| Contents |
Introduction: Six Little Piano Pieces -- Bridge passage, 1874-1908 -- First loves -- Transfigured Night -- Dawn: the Gurre-Lieder -- Berlin cabaret -- Coming apart -- An inner compulsion -- A new form of expression, 1909-13 -- Farben -- Listening to Five Pieces for Orchestra -- Paths to (and in) Erwartung -- Wrong notes -- Six Little Pieces -- Theory of harmony -- Pierrot -- Die gluckliche Hand -- Silence, order, and terror, 1914-33 -- Incident at Mattsee -- Critics and disciples -- A clearing in the forest: twelve-tone music -- Satires -- Catastrophe -- Moses and Arnold -- America, 1933-51 -- Exodus -- 1940: Stravinsky and Schoenberg -- Games -- On being short -- Piano concerto -- Death and rebirth -- Seventy-fifth birthday -- Afterlife -- Death and rebirth II -- Writings about Schoenberg -- Last notes: portrait in retrograde. |
| Abstract |
Proposing that Schoenberg has been more discussed than heard, more tolerated than loved, the author puts aside ultimate judgments about Schoenberg's place in music history to explore the composer's fascinating world in a series of linked essays--"soundings"--that are both searching and wonderfully suggestive. Approaching Schoenberg primarily from the listener's point of view, the author plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg's works while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvements in music, painting, and the history through which he lived. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Awards note | Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award in Concert Music Books. |
| LCCN | 2001023807 |
| ISBN | 0374105901 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
