1900-1999Vienna / Berlin

Expressionist music

Also known as Expressionism

A historically grounded early-modernist tag, best used for Schoenberg-centered works that push emotional extremity through dissonance, fragmentation, and speech-like vocal writing.

Origins and context

The musical label developed alongside the wider Expressionist movement in early-20th-century Central European art and literature, especially the Vienna/Berlin modernist network around Schoenberg and Kandinsky.

ViennaBerlin

The sound

Characteristics

Atonality
Dissonance
Fragmented motives
Speech-song / Sprechstimme
Small chamber ensembles
Expanded orchestral color

History

In music, Expressionism is usually tied to the first two decades of the 20th century, especially to the circle around Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin. The term is used most often for a cluster of works from roughly 1910 to 1920, including Schoenberg’s *Erwartung*, *Die glückliche Hand*, *Fünf Orchesterstücke*, and *Pierrot lunaire*, where direct expression, loosened form, and the portrayal of fear or shock became central aims. (schoenberg.at) The label grew out of the broader Expressionist movement in the arts, which prized subjective intensity over surface likeness. Musicologists and reference sources note that the term is not perfectly fixed, but in practice it points to a modernist style associated with Schoenberg and, in varying ways, his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

Notable artists