The Four Temperaments (Schoenberg)
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| The Four Temperaments (Schoenberg) | |
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| Name | The Four Temperaments |
| Composer | Arnold Schoenberg |
| Opus | Op. 9a (arrangement) |
| Year | 1907 (original), 1940 (arrangement) |
| Genre | Ballet score / Orchestral suite |
| Premiere | 1913 (ballet), 1940 (orchestral suite premiere contexts vary) |
| Duration | ~30 minutes (ballet), ~20 minutes (suite) |
The Four Temperaments (Schoenberg)
Arnold Schoenberg's The Four Temperaments is a work that bridges early twentieth-century Expressionism, late Romanticism, and the composer's evolving chromatic language. Commissioned originally for a dance project, the piece has circulated both as a ballet score and as an orchestral suite, linking Schoenberg to figures such as Isadora Duncan, Diaghilev, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and performers in Vienna, Berlin, and later the United States. The score's treatment of temperament as character aligns it with contemporary writers and thinkers in Vienna and with Schoenberg's own theoretical work in Harmonielehre, foreshadowing his later innovations in twelve-tone technique.
Background and Composition
Schoenberg composed The Four Temperaments in a period overlapping with his works such as Verklärte Nacht, Gurre-Lieder, and the early chamber pieces that established his reputation in Vienna. Initially driven by collaborations in dance and modernist theater, Schoenberg's engagement with choreographers and patrons in cities like Berlin, Munich, and Vienna placed him alongside contemporaries including Gustav Mahler, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. The concept of temperament—melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric—draws on longstanding typologies popularized in European intellectual circles stretching back to Galen and surviving in late nineteenth-century aesthetic discourse in salons frequented by figures such as Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss. Schoenberg finished the score in 1907, at a moment when his harmonic vocabulary grew increasingly chromatic, and reworked or arranged it later, producing versions suited for concert presentation as well as staged choreography, with performances tied to companies and impresarios like Ballets Russes and patrons linked to Arnold Schoenberg Center histories.
Structure and Scoring
The Four Temperaments is organized as a set of four character pieces—each movement corresponding to a temperament—often framed by an opening prelude or introduction. Scoring varies between the original chamber or dance forces and later orchestral reductions; versions employ woodwinds, brass, strings, harp, and percussion in configurations reflecting Schoenberg's orchestration practice evident in works such as Pelleas und Melisande and Gurrelieder. Instrumental color plays a central role: solo lines for violin or clarinet contrast with tutti passages, while brass chorales and string ostinati articulate structural points. The suite arrangement streamlines textures for concert halls like Konzerthaus, Vienna and American venues where Schoenberg taught at institutions such as UCLA and interacted with students and colleagues including Nadia Boulanger, Darius Milhaud, and Aaron Copland.
Musical Analysis and Themes
Harmonic and motivic cohesion unites the four movements. Schoenberg uses recurring intervallic cells, chromatic voice-leading, and alternating tonic centers that prefigure his move toward atonality found later in pieces like Pierrot Lunaire. The melancholic movement exhibits dense, expressive string writing reminiscent of Mahler while deploying ambiguous tonal centers similar to passages in Strauss and Debussy. The sanguine sections favor brisk rhythmic articulation and diatonic gestures juxtaposed with chromatic inflections, invoking parallels with dance sequences in productions of Isadora Duncan and choreographies mounted by directors linked to Diaghilev. The phlegmatic movement relies on ostinato and counterpoint that echo Schoenberg's contrapuntal studies and the contrapuntal legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach, whereas the choleric pages accelerate into jagged, dissonant textures presaging the fragmentation found in Expressionist portraiture and in works by Alban Berg. Across movements, motivic transformation and textural contrast produce a through-composed sense of developmental logic akin to the organicism admired by composers such as Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Performance History and Reception
The work's performance history weaves through early twentieth-century modernist milieus: dance premieres and concert performances in Vienna and Berlin generated attention among critics and composers, with reactions ranging from admiration among progressive circles to conservative criticism in traditionalist press outlets associated with figures like Hanslick's legacy. During Schoenberg's emigration to the United States, advocates including Nadia Boulanger and Artur Rodzinski programmed his works alongside orchestral staples by Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler, bringing The Four Temperaments to American audiences in cities such as New York and Los Angeles. The suite's reception shifted over decades: early audiences confronted its chromatic saturation, mid-century critics contextualized it within serial developments led by Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, and late twentieth-century scholarship re-evaluated the piece in light of archival materials at institutions like the Arnold Schoenberg Center and analysis by musicologists linked to Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press publications.
Influence and Legacy
The Four Temperaments influenced choreographers, conductors, and composers exploring character-based suites, informing later ballets and concert works by figures such as George Balanchine, Martha Graham, and orchestral arrangers working with twentieth-century repertory. As part of Schoenberg's oeuvre, it occupies a place in historiographies that trace the evolution from late-Romantic chromaticism to systematic atonality and the eventual development of twelve-tone technique. Its manuscripts and correspondence have been studied alongside letters involving Alban Berg and Anton Webern in archives that shaped Schoenberg scholarship and curricula at conservatories including Juilliard School and university departments in Berlin and Vienna. The piece continues to be programmed by ensembles and dance companies attentive to historical modernism, contributing to ongoing dialogues with performers and scholars associated with festivals and institutions like Salzburg Festival and the New York Philharmonic.