Heart versus brain ...

Schönberg (by Schiele)

In 1946 Schönberg published an article called 'Heart and Brain in Music,' on the adhockery of the heart-brain dichotomy. (He wrote polemics more so than irenics.) See, Schönberg was constantly accused of a brainiac heartlessness. Readers may now open their copies of Style and Idea, turning to page 53. (Readers without the book are asked to feel especially ashamed of themselves.) Twelve-tone composing, Schönberg is sorry to say, has given him 'the title of constructionist, engineer, mathematician, etc., meaning that these compositions are produced exclusively by the brain without the slightest participation of something like a human heart.' However:

'It is not the heart alone which creates all that is beautiful, emotional, pathetic, affectionate, and charming; nor is it the brain alone which is able to produce the well-constructed, the soundly organized, the logical, and the complicated.'

Some compositions are brainier than others, but all music is brainwork as well as heartwork. And if we call Schönberg a heartless brainiac, mustn't we call Chapelmaster Bach—that sovereign of the ars combinatoria—the same? Don't let's forget, in the earlier eighteenth century Bach was most famous for an arcanum.

Bach's celebrated 'Hudemann' canon (BWV 1074)

So far so good for Herr Schönberg. (NB: His musicianship cannot be questioned. He was an exemplar. Musicasters beware.) There is nonetheless a disanalogy. For where there was a realism there is but a nominalism.

To prove the legitimacy of his heirdom, Schönberg was always at-the-ready. He exhibited documentary evidence, juxtaposing tonal and atonal scoreworks, noting hereditary likenesses. Already tone-rows have their transpositions, cancrizans, inversions, and so on, as in olden-days canonic imitation. And look whether there are not even fugues in twelve-tone scores ... Or are there? We must acknowledge that the terms are not univocal, not monosemous. In Webern's Fünf Canons (op. 16), for example, there are 'canons' but not canons. Take Schönberg himself:

'There is no merit in writing canons of two or more voices, because the second, third, fourth, and further voice has only to begin two or more notes later and there will never occur parallel octaves. And who cares about fifths? ... Even the writing of fugues is a little too easy under these circumstances.'

[Note: A prohibition against parallel octaves is common to tonality and atonality, but the prohibitory wherefores are unalike. Tonally, parallels are prohibited for bringing about untoward monophony, monophony where there ought to be polyphony; atonally, for abetting tonicization, for coming nigh unto tonality.]

There could be less heart and more brain in the 'Heartless brainiac!' objections. But just what is it that's objectionable to the objectors?

More to come.