Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874-1951

Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (/ˈʃɜːrnbɜːrɡ/, US also /ˈʃoʊn-/; German: [ˈʃøːnbɛɐ̯k] (listen); 13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. As a Jewish composer, Schoenberg was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works as degenerate music and forbade them from being published.[1][2] He immigrated to the United States in 1933, becoming an American citizen in 1941. Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt district (in earlier times a Jewish ghetto) of Vienna, at "Obere Donaustraße 5". In his twenties, Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating operettas, while composing his own works, such as the string sextet Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night") (1899). In 1898 Schoenberg converted to Christianity in the Lutheran church. According to MacDonald (2008, 93) this was partly to strengthen his attachment to Western European cultural traditions, and partly as a means of self-defence "in a time of resurgent anti-Semitism". In 1933, after long meditation, he returned to Judaism, because he realised that "his racial and religious heritage was inescapable", and to take up an unmistakable position on the side opposing Nazism. He would self-identify as a member of the Jewish religion later in life.[9] In October 1901, Schoenberg married Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of the conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, with whom Schoenberg had been studying since about 1894. Schoenberg and Mathilde had two children, Gertrud (1902–1947) and Georg (1906–1974). Gertrud would marry Schoenberg's pupil Felix Greissle in 1921.[10]

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.