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"I personally hate to be called a revolutionist, which I am not. What I did was neither revolution nor anarchy."

Key Points

  • Arnold Schoenberg, along with his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern, comprise the Second Viennese School.
  • Schoenberg was highly influenced by German Expressionism and was himself an Expressionist painter and playwright.
  • Schoenberg experimented with abandoning the tonal system; his twelve-tone, or serial, method revolutionized twentieth-century composition.
  • His song cycle, Pierrot lunaire, represents his atonal-Expressionist period, which preceded his twelve-tone period.
  • In Pierrot lunaire, Schoenberg joins the text and music through the vocal technique of Sprechstimme (spoken voice), accompanied by highly disjunct instrumental lines (Klangfarbenmelodie).

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