Quote Of The Day (31/03/08)

'He treats dissonance as a tonal language, complete and satisfying in itself, owing no allegiance, or even lip-service to consonance, either at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the work. It is amazing how far we can already go with him, how strangely beautiful and moving much of this music is, that, judged by the eye alone, is mere jumble of discordant parts. But it is frankly impossible for the most advanced musician to see a coherent idea running through a great deal of this music. I do not say the coherent idea is not there, but simply that at present its coherence and its veracity are not always evident. Time alone can show whether it is our harmonic sense that thinks too slowly, or Schoenberg`s harmonic sense that thinks a little too rapidly for the rest of the world.'

Earnest Newman; 'A Review [of Schoenberg`s Five Orchestral Pieces], 1914' : Birmingham Daily Post.

printed in the Dover Miniature Score of Five Orchestral Pieces.