Study Of The Music Of Arnold Schoenberg Thought

Schoenberg is not only an important composer in 20th century, but also left plenty of writings, including papers, letters, and speeches. The thesis probes into Schoenberg' thinkings about music history, music nationalism, music education, music criticism, and music creation, respectively. There are some important viewpoints in Schoenberg's music thought: Firstly, Schoenberg's ideas of music history, he believes relationship of tradition and revolution in art is dialectical in nature, and argues that evolution in music was determined by natural law, obviously influenced by Hegel's philosophical history idea. Secondly, the thesis sums up his viewpoints of music nationalism, such as "lay stress on art music, look down on folk music", "lay stress on western European music, look down on non- western European music" by Schoenberg's account about the reasons of the formation of national art, the dominant of national art and nationality in music; in fact, this viewpoint of western cultural centricity is one of his important viewpoints throughout his life; Thirdly, Schoenberg's concept of music education: in his thought a composing teacher should teach the students how to master "the tool of art" , train them for their ability of "one major and various kinds of techniques", try his best to nourish the student's personality; Fourthly, Schoenberg set forth some opinions about modern music critics and the method of music criticism: a music critic must be equipped with the quality of a music expert, and render composer's idea to the public by his art imagination, but not his personal opinion,and Schoenberg stress the areas of music criticism on style and idea ; Lastly, Schoenberg's concept of music creation: Expressionism and organism are two important issues in Schoenberg's thinking about music creation. The former stresses on the unity of external world and internal spirital necessity, the latter imposes on logical and structure in individual composition. And he expounded his viewpoints by the examples of "basic shape" and "comprehensibility" in music.Perhaps there is something self-contradictory in Schoenberg's music thought; in a certain sense his aesthetic thoughts are partially formulated, and his art concepts hasn't become a complete system. But we can understand, realize, and further his abundant spirit fruits, and explore precious heritages from German and Austrian music cultural tradition in his music thoughts.