In 2006 Schoenberg Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle received a Lewis Lockwood Award
(Finalist) from the American Musicological Society for outstanding new books on musicological
topics. This study examines relativistic aspects of Arnold Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic
theories in the light of a framework of ideas presented in the early writings of Ludwig
Wittgenstein the logician philosopher of language and Schoenberg's contemporary and Austrian
compatriot. The author has identified correspondences between the writings of Schoenberg the
early Wittgenstein (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in particular) and the Vienna Circle
of philosophers on a wide range of topics and themes. Issues discussed include the nature and
limits of language musical universals theoretical conventionalism word-to-world
correspondence in language the need for a fact- and comparison-based approach to art criticism
and the nature of music-theoretical formalism and mathematical modeling. Schoenberg and
Wittgenstein are shown to have shared a vision that is remarkable for its uniformity and
balance one that points toward the reconciliation of the positivist relativist dualism that
has dominated recent discourse in music theory. Contrary to earlier accounts of Schoenberg's
harmonic and aesthetic relativism this study identifies a solid epistemological core
underlying his thought a view that was very much in step with Wittgenstein and the Vienna
Circle and thereby with the most vigorous and pivotal developments in early twentieth century
intellectual history.
