ABSTRACT
Severe political and economic conditions as well as artistic oppression during the 1930s led many European composers to emigrate to the United States prior to World War II. The most prominent of these émigrés was Arnold Schoenberg, who settled in the United States in 1933. He was followed by Krenek in 1937, then Bartók, Stravinsky, and Hindemith in 1939, all of whom (except Bartók) developed some form of twelve-tone serial composition further after World War II. While the younger generation of Europeans turned most prominently to the principles of Webern after the initial revival of Schoenberg’s teachings by Leibowitz, Fortner, and Rufer at Darmstadt in 1946, members of the Vienna Schoenberg circle have all been influential to varying degrees in the United States since the early 1950s. However, except for the strong Webernist influence on Stravinsky’s serial works, especially those of the twelve-tone system employed since 1958, it has been Schoenberg’s aesthetics and techniques that have served as the most vital force for the earliest generation of postwar composers in the United States.
