August 21st

Arnold Schonberg

Arnold Schonberg was one of the most prominent musical talents to grace the city of Vienna. Schonberg was self-taught and he studied great composers very meticulously. The composers that helped shape his musical developments were Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Leading up to the outbreak of World War I, Schonberg composed some of his most famous works. One of his most famous works is entitled Pierrot Lunaire and was completed in 1912. This is the piece that I chose to listen to in order to gauge whether or not I liked Schonberg’s compositions. The melody seems to consistently be changing through the piece and it doesn’t seem blend together very well throughout. The violin and flute seem to be the most overpowering as the composition goes on. Personally I feel that it tries to incorporate too much changing melodies and it didn't really make for a beautiful, uniform composition. It is kind of hard on the ears because although it is filled with emotion, it just seems to change too abruptly and much too often. It is not as melodious as the music that Strauss composed for Die Fledermaus. That music was beautiful and the singers conveyed that beauty to me as I watched from my seat during the opera.  As I listened to Pierrot Lunaire, the woman singing didn’t seem be accompanying the music, it made the whole performance into a loud consistent noise rather than a performance that I could truly listen to and enjoy. Overall I would have to say that I didn’t really care for Schonberg. I’m not pretending to know anything about music but it really wasn’t pleasant to listen to. It was just something totally different and although it has a very interesting and unique sound, for me I would not want to listen to more Schonberg after listening to Pierrot Lunaire.