Composers › Alexander von Zemlinsky › Programme note
5 Lieder
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
Die drei Schwestern Op.13 No.1 (1910)
Als ihr Geliebter schied Op.13 No.4 (1913)
Und kehrt er einst heim Op.13 No.5 (1910)
In der Sonnengasse (1901)
Herr Bombardil (1901)
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Die drei Schwestern 13/1”
Die drei Schwestern Op.13 No.1 (1910)
Als ihr Geliebter schied Op.13 No.4 (1913)
Und kehrt er einst heim Op.13 No.5 (1910)
In der Sonnengasse (1901)
Herr Bombardil (1901)
“A great artist, who possesses everything needed to express the essentials, must respect the boundaries of beauty, even if he extends them far further than hitherto.” That statement of faith, addressed by Alexander Zemlinsky to his son-in-law and former pupil Arnold Schoenberg in 1902, would obviously not be welcome to its recipient. But he made it and he lived by it. Great artist though he was, however, he did not prosper by it. In Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, when competition between traditionalism and modernism was so intense that an ambitious composer had to take sides, there was no future in being neither conservative nor progressive, neither a Korngold nor a Schoenberg, but something in between.
His extension of what he called “the boundaries of beauty” can be traced through his songs, from his Brahmsian Opp.2 and 5 by way of his Wagnerian Op.7 (inspired by his hopeless love for Alma Schindler, later Alma Mahler) to perhaps its furthest point in his Op.13, much admired by Alban Berg. These settings of German versions of six of Maeterlinck’s Quinze Chansons are perhaps too late to qualify as fin-de-siècle but they are, literally, decadent. As the composer said, “In the first song the experience of life, transience and death is placed at the beginning of the cycle as a sort of exposition of the content.” In each stanza, until the three sisters meet with an outburst of charomaticism, one is reminded of the brooding medieval atmosphere of Debussy’s Maeterlinck opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Debussy is called to mind again in Als ihr Geliebter schied until, in the last stanza, the harmonies are weighed down with a premonition of death. The last song is a tenderly melodious but resigned farewell to life.
If Zemlinsky had followed Korngold to Hollywood, In der Sonnengasse and Herr Bombardil, written for the same Berlin cabaret as Schoenberg’s Brett-Lieder, suggest that he would have had a much profitable time in exile in the USA than he actually experienced.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “In der Sonnengasse/n.rtf”