhaps more involved than any since the beginning of music, and for whom the language was so sensitive that he felt he could reflect the subtle feelings in every line of Maeterlinck's drama (as he claimed). It seems clear, then, that what is happening in a work like this is that, tonally speaking, it is the foreground just below the surface that is intensively and otherwise elaborated and which, together with the surface, bears a large quota of the tonal meaning. The other strong levels of meaning are supplied not by middle and background as before, but by rigorous and dense motivic/thematic working-a tenidency reaching its peak in the Chamber Symphony, Op. 9, but transforming ultimately into serial composition. In its tonal aspects this music occupies a parallel position on the curve down from high tonality to that occupied by the quick-shifting 'emotionalism' of Emnpfindsamkeit or, earlier, of some of the Camerata, on the upward curve. Both exploited the surface powers and just-

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5*



below-the-surface elaborative powers of tonality with great con- centration. It would be tedious to discuss verbally the subtlety of the tensions of this music, music can best speak such words, and whoever hears the music will sense them, though one might labori- ously catalogue numerically on an index the degree of tension (distance from the normative equilibrium of a tonic triad) at each and every moment. Suffice it to say that dissonances seek their resolutions and in the flow of seeking and relative finding lies the intensely meaningful activity of the voices in Sch6nberg's tonal thought.

Not only, then, is each note-complex a vivid state, it is part of an almost unprecedented motivic/thematic density. In comparison with, say, Beethoven, Sch6nberg has lost the confidence in long prolongations which allowed Beethoven stretches of considerable motivic/thematic sparseness; but he (Schonberg) has made up for it by intensifying the dynamic quality of the local event with the use of medium-complex chords-i.e. chords complex enough to achieve the maximum tonal tension without being so complex (as in much of the harmony of 'Erwartung') as to eliminate the sense of root and therefore reduce tonal tension. To compose meaningfully at any level beyond the local, it was therefore an absolutely necessity to bring in something new-the unprecedented motivicism and thematicism.

Let us now examine this level a little as it is exemplified in the opening of 'Pelleas', where the interplay of motive and theme is sophisticated, and the sense of a sub-motivic intervallic background structure, presaging serialism, is strong. The first phrase:

Ex 1

a, . -

._ b a -

, in

.

consists of two l's (intervals are described by semitonal distances) and a 6 in the top line. One could also describe the line as a 2 (embellished with a semitonal passing note) and a 6-two even ('whole-tone-scale') intervals. The harmony consists of a tonic major triad plus minor sixth, which then becomes an augmented triad (o 4 8); then an augmented triad plus 6 (o 4 6 8) which becomes, upon the movement of the C: to D, a UVI7 chord definitely in D minor (an identity helped by the tonicising E in the alto part). So we have two diatonic chords on the outside, flanking two whole- tone-type harmonies. Which elaborates which? In the case of the first two chords, the diatonic seems to elaborate the augmented triad, since the A in the top line has all the characteristics of an appoggiatura. In the case of the second two the reverse is the case: the (o 4 6 8) chord elaborates the UVI7 chord since the alto's C: has all the characteristics of an appogiatura (as does its E-a dia-

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tonic, not whole-tone, elaboration, and the most dynamically 'tense' of the phrase, tensions of the sort discussed above being inherently the property of the tonal domain and strictly impossible in the atonal whole-tone domain). Sch6nberg is here mixing the domains and forcing us to see one in terms of the other, so neither is pure.

The phrase is then repeated in sequence a minor third higher. This level becomes the springboard for many of the things that are to follow, even though here, in F minor as it is, it seems remote from the tonic, a mere sequential embellishment giving over to a return to the tonic in the very next phrase. After this third phrase there is a soft monophonic anticipation of the 'destiny' motive. Two bars later, after more of the initial 'dark forest' music, this 'destiny' motive is also transposed up a minor third, like the first phrase. Two bars later it forms a bass line which persists in ostinato (destiny at work in the action) for three bars. It is at this transposition that its relation to Ex. i becomes clearer. The augmented triad is arpeggiated, plus one diatonicising element-exactly paralleling the first two harmonies:

Ex. 2

I

Next the implications of the second phrase are developed and the theme of Melisande's helplessness is born:

(a) X LX(b)A (C) (d)

In it are not only the immediately preceding pitches of the forest music, but also an elaborated version of the A7-D tritone, and a backbone of the 'destiny' augmented triad (plus, of course, the diatonic element that accompanied it). This is immediately followed by a sequence, this time at the tritone. The reasons for the interval are easy to see:

Ex. 4

The tritone A,-D retrogrades (or 'inverts') to D-Ab and the two chromatic scale fragments occur in reverse order inverted (or retrograded), so axial symmetry is achieved on top of, or in spite of, tonality. Such procedures have been thoroughly prepared for in the 'ornamental' passages such as Ex. 3 (c). Ex. 5 shows the extension of Ex. 3 that now follows, and how it goes by way of an even-interval (whole tone) version of Ex. i, the forest music, before reaching its goal:

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This even-intervalled forest music is divested of its diatonic tensions in a manner beautifully befitting its function here as interlude. At its conclu=sion the expected Al in the bass is changed to D, 6 away, and the Al, appears at the top of the texture to start a new sequence of three Melisande themes. These occur in close canon and the third theme's D is made tonal by its harmonization with I7, with an Au, rather than the even-interval-making Al,. Such 'cor- rections' add those points of comparative dynamic equilibrium which articulate the wavering whole-tone harmony. Just as the semitones seem to be interstices between whole-tone melodic movement, so diatonic harmonies seem to be the interstices between whole-tone harmonies.

The next move is to add a sequence to the three canonic entries at the transpositional interval of 4. This even number preserves invariant the third compone thethe augmented triad backbone, thus neatly complementing the function of the previous transposition number used (T=6) which preserved the first two components, the tritone and the chromatic segments, invariant:

Melisande's tune h hahad T=6 and T=o4, now it gets T=2, and in a grand way. There follows an extraordinary canonic procession of I3 entries, each one a whole tone higher than the last-that is to say, twice through the whole-tone scale. Because of the closeness of the entries, the connection between entries two and three apart (Tn 4 and T=6) with all their invariance is clearly audible especially the T=oe invariance which Schonberg puts in the same registral area, by alternating high entries with low ones (see Ex. 7). The interval 4 created between the three sounding canonic voices at 13 eahiew entry provides a direct link to Golaud's theme, whose initial interval it is; this is softly played against the canonic texture. It eventually becomes, after the chromatic scale flurry where Melisande is startled, a broad diatonic elaboration of the major third (see Ex. 8), in contrast to this interval's whole-ton e sin the texture preceding it.

To sum up: there is in the opening section much 'feeling', in the sense that the juxtaposition of even-interval and diatonic complexes makes the dynamic tensions inherent in the diatonic

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Ex. 7 A T:-0 ,

(last notes are diatoncised)

T-4~~~~~~~~ A} T.2-6

Ex. 8

ti~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ec

degrees speak in an intricate way. If we step back a level we see that the passage is actually an even-interval passage elaborated by a chromatic surface. Also, motivic and thematic connections are constant and dense-and like serial music, they operate effectively on a level apart from their identities as tonal Is, 22s, 's etc., i.e. on an intervallic level and on a level of axial symmetry.

If each note is a 'state' it is also interpenetrated with the patterns of pure 12-note-type symmetry. It is not so far to the Fourth Quartet in whose first movement the set and its combinatorial inversion (Is) make a precisely symmetrical pattern.

Ex 9 A 'Meme 1, initial statement Axial symmetry Combinatori cmplement

-^ " ---|$r |-r Jx

The exploitation of this serial symmetry in its invariant-giving transpositions is of course the basis of the Fourth Quartet.r. Could the invariant symmetrical dyads (D), C#) (Ar,, G) between 'Pelleas' and the Fourth Quartet indicate that both spring from the same individual way of marrying 'thought' to 'dynamic states' (something which all composers do to some degree, but which only Schdnberg does quite like this), though separated by th'irty-three years ? The

' For an illuminating analysis of such matters as seen at the beginning of the slow movement, see 'Set Structure as a Compositional Determinant.' by Milton Babbitt, Journal of Music Theory, v (i 961).

379



same bold imposition of pattern on dynamicism is common to both; one imagines Schbnberg alone doing quite such an extreme imposition, then standing back and watching the two principles writhe and squeal, delighted to see that, with a few changes, they 'work'.

I want to deal with the outer poles of Schbnberg's nature, the late romantic and neo-classical, but a few words on the expressionist period in relation to the outer poles might not be out of place here. At first theoretical sight it might seem that, for instance, the main achievement of 'Erwartung' is a negative one-to have got rid of tonality (to say nothing of thematicism). It is hard to find the root of a typical 'Erwartung' chord, let alone what degree of some tonality that root is, or to what tonal area a whole phrase belongs. Such a chord may, at least, have two or three equally strong con- tenders for the role of root. If there is no root, how is it possible to feel the desires of notes for their resolution? One concludes: "anything can come out of anything, providing the elimination of root- perception is inaintained". Therefore the way was open for another principle to penetrate this situation and add a new dimension to it. Hence i 2-note composition. That, at least, is the classic description of Sch6nberg's evolution. Benjamin Boretz, after his experience of analysing parts of 'Erwartung' and Op. I5, no. i, confesses his inability to find a global system for any non-tonal, non-I 2-tone piece. He shows the coherence of local structures to be accessible from various points of view, but so far as accounting for the coherence of a piece as such is concerned, he claims that "no explanation of a minimum adequacy reasonably comparable to that which would be routinely demanded of tonal or I 2-tone music has yet been offered for any of this music, and it is hard to understand . . . what grounds [people] retain for caring about it, and, more particularly, just what they suppose themselves to be caring about".'

I make a very tentative suggestion. The explanation would turn out to be a tonal one, transposed by several degrees of complexity. Despite tlle difficulty of finding roots, it is evident that this music does manifest dynamic forces, and that Schonberg was well aware of it (hence the great speed of composition, the sense of extreme emotion in rhythm, timbre, text etc.). All agree we are aware of 'states' rather than 'patterns'. But surely the sense of coherence many of us feel, particularly in the shorter pieces, like numbers from 'Pierrot Lunaire', lies in the pattern of the states. It is no global use transliterating note-complexes into numbers and trying to show a pattern of repetition. What must be abstracted for our model is the dynamism itself. Some index or point system would have to be constructed, such as I'-I, 1==2, = 3, minor 3 =3, 2=4, 6=4, minor 6 4-5, -`5, 7 4=6, 2=7, and where there are (theoretically, not notationally) two versions of the same degree simultaneously present, the 'foreigner' would equal 8, and so on. However crude,

6 'Metavariations, Part IV', Perspectives of New Music (Spring-Summer 1973), p. 189.

380



some such index would give a guide to the degree of tension-against- a-root locally present in any chord or complex, however long this might last in any conventional prolongation sense. As for the problem of finding a root, this turns out not to be a problem at all. If there are three equally plausible roots, the three numbers resulting from the addition of the degree index numbers will be equal, or nearly so. These numbers would then behave like any micro-macro system, and designate the predominant dynamic character for passages, which could then be considered as prolongations with internal elaborations. Prolongations would be subsumed into larger prolongations until one arrived at one number which could be described as the dynamic norm, the background, of the whole piece. Such, at least, is the way I suspect I hear these pieces, and why I care about them, even though the method of formulating it is somewhat primitive.

In the 12-note serial works the system is almost infinitely rich in terms of order-meanings, just as the tonal system is in terms of content-meanings. The types of thing you can do in either system without even bending the rules, rather indeed enhancing their meaning, are innumerable. There is, however, a fundamental difference of aesthetic kind. In the content system, dynamic states are intrinsic to the system, in the order system they are extrinsic, though probably still there. It is the procession in a certain order of select intervals and their perception that is at the root of the 12-note system's coherence. Play to some music students:

Ex. 10

and ask them what interval the top line traversed. They will probably hesitate before answering. Then play them

E. 11

and they will tell you the interval immediately. In the first example the D was a 2 and it moved to a sharp 4. The listeners' minds probably went from D to the accompaniment to F#: V, whereas in the second case there was no compulsion to do this, the passage was direct: -. It is very difficult, even for the most educated serialist to avoid the compulsion in the first case. (Hence my remarks about the greater importance of the top layer of tonal structure.) Not only that, but it is often quite difficult to avoid being more aware of the difference between the same interval on two different dynamic degrees than their serially obvious similarity:

38I



One is therefore noticing all the time things that are no part of the system because of the vividness of the 'state' nature of pitches.

The function of the set seems to lie more in the sphere of enrich- ment on the motivic level of structure and the expansion of that into a marvellously coherent global structure, than a replacement of tonal levels. It certainly does not represent a clean quid pro quo of 'order determinacy' for 'content determinacy'. Schonberg's instincts and musicality are, of course, keenly aware of this, on the surface level, though attempts to show longer larger-scale tonal levels seem either synonymous with set area prolongation (and certain simultaneities favoured in the partitioning of the set) or else they seem to stretch tonality beyond limits permissible at that depth of structure, for instance postulating a tonal contradiction such as tritone-related bitonality. There are passages, however, when even the surface does not exhibit a tonal quality, especially when a strong melody is present, and the complementary hexachord with which it is harmonized seems unhelpful, or when resolutions of dissonances outwards (from greater to lesser tension) do not occur for long stretches. Then I remember Boulez's remark that Schonberg invented the I2-note system in order to recompose the past. But such passages are rare, and the joy of perceiving more and more of the motivic (set) level and its middle and backgrounds with each renewed acquaintance is so great that such dry stretches are not really difficult to bear.

Let us examine a passage of I 2-note music similar to the tonal one examined before. Instead of the penetration of pattern into tonal dynamism we still observe the penetration of tonal dynamism into pattern. The introduction to the Variations for orchestra, Op. 3I, is fairly clear, serially speaking. Like that to 'Pelleas', it builds the material up slowly and carefully, note by note, expanding the registers, until it reaches some sort of definitive thematic form. Successive order numbers of the combinatorial pair are added in two 5-bar stretches, and then in a 7-bar statement of the complete sets. The rest of the introduction is an initial exploration of the now- established sets, and falls into three 5-bar phrases. The proportions of 5:7 are applied right through the work, from the microcosm of the set partitioning, through the number of bars occupied by a set pair in the theme reflected in the 5/7, 5/7 structural division throughout the Variations, to the macrocosmic use of only (with tiny exceptions) the sixteen sets beginning with either (Bb E) or (G C#) in the first

7See 'Schoenberg's "Atonality": Fused Bitonality ?', by Kenneth L. Hicken, Temp. 109 (1974).

382



five sections of the work, keeping the total spectrum for the remaining seven sections.

At bar 9 the first complete hexachord statements are presented, and enough pitch classes (all I 2) to challenge the powers of tonality. So here, after the necessarily tonal (pitch-class limited) initial bars, we might expect Schonberg to cease caring about tonality, to use emancipated dissonances, and to cease sounding tonal. Ex. 13 simply shows how, at every turn, the quaver accompaniment, which moves with some degree of freedom, and the other voices always move toward making simultaneous neighbour notes resolve to triadic harmony notes:

Ex. 13 9 10

7 7 9. 7 'Figured ba 33' 3 3

11 12

7 9 3 7

14 13 _ e lit t

-7 ~~~~~~6 4-3 7 7 3 3 3 3 6 ~ 4y'0 - $A SF

7 7. 7 5 3 4 3 3

4-3

In the magnificent, contrapuntal passage-expanded in dyn- amics and register-that follows (1 9-23), the two principal lines react to each other i'n precisely the same quasi-tonal way, always clarifying that there is an inherent desire in clashing neighbouring pitches to part towards a resolution:

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If further proof is needed, the graceful theme itself provides it. There are exceptions, of course, and one reacts accordingly, flipping back more consciously to the purely motivic level. But the pointl is simply that one does sense the events going on in the foreground tonal level rather vividly, and in any case the exceptions are accept- able when they occur in harmony where resolutions are often highly relative-i.e. on to dissonances nearly as tense as before, a state which sometimes exists for whole phrases. In 0948 Schonberg w3rote to Rene Leibowitz: "I'm afraid List isn't quite right about 'atonal' polyphony, which would in itself be worthless. You know what I think of contrapuntal combinations and that they scarcely amount to anything of anly merit in dissonant non-tonal harmony". If Sehonberg thought atonal polyphony 'worthless', these examples tell us why-and why he preferred the term 'pantonal'.

I should like to end on a wrong note. There is only one serially 'wrong' note, I think, in the whole of the slow movement of the Fourth Quartet. It is the viola E (5) in bar 635; its 'random' repetition in the aggregate is quite uncharacteristic of Schonberg's procedures in the rest of the movement. Admittedly it is justified by motivic and other reasons, but the principal reason was perhaps a foregrounld tonal, a dynamic one. Compare it with bar 632 in

L_ '_ . .I I

ExF i C, whc i

41 I W- WEM :

Ex. 15 _e a

21s 5<-~ -- - - a nf t6b1

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In both cases order numbers I,2, 4 and 5 are combined to make an even- interval tetrachord (o 2 4 8). In the first case the cello moves to C, forming a minor triad with flattened 2-rather tense and high up the dynamic index. In the second case, the true end of the section, Schonberg wished to avoid the over-relaxed Bb major triad which would result from the omission of the 'wrong note'; so he includes it and thereby makes reference to the tetrachord (o 2 4 8) of bar 632. Then he leads the cello down to its order number o, which in this case is an inversion of bar 632, and thereby creates a major triad with sharpened 4-slightly and appropriately less tense than the minor triad with flat 2. The dynamic effect is to achieve both balance and cadential weighting, a sense of conclusion consistent with the dynamic norm. As such, it is evidence of the importance Schonberg attached to the dynamic tonal foreground (the 'small notes' in the Schenker graph) as opposed to the principle of intervallic ordering.

Various composers have recently criticised the flatness, lack of emotional richness, seemingly inherent in current atonal styles or styles which 'concentrate on other parameters'. Some have reacted violently, reharnessing the whole force of tonality in a new primi- tivism. What Schonberg did and perhaps there is a moral here- was to strive for an ever greater complexity (coinpatible with lucidity), while at the same time trying never to lose his sense of the vividness of pitch, a vividness existent in pitches only when they inhabit, however fleetingly, the tonal sphere. Only in this sense can music be feeling, as opposed to perhaps illusorily 'expressing feeling'; only in this sense can it 'fire the mind' rather than 'emotionally stir', if I understand Beethoven correctly. Schonberg is one of the precious few who can exemplify an artistic spirituality great enough to steer between the dullness of conservatism and the impoverishment of modernism, the Symplegades of our timne no less than his.

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Schönberg: Man or Woman?