Music 3705B Topics in Early Twentieth-Century Music Winter 2018 Schoenberg s Vienna. Instructor: Dr Kevin Mooney Class: M ; W

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1 Music 3705B Topics in Early Twentieth-Century Music Winter 2018 Schoenberg s Vienna Instructor: Dr Kevin Mooney Class: M ; W Office: Talbot College 217 Office hours: By appointment kmooney@uwo.ca Web: Overview Fin-de-siècle Vienna was a hothouse of unrest, whose cultural innovators broke in deliberate and consistent ways from an embattled status quo. The music of Schoenberg arose in this ferment and registers the anxieties and ideals of its time and place. This course will depart from textbook approaches that stress contrasts between Schoenberg s early, middle, and late periods, and instead view his œuvre holistically, as an ongoing exploration of a set of culturally representative and contested values. To understand those values, we shall examine Schoenberg in a series of encounters with leading Jahrhundertwende artists and thinkers. Each encounter will highlight some aspect of Schoenberg s music and show how it both reflected and shaped the main currents of Viennese modernism. Resources The course will be organized around readings, recordings, and other media. It will also use online material from the Arnold Schönberg Center ( Electronic copies of texts and scores will be provided. Links to other resources will be posted on the course web page. Outcomes Students will develop an understanding of technical, conceptual, and aesthetic issues in fin-desiècle modernism. Students will learn to analyze and evaluate representative scholarship. Students will develop written and verbal skills through class presentations and journaling. Students will learn some wonderful music by Schoenberg! Evaluation Participation (15%) I expect you to come prepared and ready to make thoughtful contributions to each class. If you miss classes or are consistently silent, this portion of your grade will be affected. Tests (15%, 20%) An important goal of this course is for you to become intimate with a selection of musical works by Schoenberg. Both tests will assess your ability to identify salient passages from key works and speak to relevant musical and cultural issues. Journal (25%, words) Another important goal of this course is for you to develop your ability to engage critically with academic research. Rather than write a term paper, which often gets pushed to the end of term, I d like you be writing throughout the term in response to what you re reading. You should view your journal as a series of short position papers in which you stake out your point of view in relation to the ideas, arguments, and issued raised in the readings and class discussions. Plan on writing about pages (12 point, double-spaced) each week. 1

2 Team Presentation (25%, 30 minutes) This course will range broadly over music, language, art, architecture, philosophy, and psychology. There should be something here for everyone! Each week we ll consider Schoenberg in relation to some area of fin-de-siècle culture. Your presentation can explore anything relevant to that area, but should not derive primarily from the assigned readings for that week. A successful presentation will blend references to scholarly sources with personal perceptions and judgments. You may use any combination of PowerPoint, CDs, handouts, etc., to make your presentation more effective. Preparation and presentation should be shared equally among team members, and presenters will each receive the same grade. Statement on academic prerequisite Unless you have either the requisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enrol in it, you may be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites. Statement on accommodation for medical illness University policy regarding medical illness can be found here: A downloadable SMC (student medical certificate) can be found here: Documentation is required for all accommodation due to medical illness. This should be submitted to the Associate Dean (Undergraduate), not to the course instructor. Statement on scholastic discipline Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically the definition of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, as found here: Statement on mental health Students who are in emotional/mental distress should refer to for a complete list of options about how to obtain help. 2

3 Schedule Week 1: Schoenberg s Vienna January 8 Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna before 1900 Dank, op. 1 (1898) January 10 & Janik, Allan, and Stephen Toulmin. Culture and Critique: Social Criticism and the Limits of Artistic Expression. In Wittgenstein's Vienna, New York: Simon and Schuster, & Schoenberg, Arnold. New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea (1946). In Style and Idea, ed. by Leonard Stein and trans. by Leo Black, London: Faber and Faber, Orchestral Prelude from Gurre-Lieder (1900/11) Lied der Waldtaube from Gurre-Lieder (1900/11) Week 2: Jugendstil January 15 & Frisch, Walter. Music and Jugendstil. Critical Inquiry 17, no. 1 (1990): & Schoenberg, Arnold. My Evolution. The Musical Quarterly 38, no. 4 (1952): & Berg, Alban. Why is Schoenberg s Music So Difficult to Understand? First String Quartet in D minor, op 7 (1905) Erwartung, op. 2 (1899) January 17 & Bailey, Walter. Programmatic Elements in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg. PhD dissertation. University of Southern California, [pp ] & Swift, Richard. 1/XII/99: Tonal Relations in Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. 19th-Century Music 1, no. 1 (1977): Verklärte Nacht, op. 4 (1899) Week 3: Symbolism January 22 & Puffett, Derrick. 'Music That Echoes Within One' for a Lifetime: Berg's Reception of Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande. Music and Letters 76, no. 2 (1995): Pelleas und Melisande, op. 5 (1903) January 24 Palmer, Peter. Lost Paradises: Music and the Aesthetics of Symbolism. The Musical Times 148, no (2007): Presentation 1 Week 4: Tonal to Atonal January 29 & Rosen, Charles. Schoenberg and Atonality. The Georgia Review 29, no. 2 (1975): & Ross, Alex. Doctor Faust: Schoenberg, Debussy, and Atonality. In The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Leonard Bernstein on Schoenberg (Norton Lectures 1/3) Second String Quartet in F-sharp minor, op 10 (1908) 3

4 January 31 & Huneker, James. Schoenberg, Musical Anarchist, Who Has Upset Europe. The New York Times, January 19, The Book of the Hanging Gardens, op. 15 (1908-9) [Songs 1 8] Three Piano Pieces, op. 11 (1909) Presentation 2 Week 5: Kraus and Language February 5 & Goehr, Alexander. Schoenberg and Karl Kraus: The Idea Behind the Music. Music Analysis 4, no. 1 (1985): & Lessem, Alan. Music and Text in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg: The Critical Years, PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, [pp ] & Timms, Edward. Journalism, Duplicity and Contrasts. In Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna, New Haven: Yale University Press,1986. The Book of the Hanging Gardens, op. 15 (1908-9) [Songs 9 15] February 7 & Kraus, Karl. Dicta and Contradicta. Translated by Jonathan McVity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [pp ] Presentation 3 Week 6: Kandinsky and Der blaue Reiter February 12 & Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art [excerpt]. In Art in Theory, : An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc., & Newman, Ernest. À Propos of Schönberg's Five Orchestral Pieces. The Musical Times 55, no. 852 (1914): & Schoenberg, Arnold. The Relationship to the Text (1912). In Style and Idea, ed. by Leonard Stein and trans. by Leo Black, London: Faber and Faber, Five Orchestral Pieces, op. 16 (1909/22) Herzgewächse, op. 20 (1911) Presentation 4 February 14 > Test 1 Reading Week (February 19-23) Week 7: Freud and the Unconscious Mind February 26 & Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Translated and edited by James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, [Biographical Introduction by Peter Gay; First Lecture] Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19 (1911) Presentation 5 4

5 February 28 & Carpenter, Alexander. Schoenberg s Vienna, Freud s Vienna: Re-Examining the Connections Between the Monodrama Erwartung and the Early History of Psychoanalysis. The Musical Quarterly 93, no. 1 (2010): Erwartung, op. 17 (1909) Presentation 6 Week 8: Kokoschka and Expression March 5 & Schorske, Carl E. Explosion in the Garden: Kokoschka and Schoenberg. In Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, New York: Vintage Books, Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (1921) March 7 & Schoenberg, Arnold. On Painting, Technique, and Education; On Theory and Painting. In A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life, ed. by Joseph Auner, 78 81; New Haven: Yale University Press, Presentation 7 Week 9: Serialism and Neo-Classicism March 12 & Schoenberg, Arnold. Twelve-Tone Composition (1923). In Style and Idea, ed. by Leonard Stein and trans. by Leo Black, London: Faber and Faber, & Schoenberg, Arnold. Composition with Twelve Tones (1941). In Style and Idea, ed. by Leonard Stein and trans. by Leo Black, London: Faber and Faber, Variations for Orchestra, op. 31 ( ) March 14 & Lessem, Alan. Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Neo-Classicism: The Issues Reexamined. The Musical Quarterly 68, no. 4 (1982): Suite, op. 29 ( ) Presentation 8 Week 10: Loos and Ornament March 19 & Loos, Adolph. Ornament and Crime. In Crime and Ornament: The Arts and Popular Culture in the Shadow of Adolph Loos, edited by Bernie Miller and Melony Ward, 29 36, Toronto: YYZ Books, & Watkins, Holly. Schoenberg's Interior Designs. Journal of the American Musicological Society 61, no. 1 (2008): [Read pp ] Piano Suite, op. 25 ( ) March 21 & Timms, Edward. Façade and Function: The Alliance with Adolf Loos. In Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna, New Haven: Yale University Press,1986. Presentation 9 5

6 Week 11: Wittgenstein and the Unsayable March 26 & Szabados, Béla. Wittgenstein and Musical Formalism. Philosophy 81, no. 318 (2006): & Wright, James. Schoenberg, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. Bern: Peter Lang, [pp ] March 28 & Steiner, George. Schoenberg s Moses and Aaron. Encounter 24, no. 6 (1965): Moses und Aron ( ) Presentation 10 Week 12: Religion and Representation April 2 & Brown, Julie. Schoenberg as Christ. In Schoenberg and Redemption, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, & Covach, John. The Sources of Schoenberg's Aesthetic Theology. 19th-Century Music 19, no. 3 (1996): Moses und Aron ( ) Presentation 11 April 4 > Test 2 Week 13: Schoenberg s Way April 9 & Smith, Joan Allen. Schoenberg's Way. Perspectives of New Music 18, no. 1 (1979): & Rufer, Josef. Schoenberg Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Perspectives of New Music 16, no. 1 (1977): April 11 Presentation 12 6