Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg’s pieces were extremely innovative and influential during

the 20th century and created expressionist music in the 20th century. The
expressionism in music heavily revolved around certain elements such as
atonality and dissonance which Arnold Schoenberg fully utilised. Tonality is the
system of keys and key relations and it took centuries in the western system to
develop and define. The key to tonality is to have the same home key for the
starting chord and the finishing chord and is theorised as an important element
of “pleasant” sounds. Schoenberg intentionally completely disregards tonality
in his music pieces to create impact. One of his famous expressionist pieces is
Peripetie.

The melody of Peripetie is disjunct and effectively uses all twelve pitches. The
rhythm is complex and irregular with regular cross-rhythms. the dynamic range
of the piece is wide and spans ppp-fff. The texture is constantly changing
throughout the piece. While the piece is largely contrapuntal, there are also
homophonic and monophonic sections. The piece holds a high level of
dissonance, this is explained by François-Joseph Fétis who theorises tonality is
the key to the pleasantness of a melody. The piece is also extremely chromatic
which means it does not fit into a particular scale or mode as it is not
composed upon a seven-note diatonic scale. the irregular rhythms and
contrasting textures help the piece to be labelled with angular melody.
Likewise to Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg uses a wide range of pitches and
leans towards the extreme pitches of different instruments.

This new and innovative style of music led to the path of expressionism in
music where him and his students explore and play with the different elements
of music.