Author: Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian-born American composer, theorist, painter, and teacher whose ideas altered the language of twentieth-century music. Style and Idea gathers his essays on his own development, other composers, twelve-tone composition, performance, notation, criticism, teaching, nationalism, and the social responsibilities of art. Philosophical Library issued the first English collection in 1950, using translations by Dika Newlin. The expanded edition associated with University of California Press was edited by Leonard Stein and translated by Leo Black; Joseph Auner supplies the 2010 anniversary foreword. The collection places technical discussions such as “Composition with Twelve Tones” beside reflections on Bach, Brahms, Mahler, Berg, Gershwin, and Stravinsky. That range makes the book both a source for Schoenberg's compositional thinking and a portrait of a teacher arguing with the musical culture around him.