Expressionism developed among German painters and poets during the early twentieth century, quickly spreading to music, theater, literature, dance and film. Expressionism stressed intense, subjective emotion and rejected conventional beauty. Radical distortions were used to shock audiences, and dark topics such as anguish, fear, madness and death were the norm. Expressionism was also a German reaction to the sensuality, shimmering textures and pleasant subjects of French Impressionism and Symbolists.
Musical Expressionism was often uses as a tool against social injustice and as a means of protest. Opposition to war, especially World War I, was a common Expressionistic subject. Composers used jarring rhythms and dissonance to stir emotions from the darkest recesses of the human psyche. As a movement, Expressionism was fairly unified: writers, artists, film makers and musicians kept in close contact and supported one another. Due to the overt political tone of the movement and its organization, Expressionism ended with the rise of the Nazi regime. Hitler, a failed artist and painter, condemned Expressionistic art as perverted. Thus, Expressionists were forced to flee Germany or go underground.
The foremost proponents of musical Expressionism were Arnold Schoenberg, 1874–1951, and his two students, Alban Berg, 1885–1935 and Anton Webern, 1883–1945. These three, along with their close associates in early 20th century Vienna, came to be known as the Second Viennese School.
Twelve-tone System
Expressionism evolved from the emotionally turbulent and highly chromatic and tonally vague music of late German Romanticism. Expressionism emphasizes harsh dissonance, melodic fragmentation, unusual instrumental timbres, extreme registers, and atonality (lack of a tonal center or sense of key).
Arnold Schoenberg's music from 1908 onward broke with Romantic traditions by the use of atonality—the absence of a tonal center and sense of key. These early attempts at atonality are called free atonality. By the early 1920s he devised a structured system of atonal composition known as the twelve-tone system, or dodecaphony. This system assigns equal importance to all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. In contrast, traditional music (common practice harmony) is based on a hierarchy of tones and graded levels of consonance and dissonance.
Arnold Schoenberg, self-portrait (1910) | Schoenberg was an innovative composer but not a good painter. | Arnold Schoenberg Center
All music written with the twelve-tone system is based on a tone row. A tone row consists of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale arranged in a specific order.
Chromatic Scale
Tone Row created from chromatic scale
All twelve notes of the chromatic scale must appear in the row, but the order is determined by the composer. The row forms the melodic and harmonic basis of the composition but is subject to various techniques:
Inversion: flipping the melodic contour
Retrograde: playing backwards
Retrograde-inversion: backwards and flipped
Transposition: moving the pitch higher or lower while maintaining the same interval spacing
Tone Row Inversion
Tone Row Retrograde
In addition to the above techniques, any tone of the row may be displaced by octaves, any rhythm may be used and the tone row may be stacked to form polyphonic and harmonic (vertical) structures. The row must be stated in its entirety. While use of a tone row may seem inflexible there are 479,001,600 possible combinations of the twelve tones. Rules underlying tone row use are called pitch serialization.
Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (Moonstruck Pierrot), was written in 1912, and is a setting of twenty-one selected poems from Otto Erich Hartleben's German translation of Albert Giraud's cycle of French poems. This cycle of poems divide into three groups of seven and evoke the bizarre night visions of a poet named Pierrot and his descent into madness.
Pierrot Lunaire illustrates Schoenberg's use of free atonality during his early years. It's scored for soprano and a quintet alternating between eight instruments as needed from song to song: flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano. The work is about 40 minutes long but we'll listen to the opening song only, Mondestrunken (moon drunk).
The singer uses a half singing and half speaking vocal style called Sprechtimme. Mondestrunken's text revolves around Pierrot, a poet drunk on moonlight, and how he gradually becomes deranged. Here's a translation of the lyrics:
The wine that one drinks with the eyes
The moon spills nights into the waves,
And a Spring flood overflows
The silent horizon.
Desires, visible and sweet
Countless swim across the flood.
The wine that one drinks with the eyes
The moon spills nights into the waves.
The poet, who practices devotion,
Enraptures himself on the holy drink,
He turns against the sky ecstatic
Headlong reeling sucks and slurps
The wine, that one drinks with the eyes.
Moonlight is suggested with a seven-note ostinato motive:
Pierrot Lunaire op. 21: 1. Mondestrunken | A. Schoenberg (0:00-2:38)
The Scream (1893) | Edvard Munch | The Scream is an icon of existential anguish | Munch Museum, Oslo
Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10
Anton Webern, 1883–1945, was an Austrian composer whose Expressionistic works were among the most radical of his time. He embraced and expanded the atonal and twelve-tone techniques pioneered by his mentor, Arnold Schoenberg.
Descended from an aristocratic family, Webern studied music at the University of Vienna and began his career as a conductor. Schoenberg tutored him in composition after college, helping shape and hone Webern's style. The young musician soon rose to prominence as a highly regarded composer, teacher, vocal coach and choirmaster.
Anton Webern | Webern in Stettin, Prussia, October 1912 | Wikimedia Commons
Webern's music is characterized by brevity, restrain and the masterful use of instrumental timbres and twelve-tone technique. His Five Pieces for Orchestra, 1911–13, is a perfect example of these attributes: each movement is between thirty seconds and two minutes in duration. Here are the movement names and start times in the video below:
1. (0:05) Sehr ruhig und zart
2. (0:49) Lebhaft und zart bewegt
3. (1:23) Sehr langsam und äußerst
4. (2:54) Fließend äußerst zart
5. (3:24) Sehr fließend
5 Pieces For Orchestra Op.10 (1911-13) | Anton Webern
Webern's music, along with other Expressionists, was denounced as degenerate art by the Nazi Party in Germany. Thus, publication, display and performance of all Expressionist music, art and literature was banned after 1938. Schoenberg fled to the United States but Webern went into hiding until Germany and Austria were occupied by Allied troops in 1945. Ironically, after Webern emerged from hiding in 1945 he was accidentally shot dead by an American soldier when he stepped outside his house to smoke a cigar.
Although the Expressionistic movement died with the rise of the Nazi regime, the style still lives on as a staple of horror movie soundtracks.
Merle Hazard
If the above atonal music tweaked your ears and soul a bit too much, Merle Hazard might make it right again with his tuneful and tonal tale of atonal music:
Gimme Some of That Ol' Atonal Music | Merle Hazard (3:31)
Vocabulary
Expressionism, atonality, twelve-tone system, dodecaphony, tone row, Sprechtimme, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Second Viennese School
•••
Musical Expressionism
Pierrot Lunaire
