and more opulently colored though they are, are still eminently of the
romantic school. The person who declared ecstatically that assisting at
a performance of the string sextet, "Verklaerte Nacht," resembled
"hearing a new 'Tristan,'" exhibited, after all, unconscious critical
acumen. The great cantata, "Gurrelieder," the symphonic setting of Jens
Peter Jacobsen's romance in lyrics, might even stand as the grand finale
of the whole post-Wagnerian, ultra-romantic period, and represent the
moment at which the whole style and atmosphere did its last heroic
service. And even the "Kammersymphonie," despite all the signs of
transition to a more personal manner, despite the increased
scholasticism of tone, despite the more acidulous coloration, despite
the distinctly novel scherzo, with its capricious and fawn-like leaping,
is not quite characteristic of the man.

It is in the string quartet, Opus 7, that Schoenberg first speaks his
proper tongue. And in revealing him, the work demonstrates how
theoretical his intelligence is. No doubt, the D-minor Quartet is an
important work, one of the most important of chamber compositions.
Certainly, it is one of the great pieces of modern music. It gives an
unforgettable and vivid sense of the voice, the accent, the timbre, of
the hurtling, neurotic modern world; hints the coming of a free and
subtle, bitter and powerful, modern musical art. As a piece of
construction alone, the D-minor Quartet is immensely significant. The
polyphony is bold and free, the voices exhibiting an independence
perhaps unknown since the days of the madrigalists. The work is unified
not only by the consolidation of the four movements into one, but as
well by a central movement, a "durchfuehrung" which, introduced between
the scherzo and the adagio, reveals the inner coherence of all the
themes. There is no sacrifice of logic to the rules of harmony. Indeed,
the work is characterized by a certain uncompromisingness and sharpness
in its harmonies. The instrumental coloring is prismatic, all the
registers of the strings being utilized with great deftness. Exclusive
of the theme of the scherzo, which recalls a little overmuch the
Teutonic banalities of Mahler's symphonies, the quality of the music is,
on the whole, grave and poignant and uplifted. It has a scholarly
dignity, a magistral richness, a chiaroscuro that at moments recalls
Brahms, though Schoenberg has a sensuous melancholy, a delicacy and an
Hebraic b