Commentary of 'The Musical Idea: and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation' by Carpenter, P. & Neff, S.

Carpenter, Patricia and Neff, Severine. edited, translated, and commentary (1995) The Musical Idea: and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation. Columbia University Press: New York.

The commentary is a great summary that will help one to understand Schoenberg's ideas without knowing too much about it previously.  Very useful reading. 

Commentary
p. 1
Music, says Schoenberg, is not a kind of entertainment but a musical poet's or thinker's presentation of musical ideas, ideas that are a part of what man can apperceive, reason, and express and that must correspond to the laws of human logic.

Schoenberg's central concern is ultimately for the work itself, its totality, its essence--not how it is made, he says, but what it is.  "I am still more a composer than a theorist."  This accounts for the most interesting and important, as well as the most difficult, aspect of his theoretical writings: at every point one must be aware of his passion for the whole--its fell, its meaning, its life. 

p.2
Schoenberg is rooted in the aesthetic tradition of German idealism stemming from Kant.....The artwork is unique, a concrete image presented for immediate experience, observed with the senses.  Kant defined it as that which is apprehended in pure intuition [Anschauung], without the intervention of conceptual thought.  It possesses a quality that demands a certain attitude that Kant called "disinterested": perception for its own sake, distinguished from theoretical or practical interests.  Much analysis may precede the full comprehension of a work, but analysis remains latent in the ultimately intuitive comprehension.

Schoenberg.....characterizes art as a kind of knowledge.  He speaks of the musical work as the "artist's message."  Just as the work is concrete, presented for immediate experience, not for the intellect, so the musical idea it realizes is not an abstract concept [Begriff], but a concrete thought [Gedanke].

Schoenberg uses presentation [Darstellung] in a way that reflects a specific tradition, that of organicism.  "[Darstellung].....signifies the presentation of an object to a spectator in such a way that he perceives its composite parts as if in functional motion.".....This entails a certain relation of parts and whole, a relation that is not arbitrary, but as close and intimate as that among the organs of a living body:.....The wholeness of the work is intrinsic because it is prior to the work itself.

Finally, the wholeness of the art work cannot be explained by the traditional methods of theory.  Science explains logically; art presents effectively.  "While science has to demonstrate its problems perfectly and completely without any omission and from every point of view, and has therefore to proceed systematically, logically and consequently, art presents only a certain number of interesting cases and strives for perfection by the manner of presentation."

p.3
This opposition between science [Wissenschaft] and art [Kunst] pervades Schoenberg's thought.  We hesitate to translate Wissenschaft (knowledge, learning, science) as "science".....Indeed a better meaning of Wissenschaft would be 'a systematic body of knowledge."

Schoenberg explicates this opposition in a personal way, defending himself as he often felt compelled to do, from accusations that he was cerebral.....It is sometimes assumed, he says, that there are qualities in music that originate exclusively in either the heart or the brain--spontaneous melody, for example, as opposed to cerebral counterpoint.  This is not so.