SCHONBERG, ARNOLD (1874— ), Austrian com poser, was born in Vienna on Sept. 13, 1874. He began to study violin and 'cello at an early age and to compose chamber music. In musical theory he was practically self-taught. His earlier works include songs, the string sextet, Verklarte Nacht op. 4 (re vised later for string orchestra with six soloists), the symphonic poem, Pelleas et Melisande, and the Gurrelieder, a ballad cycle for chorus and full orchestra (first produced in Vienna 1912-3), written under the influence of the Wagner tradition. Schonberg then came into touch with Kokoschka and other leaders of the new movement in art and literature, and entered upon an experi mental period in which he put romanticism behind him and went back to Bach and the earlier polyphonic writers for inspiration.
With the 2nd chamber symphony and particularly the 2nd string quartet (1908), into the last two movements of which he intro duces a soprano part to words by Stephan George, he definitely breaks away from tradition; and with the piano pieces op. I his mature period may be said to begin, although he continues to strike out new paths with each successive work. In 1911 he went to live in Berlin and in the same year produced his Harmonie lehre (see HARMONY), a revised edition of which was published in 1922.
An eventful performance was that of Pierrot Lunaire in Berlin the following year with Albertine Zehme in the spoken part. This cycle of twenty-one ("three times seven") poems for recitation with piano, flute, clarinet, violin, and violoncello in constantly changing combinations, is, after the Gurrelieder, his best known work. In 1918, having returned to Vienna, Schonberg founded there a society for private musical performances. A revival of
Die gliickliche Hand op. 18 at Breslau in 1928 aroused much interest. This dramatic piece, which is in effect a monodrama, with dumb secondary characters and a chorus, is in spite of its early date perhaps the most daring of Schonberg's experiments and that in which his psychology finds its clearest expression. He both wrote the libretto and ordered every detail of the staging. Essentially a pioneer, he has never made concessions to the ordi nary listener, but the tenseness and extreme compression of this work make quite unprecedented demands on the concentrative powers of his audiences. In all his later writing the combination of a tersely dramatic and fragmentary style with complete aton ality leaves an impression of complication and strain : he is nevertheless sincerely striving towards simplicity and compact ness, and his reversion to a smaller or chamber orchestra has led to a general adoption of this medium by younger composers. He has also adopted a simplified method of scoring, in which duplica tion of parts is avoided and the whole is compressed on to a few staves.
Other important works are: 6 songs with orchestra op. 8 (19II) ; chamber symphony for 15 solo instr. op. 9 (1912) ; Melodramen op. 21 ; serenade for clarinet, bass clarinet, mandoline, guitar, three strings and (low) male voice op. 24 (1924) ; pianoforte suite op. 25; quintet for wind instr. op. 26. See E. Wellesz, Arnold Schonberg (1924) ; Paul Bekker, Kritische Zeitbilder (1921).