Schoenberg - Phantasy, Opus 47

The idea of inviting Rudolf Kolisch and Eduard Steuermann to Darmstadt was suggested to Wolfgang Steinecke by Theodor W. Adorno. The efforts on the part of Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik relating to twelve-tone music were, as Steinecke wrote in 1954, "intended to close the gaps that the offical musical world had left in the overall portrayal of New Music. For, at a time when one could reasonably assume a familiarity through a number of performances with the important works of Stravinsky, Krenek, Bartok and Hindemith, it seemed imperative from a pedagogical standpoint that the works of Arnold Schoenberg, which had been passed over in silence by the official musical world, should also be made known, in order to produce an objective and no longer one-side view of the situation of New Music." The greatest composer of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874 into a lower middle class Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt district (in earlier times a Jewish ghetto) of Vienna, at "Obere Donaustraße 5". Although his mother Pauline, a native of Prague, was a piano teacher (his father Samuel, a native of Bratislava, was a shopkeeper), Arnold was largely self-taught, taking only counterpoint lessons with the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, who was to become his first brother-in-law. In his twenties, he lived by orchestrating operettas while composing works such as the string sextet Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night") in 1899. While composing the most important and brilliant works of the early 20th century (including Pierrot Lunaire, his first two string quartets, his Serenade, and his woodwind quintet), Schoenberg also became a renowned teacher. His students included not only Anton Webern and Alban Berg (two of the greatest composers in history), but also Roberto Gerhard, Adolph Weiss, Hans Erich Apostel, and Nikos Skalkottas, In the early 1930s Arnold Schoenberg was dismissed from his academic position in Germany and fled to the United States. He eventually settled in Los Angeles, where he resided for the final twenty years of his life. Initially he taught composition students on a private basis, including John Cage and Lou Harrison, who went on to become two of the most highly original American composers (and musical thinkers) of the modern era. Schoenberg settled in the Brentwood area near Sunset Boulevard, where he befriended his fellow composer (and tennis player) George Gershwin Needless to say, Rudolf Korisch was the leader of the famous Kolisch Quartet, which premiered several of Schoenberg's string quartets and made the first recordings supervised by and in the presence of the composer at "United Artists Studios" (between Trader Joe's and The Formosa) on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Rudolf Kolisch was also Arnold Schoenberg's brother-in-law from his second marriage. Eduard Steuermann was intimately associated with Schoenberg's music almost from the beginning: He was the pianist for the first performance of Pierrot Lunaire and also premiered Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, He was also famous for his Beethoven recitals.

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