Arnold Schoenberg

Introduction & Top Questions
Early life
First major works
Evolution from tonality

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg in a suit, seated at a piano and holding a conductor's baton, appears to be conducting music in a wood-paneled room.

Portrait of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, smiling slightly while seated and wearing a suit and tie, taken in a photo booth around 1930.

At a Glance

Arnold Schoenberg summary

Quizzes

Illustration of musical notes. classical music composer composition. Hompepage blog 2009, arts and entertainment, history and society, music notes

Composers & Their Music

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Petr Il'ich Chaikovskii), Russian composer.

A Study of Composers

Related Questions

How did Alban Berg and Anton Webern use the 12-tone method differently from Arnold Schoenberg?
How did Arnold Schoenberg adapt Verklärte Nacht for string orchestra?
How did Arnold Schoenberg begin composing music as a child?
How did Arnold Schoenberg’s music move away from traditional tonality?
How did Oskar Adler influence Arnold Schoenberg’s early musical development?
How did Richard Strauss help Arnold Schoenberg’s early career?
How did audiences react to the first performance of Gurrelieder?
How does Pierrot Lunaire use Sprechstimme?
How was Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony in E Major unusual for its time?
What happened at the 1951 Darmstadt performance of music from Moses und Aron?
When and where was Arnold Schoenberg born?
When did Arnold Schoenberg become a United States citizen?
When did Arnold Schoenberg develop the 12-tone method?
When did Arnold Schoenberg die?
Where did Arnold Schoenberg spend the final years of his life?
Which Arnold Schoenberg work first completely abandoned a tonal center?
Which composer strongly influenced Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet in D Major?
Which instruments did Arnold Schoenberg play in his youth?
Which later composers were influenced by Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone technique?
Which play inspired Arnold Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande?
Which poem inspired Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht?
Who was Mathilde von Zemlinsky?
Who were Arnold Schoenberg’s most important students?
Why are Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern called the Second Viennese School?
Why did Arnold Schoenberg formally return to Judaism in Paris?
Why did Arnold Schoenberg leave Germany in 1933?
Why did Arnold Schoenberg move to Berlin in 1901?
Why did Arnold Schoenberg prefer the word pantonal to atonal?
Why did Arnold Schoenberg search for a new method of musical organization during World War I?
Why does the 12-tone method avoid making one note sound more important than the others?
Why have some listeners criticized Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone music as overly mathematical?
Why is Moses und Aron often considered Arnold Schoenberg’s greatest work?
Why was Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 difficult for early audiences to understand?
Why was Gurrelieder important in Arnold Schoenberg’s career?
What was Claude Debussy’s early life like?
What was Antonín Dvořák’s early life like?
What is Robert Schumann famous for?
What was Robert Schumann’s family like?
How was Robert Schumann educated?
How did Robert Schumann die?
What was Franz Schubert’s early life like?
What changes did Franz Schubert make to classical harmony?
What are some of Franz Schubert’s most famous compositions?
How did Franz Liszt begin his career in music?

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External Websites

Seattle Chamber Music Society - Arnold Schoenberg
Deutsche Grammophon - Arnold Schoenberg
Southern Illinois University - School of Languages and Linguistics - Arnold Schï¿½nberg
Bach Cantatas Website - Biography of Arnold Schoenberg
AllMusic - Arnold Schoenberg
Humanities LibreTexts - Arnold Schoenberg
Milken Archive of Jewish Music - Biography of Arnold Schoenberg
ABC listen - The Music Show - Arnold Schoenberg at 150: a complicated and crucial man
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center - Arnold Schoenberg (1874Â–1951)
The Kennedy Center - Arnold Schoenberg
Music and the Holocaust - Arnold Schoenberg
Mahler Foundation - Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
PALNI Pressbooks - The Bible and Music - Arnold Schoenberg
BBC Sounds - Composer of the Week - Arnold Schoenberg

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Arnold Schoenberg - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Arnold Schoenberg

American composer

Also known as: Arnold Franz Walter Schönberg, Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg, Arnold Schönberg(Show More)

Written by

Dika Newlin

Composer. Professor of Music, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. Author of Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg; Schoenberg Remembered.

Dika NewlinAll

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Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

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History

Arnold Schoenberg (born September 13, 1874, Vienna, Austria—died July 13, 1951, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) was an Austrian-American composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was also one of the most-influential teachers of the 20th century; among his most-significant pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Schoenberg’s father, Samuel, owned a small shoe shop in the Second, then predominantly Jewish, district, of Vienna. Neither Samuel...

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