The position of Schoenberg's music in the development of music in the twentieth century

Austrian composer Schoenberg was born into a Jewish family in Vienna. He taught himself and studied counterpoint with Alexander von Zemlinskis in 1894. This is the only orthodox music education course Schoenberg got in his life. 1911-taught in Berlin and Vienna in the 1920s. 1933 went to the United States and settled in California. 1940 became an American citizen. In addition to a large number of works, he also wrote Harmony Acoustics, which is one of the most important contemporary harmony works. Structure and function of harmony; In addition, he also wrote Style and Thought and Basic Principles of Composition. 1907 19 10 has a large number of picture frames, many of which are self-portraits.

First, Schoenberg's romanticism

Schoenberg's music is based on the late romanticism, and he has a profound traditional music foundation. He was a loyal follower of Wagner when he was young, so his early works were full of romanticism, and some traces of imitation can be found in his works, such as the string sextet "The Night of Sublimation". The ever-changing music in the sound system obviously comes from Wagner's Tristan and isolde, which is a Strauss symphony in black and white instead of color. Some of the music in the symphonic poem pelias and Melissa has the characteristics of Strauss, and the band is actually exactly the same as the life of a hero. The desire in "Six Songs of the Band" has the feeling of Mahler.

190 1 created the greatest romantic symphony opera "Whispering Ballad". This work needs five soloists, a reciter, three four-part male chorus, an eight-part mixed chorus and a huge orchestra. Schoenberg has brought romanticism to the extreme in music structure and performance scale. Even Mahler's Eighth Symphony, with such a huge image, can't compare with Whispering Ballad. This is the peak of Schoenberg's romanticism. Although he was influenced by some composers, his creative spirit was reflected in his works.

Second, the transformation of Schoenberg's expressionist music

After pelias and Melisand, Schoenberg always felt that he was bound by traditional forms and techniques, so he began to withdraw from the field of romanticism, liberated music from natural scales and even modes, and paid more and more attention to the problem of conception. At this time, he is not so popular. The performance of string quartet No.1 in D minor by 1907 had a special performance effect, which was unacceptable to the audience and ended in failure. Schoenberg's works from then on gradually abandoned the traditional composition techniques of tonality and dependence on tonality, and abandoned the autobiographical and lyrical characteristics of romanticism. 1908 also premiered the Chamber Music Symphony and the Second String Quartet, which showed the complex harmony techniques excluding tonality, filled with complex chords and tonality, and deliberately pursued counterpoint. The performance failed again, and the audience could not understand his inner feelings of depression, fear, depression, despair and madness expressed by music. German composer esler commented on Schoenberg in this way: he did not distort the social order in which he was born, did not beautify it, and did not whitewash it. He held up a mirror in front of his time and class. What is reflected in the mirror is not beautiful, but it is real. The social environment at that time was really not optimistic. The two world wars and the ever-changing world pattern have made people witness despair, and people don't know how to change reality. At this time, only their emotions are real. This consolidates the ideological foundation of expressionism, as Schoenberg said: the greatest goal of artists is to express themselves. ②

Schoenberg is still firmly exploring his own way of music with innovative spirit. At this time, he considered how to create without the harmony standard of sound and the organization of music, how to reasonably control the motive force of melody and harmony when creating in atonal language, and describe the most real situation in the most direct way. In the contact with Debussy, scriabin's music and Matthias Hall's music theory, his music concept is gradually established, but there is still no clear direction in his creation. He turned to Kandinsky, an abstract painter, to carry out modern painting with Kandinsky's help, and thus summed up the principles of atonal music: describing intuition with concise musical language, balancing extreme emotional excitement with special conciseness, and expressing harmony through alienation. So five orchestral pieces, musical Expectation, musical recitation pierrot and musical Happy Hands were born, and a brand-new harmony system was put forward, which abandoned the familiar harmony.

Just as some expressionist painters often express their feelings about things around them by distorting and distorting things, Schoenberg's works also show this trait. Exaggerated despair and inner anxiety are full of fear and death. After listening to pierrot on the Moon, a critic said: If this is music, please God, don't let me listen to it next time. Despite this evaluation, a group of followers have gradually gathered around him, and Schoenberg has completed the transformation from romanticism to expressionism.

Thirdly, the establishment of Schoenberg's expressionism system.

Faced with the failure of the public performance and people's ungrateful, Schoenberg realized the obstacles on the creative road and urgently needed to establish a new systematic composition system in the creative process. 19 18, he set up a private performance association, with no ordinary audience and no critics invited, just to further improve his composition system in the performance practice. At this time, Albert Einstein pointed out a way to restore the order of the universe, which also gave Schoenberg a new concept, and he also made his order higher and better. He completely gave up tonality and the repetitive method of melody change that has been used for centuries, and consolidated his creative tendency of freedom and atonality, and melody no longer belongs to any natural scale. After a period of experiments without tonality and traditional methods, a twelve-tone system ④ was formed around 192 1. The creation of this system is a logical extension of the previous atonality principle. At this time, Schoenberg's music is full of atonality and disharmony, and he tries his best to simplify it. Its purpose is to make music get rid of subjective feelings and solipsistic self-expression and make music reproduce the basic elements of music. This idea was first embodied in a series of music speeches he gave in Amsterdam, the Netherlands from 1920 to 192 1, and was put into practice in his works, such as Serenade, Piano Suite for Six Strings and Whispers, etc. Twelve-tone system quickly became popular in Europe and America, and was considered as the most ideal, perfect and advanced way of thinking in music aesthetics. ⑤ The close combination of the purity of twelve-tone system form and spiritual expression successfully provided a platform for Schoenberg's creation and made him a pure expressionist composer. Variations for a Band, Piano Concerto, Survivor of Warsaw and Opera Moses and Aaron. In these later works, the 12 tone system has also become more perfect and become an important means of modern music creation.

Schoenberg still puts himself in the position of classical tradition in the process of innovation and reform. In a radio speech at 193 1, Schoenberg mentioned that his teachers were Bach and Mozart first, followed by Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms. Speaking of Bach, the musical revolution of the whole twelve-tone system can be seen clearly. Contrary to classical music and romantic music, Bach's fugue has implied the musical significance of the modern twelve-tone system, which is composed of musical themes that appear alternately in turn. From beginning to end, it starts from a unique core, which is both the theme and the answer. This is also an important example for Schoenberg to explain that he is a classical tradition. The twelve-tone principle has existed for at least 500 years.

After Schoenberg finished these works, the great composer, a perfectionist who spent his life looking for intuitive descriptions, died in July of 195 10 at the age of 76. His last words to future generations are harmony, which is also an unusual last word that all living things in the universe need to achieve. It is a great inspiration to all people who like and pursue music. All disharmony is to show and highlight harmony, which is also a problem that Schoenberg has been thinking about all his life.

Schoenberg's music is more and more loved and valued by people with the development of the times, but the research on Schoenberg in the music industry has not yet reached a satisfactory state. The author philosophically analyzes why Schoenberg can lead a system by perceptual thinking, with the ultimate goal of drawing people's attention to Schoenberg through this article, and taking him and his music as a new research topic to tap his more and more important contribution in the history of music.