What Was the Second Viennese School?
The term Second Viennese School refers to the loose grouping of Arnold Schoenberg and his two most significant students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who worked in Vienna in the early decades of the twentieth century. The "Second" distinguishes them from the "First" Viennese School — the era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Despite the institutional-sounding name, there was no school building, no manifesto, no formal membership. What united these three figures was a shared break from tonality and, eventually, a shared commitment to twelve-tone technique.
The Three Composers: A Portrait of Contrasts
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951): The Architect
Schoenberg was the intellectual engine of the group. He theorised the crisis of tonality, developed free atonality, and then invented the twelve-tone method as a structural replacement. His personality was forceful and didactic — he believed deeply in the historical necessity of what he and his students were doing, famously claiming that he had ensured the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years. His music ranges from the warmly Romantic to the searingly expressionistic.
Alban Berg (1885–1935): The Humanist
Berg's music is the most immediately approachable of the three, partly because he never fully abandoned tonal allusion even within twelve-tone writing. His Violin Concerto (1935) — written as a memorial to a young woman who died of polio — quotes a Bach chorale within a twelve-tone framework with devastating emotional effect. His two operas, Wozzeck and the unfinished Lulu, are landmarks of twentieth-century music theatre. Berg proved that twelve-tone technique and raw emotional expression were not mutually exclusive.
Anton Webern (1883–1945): The Miniaturist
Where Berg expanded, Webern compressed. His entire catalogue fits on a handful of CDs. Individual movements last less than a minute. The Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, Op. 9 runs under four minutes in total. Webern stripped music to its barest essentials — isolated tones, precise dynamics, exquisite silences. His rigorous application of twelve-tone logic, especially his use of symmetry and canonic technique, made him the primary inspiration for the post-WWII avant-garde, particularly the serialists gathered around the Darmstadt School.
The Historical Arc: Vienna to the World
The Second Viennese School's work was shaped by a tumultuous period in European history. Their most radical music was written against the backdrop of collapsing empires, World War I, the rise of fascism, and cultural upheaval. In 1938, following the Nazi annexation of Austria, Schoenberg's music was classified as Entartete Musik (degenerate music) and banned. Schoenberg emigrated to America. Webern, who remained in Austria, was tragically shot dead by an American soldier in 1945 during the post-war occupation — one of modern music's most senseless losses. Berg had died a decade earlier of blood poisoning.
Their Enduring Legacy
The influence of the Second Viennese School is almost impossible to overstate. After World War II, composers like Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luigi Nono took Webern especially as their model, extending serial logic into total serialism. Later movements — spectralism, complexity, even certain strands of minimalism — define themselves at least partly in relation to what the Second Viennese School set in motion.
A Comparison at a Glance
| Composer | Emotional Register | Characteristic Scale | Key Work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schoenberg | Expressionistic, intense | Large (orchestras, opera) | Pierrot Lunaire |
| Berg | Lyrical, tragic | Large (opera, concerto) | Violin Concerto |
| Webern | Spare, luminous | Tiny (chamber, miniatures) | Symphony, Op. 21 |
Where to Start Listening
- Berg's Violin Concerto — the most emotionally direct entry point
- Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire — strange, theatrical, unforgettable
- Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 — silence as structure
The Second Viennese School is not easy listening in the casual sense — but it rewards close attention with a world of unexpected depth and beauty.