“Schoenberg on Schoenberg: An Unpublished Analysis of his String Quartet No. 4, op. 37 (1936)”

Philip Stoecker (Hofstra University) Volume 12.3 (May 2026

 

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This video reexamines Arnold Schoenberg’s concept of the sentence in Fundamentals of Musical Composition through draft materials that preserve self-analyses omitted from the 1967 posthumous publication. Although Schoenberg defines the sentence as a normative eight-measure design modeled on the music of Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart, the drafts reveal his engagement with uneven and irregular phrase structures. Analyses of his Verklärte Nacht, the String Quartet No. 1, op. 10, Gurre-Lieder, and an unpublished analytical sketch for his String Quartet No. 4, op. 37 demonstrate how Schoenberg composed irregular, uneven phrases, including a 5½-measure sentence in the opening theme of his Fourth String Quartet. Reconstructing this passage as normalized six- and four-measure versions shows how his twelve-tone writing remained conceptually aligned with Classical models, especially that of Mozart.

Keywords: Arnold Schoenberg; Fundamentals of Musical Composition; String Quartet No. 4, op. 37; sentence phrase; musical form; uneven phrase lengths

 

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