Arnold Schönberg
Virtually self-taught, attached to the Germanic tradition and self-professed
conservative, Arnold Schoenberg nonetheless revolutionized the musical language
established for centuries by creating atonalism, then serial dodecaphony, which
exerted a strong influence in the 20th century. Born into a middle-class Jewish
family, with a father of Hungarian descent who was a shoe merchant and a
Prague-born mother who taught piano, Arnold Schönberg was born in Vienna's
Leopoldstadt district on September 13, 1874. He began playing the violin at the
age of eight, then turned to the cello, w...
