{"id":9667,"date":"2024-02-26T13:13:24","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T12:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/?p=9667"},"modified":"2024-03-19T16:24:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T15:24:00","slug":"faszination-arnold-schoenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/2024\/02\/26\/faszination-arnold-schoenberg\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"The Fascination of Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg: An Interview with Ulrike Anton"},"content":{"rendered":"
His 150th birthday is in 2024\u2014a jubilee year featuring numerous events in tribute to Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg, a universal artist and a pioneer of musical modernism. And Ulrike Anton, director of Vienna\u2019s Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center<\/a>, can now look back on her first full year.<\/h5>\n

You became director of the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center in March 2023; how would you sum up the months since then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ulrike Anton (UA):<\/b> First of all, it\u2019s a great joy and honour to be the director of this institution. Over the 25 years since its establishment, the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center has accomplished a huge amount in terms of research, exhibitions, and concerts. We have a wealth of resources to draw on in our education and outreach work concerning Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s life and oeuvre, and we can now looking back upon an exciting period. So it was all the more amazing for me, personally, to be given the opportunity of coming on board as director in the run-up to 2024\u2019s celebrations of Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s 150th birthday. I was welcomed with open arms by a fantastic team who\u2019ve since given their all and provided me with a huge amount of support\u2014which has suited me very well, since I put quite a bit of passion into every mission I choose to pursue. It\u2019s been an intense phase between March 2023 and today that we\u2019ve used to bring more Sch\u00f6nberg to Vienna. In the process, we\u2019ve been successful in networking with other venues and institutions and also established some new instances of cooperation. The fruits of these efforts will now be seen over the course of 2024 as well as beyond, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

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Ulrike Anton \u00a9 Stephan Polzer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2024\u2019s jubilarian Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg is set to be very present. What all is planned?<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA:<\/b> For the first half of this year, we\u2019ve brought together a total of 129 events organised by 26 partners at 16 different venues in Vienna and environs (the Sch\u00f6nberg House in M\u00f6dling also belongs to our foundation) under the Sch\u00f6nberg\u2009150 <\/i><\/a>label. The City of Vienna asked the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center to coordinate this together with the festival Wien Modern, and our important cooperating partners include the Vienna Musikverein, Superar, and MusikTheater an der Wien, to name just a few. At the Center itself, we\u2019ll be looking forward to a celebratory concert with members of the Vienna Philharmonic along with two new jubilee-year exhibitions coordinated by Therese Muxeneder. What\u2019s more, a whole series of concerts, performances, and academic events will be held in cooperation with the mdw. Highlights here include a visit by the Arditti Quartet\u2014which is itself celebrating its 50-year performing anniversary\u2014for a public master class at the mdw and a concert at the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center, a concert by the Webern Ensemble Wien featuring Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s Suite op. 29<\/i>, the study day on Sch\u00f6nberg and Nono, and the project Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht Unveiled<\/i> with a lecture by Eike Fe\u00df.<\/p>\n

How will your previous professional experiences be informing your current area of work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA: <\/b>I\u2019m well networked thanks to my activities as a flutist and my speciality of music composed in exile, all of which helps me in my diverse responsibilities here. The core component of the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center is its archive, which has been home to Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s legacy for 25 years\u2014and then we have the concerts and their programming, of course. A further topic close to my heart is that of the women who studied with Sch\u00f6nberg, including Vilma von Webenau and Dika Newlin, and they need to be made more visible\u2014after all, Sch\u00f6nberg didn\u2019t just have male students. We also maintain cooperative relationships both across Austria (European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024, etc.) and internationally that become visible in worldwide exhibitions like those at Theater Bonn and the Berliner Philharmonie as well as at Austrian Cultural Forum locations. And it\u2019s particularly important to me personally that we build out our mediatory activities and ensure them a presence in the city, to which end we\u2019ve met with the Vienna Board of Education as well as with Public Learning Centres Vienna\u2014which has now augmented its programming by the project LEARN TO HEAR<\/a> in cooperation with the mdw\u2019s Department of Music Education Research, Music Didactics and Elementary Music Education. And in collaboration with Superar, there\u2019s our mediation programme for children as well as Sch\u00f6nberg focuses in concerts.<\/p>\n

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Ulrike Anton in the replica of Sch\u00f6nberg’s last study in Los Angeles at the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center, \u00a9 Stephan Polzer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The spectrum covered by the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center\u2019s activities is certainly a broad one. Do you have a favourite place here, or an object that you\u2019re particularly fond of exhibiting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA: <\/b>As a flutist, I\u2019m especially fond of the wind quintet by Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg\u2014and in our most recent exhibition, we showed the famous wheel chart that he used to figure out this twelve-tone work. That\u2019s an object that\u2019s special to me. In the exhibition, we attempted to convey how twelve-tone technique arose over the course of a long process and how Sch\u00f6nberg kept on developing it. As Sch\u00f6nberg himself said to his students, \u201cOne always has to keep searching!\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg, the first thing that many people think of is his twelve-tone technique\u2014which isn\u2019t the whole story, however. To him, that was more grammar than it was a substantive statement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA:<\/b> Exactly. He thought of this method as simply a means to an end; the expressivity is what actually matters. That was also one of my key experiences when I first tried to grasp Sch\u00f6nberg. During my doctoral studies at the mdw, I got to know Richard Hoffmann\u2014who was Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s last personal assistant. Hoffmann recalled to me in a very lively way how practically oriented Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s teaching was, how he was able to explain things well and very simply. Expressiveness in the interpretation of his works was always what was most important, and never\u2014as implied by frequently expressed prejudices\u2014their technical and mathematically calculated aspects. That came across to me in a particularly vivid way in a lesson with Richard Hoffmann that\u2019s been burned into my memory ever since. And what it means is that when you hear or play music composed according to the twelve-tone method, you have to try and find an expression in every interval; that\u2019s the central point of this method.<\/p>\n

Prior to that experience as a student: Can you still remember the first time you consciously encountered Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s music? Was there some formative listening experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA:<\/b> The very first work by Sch\u00f6nberg that I experienced consciously was A Survivor from Warsaw<\/i>, which my brother\u2014who\u2019s four years my senior\u2014had as a topic for his Matura in music. He listened to it lots of times on our stereo at home, and I came to understand the political dimension of its theme. That work touched me deeply. And the realisation I came to on my own, then, was that one just couldn\u2019t express the substance of its theme with a wonderful melody\u2014even if I didn\u2019t yet know anything about the twelve-tone method or other such things.<\/p>\n

Do you have a favourite work by Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg? And if you could talk with him for an hour, what would you ask him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA:<\/b> Yes, his violin concerto is a work that I find fascinating. And being a flutist, I\u2019d naturally have to ask him why he never wrote a flute concerto. The flute does play a big role in Pierrot lunaire<\/i>, and it\u2019s also present in his wind quintet\u2014but he really could\u2019ve written more wind chamber music, and a solo concerto would\u2019ve also been nice. Another work that fascinates me is The Book of the Hanging Gardens<\/i>. With Sch\u00f6nberg in particular, you have to listen to a work several times\u2014and above all, you need to experience it several times live in concert.<\/p>\n

What work would you recommend to someone who isn\u2019t yet familiar with Sch\u00f6nberg? What should one listen to first?<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA:<\/b> Definitely Transfigured Night<\/i>! That piece is more accessible in terms of its harmonies. And then his Chamber Symphony op. 9<\/i>, which marked a real turning point in Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s composing style where this successive \u201cemancipation of dissonance\u201d already becomes clear. So those would be my two \u201cworks for beginners\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sch\u00f6nberg, of course, isn\u2019t just known as a composer; he also created things of significance in many other realms of art and life.<\/strong><\/p>\n

UA:<\/b> Yes, that\u2019s definitely another fascinating thing about him\u2014this unbelievably great and alert intellect. The fact that he wasn\u2019t just a composer but also a painter, teacher, inventor, theoretician, and so much more. One gets the feeling that if he hadn\u2019t composed, he would\u2019ve had to do something else\u2014like invent an interchange plan for the Berlin underground or something. Or more things like the coalition chess game and travel roulette set that we have at the Archive of the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center. It\u2019s this creativity that was always there. His daughter Nuria Sch\u00f6nberg tells this story about how, in addition to his study, there was a room where he kept all of his technical inventions. It would be interesting to see how Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg would feel in today\u2019s world\u2014he\u2019d definitely be open to all of the new media and technologies. And that\u2019s an aspect of him that goes well with one of our 2024 highlights, which we presented in February: a virtual reality game to go with the Staatstheater Augsburg\u2019s production of Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s Erwartung<\/i>. Sch\u00f6nberg would\u2019ve loved that. But in most of our concerts at the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center, we also tie in works by other composers alongside Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s own works. Be it in retrospect\u2014like in combination with works of Viennese Classicism or by other Sch\u00f6nberg models like Johannes Brahms or Gustav Mahler\u2014or looking towards the future, which is even more the case in this jubilee year of 2024. How do today\u2019s composers relate to Sch\u00f6nberg? In this regard, we\u2019re extremely pleased that we\u2019ll be able to present a composer\u2019s portrait with Olga Neuwirth in cooperation with the mdw\u2014and that the Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg Center can hence also be a home for the music that\u2019s being composed today.<\/p>\n

Further information<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n