None Provided8

arnold schoenberg By: Anonymous Arnold Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874, to a Jewish family in Vienna. He taught himself composition, with help in counterpoint from the Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky, and in 1899 produced his first major work, the tone poem Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for string sextet. In 1901 he married Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde, with whom he had two children. The couple moved to Berlin, where for two years Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating …

…but in the majority of his works of the 1930s and '40s he attempted to synthesize the twelve-tone technique with the formal principles he had employed during his expressionist period. This synthesis can be heard in his one-movement Piano Concerto (1942) and in the monumental String Trio. Through Schoenberg and his students, the twelve-tone method became a dominating force in mid-20th century composition and exerted a profound influence on the course of Western music.