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Summary

The decade (1899–1909) separating Verklärte Nacht from Schoenberg’s second major contribution to Night Music, the monodrama Erwartung, was typically turbulent and productive. Based mainly in Vienna, he established himself as a competent conductor, and also as the revered teacher of talented young composers such as Berg and Webern. The ambitious scale of Schoenberg’s major compositions from these years confirmed his determination to distance himself technically from admired contemporaries like Strauss, Busoni and Mahler. In pursuit of greater intensity and concentration, romanticism gave way to expressionism, as chordal dissonances were freed from their traditional need to resolve. And although critics were often hostile, Schoenberg retained the admiration and respect of performers as well as of friends such as Zemlinsky and Mahler. The affair between his wife Mathilde and the painter Richard Gerstl (ending in uneasy reconciliation after Gerstl’s suicide) fuelled the fierce musical outbursts of important compositions like the Second String Quartet, as well as of Erwartung.

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3 - Before Erwartung

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3 - Before Erwartung

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