Schoenberg, Arnold (1874-1951)

[Richard Barrett]

I noticed there was no Schoenberg thread, so now there is. My reason for starting it, though, was that I just saw in the concert calendar of the Gare du Nord in Basel that there's an upcoming performance of Pierrot lunaire with none other than Patricia Kopatchinskaja taking the solo part. That has to be interesting surely. It's a piece I find very difficult to like, and I always suspect this is because I haven't yet heard a performance that, er, speaks to me (and I've heard quite a few).

[eighthobstruction]

....if you are going to be called ARNOLD....it's just as well you get the Schoenberg bit too....otherwise....well, people might think you own a chipshop....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One of my very favourite composers - the variety and breadth of the Music; the ferocious intensity confronting tender lyricism (and the way that this reflects the rigid certainty of his belief in the tradition to which he committed himself, confronted by the honesty of the doubts and contradictions that his own Musical explorations revealed to him) - not to mention the sarcastic impudence: marvellous, powerful stuff!

But - is PK speaking or "violining" the vocal line?!

[eighthobstruction]

....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

....
sorry: for my free atonality

That's the thing about the Internet - you don't have to pay for anything these days.

[eighthobstruction]

That's the thing about the Internet - you don't have to pay for anything these days.

[jayne lee wilson]

One of my very favourite composers - the variety and breadth of the Music; the ferocious intensity confronting tender lyricism (and the way that this reflects the rigid certainty of his belief in the tradition to which he committed himself, confronted by the honesty of the doubts and contradictions that his own Musical explorations revealed to him) - not to mention the sarcastic impudence: marvellous, powerful stuff!

But - is PK speaking or "violining" the vocal line?!

Pat Kop is on vocals.... and Pierrot seems to be performed with a Webern interspersion.....
https://www.twincities.com/2017/10/2...great-theater/

[ahinton]

One of my very favourite composers - the variety and breadth of the Music; the ferocious intensity confronting tender lyricism (and the way that this reflects the rigid certainty of his belief in the tradition to which he committed himself, confronted by the honesty of the doubts and contradictions that his own Musical explorations revealed to him) - not to mention the sarcastic impudence: marvellous, powerful stuff!

Yes, indeed! One thing that puzzles me a little, though (although it's obviously incidental) is that so many peopole appear to have taken seriously (in one way or another) AS's claim to have devised a method of composing that would ensure the supremacy of German music for 100 years, Ronald Stevenson's take on it (in a Books & Bookmen [how politically incorrect was that?!] review of the excellent book on the composer by the late and much missed Malcolm MacDonald) - "what a strange idea for an Austrian Jew to have" - being just one of the more interesting examples; it always struck me that he made that observation with his tongue in both cheeks simultaneously, in the certain Erwartung that most people would buy it as a genuine one.

By thew way, some years ago I spent a good deal of time trying to track down the precise source of the famous remark credited to him that "there's still plety of music to be written in C major" but without success; all that I could conclude is that this is something that he said rather than actually wrote down, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong on that!

[Joseph K]

I love Pierrot... I am a big fan of much of Arnie's early and middle-period works: Verklaerte Nacht, the first chamber symphony, the second string quartet, the three piano pieces, the five orchestral pieces, Erwartung, Herzgewaechse... His serial pieces aren't quite of the same consistent quality IMO, even while some, like Moses und Aron and the violin concerto, are very good.

[Richard Barrett]

Pat Kop is on vocals.... and Pierrot seems to be performed with a Webern [I]interspersion.....

Not in Basel though (which is with a different ensemble also).

Earlier on I listened to the first scene of Moses und Aron (one of the moments in Schoenberg I really like a lot) in the recording conducted by Sylvain Cambreling, and found it rather promising

[Serial_Apologist]

I love Pierrot... I am a big fan of much of Arnie's early and middle-period works: Verklaerte Nacht, the first chamber symphony, the second string quartet, the three piano pieces, the five orchestral pieces, Erwartung, Herzgewaechse... His serial pieces aren't quite of the same consistent quality IMO, even while some, like Moses und Aron and the violin concerto, are very good.

For me the finest of the 12-tone works are, in chronological order, the Serenade, Op 24, for its wit as well as wealth of ideas; the piano Suite Op. 25, which I always think of as his Goldberg Variations; the Suite Op.29, even though the first movement can come over as constricted, the successive movements open out until we have the clarinet hymn tune serially-wrapped into variations that returns, cyclically, towards the end of the fourth and final movement, though it took a lot of listening to to reveal - but that's the fun of it, no? Then there are the extraordinary orchestral Variations on BACH Op.31; the much praised on here Violin Concerto and late Beethovenian Fourth String Quartet from around the same time whose wonders ferney drew attention to awhile back; the opera Moses und Aron with its Dance Around the Golden Calf challenge to people who said Schoenberg possessed none of Stravinsky's rhythmic excitement. I have problems with the Piano Concerto, even though it was the first of the serial works I had little difficulty with, and even though it contains moments of almost Mahlerian plangency, such as the start of the slow movement, and even though it is one of the examples the composer must have been thinking of when he predicted people whistling his tunes in the street one day: try it! Of the late works the String Trio Op. 45 - amazingly after the turn back to tonal forms - resumes the formal experiments partly ditched in favour of simpler baroque and classical forms in the 12-tone works of the 1920s, these continuing in Survivor, the aptly-titled, at times almost Bartokian Fantasy, Op 47, and the final psalm settings. I would urge anyone fascinated by the Third Viennese School to listen to the music of the three main protagonists, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern in dovetailed chronological sequence, you'll be surprised how each reflects and refracts off the others - and if possible slot in the wonderful music of Zemlinsky, who taught Schoenberg and followed his and Berg's developents at a judicious distance in accordance with his own creative inclinations in continuing sympathy with the styles of Strauss and Mahler, and the more overt attraction exercised by Debussy. I think the greater cohension to be found in the post 1921 music than before makes for a more gradual but arguably deeper appreciation of Schoenberg's later achievement; well, this has been my experience. Then there's the fun of the late tonal works!

[ahinton]

I love Pierrot... I am a big fan of much of Arnie's early and middle-period works: Verklaerte Nacht, the first chamber symphony, the second string quartet, the three piano pieces, the five orchestral pieces, Erwartung, Herzgewaechse... His serial pieces aren't quite of the same consistent quality IMO, even while some, like Moses und Aron and the violin concerto, are very good.

I'm not so fond of Pierrot and struggle with Moses but the rest I couldn't live without - and what about that D minor Quartet? Astonishing!

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm not so fond of Pierrot and struggle with Moses but the rest I couldn't live without - and what about that D minor Quartet? Astonishing!

Oh Pierrot was my entry point for the "free atonal" works; I still think of it as Schoenberg's most poetic and dream-evocative work. Some today argue that the music would stand complete without the poems and the Sprechsgesang; but we would never have had Berio's "Visage", Nono' "Fabbrica Illuminata" or PM Davis's "Eight Songs for a Mad King", to name but three out of many, let alone the crazy "extended vocal techniques" of so much free improvisation, had AS not composed it in that way.

[richardfinegold]

Yes, indeed! One thing that puzzles me a little, though (although it's obviously incidental) is that so many peopole appear to have taken seriously (in one way or another) AS's claim to have devised a method of composing that would ensure the supremacy of German music for 100 years, Ronald Stevenson's take on it (in a Books & Bookmen [how politically incorrect was that?!] review of the excellent book on the composer by the late and much missed Malcolm MacDonald) - "what a strange idea for an Austrian Jew to have" -

Jews in the The German Speaking Lands , particularly educated and Assimilated Jews, always viewed themselves as part of the German Cultural tradition. It was the likes of Wagner and the Nazis that rudely showed them that their assumption was not universally accepted.
As far as the Austrian Part goes, most Austrians Of that era realized that Austria-Hungary was an anachronism, and that long term incorporation into the Greater German Reichwas the key to preserving their German culture. The Hapsburgs of course could not accept this, and within the Reich there were reservations about incorporating Catholic Austria, with it’s large Galician Jewish minority that was universally unwanted.
At any rate, Schoenberg thinking of himself as part of a German Cultural lineage is not in the least bit strange

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, indeed! One thing that puzzles me a little, though (although it's obviously incidental) is that so many peopole appear to have taken seriously (in one way or another) AS's claim to have devised a method of composing that would ensure the supremacy of German music for 100 years, Ronald Stevenson's take on it (in a Books & Bookmen [how politically incorrect was that?!] review of the excellent book on the composer by the late and much missed Malcolm MacDonald) - "what a strange idea for an Austrian Jew to have" - being just one of the more interesting examples; it always struck me that he made that observation with his tongue in both cheeks simultaneously, in the certain Erwartung that most people would buy it as a genuine one.

By thew way, some years ago I spent a good deal of time trying to track down the precise source of the famous remark credited to him that "there's still plety of music to be written in C major" but without success; all that I could conclude is that this is something that he said rather than actually wrote down, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong on that!

https://www.jstor.org/stable/832371