Arnold Schönberg

Arnold Schönberg - also spelled Schoenberg - (September 13, 1874, Vienna, Austria - July 13, 1951, Los Angeles, USA) is name-checked on the cover of "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them". He is also mentioned in "The Real Frank Zappa Book" (1989).

Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Anton von Webern (1883-1945) and Alban Berg (1885-1935) are known as the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg was the first to experiment with atonality.

Composer, artist, music teacher. He was largely self-taught, and in his 20s lived by orchestrating operettas while composing such early works as the string sextet "Verklärte Nacht" (1899, "Transfigured Night"). His search for a personal musical style emerged in these works, which were not well received: his Chamber Symphony caused a riot at its first performance in 1907 through its abandonment of the traditional concept of tonality.

He became known for his concept of "12-note" or "serial" music, used in most of his later works. At the end of World War I he taught in Vienna and Berlin, until exiled by the Nazi government in 1933. He settled in California in 1934, and took US nationality in 1941. Started teaching at UCLA in 1936.

Some of his masterpieces: "Pierrot Lunaire" (1912) and "Erwartung" (1909).

In Schoenberg’s second String Quartet (1908) the singer sings, "I breathe the air of another planet", something that reminds us of FZ’s work.