An Overview of Schoenberg's Music

"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


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)

"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"

Suite for piano (1924) - (returned to standard forms and genres)

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:

"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.)

(See also The Second Viennese School)