3. Expressionism and Serialism

While the Impressionist composers attempted to move further away from Romantic forms and Romantic harmony, some Expressionist composers succeeded in completely eliminating harmony and tonal melody (melody based on a particular key) from their music. The resultant sounds were often not very melodically and harmonically pleasant to hear and therefore, the Expressionist style of music did not (and still does not) appeal to the majority of audiences. The name of this style period can be confusing for some. The Expressionist period was not a time when composers sought to express themselves emotionally in a romantic, beautiful, or programmatic way. Due to the nature of the sounds produced by the system of composition described below, Expressionism seems more appropriate for evoking more extreme, and sometimes even harsh, emotions. Using this experimental style of writing, composers such as Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) attempted to intentionally eliminate what we call tonality—music that is based on scales and the progression (movement) of chords from one to another.

In Edward Munch’s famous painting, The Scream (Figure 7.3), we see an excellent example of the parallel movement of expressionism taking place in the visual arts. Expressionists looked inward, specifically to the anxiety they felt towards the outside world. This was in stark contrast to the impressionists, who looked to the beauty of nature for inspiration. Expressionist paintings relied instead on stark colors and harsh swirling brushstrokes to convey the artist’s reaction to the ugliness of the modern world. Abstract Expressionism took this concept to a greater extreme, by abandoning shape altogether for pure abstraction. This style is typified by the works of the American painter Jackson Pollock (Figure 7.4).

Many of the early works of Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) exemplified an expressionistic musical style. He is most famous for his experiments with atonality, that is, music without a tonal center. His music was highly dissonant and sounded quite radical when compared to earlier music, which utilized dissonance only as a means to eventually return to the stasis of consonance. Schoenberg saw dissonance not as a means to an end, but as the end itself. His music invited the listeners to revel in various levels of dissonance, and many were never able to adjust.

Born in Austria, and of Jewish descent, Schoenberg was already composing by the age of nine. While in his teens, he studied composition with the Austrian composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky. In 1901 he moved to Berlin where he was befriended and mentored by the German composer Richard Strauss. Three years later in 1903, Schoenberg returned to Austria and began a long association with the renowned composer Gustav Mahler who became one of his strongest supporters.

In 1909, Schoenberg composed the first complete work that completely did away with tonality. This piano composition was one of three that together are listed as his Opus 11 and was the first piece we now refer to as being completely atonal (without tonality). Schoenberg’s most important atonal compositions include: Five Orchestral Pieces (1909), Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot, 1912), Die Jakobsleiter (Jacob’s Ladder, 1917, unfinished), Die glückliche Hand (The Lucky Hand, 1924), and Erwartung (Expectation, 1924) for soprano and orchestra.

Schoenberg famously developed a system whereby the twelve notes of the chromatic scale were randomly organized into scale units that he called the twelve-tone row. These rows could then be further “serialized” (organized in random fashion) by a number of different techniques. This idea of assigning values to musical information is called serialism. In 1921 Schoenberg composed his Suite for Piano Op. 25, the first composition written using the 12-tone method. Each 12-tone composition is built from a series of 12 different pitches that may be arranged in a number of different ways. The original row may be played forwards, backwards (retrograde), upside down (inverted), and backwards and inverted (retrograde inversion). All of the melodies and harmonies in a 12-tone piece must be derived in some way from the original row or from fragments of the original row.

In 1925 Schoenberg was hired by the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin to teach composition, and he would most likely have continued his career as teacher and composer in Europe were it not for the rise of the Nazi party and their subsequent persecution of European Jews. In 1933 he resigned from the Academy and moved first to Paris and then to Boston. In 1934 he settled in California and held teaching positions first at the University of Southern California (1935–36) and then the University of Central Los Angeles (1936–44).

Focus Composition: A Survivor from Warsaw by Arnold Schoenberg

After immigrating to the United States, Schoenberg reconnected with the Jewish faith he had abandoned as a young man. The sadness he felt because of the personal accounts of the horrible treatment experienced by so many Jews during World War II led to his composition of A Survivor from Warsaw, which was composed for orchestra, male chorus, and a narrator. The piece was entirely built on a twelve-tone row and was completed in September 1947. This important work is Schoenberg’s dramatization of a tragic story he heard from surviving Polish Jews who were victims of Nazi atrocities during World War II. Schoenberg created a story about a number of Jews who survived the war by living in the sewers of Warsaw. Interestingly, among Schoenberg’s many and very specific performance instructions is the request that the narrator not attempt to sing his part throughout the performance.

Schoenberg’s ideas were further developed by his two students, Alban Berg (1885–1935) and Anton Webern (1883–1945). Together, the three came to be known as the Second Viennese School, in reference to the first Viennese School, which consisted of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Born in Vienna, Alban Berg began studying with Schoenberg at the age of 19 and soon became known for his unique compositional style, which fused post-romantic concepts with Schoenberg’s cutting edge twelve-tone techniques. Heavily influenced by Richard Wagner, Berg held on to techniques such as the leitmotif and sought to couch his harmonic ideas in tried-and-true forms such as the sonata and fugue. Although he composed many notable pieces, such as his Violin Concerto and his unfinished opera Lulu, he initially made his fame with Wozzeck, an opera based on the drama Woyzeck by German playwright Georg Buchner. Berg served during World War I, and much of Wozzeck was composed in 1917, during a period of leave from the Austro-Hungarian Army. The opera consists of three acts, each with five scenes organized around the variations of a musical idea, such as the variations of a theme, a chord, or a rhythmic pattern. Berg himself adapted the libretto from Buchner’s original play.

Focus Composition: Act III, Scene 2, from Wozzeck by Alban Berg

The story of the opera centers on the title character Wozzeck. Like the main character in many romantic operas, he is a tragic figure. However, whereas the operas of the 19th century often depicted gods and mythical figures, the story of Wozzeck is couched in a sense of realism and addresses the type of societal problems that Berg may himself have encountered during World War I, such as apathy and human cruelty. The character of Wozzeck is that of a pitiful and unremarkable soldier who is tormented by his captain, and used for and subjected to medical experiments by a sadistic doctor. Wozzeck, who is often given to hallucinations, eventually goes mad and kills his love interest, Marie, who has been unfaithful. The opera ends after Wozzeck drowns, trying to clean the murder weapon in a pond and wading out too far.