Expressionism
schoenberg_herzgewachse_op_20.mp3
Anu Komsi, soprano. Reija Bister, harp. Emil Holmström, harmoni. Ilmo Ranta, celesta.
Alba Records 2011.
In the years before the First World War, the political situation in Europe was tense. The great powers were competing for industrial resources and colonies. Urbanisation and the monetary economy had changed living environments and culture permanently. Expressionism first emerged as a style in painting, like Impressionism. It was a modern heir to Romanticism in that although in some senses it was a reaction to Romanticism, at its core was the subjective experience of the artist, drawing deep on the subconscious.
I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it! –Arnold Schönberg
It was Arnold Schönberg, a virtually self-taught composer, who took the next logical step in harmonic development, as he saw it. He abandoned the foundation of tonality, the seven-step musical scale, and with it the concepts of tonic, major and minor. He declared that all 12 tones of the chromatic scale were equal and had to be used in equal proportion. This opened up a wholly new world of harmony for composers, and musical structures had to be completely rethought. The idea of all pitches being equal led to a rational framework for their organisation, and this led to the Second Viennese School.
