Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874-1951

Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg was born on Sept. 13, 1874 in Vienna; began composing before he was nine years old; composed the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (1899), which he later scored for string orchestra, and became one of his most popular works; Austrian composers Alban Berg and Anton Webern began studying with him in 1904; his cantata Gurrelieder (begun in 1900) was received enthusiastically at its premiere in 1913; by 1909 he began creating atonal compositions, and in his Opus 25 Piano Suite, he created the first composition based on a row or series of 12 tones; his opera Moses und Aron (begun in 1930) was based on this technique; in 1925 he was invited to direct the master class in musical composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin; after the rise of the Nazis, he was dismissed from his post in 1933, and emigrated to the United States via Paris; took a position at the Malkin Conservatory in Boston in November 1933, and then moved to California the following year; after a year as a lecturer at the University of Southern California (1935-36) he taught composition as UCLA from 1936 until his retirement in 1944; he became a U.S. citizen in 1944; continued to create compositions illustrating his mastery of the 12-tone method; died on July 13, 1951 in LA.

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