yr11_weimar_symphony

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__Arnold Schoenberg__
Symphony Hall You arrive outside the Symphony Hall. Classical music is experiencing a revolution in Weimar Germany. Signing autographs is Arnold Shoenberg, the most famous composer of the period.

You sidle up to the crowd surrounding him, and proceed to viciously elbow your way through the people. You are on the verge of elbowing a balding man with a hooked nose when you suddenly realise it is Shoenberg himself. Blocking out the other people eager for an autograph, you say: ‘Hi! Are you Arnold Schoenberg?’ ‘Ja, that is me,’ he replies. It is lucky that you understand German perfectly. ‘Would you like an autograph?’

Knowing that a genuine Shoenberg autograph will make you a packet in the future, you accept. While he is signing it, you decide to find out more about him. ‘Right. Can you tell me something about your family?’ He looks at you suspiciously, then decides to oblige a fan. ‘Well, my mother Pauline was a piano teacher from Prague, and my father was a shopkeeper from Bratislava,’ he reveals. ‘We lived in the Leopoldstadt district, which used to be a Jewish ghetto.’ ‘Your mother was a piano teacher? Was she the one who taught you music?’ you ask. ‘No, I was self-taught,’ he replies proudly. ‘I only had a few lessons with the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. In my twenties I orchestrated some operettas, then Gustav Mahler took me on as his protegé.’ You politely look impressed. ‘When my wife Mathilde left me for a few months, my style of music changed a bit, and I composed “You lean against a silver willow”,’ he reveals. ‘She came back to me, of course, and the Austrian painter she had been with committed suicide after she returned.’ ‘That’s…interesting,’ you reply. ‘I also have triskaidekaphobia,’ he tells you matter-of-factly. ‘What?’ ‘Fear of the number…er…ten-plus-three,’ he says. ‘I’m terrified of dying during a year that is a multiple of that number.’ ‘Right…’ you say. ‘Could you tell me more about your music?’ ‘A feature of my twelve-tone practice includes hexachordal inversional combinatoriality,’ Arnie replies. ‘Interesting,’ you say. ‘…and what might that be?’ He frowns as if you are a dunce. ‘Well…a form of music,’ he tells you. ‘And what about your most famous works?’ ‘They include my Chamber Symphony N°1 in E major, my //Drei Klavierstüke//, and my second string quarter, third movement,’ he replies. ‘I have also written “ [|Fünf Orchesterstücke in der Originalfassung for orchestra] ”, “ [|Die Glückliche Hand« Drama mit Musik] ”, and “Symphonia a Quattro”. I extended the traditionally opposed German Romantic traditions of Brahms and Wagner. I developed the twelve-tone technique, too. I also invented the term “developing variation.’

Eventually your conversation ends and you have to decide what to do next.

You decide to see what there is in the other side of the room.

The other part of the room is dedicated to atonal music and famous musicians that lived during the Weimar. In that part, there is a man giving an explanation about the atonal music.

“The atonal music is a kind of music that lacks any kind of tonal center. Atonality usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day, and it is basically music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The pre-twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School is a very good example of atonal music, done principally by Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern.”

You then decide to move on, and start looking at the pictures of other musicians and reading about them.


 * < [[image:images.jpg width="226" height="264" align="left"]] ||< [[image:a_webern.jpg width="179" height="234"]] ||< [[image:images_(1).jpg width="194" height="244"]] || [[image:KurtWeill.jpg width="180" height="240"]] ||
 * < Alban Berg ||< Anton Webern ||< Hanns Eisler || Kurt Weill ||

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Go North to the Library Go West to the Art Gallery