Arnold Schoenberg was not a pianist by training, and although in later years he developed a fluency with the instrument as both composer and player, his early efforts at writing for the piano are haunted by the luxurious nineteenth century style he had inherited. Some of his earlier song accompaniments are entirely effective on their own terms, however, and by the time of the Drei Stücke für Klavier, Op.11 (1909) he was finding that, as a corollary to the new, compact atonal structures he was beginning to utilize, more emotionally stringent use of the pianoforte made for fertile musical ground indeed. And so these three relatively brief pieces stand at the very gates of a revolution that was at the same time unremittingly committed to the future and, in Schoenbergs case at least, deeply rooted in the basic contrapuntal principles on which the music of his own heroes had been built.

In the first two pieces of the opus, Schoenberg's new techniques of thematic architecture—meaning that even the smallest musical gesture is intimately and directly derived from one of a handful of motivic ideas—operate in an environment in which ghosts from the tonal past still linger, including a vaguely ABA shape to Op.11 No.1. Also noteworthy are the persistent, initially tonal-sounding pedal tones F and D natural at the opening of the second piece, swiftly rebuked by the D flats, E flats, and A flats of the pianissimo upper line.

Unlike the mild-mannered first piece, the much longer second one rises to a desperately passionate climax before inevitably falling prey once again to that quiet, triplet pedal-tone figure that opened the piece. Stylistically, Op.11 No.2 owes more to Schoenberg's late Romantic heritage than do either of the other two pieces, and it is not surprising that Ferruccio Busoni chose to make an orchestral version of the piece within a year of its initial appearance.

The third piece, Bewegt, is another matter altogether. Here Schoenberg moves with fierce determination into unexplored musical territory. As its far-flung chromaticism unfolds, there is no neat three-part form or recapitulation, no clean sectional divisions (at the time, many critics labeled the work as "formless"); even the basic thematic substance of the piece is far more profuse (if just as efficient) than that of its predecessors. It comes as no surprise to learn that this forward-looking piece was composed several months after the other two, with the Hanging Gardens, Op.15, having been completed in the meantime. The musical distance that Schoenberg traveled in those months is truly awe inspiring.





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