1874–1894: Upbringing Arnold Schönberg was born on 13 September 1874 at Obere Donaustraße 5,
Leopoldstadt (historically a
Jewish ghetto), into a lower-middle-class Jewish family. His father, Samuel, a shoe
shopkeeper from
Szécsény, Hungary, had moved to Vienna via Pozsony (Pressburg; now
Bratislava). His mother Pauline Nachod was from a Prague family belonging to the
Old New Synagogue.
1894–1907: Early life and success While largely self-taught, Schoenberg began studying
counterpoint with
Alexander von Zemlinsky around 1894. In 1898, he converted to
Lutheran Christianity, in keeping with patterns of
Jewish assimilation. This did not displace his Jewish identity, which remained integral to his self-understanding amid rising antisemitism through the 1910s. In his twenties he supported himself orchestrating
operettas while composing his own music, like the string sextet
Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night, 1899), later arranged for orchestra and among his most popular works. It is
program music inspired by the
narrative of
Richard Dehmel's poem by the same name. Schoenberg married Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde in October 1901. They had two children, Gertrud (1902–1947, who in 1921 married Schoenberg's pupil
Felix Greissle) and Georg (1906–1974). , circa June 1905 Early works won
Gustav Mahler's favor, and
Gurre-Lieder drew
Richard Strauss's attention. Schoenberg, initially dismissive of Mahler, was converted by the "thunderbolt" of
his Third Symphony, viewing it as a work of
genius. After early setbacks, Schoenberg won some public acceptance in 1907 with the tone poem
Pelleas und Melisande in Berlin, though much of his (and his pupils') music met hostility. The
Chamber Symphony No. 1 premiered unremarkably in 1907.
1907–1911: Crisis and growth '', a painting by
Richard Gerstl, 1907 In 1907–1908, Schoenberg composed his
String Quartet No. 2, dedicated to "" (my wife). Around the same time (c. 1908–1910), he also produced roughly two-thirds of his small painting output of about sixty-five oils. His wife left him that summer for painter
Richard Gerstl, who died by suicide after her return that November. In the quartet, Schoenberg quoted the street song "" (Oh, dear Augustin) and traced a
Symbolist ascent from ordinary life to an exalted, otherworldly realm. Its final two movements extend
chromatic harmony toward
atonality, which was emerging amid a wider historical shift. As in a choral symphony, they add soprano and set
Stefan George's poems "" (
Litany) and "" (
Rapture) from '''' (The Seventh Ring). Schoenberg likely first encountered George's work in 1904 at the (
Ansorge Society), founded to unite poetry and music through
recitation and performance, but obtained the poems from his composition pupil
Karl Horwitz. The final poem opens with the speaker's recognition, "I feel the air of other planets". As it unfolds, the "bright beloved shadow
[shade]" is "extinguished in a deeper radiance". The speaker is dissolved into the
cosmic harmony and sees the "trembling" ground below, "white and soft as whey". The music, inspired by the elusive "tone" Schoenberg described hearing in George's modern, hyperexpressive verse, uses harmonies he later described in
Harmonielehre as "" (fluctuating) and "" (
suspended). Mahler was unable to grasp this music and worried about who would carry on his
patronage of Schoenberg. During his wife's absence, Schoenberg also composed "" (You lean against a silver
willow), the thirteenth song in the cycle
Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten (The Book of the Hanging Gardens, 1907–1909), based on the collection of the same name by George. This was his first composition without any reference to a
key. Meanwhile, Strauss distanced himself, turning to a more conservative idiom after 1909. During the summer of 1910, Schoenberg wrote his
Harmonielehre (Harmony theory). That year, he met
Edward Clark, an English
music journalist working in Germany, who became his only English student. Clark later, as a BBC producer, helped introduce the music of Schoenberg and his pupils, and Schoenberg himself, to Britain.
1911–1914: Foothold in Berlin Clark helped Schoenberg move to Berlin in 1911. At the time, Schoenberg belonged to a circle of artists and intellectuals including painter
Lene Schneider-Kainer, writer
Franz Werfel, art dealer
Herwarth Walden, and poet
Else Lasker-Schüler. His paintings also featured alongside those of painters
Wassily Kandinsky and
Franz Marc in
exhibitions of Der Blaue Reiter. In 1912, , actress 's agent, sought a suitably composer and chose Schoenberg. Since 1910, she had toured Germany performing selections from
Albert Giraud's Pierrot lunaire: rondels bergamasques in
Otto Erich Hartleben's expressionist translation as
recitation songs. The music she commissioned,
mainstream Romantic Lieder by
Heinrich Schenker pupil Otto Vrieslander, proved "obviously not strong enough", pianist
Eduard Steuermann recalled. Girard's cycle is an
allegory of his return to
Parnassianism after
Decadence and
Symbolism (or, perhaps, his attempt to infuse Parnassianism with elements of Symbolism). This moved Schoenberg, who identified with the narrative and likely saw the moon as a metaphor for his own modernism: "We are all [such] moonstruck []", he reflected in 1916, invoking
Hanswurst, a Viennese analogue to Italy's
Pierrot. "From the scorn for our wounds comes our scorn for our enemies and our power to sacrifice our lives to a
moonbeam", he wrote. "One could easily get emotional", he added. He chose and reordered twenty-one poems into three equal sections, tracing Pierrot's inspiration and intoxication, descent into darkness, and journey home. For the music, he created the now standard five-player
Pierrot ensemble (flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin/viola, cello, and piano). In the preface, he asked that the reciter, in (speaking voice), realize pitch only fleetingly. In an apparent epilogue, Pierrot reminiscences on an "ancient scent from
fairy-tale times", suggesting that
the passage of time or his experiences have made home irretrievable. For this wistful ending, Schoenberg merely evokes closure in
E major, long associated with spirituality. The last of his
Six Little Piano Pieces (1911), with its
bell-like
tolling for Mahler's death (May 1911), repeatedly reaches toward resolution (as if) in this key. Also in 1912,
Vienna Conservatory director offered posts to Schoenberg and
Franz Schreker to renew what he saw as
Robert Fuchs's and
Hermann Graedener's stale milieu. Schoenberg, who had taught a private theory course there the year before, still had local ties but declined, citing his "aversion to Vienna" in a letter to Berg. He thought it might be financially unwise but felt content. Accepting might have been a mistake for them both, he wrote Schreker two months later.
Gurre-Lieder's belated February 1913 Vienna premiere drew a fifteen-minute
standing ovation plus a
laurel crown. But when the Chamber Symphony No. 1 was performed alongside Berg's, Webern's, and Zemlinsky's music at the (31 March 1913), people left amid applause, and police intervention during audience brawls forced Schoenberg to quit conducting Berg's
Altenberg Lieder.
1914–1917: World War I service In August 1914, as
World War I began with the
Battle of the Frontiers, Schoenberg fell into what he later called "
war psychosis", writing
Alma Mahler of an imminent "
reckoning" that would
subjugate French "
kitschmongers", including
Maurice Ravel and
Igor Stravinsky. He kept a
weather diary, believing that
cloud forms could predict the outcome. That November,
Thomas Mann touted the exhilarated public mood in his essay "" (Thoughts in Wartime). The war brought a crisis in Schoenberg's development. Military service disrupted his life when at the age of 42 he was in the army. He was never able to work uninterrupted or over a period of time, and as a result he left many unfinished works and undeveloped "beginnings". On one occasion, a superior officer demanded to know if he was "this notorious Schoenberg, then"; Schoenberg replied: "Beg to report, sir, yes. Nobody wanted to be, someone had to be, so I let it be me". According to
Norman Lebrecht, this is a reference to Schoenberg's apparent "destiny" as the
"Emancipator of Dissonance".
1917–1925: Interwar Vienna , 1917 In
Red Vienna, Schoenberg founded the
Society for Private Musical Performances in 1918, providing a forum where modern musical compositions could be carefully prepared and rehearsed, and properly performed under conditions protected from hostile critics and audiences, and pressures of commerce. From its inception until its dissolution amid
Austrian hyperinflation, the Society presented 353 performances to paying members, sometimes weekly. During the first year and a half, Schoenberg did not let any of his own works be performed. Instead, audiences at the Society's concerts heard difficult contemporary compositions by
Scriabin,
Debussy, Mahler, Webern, Berg,
Reger, and other leading figures of early 20th-century music. , the widow of
Gustav Mahler, in 1920 In the early 1920s, Schoenberg developed the
twelve-tone technique into his own method of musical composition, saying he sought an ordering principle that would make his musical
texture simpler and clearer. He did not deprecate his earlier works, viewing his path as a natural, continuous progression. In 1923, he wrote to the Swiss philanthropist
Werner Reinhart: Schoenberg regarded the twelve-tone technique as the equivalent in music of
Albert Einstein's discoveries in physics. Pupil
Josef Rufer recalled him saying, "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years". Continuing to spread his ideas, the twelve-tone technique was taken up by many of his students, who constituted the so-called
Second Viennese School. They included
Anton Webern,
Alban Berg, and
Hanns Eisler, all of whom were profoundly influenced by Schoenberg.
Roberto Gerhard also began studying with him around this time. Still deeply involved with tonal theory, he published a number of books on tonal harmony, ranging from his famous
Harmonielehre (
Theory of Harmony) to
Fundamentals of Musical Composition, many of which are still in print and used by musicians and developing composers. Schoenberg later recalled that from 1922 to 1930, he felt a loss of influence over younger composers. During the
Golden Twenties, they explored rapidly changing trends:
jazz-influenced styles, machine music,
New Objectivity and (utility music), , and
neoclassicism. Widespread opposition was unsettling, even if he saw his critics' arguments as unconvincing. It left him feeling somewhat isolated and caused him to reflect on his artistic aims. His first wife died in October 1923, and in August of the next year Schoenberg married
Gertrud Kolisch (1898–1967), sister of his pupil, the violinist
Rudolf Kolisch. They had three children: Nuria Dorothea (born 1932), Ronald Rudolf (born 1937), and Lawrence Adam (born 1941). At her request Schoenberg's (ultimately unfinished) piece,
Die Jakobsleiter was prepared for performance by Schoenberg's student
Winfried Zillig. After her husband's death in 1951 she founded Belmont Music Publishers devoted to the publication of his works. Arnold used the notes G and E (German: Es, i.e., "S") for "Gertrud Schoenberg", in the
Suite, for septet, Op. 29 (1925). (see
musical cryptogram).
1925–1933: Weimar-era Berlin In 1925, during the
Weimar Republic, Schoenberg was appointed to lead the composition master class at Berlin's
Prussian Academy of Arts when
Ferruccio Busoni died in 1924. Due to health issues, Schoenberg couldn't leave Vienna and start teaching there until 1926.
Nikos Skalkottas began studying with him around this time. Schoenberg criticized Weimar-era culture for what he saw as sales-oriented, superficial
popular culture, while nonetheless assimilating it. In
Three Satires (1925–1926), he mocked the neoclassical style of Stravinsky ("Modernsky") as
pastiche ("Just like Papa Bach!"). In related essays, he criticized
folklorist composers (likely
Béla Bartók) for applying complex methods to "naturally primitive music", and "middle-road" composers (
Ernst Krenek and maybe Berg) for writing triads in post-tonal music, framing these tendencies as a doctrinal betrayal. Krenek, a student of Schreker and
Paul Bekker who had written atonal music and wanted to study with Schoenberg, began to stress music's social potential. In 1927, he finished
Jonny spielt auf (Jonny strikes up [a tune]). An autobiographical (artist-opera), it became
Weimar culture's propotypical (opera of the time). It centers on Jonny, an African American jazz musician (originally portrayed in
blackface) who triumphs over European traditions. These are epitomized by the intellectual composer Max, who, in
awe of the
sublime, sings the opening line, "Du schöner Berg!" (You beautiful mountain). Krenek was likely satirizing Schoenberg. Schoenberg wrote but did not publish a reply to Krenek's separate barbs about "an individual who ... invents rules". Instead, he and his second wife likely answered Krenek in their one-act comic twelve-tone Zeitoper,
Von heute auf morgen (From Today to Tomorrow, 1928–1929), which centers on what it means to be modern. She wrote the libretto under the pseudonym Max Blonda, perhaps after the role of Max in Krenek's opera. The opening line, "Schön, war es dort!" (It was lovely there), may refer to the symbolic realm of beautiful mountains. (In the 1930s, Krenek returned to the fold, completing the first full-length twelve-tone opera,
Karl V.) Schoenberg continued in his post until the Nazis seized power in 1933. While visiting France, he was warned that returning to Germany would be dangerous. He formally returned to Judaism at a Paris synagogue, viewing his heritage as ineluctable in opposition to
Nazism. Though this return might seem sudden, he wrote Berg in October 1933, it was the result of an exceedingly long process.
1933–1934: Migration Schoenberg and his family immigrated to the United States, though he considered England and the Soviet Union. His first teaching post was at the Malkin Conservatory (
Boston University). After arriving on 31 October 1933,, he adopted the spelling "Schoenberg" instead of "Schönberg", calling it "deference to American practice". In 1934, he applied for a harmony and theory position at the
New South Wales State Conservatorium in Sydney.
Vincent Plush found the application in the 1970s. It bore two notes with different handwriting: "Jewish" and "Modernist ideas and dangerous tendencies", the latter marked E.B. (
Edgar Bainton). Schoenberg also explored the idea of emigrating to New Zealand. His secretary and pupil
Richard Hoffmann, nephew of his mother-in-law, Henriette Kolisch, lived there from 1935 to 1947. Since childhood, Schoenberg had been fascinated with islands, especially New Zealand, possibly due to its scenic postage stamps. He abandoned the idea as his health declined in 1944.
1934–1951: Los Angeles He moved to Los Angeles, where he taught at the
University of Southern California and the
University of California, Los Angeles, both of which later named a music building on their respective campuses Schoenberg Hall. He was appointed visiting professor at
UCLA in 1935 on the recommendation of
Otto Klemperer, music director and conductor of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra; and the next year was promoted to professor at a salary of $5,100 per year, which enabled him in either May 1936 or 1937 to buy a Spanish Revival house at 116 North Rockingham in
Brentwood Park, near the UCLA campus, for $18,000. This address was directly across the street from
Shirley Temple's house, and there he befriended fellow composer (and tennis partner)
George Gershwin. The Schoenbergs were able to employ domestic help and began holding Sunday afternoon gatherings that were known for excellent coffee and Viennese pastries. Frequent guests included
Otto Klemperer (who studied composition privately with Schoenberg beginning in April 1936),
Edgard Varèse,
Joseph Achron,
Louis Gruenberg,
Ernst Toch, and, on occasion, well-known actors such as
Harpo Marx and
Peter Lorre. Composers
Leonard Rosenman and
George Tremblay and the Hollywood orchestrator
Edward B. Powell studied with Schoenberg at this time. During this late period, he composed several notable works, including the difficult
Violin Concerto, Op. 36 (1934/36), the
Kol Nidre, Op. 39, for chorus and orchestra (1938), the
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, Op. 41 (1942), the haunting
Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942), and Along with twelve-tone music, Schoenberg also returned to tonality with works during his last period, like the Suite for Strings in G major (1935), the
Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 38 (begun in 1906, completed in 1939), the Variations on a Recitative in D minor, Op. 40 (1941). During this period his notable students included
John Cage and
Lou Harrison. In 1941, he became a U.S. citizen. He was the first composer in residence at the
Music Academy of the West summer conservatory in Montecito, California. He was interested in
Hopalong Cassidy films, which Paul Buhle and David Wagner (2002, v–vii) attribute to the films' left-wing screenwriters, though Schoenberg had previously called himself a
bourgeois turned
monarchist. . In 1947 Schoenberg wrote
A Survivor from Warsaw in commemoration of this event. As the world learned of the Holocaust, he memorialized its victims in
A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46 (1947). Adrian Leverkühn, the protagonist of Mann's novel
Doctor Faustus (1947), is a composer whose use of twelve-tone technique parallels the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg. Leverkühn, who may be based on
Nietzsche, sells his soul to the Devil and is rewarded with superhuman talent. Schoenberg was unhappy about this and initiated an exchange of letters with Mann following the novel's publication. Writer
Sean O'Brien comments that "written in the shadow of Hitler,
Doktor Faustus observes the rise of Nazism, but its relationship to political history is oblique". Thomas Mann was always primarily interested in classical music, which also plays a role in many of his works. He sought and received advice from
Theodor W. Adorno on the technical compositional details of Schoenberg's new music, and revised the chapters accordingly.
Death and burial Schoenberg's superstitious nature may have contributed to his death. The composer had
triskaidekaphobia, and according to friend Katia Mann, he feared he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13. This possibly began in 1908 with the composition of the thirteenth song of the song cycle
Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten Op. 15. He dreaded his sixty-fifth birthday in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and
astrologer Dane Rudhyar to prepare Schoenberg's
horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal. But in 1950, on his 76th birthday, an astrologer wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13. This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. He died on
Friday, 13 July 1951, shortly before midnight. Schoenberg had stayed in bed all day, sick, anxious, and depressed. His wife Gertrud reported in a telegram to her sister-in-law Ottilie the next day that Arnold died at 11:45 pm, 15 minutes before midnight. In a letter to Ottilie dated 4 August 1951, Gertrud explained, "About a quarter to twelve I looked at the clock and said to myself: another quarter of an hour and then the worst is over. Then the doctor called me. Arnold's throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat and that was the end". , Vienna Schoenberg's ashes were later interred at the
Zentralfriedhof in Vienna on 6 June 1974. He had been unable to complete his opera
Moses und Aron (1932/33), which was one of the first works of its genre written completely using
dodecaphonic composition. ==Music==