ABSTRACT
By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the ultra-chromatic late Romantic styles of Wagner and Strauss were transformed into the expressionistic, atonal, idiom of the Second Viennese School: Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), Anton von Webern (1882–1945), and Alban Berg (1885–1935). Schoenberg asserted that the highest aspiration of the artist is self-expression. This more intensely subjective attitude of the Viennese com posers was foreshadowed in Romantic inclinations toward extreme emotionalism as well as strange, often grotesque subjects. However, in contrast to nineteenth-century German romantics such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Carl Maria von Weber, Robert Schuman, Richard Wagner, and others, Schoenberg belonged to an era of strong reaction to the Romantic aesthetics, as artists from various countries sought new ways of representing external reality. The term expressionism originated in the early part of the century as antithesis to impressionism. It was used to describe any modern artwork, in which representation of nature was subordinated to the expression of emotion induced by the spontaneous distortion of form and color. While the impressionist canvases of Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro are still “windows” on the world, Expressionist canvases may be perceived as “windows” looking inward to the soul.
