Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was an Austrian-born composer, teacher, and a central figure in 20th-century music. He is best known for developing the twelve-tone technique and for founding the approach of serialism, which placed systematic control over pitch as the basis of musical composition. He is associated with the Second Viennese School, along with his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and later influenced American modernism after emigrating to the United States.

Schoenberg began his career in Vienna within the late Romantic tradition, with early works such as Verklärte Nacht (1899). Around 1908 he began to abandon traditional tonality, pursuing increasingly atonal and expressive music. He wrote Pierrot lunaire (1912), a landmark song cycle that employed Sprechstimme, a speaking-voice style that approximates pitch. His opera Erwartung (1909) further demonstrated his move beyond conventional tonal centers. In the 1920s he formulated the twelve-tone method, organizing pitches into a tone row that governs musical material, a system that became a cornerstone of serial composition.

In 1933, amid the rise of Nazism, Schoenberg left Europe for the United States. He settled in Los Angeles, where he taught and continued to compose, and he held positions at American universities and conservatories. His theoretical writings, including Harmonielehre (theoretical grammar of harmony and method), helped codify his techniques for students and peers.

Schoenberg’s work redefined harmony, form, and timbre, influencing later composers and movements across Europe and America. He died in Los Angeles in 1951, leaving a lasting legacy on modern music and on the pedagogy of composition.