Expressionism

Expressionism was an early twentieth-century current in Western art music, centred on Vienna and Berlin, that sought to project extreme inner states rather than depict outward reality. In the works of *Arnold Schoenberg*, *Alban Berg* and *Anton Webern*, functional tonality collapsed into freely dissonant counterpoint, melodies moved in wide, jagged leaps, and orchestral colour was concentrated into brief, volatile gestures. Vocal writing often used Sprechstimme, poised between speech and song, while texts favoured anxiety, dream and psychological disturbance. Allied with expressionist painting and drama, the style treated distortion not as decoration but as the very substance of musical expression, favouring compression and intensity over large-scale development.