The Idea of Music: Schoenberg and Others

ISBN-13: 9780333400272 / Angielski / Twarda / 1985 / 188 str.

Peter Franklin

Opis

Why has modern music evolved as it has? Why is it that certain leading composers from the first half of this century are now considered insignificant, while the responsibility for the development of a musical language of modernism has been attributed to Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School? In this book the author seeks to re-examine Schoenberg's innovations through a reassessment of the nature of artistic expression and artistic truth. Starting from the premise that Austro-German music in the late nineteenth century was dominated by philosophical ideas, he has focused on writing by Schoenberg, Adorno and Thomas Mann, setting these alongside a discussion of the music of Pfitzner, Schreker, Mahler, Richard Strauss and Schoenberg himself, in a compelling argument for a review of the standard historical account of the period.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements - Epigraph - Introduction - Music, the Will and Ideas: Mahler and Schopenhauer - Strauss's Transfiguration: A Re-evaluation of Richard Strauss's Music - The Problem of Doctor Faustus: Thomas Mann's Novel and its Implications for Twentieth-Century Composers - Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music: An Exegesis of Adorno's Essay on Schoenberg - An Essay by Schoenberg: A Commentary on Schoenberg's Essay 'Gustav Mahler' - Chaos, the Machine or the Mystic Word: A Reassessment of Schoenberg's Role as Innovator and Progressive - Palestrina and the Dangerous Futurists: The Significance of Pfitzner's Opera - Schreker's Decline: An Evaluation of the Expressive Content of the Music of this hitherto Neglected Composer - Conclusion - Footnotes - Index