Arnold Schoenberg

Bio

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was an Austrian-born composer whose innovations in atonality and the twelve-tone technique fundamentally reshaped twentieth-century music. Born in Vienna, he began as a late-Romantic composer influenced by Wagner and Mahler, but by 1908 he had abandoned traditional tonality, producing works such as the Second String Quartet and the monodrama Erwartung that defined musical expressionism. In the 1920s Schoenberg codified the twelve-tone method, a systematic approach to pitch organization that became the cornerstone of serialism. After emigrating to the United States in 1933, he taught at UCLA and continued to compose major works including the Violin Concerto and the unfinished opera Moses und Aron. His pedagogical writings and influence on pupils such as Alban Berg and Anton Webern secured his legacy as one of the central figures of modern classical music.