Destiny Unknown

When he was 16, Vienna-born Arnold Schoenberg decided to become a professional musician. Nine years later, in 1899, he completed a string sextet, Transfigured Night, a melodic, romantic piece, which was to be one of his few works familiar to concertgoers. Critics applauded the newcomer.

From that time on, Schoenberg continued to attract attention, but it was increasingly of a different kind. He became the apostle of a musical-intellectual game which made him the most controversial innovator in 20th Century music.

New Harmonies. Where other composers were satisfied with the conventional scale of seven basic tones (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti), Schoenberg insisted on discarding "key" and exploring the potential scale of twelve tones (i.e., the full chromatic scale in an octave). The result hurt people's ears. "Just dissonance," they said, or, more simply, "Just noise." Schoenberg stuck to his guns, demanded the "emancipation of dissonance." Discords can become new harmonies, he said. He found a few disciples. The best known: Alban Berg, composer of the twelve-tone opera Wozzeck (TIME, April 23). New music, Schoenberg insisted, "must be music which, though it is still music, differs in all essentials from previously composed music."

In 1933, he left Nazi Germany to continue his teaching and composing in the U.S. He was embittered by critics who ticked him off as merely a sideline experimenter. Once he wrote: "For years, instead of studying my scores and trying to find out who I am [critics have] tried to get rid of the problems I possibly might offer by stamping me with a trademark . . . Whatever I might have to present, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, soft or harsh, true or false, was of no concern."

"It Must Be Heard." Schoenberg lived in the U.S. 18 years, eight of them as a member (1936-44) of U.C.L.A.'s music faculty. Here & there, pianists occasionally programmed Schoenberg music, vocalists sang his songs, orchestras and chamber groups performed his longer works, e.g., the symphonic poem Pelleas and Melisande, the melodrama Pierrot Lunaire and Gurre-Lieder, songs for voice and chamber orchestra. To all but his most devoted fans, the music still sounded harsh. But Schoenberg never once let up in his battle for his twelve-tone system.

Schoenberg's final place in music history may not be determined for a long time. Even he realized that. "I do not know my destiny," he once said, though he comforted himself with the idea that he might be ranked near the top one day.

One thing Composer Schoenberg felt he did know: eventually his music would be accepted. Said he: "It must be heard oftener." In Los Angeles last week, Arnold Schoenberg, 76, full of age and illness, left his music and his reputation in the hands of history.

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