No doubt, there is a certain admirable uncompromisingness, a
certain Egyptian severity, in the musical line of the first of the
"Three." But if there is such a thing as form without significance in
music, might not these compositions serve to exemplify it? Indeed, it is
only as experiments, as the incorporation in tone of an abstract and
intellectualized conception of forms, that one can at all comprehend
them. And it is only in regarding him as primarily an experimenter that
the later Schoenberg loses his incomprehensibility, and comes somewhat
nearer to us.
There is much in Schoenberg's career that makes this explanation
something more than an easy way of disposing of a troublesome problem,
makes it, indeed, eminently plausible. Schoenberg was never the most
instinctive and sensible, the least cerebral and intellectualizing of
musicians. For just as Gustav Mahler might stand as an instance of
musicianly temperament fatally outweighing musicianly intellect, so
Arnold Schoenberg might stand as an example of the equally excessive
outbalancing of sensibility by brain-stuff. The friendship of the two
men and their mutual admiration might easily be explained by the fact
that each caught sight in the other of the element he wanted most. No
doubt, the works of Schoenberg's early period, which extends from the
songs, Op.
Pages:
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240