The
Second Viennese School is the group of
composers that comprised
Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century
Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925. Their music was initially characterized by late-
Romantic expanded tonality and later, following Schoenberg's own evolution, a totally chromatic
expressionism without firm tonal centre (often referred to as
atonality) and later still, Schoenberg's
serial twelve-tone technique. Though this common development took place, it neither followed a common time-line nor a cooperative path. Likewise, it was not a direct result of Schoenberg's teaching—which (as his various published textbooks demonstrate) was highly traditional and conservative. Schoenberg's textbooks also reveal that the Second Viennese School spawned not from the development of his serial method, but rather from the influence of his creative example.