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Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language.

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Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language. By Ethan Haimo. (Music in the 20th Century.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [x, 430 p. ISBN-10: 0521865425; ISBN-13: 9780521865425. $90.] Bibliographical references, index, illustrations, music examples.

In Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language, author Ethan Haimo posits a "revisionist thesis" regarding the conventionally accepted periodization and related labeling of Schoenberg's musical output. Finding the traditional three-part division (tonal; atonal; twelve-tone) to be inadequate, and the label "atonal" to be so broad as to be meaningless, Haimo proposes three new periods, each with subdivisions. In this book he addresses a musical transformation--and the significance of that transformation--that the conventional tonal-atonal division has previously obscured.

To begin, Haimo traces those elements that remain more or less constant in Schoenberg's music from circa 1899 to circa 1908, i.e., spanning what would traditionally be considered the tonal phase of his output and the first part of the atonal phase. In a carefully constructed and copiously illustrated argument, he makes an excellent case for considering these works to be part of a single stylistic span, demonstrating how the traditionally problematized repertory of 1908 (such as the Second String Quartet, op. 10 and the song cycle Das Buch der hangenden Garten, op. 15) is connected to Schoenberg's earlier works. One of the novelties of Haimo's approach--and one that is sure to be controversial for some readers--is that...

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