Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was born in Vienna and was largely self-made as a composer, with Alexander Zemlinsky, later his brother-in-law, as his mentor. His early works, such as Verklärte Nacht and the huge Gurre-Lieder, grow out of the late Romantic language of Brahms and Wagner. In the years before the First World War he gave up traditional tonality in works including Pierrot lunaire, and by 1923 he had arrived at the twelve-tone method, a way of organising all twelve notes of the chromatic scale that shaped a great deal of later twentieth-century music. He was also a teacher of great influence, and Alban Berg and Anton Webern were among his pupils. From the mid 1920s he directed a master class in composition at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. When the Nazis forced him out in 1933 he formally returned to the Jewish faith in Paris and emigrated to the United States. He settled in Los Angeles, became a professor at the University of California there in 1936 and an American citizen in 1941, and lived in the city until his death.