Nonexistent Chords

"What is still not used today is not on that account ugly; for it may be used tomorrow, and then it will be beautiful.  In my Sextet, Verklärte Nacht ... I wrote the inversion of a ninth chord, the one in Example 267a at ✻, without then knowing theoretically what I was doing – I was merely following my ear...

"Only now do I understand the objection, at that time beyond my comprehension, of that concert society  which refused to perform my Sextet on account of this chord (its refusal was actually so explained).  Naturally: inversions of ninth chords just don't exist; hence, no performance, either, for how can one perform something that does not exist."

– Arnold Schoenberg

Theory of Harmony

(tr. Roy  E. Carter) 

Verklärte Nacht – top of p.4 of the manuscript

(Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC)

The nonexistent chord is found in measure 42 and is marked by the box at the lower left.

Verklärte Nacht

Complete recording with full score.

The nonexistent chord can be heard in context at 3:38.

(1950[?] recording by the Hollywood String Quartet

Felix Slatkin & Paul Shure, vlns, Paul Robyn, vla, Eleanor Aller Slatkin, vc

with Alvin Dinkin, vla & Kurt Reher, vc.)

Schoenberg on Ives

There is a great Man living in this Country – a composer.  He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self-esteem and to learn.  He responds to negligence by contempt.  He is not forced to accept praise or blame.  His name is Ives.

– Arnold Schoenberg
quoted in Henry & Sydney Cowell,

Charles Ives and His Music (OUP, 1955) 

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Kandinsky on Schoenberg

Kandinsky Black Spot
oil on canvas
1912

Almost alone in severing himself from conventional beauty is the Austrian composer, Arnold Schönberg. He says in his Harmonielehre: "Every combination of notes, every advance is possible, but I am beginning to feel that there are also definite rules and conditions which incline me to the use of this or that dissonance."  This means that Schönberg realizes that the greatest freedom of all, the freedom of an unfettered art, can never be absolute. Every age achieves a certain measure of this freedom, but beyond the boundaries of its freedom the mightiest genius can never go. But the measure of freedom of each age must be constantly enlarged. Schönberg is endeavouring to make complete use of his freedom and has already discovered gold mines of new beauty in his search for spiritual harmony. His music leads us into a realm where musical experience is a matter not of the ear but of the soul alone--and from this point begins the music of the future.

~ Wassily Kandinsky         

Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911)         

tr. Michael T. H. Sadler (1914)         

Wassily Kandinsky ca.1913

What Schoenberg taught me (... partial list)

Difference between playing with the rules and following the rules.
Difference between pattern and mold.
Difference between process and procedure.



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