Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg stands at the crossroads of music as one of the first composers to abandon functional harmony and venture into the world of atonality and twelve-tone music. Together with Berg and Webern, he formed the Second Viennese School that was at the very forefront of the avant-garde movement in music. Their works were often the cause of scandal and were later banned by the Nazis. But by then the tide could not be held back, and Schoenberg's technique and music have left their mark on the whole of the 20th century, encouraging other composers to follow in his footsteps. He was largely self-taught as a composer and began his career conducting choirs in Vienna. It was there that he began his vast cantata Gurrelieder, which made such an impression on Richard Strauss, when he saw the work in draft, that he arranged for Schoenberg to be awarded the 1902 Liszt Scholarship and to be given a teaching position at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. One product of his first Berlin sojourn was his vast symphonic poem, Pelleas und Melisande, with which he bade farewell to tonality. On his return to Vienna, Schoenberg began to take private composition pupils, chief among whom were Webern and Berg. In spite of the hostile reception accorded to such works as the Second String Quartet, Pierrot lunaire and Erwartung, Schoenberg refused to be discouraged. He left Germany with the rise of Nazism and settled in America, teaching first in New York and Boston and, from 1936, at the University of California in Los Angeles, where he remained until his death, his activities as a composer, theorist, and teacher undiminished.