Twelve
Schoenberg's Concept of Art in Twentieth-Century Music History

Hermann Danuser
Translated by Gareth Cox

When considering Schoenberg's concept of art, his Kunstbegriff, it is necessary to supplement his terminological and authorial concept of art — insofar as this essential aspect of the concept can be deduced from his writings and statements — with that other aspect that is revealed by his actual musical oeuvre. It is in this dual sense, in which the explicit poetics (the way Schoenberg the artist perceived himself, his Selbstverständnis ) are considered together with the implicit poetics of what can be deduced from his music, that I intend to examine Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff. In doing so the contradictions that are rooted in the specific nature of Schoenberg's artistic development will be deliberately disregarded to allow us a clearer view of the unchanging principles behind his idea, or conception, of art. After a very brief, general outline of his Kunstbegriff I intend to consider the extent to which its specific characteristics contrast with those in the music history of the nineteenth century and with the contemporary context of the first half of the twentieth;^[1] in conclusion I will outline some aspects of the historical influence of Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff in the latter half of the twentieth century.

I

Although "New Music," as both an idea and a catchword, is now outdated, the term had a formative influence on Schoenberg's understanding of art. He was outspoken in setting emphatic requirements: "Art means: New Art "; and earlier he declared: "Music insofar as it has to do with art, must always be new! Because only something new, something previously unexpressed is worth saying in art."^[2] This demand for newness in art has of course nothing to do with innovation at any price. For Schoenberg, novelty in itself was

neither an asset nor a liability; rather, he was concerned with the reasons for art being new. What he prescribed so emphatically for composers — the idea of New Music — he rejected with vehemence the moment he saw it reduced to a catchword by critics and historians. There is hardly a composer in the history of the twentieth century who combined, indeed merged, tradition and innovation more radically than Schoenberg. It was with good reason that in his dedicatory 1934 article "Der dialektische Komponist" Theodor W. Adorno quoted Stefan George's dictum "Höchste Strenge ist zugleich höchste Freiheit" (the greatest stringency is at the same time the greatest freedom),^[3] for this most productive paradox pervades Schoenberg's music. The dialectic that characterizes Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff was recognized and captured early on in such article and book titles as Hanns Eisler's "Arnold Schönberg, der musikalische Reaktionär"^[4] and Willi Reich's Arnold Schönberg oder Der konservative Revolutionär.^[5] The fact that Schoenberg was so persistently conscious of tradition prevented him from taking a "modern" position akin to that artistic modernism that since Baudelaire has associated itself with randomness, with the everyday and commonplace, but also with "épater le bourgeois. "^[6]

The poles of tradition and innovation are not the only ones that define the dialectics of Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff. Another formulation — to draw on Schoenberg's own words about compositional process — is defined by the concepts "heart" and "brain" in music; this configuration implies that even the categories of rationality and intuition (or inspiration) in Schoenberg's musical poetics are governed by a singular dialectic. This dialectic is particularly applicable where reception history has created an impression of one-sidedness — namely, in the period of free atonal expressionism (suspiciously irrational) in which Schoenberg's sense of form, governed solely by the rational basis of traditional musical expression and its syntactic mechanisms, was summed up in his declaration "Ich entscheide beim Komponieren einzig und allein durch das Gefühl, durch das Formgefühl " (in composing I make decisions only according to feeling, according to the feeling for form).^[7] Conversely, though, the dialectic is also reflected in the twelve-tone period (suspiciously rational) in which Schoenberg, while admittedly employing a technique of greater rationality as regards the selection of pitch classes, composed as before so far as the art of developing variation was concerned — composed "as before," with the old rationality of spontaneous fantasy, without any hint of constructivism for its own sake.

But what of Schoenberg's dialectical/dynamic Kunstbegriff in his own compositional development from work to work? If we presuppose a very individual synthesis in Schoenberg of the tradition of German art music from Bach to Wagner/Brahms and Mahler/Strauss, on the basis of which he was able to create his new art, then the question follows whether we can assume if not a teleological then at least a problem-historical compositional

progress. Certainly the main lines of development can be recognized, even sometimes a progression from work to work, but it would be an oversimplification to say that the succession of works in Schoenberg's oeuvre follows a model where, in seamless continuity, a musical problem is established in one work and solved in the succeeding one. Such a view would pervert the concept of a history of musical problems, a history that certainly cannot disregard the paradigm Schoenberg. Rather we should, in this respect, take as our point of departure the idea of a dialectical form of art production, one that favors the unorthodox and in which the rationally deducible is found alongside the unexpected, and recourse to compositional and genre tradition alongside bold inroads into new musical and music-historical territory.

II

In what way, then, does Schoenberg's dynamic concept of tradition differ from corresponding nineteenth-century concepts — in particular, from those of Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner, from whose works he drew central creative stimuli? Schoenberg evaded the well-established dichotomy of the second half of the nineteenth century — between instrumental music in Brahms's line of development and music theater in Wagner's — and, by boldly breaking through the entrenched mechanism of the "art text" (Kunsttext ) at the end of the century, transcended the dichotomy. He composed both and thereby manifested in his range of genres the same force of synthesis that can be seen in his compositional technique, where he adapted Brahmsian as well as Wagnerian means.

What appears new is that he relinquished any compositional-historical continuity of genre in his work. Although Wagner had drastically modified the category of genre, he did nonetheless remain true to music theater, and — despite what he said to the contrary — it in no way rendered the other areas of creativity superfluous. The only — partial — exceptions to this rule of transcending genres in Schoenberg's oeuvre that might be considered are the string quartets and, with respect to his early works, the lied. But the fact that the first quartet has a single-movement form and the second an integrated voice part shows just how loose the traditional concept of genre had become. In fact, both dodecaphonic quartets are closer to the traditional genre — also a sign of dialectical composition — just as general classical features reasserted themselves in the early dodecaphonic period.^[8]

New traits also emerge in Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff with respect to its pragmatic realization. Ever since Mozart, and particularly Beethoven, had paved the way for the idea of original composition as an indication of artistic autonomy — analogous to the bourgeois emancipation of the subject — a more or less "aesthetic detachment" (in the words of Hans Robert

Jauss) between a new work and what was expected of it by the audience became part of successful composing.^[9] Whereas Brahms worked within the traditional genres and relied upon their institutional contexts, Wagner created an appropriate institution for himself in Bayreuth, whereby this unique project also found its fulfillment in a single genre. With Schoenberg, however, the paradox was that while in terms of aesthetic reception he relied mainly on his oeuvre's connectedness to tradition (he was tireless in associating his works with the tradition of great German music),^[10] the reality of the aesthetic reception was characterized by a nearly insurmountable rupture with the public, who were, apart from the early works, aware only of the innovative and not the traditional features in his music. Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff, then, compared with that of the nineteenth century, is revealed as one that, though conceived traditionally by the composer, functioned in the pragmatic sphere in a more innovative fashion with concomitant institutional consequences (evident particularly in Schoenberg's Viennese Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen). However, Schoenberg's works are so diverse and follow such individual designs that here, too, one can hardly speak of uniform consequences.

Is the entwinement of aesthetics and ethics in Schoenberg new, or was it already anticipated in Beethoven or Brahms? It was precisely in this respect that Gustav Mahler proved so important a model for Schoenberg, perhaps even more important than in any direct compositional sense. Implied entwinement of aesthetics and ethics culminated in Schoenberg in a rigorous artistic morality that is unparalleled. It is because of this concept — artistic morality — that Schoenberg gained such pathbreaking importance, not only as a composer but also as a teacher and a thinker. Concrete instruction and imparting rules of composition were far less important than the realization that only an extraordinary compositional problem was worthy of a truly artistic effort. Therefore it was more important to him to solve incorruptibly the unorthodox problem and thus exert lasting influence through the example of his moral artistic position than to offer illusory means for solutions that in reality failed. Perhaps it is for this reason that Schoenberg is the only truly great composer of recent music history who taught with passion and corresponding success and exerted such formative influence;^[11] the Festschriften and compositions dedicated to him by his pupils testify to this.

III

In the context of twentieth-century music history, depending on the operative phase, it has been alternately either the innovative or the conservative features of the Schoenbergian Kunstbegriff that were manifest. All in all it is unprecedented with what consistency and innovative richness Schoen-

berg salvaged the concept (as derived from Schopenhauer's metaphysics) of an absolute musical art well into the twentieth century, all the more remarkable for the period after World War I, when new paradigms were established and the prewar era was considered a bygone world.

It would be well to outline here, very briefly, the various stages of Schoenberg's development. In his youth, and indeed during his whole life, Schoenberg was for the most part an autodidact. In his 1949 English-language essay "My Evolution" he names three people who played an important role in his artistic development: Oscar Adler, David Bach, and Alexander Zemlinsky.^[12] There is unquestionably a connection between Schoenberg's unacademic side, his awareness that only original solutions endure, and this nonscholastic education. It helped him attain greater independence in his musical thinking and allowed him to develop his Kunstbegriff in so original a way.

As of 1899, the date of the string sextet Verklärte Nacht, op. 4, and in what is generally referred to as the first and second main periods — those of the tonal early works and subsequent free expressionistic atonality — work succeeded work in an intense, vigorous development of his musical thinking. In the context of musical modernism (in the sense in which that turn-of-the-century period is best understood),^[13] there were overlapping, epochspecific traits — for instance, the trend toward programmatic subjects, toward the transcendence of genre, toward the monumental song — but already here Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff developed more radically and more dynamically than that of any of his European colleagues. The dynamics of the development charted by this series of works, written one after another in an incredibly short period of time, were historically unprecedented. Schoenberg recalled this burst of creative energy when he admitted at the 1910 Vienna premiere of the George-Lieder, op. 15, that in this work he had succeeded for the first time in realizing a new ideal of expression that he had had in mind for years. The heading "Schoenberg and Progress" for the chapter on Schoenberg in Adorno's Philosophy of New Music was absolutely justified. Strauss, Mahler, Reger, Debussy — all the leading contemporary composers — being children of their own time, were in one way or another committed to the idea of progress, but none realized it as radically in his work as did Schoenberg when around 1910 he ventured into totally new territory with his expressionistic art.

In the twenties Schoenberg embarked on a new stage of his work, and of music history, with his method of composition with twelve tones related only to one another. At this time his Kunstbegriff, without any involvement on his part, became subject to the dichotomous misunderstanding that it was on the one hand "brain music," the dead monster of a musical engineer who tries to compensate for his lack of artistic inspiration with mathematical calculations, and on the other "heart music," the Romantic echoes of

an outmoded composer whose legacy no longer represented a truly contemporary musical art. The first of these two polemical arguments against Schoenberg — which taken together serve to illuminate the composer's complexity — stemmed from the position of a preserved post-Romantic traditionalism (for example, that of Pfitzner); the second, from an alienating neoclassicism (for example, that of Stravinsky). Nonetheless, despite such attacks it was precisely at this time that Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff asserted itself in its complete individuality. Yet its author saw himself as an unappreciated artist. Having at the end of 1925 attained the pinnacle of public recognition with his position as the director of a master class in composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, he was forced to acknowledge that a younger generation of composers, seeing the times in a new way and with their concept of "mittlere Musik,"^[14] had already passed him over and that it was they who were at the focal point of the music world's attention, an interest that could not be ascribed to mere fashion.

It is not easy to assess the extent to which Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff changed during the last two decades of his life in the United States, after his exile from National Socialist Germany. On the one hand "committed works" take on greater significance as a result of Schoenberg's declaration that he would make the political struggle for Judaism his main mission. On the other hand his Kunstbegriff changed hardly at all, since his commitment was a fermentation more of autonomous than of functional art, and his occasional works, unlike those of composers of "mittlere Musik," remained, as in the nineteenth century, separate from his proclaimed Kunstbegriff. In no sense did Schoenberg conform to popular contemporary taste in the thirties and forties;^[15] his artistic personality was too fixed to have allowed the pressure of external circumstances substantially to change his Kunstbegriff. During those two decades he gives the impression of an antediluvian boulder resistant to any softening toward a musical populism with an eye on the tastes of the broader public. Schoenberg knew that that isolated him, but because of his unshakable belief in himself and his idea of art he also foresaw that the future would belong to him.

IV

Naturally the question of Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff in twentieth-century music history addresses not only its specific qualities in comparison with other Kunstbegriffe but also its historical influence. Schoenberg's singularity and the predominance of his personal and artistic physiognomy became apparent in the fact that in Europe in the second half of the century, at the expense of the scholastic tradition, he was considered less important than his principal pupils, Webern and Berg. Reception is also always deformation. Those two main factors "heart" and "brain" — that is, intuition and

rationality — which were dialectically intertwined in Schoenberg (and in both his pupils), in the course of reception history became sundered and fixed in separate strands of reception. On the one hand there developed that branch of Schoenberg reception that followed from the (suspected) constructivism of his twelve-tone technique and from which, with the expansion of his idea of the row in all dimensions (or parameters) of the texture, an integrated serial music emerged; because of the connection with Anton Webern this can be seen only as indirect reception. The Schoenberg patricide (committed by Boulez) from a historical distance — the dictum "Schoenberg est mort" is an artistic program, not a statement of fact — and the crowning of his pupil Webern in his place were presented in such a way that indirectly Schoenberg remained historically influential, though in a doubly deformed way as a result of aesthetic expression diminished by the reception of serialism (and the "brain" dimension made absolute, as it were). On the other hand the composers who, having grown up still within the populist aesthetic, feared the "constructivist ideology" and strove to reconcile the serial technique with tonality and expression attached themselves not to late Schoenberg but to Alban Berg, whose constructive profundity was not widely recognized; here too, where the "heart" was the focal point of attention, Schoenberg proved after 1950 to be, for the time being, of only indirect relevance. Likewise Adorno's emphasis on the "freely" atonal, expressionistic — as opposed to the dodecaphonic — Schoenberg (developed in his 1961 essay "Vers une musique informelle,"^[16] which succeeded his criticism of serial technique in the Philosophy of New Music ) was not to have reception-historical effect until later.

Schoenberg's dialectical Kunstbegriff, which the exponents of a serially organized music had criticized insofar as its constructive and expressive dimensions were considered inadequate and a relic of the aesthetic expression of an antiquated, bygone era, gained new relevance after the breakdown of the idea of the avant-garde in the 1970s. Here Schoenberg's own skepticism about "modernism" (not to mention the avant-garde), whose "fashionable" character he rejected and surmounted through rigorous connectedness with tradition, proved to be well-founded. So, at least in Germany, an authentic Schoenberg succeeded in gaining new credence after Adorno's Schoenberg — that is, the Schoenberg defined in Philosophy of New Music — had been buried. It was suddenly recognized that Schoenberg's artistic morality accords the individual a significance over and above philosophical-historical frameworks and beyond an avant-garde Kanon des Verbotenen (canon of the forbidden); his artistic morality corresponded exactly with the intentions of a younger generation who were growing weary of the obligation imposed on them by avant-garde progress. And so Schoenberg, and especially the expressionistic Schoenberg who so unreservedly followed his singular need to express himself, became a model for Wolfgang Rihm

and his contemporaries. It was not that these younger composers wanted only to tend the "heart"; rather, they did not, and indeed do not, want the dictates of the "heart" to be any longer regimented by a procedural "brain" mechanism.

If Schoenberg's concept of art is measured against his perception and understanding of himself, it must be declared a "failure." The German music tradition that Schoenberg aspired to perpetuate for a further hundred years no longer exists; national ties, in the nineteenth-century sense in which Schoenberg still perceived them, have become irrelevant. But beyond his authorial intention we can discern the continuing relevance of certain elements of Schoenberg's Kunstbegriff that manifest themselves in a number of different ways. Indeed, the very fact that in our times we cannot share his absolute view of art in the sense of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche means that his Kunstbegriff, having acquired that special dignity of something from the past, has now also attained a sentimentally refracted contemporary relevance.