“Atonal” Motifs and the Presentation of the Musical Idea

Nothing has conditioned the English-language analytical discourse about Schönberg’s atonal period music more than pitch-class sets. In Remaking the Past, Joseph Straus defines the pitch-class set as “a motive from which many of the identifying characteristics – register, rhythm, order – have been boiled away”. This understanding of atonal motif, which equates it with pitch-class set, remains widely accepted, intimating a type of “common practice” in Schönberg’s atonal music, evidenced by the motivic coherence demonstrated in pitch-class set analyses. This article proposes a different understanding of motif in atonal period works, based on Schönberg’s definition in Fundamentals of Musical Composition and Zusammenhang, Kontrapunkt, Instrumentation, Formenlehre. In these texts he defines the motif as a “rhythmicized phenomenon”, in which “often a contour or shape is significant”. For Schönberg, the motif is the “‘germ’ of the musical idea”. As the article recounts, Schönberg’s writings outline three forms of presentation of the musical idea: Entwicklung (development), Abwicklung (envelopment) and Aneinander-Reihung (juxtaposition). Since either Schönberg or his students referred to each method of presentation in reference to a different stage of the atonal period, an analytical approach that focusses on presentation of the idea not only illuminates something about compositional process, but also assumes that the atonal period was one of great variety and experimentation. The article reveals that pitch-class sets and other analytical hardware can serve as tools of interpretation and criticism, aiding in the periodization and pedagogy of this seminal time in music history.