Composers › Arnold Schoenberg › Programme note
Pierrot Lunaire
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
Part 1
Mondestrunken
Colombine
Der Dandy
Eine blasse Wäscherin
Valse de Chopin
Madonna
Der kranke Mond
Part 2
Nacht
Gebet an Pierrot
Raub
Rote Messe
Galgenlied
Enthauptung
Die Kreuze
Part 3
Heimweh
Gemeinheit!
Parodie
Der Mondfleck
Serenade
Heimfahrt
O alter Duft
One of the most important development in the relationship between words and music came about as an inspired solution to an awkward professional problem. Schoenberg had been commissioned by a Berlin actress and specialist in monodrama, Albertine Zehme, to provide her with a few pieces for her special repertoire. It could be that Schoenberg - who, in Herzgewächse, had just stretched the singing voice to what in 1911 must have seemed its limits - accepted the commission in the hope of finding some new way of using the expressive power of the human voice. But the conventional melodrama, in which words are spoken over music, would have allowed him little control over the speaking voice and little chance to exploit its potential.
So it suited him to notate the vocal part like a singing part with precise rhythmic values and pitches defined to the nearest semitone. But there is an important distinction between speech, song, and speech-song or Sprechgesang: “In singing,” Schoenberg says in the score, “the pitch of a note is maintained without modification; in speaking the voice leaves the initial pitch immediately, rising or falling away from it.” He warns the performer against “sing-song speech,” “realist-naturalistic speech” and anything resembling song (except where sung notes are specifically called for).
How Schoenberg came to choose a German translation of poems by a little known Belgian poet no one really knows. But the fact is that Albert Giraud’s poems, writing in French in 1884 and translated into even better German by Otto Erich Hartleben in 1892, are the ideal material for the new speaking voice. They are not realist-naturalistic narratives but moonlit dreams, peopled by characters from the commedia dell’arte, Pierrot prominent among them of course. Water and blood symbols are the main source of the imagery which - particularly in the middle group of the three groups of seven poems - tends to draw also on the nightmare area associated with religious heresy, violence, death and the agonies of creativity.
Obviously Schoenberg must have been attracted by the musical form of these “rondels” in which the first two lines are repeated as the seventh and eighth and the first repeated again as the last of the thirteen lines. But as far as the composer was concerned, the major musical interest was in the instrumental ensemble. Five players - a pianist, a flautist (doubling on piccolo),a clarinettist (doubling on bass clarinet), a violinist (doubling on viola) and a cellist - are involved in textures so refined and occasionally so complex that there were no fewer than forty rehearsals before the first performance could take place. After that historic even, in Berlin on 16 October 1912, the Pierrot ensemble went on a successful and extensive tour in Germany and Austria, Schoenberg conducting half the performances and Hermann Scherchen the other half.
In the speed at which the pieces go past the ear it is scarcely possible to appreciate all of the art Schoenberg applied to the settings. On the one hand there is the fairly obvious symbolism on the surface - the waltz rhythms of Valse de Chopin, the dry sound associated with the “dürre Dirne” of Galgenlied, the perverse cello cadenza representing Pierrot’s performance with the bow of his viola on the bald head of old Cassander in Serenade, the barcarolle conventions of Heimfahrt, perhaps even the return to tonal harmonies for the “alter Duft aus Märchenzeit” at the end. But the semi-private jokes are the most elaborate, like the now famous mirror canons between piccolo and clarinet and viola and cello in Der Mondfleck, the canons involving the voice in Parodie, and the extraordinary contrapuntal ingenuity in the passacaglia construction of the beautifully dark Nacht.
In no other work by Schoenberg is his enormous intellect combined with such wit and such poetic sensitivity as in Pierrot Lunaire.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Pierrot Lunaire”
Part 1
Mondestrunken
Colombine
Der Dandy
Eine blasse Wäscherin
Valse de Chopin
Madonna
Der kranke Mond
Part 2
Nacht
Gebet an Pierrot
Raub
Rote Messe
Galgenlied
Enthauptung
Die Kreuze
Part 3
Heimweh
Gemeinheit!
Parodie
Der Mondfleck
Serenade
Heimfahrt
O alter Duft
There has always been speech and there has always been song but before Pierrot Lunaire there was no speech-song, or not in the precise sense defined by Schoenberg’s own term Sprechgesang. The stimulus for the invention of this new relationship between words and music was a commission from the Berlin actress and singer Albertine Zehme, a specialist in melodrama, who had asked Schoenberg for a score to add to her repertoire of works for speaking voice with instrumental accompaniment. The text she had chosen – Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire in an uncannily evocative German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben – so fascinated Schoenberg that he felt that, to make the most of its musical potential, the vocal part should not be restricted to rhythmic recitation. He needed to involve the voice melodically too. At the same time, however, he did not want to set the poems as songs. The solution to the problem was Sprechgesang, which differs from song in that the voice is required not to sustain the prescribed notes for their full rhythmic duration, as in song, but to inflect the pitch upwards or downwards, as in speech, as soon as it hits the note.
Sprechgesang was not a compromise, however, and it was certainly not intended to simplify matters for Albertine Zehme, who had to learn a whole new technique to perform the work. It was an inspiration born of the surreal nature of the text. Giraud’s poems are not naturalistic narratives but moonlit dreams, peopled by characters from the commedia dell’arte but in situations far more sinister than those with which they are traditionally associated. Water and blood symbols are the main source of the imagery which – particularly in the middle group of the three groups of seven poems – tends to draw also on the nightmare area associated with religious heresy, violence, death and the agonies of creativity.
Schoenberg must have been attracted too by the musical form of these “rondels” in which the first two lines are repeated as the seventh and eighth and the first repeated again as the last of the thirteen lines. The further he got into the composition, however, the more interested he became in the instrumental texture, gradually enlarging the accompaniment from piano as originally envisaged to a mixed ensemble for five players – a pianist, a flautist (doubling on piccolo), a clarinettist (doubling on bass clarinet), a violinist (doubling on viola) and a cellist. Every setting is coloured by its own unique combination of instruments. Some of the textures are so refined and occasionally so complex that there had to be no fewer than forty rehearsals before the first performance could take place. After that historic event, in Berlin on 16 October 1912, the Pierrot ensemble went on a successful and extensive tour in Germany and Austria, Schoenberg conducting half the performances and Hermann Scherchen the other half.
In the speed at which the pieces go past the ear it is scarcely possible to appreciate all of the art Schoenberg applied to the settings. On the one hand there is the fairly obvious symbolism on the surface – the waltz rhythms of Valse de Chopin, the dry sound associated with the “dürre Dirne” of Galgenlied, the perverse cello cadenza representing Pierrot’s performance with the bow of his viola on the bald head of old Cassander in Serenade, the barcarolle conventions of Heimfahrt, perhaps even the return to tonal harmonies for the “alter Duft aus Märchenzeit” at the end. But the semi-private jokes are the most elaborate, like the now famous mirror canons between piccolo and clarinet and viola and cello in Der Mondfleck, the canons involving the voice in Parodie, and the extraordinary contrapuntal ingenuity in the passacaglia construction of the beautifully dark Nacht.
In no other work by Schoenberg is his enormous intellect combined with such wit and such poetic sensitivity as in Pierrot Lunaire.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Pierrot Lunaire/rev/n.rtf”