teryear than it has
with this or next. They belong to the sort that never has youth and
vigor, is old the moment it is produced. Their essential
inexpressiveness makes almost virtueless the characteristics which
Schoenberg has carried into them from out his fecund period. The
severity and boldness of contour, so biting in the quartet, becomes
almost without significance in them. If there is such a thing as
rhythmless music, would not the stagnant orchestra of the "Five
Orchestral Pieces" exemplify it? The alternately rich and acidulous
color is faded; an icy green predominates. And, curiously enough,
throughout the group the old romantic allegiance of the earliest
Schoenberg reaffirms itself. Wotan with his spear stalks through the
conclusion of the first of the "Three Pieces for Pianoforte." And the
second of the series, a composition not without its incisiveness, as
well as several of the tiny "Six Piano Pieces," Op. 19, recall at
moments Brahms, at others Chopin, a Chopin of course cadaverous and
turned slightly green.

It may be that by means of these experiments Schoenberg will gird
himself for a new period of creativity just as once indubitably by the
aid of experiments which he did not publish he girded himself for the
period represented by the D-minor Quartet. It may be that after the
cloud of the war has completely lifted from the field of art, and a
normal interchange is re-established it will be seen that the monodrama,
Op. 20, "Die Lieder des 'Pierrot Lunaire,'" which was the latest of his
works to obtain a hearing, was in truth an earnest of a new loosing of
the old lyrical impulse so long incarcerated. But, for the present,
Schoenberg, the composer, is almost completely obscured by Schoenberg,
the experimenter. For the present, he is the great theoretician
combating other theoreticians, the Doctor of Music annihilating
doctor-made laws. As such, his usefulness is by no means small. He
speaks with an authority no less than that of his adversaries, the other
and less radical professors. He, too, has invented a system and a
method; his "Harmonielehre," for instance, is as irrefragable as theirs;
he can quote scripture with the devil. He is at least demolishing the
old constraining superstitions, and in so doing may exercise an
incalculable influence on the course of music. It may be that many a
musician of the future will find himself the better equipped because of
Schoenberg's explorations. He is undoubtedl