Arnold Schoenberg's Second String Quartet, Op.10, completed in 1908, is the last of his works in which a key signature is used, and is generally regarded as a transitional work leading towards his 'atonal' period. Each of the first three movements has a key signature, whereas the last movement has no key signature--a characteristic of his later atonal works. / This study traces how the harmonic language evolves over the four movements of the quartet. The present analysis of each movement shows the structural procedures, the nature of the polyphony and the compositional techniques employed, including those which result in the dissolution of tonality. These changes contribute to the significance of the quartet as a critical work within the transition from the tonal to atonal medium.

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This study examines the relativistic aspects of Arnold Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic theories in the light of a framework of ideas presented in the early writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the logician, philosopher of language, and Schoenberg's contemporary and Austrian compatriot. The author has identified correspondences between the writings of Schoenberg, the early Wittgenstein (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in particular), and the Vienna Circle of philosophers, on a wide range of topics and themes. Issues discussed include the nature and limits of language, musical universals, theoretical conventionalism, word-to-world correspondence in language, the need for a fact- and comparison-based approach to art criticism, and the nature of music-theoretical formalism and mathematical modeling. Schoenberg and Wittgenstein are shown to have shared a vision that is remarkable for its uniformity and balance, one that points toward the reconciliation of the positivist-relativist dualism that has dominated recent discourse in music theory. Contrary to earlier accounts of Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic relativism, this study identifies a solid epistemological core underlying his thought, a view that was very much in step with Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, and thereby with the most vigorous and forward-looking stream in early twentieth century intellectual history.

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