Arnold Schoenberg

AKA:

Arnold Schönberg

Birth Name:

Arnold Schoenberg

Birth Date:

September 13, 1874

Birth Place:

Obere Donaustraße 5, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, Austria

Death Date:

July 13, 1951

Place of Death:

116 N Rockingham Avenue, Los Angeles, California

Age:

Cause of Death:

Myocardial infarction

Cemetery Name:

Der Wiener Zentralfriedhof

Claim to Fame:

Music

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has shaped much of 20th-century musical thought. Many composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century classical music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea. Schoenberg's archival legacy is held at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

Interesting to Know

Schoenberg was also an influential teacher of composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, Nikos Skalkottas and later John Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, Robert Gerhard, Leon Kirchner, Dika Newlin, Oscar Levant, and other prominent musicians. Many of Schoenberg’s practices, including the formalization of compositional method and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century.

The composer’s final days are documented in handwritten notes by his wife Gertrud, who meticulously recorded the progression of his illness and the daily routines, along with house visits by his physician Dr Orren Lloyd-Jones. On July 13, 1951 Schönberg did not eat at all and he received a sedative a few hours before his death. At 6 p.m. his pulse was 90, at 7:30 p.m. it was 72. At 11:45 p.m. Arnold Schönberg died with his wife beside him. His final word was “harmony.” On July 14 Anna Mahler took an impression of his face for the death mask.

Over the years since his passing, there has been made much about his anxiety due to triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13). Interesting to note that he died on Friday the 13th at the age of 76 (7+6=13).

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Der Wiener Zentralfriedhof

1110 Wien

Simmeringer Hauptstraße 234, Vienna,

Austria

Europe

Map:

Map of Der Wiener Zentralfriedhof in Vienna Austria

Grave Location:

Gruppa 32 C, Grab Nr. 21A

Grave Location Description

As you enter the cemetery through Tor 2 (Gate 2) drive straight ahead towards The St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery Church in the middle of the Vienna Central Cemetery. As you approach the church take the last soft left turn and look to your left into Gruppa 32 C and you will find the large angled cube that marks the grave of Arnold Schoenberg.