alan lessem - schönberg and the crisis of expressionism
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
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Schnberg and the Crisis of ExpressionismAuthor(s): Alan LessemSource: Music & Letters, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Oct., 1974), pp. 429-436Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/734095.
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
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SCHONBERG
AND
THE
CRISIS
OF
EXPRESSIONISM
BY ALAN
LESSEM
IN Arnold
Sch6nberg's published
writings,
as well
as
those
of
Webern
and
Berg,
there s no lack
of
reference
o the decisiveness
f
the
year I908,
in which he took
the first
teps
in what has
sub-
sequentlybeen described as 'free atonal'
composition.
Since
then,
too,
there
has
been
much
wrangling
over the
implications
of aton-
ality',
abstractly
onsidered,
but less
willingness
o
explore
some
of
the
broader issues of the crisis
nto which
Schonberg
and his
pupils
were
plunged-a
crisis which has
its
place
in
the social
and intel-
lectual
history
f our
century.
In pre-War Vienna the
perilous
closeness of
political
and moral
collapse
(and
an inevitable
general
hardening
to the
pursuit
of new
enterprise)broughtwith it a heightenedawareness,on the part of
thinking
men,
of the
phenomenon
of
social
stagnation
and dis-
integration.
Hugo
von
Hoffmansthal
described this
phenomenon
as "das Gleitende"
(the
"slipping
away"
of
the
world); its most
pervasive
symptoms
were an
abnormal
cultivation of the
self,
a
pre-occupation
with the
expressions
of
psychic
disturbance
and
a
guilt-ridden
sexuality.
Superficially
this
aspect of
the
Zeitgeist
s
reflected
n
the
texts
of
Sch6nberg's
Erwartung' and
'Die
gliickliche
Hand', but it
is
necessary
o
distinguish hose
who,
struggling
with a
sense of impotence, responded to their age with a melancholy or
ironic
scepticism (Hermann
Bahr,
Arthur
Schnitzler,
Robert
Musil)
from hose
who,
on the other
hand,
sought
to
confrontt
with
an
ethical
opposition,
animated
not
by
parochial
reaction but by
the
traditional
precepts
of
European humanism.
Among
the
most
intransigent
n
the
struggle
gainst
decadence
was
the
satirist and
polemicist
Karl
Kraus. In
his own
journal
Die
Fackel
(founded I899)
he
exposed and
condemned abuses
of
language so evident
in
the
inflated
stylishness
nd
superfluous
phraseologyoftheViennesefeuilletonistes.n affinityftemperament
between
Kraus
and
Schonberg drew
them,
from time
to
time,
together.
n
the
dedication
which
the
composer sent
to Kraus
with
a
copy
of
his
Harmonielehre'
(i
91
I
) he
wrote: "I
have
learntmore
perhaps
from
you than one
can
learn if one
is to
remain
indepen-
dent".,
At
the
very
outset
of his book
he had
attacked
the mental
indolence
that, n his
time,
canonized its
prejudices n art
under
the
1
Quoted
in
Frank
Field,
The Last
Days of
Mankind:
Karl
Kraus
and
his
Vienna'
(New
York,
I967),
p.
25.
429
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
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name
of
Schknheitsgesetze
laws
of beauty)
and
refused
to
recognize,
for fear
of disturbing
a
false equilibrium,
the relativity
of
such
'laws'
to history.
Another
name
that appears
in
the
Harmonielehre'
is that
of the architect
Adolph
Loos,
with whom Schonberg
was
personally associated for many years.2 Round the turn of the
century
Loos
campaigned
as
a
journalist
against
the
pseudo-
historicism
prevalent
in
the
architecture
of
Vienna,
directing
his
attack
primarily
t
the
decorative
art ofJugendstil
hich,
since
the
Secession
of i
897,
was widely
considered
as
setting
the
tone
of
fashionably
modern
taste.
In
his essay 'Ornament
and
Crime'
(I908)
he
presented
his
views
concisely:
"As ornament
s
no
longer
a
natural
product
of our civilization,
it
accordingly
represents
backwardness
or
degeneration...
Lack
of ornament
is
a sign
of
spiritualstrength".'
Loos
was
a
pioneer
in the
new
trend
towards
functionalism
in
architecture
and
handicrafts.
Similarly,
Schonberg
made
it
clear
to
the
readers
of his
Harmonielehre'
that
his concern
was
not
with aesthetics'
ut
with skills
omparable
to those
of
a
good
cabinet
maker:
Spareness
f
material
hat
s,
n
truth,
rtistic
conomy;
o
use
only
the
means
that are indispensably
ecessary
o theproduction
f
a
particular esult.All else is purposelessnd henceclumsy.Nothing
can
be beautiful
f
t is
not
organic.4
To
Schonberg
and
like-minded
thinkers
he
general
Viennese
taste
for
Schmuckornament)
was
a
form
f
ntellectual
dishonesty,
n
that
a
pretentious
arade
of
effects
as
allowed
to
conceal
a
real
poverty
of
substance.
It
was
a
means,
merely,
f
affecting
n
equivocal
pose
and
impeded
what
Sch6nberg
took
to
be a
proper
communication
of
ideas.
With
regard
to
this
problem
he wrote:
"Great
art
must
proceed to precisionand brevity . . This is what musical prose
should
be-a
direct
and
straightforward
resentation
of
ideas,
without
mere
padding
and
empty
repetitions"."
Paradoxically,
however,
the
desire
for
a
"direct presentation
of
ideas"
would
pose
a
very
real threat
to the forms
which
had
con-
ventionally
mediated
them.
For
in the philosophy
and practice
of
art
it
had
been
commonly
understood
that immediately
perceived
reality
s,
as such,
not
an
aesthetic
henomenon,
and
to become
so
must
be
mediated through
some
form
of
representation
Hegel's
Schein).The challenge, forSch6nberg and his contemporaries,was
to
discover
how
expression
and
form
could
be
properly
conciliated
2
Evidence
for
he
association
can
be
found
n
thepublished
Sch6nberg
orrespon-
dence.
See
Erwin
Stein,
ed., 'Arnold
Schoenberg
Letters',
trans.
Eithne
Wilkins
and
Ernst
Kaiser
(New
York,
i965),
pp.
144-50.
3
Ludwig
Munz
&
Gustav
Kunstler,
Adolph
Loos'
(London,
1966),
pp.
228-9.
4
Arnold
Schdnberg,
Harmonielehre',
rev.
and
enlarged
ed.
(Vienna,
1922),
p.
325.
5
Arnold
Schonberg,
Brahnis
the
Progressive',
n
'Style
and
Idea',
trans.
Dika
Newlin (New
York, 1950),
p.
72.
430
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
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without
resorting
to the
gratuitous
solution
provided
by
mere
compromise. As
Sch6nberg put
it: "I believe it won't do:
to
toy
with freedom while one is still bound
to the
unfree".6 For
those
who
met
only
indifference
o the
urgency
of
this
issue,
it
became
necessary,forthe sake of 'truthfulness',o contemplate the risk of
going
beyond
entrenched
normsof asthetic mediation. Art had
to
become
'Expressionistic'.
The music of
Schonberg's
crucial
period,
which extended
from
I908
to the compositionof the first welve-note
works,
was
shaped,
as he noted some
years
later, by
powerful
and
pervasive
subjective
impulses: "In
my firstworks
of the new
style
was
guided,
in
the
shaping
of
forms,
by
exceptionally
strong
forces of
expression
(Ausdrucksgewalten),
oth
with
regard
to
particulars
and
to the
whole".7 Further,he allowed himself o believe that the intensity
of the
subjective
demand
would,
of
necessity, enerate
artistic
orms
that were
appropriate
to it.
Intuition,
fired
by
necessity
nd
rarely
disturbed
by
conscious
reflection,
ould be trusted to do
its own
work.,
In
close
accord,
the
painter
Wassily
Kandinsky
described
"inner
necessity" s
a
fundamental
hapingforce;
ndeed,
the
affirm-
ation of
its intuitive
rightnesswas
as
widespread
in
the
early
years of this
century
as it
had
been
over
a
hundred
years
earlier.
Then,
the
rebellious attitudes
of
J.-J. Rousseau,
evident
too
in
German
Empfizdsamkeit,
ame
as
a
reaction to
eighteenth-century
intellectualism.
Similarly,
the
rationalistic
and
mechanistic
modes
of
thinking
which,
as
methodological
procedure,
dominated the
latter
part
of
the nineteenth
entury,
eemed
to those
who
became
heir to it to
exclude a
wholenessof
spirit
nd to
deny
the
significance
of
temporal
flux
and its
necessarily
non-conceptual
expression.
Joining
n
the
protest, fter
Nietzsche, were
proponentsofa
Lebens-
philosophie-prominently
Wilhelm
Dilthey
and Henri
Bergson;
further orroboration or rrationalmodes ofcognitionwas given in
the
phenomenology
of
Edmund
Husserl. "Vital
experience"
came
to
be
interpreted,
n
Bergson's
sense, as the
unique and
the
irrever-
sible.
It
was
to be valued
as
a
means of
bridging
the
gap
between
the
metaphysical
and
the
physical, between
universals
and par-
ticulars.
In
Germany a
freshburst of
activity n the
arts,
iteratureand
drama
carried with
it
a
new
set of
attitudeswhich,
achieving some
degree
of
coherence
between
about
i910
and
I925,
has
retrospect-
ivelybeen referred o as Expressionism.The Expressionists elieved
themselves
to
be
caught
in
a
malaise
of degenerate
cultural and
"
'Harmonielehre',
.
472.
7
Arnold
Sch6nberg,
Gesinnung
der
Erkenntniss
', 25
J_ahre
eue
Musik:
J_ahrbuch
1926
der
Universal-Edition,
d.
Hans
Heinsheimer&
Paul
Stefan
Vienna,
I926), p.
27.
8
"In
composing
decide
only
through
feeling,
hrough
he
feeling
or
orm.
his
tellsme
what
must
write, ll
else s
excluded.
Every
chord
that
put
down
answers
o a
compulsion:
compulsion
f
my
need for
xpression,
ut
perhaps, oo,
the
compulsion f
an
unsolicited
nd
unconscious
ogic
in
the
harmonic
construction"
'Harmonielehre',
P.
502).
431
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
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intellectual life,and hence
the importance
attached
by them to
a
new
content,
one
that would signify
rebirth
f moral and
spiritual
values.
Expressionism
was never
a
conscious
groupingor
movement
that
could
be
definedby
any
kindof common
programme,
but poets,
dramatists nd paintersweredrawn togethern theirrejectionofthe
methodsof
Naturalism,
and
also
set themselves
part
from
mpres-
sion
and Symbolism
by
refusing
he refuge
offered
y the temple
of
art. A
commitment
to intuition,
they believed,
would lead
them
back
to an
essential
humanity
whichboth materialism
nd
astheticism
had
by-passed.
Refusing
all compromise,
they
pledged
themselves
to
a
constantly
elf-renewing ensibility
while
acknowledging,
too,
that anxiety
was the
price
to
be paid for
continuing
exploration
with unforeseeable
esults.
There
were differences
mong them,
but
all seemed to have agreed on Kandinsky'swarning' against an over-
evaluation
of formal
convention
made
without
reference
to
that
which
animates it: namely,
inner content.
Believing
himself
o be
peculiarly
sensitive to
what
he described
as
the "Abstract
Spirit"
of
his
time,
Kandinsky
hailed the
approach
of
a
new
era in
which
the
sensuous properties
of
art
would
find
their
proper
place
as
an
expression
ofspiritual
values.
There is, too,
an echo of the
theories
of early
Romanticism
in
the
primary
place
Kandinsky gave
to
music as 'pure' expression;his desire was to achieve,
for
painting,
the emancipation
from
ordinary signification
lready attained
by
music.
Schonberg
and
Kandinsky
first
met at
a
holiday
resort-a
meeting
recollected
by
Kandinsky
in
a
letter
to the
composer
of
I July
1936.10 No
date
is mentioned
forthe
meeting,
which probably
took place
round
i
909
or
i
9IO.
The
men
may
have met
by chance,
but
Willi
Reich,
in his recent
biography,
suggests1L
hat
they
were
brought together
by
Kandinsky's
reading
of an
excerpt
from
the
'Harmonielehre',12fromwhich he then quoted in his 'tYber das
Geistige
in der Kunst'
of
191 2.
The
published
correspondence
between
the
two
testifies o
the close
mutual
interestn one
another's
work
during
I
1i-I213
-an
interest enewed
by
Schonberg
n
1922L4
but suspended
a
year
later
as
a
result
of
Kandinsky's
alleged
anti-
Semitism. Sch6nberg's
essay
'Das
Verhaltnis
zum Text'
was
pub-
lished
in
Kandinsky's
almanach
Der
Blaue
Reiter
1912).
1
In it
he
praised
Kandinsky's
book
'On
the
Spiritual
in Art' and
expressed
enthusiasm
over
the
promised
emancipation
of the
"painting
of
the
' See, in particular,WassilyKandinsky,Ober die Formfrage', erBlaucReiter,d.
Wassily
Kandinsky
& Franz
Marc
(Munich,
1912),
p.
78.
10
See Joseph
Rufer,
The
Works
ofArnold
Schoenberg:
A
Catalogue
of his
Compo-
sitions,
Writings
nd
Paintings',
rans.
Dika
Newlin
London,
I962),
p.
I86.
11
ee
Willi
Reich,
'Schoenberg:
A Critical
Biography',
rans.
Leo
Black
(London,
1971),
p.
41.
1
In
Die Musik,
x (1 9I 0),
pp.
I
o4-8.
12
See
etters
f
Kandinskyo
Schonberg
f
6
November
9I
I
and
13
January
9 12,
in Rufer,
Works',
pp.
I85-6.
14
See letter
f
20
July
922
to
Kandinsky,
n
Stein,
Letters',
pp.
70-72.
15
Together
with
manuscript
acsimile
fhis
song
Herzgewachse',
Op.
20.
432
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
6/9
future"
fromthe
externals
of
ordinary
ubject-matter."
In
his
own
book
Kandinsky
equated
Sch6nberg's
renunciation
of
tonality
with
the
aims
of the new movement:
namely,
the liberation
of art
from
conventional aids to
perception
and
cognition:
"His music
leads
us
to where musical experienceis a matter not of the ear, but of the
soul-and
from
his
point
begins
the
music of the
future'
7
The
goal
of
contemporary
rtists,
ranz
Marc
insisted,
was
"to create
symbols
for their
age,
symbols
for the altars of
a
new
spiritual
religion.
The
artist as technician will
simply
vanish
behind such
works"."8
The
parallel with
Schbnberg
s
important.For it is the
voice
of
this
new
generation
that
speaks, in
particular,
in
the
third
scene of 'Die
gliickliche
Hand', where
the
efforts f
worker-technicians
and
even
of
the
protagonist
himself)
to
create
a
merely decorative art
(Schmuck)re scornedand rejected.
An
affinity
etween
Schonberg's
objectives and
those
of the
Expressionists
as
been
suggested n
much
of
the
critical
iterature.',
Certainly,
the
desire
of the time
for
Ausdruckswahrheit
as
one
that
he
shared.
All
that
was not
essential
to
it,
including,
and in
par-
ticular,
what
Kandinsky
described as
"conventional
beauty", had
to be
sacrificed.
Art
historians
have,
of
course,
recognized
the
roots
of this
desire for
naked'
expression
n
early
Romanticism, and
have
queried the
independence
of
Expressionismas a
categoryof
style.
One need
only
cite,
n
support
of
this
historical
ink,
Arnold
Hauser's
description of
the
essence of
Romanticism
and
compare it
with an
'Expressionist'
programme
attached
to
Schonberg's
music by a
contemporaneous
critic:
Romantic art
is the
first
o consist
n
the
human
document', he
screaming
onfession,he
open
wound aid
bare.2?
Sch6nberg,
ndomitable,
ffers
imself
o the
whole
world
with all
his
private
daemons.
ndeed,
in a
virtual
frenzy
f
confession, e
tearsopen his breast to showthe stigmata . . The blood of his
wounds
becomes ound.21
Expressionism, to
be
sure,
did
tend
towards
Sturm
undDrang
histrionicism;how
one
prefers
o
respond to
that
aspect
of it is a
matter
of
taste
(and
it does
seem
that
our
contemporary aste
has
16
"When
...
Wassily
Kandinsky
nd Oskar
Kokoschka
paint
pictures,
he
objective
theme of
which
s
hardly
more than
an
excuse to
improvise
n colors
nd
forms
nd to
express
hemselves s
onlythe
musician
expressed
himself
ntil
now,
these
re
symptoms
of a
gradually
xpanding
knowledge f
the
true
nature ofart.And withgreat oy I readKandinsky'sbookOnthe piritualnArt,nwhichtheroadfor ainting s pointedoutand
the
hope is
aroused
that
those
who
ask
about
the
text,
bout
the
subject-matter,
ill
soon
ask no
more"
('Style
and
Idea',
p.
4).
17
Wassily
Kandinsky, On
the
Spiritual n
Art',ed. Hilla
Rebay (New
York,
1946),
P.
36.
18 Franz
Marc,
"Die
'Wilden'
Deutschlands",
Der
Blaue
Reiter,
.
31.
19
Of
particular
interest s
Arnold
Schering's
early
study,
Die
expressionistische
Bewegung
in der
Musik',
'Einfiihrung
n die
Kunst
der
Gegenwart'
(Leipzig,
19x9),
PP.
139-61.
20
Arnold
Hauser, The
Social
History f Art'
(London,
I962), iii,p.
187.
21
Ernst
Decsey,
Zur
Schonberg-Kritik', ie
Musik,
xii
(I9I2), p.
184.
433
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
7/9
decreed
against
works
ike
Die
gliickliche
Hand').
But
it would
not
be
fair
to
brand
the Expressionists
as
self-indulgent,
or
it
was
precisely
the
self-indulgence
f the
etiolated
aestheticism
n
which
late
Romanticism
had
foundered
thatthey
rejected.
The
stand
that
Sch6nberg took,with Kandinsky, against an 'empty' beauty (one
devoid
of content)
was one
that alienated
him fromeven
the
once
well-disposed
among
his
critics.
In
igi
i Richard
Specht
claimed
that
he had
now
only
contempt'
for
the praiseworthy
ophistication
ofmelodic
and harmonic
resources
chieved
in works
prior
to I
908.2
t
Adolph
Weissmann
described
his
'Expressionism'
as a capitulation
to
immediate and
local
excitation,
by-passing
ny
corporeal
frame
of reference
and
sacrificing
rt
to spirituality.23
rnold
Schering
believed
that
such
impulses
would
lead
to
a kind
of
Ubermusik
r
even Anti-Musik.24 aul Bekker, though more sympathetic than
others,
nevertheless
rew similar
conclusions:
The music
of the
nineteenth
entury,
s it developed
from
he
classi-
cal
art,
was
shapedby
the
urge
towards
epresentation,
corporeali-
zation
of the
process
offeeling
.
But here
lies the chasm.
Schon-
berg's
music
does
not
illustrate,
t does
not
represent.
t
lives
n
a
strange,
nknown
imension
f feeling,
n which the
corporeal,
he
firm utline
fthe rtistic
bject,
no longer
xists."
To suggest, as Bekker does, a 'chasm' separating Schbnberg
from
the
nineteenth
century s,
surely,
to overstate
the historical
argument,
or lready
in
that
century
he
problem
of
representation'
within
a
classical
frame
of referencebecame
a central
one.
The
historical
development
would
rather
seem
to be
one
in which
the
rebellion
of
Romantic
transcendentalism
against
the
aesthetic
immanence
of
classicism
culminated
ultimately
n,
as it
were,
a
total
mobilization:
art
against
art. The
resulting
crisis
has
been
discussed
by
T.
Wiesengrund-Adorno,
who
argues
that feeling
'truly' expressedcan no longer recognize the autonomyof art. In
Expressionism
rt survives
only
in
threatening
o cancel
itself
ut:
The essential,
isrupting
moment
s
for
Schonberg]
he function
f
musical
expression.
assions
re
no
longer
imulated;
ather oes
his
music
record,
untransposed,
he
impulses
of the
unconscious,
ts
shocks
and
traumas.
The
seismographic
egistration
f
traumatic
shocks
ecomes,
t the
same
time,
he
aw of
theform fthe
music.2
To
identify
orm
nd
expression
bsolutely,
as Adorno seems
to
do, would be to postulatean extremenominalism nd also to suggest
an
absence
of
workingprocedure
in the music. Recent
attempts
to
22
Richard
Specht,
Arnold
Sch6nberg:
eine
Vorbemerkung',
er
Merker,
i
(I
9
I
),
p.697.
23
Adolph
Weissmann,
Malerische
Musik',
Musikblatter
esAnbruch,
i
(i92o),
p.
566.
24
Schering,
p.
cit.,p.
143.
26
Paul
Bekker,
Arnold
Schonberg',
Kritische
eitbilder
Berlin, 921),
p.
170.
26
Theodor
Wiesengrund-Adomo,
Philosophie
der neuen
Musik'
(Tubingen,
949),
p. 42.
434
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
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seek
out and define
the
characteristics f
Expressionism
n
music27
have stumbled
against
this
problem,
and have
not
passed
beyond
merely
descriptive
determinationswhich
rely
heavily
on
reference
by
negation.
Most
problematic
is the
negation
implicit
in
Karl
W6rner's Momentform,ignifyings it does the absence of any kind
of
repetition
r
systematically
onceived
relationship
between
formal
parts.28
Worner's term
s,
of
course,
self-contradictory,
s form
has
to do with
relationships.
Furthermore,
Schonberg,
who
always
subjected
any
consideration
f
solated
particularities
o the
criterion
expressed
by
the word
Zusammenhang
formal
connectedness),
would
surely
have
rejected
the
implications
of
Momentform
s
irrele-
vant to his
concerns.While
granting,
with
Bekker
and
Adorno,
that
it
was characteristic f
Expressionism
o
insiston
the
precedence
of
'spirit' over 'art', one would neverthelessexpect the absence of
means of formal
organization
to
be
apparent
rather than
real.
The
source
of
these
means
derived,
as
Schonberg
frequently
sserted,
from
an
almost
somnambulistic
ntuition;
thus
the formal
relation-
ships
created
by
them,
rather
than
sounding
on
the
surface of
the
music,
will
be
found to
exist
buried
in
its
deeper
tissues.
They
are
the subconscious
controlling
forces
from
which
stems the
logic
of
all
dreams and
visions.
Yet for much of the music of thiscenturythe metaphorof the
dream and
its
wider
implications
needs to
be
thoroughly
xplored.
Psychologists
have
attributed the
extraordinary,
hallucinatory
vividnessof dream
images to
the
deeply
buried
syntax'that
creates
them.
Schonberg
stressed,
often
enough,
the
hidden,
compulsive
logic
that
underlay
the
operation
of
his
musical
fantasy.
n
common
with
some
of
his
contemporaries,
he
believed
that a
return
to the
deeper recesses of the
psyche
would
not
only tap
afresh he
sources
of artistic
inspiration but
would
also
lead
away
from
the
senses
towardswhat he described, n a letterto Nicholas Slonimsky, s a
"higher
and
better
order".29
t
may be
suggested,
then, that
his
surrender
to an
untrammelled
fantasy during
the
'free
atonal'
period
represented
n
evolutionary
retreat
from
what he
saw as
a
blind
alley
of
over-refinement,he
retreat
being
made in
the hope
of an
advance in
a
new
direction.Arthur
Koestler has
described
such
action as
reculer
our
mieux
auter-"a
favourite
gambit
in
the
grand
strategy
f
the
evolutionary
process".30
He
believes
that t has
27
See,
in
particular,
Karl
H.
Worner,
Walter
Mannzen & Will
Hoffman,
rticle
'Expressionismus', n 'Die
Musik
in
Geschichteund Gegenwart'. See furtherH. H.Stuckenschmidt,Was istmusikalischerxpressionismus', Melosxxxvi
1
969),
pp.
I-5.
28
See
Karl
H.
Worner,
Schonberg's
"Erwartung" und
das
Ariadne-Thema', n
'Die
Musik
n der
Geistesgeschichte'
Bonn,
1970),
pp.
9
I-I
i
8.
29
Letter of
3
June
1937, in
Nicholas
Slonimsky,
Music
Since
I
900', 3rd
ed.
(New
York,
949),
p.
574.
80
Arthur
Koestler,
The
Ghost
n the
Machine'
(London,
i967), p.
i67.
Koestler
adds: "It
seems
that the
task
of
breaking
p
rigid
cognitive
tructures
nd
re-assembling
them
into
a
new
synthesis
annot, as
a
rule,
be
performed
n
the
full
daylight
f
the
conscious,
ational
mind.
t
can
only
be
done
by
reverting
o
those
more
fluid,
ess
com-
mitted
nd
specialized
forms
f
thinking
which
normally
perate
n the
twilight
ones
of
awareness"
ibid.,
.
197).
435
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8/10/2019 Alan Lessem - Schnberg and the Crisis of Expressionism
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played
as
important
part
in
thehistory
f
human
endeavour
as
it
has
in biology.While
the parallel
with biology
must
remain
hypo-
thetical,
t may
become
a
usefulone
in
elucidating
the
phenomenon
of
so-called 'primitivism'
n early
twentieth-century
usic,
art
and
drama. It seems no accident that, contemporaneouslywith Schon-
berg,
composers
uch
as
Stravinsky,
artok
and
Ives
found
nspiration
in
elements
that
precede
or underlie
the civilized
superstructure
f
culture.
Musical
fantasy
was
once described
by
Sch6nberg
as "a dream
of
future
fulfilment"',
promising
a
liberation
fromthe
limitations
of
ordinary sense-experience.
The
monodrama 'Erwartung'
can
be
viewed as
an
allegory
of such
an
'expectation',
perhaps
by necessity
nocturnal
and
experienced
only
in a
state
of hallucination.
In
'Die Jakobsleiter', One Wrestling', having abandoned old laws,
awaits
the
intuition
of new
laws,
and
the archangel
Gabriel
speaks
of
a
necessary
blindness.
n 'Pierrot unaire'
the
blindness
s
that
of
a
pathetic
(and
again
nocturnal)
clown who
is the
alter go
of
the
Romantic
hero;
here
the artistic
conventions
of the
past,
rejected
by
Expressionism
as
being
no
longer
authentic,
are
momentarily
restored
and
vindicated
through
the
spirit
of
irony. Through
the
War
years,
the crisisof
form,
o whichwas
linked
a crisis
of
personal
belief,
remained
unresolved.
The Rilke
poems
chosen
by
Schonberg
for
his
orchestral
songs
of
Op.
22
give
voice
to his own anxious
expectations;
the
poem
entitled
'Alle
welche
dich suchen',
for
example,
ends
with the plea,
"Gib
deinen
Gesetzen
recht,
die
von
Geschlecht
zu Geschlecht
sichtbarer
ind".
In
'Die
Jakobsleiter'
he
Biblical
ladder
becomes
a
symbol
of
evolving
life in its
struggle
to
overcome
mere
existence.
Gabriel
makes
the
'dissolution'
of
life
and its
illusions
a condition
for
entry
into the
spiritual
domain
where
the 'laws'
are
to be
found;
the
music,
with its
high
degree
of textual integration, ts clarityof line and thematicwork, points
to
the
imminence
of such
laws.
Most
significantly,
n
emerging
principle
of
organization,
described
some
years
ago by
Winfried
Zillig,32
ields
strict
ormal
recurrences
nd
pitch
symmetries
which
should
be
associated,
n the
text,
with
the
concept
of
a
transcendent
order.
Schonberg's
secrecy
with
regard
to the
development
and
consolidation
of his twelve-note
method
was
surely
motivated,
not
by
narrow
pride,
but
by
a natural reluctance
to allow
the
method
to
be
evaluated
in
abstracto,
hat
is,
without
relation
to the
human
and spiritualexperienceout of whichit evolved.
31
"Fantasy,
in contradistinction
o logic,
which
everyone
hould
be
able to
follow,
favors
lack
of
restraint
nd
a
freedom
n
the
manner
of
expression,
ermissible
n
our
day
onlyperhaps
n
dreams,
n dreams
of
future
ulfilment":
ch6nberg,
Tonality
and
Form',
n
Merle
Armitage,
d.,
Schoenberg'
New
York,1937),
p.
260.
32 Winfried
illig,
Notes
on
Arnold
choenberg's
Unfinished
ratorio
"Die
Jakobs-
leiter"
,
The
Score
xv,
I
959),
pp.
7-x6.
436