Cadence as Gesture in the Writings and Music of Arnold Schoenberg

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the writings and music of Arnold Schoenberg to establish concrete techniques for form‐functional analysis, particularly cadential function. In bothFundamentals of Musical Compositionand ‘Problems of Tonality’, Schoenberg discusses how form can be communicated to an audience in music with and without tonal functions. I use the already established field of energetics and Robert Hatten's theory of gesture (2004) to describe the musical effect of a number of compositional techniques employed in the service of cadence. This leads me to define rhetorical and syntactical markers for cadential function in Schoenberg's music. I demonstrate this with tonal excerpts fromVerklärte Nacht, Op. 4, where harmonic function supports and coincides with these rhetorical and syntactical functions. This same technique is then examined in the Musette and Minuet from Schoenberg's Suite for Piano, Op. 25, where the twelve‐note structure is less useful for hearing formal boundaries. Although this study focuses on Schoenberg's music, it also suggests that there is more in common between what might be termed ‘Romantic’ formal functions and early non‐tonal formal functions.

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