Chapter 15

Intellectual Play and Intellectual Pleasure: Various Aspects of

Musical Representation in Arnold Schoenberg’s Atonal and
Dodecaphonic Works1

Iwona Sowińska-Fruhtrunk

Ars pulchre cogitandi

Arnold Schoenberg, the so-called father of atonality and dodecaphony provided in his
essay Heart and Brain the following specification:
Those qualities in which a listener likes to recognize his own heart are those
which he deems to have originated in the emotions of a composer: the beau-
tiful melody or phrase, the beautiful – or, at least, sweet – sound, the beautiful
harmony. Those qualities of a less heart-warming nature, such as dynamic
contrasts, changes of tempo, accentuation, features of rhythm and accompa-
niment, and, most of all, the finesses of organization – these seem to be as-
cribed to the cooperation of heart and brain and might be classified rather as
‘interesting’, arousing the interest of a listener without considerable appeal to
his feelings. The third group arouses neither so much feeling nor interest, but,
if it should accelerate the heartbeat, it is because of the admiration, the awe,
in which it is held. Counterpoint, contrapuntal style, is definitely attributed
to the brain. It is honoured by the highest appreciation but tolerated only if
it does not destroy the warmth of the dreams into which the charm of the
beautiful has led the listener (Schoenberg 2010: 54).
In this and many other essays, the composer was trying to capture and explain
the essential features of his own music, which, however, sometimes proved to be the
opposite of what he was saying.
Schoenberg fought all his life for balancing the two aspects: heart and brain,
and for proving that his works are based on their cooperation and complementing.
The mystical philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg should be mentioned here as a main
source of inspiration. The composer knew Swedenborg’s theories chiefly from the
novel Séraphîta by Honoré Balzac, from 1834. Swedenborg’s influence spread widely
over the centuries and can be traced in the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Immanuel Kant, and Arthur Schopenhauer. In Balzac’s novel an androgynous protag-
onist embodies a perfect match of masculine and feminine, materiality and spiritual-
ity, feeling and mind. Essential for Schoenberg’s thought is also the interpretation of
an artist as a Creator. This special kind of mysticism made a foundation for Schoen-
berg’s constructive skills with the central notion of a musical idea.
210 Musica Ludens 2

Although Schoenberg did not point explicitly at the sources of his theoretical
ideas, nevertheless it is possible to trace them by analyzing both his writings and com-
positions. There are surprisingly many common origins of Schoenberg’s and Deleuze’s
theories, from Kantian notion of sensation associated with representation, through
Nietzschean concept of the eternal return to Bergsonian role of memory, duration,
repetition, and virtuality. As Eugene W. Holland observes, “the past for Bergson is not
the repository of a linear series of passing presents, but an a-temporal block where
each and every past event co-exists with all the others […]. Past events themselves
co-exist, inhabiting a realm that Bergson calls the virtual” (Holland 2014: 18). Keith
Salley points at the importance of Bergsonian double time experience in Schoenberg’s
technique of developing variations (Salley 2015: 3). In turn, Nietzsche proposed two
different interpretations of the eternal return, both staying in a close relation to dode-
caphonic method: the former in its theoretical premises, the latter in its practical use.
Hans-Georg Gadamer points at the fact that the concept of beautiful grew
from the 18thcentury rationalism. For Schoenberg the beautiful is strongly connected
with the logic of a musical idea, its coherence and comprehensibility. The composer
was known for his love of canons, though their realization required one more impor-
tant element: “There are times when I am unable to write a single example of simple
counterpoint in two voices, such as I ask sophomores to do in my classes. And, in
order to write a good example of this sort, I must receive the co-operation of inspi-
ration” (Schoenberg 2010: 67). Inspiration meant for Schoenberg a gift from God,
the Supreme Commander. It is maybe not without significance that both Mozart and
Brahms, admired so much by Schoenberg, were also attracted to canons and con-
trapuntal riddles. Schoenberg calling Brahms „the progressive”, wished probably the
same for himself, as Golan Gur suggests (Gur 2012: 7). Hartmut Krones observes that
dodecaphony, with its diverse forms of a tone-row (inversion, retrograde) grew on the
base of Schoenberg’s contrapuntal fascination (Krones 2005: 190). So do the layers of
representation appear in his works as a polyphonic texture.
Let us return to Gadamer, who admits:
I should like to maintain a tactful silence about the extreme difficulty faced
by performing artists when they bring modern music to the concert hall. It
can usually only be performed as the middle item in a program - otherwise
the listeners will arrive later or leave early. This fact is symptomatic of a sit-
uation that could not have existed previously and its significance requires
consideration. It expresses the conflict between art as a “religion of culture”
on the one hand and art as a provocation by the modern artist on the other
(Gadamer 1986: 7).

Schoenberg, placing himself in the line of German music tradition, evolving

from Bach through Mozart, Brahms, Wagner and Mahler, was surely aiming at the goal
of art as a “religion of culture”. Still, the premieres and performances of his works were
delivering rather a contradictory effect. While a festival is for Gadamer a communi-
ty-oriented aesthetic experience, the atonal and dodecaphonic music of Schoenberg was
rather an individuality-oriented intellectual experience. Although they have the power
of “transforming” the listener, it is not necessarily the experience of catharsis.
 Intellectual Play and Intellectual Pleasure 211

The Play of Make-Believe

The notion of play received another modern interpretation proposed by Kendall L.
Walton. The play of make-believe is, according to the philosopher, a fundamental
human need. There exists an analogy between children’s playing and representational
art, which is a kind of a continuation of that activity in the adulthood. Artworks of a
representational status act like “props” or substitutes. Some of them are coincidental,
others (just as toys) are given that function. The functions, according to Walton, are
socially relative; the respect and admiration towards artworks is, to some extent, com-
parable with playing the make-believe game. Talking about musical representations
Walton states that:
Representation in music is not limited to blatant program music, of course,
although it is not easy to say how pervasive it is. There are representational
elements, obvious and subtle ones, in much preponderantly absolute music,
such as Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Music combined with words or pic-
tures often makes a contribution to the generation of fictional truths even
if it would not be representation by itself. […] It may turn out that musical
expressiveness is sometimes to be understood as a species of representation.
And if one is determined to, one can find representationality in – or impose
it on – almost any passage of music (Walton 1990: 334).
So called “abstract” representations Walton names as cross-modal rep-
resentations: they are not evident, not depicting, still what the listener hears
is not fictional.

Difference and Repetition

The categories of difference and repetition received a great interest in the 19th and
20th century in the philosophical thought of Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Henri Bergson, and then Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze.
Both ideas are strongly connected to the concept of representation (as mimesis, imita-
tion, reflection, or trace), where drawing a borderline between difference and repeti-
tion proved to be one of the most difficult tasks for the scholars. It should be specified
that the problematics of repetition in the philosophical thought of the 20th century is
quite “different” or even contradictory to our understanding of musical repetition (for
example, repetition of a note). Regarding these methods, I argue that Schoenberg’s
theoretical writings as well as his compositions are not only truly modernistic, but
also mark a new way of thinking about traditional problems.
Two main issues of repetition are duration and mimesis (as imitation) (Hol-
land 2014: 3). Cyclical representation of time was typical for primitive and early re-
ligious societies, as well as for myth. Repetition never meant something new, rather
static, “with little regard for the state of becoming”, until its revival and reinterpreta-
tion in the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Deleuze, as a “force
212 Musica Ludens 2

that simultaneously reproduced one thing and produced another thing anew” (Holland
2014: 6). For both Derrida and Deleuze the return of the identical is simply theoret-
ically impossible, for “the ‘Same’ to return, it has to be already different” (Holland
2014: 19). Moreover, the conception of the “original” is possible only because of the
potential repetition. Repetition “hesitates somewhere between ‘re-presentation’ (the
so-called Platonic model) and pre-presentation […], it calls into question all so-called
‘absolute’ and ‘primary’ notions of an ‘original’ entity or ‘origin’” (Holland 2014: 19).
Understanding the importance of repetition (as interpreted by Bergson) is crucial for
interpretation of Schoenberg’s theoretical and musical output. For the composer “rep-
etition is a structuring principle of coherence” (Schoenberg 1994: 37), which means
first of all, setting the laws of reproduction and repetition of a motif. The only way
to recognize the combinations of variants is to follow the rules of logic and to have a
good understanding of form (Schoenberg 2010: 102-103). The first condition for un-
derstanding is memory and the precondition for memory is recognition. Memory is
closely related to recollection, however, recollection makes the present moment static,
“steals it” from the presence, while memory acts synchronically. It is important that
the technique of developing variations was the only one to which the composer stayed
faithful until the end of his life (Dahlhaus 1990: 88).
For Schoenberg “repetition is the initial stage in music’s formal technique,
and variation and development its higher developmental stages” (Schoenberg 2010:
265). The composer takes as an example the rondo form, stating that „the musical
idea, the rondo’s principal theme, is indeed also repeated, but for a different reason:
repetition is the only way to develop it, whereas in the poem the idea is developed by
the strophes, which are not repeated. For it is that they prove the aptness of the refrain
and give expression to its core of meaning: the fact that different things can be equal,
similar, or related. […] But repetition in music, especially when linked with variation,
shows that different things can arise from one thing, through its development, through
the musical vicissitudes it undergoes, through generating new figures” (Schoenberg
2010: 266). Schoenberg defined variation as changing a number of a unit’s features,
while preserving others (Schoenberg 2010: 287). Such variation is a form of repetition
and is the service of coherence. What Schoenberg understood as “variants” and de-
veloping variations is in fact the result of Deleuzian “bare” difference. The composer
felt himself the inadequacy of the notion of repetition in reference to his own works,
since it was referring to, according to him, something static.
We may think about representation as allowing resemblance, identity and rep-
etition. This is why Deleuze’s philosophy of difference is called sometimes “a ruin of
representation” (Olkowski 1999) or anti-representational. The philosopher proposes
ontological approach to difference, which should be regarded “as such”, without the
negative perspective that burdens it since the times of ancient Greeks. For Deleuze
“difference is the state in which one can speak of determination as such” (Deleuze
2014: 37). Difference itself, its ontological status, is not really detectable, for it is in a
constant flow, move and change. Once it reaches a goal, it stops being difference any-
more. Instead of conceiving identities through differences between them, we should
see both identities and differences as they are. Obviously, that puts in question not
only the notion of representation, resemblance, but also form and category. How-
 Intellectual Play and Intellectual Pleasure 213

ever, as Eric Prieto observes, questioning and denying representation leads Deleuze
back to it in the next work, written together with Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,
through the notion of refrain (Prieto 2002).
In case of Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra Op. 31 I refer to the concept
of instrumental, absolute music as delivering pleasure, strongly connected here with
the notions of difference and repetition. According to Marianne Kielian-Gilbert to
repeat is to find no equivalent: thus, if something is irreplaceable it can only be re-
peated (Kielian-Gilbert 2016: 210), as the B-A-C-H motif in Variations for Orchestra.
Repetition and resemblance are very different in kind; an extreme resemblance may
“represent” repetition, but still it will contain difference. Schoenberg uses the B-A-
C-H cryptogram as a motif in Variations for Orchestra, which repeats in time, but is of
a static nature; acts like a relic of the external world in the work (Tomaszewski 2016).
It plays a structural role, not purely ornamental or associative. The tone-row, on the
other hand, brings difference. As Wolfgang Rihm observes, the Bach monogram orig-
inates in the row, but not directly. It acts thus through association, allusion. Even not
being heard all the time, the motif stays present in the memory (the reflexive past of
representation rather than the immediate past of retention). In the Introduction we
hear the anticipation (repeatedly appearing) of the thematic material. The B-A-C-H
motif and the Theme suggest a double temporal experience – grounded and moving,
slower and faster but not in a unified flow. We know about anticipation only looking
backwards. The three elements used by Schoenberg in the Variations are: the perfect
5th (as a representation of the “natural”), the B-A-C-H motif (as the representation of
the “cultural”) and the tritone (as the representation of the “symbolic”); all three of
them act like Waltonian “props” on a micro-level.

Labyrinthine Structures
Arnold Schoenberg noted that “a work of art is a labyrinth, in which a visitor knows
at each point where the entrance and the exit are, without following the red thread”
(Schoenberg 1912). It has to do with the composer’s concept of coherence, logic, and
comprehensibility in music. According to Hermann Kern, the word ‘labyrinth’ has
three different meanings: “as a metaphor, as a maze (a literary motif), and as an actu-
al labyrinth” (Kern 1999: 13). As a metaphor, a labyrinth is a path oriented not only
inside, but also in depth. The boundaries between interior and exterior are clearly
marked (as in a mythical opposition centre – peripheries), which is typical for utopias.
Labyrinth exists only in the context of the outside. Walking through a labyrinth may
be regarded as a trial, initiation, becoming dead or reborn, which takes place in its
mysterious centre (Kern 1999: 26–27). The pendulum-like pattern of a classical laby-
rinth expresses the movement towards both life and death. Let us quote shortly what
Charles Rosen wrote about Schoenberg’s Erwartung: “There is here the sense of move-
ment toward – and away from – absolute consonance, coming in a series of waves”
(Rosen 1975: 66). As having only one exit, a labyrinth easily becomes a metaphor of
death (Głowiński 1990: 200). Space of the labyrinth, even if familiar before, becomes
alien, untamed, incomprehensive; it corners the visitor: “a labyrinth never creates an
214 Musica Ludens 2

intimate space, but it may be treated as it would express the inner world of a man (…)”
(Głowiński 1990: 192). Labyrinth, by its historical (and mythical) definition, contains
also the motif of dance, mentioned already by Homer in Iliad (Santarcangeli 1982:
212), and then by Plutarch (Kern 1999: 22), which is underlined by its usually circular
design. In Erwartung, through that motif, remote associations with Richard Strauss’s
Salome come in mind, when the Woman is kissing her dead lover.
In Schoenbergian scholarship, the notion of labyrinth appears in the context
of Erwartung Op. 17 as well as A Survivor from Warsaw, but only on the level of the
literary text. It seems quite obvious: in the former the forest reveals a labyrinthine
aspect, as well as the complex psychological and emotional state of the Woman; in the
latter it is the sewers of Warsaw, the Ghetto and the concentration camp (as a pris-
on), as well as the unknown, intricate way, in which the terror governs human lives.
Both the Woman in Erwartung and the Narrator in the Survivor are nameless, which
emphasizes the protagonists as being lost in and at the same time governed by their
environment: social, political, and historical. They are also nameless because they do
not stand any more for themselves; fear makes them nameless (Barry 2010: 258).
In a letter to Ferruccio Busoni from 1909 (the year Erwartung was composed),
Schoenberg wrote: “It is impossible for a person to have only one sensation at a time.
One has thousands simultaneously” (Auner 2003: 70–71). If any musical work is to be
a representation of sensation, it will surely be Erwartung. “My intention is”, the com-
poser continued, “to place nothing inhibiting in the stream of my unconscious sensa-
tions. But to allow anything to infiltrate which may be invoked either by intelligence
or consciousness” (Auner 2003: 18). According to Henri Maldiney, sensation repre-
sents a chaotic world that stays in an opposition to a precisely organized structure of
a labyrinth (Bogue 2003: 119). When analysing the musical layer of both works, a few
similar and even common features appear: the organization of time (extended versus
compressed time), quasi-oneiric atmosphere, namelessness of the protagonists, the
importance of gaze, the use of quotations, lost identity versus recovered identity. I
shall argue that Erwartung reveals a quasi-labyrinthine structure, not only on textual
level, but also in its musical organization. There is no traditional melodic or motivic
“thread” to lead the listener through the work. But there is another kind of “thread”,
although more difficult to trace, that is recurring rhythmic motifs and, so called by
Schoenberg, Grundgestalten, which consist of more than one statement of the mo-
tive and often in various forms: inversion, augmentation, diminution (Schoenberg
2006: 129). Grundgestalt occurs repeatedly within the piece and it must possess some
characteristic feature. The impression of lacking motivic continuity is underlined by
stretching the time. Schoenberg wrote: “In Erwartung the aim is to represent in slow
motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excite-
ment, stretching it out to half an hour” (Schoenberg 2010: 105). As a consequence the
pieces of that single second become quasi-static. The continuity appears in the last
fourth Scene, when the fulfillment of the expectation comes, reaching the totum simul
effect at the very end. Michał Głowiński points at the problematics of time dimension
in an inner labyrinth this way: “continuity and perspective disappear, the difference
between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective‘ time fades away; ontological status of time is not
clear anymore” (Głowiński 1990: 205). Towards the end of the work the composer
 Intellectual Play and Intellectual Pleasure 215

quotes from his earlier song Am Wegrand (in d minor), which is interpreted by Bert-
hold Hoeckner as a “repressed memory” (Hoeckner 2002: 208) and by Slavoj Žižek
as a “repressed Unconscious” (Žižek 2014: 273). The Wegrand-quote underlines even
stronger the abysmal loneliness of the Woman.
In A Survivor from Warsaw the full basic set of the dodecaphonic series ap-
pears in the Shema Yisroel prayer, heard for the first time towards the end of the work.
The web of recognizable motives makes the Survivor’s structure easy to follow, as, for
example, the trumpet fanfare from the very beginning of the piece (a clear reference
to Gustav Mahler). Memories of the Narrator reach back and recall the shape of the
world before the war – the lost world. In both works ostinato, as a trapped will and
movement, is employed to create a great musical and dramatic tension. Charles Rosen
observes that,
An ostinato figure is ambiguous in its sense of movement: it is neither stable
nor dynamic. […] Nevertheless, an ostinato creates instability and contrib-
utes to the larger rhythm through the tension that comes from insistent rep-
etition. […] An ostinato that both accelerates and increases in volume can
create an almost unbearable tension (Rosen 1975: 55).
This is exactly the case in the Survivor, where the Shema prayer outbursts from the
passionate ostinato accelerando.
There is one more common feature for both Erwartung and A Survivor: inabil-
ity to see, literally and metaphorically (Barry 2010: 258). Walking through a labyrinth
we do not see the goal. In Erwartung the expectation of the fulfillment of expecta-
tion makes the Woman experience hallucinations, “visions” of “wide yellow eyes”, of
a gaze. In the original song Am Wegrand, in the closing verses, the eyes of the protag-
onist are blinded by the sun and close forever. In Erwartung the first melodic quote
is accompanied by the Woman’s words: “Look at me, beloved […]. Oh, how numb,
how scary your eyes are…”. The second quote (musical and textual) is followed by the
Woman’s words: “I can no more see you.”
Schoenberg changed Marie Pappenheim’s libretto to Erwartung in order to
“liberate music from imitating external reality” (Barry 2010: 261), to give it more free-
dom in both aspects: representation and expression. Slavoj Žižek observes that,
we remain within the space of mimesis, what changes is just the object imi-
tated […]. In contrast to the traditional art, which functions as a mimesis of
external reality, the authentic modern art should bypass the detour through
external reality and function as a direct mimesis of inner life, a ‘representa-
tion of inner occurrences’ [quote by Richard Taruskin] - and, here enters
psychoanalysis […] (Žižek 2014: 273).
Does it mean that the notion of mimesis has entered the sphere of expression?
Not necessarily. Although the composer obviously expresses his own musical idea, he
also represents the inner life of the Woman, as “lived” through his own internal ex-
perience. Both Erwartung and A Survivor from Warsaw are labelled in Schoenbergian
scholarship as musical representations (or depictions) of trauma, loneliness, and hys-
teria. Between depiction, illustration, mimesis, and symbolic “transformation” there
exist multiple nuances and levels of representation: of the text (also at the level of the
216 Musica Ludens 2

language itself – the use of three languages in the Survivor), of temporality, of terror, of
a labyrinth, of a sensation, of a gaze. These are the types of “abstract representations”
by associations, context, with no pure physical resemblance.

Notes
1 This publication is a result of the research project No. 2016/21/N/HS2/02676 funded by
The National Science Centre (NCN) in Poland.

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