"Verklärte Nacht" (Transfigured Night) (1899) - string sextet"Pelleas und Melisande" (1903) - symphonic poem (pressing the Straussian model towards denser thematic argument and contrapuntal richness)
"Gurrelieder" (Songs of Gurre) (1901-03) - a huge symphonic cantata
String Quartet no.1 (1905)
Chamber Symphony no.1 (1907) - an ensemble of 15
- intensification of harmonic strangeness
- formal complexity
- contrapuntal density
- cast as a single movement
- the absolute limits of traditional chromatic tonality
String Quartet no.2, op.10 (1908) - (sense of key was left behind)"Das Buch der hängenden Gärten" op.15 (1907-09) - the song cycle (often referred to as the first piece written in the new style)
"Five Orchestral Pieces" op. 16, (1907-09) and "Three Piano Pieces" op. 11, (1907-09) - (justifying the term 'expressionist')
Works with dramatic content:
"Erwartung" (1909) - (the rage and despair of a woman searching for her lover)Suite for piano (1924) - (returned to standard forms and genres)"Pierrot lunaire" (1912) - for reciter in Sprechgesang with mixed quintet (the bizarre stories, melancholia and jokes of a disintegrating personality)
"Die Jakobsleiter" - unfinished oratorio (the progress of the soul towards union with God)
"Die glückliche Hand" (1913) - one-act "drama with music"
String Quartet no.3 (1927) - (first completely 12-tone work)
Variations for Orchestra (1928) (the technique of combinatoriality in an extended setting)
"Moses und Aron" - unfinished opera (concerned with the impossibility of communicating truth without some distortion in the telling)
Return to something like his tonal style:
- "Suite in G" (1934) - for strings (written in the form of a Baroque suite)
- "Chamber Symphony no.2" - (1939)
- integrates the warm, rich harmonies of late Romanticism with
- transparent textures
- and a rhythmically lively, almost neo-classic spirit
"A Survivor from Warsaw" and "String Trio" - (After a heart attack in 1945, he gave up teaching at UCLA and made some return to expressionism.)
- "Theme and Variations" (for band)
(See also The Second Viennese School)