Steven J. Cahn

Questioning the entrenched and monochromatic view of Schoenberg's historical consciousness, that he saw himself as history's instrument for the advancement of music, this study finds Schoenberg's historical consciousness to be multifaceted. The most important common factor is creativity, which should be animated by historical consciousness, not squelched by it. In this respect, Schoenberg's thought is resonant with that of Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Zunz, Krochmal, Nietzsche, Bergson, Musil, Rosenzweig and Cohen. Like Schoenberg, each of these thinkers espouses the boundlessness of possibility, variation and creativity in the world. Yet Schoenberg's works also bring into relief the conflicted coexistence of historical consciousness and artistic creativity. ;To illustrate the devitalizing aspects of history, Schoenberg's views are compared to similar views of Rosenzweig and Musil. Polemics between Schoenberg and those who see decline in modern art, such as Schenker, Riemann and Spengler, reveal Schoenberg's antipathy to excesses of history. Nietzsche's The Use and Abuse of History informs this analysis. ;We next consider how historical consciousness can foster creativity. Karl Popper argues that Schoenberg entangled art with historicist ideology. This view is incomplete because it neglects the idea which Schoenberg inherited from modern Judaism's turn to history, that historical understanding promotes cultural regeneration. ;To show how works may embody one or more historical positions, Schoenberg's compositions are considered in light of his attempts at historical narrative, which are analyzed with respect to four themes: continuity, discontinuity, social history and the phenomenology of creativity. ;Affinities between art and history suggested in the work of Humboldt, Bergson, Croce, Musil, D'Arcy Thompson, Lakoff, Edelman and Gruber are related to Schoenberg's writings. These findings ground the analyses of four works: Erwartung, Die gluckliche Hand, Vorgefuhl, Op. 22, No. 4 and A Survivor from Warsaw. ;The Five Piano Pieces, Op 23, are discussed in terms of conflicts that arise when aesthetic and historical assessments of a musical composition disagree, and in terms of how Schoenberg addressed such conflicts. ;Schoenberg's evolutionary and intuitionistic view of musical perception, as described in Harmonielehre, is considered vis-a-vis the contrasting evolutionary views of Mach and Bergson.