Beyond the Notes presents
Beyond the Notes:
Vienna 1913
Tuesday, November 4th, 2025, 12:00 PM
Charles Library Event Space
Light refreshments served. Boyer recital credit given.
All programs are free and open to all, and registration is encouraged.
Welcome to the first Beyond the Notes concert of the 2025-2026 academic year! This month’s concert features student performances of works from a variety of genres, from operetta to chamber music, that would have been performed in Vienna, Austria in the year 1913. Composers whose works will be highlighted on this concert include Alban Berg, Emmerich Kálmán, Arnold Schoenberg, Alma Mahler, Karol Szymanowski, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Two of these composers, Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, along with Anton Webern, make up the Second Viennese School.
What is the Second Viennese School?
The term Second Viennese School refers to three composers: Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. This trio is positioned as the successors to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, who make up the First Viennese School. None of these composers ran an actual school or were closely associated with the Vienna Conservatory, but rather are the source of new approaches to music that fundamentally changed how tonality, which is the patterns of tension and release that orient listeners to music, functioned in music. While the composers in the First Viennese School lived and worked in Vienna for some portion of their musical career, all three members of the Second Viennese School were born natives of the city that would eventually define itself as the birthplace of classical music.
The members of the Second Viennese School were advocates of experimental music and proponents of atonality, which is music that does not fit into any single key signature and generally lacks the melodic and harmonic expectations cultivated by the previous century of music. While each composer developed their own unique approach to atonality, this compositional style remained a defining feature of all three composers’ creative output.
Arnold Schoenberg, The Man Who Started It All
Arnold Schoenberg was born in the Leopoldstadt district, a middle-class residential area, in Vienna on September 13th, 1874. Aside from counterpoint lessons with the composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky, Schoenberg mostly taught himself to compose. His early music followed trends established by composers Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner in that they were tonal, but featured dense chromaticism and complex interaction between melodic lines.
Two examples of Schoenberg’s tonal, often called “expressionist,” works are Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) and Gurre-lieder. These two works became quite popular with the Viennese public, establishing Schoenberg as a prominent composer and potential successor to Brahms or Wagner. Gurre-lieder was particularly well received during its premiere in Vienna in 1913. Despite the adulation it won him, Schoenberg was less than pleased with the reception of Gurre-lieder since he had done most of the work on that piece about ten years prior. During those ten years, Schoenberg began experimenting with atonality. Gurre-lieder was a large-scale work that featured some musical techniques that would later appear in Pierrot Lunaire, one of Schoenberg’s most well-known atonal works.
As Schoenberg defined it, atonality is characterized by “freedom of the note,” which means that notes in the chromatic scale are no longer forced into a hierarchy based on their function. “Free” atonality is the term used to describe music that does not fit within a key signature, but also does not follow the tenets of serialism. In addition to being completely atonal, Pierrot Lunaire utilized a unique type of singing known as sprechstimme (literally, “speech-singing”). The sparse texture, unusual vocal timbre, and complete lack of tonality set symbolist poems to great success and much critical debate.
Anton Webern, Musicologist Turned Composer
Born to a minor aristocratic family, Anton Webern mostly grew up in Graz. His later reflections frequently center around summers spent at his family’s cottage in the Eastern Alps. His family was musical, so he grew up playing chamber music. Webern attended the University of Vienna where he studied with prominent musicologist Guido Adler and received a doctorate in musicology with additional studies in Catholic liturgy. He met Schoenberg through Adler and joined Schoenberg’s circle from there.
Of the three composers in the Second Viennese School, Webern was the most influenced by the Expressionist movement and the last of the three to move fully away from tonality. His Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 is a characteristic example of Webern’s take on atonality. Despite encouragement to leave Nazi-occupied territory from Schoenberg and Alban Berg, who was Schoenberg’s other prominent student, Webern remained in and around Vienna for most of his life. His attachment to the city came at the cost of personal safety and financial security once his music was labeled by the Nazis as “degenerate,” and he eventually had to flee to the countryside towards the end of WWII. Webern died after the Allied forces had taken Austria. He was shot by an American soldier while smoking outside.
Alban Berg, Composer of Extremes
Born to a relatively wealthy family in Vienna, Alban Berg was more interested in writing than music until he started taking composition lessons with Arnold Schoenberg. From his letters, Berg experienced significant anxiety surrounding his compositions and frequently desired Schoenberg’s approval for his works. Berg also wrote several theoretical explanations of Schoenberg’s music.
Berg’s lieder, or art songs, are extremely short in duration and dense in motivic material. One of his earlier compositions, settings of poetry by Peter Altenberg, featured at a concert of music by Schoenberg and his students in Vienna 1913 that would later be known as the Skandalkonzert. Wozzeck, Berg’s first atonal opera, was quite successful and gave Berg the confidence to continue composing full time in addition to starting work on his next opera, Lulu. Unfortunately, Berg died before he was able to finish orchestrating the third and final act of Lulu, though it has since been completed and performed in its entirety.
Suggested Reading:
Berry, Mark. Arnold Schoenberg. Reaktion Books Ltd., 2019. https://librarysearch.temple.edu/catalog/991037039839003811
Floros, Constantin. Alban Berg: Music as Autobiography. Translated by Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch. Peter Lang, 2014. https://librarysearch.temple.edu/catalog/991009899759703811
Pufett, Kathryn and Barbara Schingnitz. Three Men of Letters: Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, 1906-1921. Hollitzer, 2020. https://librarysearch.temple.edu/catalog/991039069462803811
Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg. edited by Leonard Stein. University of California Press, 1984. https://librarysearch.temple.edu/catalog/991012207289703811
Simms, Bryan R. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern: A Companion to the Second Viennese School. Greenwood Press, 1999. https://librarysearch.temple.edu/catalog/991012207289703811
Wright, James K. and Alan M. Gilmor, eds. Schoenberg’s Chamber Music, Schoenberg’s World. Pendragon Press, 2009. https://librarysearch.temple.edu/catalog/991037718677903811
By Joanna Moxley