4 - Arnold Schoenberg and the ‘Musical Idea’

Summary

As one of the inventors of the twelve-tone technique and the first well-known composer of twelve-tone music, it makes eminent sense that Arnold Schoenberg would be understood by scholars and musicians as a traditionalist. This chapter explores an important, but often neglected, way Schoenberg preserved tradition in his serial music: through the use of a ‘musical idea’ that involves the introduction and elaboration of a problem and its eventual solution. The chapter presents two analyses: of the Prelude op. 25 and the Piano Piece op. 33a. Both pieces illustrate problems and elaborations that stem from the differences between a symmetrical pitch-class or interval pattern (presented or implied at the beginning) and various close or distant approximations of it. The symmetrical pattern is then reasserted at or near the end, and the approximations are connected to it in significant ways, as a solution.