MCP1 Lecture 18 -

Skandalkonzert 1913:
Schoenberg, Berg, Webern

Dr Helen Seddon-Gray
Second Viennese School
Skandalkonzert 1913: The Programme

• Anton Webern: Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6

• Alexander von Zemlinsky: Four Orchestral Songs on poems by Maeterlinck
• Arnold Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No.1, Op. 9.
• Alban Berg: Two of the Five Orchestral Songs on Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg,Op. 4.
• Gustav Mahler: Kindertontenlieder

The concert erupted into a riot and ended before the performance of the Mahler could begin.
What had happened prior to this that made the
audience so hostile?
Vienna in 1913
Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, Op.1, No.9
• Premiered Vienna 1907 – divided audience.
• for 15 solo instruments
• Four movements of a sonata condensed into a single movement.
• Length: around 20 minutes
• Key signature of E major but highly chromatic episodes
• Timbral contrast through ‘soloists’ as opposed to the Viennese
symphonic style of ‘blending’ (Bujic, 2011).
• Unification through reworking of short motifs and phrases.
🔊Listen here
Schoenberg’s path to the breaking down of
tonality: 1. String Quartet No.2
• 1907-1908
• A turbulent time in Schoenberg’s personal life
• ‘I renounced a tonal centre’ (Schoenberg in Auner,
2003, p. 56)
• Mvt 4: Rapture:
I feel air from another planet.
I faintly through the darkness see faces
Friendly even now, turning toward me.
And trees and paths that I loved fade

Schoenberg, The Red Gaze, 1910

2. Pierrot Lunaire (1912)
• Premiered in Berlin.
• Condensed forces: soloist, 2 wind (flute, clarinet) 2 strings (violin, cello), piano
• A melodrama, setting 21 selected poems from Albert Giraud’s ‘Pierrot Lunaire’s.
• Use of Sprechstimme (speech-singing) style by soprano voice, this work
representing its most notable deployment.
• Atonal.
• 35-40 minutes in length.
• Divided into three groups of seven poems, seven-note motifs throughout the
work.
• Echoes of German Cabaret.
• Listen here
(from Bujic, 2011 p. 93) ‘Pierrot’s
World is controlled by the alien
and sinister light of the moon;
and the macabre violence to
which he subjects Cassander
exposes the dark undercurrent
that is concealed by the
expressionless surface of a
masked, clown-like figure.’
Five Orchestral Pieces (1910)
• Klangfarbenmelodie employed for the first time
• Brevity (18/19 minutes in total)
• ‘Conscious decision to avoid thematic connections,…changing modes
of expression’ (Baker, 1982, p.2)
• Instrumentation, dynamics, texture, rhythm, register constantly
varied to avoid repetition.
• III – Farben (‘Colours’) – ‘seamless instrumental shadings vary the
same chord in constantly changing timbres’. (Bujic, 2011, p.70)
• Just 44 bars in length, structurally a loose palindrome (a-b-c, d, c1-b1-a1)
Listen here
Serialism: Suite for Piano, Op.25, 1925
• Baroque Dance titles (Prelude, Gavotte, Musette, Intermezzo,
Menuet, Gigue)

‘I have begun again to work. Something completely new! The German Aryans
who persecuted me in Mattsee will have this new thing…to thank for the fact
that even they will still be respected abroad for 100 years, because they belong
to the very state that has just secured for itself hegemony in the field of music!’
(a letter to Alma Mahler, 1923 in Bujic, 2011, p.120)

Listen here
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Anton Webern…

• Most likely Schoenberg’s first private pupil (1904-8)

• Used the 12-tone technique most rigorously, an inspiration for the
total serialists of the post war avant-garde.
• Great loyalty to Schoenberg – copyist, champion, friend
• A conductor, known for his interpretations of Mahler
Six Pieces for Orchestra (1913)
• Brevity of movements (under 12 minutes for the whole set, III only 11
bars, longest IV only 41 bars)
• Extreme dynamics and volatility of gestures, a mark of expressionism.
• Very large orchestra in first edition (6 horns, 6 trombones etc) but a
feeling of chamber music.
• Sparce orchestration
• Extensive use of Klangfarbenmelodie
• III – rising and falling 2nd in viola and trumpet parts, total
emancipated dissonance.
• Listen here
Webern and Serialism
• Tendencies towards the use of semitones in his rows.
• Pointillist textures
• Trio, Op.20 rigorously organised
• Listen here

• Why might this music be problematic for the listener?

Alban Berg (1885-1935)
Alban Berg….
Some notable works:
• Wozzek (1921-2, premiered 1925) – recurring leitmotifs and sections
underpins dramatic associations and sections, not a 12-tone
composition.
• Lyric Suite (1927) – first movement became first extended 12-note
composition, middle movements largely free.
• Violin Concerto (1935) – based on a row of overlapping major and
minor triads, enabling diatonic references.
Altenberg Lieder (1912)
• Five songs
• First independent work (age 27) after Schoenberg tutelage.
• During these songs, at the Skandalkonzert, the fighting began
• Setting of postcard texts by Peter Altenberg – ‘non-conformist ideas and
erotic allusions in the form of aphorisms’ (Leibowitz, 1991, p.126)
• The poet at the time was in an asylum.
• Highly chromatic, including 12-note chords and melodies in the 3rd and 5th
songs.
• Brevity of length (longest first and last, 38 and 55 bars)
• recurring harmonic, rhythmic and melodic figurations
• No complete performance of the songs until 1953.
• Listen here
References
Auner, J. (2003). A Schoenberg Reader:Documents of a Life. Yale: Sheridan Books.
Baker, J. (1982). Coherence in Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra Op.6. Music Theory
Spectrum. Vol 4, 1-27.
Bujic, B. (2011). Arnold Schoenberg. New York & London: Phaidon Press.
Leibowitz, R. (1991). Alban Berg’s Five Orchestral Songs after Post-Card Texts by
Peter Altenberg, Op. 4. The Music Quarterly. 75(4). 125-131.
Libery Sound. (2020). Breve análisis. Suite für Klavier op.25. | A. Schoenberg
[video file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFM7kOf0ZY