from Part IV - Paradoxes and Predicaments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2025
The androcentric tropes typical of modernist narratives distort Schoenberg’s story and the interpretation of his compositions by eliding his engagement with women and the feminine. Yet his social circle included a number of progressive women, including the educator Eugenie Schwarzwald and medical doctor Marie Pappenheim. This study considers two operas Schoenberg composed twenty years apart, each based on a libretto written by a woman and featuring a female protagonist who reflects the social situation of women in her milieu. Moreover, each opera was a vehicle for a distinctive compositional innovation, Erwartung (1909) marking the pinnacle of Schoenberg’s ‘intuitive aesthetic’ in its freely non-tonal, non-repetitive style, and Von heute auf morgan (1929) the first twelve-tone opera.
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