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Wagner, more than any other composer of his generation, undermined tonality as it was conceived and understood by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. Schoenberg's debt

Wagner, more than any other composer of his generation, undermined tonality as it was conceived and understood by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. Schoenberg's debt to Wagner is most explicit in the Verklaerte Nacht, but I think it's more important in that he conceived his innovations as a necessary and logical consequence of Wagner's chromaticism. Brahms definitely wanted to give the impression that he was following in Beethoven's footsteps. Just to state two examples, the theme of the final movement of his first symphony was obviously modelled after Beethoven's Ode to Joy (hence the 'any ass can see that' remark), and his first piano sonata (in C) not only opens with a theme reminiscent of of Beethoven's Op 106 sonata in B-flat, but the counterstatement for the theme is in B-flat, just in case anyone missed the resemblance.

nescioquid 4y ago
Oh, I don't doubt the influence. I was really only surprised about your assertion that Schoenberg believed that he carried on the traditions of both Brahms and Wagner, given the fractious climate around these two composers at the time. Not that he wasn't influenced by Wagner's music at all, but I've certainly considered him more in the Brahms camp. What you said about the Brahms symphony reminded me of something Schoenberg wrote in "Brahms the Progressive", and so went to look it up and found another, more pertinent essay, "My Evolution" (written at 75). In Schoenberg's essay "My Evolution", he writes that prior to Zemlinsky, he was a Brahmsian, but after he had a deep appreciation for Wagner's genius for writing music for stage action and goes on to detail how Verklärte Nacht was modeled on "Wagnerian 'model and sequence'...and on Brahm's technique of developing variation. He surely did acknowledge the influence as you suggest, which I suppose is tantamount to carrying on the tradition in some way, even if he didn't become primarily a composer for the stage. Thanks for the post -- I had never thought to place Schoenberg somewhere in the Brahms/Wagner rift until your comment. That Schoenberg wrote the above about Wagner in 1949 rather than 1901 also let's Schoenberg affirm the influence with little risk to a new career.

nescioquid 4y ago

Oh, I don't doubt the influence. I was really only surprised about your assertion that Schoenberg believed that he carried on the traditions of both Brahms and Wagner, given the fractious climate around these two composers at the time. Not that he wasn't influenced by Wagner's music at all, but I've certainly considered him more in the Brahms camp. What you said about the Brahms symphony reminded me of something Schoenberg wrote in "Brahms the Progressive", and so went to look it up and found another, more pertinent essay, "My Evolution" (written at 75). In Schoenberg's essay "My Evolution", he writes that prior to Zemlinsky, he was a Brahmsian, but after he had a deep appreciation for Wagner's genius for writing music for stage action and goes on to detail how Verklärte Nacht was modeled on "Wagnerian 'model and sequence'...and on Brahm's technique of developing variation. He surely did acknowledge the influence as you suggest, which I suppose is tantamount to carrying on the tradition in some way, even if he didn't become primarily a composer for the stage. Thanks for the post -- I had never thought to place Schoenberg somewhere in the Brahms/Wagner rift until your comment. That Schoenberg wrote the above about Wagner in 1949 rather than 1901 also let's Schoenberg affirm the influence with little risk to a new career.