Arnold Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874 into a Jewish family in Vienna. He taught himself composition, with the help of counterpoint from the Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky, and in 1899 produced his first major work, the symphonic poem Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for string sextet. In 1901 he married Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde, with whom he had two children. The couple settled in Berlin, where Schönberg earned his living for two years by orchestrating operettas and directing a cabaret orchestra. In 1903, Schoenberg returned to Vienna to teach. There he met his most talented students, the Austrian composers Anton Webern and Alban Berg, who became his close friends. In his compositions, Schoenberg uses far-reaching harmonies, a trait that would later develop into atonality. For this reason, riots broke out at the premieres of his first two string quartets in 1905 and 1908. Such experiences often led him to feel persecuted by audiences who did not understand his music. Schoenberg also began painting during these years and exhibited his work with a group of artists from the circle of Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. This period was marked by tragedy when Mathilde had an affair with her painting teacher, who committed suicide after returning to Schoenberg. . In 1911, the year Schoenberg published his book Theory of Harmony, he accepted a teaching position in Berlin. There he composed one of his most influential works, Pierrot Lunaire (1912). He returned to Vienna in 1915. Interruptions occasioned by World War I, combined with Schoenberg's search for a way to ensure logic and unity in atonal music, prevented him from producing many works between 1914 and 1923. By 1923, however, he had completed the formulation of his method of twelve-tone composition. Mathilde's death that same year was a blow to Schönberg, but in 1924 he met and married Gertrud Kolisch, the sister of an Austrian violinist. With the invitation in 1925 to teach composition at the Berlin Academy of Arts, Schoenberg finally obtained a prestigious position, financial security and a stable family life. In 1932, the year the couple's daughter was born, he completed the second act of his opera Moses and Aron (produced posthumously, 1957). Schoenberg and his family fled Nazi Germany for Paris in 1933. In 1934, they immigrated to the United States and he accepted a teaching position in Boston. The following year, due to his health, they moved to Los Angeles, where his two youngest sons were born.