Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

I’m not sure there’s ever been a composer who changed as much throughout his or her life as Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg would become famous, or infamous, depending on who you talk to, for his invention of atonality; the equalization of all keys so that the system of harmony that had been followed, in one way or another, in Western music for nearly a thousand years, was banished.  This invention radically changed the course of contemporary classical music, and it remains controversial to this day. Some people think Schoenberg ruined classical music forever with this invention, while others say he liberated it from convention.  But all of these inventions were in the future for Arnold Schoenberg when he wrote his Verklarte Nacht, or Transfigured Night, for string sextet. This piece, written in just 3 weeks in 1899, is hyper-Romantic in every sense and burning with passion and yearning, as well as being almost hyper tonal throughout. It is based on a poem by the German poet Richard Dehmel called Transfigured N