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The Growing Fields Of Cultural And Critical Thought That Schoenberg ...


The growing fields of cultural and critical thought that Schoenberg encountered at his time of theorising and composing was chiefly the development of abstract painting and psychoanalysis. The nearing age of modernism throughout the western world had indicated to many intellectuals at this time that thought was at a point of grand seminality, in which it could not extend or interpret any further, other than into the realms of abstraction and madness. His subsequent cultural concern sought to keep music sacred from this growing idea. The deteriorating relationship between contemporary composers and the public led him to found the Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna in 1918. His aim was to provide a forum, in which modern musical compositions could be rehearsed and performed, whilst the emphasis of musical innovation be kept alive and free from abstraction and madness. This return to the principles of rationality put forward by the philosophers of the enlightenment in conjunction with the progression of structural music was the onus of Schoenberg. His belief was that music should be free of cultural whim and that properly performed under conditions free from the influence of fashion and pressures of commerce, could be found to be creative and above all a higher form of seminal art. Schoenberg's subsequent serial technique of composition that became known as a mainstream structure of music known as the 12 notes, became one of the most central and argued issues among western musicians of the mid-20th century. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing to the present day, composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt have extended Schoenberg's legacy in increasingly radical directions. Despising the new directions that culture was taking in relation to cultural trends, Schoenberg found himself in opposition to Igor Stravinsky, and in 1926 wrote a derogatory poem about Stravinsky in which he called him Modernsky; a clear indication for Schoenberg‘s structural rejection of stylistic and critical modernism.

Stravinsky's Modernism

Unlike Schoenberg, Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity that embraced modernism and the interpretive qualities of cultural criticism and perception. He achieved international recognition with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Serge Diaghilev. They included L'Oiseau de feu ("The Firebird"), Petrushka, and Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). Known as his seminal piece, The Rite of Spring, whose premiere provoked a riot, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about the rhythmic structure that Schoenberg had put forward.

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