expressionism music definition
Arnold Schoenberg, the key figure in the Expressionist movement. The term expressionism was probably first applied to music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg, because like the painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866â1944) he avoided traditional forms of beauty to convey powerful feelings in his music (Sadie 1991, 244).nton Webern 's music was close in style to Schoenberg's expressionism for only a short while, c. 1909â13, and subsequently his music became increasingly constructivist on the surface and increasingly concealed its passionate expressive core (Fanning 2001).