Arnold Schoenberg 18741951

1
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

• Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (1912)
• Thrice Seven Poems from Albert Girauds Pierrot
  lunaire
• German by Otto Erich Hartleben
• Nacht

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Schoenbergs attitude toward the performer

• In this work, the performers at no time have
  the task of shaping the mood and character of the
  individual pieces according to the meaning of the
  words, but rather according to the music. To
  whatever extent the composer felt a
  tone-pictorial representation of the actions and
  feelings indicated in the text to be important,
  it is simply to be found in the music. Where the
  performer does not find such representation, he
  should refrain from adding anything that the
  composer did not want. In this instance he would
  not be adding, but rather detracting.--forward
  to the published score

3
Musical Characteristics

• Free atonality (replaces tonality for organizing
  pitches)
• Sprechstimme or Sprechgesang (speech-song).
  Notated pitches are touched upon and then slid
  away from.
• Passacaglia form in Nacht based on a continuous
  variation of an E - G - Eb motive

4
Excerpted program notes by Charles
WourinenNonesuch Records 1971released by
Elektra Nonesuch on CD 1990

• How best should a listener today approach
  Pierrot? One way is internally--that is, by
  dealing with the works moment-by moment
  continuity, the shifting complex of pitch and
  rhythmic relations, he play of instrumental
  sonorities ad the progress of the text. Another
  is externally--the over-all shape of the piece,
  the balance of its three parts, the permutation
  of the instrumental combinations throughout it,
  and the form of the text itself

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Excerpted program notes by Charles Wourinen
continued
. . . At the time of its composition Schoenberg
himself was searching, and hence many of the
local decisions in Pierrot were obviously made
intuitively, ad hoc. Thus it is impossible for
the mind to draw from the works unfolding a
sense of general law or pattern being observed,
as one can when listening to tonal or twelve-tone
music. Even through the phrase-shapes and other
gestural entities in the work help to draw notes
together, one can never know what will happen
next--there is no principle by which the ear can
predict. This is what still makes Pierrot, after
sixty years, new, abrasive, exciting, and even
frightening.
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Nacht (first verse)

• Finstre, schwarze Riesenfalter
• Tötenten der Sonne Glanz.
• Ein geschlossnes Zauberbuch,
• Ruht der Horizont-verschwiegen

• Sinister giant black butterflies
• Eclipse the blazing disk of sun.
• Like a sealed-up book of wizards spells
• Sleeps the horizon--secret silent.