Arnold Schoenberg
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Arnold Schoenberg (the anglicized form of Schönberg — Schoenberg changed the spelling officially when he left Germany and re-converted to Judaism in 1933), (September 13, 1874 – July 13, 1951) was an Austrian and later American composer of modernist music. Many of Schoenberg's works are associated with the expressionist movements in early 20th-century German poetry and art, and he was among the first composers to embrace atonal motivic development.
Schoenberg is best known as the innovator of the twelve-tone technique, a compositional technique involving tone rows. He was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of composition.
Art means New Art
Commenting on the concept of originality in art he famously said:
- "There is no great work of art which does not convey a new message to humanity; there is no great artist who fails in this respect. This is the code of honor of all the great in art, and consequently in all great works of the great we will find that newness which never perishes, whether it be of Josquin des Pres, of Bach or Haydn, or of any other great master. Because: Art means New Art" --Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea, Selected Writings (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p.115.
