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Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg
One of the most influential collections of music ever published, Style and Idea includes Schoenberg’s writings about himself and his music as well as studies of many other composers and reflections on art and society.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Arnold Schoenberg
482 books54 followersNoted Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg abandoned tradition and developed the twelve-tone system for music.
Associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, he led the second Viennese school. He used the spelling Schönberg until his move to the United States in 1934, whereupon he altered it to Schoenberg "in deference to American practice."
His approach in terms of harmony developed among the major landmarks of 20th-century thought; at least three generations in the Europeans and Americans consciously extended his thinking or in some cases passionately reacted in opposition. During the rise of the Nazi party, people labeled jazz as degenerate art.
People widely knew Schoenberg early in his career for his success in simultaneously extending the opposed German romantic styles of Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner. Later, his name came to personify pioneering innovations, the most polemical feature of 20th-century art. In the 1920s, the technique, a widely influential method of Schoenberg, manipulated an ordered series of all in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term variation, and this first modern embraced ways of motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.
Schoenberg, an important theorist, also painted and influentially taught his students, who included Alban Berg, Anton Friedrich Wilheim von Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, and later John Milton Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, and many other prominent. Avant-garde thought throughout the 20th century echoes many of practices, including the formalization of method and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically. His crucial, often polemical views of history and aesthetics influenced many significant critics, including Theodor Adorno, Charles Rosen, and Carl Dahlhaus,of the 20th century. His thought also considerably influenced the pianists Rudolf Serkin, Artur Schnabel, Eduard Steuermann, and later Glenn Gould.
The Arnold Schönberg center in Vienna collects his archival legacy.
Associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, he led the second Viennese school. He used the spelling Schönberg until his move to the United States in 1934, whereupon he altered it to Schoenberg "in deference to American practice."
His approach in terms of harmony developed among the major landmarks of 20th-century thought; at least three generations in the Europeans and Americans consciously extended his thinking or in some cases passionately reacted in opposition. During the rise of the Nazi party, people labeled jazz as degenerate art.
People widely knew Schoenberg early in his career for his success in simultaneously extending the opposed German romantic styles of Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner. Later, his name came to personify pioneering innovations, the most polemical feature of 20th-century art. In the 1920s, the technique, a widely influential method of Schoenberg, manipulated an ordered series of all in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term variation, and this first modern embraced ways of motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.
Schoenberg, an important theorist, also painted and influentially taught his students, who included Alban Berg, Anton Friedrich Wilheim von Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, and later John Milton Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, and many other prominent. Avant-garde thought throughout the 20th century echoes many of practices, including the formalization of method and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically. His crucial, often polemical views of history and aesthetics influenced many significant critics, including Theodor Adorno, Charles Rosen, and Carl Dahlhaus,of the 20th century. His thought also considerably influenced the pianists Rudolf Serkin, Artur Schnabel, Eduard Steuermann, and later Glenn Gould.
The Arnold Schönberg center in Vienna collects his archival legacy.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 17, 2017
This collection of essays by Arnold Schoenberg is not exactly a fun or completely pleasurable read, but it is very illuminating and very worthwhile for anyone interested in modern music. Schoenberg was very intelligent and had a truly impressive understanding of music and ability to convey his analysis of various works. His prose style is not always beautiful, but it is always clear and expresses his ideas well. And at times, especially when responding to critics, Schoenberg can produce a withering sarcasm that is subtly amusing.
Reading Style and Idea all at one go did give me the advantage of understanding what was truly important and even crucial to Schoenberg, through seeing which ideas came up repeatedly, across many years and many subjects. He was concerned above all with the clear conveying of a musical idea. He really believed that he had, in his twelve-tone compositional technique, discovered the next logical step in the development of Western art music and that he had thus secured the future of music. Perhaps at times he seems a little too sure of its centrality. He had extremely exacting and high standards for music and musicians (especially composers). I very much admired his intellect and insight.
Reading Style and Idea all at one go did give me the advantage of understanding what was truly important and even crucial to Schoenberg, through seeing which ideas came up repeatedly, across many years and many subjects. He was concerned above all with the clear conveying of a musical idea. He really believed that he had, in his twelve-tone compositional technique, discovered the next logical step in the development of Western art music and that he had thus secured the future of music. Perhaps at times he seems a little too sure of its centrality. He had extremely exacting and high standards for music and musicians (especially composers). I very much admired his intellect and insight.
January 1, 2024
Schoenberg is one of my favorite composers, and a guy who was all over the map in terms of both music and its resulting conceptology -- the Verklartenacht, Erwatnung, First String Quartet, Serenade, Moses und Aron, String Trio all seem to be each pieces of incredible forward thinking upon which subsequent music has, in my opinion, totally failed to deliver; his pupil Adorno wrote an interesting but rather contrived attempt at explicating the profundity of expressionism and musical form within Schoenberg's work, so I had hoped Schoenberg's own writings would provide a clearer explication of his thought. To an extent, they do: many essays are sufficiently technical and provide an interesting look into what Schoenberg finds profound, such as the irregularity of Brahmsian and Mozartian phrases or the early conceptualizations of retrograde harmony found across Schoenberg's own body of work.
However, Schoenberg seems to have been fundamentally romantic, and often will elide over the technical aspects of his work & instead present his ideas as the vague expression, "the compulsion to declaim prophecies to the people", of complete inner intuitions to be reverenced & presented without too much question, and the theoretical advancements seem to have occupied a logic of interesting but ad-hoc novelty in his mind. This is not a criticism, of course, being the work of a self-taught man lacking the academic impulse to blind formal adhesion, but it does make some of these explications a little too breezy. I think much of this is because of Schoenberg's feeling that the newspaper and magazine readers for whom these were written were generally incapable of deep theoretical elenchus, which he says explicitly early on & which is undeniably true.
This is a short book, all the same, and probably worth reading for any modern music fan; the reverie over Mahler, as well as Scheonberg's explications of his own music and Brahms', are well worth considering. He is pleasant to read, if greatly because he has a rather informal style of casual writing, often starting his articles with several paragraphs (or pages) of biographical reflections or random thoughts, which segue into the piece. I had somewhat expected this book to tell a story of Schoenberg's youthful romanticism decaying into the cynicism that seem, to me, to radiate from late pieces like Moses und Aron and the Phantasia for Violin, but instead Schoenberg never seems to have lost his love for music nor his benign distrust of the public, and despite being having been a jewish german in the 1930s and 40s, seems to have kept the political mostly out of mind, beyond a few deeply pessimistic but all-the-same peacefully resigned reflections.
However, Schoenberg seems to have been fundamentally romantic, and often will elide over the technical aspects of his work & instead present his ideas as the vague expression, "the compulsion to declaim prophecies to the people", of complete inner intuitions to be reverenced & presented without too much question, and the theoretical advancements seem to have occupied a logic of interesting but ad-hoc novelty in his mind. This is not a criticism, of course, being the work of a self-taught man lacking the academic impulse to blind formal adhesion, but it does make some of these explications a little too breezy. I think much of this is because of Schoenberg's feeling that the newspaper and magazine readers for whom these were written were generally incapable of deep theoretical elenchus, which he says explicitly early on & which is undeniably true.
This is a short book, all the same, and probably worth reading for any modern music fan; the reverie over Mahler, as well as Scheonberg's explications of his own music and Brahms', are well worth considering. He is pleasant to read, if greatly because he has a rather informal style of casual writing, often starting his articles with several paragraphs (or pages) of biographical reflections or random thoughts, which segue into the piece. I had somewhat expected this book to tell a story of Schoenberg's youthful romanticism decaying into the cynicism that seem, to me, to radiate from late pieces like Moses und Aron and the Phantasia for Violin, but instead Schoenberg never seems to have lost his love for music nor his benign distrust of the public, and despite being having been a jewish german in the 1930s and 40s, seems to have kept the political mostly out of mind, beyond a few deeply pessimistic but all-the-same peacefully resigned reflections.
November 3, 2021
Denne essay-samlingen inneholder flere nøkkelideer til Schoenberg's estetikk. Spesielt 4 essays var veldig effektive i å uttrykke Schoenbergs filosofi.
Essayet "Gustav Mahler" forøker å motbevise en typisk kritikk av Mahler's musikk. Schoenberg's svarer ikke bare med enkle motargumenter, men beskriver en musikkkfilosofi som i seg selv motbeviser kritikken av Mahler.
I "Brahms the Progressive" beskriver han måten Brahms brukte tematisk utvikling i stykkene sine, og derfor er en slags forløper til 12-tone musikk. Schoenberg beviser også at Brahms hadde en slags modernistisk måte å tonesette dikt på, ved å bryte opp den normale takten til diktene han tonesatte, men uten å gå utenom et tradisjonelt musikalsk språk. Schoenberg bruker også Brahms til å bevise at kunst alltid krevde "hodet", og at de som mener at det er for mye "hode" og for lite "hjerte" i moderne kunst, ikke kjenner den tradisjonelle kunsten godt nok.
Essayet "Style and Idea" er en mer tydelig redegjørelse for Schoenberg's egne meninger, for her lener han seg ikke på samme måte på tidligere komponister. Han prøver å bevise hvordan en god komponist har "ideen" som mål, og at "stilen" kun er et resultat av det kreative arbeidet med ideen. Derfor blir ideen om "pastische" "kitsch" og "stilkopiering" som ble mer og mer populær utover 1900 tallet umulig for Schoenberg.
I "Composition with 12 tones" beskriver Schoenberg hvordan og hvorfor man skal komponere i 12-tone teknikk, og hvilke muligheter denne komposisjonsteknikken har.
Essayet "Gustav Mahler" forøker å motbevise en typisk kritikk av Mahler's musikk. Schoenberg's svarer ikke bare med enkle motargumenter, men beskriver en musikkkfilosofi som i seg selv motbeviser kritikken av Mahler.
I "Brahms the Progressive" beskriver han måten Brahms brukte tematisk utvikling i stykkene sine, og derfor er en slags forløper til 12-tone musikk. Schoenberg beviser også at Brahms hadde en slags modernistisk måte å tonesette dikt på, ved å bryte opp den normale takten til diktene han tonesatte, men uten å gå utenom et tradisjonelt musikalsk språk. Schoenberg bruker også Brahms til å bevise at kunst alltid krevde "hodet", og at de som mener at det er for mye "hode" og for lite "hjerte" i moderne kunst, ikke kjenner den tradisjonelle kunsten godt nok.
Essayet "Style and Idea" er en mer tydelig redegjørelse for Schoenberg's egne meninger, for her lener han seg ikke på samme måte på tidligere komponister. Han prøver å bevise hvordan en god komponist har "ideen" som mål, og at "stilen" kun er et resultat av det kreative arbeidet med ideen. Derfor blir ideen om "pastische" "kitsch" og "stilkopiering" som ble mer og mer populær utover 1900 tallet umulig for Schoenberg.
I "Composition with 12 tones" beskriver Schoenberg hvordan og hvorfor man skal komponere i 12-tone teknikk, og hvilke muligheter denne komposisjonsteknikken har.
February 21, 2014
This collection of unpublished letters and articles by Arnold Schönberg deserves a special place in every musician -and music lover's- desk, preferrably within grasp. Okay, I've read it more than three times and come back to it almost on a daily basis. Five stars all the way, this book could be of importance to those who think that you can't actually talk about music and art in general. There's a lot to think and discuss about art, taste, form, "fashions", style, and of course: content; the Idea. Schönberg dives deep into the essence of music composition theory and brings forth the eternal questions and a reasonable amount of possible answers about the mysteries of the geniuses of the past and the fate of future forms, notation techniques, intellectual property rights, the administration of public music education, theaters, and even the evolution of standard orchestral instruments. All this important technical matters are furnished with a decent amount of digressions by the author in what can be called 'extremely' personal opinions and a relentless criticism to past and present musical trends, institutions, composers, theorists, pedagogues and even to critics themselves. Pure gold.
October 26, 2021
"Every tone which is added to a beginning tone makes the meaning of that tone doubtful. If, for instance, G follows after C, the ear may not be sure whether this expresses C major or G major, or even F major or E minor; and the addition of other tones may or may not clarify this problem. In this manner there is produced a state of unrest, of imbalance which grows throughout most of the piece, and is enforced further by similar functions of the rhythm. The method by which balance is restored seems to me the real idea of the composition. [...] The tool itself may fall into disuse, but the idea behind it can never become obsolete. And therein lies the difference between a mere style and a real idea. An idea can never perish."
"He who really uses his brain for thinking can only be possessed of one desire: to resolve his task. He cannot let external conditions exert influence upon the results of his thinking. Two times two is four-whether one likes it or not. One thinks only for the sake of one's idea. And thus art can only be created for its own sake. An idea is born; it must be molded, formulated, developed, elaborated, carried through and pursued to its very end."
"He who really uses his brain for thinking can only be possessed of one desire: to resolve his task. He cannot let external conditions exert influence upon the results of his thinking. Two times two is four-whether one likes it or not. One thinks only for the sake of one's idea. And thus art can only be created for its own sake. An idea is born; it must be molded, formulated, developed, elaborated, carried through and pursued to its very end."
April 28, 2009
His music may make you think he was an exacting, impossibly harsh megalomaniac, but in this wide-ranging collection of writings, he comes off as an inspired (and quite hilarious) philosopher of sound.
December 22, 2008
Essential for serious study of 20th century "classical" music.
January 23, 2021
This book is so much more than I expected it to be. I expected to get a few ideas that might help me with interpretation of music as a conductor and performer and with creating music as a composer and arranger. Schoenberg's essays offer so much more! This very quotable text offers many insights about how music should be composed, performed, critiqued, and taught. Often, Schoenberg is not telling the reader what to think, but giving the reader questions to think about. This book is full of sparks that might ignite composers, conductors, educators, performers, or listeners to be more engaged in continuing the rich tradition of creating music.
June 12, 2025
An essential read for young composers.
October 24, 2024
This is a collection of music-related essays from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Included are essays on twelve-tone music by composers such as Brahms and Mahler. Schoenberg's style is portrayed as not only understandable and appealing, but it also communicates significant details about the nature of modern music.
It is considered by some to be one of the most important compilations of musical essays ever released, Schoenberg's Style and Idea, has long been out of print. Only a small portion of Schoenberg's literary output was represented by the volume's few essays when it first came out. Leonard Stein, Schoenberg's assistant and editor of his theory and composition books, examined Schoenberg's entire body of work for this new edition and selected a significant number of essays to go with the reprint of the original papers. The result is a treasure trove for those interested in Schoenberg's musical thoughts.
It is considered by some to be one of the most important compilations of musical essays ever released, Schoenberg's Style and Idea, has long been out of print. Only a small portion of Schoenberg's literary output was represented by the volume's few essays when it first came out. Leonard Stein, Schoenberg's assistant and editor of his theory and composition books, examined Schoenberg's entire body of work for this new edition and selected a significant number of essays to go with the reprint of the original papers. The result is a treasure trove for those interested in Schoenberg's musical thoughts.
March 17, 2007
Very useful if you're interested in old ideas in music that are currently being rejected and are no longer of any use at all. HA!! No, really, Schoenberg was the most important composer of the 20th century, ripping apart the world of music and re-assembeling back in his own mold. His ideas would go on to start a stunch and radical following previously only found in religous zealotry. For 40 years after the composition of his first Serial piece, indeed the world's first Serial piece, strict Tone Row technique was all that was taught and accpeted in the major conservatories throughout the world. However, as with all things that have a choke hold on life, sooner or later it was bound to be rebelled against. The current state of teaching compostion is probably the most open of all time. Still, whenever you hear shrieking violins in a horror movie, the dissonant effect can be traced directly back to Schoenberg. Well, maybe to Ligeti and Zenakis, who can easily be linked to Schoenberg.
January 15, 2025
My favorite words from this book were from the essay “Brahms the Progressive”, where Schönberg emphasized Brahms’ ability to maintain rigorous counterpoints while revitalizing romanticism in music.
“Hard labour is, to a trained mind, no torture, but rather a pleasure.”
“After all, an improviser must anticipate before playing, and composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas. But a craftsman likes to be conscious of what he produces; he is proud of the ability of his hands, of the flexibility of his mind, of his subtle sense of balance, of his never-failing logic, of the multitude of variations, and last but not least of the profundity of his idea and his capacity of penetrating to the most remote consequences of an idea.”
“Hard labour is, to a trained mind, no torture, but rather a pleasure.”
“After all, an improviser must anticipate before playing, and composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas. But a craftsman likes to be conscious of what he produces; he is proud of the ability of his hands, of the flexibility of his mind, of his subtle sense of balance, of his never-failing logic, of the multitude of variations, and last but not least of the profundity of his idea and his capacity of penetrating to the most remote consequences of an idea.”
October 18, 2013
In specific topics, like music of Mahler and Brahms, music critics and his own works, Schoenberg exposes his views about function, form and idea in music, specially in the work of composing. Schoenberg's thoughts are easy to understand, but shows a very deep knowledge of music history and passionate but solid basis for his thoughts. The use of technical language can make some parts a little more difficult, but nothing that can make one misses the point.
September 19, 2007
I've read it twice. It's tough. Helps to have a music background. But this is a great way into the mind of one of the top five most important music composers in the history of humankind. Hilarious, insightful, didactic, inspiring. Hone your theory chops and it will help you get through it. Essential to anyone who writes (or tries to write...) music.
May 9, 2011
This collection of essays offers enlightening insight into how Schoenberg saw himself, his predecessors, and his contemporaries. I was pleasantly surprised to see how pragmatic and down-to-earth his discussions of music are. He offers a clear and well-stated picture of a particular attitude toward art and progress. He is not a particularly humble man, but who cares? He's dead.
October 3, 2008
I think I would enjoy this more now that I'm not using it for a course. Schoenberg's ideas and philosophy were quite interesting, if I remember correctly.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews