Stravinsky vs. Schoenberg: Who Was More Gangsta?

By Christian Hertzog Mon., Jan. 9 2012 at 3:30 AM

Categories: Classical Music, Deathmatch

In the left corner--Igor Stravinsky! In the right--Arnold Schoenberg! Geeeet rrrrrready to ruuuuuuumblllllle!

[Editor's note: Deathmatch pairs two artists who have something in common, and determines who is better. It's a concept we sort-of ripped off from MTV, except that instead of claymation it's the printed word!]

Towering classical music geniuses Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were pitted against each other as the two great rivals of the 20th century. But who was really better? The dour Austrian professor who emancipated dissonance (Schoenberg), or the tiny Russian conductor who lifted other composers' musical styles like a kleptomaniac (Stravinsky)? Let's compare them point by point.

Who was recorded more?
Arkivmusic.com shows that Schoenberg has 445 recordings for sale, and Stravinsky 1,130.

Point: Stravinsky

Whose music is better known? Schoenberg and his pupils believed his 12-tone music would become commonplace, even among children, but last time I checked my nieces weren't humming selections from Moses und Aron.

Stravinsky's Firebird, meanwhile, can be heard at every goddamn Delta Air checkpoint line in the country. Igor's music was featured on Broadway, at the circus, and in Disney's Fantasia. The closest Arnie ever got to writing soundtracks was his Accompaniment Music, op. 34--for an imaginary film. Weak sauce.

Point: Stravinsky

Who was more original?
The Schoenster got rid of those wimpy major and minor chords in his harmonies, writing the first atonal music. He wrote pieces only nine bars long. He wrote music where the timbres of the instruments were more important than chords or melody, a device he called "sound color melody."

Stravinsky smashed rhythm in a hadron collider and reassembled the smallest particles in ways never heard before. He also remixed composers like Tchaikovsky and Pergolesi, decades before Jamaican producers and disco DJs pushed their first faders.

Point: Schoenberg

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Schoenberg, Stravinsky

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You are catering to the lowest common denominator. What a misguided piece.
Schoenberg used to play tennis with Gershwin. Not very gangsta.
The operative thought-stream to connect Schoenberg's influence to Young is not 12-tone music, but serialism. Jeremy Grimshaw, in his new book on Young noted, "In fact, the elements of his early works that seem most radical and most characteristic—the extremely long tones, the sometimes wildly impractical (for the performer) or audaciously indiscernible (to the listener) performance instructions—result not from the iconoclastic, rebellious iden- tity so often attributed to Young, but rather from an unusually zealous adherence to serial principles..." His use of serial techniques extends through much of his music, including his seminal work, The Well Tuned Piano. And, as for Cage's influence on Young - and the rest of us - it should be noted that Cage studied with Schoenberg in LA. In fact, Cage event went so far as to knock on his door demanding to study with him. Stravinsky's proto-minimalist moments are present, surely, but the line from Schoenberg to Cage to Young to Riley and Reich is a much more clear musical genealogy.
...though they both did live in Beverly Hills...so...there is that going against general gangstaness... ;)
The operative concept to connect the genealogy from Schoenberg up to Young is not 12-tone music, but serialism. To quote Jeremy Grimshaw from his new book on Young, "the elements of his early works that seem most radical and most characteristic—the extremely long tones, the sometimes wildly impractical (for the performer) or audaciously indiscernible (to the listener) performance instructions—result not from the iconoclastic, rebellious identity so often attributed to Young, but rather from an unusually zealous adherence to serial principles and, especially, Webernian economy and symmetry." [http://www.cipa.ulg.ac.be/pdf/grimshaw.pdf] Of course, naturally Cage cannot be separated from Young's music and concepts, but again, it seems worth mentioning here that Cage studied with Schoenberg... And, though there are occasional rumblings of complex proto-minimalism with Stravinsky in pieces like Pulcinella, Reich studied with Berio, who was incredibly interested in serialism, and was very influenced by and participated in performances by Terry Riley...who performed with and was very entwined with Young's ideas and concepts. Perhaps what we can conclude from all this is: our musical genealogy is incredibly complicated.
Schoenberg's "Accompanying Music" was written in 1930, 3 years after The Jazz Singer electrified American audiences with its soundtrack. The German film industry began making movies with sound in 1929. Prior to that, composers did write scores for silent films, which were performed by the local theater orchestras. Early talking pictures used the same type of underscoring that had been used in the theater and opera for decades before that.
The seminal Minimalist work, Young's Trio for Strings, was written using 12-tone techniques, true. But by stretching notes out so long, Young obliterated any sense of order the 12-tone system was meant to provide to the music. Instead, you hear a succession of chords that appear to have little to do with each other. It's a subversive work in that it creates repose and a meditative state using a compositional system focused on exhausting all the 12 notes in a chromatic scale, which for many 12-tone works creates a feeling of anxiety or vigor. He quickly abandoned 12-tone thought after discovering the music of John Cage, whose compositions and philosophies were far more influential on Young and Riley than Schoenberg ever was. Stravinsky is a proto-minimalist. Listen to the Shrovetide Fair scene in Petrushka, "The Five Fingers," or the 1st of the Three Pieces for String Quartet. Steve Reich is on record as saying that classical music for him begins with the medieval composer, Perotin, up through the music of J.S. Bach. Then, it jumps ahead to Stravinsky (effectively wiping out the core repertory of what most listeners call "classical music").
We gave Schoenberg the win in the "Who's More Gangsta?" round. No better diss in classical music until Bartok blew a raspberry (literally, it's in the score) at Shostakovich's 7th Symphony in Bartok's own Concerto for Orchestra.
Plus if we are going for Gangsta, I have to point out that Schoenberg invented Sprechstimme, which is the style of singing used for Gansta rap. I rest my case.
plus.... Schoenberg wrote an imaginary film score at a time at which MOVIES WERE SILENT. That's right, there was no such thing as a film score. And the sound of that film score basically defined the sound of all underscore devices for the various cinematic emotions and moods used to the present day.
Although Stravinsky’s influence may seem more obvious, and, the music of Schoenberg may leave the listener saying, “that shit kray,” in the end Schoenberg may have a more far reaching influence. His 12-tone music and its concepts heavily influenced a variety of composers, perhaps most notably early minimalists like LaMonte Young. Young in turn influenced people like John Cale, and his ideas helped transform the ever-so-influential Velvet Underground. Young also influenced Brian Eno, who called him, “the grand daddy of us all.” And, he also influenced Terry Riley and Steve Reich, whose minimalist music in turn had far reaching impacts on everyone from The Who to Animal Collective. So, though his influence is surely less obvious…I think Schoenberg should’ve gotten the point there.