Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern are commonly grouped together as the ‘Second Viennese School’, with Berg and Webern – notwithstanding their own monumental contributions to twentieth-century music – frequently relegated to Schoenberg’s students, or even ‘disciples’. This chapter locates Berg and Webern in the huge shadow of their teacher and mentor, and considers the possibility that the Schoenberg–Webern–Berg trinity obscures a number of meaningful differences and antagonisms – musical and personal – between the three composers, and that Webern and Berg, as Schoenberg’s perpetual pupils, have become subordinate – ‘other’ – to the master in the discourses of musicology and music criticism. At the same time, it is clear that the members of the Second Viennese School – coming from a common cultural history and social and artistic milieu – understood themselves to have a unified vision for art and a shared sense of purpose.

The decade (1899–1909) separating Verklärte Nacht from Schoenberg’s second major contribution to Night Music, the monodrama Erwartung, was typically turbulent and productive. Based mainly in Vienna, he established himself as a competent conductor, and also as the revered teacher of talented young composers such as Berg and Webern. The ambitious scale of Schoenberg’s major compositions from these years confirmed his determination to distance himself technically from admired contemporaries like Strauss, Busoni and Mahler. In pursuit of greater intensity and concentration, romanticism gave way to expressionism, as chordal dissonances were freed from their traditional need to resolve. And although critics were often hostile, Schoenberg retained the admiration and respect of performers as well as of friends such as Zemlinsky and Mahler. The affair between his wife Mathilde and the painter Richard Gerstl (ending in uneasy reconciliation after Gerstl’s suicide) fuelled the fierce musical outbursts of important compositions like the Second String Quartet, as well as of Erwartung.

Entering into Anton Webern’s twelve-tone music and its complex reception history is like entering into a combat with the Hydra: cleave off one head of the Webern myth, and two more grow in its place. Taking a step back from the embattled scenes of the past in search of a broader vantage point, this chapter argues that the crux in understanding late Webern lies in understanding that the competing, often contradictory images of the composer that have emerged pose no real contradictions after all. Instead, in the same way that the Hydra’s separate heads are essentially connected entities, these different images are best understood as mediated with one another on a deeper level, representing different aspects of one and the same aesthetic concern: musical lyricism.

The chapter starts with an account of the rather hesitant and belated reception of twelve-tone technique in Western Europe, as exemplified by the situation in Italy, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. This is followed by an overview of the origins of European multiple serialism extending beyond Webern and Messiaen. The chapter shows above all that European serialism should not be restricted to its main protagonists such as Boulez, Nono, or Stockhausen. The music historical narrative of this important development in the period 1950–75 is in want of a more diverse view. Consequently, this chapter focuses on lesser-known composers of serial music such as Jean Barraqué, Michel Fano, Gilbert Amy, Karel Goeyvaerts, Herman Van San, Henri Pousseur, Bruno Maderna, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Bill Hopkins, and Bo Nilsson. The perspective is not merely broadened by introducing other composers who wrote aesthetically appealing works, but more importantly, presented other interpretations of what constitutes multiple serialism.