Second Viennese School

The Second Viennese School (German: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. Their music was initially characterized by late-Romantic expanded tonality and later, a totally chromatic expressionism without a firm tonal centre, often referred to as atonality; and later still, Schoenberg's serial twelve-tone technique. Twelve tone Composition was revolutionized by Arnold Schoenberg. Using thistechnique when composing he made sure he used all 12 notes in a chromatic scale whenforming a melody, this would be called the “Primeseries”. This series would later be enhanced in his compositions through permutations such as, Retrogrades, Inversions, Transformations etc.How this happens is, Schoenberg taking the pitches of the Primeseries and through his “Magic Square” of permutations takes said pitches and depending on which permutation he is utilizing, creates a new series of pitches to form a new melody. Later a French composer named Pierre Boulez takes Schoenberg's development and enhances it even further by serializing not only Pitch, but Rhythm, Articulation, and Dynamics as well.^[1] Adorno said that the twelve-tone method, when it had evolved into maturity, was a "veritable message in a bottle", addressed to an unknown and uncertain future.^[2] Though this common development took place, it neither followed a common time-line nor a cooperative path. Likewise, it was not a direct result of Schoenberg's teaching—which, as his various published textbooks demonstrate, was highly traditional and conservative. Schoenberg's textbooks also reveal that the Second Viennese School spawned not from the development of his serial method, but rather from the influence of his creative example.