Rarely Heard: Arnold Schönberg - Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, Op. 34 (Accompaniment to a Film-Scene)

Arnold Schönberg is, of course, famous (and infamous) for developing his serial twelve-tone technique of composition and founding the Second Viennese School of composers who all utilized the technique. His music was considered 'degenerate' in the Thrid Reich, so he emigrated to the U.S.A in 1934 and he lived in Los Angeles till his death in 1951. As Hollywood was so near he actually considered composing film music and he soon got the opportunity to discuss the option with MGM's Irving Thalberg. Thalberg admired Schönberg's pre twelve-tone composition Verklärte Nacht and said he'd like to hear him compose such "lovely music" for the movies. Arnold Schönberg interrupted him and exclained: "I don't write 'lovely' music"!
He never got the job. Neverthless, strangely enough, the twelve-tone technique would become the prevalent style of Hollywood film music, but was hardly appreciated by a larger audience anywhere else. Although, he was never to write a soundtrack, Schönberg did compose an imaginary one - for a scene in a film that existed only in his mind.

New Stuff: Moses und Aron

Arnold Schönberg's opera - a work I have been intending to purchase for a long time.

Indeterminacy X8

Years ago
when I was studying
with
Arnold Schoenberg
someone
asked him

to explain

his technique

of twelve-tone

composition.

His
reply
was
immediate:


“That

is none of your business.”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 44

(Rene Descartes: Principles of Philosophy)

During a counterpoint class at
U.C.L.A., Schoenberg
sent everybody to the blackboard.
We were to
solve a particular problem he
had given and to turn
around when finished so that
he could check on the
correctness of the solution.
I did as directed.
He said,
“That’s good.
Now find another
solution.” I did.
He said,
“Another.” Again I found
one. Again
he said, “Another.”
And so on.
Finally, I said,
“There are no more
solutions.” He said,
“What is the principle
underlying all of the solutions?”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 62

Schoenberg always complained that
his American pupils didn’t do
enough work.

There was one girl in
the class in particular who,
it is true,
did almost
no work at all.
He asked her
one day why she
didn’t accomplish more.
She said,
“I don’t have
any time.” He said,
“How many
hours are there in the
day?” She said,
“Twenty-four.”
He said,
“Nonsense:
there are as many
hours in a day
as you put into it.”

Indeterminacy 68

When the depression began, I was in Europe. After a while I came
back and lived with my family in the Pacific Palisades. I had
read somewhere that Richard Buhlig, the pianist, had years
before in Berlin given the first performance of Schoenberg’s
Opus 11. I thought to myself: He probably lives right here in
Los Angeles. So I looked in the phone book and, sure enough,
there was his name. I called him up and said, “I’d like to hear
you play the Schoenberg pieces.” He said he wasn’t contemplating
giving a recital. I said, “Well, surely, you play at home.
Couldn’t I come over one day and hear the Opus 11?” He said,
“Certainly not.” He hung up. ¶ Then, about a year later, the
family had to give up the house in the Palisades. Mother and Dad
went to an apartment in Los Angeles. I found an auto court in
Santa Monica where, in exchange for doing the gardening, I got
an apartment to live in and a large room back of the court over
the garages, which I used as a lecture hall. I was nineteen years
old and enthusiastic about modern music and painting. I went from
house to house in Santa Monica explaining this to the
housewives. I offered ten lectures for $2.50. I said, “I will
learn each week something about the subject that I will then
lecture on.” ¶ Well, the week came for my lecture on Schoenberg.
Except for a minuet, Opus 25, his music was too difficult for
me to play. No recordings were then available. I thought of
Richard Buhlig. I decided not to telephone him but to go directly
to his house and visit him. I hitchhiked into Los Angeles,
arriving at his house at noon. He wasn’t home. I took a pepper
bough off a tree and, pulling off the leaves one by one, recited,
“He’ll come home; he won’t; he’ll come home . . .” It always
turned out He’ll come home. He did. At midnight. I explained I’d
been waiting to see him for twelve hours. He invited me into the
house. When I asked him to illustrate my lecture on Schoenberg,
he said, “Certainly not.” However, he said he’d like to see some
of my compositions, and we made an appointment for the following
week.

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 147

When I first went to Paris, I did so instead of returning to
Pomona College for my junior year. As I looked around, it was
Gothic architecture that impressed me most. And of that
architecture I preferred the flamboyant style of the fifteenth
century. In this style my interest was attracted by balustrades.
These I studied for six weeks in the Bibliothèque Mazarin,
getting to the library when the doors were opened and not leaving
until they were closed. Professor Pijoan, whom I had known at
Pomona, arrived in Paris and asked me what I was doing. (We were
standing in one of the railway stations there.) I told him. He
gave me literally a swift kick in the pants and then said, “Go
tomorrow to Goldfinger. I’ll arrange for you to work with him.
He’s a modern architect.” After a month of working with
Goldfinger, measuring the dimensions of rooms which he was to
modernize, answering the telephone, and drawing Greek columns,
I overheard Goldfinger saying, “To be an architect, one must
devote one’s life solely to architecture.” I then left him, for,
as I explained, there were other things that interested me,
music and painting for instance. ¶ Five years later, when
Schoenberg asked me whether I would devote my life to music, I
said, “Of course.” After I had been studying with him for two
years, Schoenberg said, “In order to write music, you must have
a feeling for harmony.” I explained to him that I had no feeling
for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter
an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall
through which I could not pass. I said, “In that case I will
devote my life to beating my head against that wall.”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 174

One day when I was studying with
Schoenberg, he pointed out
the eraser on his pencil and said,
“This end is more important
than the other.” After twenty years
I learned to write directly in ink.
Recently,
when David Tudor returned from Europe,
he brought me a German
pencil of modern make.
It can carry any size of
lead. Pressure on
a shaft at the end of the holder
frees the lead so that it
can be retracted or extended or
removed and another put in its
place. A sharpener
came with the pencil.
The sharpener offers not one
but several possibilities.
That is,
one may choose the kind of point
he wishes.
There is no eraser.

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 52

One day

I asked Schoenberg

what
he thought




about the international
situation.





He said,

“The
important thing to do

is
to develop foreign trade.”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 45

On another occasion, Schoenberg asked a
girl in his class to go to the piano and play
the first movement of a Beethoven sonata,
which was afterwards to be analyzed.
She said, “It is too difficult.
I can’t play it.” Schoenberg
said, “You’re a pianist, aren’t you?”
She said, “Yes.” He said,
“Then go to the piano.” She did.
She had no sooner begun playing than
he stopped her to say that she was not
playing at the proper tempo. She
said that if she played at the proper tempo,
she would make mistakes.
He said, “Play at the proper tempo
and do not make mistakes.” She began
again, and he stopped her immediately
to say that she was making mistakes.
She then burst into tears and between
sobs explained that she had gone to the
dentist earlier that day and that she’d
had a tooth pulled out. He
said, “Do you have to have a tooth
pulled out in order to make mistakes?”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 153

Coming back from an all-Ives concert we’d attended
in Connecticut, Minna Lederman said that by
separating his insurance business from his
composition of music (as completely as day is
separated from night), Ives paid full respect to the
American assumption that the artist has no place in
society. (When Mother first heard my percussion
quartet years ago in Santa Monica, she said, “I
enjoyed it, but where are you going to put it?”) But
music is, or was at one time, America’s
sixth-largest industry — above or below steel, I
don’t remember which. Schoenberg used to say that
the movie composers knew their business very well.
Once he asked those in the class who intended to
become professional musicians to put up their hands.
No one did. (Uncle Walter insisted when he married
her that Aunt Marge, who was a contralto, should
give up her career.) My bet is that the phenomenal
prices paid for paintings in New York at the present
time have less to do with art than with business.
The lady who lived next door in Santa Monica told
me the painting she had in her dining room was worth
lots of money. She mentioned an astronomical sum.
I said, “How do you know?” She said she’d seen a
small painting worth a certain amount, measured it,
measured hers (which was much larger), multiplied,
and that was that.

- John Cage