Pencil on paper
ca. 1907
Catalogue raisonné 259
Belmont Music Publishers, Pacific Palisades/CA
“Schönberg’s music now appears to be the resultant of that which came before or the unresolved remains of his previous efforts. In truth his first impressions were musical ones. Perhaps this was because chance put a violin bow in the hand of this young child instead of a brush or a pen. Hence music and its techniques grew up with him, while the other arts had to wait until the feelings that were demanding to get out came to life. So when everything within was ready and waiting, the tension became so great that the external technique had to be acquired at the very moment of production. After all, everlasting technique does not exist, since it is born at the same time as the work of art.
That it was music that caught him first becomes clear when, for instance, we look at his earliest songs and his earliest pictures. The songs go back further than a decade, whereas the pictures are barely three years old. The structure of the music is based on the rules of the triad, whereas the pictures are based on entirely new values, estranged and unstructured. It is signifi cant that the early pictures fall into the period when Schönberg first began to tread new musical paths. Nothing is more organic than that. No human being can make structures as logical as those produced by development. Any objection on the grounds of his music’s intentionality and manufacturedness perceives no more than the surface. It is not possible to prove that one feels in a particular way other than by writing in that way.” (Karl Linke, in: Der Merker, Juni 1911)
Arnold Schönberg: Friede auf Erden [Peace on Earth], op. 13 (1907)