The Second Viennese School is best heard as a continuation of the late-Romantic Viennese tradition (Brahms, Mahler, Wagner) taken to its breaking point. Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (1899, string sextet), his first major work, sits between Wagner's Tristan and Brahms's sextets and is still fully tonal. Then, in the fourth movement of his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 (1908), a soprano enters singing 'I feel the air of another planet' — and in that moment the gravitational pull of functional harmony is gone. From 1908 through 1923 the school works in atonality: Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces Op. 11 (1909), Pierrot lunaire Op. 21 (1912); Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces Op. 6 (1914); Webern's Six Bagatelles Op. 9 (1913). Then, in 1923, with Schoenberg's Piano Suite Op. 25, the twelve-tone method (dodecaphony) crystallises: an ordered row of all twelve chromatic pitches becomes the structural principle of a work. Webern's Symphony Op. 21 (1928) takes this to a canon-based extremity; Berg's Violin Concerto (1935) softens it toward late-Romantic emotion.

The school began in 1904, when Schoenberg took Berg and Webern as private pupils. Both were in their late teens or early twenties, from middle-class Viennese families, and studied at Schoenberg's private lessons rather than at the Vienna Conservatory. In 1918 Schoenberg founded the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen ('Society for Private Musical Performances'), which held about 113 concerts in three years, presenting new music to a private membership. This society was the school's shared performing platform. The end came in stages: Berg died of septicaemia from an insect bite on 24 December 1935, aged 50; Schoenberg emigrated to the United States, teaching at UCLA from 1936; Webern was shot by mistake by an American occupation soldier on 15 September 1945 in Mittersill, Austria, aged 61.

First, note the atonal / twelve-tone distinction. The atonal period (1908-23) is free chromatic and Expressionist — dense, dramatic, unpredictable. The twelve-tone period (1923-) is disciplined by the row: transformations by inversion, retrograde, and transposition create formal symmetry. Second, listen for Sprechstimme ('speech-song'). Introduced in Pierrot lunaire (1912) — halfway between song and speech — it becomes a signature Berg technique in Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937). Third, Webern's extraordinary economy of material: individual pieces sometimes last a minute or two, with every note carrying maximum weight. Fourth, Berg's compromise: he keeps twelve-tone method but treats it flexibly. His Violin Concerto row includes triads, allowing near-tonal harmonic implications — an intentional dialogue with the past.

Start with Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht Op. 4 (1899), a late-Romantic masterpiece — the Karajan / Berlin Philharmonic recording is the reference. Then Pierrot lunaire Op. 21 (1912) in Boulez's late-twentieth-century recording. For depth: Berg's Wozzeck (1925, especially the Kleiber recording from Vienna State Opera), Webern's Six Bagatelles Op. 9 (1913), and Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw Op. 46 (1947). For twelve-tone: Schoenberg's Piano Suite Op. 25 (Pollini) and Webern's Symphony Op. 21 (Boulez / Berlin Philharmonic).

Berg's death in December 1935 was a small tragedy that mattered to twentieth-century music: pre-penicillin, an insect bite led to blood poisoning that killed him at 50. Had he lived even another decade, he might have bridged the school with Boulez's and Stockhausen's Darmstadt generation, and the postwar map of composition would look different. Second: Webern's death was even stranger. His son-in-law was under investigation by the American occupation authorities for black-market dealings; Webern was staying with the family in Mittersill and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. An American soldier posted outside mistook him for the son-in-law and shot him. Third: Schoenberg was terrified of the number thirteen (triskaidekaphobia). He died on 13 July 1951 in Los Angeles. His remains were later moved to Vienna, where his gravestone displays thirteen notes.