The Classical Music Book

242

U

ntil the end of the 19th

century, music had been

largely dictated by a tonal

system, in which keys, chords, and

scales complemented each other to

create melody and harmony that

were pleasing to the ear. Even

where dissonant, or unsettling,

passages were used in a piece of

music, it was still resolved onto a

consonant, or harmonious, chord.

The seeds for the unraveling

of this tonal tradition were sown

by Richard Wagner. In his operas,

especially Tristan und Isolde (1859),

Wagner undermined the concept of

music written in one key by moving

through a range of different, often

unrelated, keys, without settling on

any one, and introducing dissonant

chords for dramatic effect. A few

decades later, Arnold Schoenberg

and other composers, including

Alexander Scriabin and Béla

Bartók, started to experiment

further, escaping from traditional

harmony, and chords and melodies

based on diatonic (major and minor)

scales, instead exploring more

dissonant 12-note chromatic scales.

The Austrian composer and critic

Joseph Marx coined the term

“atonality” for this music, which

had no recognizable tonality, or key.

Schoenberg gave it full rein in the

works of his middle period (roughly

1908–1921), of which Pierrot lunaire

is arguably the most influential.

Tonality taken to the limit

The use of chromatic scales to

create new harmonies had become

the norm among composers at the

end of the 19th century, especially

in Austria and Germany. But in

the early years of the new century,

Schoenberg came to realize that

tonality, the system of major and

minor scales that had formed the

basis of Western music since

PIERROT LUNAIRE, OP. 21

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Atonality

BEFORE

1865 Richard Wagner’s opera

Tristan und Isolde is first

performed—a turning point in

the move away from tonality.

1894 French composer Claude

Debussy uses ambiguous

harmonies and fluid harmonic

progressions in his Prélude à

l’après-midi d’un faune.

1899 Schoenberg stretches

the bounds of tonality to its

limits in his string sextet

Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.

AFTER

1917–1922 In his Five Sacred

Songs, Op. 15, Austrian

composer Anton Webern uses

a similar small ensemble to

that of Pierrot lunaire and

develops many of the same

compositional techniques.

1921–1923 The Suite for

Piano, Op. 25, is the first of

Schoenberg’s works to use

his 12-tone serial method

of composition throughout.

1922 French composer Edgard

Va rèse’s Offrandes for soprano

and chamber orchestra has its

premiere in New York.

1965 An ensemble, the Pierrot

Players, later known as the

Fires of London, is founded to

perform Pierrot lunaire and

other new works.

Arnold Schoenberg poses with

his second wife, Gertrud, and their

children, in 1950. Gertrud wrote the

libretto for Schoenberg’s one-act opera

Von heute auf morgen (1928–1930).

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