A composer’s study and celebration of a difficult but influential artist, his work, and his time

Proposing that Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) has been more discussed than heard, more tolerated than loved, composer Allen Shawn puts aside ultimate judgments about Schoenberg’s place in musical history to explore the composer’s fascinating world in a series of “linked essays–soundings” that are more searching than analytical, more suggestive than definitive. In an approach that is unusual for a book of an avowedly introductory character, the text plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg works, while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvement in music, painting and the history through which he lived. Emphasizing music as an expressive art of rhythms and tones, Shawn approaches Schoenberg primarily from the listener’s point of view, uncovering both the seeds of his radicalism in his early music and the traditional bases of his later work. Although liberally sprinkled with musical examples, the text can be read without them. By turns witty, personal, opinionated and instructive, “Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey” is above all an appreciation of a great musical and artistic imagination in a time unlike any other.