Das Buch der hängenden Gärten
Op. 15 (1908 - 1909)
Das Buch der hängenden Gärten is a song cycle comprising musical settings of fifteen poems by the German lyric poet, editor and translator Stefan George. Originally scored for solo voice and piano, the significance of this work lies in its full abandonment of tonality. Marking Schoenberg’s embrace of true expressionism, here we find dissonance without resolution, an atonal freedom which does not demand consistent textures or harmonies. Until this work, composers in the footsteps of Wagner had pushed tonality further and further aside, but no one had dared to demolish it entirely.
Written in a way the defied the conventions of the German language, George’s poems depict, in no clear sense, the growth and the demise of a passion; the somewhat opaque nature of both the poetry and the music has continued to puzzle and fascinate interpreters.
Das Buch der hängenden Gärten garnered a mixed response at its original performance – hostility from those who objected to the departure from tonal traditions and praise from his supporters and disciples.
This version of the work, in which the original piano accompaniment is replaced with the same ensemble of instruments as Pierrot, was created by Howard Burrell in memory of Alison’s late husband Martyn Parry, with whom she regularly sang these songs.
Pierrot Lunaire
Op. 12 (1912)
A three part melodrama for voice and chamber ensemble. Pierrot Lunaire is the last of Schoenberg’s important expressionist works. It consists of twenty-onc poems by Belgian poet Albert Giraud translated into the German language by Otto Erich Hartleben - set against an accompaniment arranged for a chamber ensemble of eight instruments (piano, flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola and cello) played by five performers. The poetry is performed in ‘Sprechstimme’, a distinctive eerie vocal style which lies somewhere between speech and singing; pitches sounded but not sustained, instead rising or falling into the next note.
The cycle was commissioned by the German actress and singer Albertine Zehme. Its premiere in Berlin was met with a mixed response and, although the work was largely successful it was criticised for the blasphemy expressed within the texts.
The poems, all strict French rondeaux, together narrate a story centered around Pierrot, a clown based on Pedrolino from Italian improvised theatre. While out walking, Pierrot is possessed by the moon and begins to express a series of fantasies which become progressively more shocking and violent in nature.
The three sections of Pierrot Lunaire are organised by their themes:
During part 1, Pierrot explores his fantasies of love, sex and religion. The tone is set here for the rest of the work.
Part 2 sees Pierrot descending into a violent nightmare, disturbed by dark thoughts of death, blasphemy and murder.
Finally, in Part 3 Pierrot concludes his walking by returning to his home in Bergamo, no longer obsessed by death and violence but instead enveloped in nostalgia.
The work is atonal but not twelve-tone; it was not until later that the composer began to explore twelve-tone serialism in his music. There is much variety in the musical forms and structures found in Pierrot Lunaire, and a number of older, traditional musical forms are found, including the canon, fugue, passacaglia, rondo and free counterpoint.
Schoenberg was fascinated with numerology, and many music analysts believe that the dominating numbers surrounding this work may have held great significance to
Schoenberg. The total number of poems is twenty-one, a reversal of the digits of both the Opus number (12) and the year of composition (1912).The numbers three, seven, and thirteen are also important. Each part contains seven poems, the performing ensemble (including the conductor and the vocalist) amounted to seven performers, and Schoenberg’s seven-note motif representing Pierrot (G#, E, C, D, Bb, C#, G — a sequence corresponding to the letters in Pierrot’s name) is present throughout the piece’s entirety. There were three authors involved in the work (Giraud, Hartleben and Schoenberg), the work is in three parts, and each poem is made up of three stanzas - thirteen lines in total, with the first line repeated three times in each stanza.
Helen Trevillion
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