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Arnold Schönberg
Three Piano Pieces op. 11
Arnold Schönberg’s Piano Pieces op. 11 are a milestone in the development of piano music. Schönberg had also already composed other atonal works, but always for voice with sung text. By contrast the Piano Pieces op. 11 are the first instrumental compositions to be written in so-called “free atonality”. For all its revolutionary explosive power, the cycle is classically structured, with a sonata-like first movement, a slow middle piece and a stormy finale. The Henle Urtext edition publishes this modern classic in a new, generously laid out music setting based on the first edition, edited by Schönberg scholar Ullrich Scheideler. Highly experienced piano maestro Emanuel Ax has added fingering recommendations, making the work suitable for practical use.
Content/Details
PREFACE
CRITICAL COMMENTARY
About the Composer
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Arnold Schönberg
The most important composer of the first half of the twentieth century, who with the transition to atonality and twelve-tone technique influenced musical history like no other.
1874 Born on 13 September in Vienna. Largely self-taught except for lessons with Alexander Zemlinsky.
1890–94 Worked as a bank clerk.
1899 String Sextet “Transfigured Night” op. 4 as first mature original piece.
1900–11 “Gurrelieder”.
1901–03 Conductor in Berlin at Ernst von Wolzogen’s “Überbrettl”.
1903 Symphonic poem “Pelleas and Melisande” op. 6. After returning to Vienna, he taught (pupils included Anton Webern and Alban Berg, with whom he formed the Vienna School).
1906 Chamber Symphony op. 9 with quartal harmony.
1908/09 Shift away from tonality: String Quartet op. 10, Three Piano Pieces op. 11, Five Orchestra Pieces op. 16, monodrama “Erwartung” (Expectations) op. 17 (composed 1909, performed 1924), “Die glückliche Hand” (The Hand of Fate) op. 18.
from 1911 Second sojourn in Berlin. “Theory of Harmony”.
1912 Melodrama cycle “Pierrot lunaire” op. 21 was a great international success.
1918 Founding of the Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna.
Ca. 1920 After a creative crisis, he found his way to twelve-tone technique (Suite for Piano op. 25, 1921–23).
1925 Appointed to a professorship at the Prussian Academy of Arts Berlin.
1930 Period-piece opera “Von heute auf morgen” (From Today to Tomorrow) op. 32.
1930–32 Started work on the opera “Moses and Aaron”.
1933/36 Emigrated to the USA, professorship in Los Angeles.
1942 “Ode to Napoleon” op. 41, Piano Concerto op. 42.
1947 “A Survivor from Warsaw” op. 46.
1951 Died on 13 July in Los Angeles.