JM 2015 32 2 279

“For the serious listeners who swear neither at nor by Schoenberg”: Music Criticism, the
Great War, and the Dawning of a New Attitude Toward Schoenberg and Ultra-Modern
Music in New York City
Author(s): Walter B. Bailey
Source: The Journal of Musicology , Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring 2015), pp. 279-322
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2015.32.2.279
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to The Journal of Musicology
This content downloaded from

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
‘‘For the serious listeners
who swear neither at nor
by Schoenberg’’: Music
Criticism, the Great War,
and the Dawning of
a New Attitude Toward
Schoenberg and
Ultra-Modern Music
in New York City
279
W A L T E R B. BA I L E Y
T
here is still much to learn about the reception
of Schoenberg’s music in the United States before 1933. Until recently
the consensus was that his music was neither known nor performed—
and certainly not appreciated—before he arrived in the United States
that year. So one might be surprised to discover that by about 1910 his
work was actually discussed with some frequency, by 1914 it had begun to
be played, and by 1917, when the United States entered into the Great
War, it had generated such sustained interest that critics in New York City
bemoaned the absence of performances of Schoenberg’s most notorious
compositions. Although recent scholarship has framed this larger pic-
ture of Schoenberg’s early reception very effectively, certain important
The author wishes to thank the anonymous readers of the Journal

of Musicology for their insightful comments, which helped to focus
this article.
The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 32, Issue 2, pp. 279–322, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2015
by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permis-
sion to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/JM.2015.32.2.279

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
details remain unexplored. One of these concerns the new response that
Schoenberg elicited in New York City’s musical press at the end of the
Great War. Routinely recognized before 1917 as the single most impor-
tant composer of challenging contemporary music, Schoenberg was
viewed after the war as just one—and certainly not the most impor-
tant—of a group of similarly challenging composers. The press’s new
assessment of Schoenberg reflected not only a vastly increased familiarity
with his music, but also the growing credibility of the avant-garde music
that he had come to represent in the United States. Drawing on primary
sources dating from 1914 to 1922, this article will explain the significance
of this new attitude toward Schoenberg and what was at the time known
as ‘‘ultra-modern music.’’
The largest entry to date in the body of scholarship concerning
Schoenberg’s reception in the United States is Sabine Feisst’s Schoenberg
in America, which covers many aspects of Schoenberg’s engagement with
America, from the first references to his music through his posthumous
reputation.1 Feisst corrects many common misconceptions but leaves
unexplored certain details of Schoenberg’s American pre-history. 2
She does not discuss, for example, the press’s new attitude toward
280 Schoenberg after the Great War. Despite the undoubted value of Feisst’s
book, there is more of the story to tell, more foreground to illustrate.
Two articles embarked on this topic before Feisst’s book: in 1994 David
Metzer thoroughly explored the reception of the New York premiere
of Pierrot lunaire in 1923; in 2008 I fleshed out the prehistory and impact
of the first performance of a major work by Schoenberg in New York
City—the String Quartet, No. 1 in D Minor, op. 7—in 1914.3 These articles
invite us to fill in the chronological gap between them.4
1
Sabine M. Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (New York: Oxford,
2011).
2
Feisst’s book devotes fewer than ten pages to the reception of Schoenberg’s music
before 1920. An earlier, shorter overview of a more focused time frame, devotes about five
pages to the topic. Sabine M. Feisst, ‘‘Zur Rezeption von Schönbergs Schaffen in Amerika
vor 1933,’’ Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 4 (2002): 279–91. Both works provide an
overview of Schoenberg’s early reception with representative quotations from newspapers
and music magazines, focusing on performances and performers. Additionally, the section
‘‘Schoenberg Explained and Contextualized’’ in the second chapter of Schoenberg’s New
World (pp. 31–36) surveys the perspectives of Schoenberg’s supporters and detractors as
published in American publications between 1914 and 1931.
3
David Metzer, ‘‘The New York Reception of Pierrot lunaire: The 1923 Premiere and
Its Aftermath,’’ Musical Quarterly 78, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 669–99; Walter B. Bailey, ‘‘‘Will
Schoenberg Be a New York Fad?’: The 1914 American Premiere of Schoenberg’s String
Quartet in D Minor,’’ American Music 26, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 37–73.
4
Important general studies that touch on the reception of Schoenberg’s music in
New York also invite supplementation. Carol Oja’s study provides a compelling overview
of the arrival of ‘‘European Modernism’’ in the United States during the 1910s but does
not address Schoenberg’s new status in the press in the early 1920s. Carol Oja, Making

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
Because scholars of early twentieth-century American music have

focused their attentions largely on the 1920s rather than on the previous
decade, we know little about musical culture in New York City just before,
during, and immediately after the Great War. Although the draw of the
1920s—a decade that provides a thriving new-music scene encompassing
a significant number of American composers, performers, and advo-
cates—is obvious, the preceding ‘‘mysterious Paleolithic period of Amer-
ican modernist music,’’ as Carol Oja has labeled it, offers its own
tantalizing realities.5 It was during the 1910s that what would eventually
be known as musical modernism took root in New York City, making its
flowering during the 1920s possible.6 Conveniently, one of the important
factors in the advancement of new music during the 1920s was already in
place by 1910: a proactive musical press that fostered the public’s thirst
for knowledge about the latest trends in music. The musical landscape
depicted in newspapers, music magazines, and general interest period-
icals during this earlier decade, however, contrasts with that of the 1920s.
Before the 1920s, the press focused on European performances as
a means of placing local musical events in perspective, and, in a nod to
the city’s traditions dating back to the 1840s, promoted a general rever-
ence for German music. By about 1920 it encompassed a more egalitar- 281
ian approach to music by composers of different nationalities, including
Americans, and no longer favored German music.
During the pre-war period, music perceived to be especially new and
different figured prominently in the musical press, and although critics
did not always agree on how to label it, they seemed to concur that
‘‘modern’’—the term most recently applied to the music of Richard
Strauss and Claude Debussy—was insufficient. ‘‘Ultra-modern,’’ ‘‘futur-
ist,’’ and ‘‘modernist’’ became the preferred labels, even though some
critics persisted in using ‘‘modern.’’ No matter how it was labeled, how-
ever, this ultra-modern music was almost always foreign: few American
composers worked in this vein and the compositions of those who did
were slow to reach the public. Charles Ives, for example, had written
a significant body of what could be labeled ultra-modern music, but his
-
Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000).
5
Carol Oja coined this colorful descriptive phrase in her Making Music Modern, 11.
For Oja modernism is an ‘‘imprecise’’ term that referred at the time to a ‘‘kaleidoscope of
musical styles’’ that stood for ‘‘iconoclastic, irreverent innovation, sometimes irreconcilable
with the historic traditions that preceded it.’’ Ibid., 4.
6
Denise von Glahn and Michael Broyles, ‘‘Musical Modernism Before it Began: Leo
Ornstein and a Case for Revisionist History,’’ Journal of the Society for American Music 1, no. 1
(February 2007): 29–55. Von Glahn and Broyles use the term modernism ‘‘to refer to
movements in the various arts in the early twentieth century characterized principally by
a break or an attempt to break away from nineteenth-century conventions’’ (ibid., 29n1).

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
compositions were so rarely performed that almost no one knew of them.

Even Edgard Varèse, another composer who would be identified with
American ultra-modernists in the 1920s, had none of his compositions
performed in New York until after 1920, even though he had established
himself there in the 1910s as a conductor and advocate for ultra-modern
music. Indeed, during the 1910s the only significant U.S. composer who
could be considered equal to his European avant-garde colleagues was
Leo Ornstein, the so-called ‘‘wild man’’ of music.7 Ornstein’s fame as
a pianist and composer was short-lived but widespread: he toured
throughout the United States and played before packed houses for about
six years beginning in 1915. He programmed his own compositions on
his recitals but also works by other composers, including Schoenberg.8 In
New York City he enjoyed the support of a small circle of music lovers,
including Paul Rosenfeld and Clair Reis, who, inspired by recent trips to
Europe, wanted to make American audiences aware of ultra-modern
music.9 For them promoting Ornstein was a means to this end. Through
his connections with Alfred Stieglitz and his circle, Ornstein was also
associated with supporters of modern literature and art.10
Although it has been said that by 1918 Ornstein was ‘‘possibly the most
282 notorious musician in America,’’11 it is important to acknowledge that the
compositional aspect of that notoriety was initially defined in terms of
Schoenberg. On the occasion of Ornstein’s debut recitals in New York in
1915, a critic for the Musical Courier observed not only that Ornstein had
‘‘aroused considerable discussion . . . by his ultra-modern tendencies’’ in
his earlier performances in Europe, but also—and more specifically—that
‘‘he has been said to ‘out-Schoenberg Schoenberg.’’12 As a performer, aside
from the novelty of his own piano pieces, he was praised for giving New York
‘‘its first taste of the real Schoenberg’’ by playing the Three Piano Pieces,
7
‘‘Wild man’’ Leo Ornstein (1893–2002), pianist and composer, arrived in New York
City in 1907. Born in Ukraine and trained initially in St. Petersburg, he continued his
education in New York City. In 1914 he gave recitals in Paris and London before making his
New York debut. He concertized mainly between 1915 and 1921 and then gradually
dropped out of the new music scene. Substantial studies on Ornstein include a chapter in
Oja, Making Music Modern, 11–24, and the more recent book by Michael Broyles and Denise
von Glahn, Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 2007).
8
The program of Ornstein’s first recital in New York in 1915 included works by
Ornstein, Schoenberg, Scriabin, Ravel, Grainger, and Cyril Scott. Schoenberg’s Three
Piano Pieces, op. 11, were programmed on this first recital; Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano
Pieces, op. 19, were programmed on his second recital.
9
Von Glahn and Broyles, ‘‘Musical Modernism Before it Began,’’ 43.
10
Ibid., 34.
11
Ibid., 32.
12
‘‘Leo Ornstein Discusses Futuristic Music,’’ Musical Courier (24 March 1915): 30
(unsigned article).

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
op. 11.13 Moreover, at least one critic expressed his preference for Schoen-
berg’s piano pieces over Ornstein’s own on Ornstein’s recital:
The general impression left by this program was one simply of weari-
ness; the program itself was too long and there was very little on it that
was attractive. Among the best, Ornstein’s compositions must certainly
be mentioned. . . . But to the taste of the present chronicler (and surely
in these ultramodern fantasies there can be no criterion but one’s own
taste, for they entirely defy tradition) the most interesting and impres-
sive works were the three piano pieces by Schoenberg.14
As a performer present on the scene, Ornstein was for a time favored by

the press, but interest in Schoenberg’s music predated and outlasted
interest in Ornstein’s compositions.15 Nevertheless, Ornstein played
a key role in establishing ultra-modern music in New York City and
contributed significantly to the reception of Schoenberg’s music there.
In the absence of a cadre of resident ultra-modern composers and
a substantial body of homegrown avant-garde works, adventurous music
lovers in New York City directed their attention to Europe. Initially, since
they could not hear the music in their own city, they made do with
283
critiques of European performances, some of which appeared in local
newspapers. By and large, however, weekly and monthly music maga-
zines, such as Musical America, Musical Leader, Etude, and Musical Courier,
provided a larger and more detailed body of information about recent
music, as did periodicals not geared exclusively to music, including Van-
ity Fair, The Dial, and The Nation.16 The approach of each of these three
types of publications was different. Although newspapers were in the
business of delivering ‘‘news,’’ several New York newspapers employed
music critics who took it upon themselves to edify their readers regarding
the correct manner of performing and appreciating classical music, and
to instill in them the relative value of certain composers and musical
styles.17 Music magazines, on the other hand, took the education and
13
‘‘Mr. Ornstein deserves a vote of thanks for giving New York its first taste of the real
Schoenberg.’’ A. Walter Kramer, ‘‘Ornstein Plays His Own Music,’’ Musical America 21, no.
13 (30 January 1915): 43.
14
‘‘Very Modern Music,’’ Musical Courier (3 February 1915): 23.
15
Von Glahn and Broyles conclude that Ornstein’s success was due to the fact that he was
a performer. Von Glahn and Broyles, ‘‘Musical Modernism Before it Began,’’ 33.
16
The majority of these publications, especially the music magazines, are unindexed,
and some are not widely accessible. The archive of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna
does not have a systematic documentation of the reception of Schoenberg’s music in the
United States before 1930, but instead contains less than a dozen clippings that Schoen-
berg held in his personal collection.
17
For further information on these music critics, see Barbara Mueser, ‘‘The Criticism
of New Music in New York: 1919–1929’’ (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1975), 42–
102.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
dedication of their readers for granted and provided broader and less
condescending coverage of music and musical issues. With their inter-
national perspective, they promoted not only the music itself but also
ideas about the music formed in Europe and Great Britain.18 Non-
musical magazines offered still wider coverage with discussions of music
in the context of larger movements in the arts; they typically identified
rising or changing artistic trends in a manner appealing to musicians and
non-musicians alike.19 Such publications reached a small but influential
audience of the intellectual and artistic elite that knew more about
painting and literature than it did about music.20 Elite or otherwise, the
audience for new music had ample material to read in these different
types of publications. Collectively, these writings were essential tools for
the dissemination of ultra-modern European music in New York well
before it developed an aural profile there. Even after a number of Amer-
ican composers found their own ultra-modern voices in the early 1920s,
such publications continued to contribute to the musical public’s appre-
ciation of this music.21
Although newspapers and more generally themed magazines are still
with us today, music magazines such as those that informed New Yorkers
284 about recent European works no longer exist and therefore warrant expla-
nation. With large subscriber bases and comprehensive coverage of art
18
For example, British critiques of performances in London were often quoted or
reprinted in American music magazines. As these critics refined their judgments of modern
music, taking their cue from approaches developed by the art critic Roger Fry, American
readers benefitted from their experience. Two London performances of Schoenberg’s Five
Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16—the world premiere in 1912 and a second performance,
conducted by Schoenberg, in 1914—provide a means for discovering how a critical lan-
guage that was developed for the visual arts could be applied to music. From its origins in
art criticism, formalism became important in literary and musical criticism after the Great
War, but it was certainly not always apparent in the reviews discussed in this article. For Fry’s
importance in British music criticism, see Deborah Heckert, ‘‘Schoenberg, Roger Fry and
the Emergence of a Critical Language for the Reception of Musical Modernism in Britain,
1912–1914,’’ in British Music and Modernism, 1895–1960, ed. Matthew Riley (Farnham,
Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 49–66.
19
Schoenberg himself published articles in literary and arts journals, often as
a means of defending his music before a larger audience. He engaged with the critic
Ludwig Karpath in 1909 in an open letter published in Karl Kraus’s satirical Viennese
journal Die Fackel. See Joseph Auner, A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2003), 62–63. In 1912 he rebutted the Berlin critic Leopold Schmidt
in the fashionable arts journal Pan. See Walter B. Bailey, ‘‘Composer versus Critic: The
Schoenberg-Schmidt Polemic,’’ Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 4, no. 2 (November
1980): 119–37. Schoenberg’s writings are inventoried and documented in Arnold Schönberg
in seinen Schriften: Verzeichnis, Fragen, Editorisches, ed. Hartmut Krones (Vienna: Bölau, 2011).
20
Herbert Leibowitz, ‘‘Remembering Paul Rosenfeld,’’ Salmagundi 9 (Spring 1969):
16.
21
These three types of publications were not unique to the United States. They ex-
isted also in Great Britain, France, and Germany, where they served a similar function in
educating the public about current trends in music. John Irving, ‘‘Schönberg in the News:
The London Performances of 1912-1914,’’ The Music Review 49, no. 1 (1988): 52–70.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
music and its performers, composers, and institutions in the United Sates
and in major cities in Europe, these publications catered to fans and
teachers as well as to devoted music lovers and professional musicians.
Single issues might touch on the private lives of famous performers, rep-
ertoire and pedagogical tips for music teachers, chronicles of musical
events, critiques of specific concerts, and discussions of larger trends by
knowledgeable critics. Because many of the articles and reports in these
magazines were unsigned, it is impossible to confirm the depth of their
authors’ musical training. Some authors present insights that only a well-
schooled musician could possess, but others may easily have been dilet-
tantes who reacted viscerally—and colorfully—to music of which they had
no real understanding. Noted performers, composers, and critics with
substantial musical training, however, provided a significant number of
signed articles during the period in question. Walter Damrosch, Olin
Downes, A. Walter Kramer, Arthur Elson, Cyril Scott, Charles Wakefield
Cadman, Edward Kilenyi, Percy Grainger, Harold Bauer, E. Robert
Schmitz, and Leo Ornstein—all quoted below—are just some of the prac-
ticing musicians and musically trained critics who reported their thoughts
on modern music in U.S. music magazines between about 1910 and the
early 1920s. In addition, the magazine editors were typically trained mu- 285
sicians. Leonard Liebling, the editor of Musical Courier, studied piano in
Berlin and taught piano in New York before joining the magazine.22
In contrast with these musically trained authors, contributors to the
general magazines were most often trained writers attuned to music but
lacking advanced musical education. Paul Rosenfeld, for example, studied
at Yale and at the Columbia School of Journalism before embarking on
a career as an arts writer for magazines, including the Seven Arts, the New
Republic, The Dial, and Vanity Fair; in addition to writing about music, he
wrote about the visual arts and literature.23 Pitts Sanborn and Henrietta
Straus were two other arts writers who, even if they did not have profes-
sional musical training, provided great insight into the music of the time
with their contributions to various magazines and newspapers. To be sure,
these publications were not scholarly journals, but in the depth and seri-
ousness of their musical coverage they surpassed even the most culturally
aware newspapers.24 Although not devoid of sensationalism, especially in
22
Like Liebling, Florence French, editor of the Musical Leader, was a trained pianist;
Arthur Elson, editor of the Etude, was a composer. Of the editors of the major music ma-
gazines, only John C. Freund, of Musical America, was not a trained musician.
23
Although not professionally trained, Rosenfeld ‘‘spent days at his piano preparing
for a concert he was to review playing through the score, of old music and new.’’ Leibowitz,
‘‘Remembering Paul Rosenfeld,’’ 5.
24
The first musicological journal in the United States, founded in 1915, ran a life-
and-works article on Schoenberg in its second year. See Egon Wellesz, ‘‘Schönberg and
Beyond,’’ The Musical Quarterly 2, no. 1 (January 1916): 76–95.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
regard to recent musical works, they provided a more balanced approach

to modern music than the daily press.25
Because each type of publication—newspaper, music magazine, gen-
eral or arts magazine—was presumably intended for a different audi-
ence, it would have been unusual for any one person to read them all.
It is not difficult to imagine, however, that wealthier music lovers would
read newspapers and general interest or arts magazines, such as Vanity
Fair; it is also likely that people in this demographic who were also
advanced amateur performers would subscribe to one or more of the
music magazines (or peruse such publications in their teachers’ stu-
dios).26 Dedicated musicians would be likely to subscribe to one or more
of the music magazines; they also probably read newspapers. Diehard
fans of musical performers would probably subscribe to music magazines
as well, in addition to reading newspapers; depending on their interests
and demographic, they might also read arts magazines. Followers of the
visual or literary arts who were not specifically interested in music would
also be exposed to writings on music via newspapers and arts publications
that included material on musical trends. In other words, music lovers of
all stripes and even those interested in the visual arts and literature had
286 access to ideas about contemporary music via more than one line of New
York’s musical press.27
In the concert arena, too, audiences did not have to go out of their
way to encounter new music. Although after the Great War new music
was often performed with other new works for specialist audiences,
before the war it was usually presented on mixed concert programs for
general musical audiences. Audiences were drawn to new music not only
by musical curiosity, but also by the attraction to the novelty that was
inherent in the world of style and fashion. Mary E. Davis has illustrated
the connections between the worlds of fashion and the arts, and the
importance of non-musical publications for the dissemination of mod-
ernism in early twentieth-century Paris.28 Critiques of performances of
Schoenberg’s music suggest that new music in New York exerted a similar
25
For further information concerning U.S. music magazines see Bailey, ‘‘‘Will
Schoenberg Be a New York Fad?’’’ 39–42.
26
It is reasonable to assume that the female patrons and organizers of new music in
New York during the 1920s, including Alma Wertheim, Blanch Walton, and Claire Reis,
would fall into this last category and would already have been interested in new music during
the 1910s. See Oja, Making Music Modern, 205–21.
27
Followers of modern literature and the visual arts supported Ornstein. See Von
Glahn and Broyles, ‘‘Musical Modernism Before it Began,’’ 47. Gertrude Vanderbilt
Whitney, mainly a patron of visual artists, also underwrote several musical projects as part of
her plan to promote modernism in the United States. See Oja, Making Music Modern, 204–
205.
28
Mary E. Davis, Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006).

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
appeal, as evidenced when critics employed the word ‘‘fad’’ or refer-

enced the artistic movement of Cubism in relation to Schoenberg’s
music.29 Newspaper critic W. B. Chase’s review of the 1914 performance
of Schoenberg’s String Quartet in D Minor, for example, appeared
under the headline ‘‘Music and Musicians: Schoenberg Gives Musical
Burial to the Cubists ‘Falling Downstairs.’’’ In the body of his review he
cited the reactions of a fashionably dressed woman and an art critic,
providing an uncharacteristically detailed view of the kind of people
attending the concert:
Past the half-hour mark all was still going well. At forty-five minutes,
a young person in pink and furs in the front row got up and dashed for
the door like a poor sailor in a heavy sea. A well-known art dealer walked
out with dignity. The crowd was seized with coughing, but it clapped for
sheer relief of nervous tension when Schoenberg landed on a plain major
chord at last, after fifty-two minutes trying.30
In another example, one of the several articles that appeared in Decem-

ber 1913 advertising the upcoming performance of Schoenberg’s quar-
tet posed the question, ‘‘Will Schoenberg Be a New York Fad?’’ and 287
placed Schoenberg’s perceived ‘‘harmonic atrocities’’ on par with vari-
ous fashionable trends that had recently engaged the citizens of New
York City, including Cubist paintings, ‘‘lurid dances,’’ and ‘‘sensational’’
women’s clothing styles.31 Clearly, the attraction of new music affected
more than dedicated music lovers.
Inspired by the scandalous reception of Schoenberg’s music in Aus-
tria and Germany, foreign correspondents and their American editors
set him and his ‘‘harmonic atrocities’’ up as the ne plus ultra of recent
European musical trends from about 1910 onward by referencing him
repeatedly and describing his works with colorful adjectives.32 Thus, in
1912, when the London representative for Musical America described the
music of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16, as ‘‘bizarre,’’
‘‘startling,’’ and ‘‘shocking,’’ New York readers would not have been
29
Barbara Mueser notes that ‘‘avant-garde music was taken up by New York society for
a time as a fad.’’ Barbara Mueser, ‘‘The Criticism of New Music in New York: 1919–1929,’’ 14.
30
W. B. Chase, ‘‘Music and Musicians: Schoenberg Gives Musical Burial to the Cubists
‘Falling Downstairs,’’’ New York Evening Sun, 27 January 1914. The article title refers to
Marcel Duchamp’s notorious painting ‘‘Nude Descending a Staircase,’’ which was ex-
hibited at the famous Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art) in New York
in 1913.
31
K. S. C., ‘‘Will Schoenberg Be a New York Fad?’’ Musical America 19, no. 7 (20
December 1913): 5. On the performance of the quartet, see Bailey, ‘‘‘Will Schoenberg Be
a New York Fad?’’’
32
Oja’s assertion that Stravinsky emerged in the 1910s as ‘‘an American favorite’’ was
not borne out in my research. Oja, Making Music Modern, 50.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
surprised. But the extremely negative reaction of the usually staid

English audience to this world premiere surpassed even the critic’s
expectations.
As was the case when some piano pieces of Schoenberg were played at
a recital some months ago, the audience laughed not a little during the
progress of the music, but one was not prepared for the extraordinary
scene which occurred at the conclusion of his works on Tuesday. From
all parts of the hall hissing and booing such as has seldom been heard in
London broke out.33
Indeed, such demonstrations were so common in Germany and Austria

that when the audience at the premiere of Pierrot lunaire in Berlin did not
behave similarly, The Musical Courier’s notably conservative correspon-
dent felt compelled to explain why.
To arouse any kind of sensation in these days of such enormous over-

production in every branch of music is of itself an extraordinary feat.
Arnold Schoenberg may be either crazy as a loon . . . or he may be a very
clever trickster. . . . At any rate, he is just at present the most talked of
musical personality of the day, not excepting Richard Strauss. . . . His
288
music to Albert Giraud’s fantastical poems entitled ‘‘The Songs of Pier-
rot Lunaire’’ is the last word in cacophony and musical anarchy. . . . The
remarkable part of this whole farce is that Schoenberg is taken seriously.
A musically cultured audience sits through such an atrocity with hardly
a protest. The grotesque sound . . . occasionally called forth outbursts of
merriment, but the audience was as a whole very well behaved.34
In citing Richard Strauss, Abel referenced a composer who until

recently had been considered the greatest musical iconoclast of the day.
Performers as well as critics used this comparison to try to explain the
newness of Schoenberg’s approach. In an interview that appeared in
Musical America during the same week as Abel’s article, Josef Stransky,
conductor of the New York Philharmonic, embellished on the
Schoenberg-Strauss comparison.
‘‘Of all wild, absurd, incomprehensible, ugly, and eccentric music,’’

began Mr. Stransky, with an expression in his face as though he felt
like coining a word strong enough to describe his unfathomable abhor-
rence for this latest musical harpy. And one knew full well even before
he uttered the fated name that he meant Arnold Schoenberg. For those
33
Anthony M. Stern, ‘‘Schoenberg in Advance of His Day,’’ Musical America 16, no. 20 (21
September 1912): 4.
34
Arthur M. Abel, ‘‘Berlin,’’ The Musical Courier 65, no. 19 (6 November 1912): 5.
Reprinted in Dossier de Presse/Press-book de Pierrot lunaire d’Arnold Schönberg, ed. François
Lesure (Genève: Minkoff, 1985), 13.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
who rail at Richard Strauss today or at poor, harmless, necessary [Max]

Reger may well consider themselves as beyond all hope obsolescent. The
revolutionists of two years past are now old-fashioned and only Schoen-
berg stands forth menacingly as one of most redoubtable novelty. Every
newcomer from Europe today has the same tale of woe to relate. ‘‘There
can be absolutely no room for comparison between Strauss and such
a man as Schoenberg,’’ said Mr. Stransky. . . . ‘‘[T]here is absolutely no
anterior connection between Schoenberg and anything else. He has
simply tried to leap ahead to reach perhaps five or six hundred years
ahead of the time and skip the intervening generations. . . . ’’35
As Stransky’s interviewer related, even in Europe Schoenberg eclipsed

other composers with the newness of his works during this period, which
was of course a period of extreme novelty in his output. American pub-
lications, however, neglected to explain that earlier in his career Schoen-
berg had composed a significant body of music that was more
conventional in sound and design.36 Nor did they bother to parse the
mannered stylistic debates of Viennese critics who took issue even with
these earlier works, leaving unexplained how compositions as varied in
sound as the String Quartet in D Minor and the Five Pieces for Orchestra
could be described as ‘‘cacophony.’’ Through these omissions they 289
implied that all of Schoenberg’s works were equally challenging, and
readers—supplied only with fantastic descriptions of unheard music—
readily accepted Schoenberg as the ultimate ultra-modern composer.37
It is no wonder that at the first performance of a major work by
Schoenberg in New York City, in early 1914, audiences and critics found
35
‘‘In Choice English, Stransky Tells What He Thinks of Schoenberg’s Music,’’
Musical America 16, no. 26 (2 November 1912): 3.
36
Reviews of the premieres and further performances of works, such as the String
Quartet, no. 2, op. 10 (Vienna, the so-called ‘‘scandal concert’’ of December 1908); the Five
Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16 (London, September 1912); Pierrot lunaire (Berlin, October
1912); and the Chamber Symphony, op. 9 (Vienna, the so-called ‘‘scandal concert’’ of
March 1913), confirmed the novelty of Schoenberg’s recent works.
37
Conservative Viennese critics questioned subtle aspects of form, genre, and har-
monic usage that probably would have left U.S. music lovers unmoved. For a selection of
their criticism see Martin Eybl, Die Befreiung des Augenblicks: Schönbergs Skandalkonzerte 1907
und 1908—Eine Dokumentation (Vienna: Böhlau, 2004), and Esteban Buch, Le cas Schönberg:
Naissance de l’avant-garde musicale (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). Leon Botstein proposed that the
Jewish heritage of these Viennese critics increased their conservatism as they attempted to
uphold and protect a musical tradition to which they, as recently assimilated Jews, had only
recently been admitted. Leon Botstein, ‘‘Schoenberg and the Audience: Modernism,
Music, and Politics in the Twentieth Century,’’ in Schoenberg and His World, ed. Walter Frisch
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 40. In a possible parallel, the generation of
so-called ‘‘old guard’’ critics who wrote for New York newspapers in the 1920s were dismis-
sive of new music perhaps because of their desire to uphold European traditions that they,
as Americans, could not claim as their own. Concerning these critics, see Barbara Mueser,
‘‘The Criticism of New Music in New York: 1919–1929,’’ 42–102.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
it difficult to reconcile what they actually heard with what they had been
prepared to expect.38 Although a lone voice had attempted to correct
the misconceptions about Schoenberg’s music before the event, it did
little to quell the wilder view of Schoenberg promoted by the musical
press, even after the Quartet had been heard. Kurt Schindler, a German
musician who gave a pre-concert talk and later published an introduc-
tion to Schoenberg’s String Quartet in D Minor, clarified the chronology
of Schoenberg’s works, placing the Quartet within the second of what he
perceived to be three stylistic periods of Schoenberg’s music. This is how
Schindler characterized these periods:
There is first an early period of seeking for romantic effects, for color-
istic touches, not quite free from some sweet Viennese sentimentalities,
and decidedly under the influence of Wagner’s music-dramas and the
Strauss of Heldenleben and Domestica. [Verklärte Nacht (1899), Gurre-Lieder
(1901), Pelleas und Melisande (1903).]
There is a second period of earnest and ascetic concentrations, when,
by the study of Bach and the later Beethoven, Schoenberg comes to the
conviction that everything must be melody, every thematic voice must
290 live its individual life, when—in order to weave a melodious fabric as
fine as Beethoven’s last utterances . . . he has to invent an enlarged sys-
tem of harmony on his own. [String Quartet in D Minor (1905), Kam-
mersymphonie (1906), String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp Minor (1908).]
Finally, there is the last period of the little piano and orchestra pieces,
mood-pictures, strange, grotesque, intimidating. I heard the piano
pieces in Paris, and must affirm that the impression, already described
and ridiculed by others, was also mine—that is, that apparently the
wrongest tone possible, the wrongest harmony thinkable, was always
struck; also, that . . . a logical order prevailed in these rhythmical, fan-
tastic puzzles, to which I could not find the key. [Three Piano Pieces,
Op. 11 (1909), Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 (1911), Five Pieces for
Orchestra, Op. 16 (1909), Pierrot lunaire (1912).]39
If critics and readers had paid attention to Schindler’s overview of

Schoenberg’s musical development, they might have been able to undo
the impression established by their first exposure to his music: heated
38
For additional information on this performance, see Bailey, ‘‘‘Will Schoenberg Be
a New York Fad?’’’
39
Kurt Schindler, Arnold Schoenberg’s Quartet in D Minor, op. 7: An Introductory Note
(New York: G. Schirmer, 1914), 6. The works in brackets are those to which Schindler
referred, but between 1908 and 1914 Schoenberg also composed the song cycle Fifteen
Poems from The Book of the Hanging Gardens, op. 15 (1909), the monodrama Erwartung, op.
17 (1909), the opera Die glückliche Hand, op. 18 (1910–1913), and the song ‘‘Herzge-
wächse,’’ op. 20 (1911). Aside from the op. 15 song cycle, however, these works were not
performed during the period in question.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
reviews of Schoenberg’s recent works that reflected European critics’

consternation with Schoenberg’s astonishingly rapid compositional
development. Although few places in Europe could boast complete
exposure to Schoenberg’s compositions, a number of cities in Austria
and Germany had at least heard performances of the earlier works, such
as Verklärte Nacht and the String Quartet in D Minor, before they were
exposed to the Five Pieces for Orchestra or Pierrot lunaire.40 In New York
the delayed and disordered arrival of Schoenberg’s music made it diffi-
cult for music lovers to move past their initial impression. Despite
Schindler’s attempts, before the Great War the chronology of Schoen-
berg’s works remained confused in the United States (table 1).41
In addition to this confusion, several other factors pushed Schoen-
berg to the forefront of discussions concerning ultra-modern music.
First, the invective inspired by performances of his music in Europe and
reported in American media surpassed the heat and quantity of reviews
generated by other composers’ works. On an altruistic level, American
editors were obliged to cover Schoenberg because of his importance in
Europe no matter how they felt about his music; on a more practical
level, editors interested in selling their publications could not pass up the
chance to run such hot copy. Second, as a native of Vienna, Schoenberg 291
40
Music theorists have long been fascinated with the evolution of Schoenberg’s
musical style and have focused on the importance of the loosening of tonal bonds and the
establishment of atonality as a break with the past. Bryan R. Simms, The Atonal Music of
Arnold Schoenberg, 1908–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). More recently,
Ethan Haimo has thoroughly parsed the transformation of Schoenberg’s musical style from
1899 to 1908, employing the concept of ‘‘incremental innovation’’ to explain the continuity
and newness of Schoenberg’s music. Haimo identifies the few radical works from 1909 as
the real break with the past. Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg’s Transformation of Musical Language
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
41
London was another city in which the performance of Schoenberg’s works came
out of chronological order, but there it was the more recent works that were played first,
followed by earlier pieces. The Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, were the first works to be per-
formed in London, in January 1912, followed by the Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16, in
September 1912. Next came the String Quartet No. 1 in D Minor, op. 7, in November 1913.
In 1914 Schoenberg visited London to conduct more performances of the Five Pieces for
Orchestra (January), then followed performances of Verklärte Nacht, op. 4, various songs for
voice and piano, the String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp Minor, op. 10, the Six Little Piano Pieces,
op. 19, and repeat performances of the Three Piano Pieces. As in the United States, English
publications included reports of performances of Schoenberg’s works from the continent,
and certain works, such as the Chamber Symphony No. 1, op. 9, and Pierrot lunaire, op. 21,
became notorious long before they were heard in London. Negative reviews of the Three
Pieces for Piano and the Five Pieces for Orchestra are said to have colored Schoenberg’s
long-term reception in England, but his earlier works had earned critical acceptance and
a popular following by 1914. Irving, ‘‘Schönberg in the News,’’ 52–70. In Paris, as in New
York, references to Schoenberg appeared in print circa 1910. Verklärte Nacht was the first of
his works to be played there, in 1912, followed later that year by the songs, op. 8, and the
Three Piano Pieces, op. 11. Additional performances and discussion in print followed, so that
by 1914 his music was fairly well known. Marie-Claire Mussat, ‘‘La reception de Schönberg en
France avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale,’’ Revue de Musicologie 87, no. 1 (2001): 146–51.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
TABLE 1
Major Performances of Schoenberg’s Music in the United States,
1913–1923
Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago,
Philadelphia, and other cities New York City
1913–1914 1913–1914
October 1913 (Chicago): Five Pieces October 1913: Songs from opp. 1
for Orchestra, op. 16 (Stock) and 3 (Reinald Werrenrath)
January 1914 (Boston, Chicago, January 1914: String Quartet No. 1,
Philadelphia): String Quartet op. 7 (Flonzaley)
No. 1, op. 7 (Flonzaley)
1914–1915 1914–1915
December 1914 (Boston): Five January 1915: Three Pieces, op. 11
Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16 (Ornstein)
(Muck) February 1915: Six Little Pieces, op.
February (Chicago), March 1915 19 (Ornstein)
292 (Boston, Philadelphia): March 1915: Verklärte Nacht, op. 4
Verklärte Nacht, op. 4 (Kneisel) (Kneisel)
1915–1916 1915–1916
November 1915 (Philadelphia): [November 1915, for private
Chamber Symphony No. 1, op. 9 audience: Chamber Symphony
(Stokowski) No. 1, op. 9 (Stokowski)]
December 1915 (Boston): Piano November 1915: Pelleas und
Pieces, op. 11 (Ornstein) Melisande, op. 5 (New York
March 1916 (Boston): Piano Philharmonic, Stransky)
Pieces, op. 19 (Gabrilowitsch) February 1916: Chamber
Symphony, op. 9 (New York
Symphony, Damrosch)
1916–1917 1916–1917
March 1917 (Cincinnati): Pelleas January 1917: Piano Pieces, op. 11
und Melisande, op. 5 (Cincinnati (Bauer)
Symphony, Kunwald) February 1917: Verklärte Nacht, op. 4
(Kneisel)
1917–1920 1917–1920
no performances no performances
(continued)

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
TABLE 1 (continued)
Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago,
Philadelphia, and other cities New York City
1920–1921: 1920–1921
March 1921 (Philadelphia): Pelleas March 1921: Verklärte Nacht (for
und Melisande, op. 5 (Stokowski) string orchestra) (Mengelberg,
April 1921 (Los Angles): Piano National Symphony Orchestra)
Pieces, op. 11 (Richard Buhlig)
1921–1922 1921–1922
November 1921: Five Pieces for November 1921: Five Pieces for
Orchestra, op. 16 Orchestra, op. 16 (Philadelphia
(Philadelphia), December Orchestra, Stokowski, Carnegie
(Baltimore, Washington, Hall)
Harrisburg, Pittsburgh)
(Stokowski)
1922–1923 1922–1923 293

December 1922: Two Chorale
Preludes (orchestrations of
Bach’s ‘‘Komm Gott, Schöpfer,
heiliger Geist,’’ BWV 631 and
‘‘Schmücke Dich, o liebe Seele,’’
BWV 654) (New York
Philharmonic, Stransky)
February 1923: Pierrot lunaire
April 1923 Chamber Symphony, April 1923: Chamber Symphony, no.
no. 1, op. 9 (Philadelphia, 1, op. 9 (Philadelphia Orchestra,
Stokowski) Stokowski, Carnegie Hall)
belonged to the culture of German-speaking musicians that had deter-

mined American musical values for generations. As the critic Pitts San-
born pithily summed it up in 1918, New York had been a musical
province of Germany ever since the founding of the symphony society
by ‘‘a few homesick Germans’’ in the 1840s.42 For editors desiring to
capitalize on the newness of modern music, what could be more effective
42
Pitts Sanborn, ‘‘The War and Music in America: The Metropolitan Opera House
Frees Itself From German Musical Frightfulness,’’ Vanity Fair 9, no. 5 (January 1918): 60,
86, 88.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
than featuring an apparently renegade composer from the parent musi-

cal culture? Finally, because U.S. listeners were unfamiliar with the sound
of Schoenberg’s music, they could only imagine it—fueled by a fear of
the unknown, their imaginations magnified the music’s reported terrors,
ultimately cementing Schoenberg’s role as the bogeyman of modern
music.
Three Seasons of Experience
Following the premiere of the String Quartet in D Minor in New York,

audience members and critics alike had the opportunity to educate
themselves about Schoenberg when they heard more of his compositions
in their own city. Performances of Verklärte Nacht, Pelleas und Melisande,
the Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, and the Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19, in
1915, of the Chamber Symphony, op. 9, in 1916, and a repeat perfor-
mance of the Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, in 1917, contributed to a greater
understanding of Schoenberg’s musical development. To supplement
the knowledge gained from these performances, New Yorkers could still
294 rely on reports from elsewhere, but because of the Great War, concert
reviews from Europe became scarce and were replaced with reviews of
U.S. performances.43 A performance of Verklärte Nacht in Dresden in
early 1915 was the last European Schoenberg performance to be covered
in American music magazines until after the war.44
Without its umbilical connection to Europe, and specifically to Ger-
many, the artistic environment of New York was ripe for change. As early
as October 1914, Walter Damrosch noted the possibility of a new inde-
pendence: ‘‘Our public has for so many years looked with such humility
on everything artistic bearing the European stamp that this Winter, with
its enforced isolation, may perhaps bring such people to a realization
that we are really able to draw inspiration from our own home surround-
ings.’’45 Although this unexpected benefit of the War was more wishful
thinking than reality in 1914, in the following year Emilie Frances Bauer,
the New York representative of the Musical Leader, claimed another
43
Communication between continental Europe and the United States became
problematic when Great Britain, in one of its first actions in the war, severed undersea cable
connections between Germany and the United States in order to control and censor
information leaving the continent. Newspapers in the United States thus relied almost
exclusively on British sources for their war news. Stewart Halsey Ross, Propaganda for War:
How the United States was Conditioned to Fight the Great War of 1914–1918 (Jefferson, North
Carolina, and London: McFarland, 1996), 27–29.
44
The performance was reviewed in ‘‘Musical Activity in Germany,’’ Musical Courier
70, no. 17 (28 April 1915): 26.
45
Walter Damrosch, ‘‘Influence of the War on Music in America,’’ Musical America 20,
no. 24 (17 October 1914): 2.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
change as a result of the war in Europe. The city’s already international

musical community, augmented by those who had left Europe—includ-
ing returning American students, teachers, and performers—had
become ‘‘the most distinguished and cosmopolitan music community
of the world.’’46 Yet despite these attempts to focus on the positive effects
of isolation from Europe, magazine editors seemed relieved to report in
the fall of 1914 that the foreign conductors of three of the major U.S.
orchestras—Karl Muck, Josef Stransky, and Ernst Kunwald, of the Bos-
ton, New York, and Cincinnati orchestras, respectively—would be able to
return from their ‘‘off season stays in Germany’’ to resume their leader-
ship positions, and that although some of their German players would
not be able to return with them to the United States, they had been able
to hire substitutes before leaving Europe.47 Some musicians clearly
wanted musical independence from Europe, but long-standing ties were
difficult to break even in the absence of regular interactions.
Because trends in concert programming in the United States were
initially unaffected by the war, Schoenberg’s works continued to attract
special attention in the musical press. During the 1914–1915 season in
New York City, the Kneisel Quartet performed Verklärte Nacht (a work
they also performed in Chicago and Boston that season), and Laura 295
Maverick sang one of Schoenberg’s earlier songs. In the same season
in Boston Carl Muck and the Boston Symphony Orchestra played the
Five Pieces for Orchestra.48 Because of Schoenberg’s notoriety music
magazines highlighted each of these performances, and one can imagine
the interest with which New York readers studied reports such as Olin
Downes’s review of the Boston premiere of the Five Pieces, one of the
works that had garnered Schoenberg such notoriety.49 During the 1915–
1916 season Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra per-
formed the Chamber Symphony in Philadelphia and in New York City;
Damrosch and the New York Symphony also played the work. Stransky
and the Philharmonic Society of New York performed Pelleas und Meli-
sande. In Boston, Leo Ornstein played the Piano Pieces, op. 11, and Ossip
Gabrilowitsch performed the Piano Pieces, op. 19. The next season,
46
‘‘The War Makes New York the Musical Hub of the World, Musical Leader 30, no. 4
(22 July 1915): 104.
47
‘‘Year’s Plans of Our Orchestras Not Hindered by War,’’ Musical America 20, no. 21
(26 September 1914): 1, 3; [‘‘News Reports,’’] Musical Courier 69, no. 13 (30 September
1914): 20.
48
Maverick sang ‘‘Hochzeitslied’’ on a recital in New York in early February. In yet
another performance during that same month, Julia Culp sang Beethoven’s song ‘‘Adelaide’’
(for which Schoenberg provided the orchestration of the accompaniment) in Boston with
assistant conductor Ernst Schmidt and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
49
Olin Downes, ‘‘Schoenberg Arouses Laughter in Boston: Dr. Muck Plays the ‘Five
Orchestral Pieces’; Ugliness Triumphant,’’ Musical America 21, no. 8 (26 December 1914): 19.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
1916–1917, included performances in New York City of Verklärte Nacht by

the Kneisel Quartet and the Piano Pieces, op. 11, by Harold Bauer; Kun-
wald and the Cincinnati Orchestra performed Pelleas und Melisande in
Cincinnati. When the United States declared war on Germany in April
1917, however, such performances came to an end: a ban on performances
of music by German and Austrian composers effectively blocked the
longed-for completion of the Schoenberg story for U.S. listeners. Already
during the previous year critics in New York City had bemoaned the con-
tinued absence of the Five Pieces for Orchestra and Pierrot lunaire, reports
of which had instigated the sudden interest in Schoenberg years earlier.50
American critics and editors writing about Schoenberg’s music
between 1914 and 1917 defined ultra-modern music for their readers
in three ways. First, they made an effort to establish the cohort of ultra-
modern composers; second, they began to distinguish between ultra-
modern and merely modern within Schoenberg’s works; and third, they
weighed in on the value of ultra-modern music. Schoenberg was fre-
quently compared in the musical press with other composers, a useful
and well-established practice that helped readers place music that they
had never heard within the range of styles with which they were familiar.
296 The frequently exaggerated nature of these comparisons also helped
critics to identify and rank the exponents of the avant-garde.51 In many
instances, however, comparing other composers with Schoenberg served
not so much to identify a specific style as to establish a degree of stylistic
extremism, a practice developed as early as 1910 in reports from Europe.
Thus, when the Flonzaley Quartet announced in the fall of 1915 that they
would include Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet in their rep-
ertoire for the coming season, critics in the Musical Courier and the
Musical Leader identified this still relatively unfamiliar composer as ‘‘the
most modern of ultra-moderns, a composer who out-Schoenbergs
Schoenberg.’’52 Similarly, as composer/pianist Leo Ornstein began his
brilliant but brief concert career in 1915, he was also described as having
‘‘out-Schoenberged Schoenberg.’’53
50
H. F. P., ‘‘Plays Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony,’’ Musical America 23, no. 18 (4
March 1916): 35.
51
Glenn Watkins cites this exaggeration in regard to comparisons between Schoen-
berg and Stravinsky in Europe before the war, in Glenn Watkins, Pyramids at the Louvre:
Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists (Cambridge, Massachusetts,
and London: Belknap, 1994), 49.
52
‘‘Flonzaley Quartet Back in America,’’ Musical Courier 71, no. 10 (9 September
1915): 11; a variation on the same phrase was also used in ‘‘Modern Composers on Flon-
zaley Programs,’’ Musical Leader 30, no. 18 (28 October 1915): 505. Stravinsky’s music was
largely unknown in New York before this performance, although the New York Philhar-
monic had performed Fireworks in 1914.
53
‘‘Leo Ornstein Discusses Futurist Music,’’ Musical Courier 70, no. 12 (24 March
1915): 30.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
Which composers deserved the ultra-modern label remained a con-

stant topic. Typically, the relative conservatism of whoever was making
the assessment would come into play. A conservative author, for instance,
would most likely include older composers such as Richard Strauss and
Max Reger along with Schoenberg; for more forward-looking authors,
Ornstein would replace Strauss and Reger.54 Clearly, critics perceived
different degrees of modernity. In April 1916, in an advertisement
headed ‘‘Is It Noise or Music?’’ The Etude announced that its next issue
would be a ‘‘Modernist-Futurist Issue,’’ and that it would ‘‘deal with the
subject from the milder (?) innovators—Debussy, Ravel, Strauss and
others—to the most rabid revolutionists.’’55 Indeed, the May issue
included ‘‘A Classified List of Some ‘Futurist’ and ‘Modernist’ Compo-
sers,’’ but the classification was by nationality only, and the list contained
the names of many living or recently deceased composers, only a few of
whom were actually representative of the ultra-modern outlook.56 Other
authors critiqued this rather sloppy practice. During the previous season,
when Ornstein announced a series of recitals of ‘‘modern and futurist
music,’’ a critic from the Musical Courier pointed out that of the pieces
programmed only Schoenberg’s and Ornstein’s were ‘‘of the futurist
character.’’ ‘‘For the rest,’’ he concluded, 297
we are all familiar with Korngold, Ravel, Scott, and Debussy, and neither
Albeniz nor Grondahl are in advance of them in the matter of reaching
out toward futurist possibilities and experimenting in the art of discord
which seems to be the foundation of the futurist school.57
Comments such as these, both published in music magazines directed at

a musical audience, illustrate the gap between writers who accepted any
innovation as proof of ultra-modernism and those who reserved the new
category only for music truly untethered to past conventions.
54
A number of authors were careful to distinguish between the ‘‘music of Schoen-
berg or of the late Strauss’’ and the experimental music of Italian Futurism. ‘‘Futurist Music
an Ordeal to Face,’’ Musical Leader 30, no. 4 (22 July 1915): 116.
55
‘‘Is It Noise or Music?’’ Etude 34, no. 4 (April 1916): 241. Specific ‘‘revolutionists’’
were not identified.
56
Grouped by region or language, the list included ‘‘Latin’’ composers (Albeniz,
Bossi, Bruneau, Chabrier, Charpentier, Debussy, Dukas, Fanelli, Granados, D’Indy, Ler-
oux, Pierné, Ravel, Roussel, Satie, and Florent Schmitt), ‘‘Teutonic’’ composers (D’Albert,
Bruckner, Dohnanyi, Korngold, Kronke, Mahler, Reger, Schillings, Schoenberg, Strauss,
Streicher, and Wolf), ‘‘Slavic’’ composers (Balakirev, Borodin, Juon, Mussorgsky, Rach-
maninoff, Rebikov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Stravinsky, and Taneyev), ‘‘English and
American’’ composers (Bantock, Carpenter, Delius, Grainger, Holbrooke, Ornstein, and
Scott), and ‘‘Scandinavian’’ composers (Grieg, Sibelius, and Sinding). ‘‘A Classified List of
Some ‘Futurist’ and ‘Modernist’ Composers,’’ Etude 34, no. 5 (May 1916): 330.
57
‘‘Very Modern Music,’’ Musical Courier 70, no. 5 (3 February 1915): 23.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
Just as they discussed which composers might best be labeled as

ultra-modern, critics began to distinguish between more conventional
and ultra-modern compositions within Schoenberg’s output. Indeed it
was during these three seasons that for the first time some authors con-
sistently differentiated between the styles of Schoenberg’s earlier and
more recent compositions. Writing in Musical America in 1915, Olin
Downes pointed out that Verklärte Nacht (1899) was fifteen years old,
compared it to the String Quartet in D Minor (1905) and the Five Pieces
for Orchestra (1909)—a work still unheard in New York—and wondered
if Schoenberg would still recognize it as ‘‘one of his representative
works.’’58 Unlike Downes, other critics ignored Schoenberg’s stylistic
development and categorized all of his music as difficult and complex.
A general equating of Schoenberg with complexity was nothing new in
music criticism, and in 1915 when the editor of the Musical Courier made
a humorous allusion to the difficulty of Schoenberg’s music he merely
drew on a fresh image inspired by the war. ‘‘Perhaps,’’ he suggested,
‘‘Schoenberg is writing in musical code to escape the critical censors.’’59
The issue of complexity also arose in respect to specific performances.
Walter Damrosch introduced the Chamber Symphony (1906) to his New
298 York audience in February 1916 with what a critic called ‘‘a platform
speech on the dread nature of the novelty, of its possible future impor-
tance, and his own perplexities in the face of it.’’60 Nevertheless, as the
critic for Musical America pointed out, as novel as the Chamber Symphony
58
Olin Downes, ‘‘Schoenberg Sextet Has First Boston Hearing,’’ Musical America 21,
no. 22 (3 April 1915): 28. Writing for the same magazine, another critic noted that Verklärte
Nacht was ‘‘no formidable ordeal, no representation of its composer in the characteristic
semblance which has brought him wild notoriety.’’ H. F. P., ‘‘Schoenberg’s Sextet a Kneisel
Novelty,’’ Musical America 21, no. 18 (6 March 1915): 37. When the Kneisels repeated
Verklärte Nacht two seasons later, its reception was much the same, except that critics eval-
uated it in the light of Schoenberg’s more recent works. As a critic for Musical America
wrote, ‘‘It is extraordinarily beautiful music, music that has a distinct place in the literature
and that will probably be heard long after Schoenberg’s more advanced things have passed
into the limbo of forgotten masterpieces.’’ A. W. K., ‘‘Kneisels Revive Schoenberg Sextet,’’
Musical America 25, no. 16 (17 February 1917): 5.
59
Leonard Liebling, [‘‘News Briefs,’’] Musical Courier 70, no. 3 (20 January 1915): 20.
60
H. F. P., ‘‘Plays Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony.’’ Similarly, when Stokowski
addressed the audience in Philadelphia before conducting the Chamber Symphony in
November 1915, ‘‘he warned his hearers not to judge the piece and the composer on
a single hearing.’’ Harold P. Quicksall, ‘‘Schoenberg’s Discords Fail to Disturb Philadel-
phia: Modernist’s Work Receives Much Applause,’’ Musical Courier 71, no. 19 (11 November
1915): 56. When the Cincinnati Orchestra played Pelleas und Melisande in 1917, it was taken
for granted that the work was difficult to understand, despite the relatively early date of its
composition (1903). Conductor Ernst Kunwald spoke about the work from the podium,
explaining the connection between the program and the music. ‘‘Thanks to Dr. Kunwald’s
illuminative analysis,’’ a critic for the Musical Courier observed, ‘‘we were able to see method
in all this seeming riot.’’ ‘‘Kunwald Explains Schoenberg’s ‘Pelleas,’’’ Musical Courier 74, no.
13 (29 March 1917): 10.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC6 12:34:56 UTC
bailey
and the other Schoenberg works heard in New York seemed to be, they
were still not representative of his latest compositions.
The string quartet did not do the trick. Neither did the sextet, nor yet
the several songs we have heard or the little piano pieces. The Pelléas and
Mélisande had length, breadth, and thickness, but no real terror in its
aspect. The ‘‘Kammersymphonie’’ leaves matters very much where they
stood and for the same reason. . . . To those who have watched Leo Orn-
stein run amuck it was innocuous; to all prepared by Mr. Damrosch’s
menacing eloquence to sup full of horrors it was a disappointment.61
Although it might seem trivial today, identifying the ‘‘real’’ Schoen-

berg had great significance for a New York audience struggling to come
to grips with exactly what it was that had caused Schoenberg’s notoriety.
When Leo Ornstein played two of the Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, on his
first recital of ‘‘ultra-modern’’ music in 1915, A. Walter Kramer of Musical
America went so far as crediting Ornstein with providing New York with its
‘‘first taste of the real Schoenberg.’’62 Other reviewers in New York did
not always specifically place this set of pieces in the underrepresented
recent phase of Schoenberg’s output, but they never failed to recognize 299
its advanced nature. When Harold Bauer performed an excerpt from it
in January 1917, the reviewer for Musical America pronounced it to be ‘‘a
bit beyond even the most sophisticated listener.’’63 For New York readers
attuned to the unfolding of the Schoenberg story, these reviews may have
brought to mind Downes’s critique in Musical America of the Boston
premiere of the Five Pieces for Orchestra. Recalling the accessibility and
beauty of the String Quartet in D Minor heard the previous season,
Downes observed that the Five Pieces were
for the most part ungrateful and entirely incomprehensible. . . . If it is

music at all, then it is the music of tortured, supersensitive nerves, of
a brain and an organism screwed up to a pitch of sensitiveness far
higher and more intense than any average consciousness of this day.
And if modern civilization is responsible for the ‘‘over-man’’ attempts of
R. Strauss and the ultra-refinements of the later Debussy, then perhaps
Schoenberg’s music is the expression of what the modern nerves and
the modern soul will be in four or five generations.64
61
H. F. P., ‘‘Plays Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony.’’
62
A. Walter Kramer, ‘‘Ornstein Plays His Own Music,’’ Musical America 21, no. 13 (30
January 1915): 43.
63
H. B., ‘‘Bauer Emerges as Disciple of Moderns,’’ Musical America 25, no. 11 (13
January 1917): 32. The other works were by Debussy, Edward Royce, Scriabin, Franck,
Raoul Laparra, and Mussorgsky.
64
Downes, ‘‘Schoenberg Arouses Laughter in Boston.’’

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
Regardless of whether they concurred with Downes’s view of the pro-

phetic nature of Schoenberg’s later works, between 1914 and 1917 New
York music lovers received sufficient information about his stylistic devel-
opment to understand the differences between his earlier and later
works, even if they had still not heard the most striking of Schoenberg’s
recent compositions.
Critics often discussed the meaning and significance of ultra-
modern music during the seasons in question, whether in reviews, inter-
views with performers or composers, or specifically themed articles. In
general their observations were similar to those being voiced in Europe,
and, as there, positive assessments of ultra-modern music routinely coun-
tered negative ones. More often than not critics cited Schoenberg’s
music to support their points of view. When asked what he thought of
modern music in 1916, pianist Josef Hofmann replied, ‘‘Some of it is only
contortion: Stravinsky and Schoenberg, for instance. Yet it is sought after
as a fad, from curiosity.’’65 But in the previous season Arthur Elson,
editor of the Etude, quoted the British critic A. Eaglefield Hull to estab-
lish that the ‘‘widespread nature of modernism’’ gave it a legitimacy,
whether one liked it or not. Not surprisingly, Hull’s comments were
300 precipitated by Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra.66
A recurring criticism of ultra-modern composers was that their music
lacked ‘‘substance.’’ The American-born, Leipzig-trained composer
Israel Amter believed that the ‘‘moderns,’’ among whom he included
Debussy, Reger, Strauss, and Schoenberg, dealt in ‘‘moods’’ rather than
‘‘ideas,’’ and that they hid their music’s lack of substance through bril-
liant technique.67 Apart from a brief dig at Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande,
Amter’s only references to specific works were to Schoenberg’s Chamber
Symphony and Piano Pieces, which he characterized as ‘‘a whole gallery
of little moods which somehow fail to fit into each other. . . . Here and
there is a passage that one may remark as striking; otherwise the work is
a passing from violence to violence without the support of a comprehen-
sive musical thought. Pure technique!’’68 The critic Charles L. Buchanan
made a similar assessment of ‘‘futurist music,’’ concluding that it was
more concerned with ‘‘sensation’’ than ‘‘idea.’’ Inspired by Ornstein’s
performances of his own original piano pieces, such as ‘‘Wild Men’s
Dance,’’ Buchanan linked Ornstein with Schoenberg and Debussy,
65
Harriette Brower, ‘‘‘Dr. Muck Has Little or No Regard for His Soloists’—Josef
Hofmann,’’ Musical America 23, no. 20 (18 March 1916): 2.
66
Arthur Elson, ‘‘Musical Thought and Action in the Old World,’’ Etude 32, no. 9
(September 1914): 646.
67
Israel Amter, ‘‘Mood, Instead of Idea, the Basis of Futuristic Music,’’ Musical
America 21, no. 16 (20 February 1915): 14.
68
Ibid.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
noting a ‘‘rather too facile trifling with sensation’’ in all three.69 The
composer Cyril Scott, identified as ‘‘the distinguished English modern-
ist’’ by the Etude, believed that Schoenberg’s piano pieces consisted of
‘‘harmony (if so it can be called) and nothing whatever besides,’’ mean-
ing that Schoenberg presented ‘‘‘atmosphere’ and that is all there is to
it.’’ According to Scott, Schoenberg’s approach could produce nothing
of lasting value because it overstepped the ‘‘boundaries of beauty’’ by
avoiding such necessities as structure, polyphony, and melody. In his
opinion the avoidance of such basic musical ingredients led to ‘‘monster-
ism’’ rather than ‘‘modernism.’’ Debussy, however, was able to include
these aspects of beauty along with ‘‘atmosphere,’’ thereby producing
more lasting works.70
As an alternative to discussing ultra-modern music’s alleged lack of
substance, a number of authors focused on its dissonance, exploring its
position in the historical evolution of harmony. American composer
Charles Wakefield Cadman believed that the avoidance of consonance
in the music of ultra-modern composers, such as Ornstein and Schoen-
berg, created a complete break with the music of the past.71 Other
authors, including Edward Kilenyi, noted that recent harmonic innova-
tions, including Schoenberg’s, actually evolved from past styles, an idea 301
promoted by European authors whose positions were conspicuously re-
presented in the music magazines.72 Rather than pursuing either of
69
Charles L. Buchanan, ‘‘Futurist Music,’’ Musical Courier 73, no. 7 (17 August 1916):
38. The final paragraph of Buchanan’s essay, cited as a quotation from Harper’s Weekly, was
also published as idem, ‘‘The Lack in Present-day Music,’’ Musical America 25, no. 11 (13
January 1917): 32.
70
Cyril Scott, ‘‘The Boundaries of Beauty in Musical Art,’’ Etude 34, no. 5 (May 1916):
335–336. Buchanan also brought up the overreliance on harmony. See also Buchanan,
‘‘The Lack in Present-day Music.’’
71
Charles Wakefield Cadman, ‘‘Pleads for Liberal Attitude to Ultra-Modern Compo-
sers,’’ Musical America 21, no. 15 (13 February 1915): 14.
72
Edward Kilenyi, ‘‘The Futuristic Music of Today,’’ Etude 34, no. 5 (May 1916): 341–
42; for a similar U. S. perspective, see also the editorial ‘‘After Tomorrow, What?’’ Etude 34,
no. 5 (May 1916): 327. For examples of the opinions of foreign musicians reported in U.S.
publications, see Ernest Newman, ‘‘Freak Minds in Modern Music,’’ Etude 35, no. 6 (June
1917): 368; and Hugo Leichtentritt, trans. Caroline V. Kerr, ‘‘Harmonic Conflicts,’’ Musical
Leader 28, no. 26 (24 December 1914): 730–31. According to these articles, Newman saw
Schoenberg as a ‘‘conscious experimenter’’ whose focus on ‘‘the undiscovered possibilities
of harmony’’ separated him from composers such as Strauss, who was ‘‘knee-deep in the
debris of a decaying tradition.’’ Leichtentritt traced the evolution of harmony from the
beginnings of Western music through the ‘‘harmonic innovations legitimized by Wagner
and Liszt,’’ the ‘‘impressionism of Debussy and Busoni,’’ and the ‘‘Neo-Impressionists and
Futurists’’ led by Scriabin and Schoenberg. ‘‘In the case of Schoenberg, the harmonic
structure collapses completely, and out of the ruins he expects to create a new world. It
is difficult to comprehend his intentions, for here all known rules and systems are set in
abeyance. . . . Schoenberg himself seems to be quite vague as to the method pursued in
achieving his astounding creations, and is obliged to take refuge in the argument of ‘artistic
intention.’’’ Ibid., 731.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
these models, pianist-composer Percy Grainger thanked composers such

as Schoenberg and Cyril Scott for ‘‘liberating’’ contemporary composers
from ‘‘the inevitability of ‘harmony’’’ and viewed contact with Schoen-
berg’s music as a freeing experience, observing that ‘‘such contact can
hardly fail to infect us all with a beneficial impulse towards greater artistic
self-indulgence, greater unrestraint.’’ ‘‘Emboldened by Schoenberg’s
plucky example,’’ Grainger concluded, ‘‘we unconsciously feel ourselves
freer than before to indulge in part-writing that ‘makes harmony’ or in
part-writing that neglects to ‘make harmony’ at will.’’73
The most typical assessment of ultra-modern music in general, and
particularly of Schoenberg’s music, was that it was too early to judge its
worth; in the meantime, many argued that all works deserved a fair hear-
ing. The editor of the Musical Leader noted that audiences demanded
novelty, and ‘‘hence Schoenberg, Stravinsky and all other modernists
and futurists must have their innings, and afford an interested public
the opportunity to express approval or disapproval.’’74 As Cadman
observed in Musical America, ‘‘what is revolutionary today may be stan-
dard tomorrow’’; Cadman was content to let ultra-modern music be
judged by the future.75 Nevertheless, some critics took issue with this
302 wait-and-see attitude. The editor of the Etude bemoaned the fact that
‘‘through sheer fear of the scorn of posterity’’ many music lovers dem-
onstrated ‘‘an almost unheard of tolerance bred by temerity.’’76 Simi-
larly, the editor of Musical America, noting that works by the ‘‘futurists’’
Schoenberg, Mahler, Ornstein, and Stravinsky were to be performed in
New York City, feared that
the old fallacious arguments will be drawn forth from their pigeon-
holes again. We shall be reminded that Beethoven and Wagner were
‘‘not appreciated at first,’’ and be left to infer that our futurists, not
being appreciated, are thus presumably incipient or neglected Beetho-
vens or Wagners.77
73
Percy Grainger, ‘‘Modern and Universal Impulses in Music,’’ Etude 34, no. 5 (May
1916): 343.
74
Florence French, ‘‘No ‘Futuristic’ Music for Boston,’’ Musical Leader 28, no. 27 (31
December 1914): 754.
75
Cadman, ‘‘Pleads for Liberal Attitude to Ultra-Modern Composers,’’ 14. In similar
fashion, Arthur Elson quoted the British critic A. Eaglefield Hull in Etude: ‘‘We are too close
to Schoenberg’s music to be able to assess it at all properly.’’ Yet Elson, in an atypically
irreverent reaction to Hull’s position, noted that many listeners would have preferred to be
‘‘several miles away when the composer’s music is given.’’ Arthur Elson, ‘‘Musical Thought
and Action in the Old World,’’ Etude 32, no. 9 (September 1914): 646.
76
‘‘After Tomorrow, What?’’ editorial in Etude 34, no. 5 (May 1916): 327.
77
John C. Freund, ‘‘The Futurists,’’ Musical America 23, no. 5 (4 December 1915): 28.
Finding Mahler’s name in a list of ‘‘futurist’’ composers in 1915 is unexpected; he was
hardly mentioned in New York City’s musical press after his death in 1911 and clearly
belonged to an earlier generation. Before Schoenberg’s music was heard in New York

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
The Great War Intrudes
When European critics compared Schoenberg’s reception with that of

Beethoven and Wagner, they evoked images of greatness and of the com-
poser ahead of his time. When American readers encountered these com-
parisons, the same images were magnified by the historic importance of
German music in the formation of American musical conventions, espe-
cially concert music in New York City.78 Initially this association worked to
Schoenberg’s advantage, but as the international situation deteriorated, it
became a liability. The war and its impact on German music and musicians
in the United States, on ultra-modern music, and ultimately on Schoen-
berg, became a major factor in the development of the new attitude that
fueled the acceptance of ultra-modern music in the 1920s.
Between 1914 and April 1917 the United States was officially neutral
in the conflict in Europe, but anti-German sentiment ran high nonethe-
less, and some factions of the public repeatedly called for boycotts of
anything of German origin. When the United States finally declared war
on Germany in April 1917, this anti-German fervor increased. Initially,
entry into the war had little effect on musical programming in New York
City, but German performers were immediately subjected to public cen- 303
sure.79 By the following fall, as emotions intensified, the Metropolitan
Opera had banned not only German singers but also German works. Pitts
Sanborn, reporting in Vanity Fair, drew attention to the importance of
the company’s new prohibitions by noting New York’s long-standing
preference for German repertory and German performers, for critics
‘‘steeped in German ideas, teachings, [and] prejudices,’’ and for music
played from the German perspective—even music written by non-
Germans. Sanborn sanctioned the Met’s policy as a hedge against Ger-
man music’s potential use as propaganda for the German cause.80
-
European correspondents compared Schoenberg to Mahler to explain the novelty of
Schoenberg’s music. The Munich correspondent of the Musical Courier observed: ‘‘It is said
that Reger’s, Mahler’s, and Strauss’s works are of classic simplicity compared to Schoenberg’s
creations.’’ William Leonard Blumenschein, postscript to his translation of Alexander Dill-
man, ‘‘Richard Strauss in the Mirror of Our Time,’’ Musical Courier 61, no. 7 (17 August
1910): 31. Such comparisons implied that Mahler was classed with Strauss at the time as an
ultra-modern composer. See Bailey, ‘‘‘Will Schoenberg Be a New York Fad?’’’ 43–47.
78
Joseph Horowitz asserts that ‘‘America’s musical high culture was essentially
a German import’’ before the Great War. Joseph Horowitz, Classical Music in America: A
History of its Rise and Fall (New York: Norton, 2005), 266.
79
‘‘Musically, the Metropolitan [Opera] 1916–1917 season did not differ materially
from other winters at our opera house. A total of 150 performances . . . consisted of thirty-
nine operas, twenty in Italian, thirteen in German, five in French and one in English.
Wagner headed the list with thirty performances of eight operas.’’ Leonard Liebling,
‘‘Variations,’’ Musical Courier 74, no. 16 (19 April 1917): 21.
80
Pitts Sanborn, ‘‘The War and Music in America: The Metropolitan Opera House
Frees Itself From German Musical Frightfulness,’’ Vanity Fair 9, no. 5 (January 1918): 60,

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
Inspired by protests from its subscribers, the New York Philharmonic

soon followed the Met’s example, but limited its ban to music by living
composers of German or Austrian nationality. Ostensibly such a prohibition
would prevent enemy nationals from benefitting financially from perfor-
mances in the United States. Music magazines noted that Richard Strauss
was the composer most likely to be affected, although they indicated that
other living Germans heard locally in recent seasons would also suffer, includ-
ing Weingartner, Bruch, Humperdinck, Korngold, Hausegger, and Schoen-
berg.81 Listing Schoenberg in such company implied that the commentator
had anticipated hearing additional performances of Schoenberg’s music.
Due to the general anti-German tenor of the time, the repertories of
the New York orchestras changed dramatically, if only briefly, during the
war. Not only did the Philharmonic and the New York Symphony avoid
works by living Germans, but they also turned away from their historical
reliance on German compositions in general. For new works, they looked
to composers of other nationalities. During the 1916–1917 season sixty
percent of the works played by the New York Philharmonic were by
German composers. This number decreased by thirteen percent during
the 1917–1918 season, and by an additional fifteen percent the following
304 year. Nevertheless, during the 1919–1920 season the number of German
compositions increased by nineteen percent, and by the following season
the percentage of German works had outpaced the level of 1916–1917.
As the percentage of German works decreased, that of Russian, French,
and American compositions increased, in general, but they had all re-
turned to their pre-1917 levels by 1920.82 Scrutiny of the concert pro-
grams for the New York Philharmonic and New York Symphony for the
1917–1918 and 1918–1919 seasons reveal numerous works by living com-
posers, but no works that approach the novelty of Schoenberg’s Five
Pieces for Orchestra, which had still not been played in New York. Sev-
eral older works by Debussy were programmed, and single works by
Casella, Respighi, Loeffler, Bloch, Dukas, Roger-Ducasse, Lyadov, Lili
Boulanger, Rachmaninoff, and Sibelius, to name a few. There were also
works by Americans, but many of these were patriotic pieces inspired by
-
86, 88. Although the notion of propaganda in this form might seem far-fetched, there was
indeed a German propaganda campaign in the United States designed to place Germany
in a positive light. See Ross, Propaganda for War, 91–144. The idea that German music was
somehow tied to political issues was a product of anti-German propaganda funded by the
U.S. government. See Susan A. Brewer, ‘‘Crusaders vs. Barbarians: American Propaganda
during World War I’’ in ‘‘Huns’’ vs. ‘‘Corned Beef’’: Representations of the Other in American and
German Literature and Film on World War I, ed. Thomas F. Schneider and Hans Wagener
(Göttingen: V & R unipress/Universitätsverlag, Osnabrück, 2007), 27–57.
81
‘‘Philharmonic and the Germans,’’ Musical Courier 76, no. 4 (24 January 1918): 21;
‘‘Exeunt Strauss and Others,’’ Musical America 27, no. 14 (2 February 1918): 24.
82
Barbara L. Tischler, An American Music: The Search for an American Musical Identity
(New York: Oxford, 1986), 73–77.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
the war effort. None of them entered the standard repertory.83 It is safe
to say that by delaying the arrival of the Five Pieces in New York, the war
delayed the city’s ability to fully appreciate not only Schoenberg’s latest
style but also the whole idea of ultra-modern music.
The pervasiveness of anti-German sentiment in American musical cir-
cles during the war affected not only the repertory of institutions such as the
Metropolitan Opera and the Philharmonic Society, but also specific Ger-
man musicians, a process that was richly documented in the music maga-
zines. Ernst Kunwald and Karl Muck, conductors of the Cincinnati and
Boston orchestras, respectively, were arrested and eventually deported.84
Joseph Stransky, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and Friedrich
Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, escaped censure by
publicizing their progress toward becoming American citizens. As anti-
German fervor increased, even magazine editors—some of whom were of
German heritage—became targets.85 In April 1917 Liebling had called on
the readers of the Musical Courier to enlist, but this action was apparently
not sufficient to establish his patriotism.86 A year later he was faulted for
not taking a strong position against German music. His response, published
in his regular column, made it clear that he would not be made a victim of
hysteria. ‘‘We should not be impatient with all those Americans who cry for 305
the complete exiling of German and Austrian music,’’ he wrote.
War brings strange human passions to the front and moves different
individuals differently. . . . Personally, we have not found it possible to
expunge from our heart a great love for much of the music of Bach,
Beethoven, Wagner, and all the other classical Teutons. . . . The one thing
we do not understand is, why Americans should wish to ban Wagner,
Brahms, and Beethoven, while our allies, the British and French, do
not. . . . Let us remove all the German music from all our programs, if
that is deemed a good and practical war measure. But let us stop abusing
the music itself and its composers, especially those who are dead.87
83
For listings of the repertory of the New York Philharmonic, see Howard Shanet,
ed., Early Histories of the New York Philharmonic (New York: Da Capo, 1979) and the ‘‘Per-
formance History Search’’ section of the website of the New York Philharmonic: http://
history.nyphil.org/nypwcpub/dbweb.asp?ac¼a1.
84
‘‘New Yorkers Protest Against Dr. Muck,’’ Musical Courier 76, no. 11 (14 March
1918): 35. Five other cities prohibited Muck’s appearance with the orchestra: Pittsburgh,
Detroit, Baltimore, Springfield, Mass., and Washington, D.C. ‘‘Dr. Muck Arrested,’’ Musical
Courier 76, no. 13 (28 March 1918): 20.
85
Leonard Liebling, editor in chief of the Musical Courier from 1911 until his death in
1945, was born in New York in 1874 to German immigrants. John C. Freund (1848–1924)
was born in London to German immigrants; he emigrated to New York in 1871.
86
Leonard Liebling, ‘‘Variations,’’ Musical Courier 74, no. 16 (19 April 1917): 21.
87
Leonard Liebling, ‘‘Variations,’’ Musical Courier 76, no. 14 (4 April 1918): 22. Aside
from Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, Liebling did not mention additional Austrian or
German composers in this article.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
In successive months, however, other publications bowed to war hysteria.

John Freund, editor of Musical America, wrote an impassioned editorial
exhorting readers to purchase war bonds as a means of supporting the
war effort. He made no mention of music, but he used every possible
example to demonize Germany and even the German people.88 Vanity
Fair featured a boxed ‘‘Warning’’ on its table of contents page that ad-
monished readers to be on guard against potential spies.89
By way of comparison, in England and France the prohibition of
German and Austrian composers during the war was largely limited to
living composers or works not yet in the public domain. Nevertheless, the
nature and value of German music was widely debated. In France the
urge to present a strong and unified alternative to contemporary Ger-
man music united French composers formerly at odds with one another
and led to a pro-French propaganda that would eventually be promoted
in the United States, especially immediately after the war (see more
below). Under government-sponsored cultural directives, French arts
leaders found consensus in what Jane Fulcher has called the ‘‘myth’’ of
a French ‘‘classical’’ cultural identity distinct from that of Germany.
French classicism represented ‘‘the purportedly endemic Latin virtues
306 of purity, proportion, and order’’ as opposed to ‘‘the ‘Nordic’ romanti-
cism and irrationalism of the ‘Huns.’’’90
In the United States, even after the Armistice was signed on 11
November 1918, anti-German sentiment persisted, and so did the target-
ing of German musicians and discussions about limiting the program-
ming of German music. When the New York Philharmonic advertised
a program of works by Wagner in January 1919, the American Defense
Society threatened to demonstrate, and police detectives were stationed
inside and outside the hall as a deterrent, but no demonstration mate-
rialized.91 Although popular sentiment still seemed to favor a morato-
rium on anything related to Germany, by February 1919 the music
magazines regularly challenged this position through a variety of tactics.
Liebling ridiculed it by proposing some tongue-in-cheek musical sugges-
tions to the League of Nations, including ‘‘the establishment of an
embargo on Bruckner,’’ the ‘‘Limitation of Beethoven recitals,’’ and the
88
John C. Freund, ‘‘What Are You Going to Do About It?’’ Musical America 28, no. 11
(4 May 1918): 2.
89
‘‘Every German or Austrian in the United States unless known by years of association
to be absolutely loyal should be treated as a potential spy.’’ ‘‘Warning,’’ Vanity Fair 10, no. 4
(June 1918): 25.
90
Jane Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France 1914–1940
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 21.
91
H. F. P., ‘‘Sleuths on Hand as Philharmonic Performs Wagner,’’ Musical America 29,
no. 13 (25 January 1919): 23.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
‘‘Dismemberment of Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande.’’ 92 Other voices

were similarly skeptical of continued moratoriums.93
In an environment that advocated the banning of German music
and questioned the loyalties of prominent music writers of German her-
itage, one might expect that Schoenberg, and by association, ultra-
modern music, would become targets. Yet, perhaps because there were
no performances of Schoenberg’s music to inspire new controversy or
resurrect old issues in the general press, anti-German activists—who
tended not to be among the musical cognoscenti—missed the Schoen-
berg/German connection. In the specialized environment of the music
magazines during the 1917–1918 and 1918–1919 seasons, therefore,
authors were free to discuss Schoenberg as the key member of a small
group of ultra-modern composers. As in the earlier years of the war, the
makeup of the group varied somewhat: ‘‘Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoen-
berg,’’94 ‘‘Schoenberg, Scriabin, Debussy, Ravel, Dukas,’’95 ‘‘Debussy,
Schoenberg, Ornstein,’’ 96 ‘‘Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Orn-
stein.’’97 Typically, Strauss was not included, having become, according
to Musical America’s John Freund, unfashionable.98
Whereas some critics dismissed ultra-modern music (and Schoen-
berg) out of hand, others lobbied for its acceptance. Carl Grimm, in the 307
Etude, criticized the perceived ‘‘pursuit of ugliness’’ in modern music,
ascribing Schoenberg’s music to a passing ‘‘craze.’’99 Critic Henrietta
Straus, however, noted that some composers who had rather recently
been regarded as ‘‘futurists’’ were now finding acceptance. ‘‘[Wagner,
Strauss, and Wolf] are already firmly entrenched as classics. Debussy is
beginning to be held up as a model by those who reviled him most
bitterly, and even Scriabin is finding favor with his one-time enemies.’’
92
Leonard Liebling, ‘‘Variations,’’ Musical Courier 78, no. 7 (13 February 1919): 21.
93
A. T. M., ‘‘U.S. Senators Say War Should Not Bias Americans Against Great German
Music,’’ Musical America 30, no. 13 (26 July 1919): 24. The reference is to Sen. Seldon P.
Spencer of Missouri and Sen. Miles Poindexter of Washington.
94
C. R., ‘‘Pierre Key’s Pros and Cons,’’ Musical Courier 76, no. 17 (25 April 1918): 7.
95
Clare Peeler, ‘‘Too Much Worship of Names, Deplores Mayo Wadler,’’ Musical
America 27, no. 26 (27 April 1918): 11.
96
Marjory Marckres Fisher, ‘‘Futurist Music a Logical Outcome of the Age, Declares
This Modernist,’’ Musical America 26, no. 16 (18 August 1917): 27.
97
Byron Hagel, ‘‘The Bystander,’’ Musical Courier 76, no. 11 (14 March 1918): 24.
98
John C. Freund, ‘‘Strauss Camouflaged?’’ Musical America 27, no. 10 (5 January
1918): 26.
99
Carl W. Grimm, ‘‘Can Ugly Music Be Beautiful?’’ Etude 36, no. 2 (February 1918):
80. See also Fischer, ‘‘Futurist Music a Logical Outcome of the Age,’’ and J. L. H., ‘‘Echoes
of Music Abroad,’’ Musical America 26, no. 5 (2 June 1917): 17–18. One of the first signif-
icant newspaper pieces about Schoenberg to appear in New York, a review of Pierrot lunaire,
introduced U.S. readers to the already commonplace European association between
Schoenberg and ugliness. James Huneker, ‘‘Schoenberg, Musical Anarchist, Who Has
Upset Europe,’’ New York Times, 19 January 1913.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
Straus concluded that at present Prokofiev, who was then making an

American tour, had emerged ‘‘as a still more radical thinker,’’ but she
hoped that his critics ‘‘would let the years be the judge and render the
verdict, and in the meantime admit that perhaps they have lagged
behind and do not understand; for they have not yet proved that they
have learned to ‘discern the signs of the times.’’’100 Following models
established earlier, other critics compared Prokofiev to Schoenberg and
other, mainly ultra-modern composers. In a review of Prokofiev’s piano
recital in New York, a critic from the Musical Courier reported that ‘‘some
persons whispered that ‘Prokofiev out Stravinskies Stravinsky.’’’101 Musi-
cal America’s critic advised, ‘‘Take one Schoenberg, two Ornsteins, a little
Satie, mix thoroughly with some [Nikolai] Medtner, a drop of Schu-
mann, a liberal quantity of Scriabin and Stravinsky—and you will brew
something like a Serge Prokofieff [sic] composer.’’102
Although the specialized nature of the music magazines allowed this
discussion of ultra-modernism—and of Schoenberg—to continue dur-
ing the war, the prevailing anti-German sentiment caught up with
Schoenberg not long after the Armistice when pro-French musicians
combined anti-German and anti-modern sentiments to criticize his musi-
308 cal style. In October 1918 the Musical Courier ran an unsigned review of
U.S. composer Daniel Gregory Mason’s book, Contemporary Composers,
quoting a passage from the preface in which Mason singled out Schoen-
berg, Ravel, Stravinsky, Scriabin, and Ornstein as examples of composers
too recent to be appraised and therefore not covered in his book. Mason
nevertheless identified specific faults in the styles of each of these com-
posers—for Schoenberg, it was his use of music as ‘‘a vehicle for a priori
intellectual theories’’—and warned that their ‘‘centrifugal tendencies’’
posed ‘‘a real menace to the best interests of music.’’103 Although the
reviewer seemed suspicious of Mason’s approach to the idea of ‘‘national
defects,’’ he paraphrased Mason’s assertions that contemporary German
composers suffered from a lack of ‘‘intelligence, discrimination, moder-
ation, and taste’’ that had brought to an end ‘‘the great stream of music
that flowed through Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms.’’ Accord-
ing to Mason it was ‘‘chiefly in France, with its racial genius of lucid
100
Henrietta Straus, ‘‘Unsolicited Remarks About: Program ‘Futurists,’’’ Musical
Courier 77, no. 26 (26 December 1918): 50.
101
‘‘Novel Concert Features Stir New York Audiences,’’ Musical Courier 77, no. 22 (28
November 1918): 1.
102
A. H., ‘‘Serge Prokofieff Startles New York,’’ Musical America 29, no. 5 (30
November 1918): 16.
103
‘‘Contemporary Composers, Daniel Gregory Mason,’’ Musical Courier 77, no. 17
(24 October 1918): 49. Mason’s designation of Schoenberg as an ‘‘intellectual’’ composer
was not unique; such identifications may have been inspired by the publication of
Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre in 1911.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
intelligence,’’ that one could find ‘‘a truly vital contemporary music,’’
especially in the person of Vincent d’Indy.104
In a music magazine that had been generally accepting of ultra-
modernism and largely silent on the relative merits of music of different
nationalities for nearly ten years, Mason’s pro-French, anti-ultra-modern
stance was especially conspicuous. Indeed, the reviewer was struck by
Mason’s propensity to ‘‘take sides.’’105 Nevertheless, Mason’s position,
which reflects the French cultural propaganda mentioned above, was not
unique during the war years. Other authors also posited a pro-French
stance as an alternative to the traditional dominance of German music.
In his study of neoclassicism Scott Messing has conveniently summarized
the contemporary debate over the relative merit of French and German
music by quoting passages from British and American publications, circa
1917–1918, concluding that
it was common to find Germans accused of ‘‘destroying the clarity of the

eighteenth century,’’ and to find French music equated with ‘‘the anti-
sentimental trend’’; characterized by ‘‘grace, vivacity, certain forms of
politeness, colour and wit’’; made up of ‘‘more conciseness, more logic,
more clearness’’ than before; intolerant of ‘‘fatiguing prolixities,
309
tediousness, redundancy, sterile agitation’’; returning to ‘‘the taste for
clear thought, formal purity and sobriety, the disdain for the big ef-
fects’’; and representative of ‘‘order and architectural structure.’’106
Initially Schoenberg was left out of this discussion in American music

magazines, but that situation changed in 1919 when French pianist E.
Robert Schmitz (1889–1949) published an article that placed Schoen-
berg overtly in an anti-German frame. Titled ‘‘Germany,’’ it was the
second in a series of three articles by Schmitz concerning ‘‘The Evolution
of Peoples as Shown by Their Music’’ published in The New France, a pub-
lication subtitled ‘‘An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Franco-American
Relations.’’107 Schmitz had been active in France before the war as a pia-
nist and founder of several concert organizations—he even performed
Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, in 1912.108 Drafted into mili-
tary service, he spent three years in the artillery corps, where he was
wounded twice. Despite injuries to ligaments in his left hand, he was able
104
Ibid.
105
Ibid.
106
Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept through the
Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1988), 75.
107
E. Robert Schmitz, ‘‘The Evolution of Peoples as Shown by Their Music, Part II—
Germany,’’ The New France 3, no. 3 (May 1919): 496; excerpt quoted in Leonard Liebling,
‘‘Shall We Have German Music,’’ Musical Courier 79, no. 3 (17 July 1919): 22.
108
Marie-Claire Mussat, ‘‘La reception de Schönberg en France avant la Seconde
Guerre mondiale,’’ Revue de Musicologie 87, no. 1 (2001): 146.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
to resume his pianistic activities following the war. He came to the

United States in November 1918 with his wife’s family after he was ‘‘spe-
cially released’’ from military service just before the Armistice. When his
father-in-law’s business ventures in Chicago failed, he worked as an
accompanist at the Chicago Opera and soon thereafter made his way
to New York City, where he reportedly intended to propagandize for
French music; indeed his American enterprises were ‘‘abetted by the
French Ministry of Fine Arts for at least two or three years.’’109 These
enterprises eventually included the founding of the Franco-American
Music Society, later renamed the Pro-Musica Society, in 1920.
As a mouthpiece for the French Ministry of Fine Arts, Schmitz relied on
France’s official postwar propagande musicale.110 Without obvious precedent
in the American press, he linked Schoenberg to the evils of German mili-
tarism. After positing the development of German music along the lines of
‘‘destructive Kultur’’ from the early nineteenth century through Strauss’s
Salome, Schmitz equated Schoenberg with contemporary Germany.
Here, no creative power—but the using of every piece of material cre-

ated by others, compiled by himself. A gigantic compilation, enough to
310 build a crowning structure of cast iron and steel upon the pinnacle of
the German edifice. The structure of metallic ‘‘Cubisme,’’ dispropor-
tionate with the rest of the monument, crushing the German ‘‘sky-
scraper’’ and causing it to topple! It is because this false ideal of
‘‘heavier than art’’ was not discovered in time that its exponents
avenged themselves by destroying the exquisitely pointed spires of our
cathedrals, so delicately wrought as to mingle with the Heavens toward
which they are bound.111
Due in part to its German-born dealers, Kahnweiler and Uhde, in France

Cubism was viewed during the war as un-French, unpatriotic, and even
German. Moreover, for some, modern art in general was considered
alien to France.112 Jane Fulcher notes that criticisms of the outsized
qualities of German art were meant to imply the supremacy of ‘‘French
classic proportion, precision, and measure.’’ Ties between anti-Semitism
and anti-Germanism grew to become commonplace during the war and
made it natural for Schmitz to criticize Schoenberg (and Mendelssohn)
for lacking creative power.113
109
Ronald V. Wiecki, ‘‘A Chronicle of Pro-Musica in the United States (1920–1944):
With a Biographical Sketch of its Founder, E. Robert Schmitz’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of
Wisconsin, Madison, 1992), 41.
110
Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, 118.
111
Schmitz, ‘‘The Evolution of Peoples as Shown by Their Music, Part II—Germany.’’
112
Deborah Menaker Rothschild, Picasso’s ‘‘Parade’’: From Street to Stage (London: So-
theby’s Publications, 1991), 47.
113
Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, 118.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
When Liebling quoted Schmitz’s article in the Musical Courier, he

accompanied it with selections from other outspoken references to the
negative value of German music. Where Schmitz asserted that German
music reflected the negative force that ‘‘deformed the entire German
people into an instrument of barbaric militarism,’’ the National Civic
Federation Review warned that any attempt to put German music back
onto programs was an effort by German agents to reinstate a powerful
source of German propaganda much larger than music.114 Although
presented here without comment, Liebling’s lack of sympathy for those
who wanted to prevent the programming of German music was well
known, and juxtaposing Schmitz’s critique with this warning inferred his
negative opinion of both.
In contrast to the attention that Schoenberg continued to receive
domestically, when reports from Europe resumed in U.S. publications
after the war, correspondents referred only to Schoenberg’s absence
from the musical scene. ‘‘Nobody has a word to say for poor old
Schoenberg,’’ reported Cesar Saerchinger from Munich. ‘‘He is said
to be ‘finished.’ After the famous Orchestral Pieces, . . . dissolution
seems to have set in.’’115 Although critics in the United States remained
willing to dwell on works such as the Five Pieces for Orchestra, critics in 311
Europe expected to hear new compositions. Schoenberg, however, had
completed few new works between 1914 and 1918 and instead pro-
moted his earlier compositions as a means of educating audiences
about new music.116 He also began to rethink his relationship with the
public. In June 1918 he conducted a series of open rehearsals of his
Chamber Symphony, no. 1 (1906) in Vienna, the success of which
inspired him to found the Society for Private Musical Performances.
In the previous year he had begun a theoretical treatise in which he
addressed comprehensibility and the audience.117 Until new composi-
tions by Schoenberg appeared, the sustained novelty of works now ten
years old, such as the Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, and the Five Pieces for
114
Liebling, ‘‘Shall We Have German Music.’’
115
Cesar Saerchinger, ‘‘Music in Munich: What the Moderns Are Doing,’’ Musical
Courier 78, no. 21 (22 May 1919): 45.
116
The only major work to be completed during the war, the Four Orchestral Songs, op.
22 (1913-1916), was not premiered until 1932.
117
Auner translates a review by Heinrich von Kralik of the open rehearsals of the
Chamber Symphony that demonstrates their effectiveness in preparing listeners for new
music (Auner, ed., A Schoenberg Reader, 150). Auner also reproduces an excerpt from
Schoenberg’s unfinished theoretical treatise, Coherence, Counterpoint, Instrumentation,
Instruction in Form (1917), which addresses comprehensibility and the audience (ibid., 141–
43). For the complete treatise, see Arnold Schoenberg, Coherence, Counterpoint, Instrumen-
tation, Instruction in Form, ed. Severine Neff (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
Orchestra, op. 16, would continue to fuel discussion in the United

States.118
After the War: A New Attitude Toward Ultra-Modern Music
By the end of the 1919–1920 season works by living German composers

were beginning to be reintroduced into concert programs in New York
City. Critics took note of their reappearance, just as they had earlier in
the season when Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht was performed in Lon-
don—the first time since the war began that a work by a living represen-
tative of the former enemy had been played in that city.119 Critics also
began to observe that German works were now perceived differently
because of the war. ‘‘What we have gained, then, by this non-German
interregnum,’’ wrote Straus in The Nation, ‘‘has been a fresh aspect of
German music—a clearer insight into its weaknesses, a deeper and truer
appreciation of its strength and its beauties.’’ Straus also reported that
the prohibition of German music had ‘‘forced’’ listeners to explore
music from other countries and ‘‘to recognize more than novelty in the
312 works of Mussorgsky and Scriabin and Stravinsky, of Debussy and Ravel
and Dukas.’’ As a result, they had come to appreciate the larger signifi-
cance of ultra-modern trends, ‘‘to realize that what we have been belit-
tling are, in reality, vital forces that have, for the last decade or more,
been accomplishing a profound if silent revolution.’’120
During the following two seasons (1920–1921 and 1921–1922), when
performances of Schoenberg’s music resumed in Europe on a regular
basis and more sporadically in the United States, music periodicals re-
gained their pre-war coverage of Schoenberg’s works. Although most of
these performances were of his older, tonal works, the Three Piano
Pieces, op. 11, and Pierrot lunaire were also included.121 Some critics
118
The next works to be completed by Schoenberg were the Five Piano Pieces, op. 23,
(1920–1923; the first two premiered on a concert of the Society for Private Musical Perfor-
mance in 1920; the complete set premiered in 1923), the Serenade, op. 24 (1920–1923; pre-
miered in 1924), the Suite for Piano, op. 25 (1921–1923; premiered in 1924), and the Wind
Quintet, op. 26 (1923–1924; premiered in 1924).
119
In the middle of the 1919–1920 season, Musical America reported from London
that the London String Quartet had performed Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, ‘‘the first
work by a living composer of the nations recently at war with us, to feature in a London
program.’’ The programming choice was controversial, but its impact was softened by the
London String Quartet’s long-standing practice of programming works by British compo-
sers. Edwin Evans, ‘‘Work of Enemy Composer Restored to London for the First Time,’’
Musical America 31, no. 13 (24 January 1920): 17.
120
Henrietta Straus, ‘‘Music: Fair Play,’’ Nation 110, no. 2861 (1 May 1920): 599.
121
Works reported on during the 1920–1921 season included the Gurrelieder in Am-
sterdam, where Schoenberg spent a residency at the invitation of Willem Mengelberg, the
Chamber Symphony in Amsterdam and London, Pelleas und Melisande in Amsterdam and

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
continued to dwell on pre-war issues, such as the idea that a composition

could not be judged correctly by contemporary listeners, or that a work’s
value hinged on its composer’s sincerity,122 but others applied Straus’s
critical view of German music to Schoenberg. Writing in the Musical
Courier, Frank Patterson summarized the conventional view of Schoen-
berg from the period before the war when he wrote, ‘‘Arnold Schoen-
berg means, for the most of us, the very essence of modernism, or
musical cubism or futurism—call it by whatever name you will.’’ Yet
when, as an illustration, Patterson cited a wide range of reactions to the
Three Pieces, op. 11, he employed a rather flippant tone that would have
pleased neither supporters nor detractors of Schoenberg, effectively triv-
ializing the formerly burning issues surrounding Schoenberg and ultra-
modern music.
[The Three Pieces had been] seen or heard, in whole or in part, by

nearly every musician, and the musicians have laughed or cried, raved
or giggled, according to their points of view as to the seriousness of
these strange conceptions—their seriousness, I mean, to the progress of
music. Some there are who see in such works the beginning of the end,
just as some saw the downfall of classicism, of form, of everything that
313
they valued in music in the symphonic poems of Liszt and Strauss, in the
music dramas of Wagner. Some there are who merely shrug their
shoulders and smile scornfully, dismissing the whole thing as senseless
rot, without potentiality to evil, a mere passing stench in the flower
garden of eternal beauty.123
If Patterson questioned the significance of Schoenberg’s music, Liebling

and others questioned the very viability of its composer. Specifically,
Liebling drew his readers’ attention to Schoenberg’s productivity in
comparison with that of Scriabin and Stravinsky, two of the ‘‘very
advanced’’ composers with whom he had been compared in previous
years.
Looking over a great number of programs for the past two seasons, we
are led to believe that the dead Scriabin is the one of the three who is
most alive. Stravinsky has done some interesting works without advanc-
ing very far of late, but where is Schoenberg? When and where are his
compositions played today? Is he writing great works which the future
-
Philadelphia, the First String Quartet in Amsterdam, Budapest, and in Italian cities, Ver-
klärte Nacht in Budapest, Berlin, and New York, Pierrot lunaire in Vienna, and the Three
Piano Pieces, op. 11, in Los Angeles.
122
C. S., ‘‘The American Composer,’’ Musical Courier 82, no. 25 (23 June 1921): 22,
and ‘‘Dohnanyi Discusses Modernism,’’ Musical Courier 82, no. 9 (3 March 1921): 47.
123
Frank Patterson, ‘‘Arnold Schoenberg: Impressions of Modernism,’’ Musical
Courier 83, no. 1 (7 July 1921): 7.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
will acclaim? We do not know and we will not do the composer the
injustice of condemning him in ignorance.124
Even when the activities of the Society for Private Musical Performance
were reported in New York’s musical press, the Society was presented
only as a concert organization and Schoenberg as a conductor.125
Other commentators not only questioned Schoenberg’s continued
viability as a composer of ultra-modern music, but also suggested that his
most notorious works were not so modern after all. As they linked
Schoenberg’s post-1908 works to the styles of nineteenth-century mas-
ters, discussing the works in terms of traditional musical qualities and
techniques, they demystified a body of music formerly viewed by many as
unintelligible. In the opinion of Ornstein, Schoenberg was
a modernist with all the instincts of a Brahmsite. He is a modernist in

outward form, but within he is a thorough born Brahmsite. One need
only inspect the Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, to see under what complete
dominance not only emotionally, but to a certain extent even techni-
cally, he is under the influence of the German master.126
314
Blair Fairchild, an American composer interviewed in Paris, furthered
Ornstein’s argument when he suggested that certain traditional aspects
of Schoenberg’s music counteracted its modernity. ‘‘I believe, however,
that he is less modern than Ravel and certainly less startling than Stra-
vinsky,’’ Fairchild observed. ‘‘At first his music strikes you as revolution-
ary, but after a study of it I have become convinced that it is simply
a carrying on of the Wagnerian tradition—an exaggerated sublimation
of Wagnerian methods.’’127 Reference to Wagnerian and Brahmsian tra-
ditions anchors Schoenberg in the nineteenth century, a grounding that
was not always recognized by his critics in the immediate past.128
124
Leonard Liebling, ‘‘When Shall We Three Meet Again,’’ Musical Courier 82, no. 22
(2 June 1921): 20. Writing from London, Edward Dent reported later that month that
Schoenberg had ‘‘abandoned composition now, owing to the nervous strain of military
service during the war.’’ Edward Dent, ‘‘Schoenberg in London, as Dent Hears and Sees
Him,’’ Musical America 34, no. 9 (25 June 1921): 11.
125
Paul Bechert, ‘‘Vienna,’’ Musical Courier 84, no. 1 (5 January 1922): 35, and
‘‘Foreign Artists Spur Unprecedented Activity in Musical Life of Vienna,’’ Musical America
35, no. 24 (8 April 1922): 10.
126
Leo Ornstein, ‘‘The Trend of Modern Music,’’ Musical Courier 84, no. 21 (25 May
1922): 7.
127
Louis Bromfield, ‘‘Sees State Subsidy as Spur to Creative Work,’’ Musical America
36, no. 3 (13 May 1922): 19.
128
Reviews of a number of Schoenberg’s works from this period noted connections
with past musical styles. In a report in the Musical Courier on a performance of Pierrot in
Vienna in 1921, the unnamed correspondent was receptive to the work because he noted
an ‘‘inner relationship’’ between it and Schoenberg’s earlier ‘‘Wagnerian’’ compositions.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
In Europe, the idea that Schoenberg was now old-fashioned tied in

with the emergence of a fresh, ironic aesthetic perspective distinct from
the ‘‘lofty sincerity’’ of the pre-war years. In the realm of music, the
former perspective had long been associated with Wagner, but it had
reached an extreme in Schoenberg’s expressionist works; the new per-
spective was associated with composers such as Eisler, Weill, Krenek,
and Hindemith. Works representing the new aesthetic perspective, and
information concerning its reception in Germany, however, were slow to
arrive in New York.129 A study of the concert programs of New York City’s
new-music societies from 1920 through 1931 shows that Paul Hindemith
was the most performed of the younger German composers during this
time period, but the performances did not start until the end of 1923,
when the International Composers’ Guild programmed an excerpt from
his Suite ‘‘1922.’’130 American music magazines began covering Hinde-
mith’s reception in Germany somewhat earlier, with César Searchinger’s
report on the Donaueschingen music festival in the Musical Courier in
1921.131 The scholarly Musical Quarterly contributed to the sharpening of
Hindemith’s profile when in 1923 Carl Engel translated a review of
a Leipzig performance of Hindemith’s Kammermusik, op. 24, no. 1, in
order to make his point that European critics did not understand Amer- 315
ican dance music.132 Through increasingly frequent performances and
-
‘‘Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire is Given a Truly Worthy Performance in Vienna,’’ Musical
Courier 82, no. 25 (23 June 1921): 27.
129
See Stephen Hinton, ‘‘Germany, 1918–45,’’ in Music and Society: Modern Times:
From World War I to the Present, ed. Robert Morgan (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice
Hall, 1993), 83–100. For a compelling examination of the shift from the old to the new
aesthetics in Germany, see Joel Haney, ‘‘Slaying the Wagnerian Monster: Hindemith, Das
Nusch-Nuschi, and Musical Germanness after the Great War,’’ Journal of Musicology 25, no. 4
(2008): 339–93.
130
Additional performances of Hindemith’s music continued in March 1925 with the
Kleine Kammermusik, op. 24, at a League of Composers’ concert; two more works were
performed in 1925, three in 1927, two in 1928, one in 1929, two in 1930, and one in 1931.
The League of Composers programmed Krenek’s Dance Study in November 1924; other
groups programmed single works by Krenek in 1927 and 1928. No works by Eisler or Weill
were programmed. See ‘‘Programs of Modern-Music Societies in New York, 1920–1931,’’ an
appendix to Oja, Making Music Modern, 367–406.
131
César Searchinger, ‘‘Donaueschingen Becomes the Pittsfield of Germany,’’
Musical Courier 83, no. 9 (1 September 1921): 23, quoted in Rüdiger Jennert, Paul Hindemith
und die neue Welt: Studien zur amerikanischen Hindemith-Rezeption (Tutzing: Hans Schneider,
2005), 31.
132
Carl Engel, ‘‘Views and Reviews,’’ Musical Quarterly 9, no. 4 (October 1923): 578–
87. The same journal put Hindemith into the context of the previous generation when it
published an article by Hugo Leichtentritt, ‘‘German Music of the Last Decade’’ Musical
Quarterly 10, no. 2 (April 1924): 193–218. Leichtentritt noted that Strauss had lost his
dominant position and that younger composers were now turning toward ‘‘leaders like
Schoenberg, Busoni, [Hans] Pfitzner, [and] Stravinsky,’’ but he also observed that Hin-
demith ‘‘has generally been recognized throughout Germany as the most talented and
most promising composer of the younger generation.’’ Ibid., 193, 200.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
reports in the musical press Hindemith’s reputation grew during the

1920s.133 Yet no matter how well known he was in the United States by
the end of the decade, at its start Hindemith was largely unknown, and
when New York critics called Schoenberg old-fashioned in 1921 and 1922
it had at least as much to do with familiarity with his works to date as it did
with the new style emerging in Germany.
Critiques of the long-awaited New York premiere of Schoenberg’s
Five Pieces for Orchestra in November 1921 demonstrated that although
a new attitude toward Schoenberg was taking ground in the press, it was
not universal. It was especially rare in newspaper reviews, which tended
to revert to colorful expressions of outrage reminiscent of the past. The
Musical Courier, perceiving these critiques to be a useful foil for its own
assessment, quoted several, which included phrases such as ‘‘the most
hideous concatenation of blood-curdling noises ever drawn from tor-
tured instruments in Carnegie Hall,’’ and ‘‘the high spots of the perfor-
mance were a passage wherein a muted trombone said ‘Brr!’ and
convulsed the audience, and another in which someone stepped on the
piccolo’s tail and it yelped.’’ Agreeing that there were indeed odd sounds
in the Five Pieces, the Musical Courier added that there were ‘‘also pas-
316 sages of real music, though tremendously dissonant’’ and ‘‘some genu-
inely fine orchestral effects.’’ Although the reviewer concluded that
‘‘there is never a moment in all of these five pieces when the hand of
the master is not felt,’’ he nevertheless registered a certain distaste for
Schoenberg’s aesthetics:
If a composer sets out deliberately to reflect in tone the dreadful pos-

sibilities of human consciousness and imagination he is pretty sure to
arrive just where Schoenberg has arrived. On the other hand, can it be
denied that art is gradually trending in that direction? Art works that
represent the normal, ordinary, monotonous life of toil and duty are at
a discount, and have been relegated to the Sunday school. The rest of
mankind wants to be thrilled, and—perhaps it is fair to say—can only be
thrilled by the unusual, the exotic, the bizarre; either that, or the
primitive.134
By reporting the old-fashioned assessments of the newspapers, counter-

ing them with references to the composer’s technical mastery, and then
criticizing Schoenberg’s aesthetics, the reviewer produced a fresh assess-
ment of the Five Pieces that acknowledged weaknesses as well as
133
Jennert, Paul Hindemith und die neue Welt, 31–33
134
‘‘Schoenberg,’’ Musical Courier 83, no. 23 (8 December 1921): 22. After this per-
formance by the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York City, the New York Symphony pro-
grammed the Five Pieces in 1925; the Philharmonic did not play the work until 1948.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
strengths but removed itself from the hyperemotional reactions of critics

in the past.
Musical America’s review of the Five Pieces also leaned in this new
direction. It provided the performance history of the work—including
reference to its delayed appearance in New York—and noted its ‘‘un-
ique’’ reception in London, Vienna, and, most recently, Philadelphia.
The reviewer acknowledged the uncharacteristic ‘‘joyful chuckles and
unrestrained cackles of merriment’’ with which New York audiences met
the work, but also explained that ‘‘these scoffers soon subsided’’ because
‘‘the extraordinary deluge of tone, the veiled strangeness, captured
attention.’’ Although the reviewer perceived the Five Pieces to be a seri-
ous work of ‘‘genius,’’ he also admitted that he did not understand the
work ‘‘beyond providing overwhelming proof of the soul-stirring, chal-
lenging art of Schoenberg as a master of strange tonal colors and bewil-
dering rhythmic patterns.’’135 He acknowledged the work’s difficult past,
its distinctive reception, and its status as an artwork, and yet he also
registered his befuddlement in trying to understand it on traditional
musical terms.
Whereas these critics seemed to be rather confused by Schoenberg’s
music, Paul Rosenfeld, writing in The Dial, proclaimed his understanding 317
and appreciation of Schoenberg, whom he called ‘‘as troubling, capri-
cious, and seraphic an artist as any the world holds today.’’ Rosenfeld
described the idiosyncrasies of Schoenberg’s style in terms that his read-
ers may have been able to appreciate, explaining that Schoenberg ‘‘hears
in almost epigrammatic rapidity; jumps processes of relation which to
others appear necessary, [and] feels a dominant pitch in what to others
may seem a succession of dissonances.’’136 Although Rosenfeld clearly
admired the Five Pieces, he noted its musical extremes in terms that
implied doubt of the work’s cohesiveness. His major criticism, however,
was reserved for the audience, which he faulted for being unable to
appreciate this hearing of the work as a creative act. Instead, he ex-
plained, they ‘‘sat like patients in dentist chairs, submitting resignedly
to a disagreeable operation,’’ and only refraining from actively expres-
sing their distaste because of their memory of previous injustices. ‘‘Every-
one there doubtless remembered the days when a certain Richard
Strauss, who has since been discovered the tamest of domestic animals
. . . wrote ‘crazy-music’ and was ‘an anarch of art,’’’ Rosenfeld con-
cluded.137 By registering his critical view of the work along with his
admiration for Schoenberg, Rosenfeld distanced himself from critics
135
A. H., ‘‘Stokowski Introduces Schoenberg’s Five Orchestra Pieces,’’ Musical
America 35, no. 7 (10 December 1921): 48.
136
Paul Rosenfeld, ‘‘Musical Chronicle,’’ The Dial 72 (January 1922): 111–13.
137
Ibid.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
who supported Schoenberg unconditionally or who found his music to

be completely offensive. His main critique concerned the environment
in which Schoenberg’s music was heard, implying that the baggage accu-
mulated over the past decade made it impossible to really listen to the
music and appreciate it on its own terms.138
Near the beginning of the next season (1922–1923), Rosenfeld
wrapped his appreciation of Schoenberg into an assessment of current
trends in German music, presenting a reading that reinforced the epic
nature of the new perspective Straus had outlined more than two years
earlier. In an essay for Vanity Fair, Rosenfeld posited that a renewed
acquaintance with contemporary German music ‘‘obliged’’ listeners to
reorient themselves. Obliquely referencing Guillaume Apollinaire’s
1914 poem ‘‘La Petite Auto,’’ in which Apollinaire referred to a new era
that began with his journey to enlist, Rosenfeld identified the present as
a new era of music divided from the past by the war. For Rosenfeld, there
was no confusion: the reign of Richard Strauss, the earlier master of
German music, was over; the composer most likely to take his place was
Schoenberg, the ‘‘one great force in German music capable of dominat-
ing the situation as Strauss once dominated it.’’139 Although he found
318 that Schoenberg was more the heir to Brahms and Reger than to Wagner
and Strauss, he nevertheless saw him as dominating German music in the
future. In addition, he explained why Schoenberg’s music was so difficult
for many listeners to admire.
Schoenberg seems to have the power of exceedingly rapid experience;

he seems to belong to the class of men who come quickly to conscious-
ness, and recognize a situation with lightning quickness from the very
preliminary rustle and quiver in their nerves. For this reason, it is prob-
able that his expressions will [for] a long time seem grotesque and
incomprehensible to our slow-moving, slow-thinking, slow-living
public.140
Rosenfeld’s assessment of the future reception of Schoenberg’s music

was insightful; his claim of Schoenberg’s leadership in German music,
which would be challenged in Europe and the United States during
coming decades, was not. Indeed, in discussing current German music
Rosenfeld listed only Walter Braunfels and Erich Korngold as Straussian
138
About Rosenfeld’s significance as a critic see Leibowitz, ‘‘Remembering Paul
Rosenfeld,’’ and Musical Impressions: Selections from Paul Rosenfeld’s Criticism, ed. idem (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1969).
139
Paul Rosenfeld, ‘‘The Music of Post-Straussian Germany: Impressions of Three
Present-Day German Musicians Gleaned from Recent Performances of their Work,’’ Vanity
Fair 19, no. 3 (November 1922): 63, 110. Note that this article predates Leichtentritt’s 1924
assessment of German music, quoted earlier, by nearly two years.
140
Ibid.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
composers who did not measure up to their model, but he did not
mention any of the younger composers, such as Hindemith, Weill, Eisler,
or Krenek, who would soon come to prominence in Germany. Rosen-
feld’s hyperbole, however, effectively dismissed Strauss from discussions
of ultra-modern music, somewhat clarifying the application of the term
at that particular time.
Three months after Rosenfeld’s article appeared, his predictions
regarding the reception of Schoenberg’s music came to the test when
Pierrot lunaire had its long-awaited U.S. premiere. Finally, music lovers in
New York City—‘‘slow-thinking’’ and otherwise—could hear one of the
works that had catapulted Schoenberg into their consciousness just over
a decade earlier. As had been the case with several other premieres of
Schoenberg’s works in New York, Pierrot lunaire was given special signif-
icance by a pre-concert lecture: Carl Engel, the head of the music divi-
sion at the Library of Congress, warned the audience that the work was
‘‘difficult to grasp’’ but exhorted them nonetheless that it was their duty
to be receptive to it.141 Ultimately, the reception of the work was mixed,
with older newspaper critics replaying earlier, negative reactions to
Schoenberg and younger critics offering support. At least one of these
younger critics, Katherine Spaeth of the Evening Mail, illustrated the new 319
critical assessment of Schoenberg. ‘‘As music it is an interesting idea; as
melody it is a minus quantity,’’ Spaeth observed. ‘‘It reeks with exotic and
weird ramblings, yet holds the attention with its very unrest.’’ Spaeth’s
most pointed criticism of Pierrot was reserved for its distinctive vocal
recitation, which in her opinion created an ‘‘irritating effect against the
orchestral background,’’ leading ultimately to a work in which ‘‘the voice
and the music did not mix well.’’142 Significantly, Spaeth noted this
defect dispassionately, not feeling compelled to denigrate the composer.
Other critics avoided such specific criticisms, but instead regarded Pierrot
as a special work, a categorization that we tend to take for granted today.
Apparently, in 1923 Pierrot was already perceived to be a work that would
remain forever challenging because of its distinctive language. In the
Musical Leader Emilie Bauer reported that
no one was lukewarm about the work; one either hated it, or was
intensely moved by it. It cannot be passed by with the banal remark
with which most new works are greeted, that it was ‘‘interesting.’’ It was
interesting and it was much more. It is a work of expressionism with
great dramatic power. Liking it or not liking it is of no consequence;
perhaps it is decadent and perhaps it is not; but if one can listen without
141
Metzer, ‘‘The New York Reception of Pierrot lunaire,’’ 672.
142
Katharine Spaeth, ‘‘Concert and Opera: Schoenberg’s Novelty,’’ The Evening Mail,
5 February 1923.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
the prejudice of the past, one may also hear the menace of the future
with all its dangers and also all its triumphs.143
Indeed, this performance of Pierrot lunaire seemed to justify the furor

long attached to Schoenberg’s music, and yet, despite the historical
importance of the event, most reviews of the performance did not reflect
Schoenberg’s new status in New York City’s musical press. Instead it was
a review of the Chamber Symphony two months later that best articu-
lated how critical understanding of Schoenberg’s music had changed
since 1910. In April 1923 Stokowski conducted the Philadelphia Orches-
tra at Carnegie Hall in the Chamber Symphony, a work first heard in New
York City in 1915. Introducing it as ‘‘the most interesting, if not the most
enjoyable, feature of the week,’’ the critic at Musical America chose the
subhead ‘‘The Terrible Schoenberg’’ to set off his discussion of the
Chamber Symphony, which centered on the attempt by a few members
of the audience to suppress the applause given the work with hissing.
There are people who would make it the fashion to object to music of
Schoenberg whenever and wherever it is played. To the non-partisan
mind they appear, perhaps, somewhat belated adventurers, survivors of
320 the piping days when Schoenberg was the musical ogre of Europe, when
every new trick or fantastic somersault he might perform was a signal for
laughter and ridicule. [ . . . ]
For the serious listeners who swear neither at nor by Schoenberg there
was much of beauty in the work, and a great deal to interest and hold
the mind.
The critic then placed the Chamber Symphony within Schoenberg’s

compositional evolution by noting that it was a transitional work:
The composer had not forgotten his Verklärte Nacht. He had not yet
found his way to the Five Pieces. Written in 1906, its contents denote
the younger Schoenberg not yet free from the influences of other
minds; but they also denote the radical of the later manifestoes.144
This particular review suggests some new realities, not the least of
which is the implied modernity of a non-partisan mindset that relegated
the traditional disputes over Schoenberg to an age long past. Was it the
143
Emilie Bauer, ‘‘New York Debates Merits of ‘Pierrot Lunaire,’’’ Musical Leader 45,
no. 6 (8 February 1923): 126.
144
‘‘Schönberg’s Kammersymphonie Divides New York Audience,’’ Musical America 37,
no. 25 (14 April 1923): 6. The unnamed reviewer refers to the work as ‘‘Schoenberg’s later
arrangement for large orchestra,’’ as distinct from the original version for fifteen instru-
ments, but Schoenberg did not complete his official version of the work for full orchestra,
op. 9b, until 1935.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
bailey
case that after years of admonitions, audiences had finally come to hear
Schoenberg with dispassionate ears? Hissing in the audience indicates
otherwise; but the recognition of the controversy over Schoenberg as
a long-standing phenomenon in its own right, and the assignment of
the whole experience to a physically, aesthetically, and temporally distant
Europe, intimate that a new sensibility had been achieved. Once held up
as the ultimate example of ‘‘the new,’’ Schoenberg’s works garnered, if
not complete understanding and acceptance, at least tolerance.145
In New York City during the 1920s, the new attitude identified by
Straus and Rosenfeld years earlier became predominant: German dom-
inance receded and a greater sense of internationalism took root. In this
new environment the current version of ultra-modern music flour-
ished.146 Resident composers, including Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell,
and Edgard Varèse, contributed substantially not only to the repertory of
new music in New York, but also to the organizations that supported its
performance. With the recognition of the tremendous scope of recently
composed music and the prominence of local composers of ultra-
modern music, audiences and critics could no longer discount new
trends. Schoenberg benefitted from this new tolerance with additional
performances of Pierrot lunaire in 1925 and 1933, but so did other com- 321
posers.147 Leader of German music or not, Schoenberg was now just one
of many ultra-modernists, including Americans, whose music could be
heard in New York. Never again would conditions foster the distinctive
status that he had achieved during the second decade of the twentieth
century; it was now impossible for Schoenberg to be perceived realisti-
cally as the unchallenged leader of ‘‘the new.’’ Nevertheless, the earlier
145
It is important to note that in Europe Schoenberg had achieved a new level of
acceptance by the musical establishment by the mid-1920s. At the end of 1925 he was
appointed to a prestigious professorship at the Berlin Academy of the Arts.
146
The application of the term ultra-modern was fluid in the first decades of the
twentieth century, when it was used to identify the most challenging music of the day, be it
Schoenberg in 1914 or Varèse in 1928. Von Glahn and Broyles assert that ‘‘ultra-modern’’
became common only around 1920, when it was ‘‘used to distinguish a group of radical
composers, including Varèse, Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, Dane Rudhyar, and
Ruth Crawford from forward-looking but less radical ones, such as George Gershwin, Roger
Sessions, and Virgil Thomson.’’ Von Glahn and Broyles, ‘‘Musical Modernism before it
Began,’’ 30n5. Metzer notes that ‘‘modernist’’ and ‘‘ultra-modern’’ are terms used to iden-
tify challenging works in general, but that especially during the 1920s ‘‘ultra-modern’’ was
applied to the ‘‘more radical composers, including Varèse, Cowell, and Schoenberg.’’
David Metzer, ‘‘The Ascendancy of Musical Modernism in New York City, 1915–1929’’
(Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1993), 284–86. I would argue that ‘‘ultra-modern’’ was applied
consistently from about 1910 through the 1920s to music that was arresting in its newness,
as a means of distinguishing it from other music by living composers. The application of the
term became more consistent as critics and listeners became more familiar with the direc-
tion modern music in general was taking.
147
Feisst summarizes how Schoenberg was ‘‘explained and contextualized’’ in
American publications during the 1920s and 1930s. Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World, 31–36.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC
reception of his music in the American musical press had been so mem-
orable and pervasive that it would be difficult for music lovers to separate
him from his former status.148 For them Schoenberg became, like his
Pierrot lunaire, a category unto himself, a timeless symbol of the challenge
that ultra-modern music posed before the Great War.
ABSTRACT
The rich array of publications covering music in New York City
during the second two decades of the twentieth century provides
a compelling account of the reception of ultra-modern music. Newspa-
pers, arts periodicals, and, especially, monthly and weekly music maga-
zines offer tantalizing insight into how music lovers perceived new and
challenging music. Before the Great War connections to German musi-
cal traditions were strong, and ultra-modern music was mostly imported.
During the war ties to Germany were largely severed and ultra-modern
music was silenced. After 1918 a more egalitarian and international atti-
322 tude emerged. The reception of Schoenberg’s music in New York City
between 1910 and 1923 illustrates the evolution of this new attitude.
Keywords: Great War, New York City, reception of contemporary music,

Schoenberg, ultra-modern music
148
In his 1928 retrospective overview of ‘‘waves’’ of modern music since 1920, Cop-
land implied that the distinctive qualities of Schoenberg’s (and Stravinsky’s) works from
the pre-war era guaranteed that they would be forever ‘‘associated with musical radicalism
of the second decade of this century.’’ Aaron Copland, ‘‘Music Since 1920,’’ Modern Music 5,
no. 3 (March–April 1928): 17.

5.31.134.175 on Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:46:36 UTC

JM 2015 32 2 279

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

JM 2015 32 2 279

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

“For the serious listeners who swear neither at nor by Schoenberg”: Music Criticism, the

This content downloaded from

The author wishes to thank the anonymous readers of the Journal

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

Because scholars of early twentieth-century American music have

This content downloaded from

compositions were so rarely performed that almost no one knew of them.

This content downloaded from

As a performer present on the scene, Ornstein was for a time favored by

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

regard to recent musical works, they provided a more balanced approach

This content downloaded from

appeal, as evidenced when critics employed the word ‘‘fad’’ or refer-

In another example, one of the several articles that appeared in Decem-

This content downloaded from

surprised. But the extremely negative reaction of the usually staid

Indeed, such demonstrations were so common in Germany and Austria

To arouse any kind of sensation in these days of such enormous over-

In citing Richard Strauss, Abel referenced a composer who until

‘‘Of all wild, absurd, incomprehensible, ugly, and eccentric music,’’

This content downloaded from

who rail at Richard Strauss today or at poor, harmless, necessary [Max]

As Stransky’s interviewer related, even in Europe Schoenberg eclipsed

This content downloaded from

If critics and readers had paid attention to Schindler’s overview of

This content downloaded from

reviews of Schoenberg’s recent works that reflected European critics’

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

1922–1923 1922–1923 293

belonged to the culture of German-speaking musicians that had deter-

This content downloaded from

than featuring an apparently renegade composer from the parent musi-

Three Seasons of Experience

Following the premiere of the String Quartet in D Minor in New York,

This content downloaded from

change as a result of the war in Europe. The city’s already international

This content downloaded from

1916–1917, included performances in New York City of Verklärte Nacht by

This content downloaded from

Which composers deserved the ultra-modern label remained a con-

Comments such as these, both published in music magazines directed at

This content downloaded from

Just as they discussed which composers might best be labeled as

This content downloaded from

Although it might seem trivial today, identifying the ‘‘real’’ Schoen-

for the most part ungrateful and entirely incomprehensible. . . . If it is

This content downloaded from

Regardless of whether they concurred with Downes’s view of the pro-

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

these models, pianist-composer Percy Grainger thanked composers such

This content downloaded from

The Great War Intrudes

When European critics compared Schoenberg’s reception with that of

This content downloaded from

Inspired by protests from its subscribers, the New York Philharmonic

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from