In this fully updated edition of his long-indispensable study, Malcolm MacDonald takes advantage of 30 years of recent scholarship, new biographical information, and deeper understanding of Schoenberg's aims and significance to produce a superb guide to Schoenberg's life and work. No general survey of Schoenberg is more alert than this one to the paradoxical yet productive tensions between tradition and innovation, secular and spiritual in the composer's life and work. Returning to his original text after three decades, Malcolm MacDonald has not only updated the narrative but also intensified his interpretation in ways which fit the book's governing qualities of enthusiasm and admiration for Schoenberg's special capacity to transcend the negative. The result is an absorbing and accessible tribute to one of musical modernism's greatest masters.