Arnold Schoenberg (formerly Schönberg until he was forced to change it because of the umlaut's unpopularity at the time) was an Austrian composer who lived from September 13, 1874 to July 13, 1951, producing melodies and harmonies that ranged from totally annoying to absolutely unintelligible to spontaneously lunatic random insanity, all whilst sounding worse than anything ever heard before. He also invented the twelve-tone technique of composition, a manifesto to destroy any pleasure or beauty that music ever tried to convey, which, short of totally destroying music, sterilized all further classical music (popular music survived until the unfortunate introduction of rap).