The Roots of Form in Schoenberg's "Sketches"

Abstract

Descriptive titles seem preferable on whole, but I was tempted to call this paper Is Alive because my principal aim will be to reverse conclusions advanced by Pierre Boulez under title Is Dead. Boulez published his premature obituary for Schoenberg's influence in 1952, but its arguments still merit consideration for two reasons. First, it remains most forceful and concise expression of difficulties that Boulez found in Schoenberg's methodone he has never retracted, but rather reiterated and extended in later works.' Second and more important, Boulez's criticisms, though severely challenging Schoenberg's achievement, have been neglected by all but a very few scholars.2 Schoenberg's influence will obviously not live or die on scholarly command, but Boulez's criticism, and I hope my reply, are valuable because they help us better to understand resources of Schoenberg's method and achievement of his music. Of two major apparent difficulties in Schoenberg's twelve-tone method, what might be called the harmonic problem and the form problem, Boulez concentrates on latter-the potential of method to sustain extended forms comparable to those of tonal compositions. Against common view that Schoenberg went too far in trusting to a method that lacks structural principles comparable to

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