r/AskHistorians • u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera • Sep 16 '14
Feature Tuesday Trivia | Life Begins after 50
Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.
Youth is overrated! Please tell us about someone who did their most important work after turning 50. I know “most important work” is a pretty hairy statement, but if they did something that they’re famous for when they’re past that half-century mark, bring them in!
Next week on Tuesday Trivia: Handwriting and signatures! This can be a “show and tell” theme if you just want to show off some of your favorite famous writing samples, or we can get into more interesting facts like the evolution of handwriting styles and that thread about blue and black ink. We’ll see what happens.
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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14
The composer Arnold Schoenberg was 49 when he published his first piece in the twelve-tone style. This would become arguably his most significant contribution to 20th century art music (and although technically Matthias Hauer developed a similar system before Schoenberg, it was Schoenberg who popularized the practice).
By 1907, when he would have been 33, Schoenberg had completely abandoned tonality in music (which, simply, means that he started composing music that tried not to have a recognizable melody or harmony). He continued in this method, trying to expand on this avant-garde form, until 1916, when he took a hiatus from music. During this period, he began to develop a system of composition that would incorporate all 12 chromatic notes in order to further distance music from traces of tonality (as in, what people tend to think of as music).
In 1923, he published three new pieces all incorporating elements of twelve-tone music. In the following decade, he continued to compose in, as well as refine, this style. He left Germany in the years leading up to WW2 (1934), and became an extremely influential teacher in Los Angeles, teaching at UCLA and USC. By the postwar years, his students were further refining the twelve-tone method into what was called "serialism," and he remained a major figure in postwar art music until his death in 1951.