I got turned on to Schoenberg as a teenager listening to his string quartets, though I never dug too deeply. As a punk rocker who was really into free jazz, his

I got turned on to Schoenberg as a teenager listening to his string quartets, though I never dug too deeply. As a punk rocker who was really into free jazz, his music spoke to me much more than other 'classical' composers. There's a great performance with Glen Gould and Yehudi Menuhin performing Phantasy for Violin and Piano (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AABQYAPK_Ek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AABQYAPK_Ek) Gould defends Schoenbergs compositions, Menuhin dislikes them for all the reasons most people do, and admits he is only playing it because he respects Gould so much. One of Gould's points is that the piece is specifically composed for violin - no other instrument could play it, whereas Bach pieces can be rearranged for any instrument. Bach is composing music in an abstract sense but Schoenberg is composing to the specific capabilities of the instrument. There's another great monologue from Gould enumerating why Mozart was a "bad" composer, which I love to cite whenever I have to defend my dislike for the child genius.