你好 Few composers have ever presented as radically new an idea as Schoenberg did with what he called his "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Related Only to Each Other." In it, he broke with a system of tonal organization that had developed over hundreds of years and had become a hallmark of Western music.

Schoenberg began violin lessons when he was eight and almost immediately started composing, though he had no formal training until he was in his late teens, when Zemlinsky became his teacher and friend (in 1910 he married Zemlinsky's sister). His first acknowledged works date from the turn of the century and include the string sextet Verklärte Nacht as well as some songs, all showing influences from Brahms, Wagner and Wolf.

In 1901-3 he was in Berlin as a cabaret musician and teacher, and there he wrote the symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande, pressing the Straussian model towards denser thematic argument and contrapuntal richness. He then returned to Vienna and began taking private pupils, Berg and Webern being among the first. He also moved rapidly forwards in his musical style.

Schoenberg's early music was clearly marked by the style of the late nineteenth century, and influences of Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, and others can be seen in pieces such as his Verklärte Nacht. But as his compositional style developed, it became more concise and contrapuntally intricate. At the same time, Schoenberg's chromaticism intensified to the point that any strong tonal focus disappeared. The music of this period is also marked by a style that is referred to as expressionist, and Schoenberg had contact with, and a great deal of admiration for, the expressionist painters and writers (Schoenberg himself painted in an Expressionist style). These ideals can be seen in the piece’s dark and dreamlike atmosphere. The kinds of internal conflicts we associate with Freud and his school of psychoanalysis are played out in exquisite musical detail.

To understand why Schoenberg composed the music that he did, it is useful to begin with his own statement: "Had times been 'normal' (before and after World War I) then the music of our time would have been very different."

Schoenberg, as a intellectual, was passionately committed to the concept of unshaken adherence to an "Idea" and the pursuance of Truth. He saw the development of music accelerating through the works of Wagner, Strauss and Mahler to a state of total exhaustion. If music was to get a needed shot in the arm, regain a genuine and valid simplicity of expression, as in the music of his beloved Mozart and Schubert, the language must be renewed.

Much of his work, however, was not well received. In 1907 his Chamber Symphony No. 1 was premiered. The audience was small, and the reaction to the work lukewarm. When it was played again, however, in a 1913 concert which also included works by Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Alexander von Zemlinsky, some of the audience began to shout out abuse. Later in the concert, during a performance of some songs by Berg, fighting broke out, and the police had to be called in. Schoenberg's music had made a break from tonality, which greatly polarized responses to it: his followers and students saw him as one of the most important figures in music, while critics hated his work, on the whole.

In 1933 he was forced, as a Jew, to leave Berlin. Ironically, he had converted to Lutheranism in 1898, but after fleeing to Paris he renounced the Christian faith and returned to Judaism. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States and in 1936 began teaching at UCLA. In Brentwood, Los Angeles, where he lived until his death in 1951.he wrote several works in which he returned to keyed harmony, but in a very distinctive way, not simply re-using classical harmony. This was in accordance with his belief that his music evolved naturally out of the past. One of his sayings was "my music is not really modern, just badly played."

What’s in our player now: Schoenberg: Trasnfigured Night (Verklarte Nacht) - Berlin Philharmic, Herbert von Karajan, cond.

Originally written for a sextet of two viiolins, two violas and two cellos, Verklärte Nacht was arranged by the composer for string orchestra in l943. It is a highly chromatic but still tonal work created before Schoenberg developed his 12-tone system of composition. A translation of the Richard Dehmel poem on which the instrumental work is based appears in the note booklet in three languages. It concerns a young couple in love walking in the moonlite woods. The woman confesses to the man that she is pregnant but not by him. The man then speaks and tells her not to let that burden her soul - that he accepts her regardless. This point is marked in the score with a glorious transition from minor to major as though the moon comes out from behind a cloud.

This masterpiece is tonal but stretches the tonal system about as far as it (and Romanticism) can go. Written for only 15 instruments, it was composed by Schoenberg at the same time Mahler was working on his Symphony of a Thousand - his Eighth. Schoenberg wanted to divorce himself from ornamentation, and he kept his symphony to the bare essentials. The work is under 22 minutes length. Excellent playing on both selections; the strings on the Transfigured Night are silky natural-sounding even on peaks.

This is the kind of music, you either hate or you love. I love it.