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CYCLIC COHERENCE IN SCHOENBERG'S EARLY WALTZES FOR STRING ORCHESTRA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2013

Daniel Guberman
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Abstract

In 1897 Schoenberg composed an apparently unfinished set of waltzes, which thus far has been dismissed as juvenilia. In this article I explore how the waltzes reflect many aspects of Schoenberg's mature thought about large-scale tonality, focusing on two interrelated concepts, the tonal problem and monotonality. Examination of the waltzes through Schoenberg's own analytical methods reveals a series of closely interrelated pieces that follow a carefully planned progression through key areas making use of frequent intertextual references between waltzes. After demonstrating the connexions and progression of the waltzes, I propose that the set is not in fact incomplete, but that the tenth waltz offers a functional conclusion to the set as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Volume 67 , Issue 265 , July 2013 , pp. 57 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 For a discussion of the role of such oppositions in Schoenberg's music and thought see Cherlin, Michael, ‘Dialectical Opposition in Schoenberg's Musical Thought’, Music Theory Spectrum 22, no. 2 (2000), 157–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Schoenberg's love of the waltz is well documented through his compositions and his teachings. Before this set, he wrote the Alliance Waltzer some time around 1882, one of his earliest surviving attempts at composition, and he turned to the waltz in the opus 23 Piano Suite to give structure to one of his first 12-tone compositions. In his teachings, Schoenberg analyzed Johann Strauss's ‘On the Beautiful Blue Danube’ more than any other work (examples may be found throughout Style and Idea). He also made chamber ensemble arrangements of Strauss's Rosen aus dem Suden, Lagunenwalzer and Kaiserwalzer.

3 Frisch, Walter, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893–1908 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

4 Severine Neff, ‘“A Kernel from the Tree of Life”: Remarks on Schoenberg's Earliest Waltzes’, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center (Forthcoming).

5 Watkins, Holly, ‘Schoenberg's Interior Designs’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 61, no. 1 (2001), 135Google Scholar.

6 Schoenberg, Arnold, Structural Functions of Harmony, revised edition by Stein, Leonard (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969)Google Scholar, 19.

7 From the essay ‘My Subject: Beauty and Logic in Music’, reprinted in Schoenberg, Arnold, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation, edited, translated, and with a commentary by Carpenter, Patricia and Neff, Severine (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 63Google Scholar.

8 Only one copy of the waltzes survives, held by the Arnold Schoenberg Center, and the few changes are written directly into the score.

9 Frisch, Early Works, 24.