Passacaglia and Largo (Frühe Klaviermusik)

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Musical Terms (1)

• Second Viennese School English
  The informal name for the group of composers centred on Arnold Schoenberg in early 20th-century Vienna, including Alban Berg and Anton Webern as his two principal students. The term distinguishes them from the 'First Viennese School' of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The Second Viennese School developed free atonality (c.1908–1921) and then the twelve-tone technique (from 1921), transforming the harmonic language of Western music. Berg, Webern, and Schoenberg each took the techniques in radically different directions: Schoenberg rigorously systematic, Webern compressed and serial, Berg warmly expressive and resistant to rigid doctrine.
  Understanding the Second Viennese School places Berg's piano music in its full context. The Piano Sonata Op.1 sits at the threshold of the new language — deeply Romantic in feeling, atonally adventurous in syntax. Approach it as a late-Romantic work that has gone too far to turn back, not as an academic exercise in new technique.