Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 141 views

    SEARLE, Humphrey. Schoenberg and Music Today PDF

    Uploaded by

    rrbarerty

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    SEARLE, Humphrey. Schoenberg and Music Today PDF

    Uploaded by

    rrbarerty
    141 views3 pages

    Original Title

    SEARLE, Humphrey. Schoenberg and music today.pdf

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    141 views3 pages

    SEARLE, Humphrey. Schoenberg and Music Today PDF

    Uploaded by

    rrbarerty

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    Schoenberg and Music Today

    Author(s): Humphrey Searle


    Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Autumn - Winter, 1974), pp. 56-57
    Published by: Perspectives of New Music
    Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832369
    Accessed: 19/02/2009 17:51

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
    http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
    you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
    may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

    Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
    http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pnm.

    Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
    page of such transmission.

    JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
    scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
    promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

    Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Perspectives
    of New Music.

    http://www.jstor.org
    SCHOENBERG AND MUSIC TODAY

    HUMPHREY SEARLE

    I never met Schoenberg, unfortunately: I was only nineteen when he


    left Europe for America, and I did not get an opportunity of going to the
    States until many years after his death. But we did correspond toward the
    end of his life: I was writing a new article about him for the fifth edition
    of Grove's Dictionary, and in a letter giving me information about his
    latest works he wrote: "It should be mentioned, that in my opinion, in the
    formula: the method of composing with 12 tones, the accent does not lie
    so much on 12 tones, but on the art of composing." It is interesting to
    think what he might have said about the mathematical methods of some
    present-day composers. I was able to arrange the British publication of his
    books Style and Idea and Structural Functions of Harmony, and shortly
    before his death the BBC asked me to find out if he would be willing to
    record a talk for the weekly Sunday radio program "Music Magazine." His
    reply was characteristic:
    Your message has suggested to me at once a subject: Advice for Begin-
    ners in Composition with Twelve Tones. Unfortunately when I con-
    ceived this idea, I had forgotten that television is not so general in use
    in England than in America. Thus I don't know whether this lecture
    which will use many musical examples, coming into effect only if one
    reads them, is acceptable for the BBC. There would still be a possibility
    to print in a cheap manner sheets containing these examples, if the BBC
    can distribute them in time. Namely the examples will bring so many
    changes the improvement of which is perhaps less easily to realize by the
    ear than by the eye.
    I must admit that this lecture will be very technical and direct itself to
    the higher educated musician, to those who can apply the advice I give
    them in their composition. Thus it is much less theoretical or aesthetical
    than technical-compositorial. Of course musicologists might profit there-
    from and add much of the knowledge I procure them to their tools of
    criticism. Besides, it will clarify many problems of this technique and
    * 56?
    SCHOENBERG AND MUSIC TODAY

    prove how much inspiration must contribute in order to create a real


    work of art.

    Schoenberg did begin this lecture-it is numbered 137 in Josef Rufer's


    catalogue of his articles-and it is sad that it was never finished.
    In an earlier letter I had suggested that it might be a good idea to form
    some kind of an association of 12-tone composers, who in 1948 were few
    and far between. Schoenberg was very interested in the idea and wrote:
    "it might be possible to produce a book in which all members of the associ-
    ation describe their own approach to 12-tones." Something of the sort was
    in fact done in the appendix to the first edition of Rufer's Composition
    with Twelve Notes.
    And what of Schoenberg today? One critic wrote: "Stockhausen is as
    far from Schoenberg as Schoenberg was from Schumann" and this may
    well be true. Also Stockhausen can often fill a concert hall with a program
    of his works, especially with young people, whereas Schoenberg cannot
    always: does this invalidate Schoenberg? I don't think so. What people
    are looking for-and getting-in Stockhausen is quite different from what
    they expect from Schoenberg, and these two composers are bound to
    appeal to different audiences. In spite of his new ideas which revolution-
    ized the whole of modern music, Schoenbergbelieved in the traditional art
    of composition: he did not leave things to chance or to his interpreters,
    and his works cover an enormous range of musical expression. In the first
    two letters quoted above he laid great stresson "the art of composing" and
    on "how much inspiration must contribute in order to create a real work
    of art." That is why I feel that his music will have a permanent and highly
    important place in musical history when many present-day experiments
    are forgotten. He was one of the great geniuses of our age.

    * 57 0

    You might also like