Schoenberg in Amerika (short)

A composer whose music has often been depicted as abstract and hard to understand is in the limelights this year - Europa is celebrating the 50th death anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg who cast aside the boundaries of traditional harmony with his twelve-tone music. Schoenberg, who is also referred to as the founder of the "Second Viennese School," was born on September 13, 1874, in Vienna, and he died on July 13, 1951, in Los Angeles. Being Jewish, he had been deprived of his professorship at the Berlin Academy of the Arts immediately after Hitler seized power in Germany. After a short stay in Paris, Schoenberg emigrated to the United States. His first stops in America were Boston and New York, but after a year, he settled in Los Angeles where he spent the last 17 years of his life. He wrote some of his most important works in America, including a piano concerto and a violin concerto, as well as a short but moving piece entitled "A Survivor From Warsaw." Schoenberg had to adapt a moderate lifestyle while in exile, but his influence on music in America is unquestioned, as Georg Hirsch reports.

[ Home - English ] [ Home - Deutsch ]