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Schoenberg's Chamber Music, Schoenberg's World. Edited by James K. Wright and Alan M. Gilmour. Hills - dale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2009. [xiv, 258 p. ISBN 9781576471302, $54.] Music examples, illustrations.
A lively and continuing involvement with the music of Arnold Schoenberg has long characterized Canadian academic and artistic circles. This interest was evident in the July 2007 symposium "Schoenberg's Chamber Music, Schoenberg's World," sponsored by Carleton University in cooperation with the International Ottawa Chamber Music Festival and Austrian Cultural Forum. An international group of scholars lectured on Schoenberg, and thirteen articles-most originating at the symposium-make up Schoenberg's Chamber Music, Schoenberg's World. The volume begins with a foreword by Lawrence Schoen - berg (the composer's youngest son) and preface by James Wright, organizer of the symposium. In a brief look at "The Young Arnold Schoenberg," Christian Meyer, Director of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, focuses on aspects of Schoen - berg's life and music in the years before 1900. James Deaville's contribution, "Schoen berg's String Quartet No. 1 in Dresden (1907): Programming the Un - programmable," provides a history of Schoen berg's presence in the 1907 festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in Dresden. The author draws upon hitherto unpublished correspondence from the Verein archive in Weimar to show that Richard Strauss, still in 1907, was an avid supporter of Schoenberg and his music. Deaville explains that the scheduling of Schoenberg's First String Quartet at the festival-a work of daunting complexity for the players-was the result of Strauss's intervention on Schoenberg's behalf.
Alexander Carpenter, in his article "A Bridge to a New Life: Waltzes in Schoen - berg's Chamber Music," explores the significance of waltz-like passages in Schoen - berg's String Quartets opp. 7 and 10; the Serenade, op. 24; and the Suite, op. 29. He interprets them as "meaningful personal signfiers that are connected to intimate and intense feelings" that "mark moments of crisis and change" (pp. 25-26) in Schoen berg's life. An example is the waltzlike folk tune "Alles ist hin!" in the Second Quartet, the unspoken text of which alludes to Schoenberg's feelings of alienation from his first wife, Mathilde. Schoenberg gazes in the opposite direction with the waltz tune "Ännchen von Tharau," which he quotes in the Suite, op.29, to look...