“Away with Motivic Working?” Not So Fast

Abstract

Schoenberg’s third Piano Piece op. 11 has given rise to an international controversy regarding whether its melodic materials, harmonies and rhythms are carefully worked out according to larger patterns or are by-products of expression and improvisation. Articles and books in English use Schoenberg’s writings, particularly one of his 1909 letters to Busoni, to support the claim that op. 11, no. 3 was among the first of his pieces to exemplify an “intuitive aesthetic,” and is relatively free from overarching formal, harmonic, rhythmic or motivic patterns. Meanwhile, German-language studies focus on detailed analysis of the piece, describing networks of motivic and harmonic relationships. My article maintains the latter point of view; but it also goes beyond existing analyses to describe a large motivic process that gives op. 11, no. 3 coherence as a whole. It takes two motivic progressions that characterize op. 11, no. 1, “expanding” and “explanatory” processes, and sets them against one another in a conflict, but with no resolution—the first process simply takes over at the end. In addition, the “expanding” process can be heard as becoming more abstract as the first piece progresses, and as moving back from abstract to concrete through the third piece. This motion from concrete to abstract and back is illustrated in another way by considering the piece’s motivic progressions from the viewpoint of “minimal offset voice-leading” as described by Straus 1997 and Straus 2005.