Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht ( Transfigured Night), Op. 4, for string sextet (1899)

Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4, for string sextet (1899) A work in one movement for string sextet by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (18741951), his first true masterpiece, which is perhaps his most enduring composition. Composed in a highly harmonically advanced postRomantic idiom, this work demonstrates that the young Schoenberg, aged 25, had already surpassed all his contemporaries in their style; it is little wonder that he would go on to search for new modes of composition and musical expression, pioneering atonal, expressionist and twelvetone music. Even in this early work, the extensive use of chromaticism, modulation, dissonance and unorthodox harmonies made it very controversial when it premiered in 1902. In particular, Schoenberg used a certain nonexistent inverted ninth chord (it was nonexistent because it was uncategorized, and hence forbidden by convention), and this led the Vienna Musical Society to reject the composition. Verklärte N