Ha Schoenberg gets a lot of shit. I like the dude. Bloody minded. Self taught. Incredibly annoying to a lot of people. I suppose that says a lot about my self image lol.
Verklarte Nacht is, I think, an attempt to unify the advanced harmony of Wagner with the formal and contrapuntal brilliance and motivic discipline of Brahms. Those were AFAIK Schoenberg's two main influences. In fact, we can actually see the 12 tone system as a sort of sideways mad scientist sort of encapsulation of those two things - the advanced non tonal harmony mixed with extreme motivic discipline and conservation of melodic material. And then he spent his later years getting ridiculed for writing wrong note Brahms by the young Turks who preferred Webern.
Anyway, the stuff Schoenberg fans generally actually like the most is the 'free tonal' era, pre 12-tone; so Pierrot Lunaire, Erwartung, Second String Quartet, Five Orchestral Pieces. And they are - utterly amazing, unprecedented bolts from the blue. No-one was writing that stuff. It still sounds out there today. Schoenberg's use of this dissonant musical language to evoke extreme emotional states was actually very influential. Just ask a horror movie composer.
Schoenberg himself didn't actually believe that only 12 tone music was valid; that was the younger generation. He was tennis doubles partner with George Gershwin after all. And wrote this late in his career...
If I had to pick something I like about Schoenberg's tonal works it is that like Brahms I find them quite hard to understand at times. There's a lot going on in Brahms's music; I often feel it is much better than it sounds... But his free tonal music has no such issues. Of course, that wasn't enough for him.
So 12 tone music? Well... I dunno. Best to listen to music with an open mind and ears. I have had some musical epiphanies listening to 'advanced music' - take this for instance. This work is just stunning to me. I have literally no idea how Boulez wrote this and I don't care.
Here I think I am mostly responding to Boulez's brilliance with orchestral colour. But I actually find it easier to appreciate than a lot of 19th century symphonic writing which is reliant on formal expectations that go completely over my head, and endless connecting tissue and 'development'. Give me some Ariana Grande any day.
Anyway these dudes are all dead now. We are post orchestra, post minimalism, post everything.
But dots on paper and attention to form is still a thing for some.
This is what New Music sounds like now:
Bill Moll John Pizzarelli Signature
Today, 02:47 PM in For Sale