He decided that he enjoyed the stand so much that his family would stop by there every time they went traveling. And he did.
When they were older, his children were asked what it was like to grow up in the Schoenberg household - the one that killed good ol' fashioned melodies and harmonies.
The kids said that it was just like any other place. They like their dad's music - they grew up with it, and they grew up whistling and humming his tone rows. This is sort of like howmy mom makes the best everything.
Really though, my mom does make the best most-of-things. Other people's moms probably make good things, but mine makes the best, and it's been independently verified!
What does this have to do with anything?
Well, the point is that even the cookie-monster himself still needs and wants a friend. Schoenberg was a guy who had a family, did what he thought was right, and wrote a lot of music. Too often is he vilified for ruining all that we hold near and dear about our favorite tunes; too often is he wrongly associated with dead-ends in musical maze-dom; associated with influencing the intellectualism that dominated the middle part of the last century.
No, I don't think we hate Schoenberg as much as we think we do. In all honesty, I wonder if the people that we really don't like are the people that came after - The Imitators. Ooh, I think I smell a new Stephen King book!
Yes, these people are the ones that fancied themselves intellectual, wrote a lot of black-note-fever-inducing music to elevate their esotericism and causing general back-patting to be done by them and everyone else who wanted to look smart and esoteric too. These same denizens that make the eyes of audience members roll and their tongues loll as they fall asleep to the incomprehensible squeak-fart-bleep-bloop music that spews non-sensibly out of performers' instruments.
And that's where they get you. If you don't fall in line or think it's cool then "you don't get it." You're obviously not smart enough or not musically well-read enough. So, embrace that weird music if you think of yourself as a good musician.
Is there a point here? Are you selling something or are you preachin' pal?
ABSOLUTELY.
As a composer, and a young, technically feeble and undeveloped one at that - I can chiefly say that this has been a strong pull for me ever since I've learned about music history outside the lineage of Rock & Roll. For me, my history began with the Beatles and 'Stones and continued through the European trends until we arrived in the 80's and then Metal took over; followed by Rap, Blues Traveler, Third-Eye-Blind, and an assorted mish-mash of iconically 90's artists; only to be replaced by Boy-Bands, mostly-naked girls, and as Thom York puts it "fake plastic love" of the 21st century.
I am sometimes sheepish when people ask me what my 'influences' are because in all honesty, I didn't grow up like Charles Ives harmonizing minor-seconds over a piano melody and lighting my cats on fire and catapulting my younger sister into a vat of maple syrup.
I didn't grow up like Mozart being groomed by my dad and then exploited for years and years by that same person only to turn out a genius but socially-inadequate-and-repressed adult.
I didn't grow up like Bach (you know the one I'm talking about) whose family would get together at parties and then make fun of people they didn't like in IMPROVISED FOUR-PART HARMONY WITH CORRECT VOICE LEADING. I'm not making this up. You can't make this up.
When I hear music, I almost never find myself herrumpfing loudly to myself, "Well yes, this part does sound a bit like late Schubert and this part here does sound a bit like early Messiaen." I can withdraw overt similarities - especially if I'm listening for them - but if I'm listening to music, I'm listening for the content, the affect, and the delivery. I'm not really interested in playing connect-the-dots with who-influenced-who, and I find it quite interesting that so many learn-ed musicians are so quickly to pigeon-hole one another into perceived archetypes.
I feel the same way when people ask me, "What type of music do you write?"
To which I astutely respond, "Whatever pops into my head."
Okay okay okay, I get it. But what does this have to do with Schoenberg?
Well, to answer your question Italic Question Guy, Schoenberg resisted the pull by many many other popular composers of his time to further develop what he considered to be a "crass" harmonic language.
Schoenberg disliked the direction of harmony - he displayed contempt for augmented-sixth chords and many other of the fancy chords second-year theory students learn about. Schoenberg felt that if you were going to use traditional harmony, you should not piddle around with it and see how many ways you could twist it before it became too absurd. For him, he thought it was time for a new approach.
You see, it is highly illogical to think that he woke up one morning and thought to himself, "Gee, I wonder how I can ruin music today?"
Indeed, looking at his early work (see: any of his early lieder, String Quartet No. 1 in Dm, etc) young Schoenberg wrote in what is essentially the same sort of harmonic universe that the likes of Mahler, Dvorak, late Strauss, and others lived; that sort of post-Wagner nebula of swirling harmonies. Furthermore, if you were to go through his catalog or "ouevre" if you're a fancy European, you would see that the majority of his work is tonal. That's right. Tonal.
The guy most known for being an Atonal-obnoxious-face actually wrote more tonal music than not. In fact, even when he was developing his twelve-tone system, it's not as if he swore off The Good Wholesome stuff forever; he continued to write theme and variations, folk songs, and pieces for band - band throughout his life. Band.
At a time when it was popular to be fussy, Schoenberg decided to simplify things. He wanted to "emancipate the dissonance" by treating all twelve-tones equally. He didn't like the term "atonal" and probably never thought of himself as being that way; since in effect, it means the opposite of what he was actually trying to do, which was to emphasize all tones. He preferred to think of himself as pan-tonal which is a bit more accurate if you think about it.
Have you thought about it yet?
Are you still wondering if I'm leading you somewhere?
ABSOLUTELY.
As young musicians, we deal with something that the older, established ones do not - having to establish ourselves. While that does come across like a yuk-yuk observation, it is chiefly an important one as this career of art - whether we kid ourselves or not - is decidedly a social one.
For composers, we have to be cognizant of not allowing ourselves to get sucked into things we think we should be doing because we see other people have what we think as success. Approaching music that way feels wrong and it comes out as false and you will know it and your audience will know it and they will remember that you spent their time on something false.
For performers, we have to be aware of that fine line of tradition and innovation. Unfortunately, technology has played quite a detrimental role in the world of performing. When people don't get auto-tune, they get angry. Even non-musically related; the bombardment of electronic social media has begun to intercede the minds of young musicians; distracting them from meaningful experiences. Some people are more interested in their phones than meeting a real, live, professional composer and learning from them.
For educators, it means not falling sway to the glitz of sugar that is pop-music. It means refusing to program arrangements from Glee for your band or chorus concert. It means not tanking your job so that your administration will hire a second music teacher.
In this sense, we must be like Schoenberg; make decisions; following what we do regardless of what others think and external "success" because we know it is the right thing to do for no other purpose than to do it for its own sake. (Instead of Pete for example.)
And still, we must do this with the understanding that no matter the end result of our lives, people will attempt to pigeon-hole us into shapes that easily fit into their back pockets so they can take them out and show everyone how smart they are. Pigeon-holed in the sense that Schoenberg was - for ruining our good fun; pigeon-holed like so many of the other important composers of history; who are often defined word-of-mouth by people who actually aren't familiar with their entire catalog.
Lastly, we must not pigeon-hole ourselves with expectations of what kind of musicians we are and will be. My compositional voice is not Wagner + John Lennon or Berlioz + Monkees - George Gershwin. My voice sounds like me, and I don't know how else to describe it. If I did, I probably wouldn't bother writing music.
We musicians are in the field of music because we are passionate about it. To dilute that with notions of what we should be doing and what is popular? or how can I be innovative? or how can I push the mold? will only cause us to deflate ourselves, and that is no fun for anyone.
So thank you Schoenberg, you card.
November 9th, 2012
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