Schoenberg joined a traditional genius myth to a belief in constant musical progress.

Evidence

With Schoenberg, however, it was combined with the assumption that musical progress was constant, and the conviction that everything which was produced when the artist `went down again and again into the dark realm of the unconscious to bring back unified content and form’ must be justified. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 295

Categorization

• QUESTION: How does the free-atonal crisis reconcile with the claim of constant musical progress — is progress itself the justification for atonality?
• XREF: connects to: Schoenberg’s drive theory fused Schopenhauer’s genius cult with a belief in constant musical progress — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 295; A composer’s experimental soundscape can become an established tradition years later — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 942

Broader Connections

• A composer’s experimental soundscape can become an established tradition years later #expands (0.72) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 942