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4 unusual facts about Second Viennese School


LaSalle Quartet

The LaSalle Quartet was best known for its espousal of the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, and of the European modernists who derived from that tradition, though they also performed standard classical and romantic literature.

Second Viennese School

René Leibowitz, Schoenberg et son école (Paris, Editeur J B Janin, 1947) translated by Dika Newlin as Schoenberg and His School: The Contemporary Stage of the Language of Music (New York, Philosophical Library, 1949)

The term "Third Viennese School" is occasionally used to refer to the composers surrounding the Viennese new music ensemble Klangforum Wien, including its founder Beat Furrer and other late modernists such as Helmut Lachenmann, Olga Neuwirth, Friedrich Cerha and Bernhard Lang.

State Institute for Music Research

It also operates the Institute's library with a special focus on organology and the Second Viennese School.


Interval cycle

Cyclic tonal progressions in the works of Romantic composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner form a link with the cyclic pitch successions in the atonal music of Modernists such as Béla Bartók, Alexander Scriabin, Edgard Varèse, and the Second Viennese School (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern).

Michael Gielen

As a composer, he has elaborated on the tradition of the Second Viennese School and his small oeuvre includes settings of poems by Hans Arp, Paul Claudel, Stefan George, and Pablo Neruda.

Robert Craft

He became particularly interested in early music and the music of Claudio Monteverdi and Heinrich Schütz, and in contemporary music by the composers of the Second Viennese School and others.

Solo concerto

The composers of the Second Viennese School also produced several prominent concertos: Alban Berg's Chamber Concerto for piano, violin, and 13 winds (1923–25), not fully serial but incorporating many elements of Arnold Schoenberg's new system; Anton Webern's Concerto for nine instruments (1931–34), originally intended as a piano concerto; Berg's important Violin Concerto (1935); and Schoenberg's own Violin Concerto (1935–36) and Piano Concerto (1942).


see also

Friedrich Cerha

Apart from his compositions, Cerha widely earned a reputation as an interpreter of the works of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern; his affinity for the works of the second Viennese school culminated in the completion of Alban Berg's opera Lulu by finishing the instrumentation of the 3rd act and filling the gaps in the score (premiered by Pierre Boulez in Paris, 1979).