expressionism
An early 20th-century musical movement emphasizing extreme emotional states through dissonance, atonality, and distorted forms.
In Depth
Musical expressionism, centered in Vienna and Berlin from roughly 1908 to 1925, sought to express raw inner emotion and subconscious states, often evoking anxiety, terror, or ecstasy. Composers like Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern — the Second Viennese School — abandoned tonality and traditional forms in favor of free atonality, extreme dynamic contrasts, wide melodic leaps, and Sprechstimme (speech-song).
Key works include Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (1912), which uses Sprechstimme to set expressionist poetry, and Berg's opera Wozzeck (1925), a searing portrait of madness and oppression. Expressionism's influence pervades modern horror film scoring and avant-garde music, and its techniques of distortion and extreme contrast remain powerful tools for composers seeking to convey psychological intensity.
Schoenberg was also a painter whose expressionist self-portraits were exhibited alongside works by Kandinsky in the Blue Rider group.