The relations between Josef Matthias Hauer and Arnold Schönberg

It is quite natural that the two founders of twelve-note music regarded each other als antipodes. Hauer made three attempts (1913, 1917, 1923) to approach the more renowned Schönberg. A correspondence sprang up and even personal meetings took place at Gloriettegasse 8, 1130 Vienna, but also in Mödling, Bernhardgasse 6, Schönberg's residence. The historical fact is that Hauer's compositional technique with 12 notes pre-dates Schönberg.
Hauer's music renounces dynamic and agogic elements, which makes his works appear static and tensionless. The very opposite is Schönberg's powerful expressive aesthetic, gained from his late Romantic and expressionistic phase of composing. Naturally it had and still has a greater impact on audiences. What both composers have in common is their effort concerning the idea of a twelve-note system. In Schönberg's case this is embodied in the principle of the twelve-note row together with its 48 modes, in Hauer's case first in the trope and later in the sound series ("continuum"), which Steinbauer takes up in his doctrine of sound series and makes practical use of for the technical structuring of movements.

An explicit statement to illuminate the difference between the two composer personalities is contained in Hauer's datestamp that he put next to his signature (after 1937):

Schönberg's letters to Hauer 

Further information:
Zwölftonreihe
Trope
Klangreihe
Klangreihenmusik