Tag: Arnold Schönberg

A toast to … Arnold Schönberg

Today marks the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schönberg’s birth, and the Austrian Cultural Forum here in New York will celebrate next week on Friday, September 19, with the opening of Arnold Schönberg: 150 Years, an exhibition running through November 8 devoted to the life and work of the modernist composer, a collaboration with Vienna’s Arnold Schönberg Center. The celebration will get under way next Friday with a concert from Trio Callas, which will be performing the composer’s Verklärte Nacht and Charles Ives’s Piano Trio, following opening remarks from Dr. Ulrike Anton, the newish director of the Schönberg Center. This event is sold out, alas, but I’ll look forward to the exhibition itself.

As I raise my glass of Moric’s Haus Marke Red tonight, I’ll be listening to Hilary Hahn’s splendid rendition of Schönberg’s violin concerto, accompanied by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. While the actual Deutsche Grammophon CD release is to be preferred, here’s the YouTube version — better than nothing — for all you cheapskates out there. And really, if you’re going to listen to this music, get yourself a real stereo system whydon’tcha.

Schönberg/Kraus

Arnold Schönberg, Satire (Karl Kraus), 1910. Oil on paper. Belmont Music Publishers, Pacific Palisades, CA.

[Karl Kraus’s] life stands as an example of moral uprightness and courage which should be put before anyone who writes, in no matter what language. … I had the privilege of listening to his conversation and watching his face, lit up by the pale fire of his fanatic love for the miracle of the German language and by his holy hatred for those who used it badly.

— Gregor von Rezzori

Looks like I should have extended my recent outing to Vienna. At the Arnold Schönberg Center, an anniversary exhibition marking the 150th birthdays of Arnold Schönberg and Karl Kraus will be open to the public through May 10. Any student of Viennese Modernism like myself will look forward to this program that features music manuscripts, texts, paintings, and drawings, as well as letters and photographs. The Center says:

Advocating progress in music, Schönberg embodied the courage to break with conventions. In keeping with the interdisciplinary orientation of Viennese Modernism, the composer also expressed himself as a writer and painter. As a censor of language, Kraus fought an unrelenting battle against corrupting newspaper phrases, double standards and esthetic uniformity. The two jubilarians were united by an unspoken understanding of artistic and social matters, and by a shared ethical program which aimed at a claim to truth in all areas of art.

I wrote briefly about Kraus’s Last Days of Mankind here, and I hope to write about Schönberg (one day, one day …). Those of us who can’t be there can comfort ourselves with the English-language catalog of the show, available here. And below is a trailer for the exhibition.