Continuing
our look at jealousies through music history, today let’s travel to the early
twentieth century and look at two famous composers who represented opposing
camps in contemporary music. Arnold Schoenberg stands at one end of the debate,
viewing himself as the “inheritor of the great tradition of European music,” as
stated in Weiss and Taruskin’s Music in
the Western World: A History in Documents. Known for using the twelve-tone
system of composition, Schoenberg considered his ideas a continuation of
nineteenth-century aesthetics. Twelve tone is a type of composition in which
the composer takes the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, places them in an
order of his choice, and then uses this series as the basis for his work.
The
second camp of contemporary music sides with Igor Stravinsky, a neo-classicist
who reacted to Romanticism by denying music’s expressive nature. Supporters of
neoclassicism tended to revive forms and styles common in music of the Baroque
and Classical eras (ca. 1600–1800). This movement was a type of reaction
against the dramatic, emotional, and romantic music of the nineteenth century
and tended to focus more on form and order.
Scholars
say that Schoenberg and Stravinsky were once amiable acquaintances however
sometime in the 1920s, the divide seemed to become apparent. Journalists
certainly did not help with matters as they quoted both composers in opposition
to each other. Schoenberg is noted as calling Stravinsky’s music “chic,
attention-grabbing” while Stravinsky found his opponent’s “music of the future”
ridiculous.
I
find it interesting how two successful composers could have such an intense
rivalry! Do you tend to side with one camp of contemporary music over the other
or do you appreciate both types of twentieth-century styles? On Thursday we
will look at a piece composed by each composer and then it’s up to you to
decide!
