Stravinsky vs. Schoenberg

[Eziana Altaire]

Everyone at my school recently wrote a paper discussing these two great composers. They had to support one and derail the other.

Not only was I appalled that a history prof at a conservatory would require you to bash another composer for the purpose of educational integrity....wtf.....but I was horrified by some peoples' opinions!

One girl literally said "Stravinsky isn't a real composer. He just takes other peoples' stuff and pieces them together."

I hope she got an F-, that is one of the most unsupported, ignorant, disorganized theses I have ever heard. I wanted to give her the stink eye but she was too busy ranting to someone to notice my death glares.

I love both composers, I would rather listen to Stravinsky because that's just the harmony I prefer. But to base an argument to support Schoenberg as a better composer simply on the fact that he innovated new ways of composing (serialism-12 tone series), that doesn't make him a better composer. It's an opinion, opinion is subjective.

What are your opinions?

I won't judge too much wink

-B  

[Gjornia X]

At first hearing of Transfigured Night, I wanted to die. I wanted to be deaf. I wanted to do witchcraft, raise the man from the grave just so that I could put him there again.

Simply, I was offended.

And I love "Firebird", and "Le Sacre du Printemps" who in their right mind would say it's unmusical?

But! as I learned about John Cage and indulged more deeply my infatuation with all things Adams and Glass (who played in my hometown last year! whee )--and then learning to love Gubaidulina, though her works for string ensemble are hard for me NOT to like--my apprecaition and understanding of Schoenberg deepened.

I listened to his works again and studied his artwork (yes! He was also a painter) and it just...made sense. His music delved beyond the superficial layer of sonority and I could "hear" his perceptions of the industrialized world, of urban life.

No, his music is not immediately accessible (did I mention that I wanted to re-kill him before), but it's cathartic and unapologetically gritty, much like the stresses brought on by WWI.

To understand his music, as listeners we must understand him, or else we will suffer from what I suffered from--biased assumption.

He marked the beginning. In the baroque era no one cared for composers. You made more money by making music than composing, and until the 1600's no one really cataloged works...again, no one cared so much. It was all about the music. Through the classical and romantic era, it was all about appealing to the aristocrats and bourgeoisie.

And though composers gradually grew in terms of notoriety, it was still about the music as a stand-alone life form.

I do think that the rise of the "impressionist" style of composition, that which traces its lineage to early baroque of coupling text with sound, inevitably lead to composers more boldly speaking about themselves through music. And Schoenberg's music and many 20th century composers talk frankly about themselves, their lives, and the world's effect on them specifically through music. Schoenberg's a special case. It was incredibly therapeutic for him and he was effective and knew its structure intimately enough to exploit the untapped resource that birthed the 12 tone method.

Anyway, I've rattled too long. I very much consume in mass quantities tonal and ambient music and know its immediate comprehension (and mass repetition ) plays a large part in their fame. However, I greatly appreciate the depth that Schoenberg and his predecessors have achieved. His music touches a raw nerve beyond mere emotion and into the deep of the human psyche.