This was an organization that Schoenberg had established in 1918 to
promote performances of new music at a time when Viennese cultural
life had contracted due to the war, and when avant-garde music such as
his own was badly received by the public—a situation that never sub-
stantially altered. The Society gave weekly concerts of chamber music,
mostly new music, with exceptional amounts of rehearsal time, in some
cases up to fifty hours. Schoenberg’s power over the society was dicta-
torial (it was informally known as the ‘Schoenberg Society’), and
amongst its rules were that no critics were allowed in, and no applause
nor booing nor any other kind of audience response was permitted.
Stein was Vortragsmeisterand acting President when Schoenberg
was abroad in late 1920–early 1921. Whether Popper came to Stein as a
result of joining the Society or the other way around isn’t clear, but
either way, rather than give the young Popper lessons, Stein mainly
seems to have involved him with the Society as a junior helper at
rehearsals. At these rehearsals Popper came to know some works by
Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern intimately. He knew Webern well enough
to converse with him, and admired him as a person if not as a composer.
Popper describes Webern as a “dedicated musician and a simple, lovable
man... .” but adds that “there was not much music to be found in his
modest compositions,” and he reports Webern explaining to him why his
pieces were so short: “he just listened to sounds that came to him, and
he wrote them down; and when no more sounds came, he stopped.”^3
Apart from this, Popper’s links with the Schoenberg circle were not
very close. Another of Schoenberg’s pupils, Lona Truding, who had an
interest in philosophy, remembered Popper at the concerts but described
him as “an outsider in the best sense of the word”: “He came to these
concerts, but he was not in close relationship. I think he wasn’t related
with any of that particular circle.”^4 By 1922, when the Society was
wound up, Popper had decided that a career as a musician was not for
him. Not only that, but aside from his autobiography and a few passing
references in various articles, he did not write about music or any other
aspect of aesthetics in his subsequent career. He did however continue to
compose as a private recreation throughout his life, and what he wrote
was precisely the sort of thing that composers of his generation and later
generally felt they could not do: he wrote in an ‘outmoded’ style—
fugues in the style of J.S. Bach, which he described as his “Platonic
model.”
Popper’s status as an outsider to this avant-garde circle is not very
surprising. He was, he tells us, always musically conservative. He seems
to have joined the Society largely because he recognized the problem of
What Shall We Do After Wagner? 99