Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1: “A True Turning Point”
Arnold Schoenberg completed the Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 in July of 1906, a year after Mahler finished his Seventh Symphony. Both works can be heard as daring glimpses into a disquieting modernist future. Nineteenth century Romanticism was crumbling under its own weight, and an over-waltzed Vienna was entering the turbulent twilight years of the Habsburg Empire. Mahler delayed the Seventh Symphony’s premiere until 1908, anxiously anticipating the audience’s bewildered response. …