Schoenberg: Klavierstücke Opus 11, No.

Please continue the lesson by ejecting the Invention disk, inserting Paul Jacobs
CD "Arnold Schoenberg Piano Music" (Elektra/Nonesuch 9 71309-2), and
listening to the first piece from the Klavierstücke Op. 11.

Arnold Schoenberg, one of this century's brilliant composers, was also one of
its leading theorists. Referring to "motive," Schoenberg writes of the
Grundgestalt. Depending upon context, Grund could mean fundamental,
ground, basic, original or rudimentary. Gestalt, a word having no literal English
equivalent, connotes form, formation, figure, organization or shape. Taking
these English words as a "Gestalt," Schoenberg's term refers to the fundamental
musical idea that permeates his own compositions. This idea, Schoenberg
theorizes, manifests itself not only in melody, but also in larger-scale operations
such as textural contours, voicing and harmonies. While Schoenberg and his
contemporaries would have rejected the notion of motive as the concrete
representation of psychological abstractions, his concept of Grundgestalt is
traceable to the baroque doctrine of Affekt.

In the two hundred years separating Bach and Schoenberg, the techniques for
writing organically structured music had evolved to the point that Schoenberg
would be able to articulate relationships unimaginable in the eighteenth
century. Whereas Bach's music was organic at the motivic level, it relied upon
tonal centricity for development. The first part of this lesson listed some of
these techniques as found in the C-Major Invention: repetition of the motive on
other scale degrees and in other keys or modes. Thus, from Bach to
Schoenberg, tonality was the sine qua non of development; it was assumed that
no musical idea could be developed without it.

By the turn of the 20th century, however, tonality as the primary means of
motivic development had broken down. Richard Wagner's brinkmanship with
the tonal system had left composers with nowhere to go and they were looking
for new models. The impressionists, the "Russian Five," Charles Ives and
others had experimented with non-western and nationalistic idioms, but it was
Arnold Schoenberg who grasped the fundamental significance of the motive
itself, apart from its tonal centeredness, as cornerstone of the great organic
tradition. Picking up where Brahms and Wagner had diverged (Brahms too
having understood the importance of the motive) Schoenberg showed that it
was possible to develop the motive without recourse to a tonal center.
Schoenberg's twelve-tone system of composition was nothing less than a
systematic attempt to insure that a composition was fully saturated with
variations of the motive. To be sure, his tone rows were calculated to avoid the
hint of tonality (dominants, triadic formulations, leading tones etc.) it is
unfortunate, in contemporary descriptions of this "new system" as Schoenberg
himself called it, that the emphasis is often placed upon the absence of tonality
rather than the presence of motive. Schoenberg is often called, for example, the
"grandfather of the atonal system" as if his main contribution to western art was
to have rid music of tonal centricity. In truth this riddance had happened long
before Schoenberg's invention of the twelve-tone row. Schoenberg himself
might have preferred to have been called the "grandson" of the motivic
tradition (Bach having been the father, and Brahms the son). It is this
sophisticated concept of the motive that Schoenberg called Grundgestalt
elaborated in the first paragraph of this section.

If motivic development and saturation were to exist "beyond Bach and Brahms"
it was necessary to find ways of expressing the motive as a static--as opposed
to temporal--entity. In the baroque, the tonal center provided an element of
stasis against which it was possible to hear the motive--essentially a
melodic/rhythmic construct--as having relationship to it. This relationship we
have expressed in terms like: "the motive is now reiterated on the fifth scale
degree," or "the motive is now stated in the relative minor key." Statements like
these are possible only in the presence of something bigger than motive,
something the motive is subservient to, something that operates independently
of motive. That something, in the music of Bach and Brahms, had been tonality.
But Schoenberg's "new system" admitted no such something, for, without tonal
centeredness, there are no scale degrees, no keys and no modes. In terms of
development, this left him only the techniques of transposition (not to a new
key, but to a new tessitura) and textural development. However, the baroque
resources of variation inherent in the motive itself--contrary motion and
augmentation--remained intact.

Schoenberg's solution was to make the motive itself sine qua non, subservient
to nothing, and compared to which all else was subsidiary. To the excision of
tonal stasis, Schoenberg responded by extending the baroque techniques of
motivic variation to the chord. If it was possible, he reasoned, to express a
melody in contrary motion, then it should be possible to express a chord (a
static and atemporal element) in the same manner. Now this may seem, on the
face of it, to be a contradiction in terms...for there to be motion there must also
be time. But Schoenberg's insight was his perception of the fundamental
motivic relationship as consisting, at its most primal level, not only in the
ORDER and DIRECTION in which intervals are expressed, but also in the
QUALITY of the INTERVAL itself. This quality, Schoenberg reasoned, could
provide the element of stasis vacated by the tonal system.

To understand the possibilities afforded by interval stasis as surrogate for tonal

centricity, it shall be helpful to begin with a concept familiar to all musicians--
that of chord quality. A major triad, for example is comprised of three pitch
classes in the following relationship. The triad's third is a Major third, while the
fifth is a Perfect fifth, above the root. In the 18th century, Bach's contemporary,
Rameau, was the first to recognize that regardless of how such a chord was
voiced, its "fundamental bass" was always the root of the chord. This
eventuated in what we now call the "invertibility" of the triad, meaning that
whether the triad sounded with its root, third, or fifth in the bass, and regardless
of which triad factors the upper voices took, the chord had a qualitative
"sameness" about it. This sameness expressed itself in the perception that a
major triad sounds "different" from a minor triad, which sounds different from
diminished, etc.

Schoenberg's departure from tonality hinged upon a recognition that, while

major and minor triads do sound different, they, too, have a fundamental
"sameness" based upon the intervals of which they are made. Whereas a major
triad is made of a M3 and P5 ABOVE the bass, a minor triad is made of a M3
and P5 BELOW the fifth. Thus, the interval resources of the major and minor
triad are identical. What is different, Schoenberg reasoned, is that they are
mirror images of each other. While theorists also call this mirroring "inversion,"
it is a species of inversion exceedingly different from that of Rameau and the
common practice. Eighteenth-century inversion involved re voicing of the same
sonority by the placement of a different pitch in the bass (e.g. C major triad
with E in the bass rather than C). In other words, 18th-century inversion
resulted when the same PITCHES were put into a different order. By contrast,
Schoenbergian inversion resulted when the same INTERVALS were put into a
different order (mirror image) to produce a new set of pitch classes (e.g. C
major becomes f minor). In Schoenberg's mind, this fundamental equivalence
of INTERVAL content was one of motivic sameness or Grundgestalt, and could
function as the static element unifying a composition as the tonal system had
functioned before it.

Returning now to the skip/step idea of our lesson on motivic variation, here is
how Schoenberg expresses, and develops, the same idea in his Klavierstücke
Opus 11, Number 1. Let the step be a minor second, and let the skip be a Major
third. Now let us express this skip/step motive as a chord of three pitches. Let
us represent the first pitch--it could be any pitch--by the number zero [0]. The
minor second is ONE half step away and therefore could be represented by the
number 1--the two pitches of the set now being represented by [0,1]. The Major
third is FOUR half steps away and therefore represented by the number 4--the
set now being [0,1,4]. Notice that, when the m2 is subtracted from the M3 [4-
1], the motive also allows the possibility of a m3 (interval class 3). The [0,1,4]
set is what we call the "P-form" of the motive (P for Prime) because it
expresses the set with the smallest interval toward the left. Inversion involves
reconfiguration of the P-form in mirror image, so that the smallest interval
appears at the other end: [0,3,4]. The inversion is called the "I-form" of the set.
P- and I-forms of a motive may sound as different as major and minor, but,
because they are unified by interval content, the ear hears them, in the context
of non-tertian sonorities, as motivic variations of each other.

The following represents the first five measures of No. 1 from Schoenberg's
Klavierstücke Op. 11. Follow the animation as it illustrates imbrications of the [0,1,4]
motive (yellow) and its inversion [0,3,4] (green). Notice that every pitch, whether it be in
the melody or a chord, is generated from the motive. Although the animation is not
synchronized with the CD, you can play the movement by clicking on the score. At the
beginning of this "beyond" module you were asked to listen to this work. Did you
recognize, at that time, its motivic tightness? While Bach's Invention was motivically
dense, it was, by comparison, only partially saturated. It is in the music of "beyond" that
composers found the words to complete a chapter they had begun to write three hundred
years earlier--in the baroque.

Schoenberg Klavierstücke Op. 11, No. 1 [Play] [Stop CD]

motive P-form [0,1,4] in yellow; motive I-form [0,3,4] in green
Animation and analysis ©1997 Tim Smith with kind permission of Universal
Edition
A.G., Wien and Belmont Music Publishers (USA distributors)
(To restart the animation, reload the page from your web browser.)

That Opus 11 predates Schoenberg's system of composition by twelve-tones,

shows that his conception of motivic preeminence was fully formed before he
conceived of his "new system" for composition. For Schoenberg, the
composing out of the "fundamental Gestalt" required more than the
concatenation of pitches developed from the motive. Measures 1-10 illustrate
how the [0,1,4] motive manifests itself at a higher level. These measures
contain four phrases in which Schoenberg articulates four chords. These chords
employ the bass notes Gb-Bb-Bb-G, the P-form [0,1,4] of the motive.
Similarly, the highest melodic pitches of each phrase are B, G, G, G#, not only
the P-form of the motive, but also the first three pitches of the piece! Thus, the
"fundamental shape" replicates itself not only in contiguous melodic and
harmonic entities, but also in non-contiguous units analogous to each other by
means of texture, function, or register.

Assignment

Questions pertaining to the Bach Invention:

Listen to the Two-Voice Invention in C-Major while following the score. After
you have become thoroughly familiar with the invention, listen again while
following the motivic analysis. You will have noticed that my explanation of
textural development did not specify WHERE, in the Bach invention, each of
these two-measure chunks were located. This omission was deliberate
inasmuch as your assignment, now, is to locate them yourself. You will find this
assignment difficult to do without a thorough understanding of the textural
variations and repositioning of voices illustrated by the animated analysis.
Begin by reviewing the discussion of textural development, training your ear to
distinguish material in the high voice from material in the low. Write down
what you hear. Next listen for the motive variant that sounds in each voice--is it
the original, or does the motive appear in contrary motion? Now do the same
for the analogous section, then compare notes.

1. Identify the measure in which Bach first develops the motive's initial
figure (the rising scale idea) in note values that are twice as long?
2. With respect to the question above, in which measure does Bach first
develop this augmented figure in contrary motion?
3. In mm. 1-2 the motive is stated in both voices beginning on "do" then
repeated in both voices beginning on "sol" All four statements are in the
key of C. Identify two measure that represent a repetition of this chunk,
somewhat modified, in a different key. What is the key? Whereas the
new key provides TONAL variety. what does Bach do to provide
TEXTURAL variety in this new chunk?
4. Identify two measures in which the motive appears in the same voices as
an earlier two-measure chunk, but in which the motive has been varied
 by means of contrary motion. Identify the two measures from which this
chunk was copied.
5. Measure 3-4 represent a falling sequence made of the contrary version of
the motive in the high voice, and figure 1 of the motive in the low voice.
Identify two subsequent measures where these same ideas return, but in
the opposite voices. (i.e. contrapuntally inverted). Identify the interval by
which the high-voice idea in mm. 3-4 has been lowered. Identify the
interval by which the low-voice idea in mm-3 has been raised. For extra
credit, read about how to identify the type of contrapuntal inversion, then
identify the type represented in the excerpt under consideration.
6. Identify two measures in which the motive appears melodically inverted
(that is, in contrary motion) AND in the opposite voices (that is,
contrapuntally inverted). Identify the two measures from which this
chunk was copied.

Questions pertaining to the Schoenberg Klavierstücke Op. 11, No. 1:

1. On a separate sheet of paper sketch out nine clock faces indicating the
hours as zero to eleven rather than one to twelve. (Or, if you would
prefer, print out this page then use the "back" button to return to here.)
Label clock faces as "a, b, c, d" etc. Study the segmentations of the first
phrase of the Schoenberg. With C=0, C#=1, D=2, D#=3, E=4 etc., the
pitches of the first segment of the Schoenberg (segment "a") would be
[7,8,11]...circle those numbers on your first clock diagram. On the
remaining clock diagrams circle the numbers representing the pitches of
remaining Klavierstücke segments (b) through (i). The numbers are an
abstraction representing "pitch-classes" with strict enharmonic
equivalence: A# = Bb = 10. The collections of numbers representing
each segmentation are called "pitch-class sets." In 20th-century music,
pitch-class sets undergo variation, and tend to saturate compositions,
much like motives of the baroque period. Notice that we could have
represented each set as having starting at three different points on the
clock diagram and moving clockwise. Set (a), for example, could have
been written as [7,8,11] or [8,11,7] or [11,7,8]. While all of the foregoing
are in clockwise order, [7,8,11], representing the shortest circumference
on the clock face, is the set's "normal order." What would be the normal
order of Klavierstücke sets (b) through (i)?
2. Pitch-class set analytical technique enables us to determine whether a set
is a TRANSPOSITION or an INVERTED TRANSPOSITION of another
set. Here are the basic mathematical operations and what they imply.
o If you can SUBTRACT one normal-ordered set from another, and
the DIFFERENCE is the same value for each number in the set,
then the two sets are transpositions of each other and the
difference between them is the T-FACTOR. If you subtract a
larger number from a smaller, convert the negative difference to a
positive value by adding 12 to it. It is customary to subtract the
original from the derived set, as reversing the order would
indicate how many half-steps DOWNWARD the derived set is
from from its progenitor. But subtracting the original set from its
variant shows how many half-steps UPWARD (clockwise on the
clock diagram) the variation is from its original. For example, if
we wanted to determine how set (b) is generated from set (a), we
would subtract set (a) from set (b) and NOT (b) from (a):

[5, 6, 9 ] set b
[7, 8, 11] set a
[-2,-2,-2] difference

Convert the negative to a positive value by adding 12 to it, and the

T-factor is 10. Set (b) is generated from set (a) by a T-factor of
10...which is another way of saying that set (b) is a transposition
of set (a) up 10 half steps. This relation could be expressed as
follows: set (b) is generated from set (a) at T10.

o If you can ADD opposite members of normal-ordered sets to each

other, and the SUM is the same, then the two sets are inversions of
each other and the sum is the T-FACTOR. By "opposite members"
we mean, add the FIRST number of the first set to the LAST
number of the second set, the 2nd number of the first set to the
2nd-to-last, middle to middle, etc. For example, if we wanted to
determine if the following sets were related by inversion, we
would first put them into normal order, then add opposite
members as follows:

The fact that the sum is the same value all the way across
indicates that set (y) is generated from set (x) by a process of
inversion with a T-factor of 4...another way of saying that set (y)
 is a mirror image (counterclockwise reading on the clock
diagram) of the intervals of set (x), transposed up 4 half steps
(T4I). For every set there will exist one inversion that is
untransposed, in which case we would say that the T-factor is
zero: i.e. the relation of each set to the other is T0I.

Which sets in the Schoenberg example represent TRANSPOSED

INVERSIONS of set (a)? Which sets represent
TRANSPOSITION of (a) without inversion?

3. Complete the following statements. In each case "process" will either be

"transposition" or "inversion (with or without transposition)." Use Jay
Tomlin's Set Theory Machine, if you wish, to complete this assignment.
o Set (b) is generated from set (a) by a process of
TRANSPOSITION with a T-factor of TEN.
o Set (c) is generated from set (b) by a process of _____________
with a T-factor of ____.
o Set (d) is generated from set (c) by a process of _____________
with a T-factor of ____.
o Set (e) is generated from set (d) by a process of _____________
with a T-factor of ____.
o Set (f) is generated from set (e) by a process of _____________
with a T-factor of ____.
o Set (g) is generated from set (f) by a process of _____________
with a T-factor of ____.
o Set (h) is generated from set (g) by a process of _____________
with a T-factor of ____.
o Set (i) is generated from set (h) by a process of _____________
with a T-factor of ____.
4. While Schoenberg is best known as a composer, he was also an
accomplished music theorist. His most important theoretical writing is
found in Harmonielehre ("Theory of Harmony"). This work was begun
in the 1920's and underwent significant revision at about the same time
that Schoenberg wrote the Klavierstücke studied in this unit. While the
author was adamant that Harmonielehre was not intended to be a
systematic theory, the work was seminal in that it prepared the way for
Schoenberg's eventual abandonment of tonality and turn toward what he
called his "method of composing with twelve tones which are related
only with one another." In 1949 Schoenberg commented upon his
abandonment of tonal centricity by saying: "I myself and my pupils,
Anton Webern and Alban Berg, and even Alois Hába believed that now
music could renounce motivic features [as well] and remain coherent and
comprehensible nevertheless (from "My Evolution," Musical Quarterly
XXXVIII, No. 4, pp. 524-5). Please comment on what you see as the
feasibility of Schoenberg's envisioned abandonment of motive. What do
you think such music might have sounded like? If no tonal center and no
motive, what might Schoenberg have used as a tool to make the music
"coherent and comprehensible?" How might this music have been related
(or not) to the music of Bach and the Baroque? Can you name any
composers whose music could be said to have done this?