complete liberation from all forms
from all symbols
of cohesion
and logic.
Thus :
Away with "motivic working out."
Away with harmony as cement or bricks of a building.
Harmony is
expression
and nothing else.
. . .
My music must be
brief.
Concise ! In two notes : not built, but '
expressed' ! !
And the results I wish for :
no stylized and sterile protracted emotion.
People are not like that :
It is
impossible for a person to have only one sensation at a
time.
One has
thousands simultaneously. And these thousands
can no more readily be added together than an apple and a pear.
They go their own ways.
And this variegation, this multifariousness, this illogicality
which our senses demonstrate, the
illogicality presented by
their interactions, set forth by some mounting rush of blood,
by some reaction of the senses or the nerves, this I should
like to have in my music.
~ Schoenberg letter to
Busoni, 1909
[written shortly after the completion of
the op.11 piano pieces and
the Five Pieces for Orchestra, op.16]