Register for a CSMC lecture
Wednesday, 16 November 2022, 2:15 pm - 3:45 pm (CET)
Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg, Room 0001 (Pavilion) and online
Schoenberg’s Sketchbooks as Witnesses and Tools of the Creative Process
PD Dr Ulrich Krämer (Universität der Künste Berlin and Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock)
Arnold Schoenberg was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Although his name is commonly associated with atonality and the twelve-tone method developed in the early 1920s, his compositions tie in with the works of the ‘classical’ masters and encompass a wide array of styles and genres, ranging from his early programmatic string sextet ‘Verklärte Nacht’ to the politically engaged music of the 1940s such as the cantata ‘A Survivor from Warsaw’. For Schoenberg, sketching was an essential and indispensable stage within his creative process. Accordingly, a great number of sketches and drafts has come down to us, including those transmitted in 13 mostly hand-made sketchbooks, which Schoenberg used throughout much of his career as a composer, at times even on a daily basis.
After a brief introduction to Schoenberg’s life and development as a composer, the lecture focusses on the question of how the sketchbooks helped him to organise his artistic work. It is divided into three sections, starting with an overview of the existing sketchbooks and a discussion of their appearance, making, and contents. The second part examines in some detail one of the most extensive sketchbooks which contains both musical notations and verbal notes, mostly related to the never-completed oratorio ‘Die Jakobsleiter’. The third section is intended as a conclusion by discussing some of Schoenberg’s comments that reflect his own attitude towards sketching and sketches.