Arnold Schoenberg's Six Little Pieces for Piano op. 19 (Sechs kleine Klavierstuecke) in a new edition with a clear, easy-to-read layout and complete with full translation of the German text, fingering and critical notes. These 6 short pieces are a fundamental part of 20th century piano repertoire. Arnold Schönberg, 6 Little Pieces for Piano opus 19. Read more

No composer was more responsible for changes in the landscape of twentieth-century music than Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and no other composer's music inspired a commensurate quantity and quality of technical description in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet there is still little understanding of the correlations between Schoenberg's musical thought and larger questions of cultural significance in and since his time: the formalistic descriptions of music theory do not generally engage larger questions in the history of ideas and scholars without understanding of the formidable musical technique are ill-equipped to understand the music with any profundity of thought. Schoenberg's Musical Imagination is intended to connect Schoenberg's music and critical writings to a larger world of ideas. While most technical studies of Schoenberg's music are limited to a single compositional period, this book traces changes in his attitudes as a composer and their impact on his ever-changing compositional style over the course of his remarkable career. Read more

In a number of his early compositions, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) expressed the strong emotions stirred in him by the poetry of Richard Dehmel. Among these seminal works, Verklärte Nacht (1988) stands out for the beauty and strength of its chromatic language, drawing on Wagner's advances in Tristan und Isolde for its emotional impact.The program of Verklärte Nacht is a love story. Yet, in both its content and psychology, the work clearly anticipates the innovative twentieth-century music Schoenberg himself helped to forge.Pierrot Lunaire, one of Schoenberg's best-known and most striking works, was composed in 1912. It is a music setting for solo voice and chamber ensemble of 21 poems by Albert Giraud, translated into German by the Expressionist poet Otto Erich Hartleben. In this satiric work, evoking moods that are by turns ironic, melodramatic, and sinister, Schoenberg incorporates a highly specialized use of the speaking voice, the singing-speech delivery call Sprechstimme, within an instrumental framework of jolting atonality.Both Verklärte Nacht and Pierrot Lunaire deeply influenced the development of the Second Viennese School and, in time, the course of twentieth-century music. They are reprinted here from authoritative editions. Read more

The forced migration of artists and scholars from Nazi Germany is a compelling and often wrenching story. The story is twofold, of impoverishment for the countries the musicians left behind and enrichment for the United States. The latter is the focus of this eminent collection, which approaches the subject from diverse perspectives, including documentary-style newspaper accounts and an exploration of Walt Whitman's poetry in the work of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill.The flood of musical migration from Germany and Austria from 1933 to 1944 had a lasting impact. Hundreds of musicians and musicologists came to the United States and remained here, and the shaping power of their talents is incalculable. Several essays provide firsthand insights into aspects of American cultural history to which these émigrés made essential contributions as conductors, professors, and composers; other essays tell of the traumatic experience of being exiled and the difficulties of finding one's way in a foreign country. While the migration infused the U.S. with a distinctly European musical awareness, at the same time the status and authority of its participants tended to intervene in the development of a genuinely American cultural voice. The story of the unprecedented migration that resulted from Nazism has many dimensions, and Driven Into Paradise illuminates them in deeply human terms. Read more

Perhaps more than any other composer of his time, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) influenced the course of twentieth-century music. His compositional style moved progressively from lush, late Wagnerian chromaticism to a complete break with traditional tonality, later organized theoretically as "composition with twelve tones." This systematic control of all pitches evolved into a similar serialization of all of music's elements — a revolutionary advance that dominated international composition through most of this century.This edition of two of Schoenberg's most important orchestral works invites music lovers into the first steps of the revolution he helped bring about. The symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande (1902), based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play, reveals Schoenberg's expanding chromatic language. The Five Orchestral Pieces (1909) demonstrates the composer's daring exploration of a music that renounces motivic connections as well as tonality. Both of these groundbreaking works are presented here in authoritative editions. Read more

Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet revolutionized western art music. For nearly a century, it has inspired composers, scholars, critics, performers, and visual artists.  Severine Neff re-creates for her readers the quartet's historical, cultural, and musical background–its introduction of the human voice, its genesis during a personal crisis in the composer's life, the scandal at its premiere, and its endlessly controversial reception, both critical and analytic.  This volume includes a newly edited, authoritative score of the quartet, as well as previously unavailable and newly translated texts by Grant Chorley. "Indispensable for understanding one of the central compositions of the twentieth century."―Walter Frisch, Columbia University. Read more

Only Stravinsky can claim as much credit as Schoenberg for the most dramatic innovations in twentieth-century music. Inventor of the twelve-tone row, explorer of atonality and the hexachord, composer of tone poems, songs, and chamber music, and chief spokesman for the Vienna Circle, Schoenberg has become ever more influential as his successors have come to understand him. Fuller understanding has been delayed because many of his writings have not yet been edited or published. This volume collects four short works, each concentrated on a key issue in composition. Written in 1917, but altered and augmented many times in later years, the manuscripts edited and translated in this volume have never been published before. Their importance can permit no further delay since they present Schoenberg's thinking well after the publication in 1911 of Harmonielehre, his revolutionary theoretical book. The later texts provide numerous prospects for enhancing the study and appreciation of Schoenberg's compositions and theories. Also a painter, Schoenberg enjoyed the friendship of Kandinsky and the Berlin expressionists. This volume includes a frontispiece reproducing one of Schoenberg's paintings. Read more

Inspired by Richard Dehmel's poem "Verklärte Nacht" ("Transfigured Night"), this 1899 work for string sextet is very much in the late-Romantic tradition. Schoenberg deftly translates the poem's pathos into a monumental work of chamber music.The work is reproduced here from an authoritative edition, complete with bar-numbered movements for easy reference. Ideal for study in the classroom, at home, or in the concert hall, this affordable miniature-score edition includes the original poem and a translation. Read more

Pianists at intermediate and advanced levels will applaud this fine compilation of works by a trio of the century's most significant composers. Contents include Stravinsky's 3 Movements from Petrushka, Rag Time, Piano-Rag-Music, and The 5 Fingers: 8 Very Easy Melodies on 5 Notes; Schoenberg's Symphony, Op. 9, 3 Piano Pieces, Op. 11, and 6 Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19; and Hindemith's 1922: Suite for Piano, Op. 26. Reprinted from authoritative editions. Read more

Arnold Schoenberg's Six Little Pieces for Piano op. 19 (Sechs kleine Klavierstuecke) in a new edition with a clear, easy-to-read layout and complete with full translation of the German text, fingering and critical notes. These 6 short pieces are a fundamental part of 20th century piano repertoire. Arnold Schönberg, 6 Little Pieces for Piano opus 19. Read more

Even in his earliest songs, Schoenberg had begun explorations of chromaticism that would lead him away from traditional harmony and, eventually, from tonality itself. Audiences and critics did not take to these new sounds without protest. As Schoenberg himself put it, "the scandal never stopped." But despite listeners' resistance, the composer persisted on a course that in time deeply influenced the musical language of the twentieth century. Today, his songs have become an integral part of song recitals and recordings devoted to the roots of contemporary composition.This superb collection contains forty-three of the composer's most important songs, all from the turn of the twentieth century. They include Four Songs, Op. 2 (1899), Six Songs, Op. 3 (1899–1903), and Eight Songs, Op. 6 (1903–05), all set to texts by Dehmel, Keller, Nietzsche, and others; Six Orchestral Songs, Op. 8 (1903–05), set to texts by Petrarch and others, and arranged for voice and piano by Anton Webern; The Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15 (1908–09), fifteen songs on texts of Stefan George; and four songs from Gurrelieder (1900–01), arranged for voice and piano by Alban Berg. Stanley Appelbaum has supplied new English translations of the texts. Read more

One of the most influential and important composers of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) brought remarkable new elements to modern music. His compositional style moved progressively from lush, late Wagnerian chromaticism to a complete break with traditional tonality, later organized theoretically as "composition with twelve hours." This systematic control of all pitches evolved into a similar serialization of all of music's elements — a revolutionary advance that dominated international compositions through most of this century.This new volume presents two major early chamber works in an attractive study-score edition. The String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7, while still showing the Wagnerian influence evident in such early masterpieces as Verklärte Nacht, displays an advanced chromaticism that is developed even further in the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10. More radical in its structure and harmonic design, this work pushes music to the brink of atonality, pointing the way to Schoenberg's radical innovations. Even more striking in its design is the unexpected addition of a soprano in the second quartet's third and fourth movements — settings of two poems by Stefan George ("Litanei" and "Entrücking").All students of twentieth-century music will want to add this attractive, authoritative edition to their library of music scores. Read more

(Orchestra). For string orchestra. Read more

An incisive new look at the pivotal modernist composerAlban Berg and His World is a collection of essays and source material that repositions Berg as the pivotal figure of Viennese musical modernism. His allegiance to the austere rigor of Arnold Schoenberg's musical revolution was balanced by a lifelong devotion to the warm sensuousness of Viennese musical tradition and a love of lyric utterance, the emotional intensity of opera, and the expressive nuance of late-Romantic tonal practice.The essays in this collection explore the specific qualities of Berg's brand of musical modernism, and present newly translated letters and documents that illuminate his relationship to the politics and culture of his era. Of particular significance are the first translations of Berg's newly discovered stage work Night (Nocturne), Hermann Watznauer's intimate account of Berg's early years, and the famous memorial issue of the music periodical 23. Contributors consider Berg's fascination with palindromes and mirror images and their relationship to notions of time and identity; the Viennese roots of his distinctive orchestral style; his links to such Viennese contemporaries as Alexander Zemlinsky, Franz Schreker, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold; and his attempts to maneuver through the perilous shoals of gender, race, and fascist politics.The contributors are Antony Beaumont, Leon Botstein, Regina Busch, Nicholas Chadwick, Mark DeVoto, Douglas Jarman, Sherry Lee, and Margaret Notley. Read more

Arnold Schoenberg completed his Kammersymphonie, Op. 9, in July 1906, singling it out as a "true turning point" in his compositional style . . . "the last work of my first period that existed as a single through-composed movement." To prepare himself for the creation of a one-movement work built on an internal, multi-movement structure, the composer studied the great examples from the classical literature: Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, Liszt's B-minor Sonata, and Schubert's "Wanderer" Fantasy (itself the study-model for the epic Liszt work).From these roots evolved the multidimensional concept of internal "movements" that dissolve effortlessly into one another (here built on no less than nineteen themes), the whole supported by an intricate harmonic language — a major step in Schoenberg's "emancipation of the dissonance." As for its "symphonic" aspect, the composer regarded that term as a "panorama where one could indeed regard each image for itself, but in reality these images are securely connected and interwoven."Little wonder that a work so harmonically and structurally provocative for its time and place was to cause an uproar at its 1907 Vienna premiere, stirring an unprecedented outpouring of controversial critiques. Gustav Mahler, however — a staunch supporter of Schoenberg, and a true friend — publically stood up for the composer's work (although he privately confessed that he could not fully understand Schoenberg's development). Today, however, this seminal music from Schoenberg's early period has become one of his most accessible works.Dover's faithful reproduction of the complete original score of 1922 brings this influential and historically important work to the libraries of all musicians and music lovers fascinated by the extraordinary evolution of musical language in the first decades of the twentieth century. Scored for a chamber ensemble of flute, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, two horns, two violins, viola, cello, and bass. Instrumentation. Glossary. Read more

This ambitious work by one of the 20th century's great musical innovators calls for five solo voices, a speaker, three male choruses, and an eight-part mixed chorus. Schoenberg based his monumental achievement on a German translation of a poem by the Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen. This comprehensive edition features the original text of Songs of Gurre, as well as a German singing translation and a new English translation. Read more

Howard Smither has written the first definitive work on the history of the oratorio since Arnold Schering published his Geschichte des Oratoriums in 1911. This volume is the first of a four-volume comprehensive study that offers a new synthesis of what is known to date about the oratorio.Volume 1, divided into three parts, opens with the examination of the medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque antecedents and origins of the oratorio, with emphasis on Rome and Philip Neri's Congregation of the Oratory and with special attention to the earliest works for which the term oratorio seems appropriate. The second part recounts the development of the oratorio in Italy, circa 1640-1720. It reviews the social contexts, patrons, composers, poets, librettos, and music of the oratorio in Italy, especially in Vienna and Paris. The procedure adapted throughout the work is to treat first the social context, particularly the circumstances of performance of the oratorio in a given area and period, then to treat the libretto, and finally the music. For each geographic area and period, the author has selected for special attention a few oratorios that appear to be particularly important or representative. He has verified the information offered in the specialized literature whenever possible by reference to the music or documents. In a number of areas, particular seventeenth-century Italy, in which relatively few previous studies have been undertaken or secondary sources have proven to be inadequate, the author has examined the primary sources in manuscript and printed form -- music, librettos, and documents of early oratorio history. Impressive research and intelligent integration of disparate elements make this complicated, diffuse subject both readable and accessible to the student of music.Volume 2, The Oratorio in the Baroque Era: Protestant Germany and England, and Volume 3, The Oratorio in the Classical Era, continue and expand the study of oratorio history. Although this series was originally announced as a three-volume study, Smither will conclude with a fourth volume.This new work--the first English-language study of the history of the oratorio will become the standard work on its subject and an enduring contribution to music and scholarship.Originally published in 1977.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value. Read more

Schoenberg and Redemption presents a new way of understanding Schoenberg's step into atonality in 1908. Reconsidering his threshold and early atonal works, as well as his theoretical writings and a range of previously unexplored archival documents, Julie Brown argues that Schoenberg's revolutionary step was in part a response to Wagner's negative charges concerning the Jewish influence on German music. In 1898, and especially 1908, Schoenberg's Jewish identity came into confrontation with his commitment to Wagnerian modernism to provide an impetus to his radical innovations. While acknowledging the broader turn-of-the-century Viennese context, Brown draws special attention to continuities between Schoenberg's work and that of Viennese moral philosopher Otto Weininger, himself an ideological Wagnerian. She also considers the afterlife of the composer's ideological position when, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the concept of redeeming German culture of its Jewish elements took a very different turn. Read more

Leading authorities explore, in direct and accessible language, chamber-music masterpieces by twenty-one prominent composers since 1900.2 volume set: Modern composers as diverse as Béla Bartók, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, and John Cage have confided some of their most personal and intense thoughts to the medium of the string quartet. The resulting repertoire has won the allegiance of string players and of listeners in the concert hall and at home. Yet, until now, no book has addressed the language of these remarkable works, their interactions with the masterpieces of Beethoven and others, and their new approaches to musical expression. Intimate Voices, organized in rough chronological order, offers the observations and intuitions of twenty leading authorities on quartets by twenty-one composers from eleven countries. Its two volumes -- available separately or together -- comprise an indispensable guide to amateur and professional chamber musicians, scholars, students, and anyone seeking a deeper acquaintance with the great achievements of twentieth-century music. Edited by Evan Jones, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Florida State University College of Music Contents and authors: Volume 1: Debussy and Ravel (MarianneWheeldon); Sibelius (Joseph Kraus); Bartók (Joseph N. Straus); Hindemith (David Neumeyer); Schoenberg (Matthew R. Shaftel); Berg (Dave Headlam); Webern (David Clampitt); Villa-Lobos (Eero Tarasti); Prokofiev (Neil Minturn)Volume 2: Shostakovich [Patrick McCreless]; Britten [Christopher Mark]; Ligeti [Jane Piper Clendinning]; Berio [Richard Hermann]; Xenakis [Evan Jones]; Scelsi [Eric Drott]; Cage [David W. Bernstein]; Babbitt [Andrew Mead]; Carter [Jonathan W. Bernard]; Mel Powell [Jeffrey Perry]; Shulamit Ran [Robert W. Peck] Read more

Composing a World is the definitive work on Lou Harrison, the prolific California composer often cited as one of America's most original and influential figures. The product of extensive research, including seventy-five interviews with the composer and those associated with him over half a century, Composing a World includes chapters on music and dance, intonation and tuning, instrument building, music criticism, Harrison's political activism, homosexuality, Asian influences, and final years. This edition features an updated catalog of works reflecting compositions completed after 1997. It also includes an annotated work list detailing more than 300 compositions and a CD featuring over seventy-four minutes of illustrative Harrison compositions, including several unique and previously unrecorded works.A compelling and deeply human portrait, Composing a World offers an indispensable study of a beloved musical pioneer. Read more