PART II—
EXPANDED TONALITY, EXPANDED FORMS 1899–1903
Chapter Four—
The Dehmel Settings of 1899
Schoenberg and Weib und Welt
If, indeed, as the stylistic and paleographic evidence suggests, all the compositions discussed in part I of this study were completed by the end of 1897, then 1898 appears to have been a relatively fallow year in Schoenberg's early creative life. The only works that we can attribute to it with relative certainty are the two songs, op. 1 , and the aborted symphonic poem Frühlings Tod.[1] The songs of op. 1 are strikingly different both from what preceded them in 1897 and from what followed them in 1899. Schoenberg turns away from both the folk-like poetry of Heyse and the modified folk style of the two Dehmel poems toward two longer, more discursive texts—examples of what has been called Begriffipoesie —by an-other contemporary, Karl von Levetzow (1871–1945).[2] The expansive, cantata-like musical settings, with their extravagant piano parts, contain many splendid moments, but they were ultimately an expressive dead end for Schoenberg. He was to find his own path, his own voice, in his rediscovery of Dehmel's verse, specifically the collection Weib und Welt. Schoenberg's involvement with this volume in 1899 was so intense that I believe it can be said that his remarkable development that year, culminating in the sextet Verklärte Nacht, grew directly out of his search for a musical language appropriate to the poetry of Weib und Welt.
[1] Although the autographs for the op. 1 bear no date, there is a partial preliminary draft of no. 1, Dank, at the Schoenberg Institute, dated 30 July 1898 (see SW B1/2/II: 143). The particell for the symphonic poem is dated ten days earlier than the song sketch, 20 July 1898 (see Maegaard 1972, l:28). This work will be discussed briefly at the beginning of the next chapter.
[2] The texts were taken from Levetzow's collection Höhenlieder: Gedichte und Aphorismen (Vienna: Carl Konegen, 1898), where (like the Dehmel poems set in 1897) they appear on consecutive pages. Here, however, Dank (Schoenberg's no. 1) comes after Abschied (Schoenberg's no. 2).
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
There survive fragments, drafts, or completed manuscripts for eight compositions of 1899 based on the poems from Weib und Welt (table 3). The only other works firmly attributable to this year are the songs Die Beiden (Hofmannsthal), composed on 4 April, and Mailied (Goethe), composed on 8–9 May. On the same type of paper as these two songs, and probably composed about the same time (although undated), is a setting of Dehmel's Mannesbangen. The earliest dated Dehmel song manuscript of 1899, the first version of Warnung (op. 3, no. 3), was written on 7 May, a day before Mailied. The apparent chronology, then, suggests that Schoenberg's preoccupation with Weib und Welt began in the spring of 1899 and very soon displaced all other poetic interests, even in such high-quality verse as that of Hofmannsthal and Goethe.[3]
Weib und Welt, which appeared in the fall of 1896, marked an analogous milestone in Dehmel's poetic development. In a letter to a friend in October of that year the poet himself noted that in this volume, "I believe I have finally found
[3] In light of the fluid publication history of Dehmel's poems—especially the fact that poems were transferred and reprinted among different collections—it may seem risky to assume that Schoenberg drew all his 1899 and 1905–6 poems directly from Weib und Welt. But the high incidence of compositions based on poems that appear in that volume(wherever else they may also have appeared) points strongly to the composer's acquaintance with it. Moreover, it is clear that he had access to Weib und Welt at least in 1906: the sketch for Besuch bears the annotation "Dehmel 112," a reference to the precise page on which this poem appears in Weib und Welt.
the proper simplicity, the balance between form and content, which is distinguished from the 'classical' style only in that it gives expression to my own time and eternity" (Dehmel 1923, 256). Weib und Welt had a great impact on younger poets, inspiring the twenty-one-year-old Rainer Maria Rilke to write an unabashed fan letter: "Since I have come to know Weib und Welt, my admiration for you has grown enormously. A book of poetry like this comes along only once in a century."[4]
The appearance of Weib und Welt also brought the greatest public notoriety of any of Dehmel's works. In June 1897 the poet was called into a Berlin courtroom to defend himself against charges of blasphemy and immorality. On 23 June he responded with a remarkable "open letter," which bears partial quotation here for the light it sheds on the poetry to which Schoenberg was to be drawn so strongly:
First, I must disagree that to an unprejudiced mind the overall content of the book can appear immoral [unsittlich] —whether blasphemous or lewd [gotteslästerlich, unzüchtig]. To be sure, the book shows how a human being, contrary to his holiest principles, abandons himself to a sensual passion, and is thereby driven by the most painful emotional turmoil, finally to a disgraceful death. Clearly it cannot be the artist's task to disguise or conceal the seductive charms that lie naturally within every passion. But I believe that anyone who helps the human soul open its eyes to its bestial urges serves true morality better than many a moralistic accuser.
DEHMEL 1963, 126
Dehmel's open letter reveals something of the inner "turmoil" he was himself experiencing at the time. Weib und Welt is a largely autobiographical work,inspired by the poet's infatuation with Ida Auerbach, whom he met in the fall of 1895. Their affair was to lead to the breakup of his marriage to Paula Oppenheimer, and to his eventual marriage to Auerbach in 1901.[5]
It may have been the publicity surrounding the court proceedings of the summer of 1897 that first brought Dehmel to Schoenberg's attention: as we saw in chapter 3, his earliest Dehmel settings date from the fall of 1897. Even though he might have come to know Weib und Welt at this time, Schoenberg initially turned to earlier, less steamy verses of Dehmel's. Only in 1899 was he inclined to take
[4] Cited in Dehmel 1963, 195. For more information on the creation of and reaction to Weib und Welt, see Bab 1926, 194–203.
[5] On Ida Auerbach, or "Frau Isi," see Bab 1926, 175–93.
on musically the full-blown eroticism of Weib und Welt. Schoenberg's biographer H. H. Stuckenschmidt has noted plausibly that this compositional activity coincided with his courtship of Mathilde Zemlinsky, whom he was to marry in 1901 (Stuckenschmidt 1978, 40).[6]
Only four of Schoenberg's Dehmel song efforts of 1899 were actually to be completed and published by him: as op. 2, nos. 1 (Erwartung), 2 (Jesus bettelt), and 3 (Erhebung); and op. 3, no. 3 (Warnung). These collections appeared, respectively, in October 1903 and April 1904.[7] At least one of the songs, Warnung (to be discussed below), was extensively revised, probably shortly before publication. Erwartung and Erhebung are virtually identical in their 1903 publication to the dated drafts of 1899.
Given Schoenberg's Dehmel infatuation and the generally high quality of his settings, it is noteworthy that he did not choose to make his op. 2 an all-Dehmel set, indeed an all-Weib und Welt one, with Warnung as the fourth song (or as one of the four). The publication of Warnung was delayed until op. 3, and a weaker if attractive song, Waldsonne, set to a text by Johannes Schlaf, was inserted to round out op. 2. These actions suggest that by the fall of 1903 Schoenberg was still not satisfied with Warnung, and that he needed to find a last-minute substitute.
Whatever the precise details and dates of their Entstehungsgeschichte —here as elsewhere it is not possible to establish a watertight chronology—the Dehmel settings of 1899 merit close attention because it is through them that Schoenberg moves definitively beyond the Brahms style to explore and gain mastery over a more progressive chromatic language and more ambitious musical forms. There is no question that this language owes much to Wagner, and probably something to Wolf and Richard Strauss, all composers for whom Schoenberg developed an
[6] The turn to Dehmel's more intensely erotic poems, as well as to a more chromatic musical style, may also have been spurred in part by Zemlinsky's Dehmel settings of 1898, especially Entbietung, op. 7, no. 2, which is in the same key and shows certain other similarities to Schoenberg's Mannesbangen. For further discussion, see Frisch 1986, 172–73.
[7] These dates of publication are taken from a postcard in Alban Berg's Nachlaß at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. To my knowledge, they have never been discussed before. When preparing a book on Schoenberg (which he never completed), Berg wrote to Verlag Dreililien to get exact publication dates for the early works. The firm responded with a card (dated 14 February 1921) that noted:
|
These dates, for which the firm must have checked its own files.should probably be taken as definitive.
appreciation in the last few years of the century. As with some of the Brahmsian works examined in part I, we now find many Wagnerian "symptoms," such as surging model-and-sequence constructions. One particularly bald example is the lengthy instrumental introduction to Gethsemane, a fragment for baritone and orchestra, which is modeled directly on the Prelude to Tristan. As the piece unfolds, the sequences become progressively shorter and the climax is reached (on the "Tristan" chord, of course) approximately three-fourths of the way through (m. 25).
The interest and importance of the works of 1899 lie in the way Schoenberg assimilates some of these Wagnerian techniques to the Brahmsian ones he had already absorbed. Schoenberg himself pointed to this kind of synthesis in Verklärte Nacht (Schoenberg 1975, 80), which was completed toward the end of 1899;but the other Dehmel works form an indispensable part of this process. Based on the style and technique of the surviving music and on the chronology suggested by the paper types, we can trace, in brief, the following development in Schoenberg's Dehmeljahr.
He turned first, in the spring of 1899, to two of the most explosive poems in Weib und Welt, "Mannesbangen" and "Warnung." In the first of these settings, the chromatic harmony and the motivic language—the Wagnerian and Brahmsian spheres, so to speak—are poorly coordinated. Warnung is in these respects more successful, but still awkward; Schoenberg himself was dissatisfied enough to undertake a major revision in 1903–4. The draft of Warnung was followed by Gethsemane, set to a very different kind of poem, a long monologue spoken by Jesus on the eve of his arrest. Here, too, Schoenberg came to a dead end, breaking off the piece after 88 measures.
With the song Erwartung, composed on 9 August, Schoenberg managed to strike the right balance between chromatic expansion and formal control; the song embodies perfectly on a small scale those processes to be expanded in Verklärte Nacht, begun in September. The last two completed Dehmel settings of 1899, Jesus bettelt ("Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm") and Erhebung, may be seen to divide between them the dual, Wagner-Brahms musical inheritance of the Dehmel year. The former shows a great mastery of chromatic harmony and the-matic transformation, the latter of motivic development, polyphonic density, and flexible phrase structure. Something of what is achieved in these last two songs is adumbrated in the fragment Im Reich der Liebe, also composed in the fall.[8]
[8] After the intense involvement with Dehmel's poetry in 1899, Schoenberg returned to it during two later periods, in 1905–6, and again in 1914–15. At neither time did the verse seem to strike the same spark. With the exception of the song Alles, op. 6, no. 2 (September 1905), to be discussed briefly in chapter 8 below, all these other Dehmel works remained fragments (see Frisch 1986, 170–71, and Bailey 1984, 79–118).
Mannesbangen
In "Mannesbangen," as in many poems of Weib und Welt, the speaker is a man addressing a woman, and there is a great emphasis on physical, specifically sensual, detail—the eyes, hands, hair, head, and loins. Also like many poems in the collection, "Mannesbangen" has a symmetrical structure. The central seven lines of physical description are framed by the opening and closing couplets, which articulate the poem's basic conceit of fear:
Du mußt nichtmeinen,
ich hätte Furcht vor dir.
Nur wenn du mit deinen
scheuen Augen Glück begehrst
und mir mit solchen
zuckenden Händen
wie mit Dolchen
durch die Haare fährst,
und mein Kopf liegt an deinen Lenden:
dann, du Sündrin,
beb' ich vor dir—
You must not think I am afraid of you. Only when you with your shy eyes
desire happiness and with such quivering hands like daggers run through
my hair, and my head lies upon your loins: then, you sinful woman, I
tremble before you—
Two autographs survive for Schoenberg's setting of Mannesbangen, one a fragment extending only ten measures, the other a slightly altered revision complete except for one measure, m. 6 (Appendix ex. K). There are many aspects that place the song light years beyond the Dehmel settings of 1897: the extraordinarily busy piano accompaniment; the angular vocal part, with large dissonant leaps; and the profusion of vagrant harmonies, especially the augmented triad, the diminished seventh, the half-diminished seventh, and the French sixth. In a clear attempt to capture the framing aspect of the poem, Schoenberg fashions an ABA' form in which the outer sections (mm. 1–6 and 21–25, the latter in fact the piano postlude) are diatonic and the central one (mm. 7–20) is dominated by the vagrant harmonies.
Ulrich Thieme has suggested that the B section of the song is in fact oriented around a diatonic sonority, the subdominant B minor, which is touched upon three times in passing (mm. 11, 12, and 15) and then approached with more em-
Example 4.1
Mannesbangen , cadential articulation points.
phasis in m. 17.[9] Although Thieme's analysis is persuasive, it does not account sufficiently for the way
This is literally the same chord that dominated much of Mädchenfrühling, but the different treatment it receives shows how far Schoenberg's harmonic language has traveled. In the earlier song the half-diminished was treated exclusively as a pre-dominant (at the end, a dominant substitute) of B minor. In Mannesbangen, Schoenberg more extensively exploits the chord's vagrant possibilities along the lines of the tongue-in-cheek description he provides in Theory of Harmony, where vagrant chords are characterized as "homeless phenomena, unbelievably adaptable and unbelievably lacking in independence: spies, who ferret out weaknesses and use them to cause confusion; turncoats, to whom abandonment of their individuality is an end in itself; agitators in every respect, but above all: most amusing fellows" (Schoenberg 1978, 258). Although the chords cause considerable fluidity and ambiguity in the middle section, Schoenberg demonstrates an impressive concern for overall coherence by organizing the articulation points with a large-scale bass arpeggiation of the
The large role played by
[9] See Thieme 1979, 167–68. The song is also discussed briefly in Bailey 1979, 103–4.
Example 4.2
Mannesbangen , cadences omitting dominant.
minor. Schoenberg realized that the final cadences to the tonic could not be effectively made via its own dominant. Thus
Despite the large-scale control manifested by Schoenberg's organization of the vagrant harmonies around
3½. Yet these alterations do not really give motivic life to the song; they fail to generate process or development.[12]
Only at the climax of the song does the motive undergo more significant modification. Here the descending form is extended across two full measures in a dramatic sequence (
The other principal flaw of Mannesbangen is the great discrepancy between diatonic and chromatic harmony. As mentioned above, Schoenberg attempts to reflect the structure of the poem by "framing" the central chromatic portion of the song with diatonic segments. But the contrast between the stodgily diatonic A section and wildly chromatic B section is too extreme, too unmediated. Indeed, the fact that m. 6 remained incomplete—with only a solitary E-minor triad in the right hand—suggests that Schoenberg himself found the gap difficult to bridge. He could not decide how to move persuasively from the broad, conventional half-cadence on the dominant
Warnung
In Dehmel's "Warnung," the imploring, submissive persona of "Mannesbangen" has become a jealous figure who poisons his dog and threatens his beloved with a similar fate if she is not careful:
Mein Hund, du, hat dich bloß beknurrt
und ich hab ihn vergifte;
und ich hasse jeden Menschen,
der Zwietracht stiftet.
Zwei blutrote Nelken
schick ich dir, mein Blut du,
an der einen eine Knospe;
den dreien sei gut, du,
bis ich komme.
[12] According to the criteria Schoenberg himself adopts in Fundamentals of Musical Composition (Schoenberg 1967, 8), these changes in the motive would constitute "variants" rather than genuine "developing variations." With the latter "there is something which can be compared to development, to growth. But changes of subordinate meaning, which have no special consequences, have only the local effect of an embellishment. Such changes are better termed variants. "
Ich komme heute Nacht noch;
sei allein, sei allein, du!
Gestern, als ich ankam,
starrtest du mit Jemand
ins Abendrot hinein—Du:
denk an meinen Hund!
My dog, you, merely snarled at you, and I have poisoned him; and I hate
everyone who sows discord.
I send you, my blood you, two bloodred carnations, on one of which is a
bud; be good to the three, you, until I come.
I'm still coming tonight; be alone, you! Yesterday when I arrived, you were
staring deep into the dusk with someone—you: think of my dog!
Given the musical style of Mannesbangen, one might expect Schoenberg to give the still more violent "Warnung" an analogously more florid setting. In fact, however, with his May 1899 setting of this poem, Schoenberg reins in some of the earlier pianistic and harmonic extravagance to create a tauter, more intense song. Above all, he seems to be striving for a new kind of relationship—new in his own work—between piano and voice. In Warnung, the piano bears almost the full weight of musical continuity, while the vocal part is broken up or dissolved into relatively small declamatory fragments that sometimes unfold independently of the phrase structure of the accompaniment. Perhaps to offset the fluidity of the voice, the piano part is decidedly square in terms of rhythm, meter, and phrase structure. In the A section of the song—the song as a whole has a ternary structure—the piano has essentially two thematic ideas, x and y (Appendix ex. L; complete 1899 version in SW B½/II: 18–22), which appear in alternation: x twice (1–4), y (5–6), x twice (8–11), y expanded (12–16). The second x–y pair is transposed up a fourth. The vocal part in mm. 1–3 overrides, or floats free of, the 2+2 structure of the piano: the conjunction "und," which actually begins the second vocal phrase, appears on the last note of x in m. 4.
A particularly significant aspect of Warnung is the role played by thematic transformation in shaping the B section of the song. Indeed, we have here one of the earliest examples in Schoenberg's works of a theme being reshaped (rather than pulled apart or developed) to yield an entirely different affect.[13] The piano's fivenote figure x from m. I is reworked in m. 17 such that it retains its original contour and identity, although its intervals are adjusted (see ex. 4.3). The lower neighbor now appears on the third beat (F in m. 17) rather than the second (
[13] For more detailed discussion of the distinction between thematic transformation and thematic development, see Frisch 1984, ch. 2, and Friedheim 1963, 13–14.
Example 4.3
Warnung , thematic transformation (piano part only).
tura (
Schoenberg elegantly shifts harmonic weight in the transformation. In mm. 1–2 the progression is iv-i-v; the most emphasis falls in the second half of the first measure, with the tonic triad. In the transformation in mm. 17–18, the harmonic progression is now adjusted to move toward the key area of
Despite the more flexible relationship between voice and piano and the role played by transformation, the 1899 draft of Warnung remains awkward. The vocal line of the A section swings clumsily between very small intervals (seconds at "Mein Hund, du" and "ich hab ihn vergiftet") and large octave leaps (at "hasse," "Menschen," and "Zwietracht"). The chords falling every half-measure in the left hand in the A section make for metrical heavy-handedness. The return to A' in m. 38 is also disappointingly literal, coming from the pen of a composer preoccupied with fashioning subtle returns in some of his earlier songs (as in an earlier Dehmel setting, Mädchenfrühling, examined in chapter 3). In the 1899 Warnung, Schoenberg opts for an exact return of x and y from mm. 1–6 in the piano (mm. 38–43).
Schoenberg clearly felt the need for a substantial postlude to take up or dissipate the intense energy of the song. But the long-winded postlude he wrote in 1899 surely makes for one of the least persuasive endings among the early songs. Transposed but literal statements of y (mm. 42–46; cf. mm. 11–15) and x (mm. 47–50; cf. mm. 1–4) give way to a repeated cadential figure moving to the tonic
major (mm. 53–56). This figure, which bears no meaningful relation to x or y, seems peculiarly unmotivated or arbitrary in a song that has been so taut in its motivic economy (if also square in phrase structure).
All the features that I have characterized as weak were altered when Schoenberg came to revise Warnung in 1903–4. Strictly speaking, those revisions lie outside the scope of this chapter, for they obviously form no part of Schoenberg's development in 1899. (A chronologically oriented discussion of them would belong somewhere between chapters 6 and 7 of the present study.) But for the convenience of the reader, and because the revisions have, to my knowledge, never been taken into account in the general Schoenberg literature,[14] I shall summarize them here. (I include no musical examples from the op. 3 revision; readers should refer to the available published score.)
· When Schoenberg came to revise Warnung, he altered both the stiff phrase structure and rhythms of the piano and the melodic shape of the vocal line. In the op. 3 version, the second part of the A section (mm. 7–13) is now compressed and varied: it begins like the 1899 version, with a sequential repetition of x, but then deviates from the second half of m. 8. As Schoenberg must have realized, the repetition of y material in mm. 12–16 of the original version is unnecessary from the musico-poetic point of view: it serves only to complete the formal plan, x y x y, and leaves six awkward measures of silence in the vocal part. Underneath a revised vocal part (mm. 9–13), Schoenberg omits y altogether and introduces octaves and sequential imitation based on x.
· Another weakness of the 1899 version, the strong metrical stress on each half-measure, is removed in op. 3. In the x material, mm. 1–4 and 7–8, Schoenberg replaces the regular dotted quarter notes in the left hand with brief figures or chords that begin off the beat. This greater rhythmic nervousness captures much more effectively the spirit of the text and also provides better contrast with the stressed beats in the y material of mm. 5–6 and 9–13.
· In the op. 3 version Schoenberg also gives the vocal line greater continuity and coherence. He eliminates some of the short-breathed quality—without sacrificing any declamatory force—by filling some of
[14] For example, the analyses of Warnung in Stuckenschmidt 1978, 38–40, and Friedheim 1963, 91–94, are based on the version published in op. 3, which is tacitly assumed to be identical to the draft of 1899 and thus is discussed as if it were a composition of that year. Most of the musical features discussed by these two authors are in fact a result of the later revisions.
the large temporal gaps and rests with sustained notes ("du" and "und"). He also brings closer together lines 2 and 3 of the poem, thus bringing forcefully forward the phrase "ich hasse" and eliminating the long vocal pause in mm. 5–7 of the 1899 version. Schoenberg also moderates the intervallic extremes of the 1899 song, in the process giving the text greater definition. The first "du" is now given greater emphasis by the descent of a fourth, to C, from which the vocal line rises logically upward to the high
· A small but striking difference between the A section in the two versions of Warnung involves the harmony of the y component. In the 1899 version, the inner voice of the piano in mm. 5–7 plays a thirtysecond figure with
· Two other important aspects of the 1899 Warnung that were altered in 1903–4 involve the extent of the return in A' and the piano postlude. Schoenberg radically modified the entire A' section, first by avoiding a literal return in the piano. The second two measures of x (mm. 37–38), instead of repeating the first two (cf. 3–4), are now transposed up a tone. Moreover, from m. 39 the accompaniment continues as if recapitulating mm. 9ff., the x passage reworked with sequence and imitation.
[15] Schoenberg demonstrates this way of altering a dominant seventh in his Theory of Harmony (Schoenberg 1978, 355, ex. 287). However, he does not specifically mention the chord's whole-tone properties in this context. Rather, he sees the whole-tone scale as arising from a dominant seventh with a raised fifth (and thus an augmented triad) (Schoenberg 1978, 391).
· Schoenberg also alters the voice part. At the return in the 1899 song, he seems determined to compress the three lines of text (lines 12–14) into three measures (mm. 38–40), where at the opening the same musical space had been filled by only one line of the poem. The vocal part of mm. 38–41 is declaimed with very small note values. As Schoenberg came to realize, the compression is too great, especially at the fast tempo of the song. In the revision Schoenberg allows lines 12–14 of the poem to unfold over six measures, but compensates somewhat for the expansion by marking the return "Sehr rasch." He also introduces a hemiola on "jemand" in m. 38 and extends the final "Du" and the admonition "Denk an meinen Hund" over a much broader expanse of five measures (mm. 41–45), as compared with the three of the 1899 version.
· In the revised Warnung Schoenberg completely recasts the postlude. He builds to a large, triple forte climax at m. 48, then winds down. Only the
Erwartung, op. 2, no. 1
The more flexible vocal style and the more motivically coherent accompanimental foundation toward which Schoenberg is apparently striving in the May 1899 version of Warnung are fully achieved in Erwartung. With its mastery of largescale ternary form, the control and coordination of melodic and harmonic processes, and the balanced relationship between voice and piano, Erwartung is the gem among the Dehmellieder of 1899. Schoenberg himself must have felt thus, when several years later he placed it at the head of his op. 2. With Erwartung, Schoenberg turned from frenetic texts to a more understated poem:
Aus dem meergrünen Teiche
neben der roten Villa
unter der toten Eiche
scheint der Mond.
Wo ihr dunkles Abbild
durch das Wasser greift,
steht ein Mann und streift
einen Ring von seiner Hand.
Drei Opale blinken;
durch die bleichen Steine
schwimmen rot und grüne
Funken und versinken.
Und er küßt sie, und
seine Augen leuchten
wie der meergrüne Grund:
ein Fenster thut sich auf.
Aus der roten Villa
neben der toten Eiche
winkt ihm eine bleiche
Frauenhand.
Out of the sea green pond, near the red villa, under the dead oak, shines the
moon.
Where her dark image reaches through the water, a man stands and draws a
ring from his hand.
Three opals glimmer; red and green sparks swim through the pale stones
and sink away.
And he kisses them, and his eyes glow like the sea green depths: a window
opens.
Out of the red villa, near the dead oak, the pale hand of a woman beckons
to him.
Dehmel's "Erwartung" is about sexual anticipation, not about unbridled fulfillment. The speaker is an impersonal narrator, not an impatient or threatening lover; emotions are controlled, as he or she describes, not the love encounter itself, but the expectation of it. "Erwartung" is also one of the most visually evocative poems in Weib und Welt, constituting a perfect example of the technique at which Dehmel hints in a diary entry of 1894: "Nowadays we aim to make poetic technique more sensuous by incorporating painterly and musical effects, just as painting and music attempt to learn new means of expression from the sister arts" (Dehmel 1926, 21). Dehmel claims that there are limitations to this kind of technical interchange but suggests, for example, that the poet might "associate a color word with a particularly strong upwelling of a certain emotional state" or might intensify his verse "through the use of sound symbols."
In "Erwartung," color words become more than simply adjectives describing the setting: Dehmel achieves "painterly effects" by treating them in a fashion that is almost abstract, stylized. Each line of the first stanza either states or implies a different color. The pond is "sea green," the villa "red," the oak "dead"—hence black or dark brown—and the moonlight pale white. These colors are then repeated and transformed. In stanza 3 the opals are "pale," the sparks "red and green." In stanza 4 the Grund, apparently referring to the immobile bottom of both the pond and the stones, is again "sea green." The final stanza acts as a return or (in musical terms) a recapitulation. "Red" and "dead" reappear, and the "pale," with its color value of white, is now transferred to the woman's hand.
By introducing the paired juxtapositions in stanza 1, red-green and black-white, Dehmel may consciously have sought to exploit color complementarity.[16] Indeed, he seems to endow the colors with strong psychological associations much like those Wassily Kandinsky was to outline in Concerning the Spiritual in Art of 1911. Kandinsky calls the elements of each such pair "antithetical." Green is passive, "the most restful colour that exists"; its opposite, red, is warm and intense. Black represents a "totally dead silence," white "a silence . . . pregnant with possibilities" (Kandinsky 1977, 36–41).
In Dehmel's poem, the shining moon, the blinking stones, and the waving hand of the woman—the physical images most closely linked to the lovers' anticipation—are pale or white, and thus appropriately "pregnant with possibilities." The villa, presumably the actual scene of the lovemaking to come, is red. The images implying less motion, the dead oak and the tranquil pond, are black and green.[17] "Erwartung," then, is truly a study in poetic color, a fine example of what one Dehmel scholar has called a Farbenspiel (Fritz 1969, 71). The coloristic and painterly qualities of "Erwartung" also suggest an affinity with one of the leading contemporary movements in the visual arts, Jugendstil.[18]
The poem has a symmetrical structure that might also be considered painterly. The two outer stanzas, which are similar in content, frame the poem even more strongly than the beginning and closing couplets in Mannesbangen. There is an elegant inner symmetry as well. The two principal unidirectional actions of the poem, the man pulling the ring from his hand, and the window going up, are presented in the second and fourth stanzas. At the still center of the poem are the most circular or static actions: the opals glimmer, the sparks swim (although they also sink).
Schoenberg was, to the best of my knowledge, the only major composer of the time to set "Erwartung" to music.[19] His musical imagination was clearly kindled by the possibilities of realizing the "painterly" aspects of the poem, especially the Farbenspiel. At the very opening (ex. 4.4a), the words "meergrünen" and "roten" are accompanied by a distinctive five-note harmony built from the tonic note
[16] Red and green are considered psychologically complementary colors, as are black and white. See the useful discussion in Osborne 1970, 258.
[17] Even if the oak is taken to be brown instead of black, similar associations prevail: Kandinsky calls brown "unemotional, disinclined for movement" (1977, 40).
[18] On Dehmel's personal contacts and/or collaborations with Jugendstil artists, see Fritz 1969, 39–43. The best general treatments of Jugendstil in the visual arts can be found in Schmutzler 1962, in Hamann and Hermand 1973, and in the essays collected in Hermand 1971. For further discussion of the affinities or connections between Schoenberg's music and Jugendstil, see Frisch 1990b.
[19] I have found no evidence to support Ernst Hilmar's claim that Zemlinsky also set the poem (Hilmar 1976, 57–58). Zemlinsky published no setting, and no such manuscript exists in his Nachlaß at the Library of Congress. Challier's song catalog does, however, report that a setting of Dehmel's "Erwartung" by a W. Jordan appeared sometime between July 1904 and July 1906 (Challier 1906, 1951), thus shortly after Schoenberg's.
Example 4.4
Erwartung , op. 2, no. 1.
Example 4.5
Erwartung , transformations of color chord.
and four neighbor notes. Schoenberg proceeds to make this "coloristic" chord structural, much as Dehmel does with the color words in the poem. In a manner reminiscent of, but more sophisticated than, Mädchenfrühling of two years earlier, this single Klang, or harmonic configuration, comes to dominate the song.
Edward T. Cone has shown how the color chord is successively transformed in the song.[20] In ex. 4.5 I elaborate on aspects of his sensitive but brief analysis. W represents the chord as it appears in mm. 1–3. Respelling and inverting the chord, placing D in the bass, give X, a dominant thirteenth sonority with the seventh omitted and the ninth flatted.[21] It is in this form transposed down a fifth, Y, that the chord appears on the third and fourth beats of m. 4, at "scheint der Mond." In context, the
At the opening of the second stanza, the entire initial progression is repeated, transposed down a minor third, in the key of C major. This level of transposition assures maximum intersection between the pitches of the original (W) and transposed color chord (Z). A comparison of the chords W and Z in my example will reveal three pitches in the common (
In that it resolves to the tonic twice in mm. 1–2, the color chord in its initial, neighbor-note form (W) may be considered a kind of enhanced or substitute dominant. And, as I have just argued (following Cone), it is transformed into just such a chord at m. 4 (Y and Y') and in the middle section of the song. But
[20] See Cone 1974, 28–29. Other published analyses of Erwartung include Just 1980; Brinkmann 1984, 27–28; and Friedheim 1963, 98–103.
[21] Friedheim (1963, 98) suggests that the five-note chord should be interpreted not as an appoggiatura chord, but as an "altered supertonic ninth without the root." I find this analysis misrepresents the way the chord is actually presented and transformed. At first the chord clearly functions as an appoggiatura to the tonic triad; only later is it reinterpreted as a kind of ninth chord (though not on the second degree and not with an absent root).
Y is the dominant of C major, not of
With "Erwartung," Schoenberg finally settled on a Dehmel poem perfectly suited to a rounded musical structure, to which some of the earlier settings could be fitted only with difficulty. The broad five-part form might be analyzed as:
|
After the delicate, flickering stasis of mm. 1–2, the harmony begins to move toward the dominant via the subdominant sonorities of mm. 3–4 (the voice at "unter der toten Eiche" outlines a sudominant triad). But on the last two beats of m. 4 (at the sfpp), Schoenberg abruptly substitutes a dominant on G (chords Y and Y'), and the vocal part cadences on
This G dominant continues to replace
The moment is indeed "magical," as Cone has said, though I would not agree that the chord "is accorded the status of a true dominant" (Cone 1974, 29). There can, I think, be only one "true" dominant; and Schoenberg's compositional strategy, as I have been describing it, is precisely to avoid articulating the dominant harmony. He continues to do so throughout the transition and the recapitulation (A"). Only in the piano postlude is the entire dominant chord presented; and, as if to make up for its previous absence, it is repeated again and again. The dominant functions here as the final transformation of the color chord, which now appears in its Y' form, transposed to the dominant.
The elegant harmonic process of Erwartung supports an equally elegant vocal part, one that is metrically much more flexible than in Mannesbangen, where the stresses tended to fall on the downbeat with some regularity, or in the original Warnung, where the freer declamation generated a vocal line that bordered on incoherence. In the A section of Erwartung, (ex. 4.4a), each phrase lies slightly differently in relation to bar line. Phrase 1 begins with an upbeat figure ("Aus
dem"), which is then in varied form ("Neben der") squeezed into the downbeat of phrase 2. This rhythmic-metrical migration continues in phrase 3, where the equivalent "upbeat" ("unter der") now falls on the notated second beat of the measure, while the notated downbeat remains empty. This progressive metrical shift of the prepositions ("Aus," "neben," "unter") serves to bring the musical climax of mm. 1–4, the
The large-scale control evident in the harmonic and melodic aspects of Erwartung —specifically the treatment of the color chord, the withholding of the dominant, and the declamatory and metrical fluidity of the vocal part—is not to be found in Schoenberg's earlier works. He instinctively realized that the rather frantic style of Mannesbangen or the surging, Tristanesque harmonic language of Gethsemane would not be appropriate here. "Erwartung" is a poem not of passionate intensity or of Wagnerian-Schopenhauerian Sehnsucht, but of heightened anticipation.
The magisterial breadth and pacing of Erwartung give it a quality that might be justly called symphonic. Indeed, it is probably no coincidence that the composition of the song in August 1899 was followed shortly by work on what was to become Schoenberg's first instrumental piece truly to deserve that label, Verklärte Nacht. There are even certain similarities between the two poems, "Erwartung" and "Verklärte Nacht." Both have as their subject a nocturnal encounter between a pair of lovers. Both are framed by stanzas in which a narrator describes the scene (in "Verklärte Nacht," however, the characters also speak), a feature that inspired Schoenberg to create in both works a broad recapitulatory closing section. I suspect that the achievement represented on a smaller scale by Erwartung may have encouraged Schoenberg to undertake the ambitious sextet.
Im Reich der Liebe
Erwartung may be said to represent the still center, and also the musico-poetic high point, of Schoenberg's Dehmellieder. In what appear to be the last three settings of 1899, Schoenberg moves to consolidate more consciously, or at least more obviously, Brahmsian and Wagnerian compositional principles. Both together inform the fragment Im Reich der Liebe, in which Schoenberg set only the first of three stanzas (a full setting was probably to have a ternary form):
[22] For a brilliant and extended analysis of the metrical implications of vocal lines in certain later works of Schoenberg, see Lewin 1982.
O Du, dein Haar, wie stralt dein Haar,
das ist wie schwarze Diamanten!
O—weil wir uns als Herrscherpaar
der ewigen Seligkeit erkannten,
Du!
Oh, you, your hair, how your hair shines, it's like black diamonds! Oh—
because we knew ourselves rulers of eternal bliss, you!
In musical style and mood, the setting resembles Mannesbangen (see Appendix ex. M for the first eight measures). But where in the earlier song the succession of vagrant harmonies seemed out of control, here such chords—initially a half-diminished seventh (m. 3), a German sixth in third inversion (m. 4), and an augmented triad, notated in second inversion (m. 5)—are connected and supported by a strong bass line that descends by step (
In m. 6 of Im Reich der Liebe, Schoenberg interrupts the stepwise motion to prepare a cadence in the relative major, G: the bass now moves by fifth A-D-G. But the cadence is subtly sidestepped by both the harmonic resolution and the phrase structure; the next phrase actually begins before the harmonic arrival. In the measure of dominant preparation (m. 6), Schoenberg begins a new rising stepwise line in the right hand of the piano; the voice enters on the second beat, moving in parallel thirds and sixths. In the following measure, at the cadence to G minor, the rising line is transferred to the bass, where it is then repeated sequentially through m. 9. The sophistication here is threefold. First, Schoenberg overlaps the beginning of the new phrase in m. 6 with the harmonic cadence, which is not completed until m. 7. Second, the cadence is blurred by the motivic imitation or interchange between the right and left hands across the juncture of mm. 6—7. And third, the actual cadence is made to G minor rather than the expected major. In these ways, Schoenberg achieves continuity between the phrases.
Together with its Wagnerian (or post-Wagnerian) harmonic language, this passage provides a fine example of a technique characteristic of Brahms, which Schenker called the Knüpftechnik, or linkage technique: a motive introduced at the very end of a phrase is taken over to initiate the next one (see Frisch 1984, 15—16). Schoenberg's linkage is even more elegant than many in Brahms, since the harmony and phrase structure are made to be out of phase with one another; the new phrase begins in m. 6, but the cadence is completed only in m. 7.
Jesus bettelt ("Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm"), op. 2, no. 2
The song, Jesus bettelt pulls together various technical and expressive threads of the earlier completed Dehmel settings of 1899. It develops further the chromatic
style of Mannesbangen; it resembles Warnung in the declamatory flexibility of the vocal line and in the use of thematic transformation to shape the central section of the song; and it has something of the broad pacing, the control of the large scale, evident in Erwartung. A highly sensual appeal by Jesus to Mary Magdalene (and only slightly more chaste than the approaches of Wilde's Salome to Jokanaan), the poem is surely one of the texts of Weib und Welt viewed as bordering on blasphemy and obscenity:
Schenk mir deinen goldnen Kamm;
jeder Morgen soll dich mahnen,
daß du mir die Haare küßtest.
Schenk mir deinen seidnen Schwamm;
jeden Abend will ich ahnen,
wem du dich im Bade rüstest—
o Maria!
Schenk mir Alles, was du hast,
meine Seele ist nicht eitel,
stolz empfang'ich deinen Segen.
Schenk mir deine schwerste Last;
willst du nicht auf meinen Scheitel
auch dein Herz, dein Herz noch legen—
Magdalena?
Give me your golden comb; each morning should remind you that you
kissed my hair. Give me your silken sponge; each evening I will envision
you preparing for your bath, O Mary!
Give me everything that you have; my soul is not vain, proudly I receive
your blessing. Give me your heaviest burden; will you not also lay your
heart upon my head, Magdalene?
The formal structure of Schoenberg's song is more ambitious than that of any of the earlier settings. Rather than fashioning a modified strophic or ternary form, Schoenberg treats the second stanza (mm. 19–38) as a kind of development or expansion of the first. The first stanza consists essentially of a six-measure statement and its sequential repetition up a half-step, followed by a climactic setting of Jesus' direct address, "o Maria." The music for "o Maria" returns in the second stanza for the analogous "Magdalena," but what precedes it constitutes essentially a development of motives from the first stanza.
The opening two-and-a-half-measure theme in the piano furnishes the basic material for the song. This theme has two components (labeled x and y in ex. 4.6a), which are developed separately in the second stanza. The basic principle resembles that of Warnung, but now the two thematic ideas are handled with
Example 4.6
Jesus bettelt ("Schenk mir"), op. 2, no. 2.
greater fluidity. The theme remains relatively intact during the first fourteen measures. (Motive x is used for the transition between the statements of the sequence.) At m. 14, y is for the first time isolated and treated sequentially, in diminution, as Schoenberg builds to a climax at "o Maria." The second stanza is dominated at first by sequential repetition of y (mm. 19–23), which then gives way to sequential diminution of x. The diminution of x is first introduced in m. 23, then retreats and reappears to dominate all of mm. 26–33 (ex. 4.6b).
The modification of x in the accompaniment at the "wieder langsamer" of m. 26 manifests the same impulse toward thematic transformation seen in the B section of Warnung. The contrast in mood is, to be sure, not as marked as that between the angry opening of Warnung and the "carnation" transformation. But in Jesus bettelt, the Stimmung has definitely changed at m. 26, from "ausdrucksvoll" to "sehr innig." And this change is accompanied or reflected by the new treatment of x.
Also more successful is Schoenberg's treatment of harmony. Two aspects are especially worthy of discussion. The first is the way Schoenberg underpins the chromatic voice-leading with strong fifth-oriented bass progressions. At the very opening (see ex. 4.6a), the bass steps down from
Strong root progression in the bass emerges again in mm. 14–19. Here the effect is even more striking than at the opening of the song because of a very basic cadential I–II–V–I succession, in which, however, the diatonic Stufen are harmonized with vagrant chords (see ex. 4.7a). This passage shows how skillfully Schoenberg can extend or delay arrival on the tonic. The first cadence in the song, at "küßtest" in m. 6, is made to the tonic major. At the parallel spot in m. 14 ("rüstest") Schoenberg wants to avoid closure to the tonic so as to lead into the climactic "o Maria." The tonic note,
Example 4.7
Jesus bettelt, vagrant harmonies with diatonic roots (piano part only).
inution of motive y), which is sustained for two measures. This chord then gives way to another vagrant harmony, a whole-tone chord with a
The succession of chords in these measures shows Schoenberg attempting to connect vagrant harmonies by means of smooth voice-leading. As is suggested in ex. 4.7b, the first two of the three harmonies—the "Tristan" half-diminished and the whole-tone chord—differ from each other only by one half-step. Further half-step voice-leading produces the third chord, the dominant seventh. (The
Toward the end of the song, Schoenberg reworks the "o Maria" passage at the
Example 4.8
Jesus bettelt, mm. 34–38 (piano part only).
parallel place in the stanza (ex. 4.8), where he manages to delay the tonic still longer. At mm. 34–36 (cf. mm. 14–17), a I–II–V supports, as before, the "Tristan" chord, the whole-tone chord, and the dominant seventh. But the dominant now resolves deceptively to a IV6 chord (which in turn moves on in the second half of the measure to a vi). This is an especially lovely moment, largely because up to this point in the song there has been no emphasis on the subdominant. Its appearance here at the conclusion fulfills, or at least begins to fulfill, the same tension-releasing function as in many classical and romantic codas. But instead of descending to
The final cadence of Jesus bettelt, as suggested above, resembles that of Mannesbangen and is motivated by similar harmonic procedures. In both cases the dominant is elided and the tonic is approached directly from what is normally a predominant chord, the French sixth in the earlier song, V/V in Jesus bettelt. The rationale for this procedure in both songs is that the dominant has in some sense exhausted its cadential powers; in Jesus bettelt, the dominant has featured strongly in the big climax at mm. 17–18 and the more restrained one at 35–36.
In Jesus bettelt, then, Schoenberg has tightened the harmonic and motivic procedures of the earlier Dehmel settings. This is accomplished above all through a more moderate and transparent accompaniment, a more focused motivic language, and a strong emphasis on stepwise connection between vagrant chords, which are here often underpinned with basic diatonic progressions.
Erhebung, op. 2, no. 3
The song Erhebung appears to be Schoenberg's final Dehmel setting of 1899. (Its composition may well have taken place contemporaneously with the copying of the score of Verklärte Nacht. ) The poem is the briefest of the texts selected by Schoenberg in 1899:
Gieb mir deine Hand,
nur den Finger, dann
seh ich diesen ganzen Erdkreis
als mein Eigen an!
Oh, wie blüht mein Land!
sieh dir's doch nur an,
daß es mit uns über die Wolken
in die Sonne kann!
Give me your hand, only your finger; then will I see the whole circle of this
earth as my own!
Oh how my land is blossoming, look at it now, so that it can rise with us
over the clouds toward the sun!
Rather than floating on top of an accompaniment that provides continuity, as in Warnung and Erwartung, the voice part of Erhebung is a full participant in the polyphonic texture. The voice is often doubled, or at least shadowed closely, by one line of the piano part. This kind of texture, also apparent in Jesus bettelt, contributes in Erhebung to a still more extreme motivic-thematic concentration and development. This concentration is apparent not only on the largest scale—the setting is a compact modified strophic one, A (mm. 1–11) A' (12–24)—but on the most detailed level. The melodic line at the very opening (see reduction in ex. 4.9) seems almost a programmatic announcement of the large role to be played by developing variation: the melodic line of m. 2 is clearly heard as a transposed retrograde of the m. 1: the descending triad of A, followed by the leading tone
Each of the two strophes of Erhebung is comprised essentially of a phrase and its varied or developed repetition. In the first strophe, mm. 5–9 constitute a modification and expansion of mm. 1–4, fashioned more subtly than anything we have seen up to this point. Schoenberg adjusts the metrical alignment of the melody and bass in ways that directly anticipate parts of Gurrelieder, in particular Tove's song "Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick," to be examined in chapter 6.
Example 4.9
Erhebung, op. 2, no. 3, mm. 1–9 (piano and vocal parts reduced).
The A in the bass on the last half of m. 4 represents both the end point of the first phrase (which consists of eight half notes) and the beginning of the second (consisting of ten). Although it is slurred with the previous
Where mm. 5–9 expanded the original thematic material, the first phrase of the second strophe, mm. 12–14, now compresses it into three measures, in prepara-
Example 4.10
Erhebung, mm. 15–21 (piano and vocal parts reduced).
tion for a final, still greater expansion, mm. 15–21 (ex. 4.10). This expanded last phrase shows Schoenberg's powers of motivic-thematic development at their height in the 1899 Dehmel songs. By analogy to the preceding statements of the basic phrase, the high
Even more than in the earlier Dehmel songs of 1899, Schoenberg avoids strong dominant resolutions in Erhebung. In Mannesbangen and Jesus bettelt the dominant (
transition between strophes (mm. 9–11) and the postlude (mm. 21–22), the tonic is approached directly (as in Jesus bettelt) from a form of V/V that has an
In Mannesbangen and Jesus bettelt, the cadences to the tonic might be said to be relatively tentative and unconvincing. Erhebung is most impressive for the way in which the "false" dominants of mm. 11, 21, and 23 lead strongly, persuasively to the tonic. This effect is in part a function of, or corollary to, the thematicmotivic processes, which impart considerable continuity and thrust to the musical discourse.
In this sense, Erhebung represents the culmination of Schoenberg's Dehmel songs of 1899. Although traditional harmonic syntax has been loosened, it is compensated for by a dynamic motivic language and fluid phrase structure, which carry along and give meaning to the vagrant chords and the unusual harmonic resolutions. Even if we might prefer Erwartung as the most perfect song of Schoenberg's Dehmeljahr, Erhebung nevertheless embodies more than any other song the techniques that were to be developed in Gurrelieder and other later works.
Chapter Five—
Verklärte Nacht , op. 4 (1899)
The string sextet Verklärte Nacht was both the culmination of Schoenberg's Dehmeljahr and his first instrumental masterpiece. At once chamber music and program music (a novel combination acknowledged as such by contemporary critics), it hovers generically and chronologically between the Brahms tradition represented by the D-Major Quartet of 1897 and the Liszt-Strauss tradition that was to be explored further by Schoenberg in the symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande (1902–3).
The sextet was preceded by three attempts at program music, each of which remained a fragment. One is a brief thirteen-measure draft (in short score) for a symphonic poem entitled Hans im Glück, which appears to date from 1898 (see Maegaard 1972, i: 152; Bailey 1984, 44–45). A more substantial fragment, begun in the summer of 1898, is the symphonic poem Frühlings Tod, based on a poem by Nikolaus Lenau (the poet of Schilflied.) A short score of the piece extends 255 measures, a full score 135. Because Frühlings Tod has been discussed in detail twice (Thieme 1979, 183–215, and Bailey 1984, 45–51), it will not be treated here. Suffice it to say that it shows Schoenberg beginning to grapple with chromatic harmony and Wagnerian sequential construction on a scale broader than he had attempted before. The third fragment, which is closest in style and medium to Verklärte Nacht, is a string sextet entitled Toter Winkel, a 34-measure fragment in B minor, based on a poem by Gustav Falke. The manuscript of Toter Winkel is undated, but it probably was written in 1898 or early 1899.[1]
In each of these cases, it may have been the poetic source that failed to sustain
[1] The work is discussed in detail by Thieme (1979, 173–83) and Bailey (1984, 38–44), both of whom include a complete facsimile of the score.
the initial creative spark ignited in Schoenberg. As in his Lieder, so in his program music, the encounter with Richard Dehmel's work was to be decisive. Indeed, as I have suggested in the preceding chapter, it was probably the composer's successful engagement with the poetry of Dehmel in the songs of the spring and summer of 1899 that inspired him to attempt—and complete—the sextet that became op. 4.
The exact date of composition of Verklärte Nacht in relation to the songs of 1899 cannot be precisely determined. The handful of sketches are undated; the autograph manuscript, which shows considerable revision and recomposition (to be treated below), is dated 1 December 1899. Egon Wellesz, an authoritative source, whose information was in many cases provided (or corrected) by Schoenberg himself,[2] reports that the sextet was composed in September (Wellesz 1925, 14). Schoenberg himself says that the sextet was composed in three weeks, but gives no specific dates (Schoenberg 1975, 55).[3] Zemlinsky tried to have the work performed at the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein, which had given the D-Major Quartet in the preceding season (1898–99), but the sextet was rejected (Zemlinsky 1934, 34). It was given its premiere by the Rosé Quartet (augmented by two players) in March 1902; the score was published, after many delays, by Verlag Dreililien in May 1905.[4]
From all this evidence, it seems logical to assume that the sextet was conceived and written during a relatively short span in September 1899, then was revised intermittently over the course of the fall, so that the complete score was finished on 1 December. Another tantalizing possibility is that the major revisions reflected in the manuscript were undertaken just over two years later in preparation for the first performance (no manuscript parts survive for this performance), or even later still, as Schoenberg was preparing the score for publication. The most likely scenario, however, is that the essential inspiration and creative work, as well as the most intensive revisions, took place in the late summer and fall of 1899, when the composer was strongly in the thrall of Dehmel's poetry.
It was suggested in the previous chapter that the Dehmel poem "Verklärte Nacht" is similar in several respects to "Erwartung" and is less sexually explosive than some of the other poems from Weib und Welt selected by Schoenberg in 1899. Like "Erwartung," "Verklärte Nacht" has a clear, almost rigidly symmetrical
[2] See chapter 2, n. 14, above.
[3] Willi Reich (Reich 1971, 7) misquotes Zemlinsky as saying, "In the summer of 1899 (during a holiday together in Payerbach) Schoenberg composed a sextet." In fact, Zemlinsky does not specify a date, implying only that the sextet was composed "soon after" the first performances of the D-Major Quartet (Zemlinsky 1934, 34).
[4] On the date of publication, see chapter 4, n. 7.
structure, in which the first, third, and fifth stanzas are spoken by an implied narrator, the second and fourth by one of the two protagonists:
Zwei Menschen gehn durch kahlen, kalten Hain;
der Mond läuft mit, sie schaun hinein.
Der Mond läuft über hohe Eichen,
kein Wölkchen trübt das Himmelslicht,
in das die schwarzen Zacken reichen.
Die Stimme eines Weibes spricht:
Ich trag ein Kind, und nit von dir,
ich geh in Sünde neben dir.
Ich hab mich schwer an mir vergangen;
ich glaubte nicht mehr an ein Glück
und hatte doch ein schwer Verlangen
nach Lebensfrucht, nach Mutterglück
und Pflicht—da hab ich mich erfrecht,
da ließ ich schauernd mein Geschlecht
von einem fremden Mann umfangen
und hab mich noch dafür gesegnet.
Nun hat das Leben sich gerächt,
nun bin ich dir, o dir begegnet.
Sie geht mit ungelenkem Schritt,
sie schaut empor, der Mond läuft mit;
ihr dunkler Blick ertrinkt in Licht.
Die Stimme eines Mannes spricht:
Das Kind, das du empfangen hast,
sei deiner Seele keine Last,
o sieh, wie klar das Weltall schimmert!
Es ist ein Glanz um Alles her,
du treibst mit mir auf kaltem Meer,
doch eine eigne Wärme flimmert
von dir in mich, von mir in dich;
dir wird das fremde Kind verklären,
du wirst es mir, von mir gebären,
du hast den Glanz in mich gebracht,
du hast mich selbst zum Kind gemacht.
Er faßt sie um die starken Hüften,
ihr Atem mischt sich in den Lüften,
zwei Menschen gehn durch hohe, helle Nacht.[5]
[5] The text is reproduced here as it appears in Dehmel's Weib und Welt (Berlin, 1896), 61–63. There are certain small variants between this version and that printed at the head of the score of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht.
Two people walk through the bare, cold woods; the moon runs along, they
gaze at it. The moon runs over tall oaks, no little cloud dulls the heavenly
light, into which the black points reach. A woman's voice speaks:
I bear a child, and not by you. I walk in sin alongside you. I have gone
seriously astray. I believed no longer in good fortune, yet still had a great
longing for a full life, for a mother's happiness and duty; then I became
reckless; horror-stricken, I let myself be taken by a stranger and even
blessed myself for it. Now life has taken its revenge: now have I met you,
oh, you.
She walks with clumsy gait. She gazes upward; the moon runs along. Her
somber glance drowns in the light. A man's voice speaks:
The child that you conceived, let it be no burden to your soul; oh, look,
how clear the universe glitters! There is a radiance about everything; you
drift along with me on a cold sea, yet a special warmth glimmers from you
in me, from me in you. It will transfigure the strange child, you will bear it
me, from me; you have brought the radiance into me, you have made me a
child myself.
He holds her around her strong hips. Their breath mingles in the air. Two
people walk through the high, clear night.
The poem was apparently conceived the day after Dehmel's first amorous encounter with Ida Auerbach in November 1895, and, except for the pregnancy, directly reflects that experience. In a letter of 30 November, he reminded her of "the moonlight" and asked, "Did you also feel it, this radiance [Glanz, as in the poem] coming through the clouds while I led you through the streets? You, me. Everything glowed [glänzte]" (Dehmel 1923, 224–25). Dehmel was proud of the structure of "Verklärte Nacht" and claimed to have found in it "the form for the new ballad, which owes nothing to the old-fashioned masquerade; it is a form that permits the entire life of a soul and human fate to be depicted in a thousand variations" (Dehmel 1923, 225). In fact, Dehmel was to go on to make "Verklärte Nacht" the model for (and the first poem in) an entire collection of poems with the same basic 36-line structure, Zwei Menschen: Ein Roman in Romanzen (1903).
Form in Verklärte Nacht
Cast in a single movement, and lasting just under half an hour, Verklärte Nacht is the most extensive, ambitious instrumental structure completed by Schoenberg up to this point. Its formal disposition has prompted divergent analytical perspectives. Webern, probably the earliest commentator, described Verklärte Nacht as simply "frei phantasierend" (Webern 1912, 23). Schoenberg's own discussion, written for record liner notes in 1950, seems to take a similar tack in that he does not explicitly treat the larger form, but rather associates certain specific musical
themes with portions of the poem.[6] In 1921, Wellesz proposed a more intimate relationship between the overall structure of the sextet and the Dehmel poem:
The structure of Verklärte Nacht, in accordance with the poem, is made up of five sections, in which the first, third, and fifth are of more epic nature and so portray the deep feelings of the people wandering about in the cold moonlit night. The second contains the passionate plaint of the woman, the fourth the sustained answer of the man, which shows much depth and warmth of understanding.
WELLESZ 1925, 67
In more schematic terms, what Wellesz proposes as the larger musical form of Verklärte Nacht is something corresponding to the five poetic stanzas as ABA'CA". A, A', and A" represent the more "epic" or narrative segments; B and C, the direct speeches of the protagonists. Wellesz's plan is persuasive, although the actual unfolding of the sextet is, of course, considerably more complex than the rondo-like scheme implied by the letter designations. As Carl Dahlhaus has suggested, "the rondo ground-plan, which gives the work formal support, is as it were covered with a web of thematic and motivic relationships, a web which becomes tighter and thicker as the work proceeds" (Dahlhaus 1987, 97). In other words, the different segments of Verklärte Nacht are closely related by motivic variation, and toward the end of the work earlier themes are recalled.[7]
The Wellesz-Dahlhaus analytical stance toward Verklärte Nacht is, I believe, the most reasonable one to assume, since it grants to the sextet a form that is musically coherent and yet at the same time reflective of the broader structure of the poem. Several commentators, however, including Wilhelm Pfannkuch and Richard Swift, have gone further in according to Verklärte Nacht a more purely musical shape, that of sonata form. In this respect, the sextet is seen implicitly as the successor of the forms of the D-Major Quartet and explicitly as the direct precursor of the large one-movement instrumental works Schoenberg composed in 1902–6, including Pelleas und Melisande, op. 5; the First Quartet, op. 7; and the First Chamber Symphony, op. 9.
In 1963, Pfannkuch suggested that Verklärte Nacht represents, if only "vorstufenhaft," Schoenberg's first attempt to blend sonata form with a larger structure resembling the standard four-movement format. According to Pfannkuch, the sextet consists of two principal themes (mm. 1–49); a transition (50–104); a sec-
[6] Schoenberg's commentary appears in the booklet accompanying the Columbia recording The Music of Arnold Schoenberg, vol. 2. It is excerpted in Bailey 1984, 31–34.
[7] On the relationships between the poem and motivic and formal procedures in Verklärte Nacht, see also Schmidt 1978, 181–84.
ondary theme (105–31); a "development" (132–80); a brief "reprise" (181–87); a transition, further reprise, and more transition (188–228); an inserted "adagio" movement (229–369); and a reprise/coda (370–418) (Pfannkuch 1963, 269–70). (The exact measure numbers, although not given in Pfannkuch's analysis, have been added here.)
In 1977, Swift argued that Verklärte Nacht consists of a pair of sonata forms, preceded by an introduction, linked by a transition, and followed by a coda (Swift 1977, 7). In this plan, the A, A', and A" segments of the Wellesz-Dahlhaus scheme constitute, respectively, the introduction, transition, and coda; the B and C portions become the two sonata forms. Swift's analysis remains highly problematic on the detailed level, essentially because it employs the traditional labels of sonata form without arguing effectively for their applicability. Rather than being passed over quickly, however, his analysis should be dealt with at some length because it raises issues of formal structure important to an understanding not only of Schoenberg's early music, but of much of the post-Wagnerian instrumental repertory.
There are three major problems with Swift's approach. First, as even he admits, Schoenberg's sextet is lacking in much of the tonal polarity that lies at the basis of sonata form even late into the nineteenth century. Not only is there "an astonishing absence of emphasis upon the dominant as a large-scale tonal area" (Swift 1977, 9), but there is no consistent dominant substitute. (As will be suggested below, the dominant does play a significant role in the latter part of the sextet, but not as a large-scale key area.) Second, as Klaus Kropfinger has observed, it seems misleading for Swift to relegate what is really the primary thematic material of the sextet—material that returns prominently in the first violin of the "second group" of Sonata II—to an "introduction," "transition," and "coda," terms that imply secondary status (Kropfinger 1984, 142). Third, the proportions of the various sections in Swift's "sonatas" are suspiciously unbalanced, and his partitioning tends to obscure other more plausible interior formal arrangements. For example, the "bridge" of his Sonata I lasts 42 measures, longer than either the first or second groups, and its supposed boundaries override or obscure a clear A (mm. 50–62) B (63–68) A' (69–74) thematic-formal structure (involving what I call themes 3a and 3b; see below, ex. 5.1), which is followed by a new theme (4a) at m. 75. In Swift's analysis, theme 3a appears in the "first group," while the contrasting 3b (stepwise and chromatic) and the return of 3a are relegated to the bridge.
Swift acknowledges that the second sonata incorporates thematic material from the first, but his diagram does not adequately reflect the way or the places in which earlier themes are brought in. All of mm. 229–44 is lumped in the "first group," although an important articulation point is surely provided in m. 236 by the entrance of the theme from m. 29 (2a). The "bridge" of the second sonata is
surprisingly brief—only five measures—by comparison with the earlier bridge. While the broad theme in
At issue here is the necessity of invoking sonata form at all, when so many distortions are required to make it fit. A brief comparison may be appropriate between Verklärte Nacht and a roughly contemporary programmatic work, Strauss's Don Juan (1889). Though the medium and the mood differ, both works are in a single movement of about the same length. In both works the poetic source is printed at the front of the score and could be said to bear a similar relationship to the musical form.[8] Yet Don Juan is much more closely tied to principles of sonata form (see Hepokoski 1992, 192ff.). The first 148 measures form a clear "exposition." The bold E-major theme of m. 9 functions as a first theme, and the first group closes with a firm cadence on the tonic at m. 40 (rehearsal letter B ). This is followed by a transition based on the first theme and some new material, leading up to the strong preparation of a contrasting key beginning at m. 71 (D ). The preparation involves an extended V/V pedal (
In fact, Strauss provides no development as traditional in design as the preceding exposition. Instead, he moves to a stable G (minor, then major) and introduces three new themes (m. 199, K; m. 236, L; m. 299, N). The G then serves as dominant to the bold horn theme presented in C (actually, first on G as dominant) at m. 316. Only after this are earlier themes combined and fragmented in the manner of a classical-romantic development section. This section concludes with an extremely long dominant pedal (mm. 425–49, 459–75) that clearly suggests "retransition." The recapitulation, beginning at m. 476 (W ), is truncated but unmistakable: it incorporates the first theme and the horn theme, both in the tonic.
Even allowing for Strauss's imaginative reworkings of the standard form from
[8] Walter Bailey (1984, 28) has suggested that Schoenberg did not initially want to include the poem with the printed score. The evidence to which Bailey points is a letter of 2 August 1905 in which Schoenberg's publisher. Max Marschalk of Verlag Dreililien, urges him to furnish the program ("raus mit dem Programm"). This letter, however, refers, not to Verklärte Nacht, which had already been published in May (see chapter 4, n. 7, above), but to Pelleas und Melisande, a score the composer was trying to persuade Marschalk to accept for publication. The letter is part of the extensive correspondence from Marschalk in the Schoenberg Collection of the Library of Congress. What we do know about the poem and the sextet (gleaned from contemporary reviews) is that at the premiere of Verklärte Nacht in March 1902, the text was distributed only to critics, not to the general public.
the "development" on, Don Juan is much more clearly shaped by sonata principles than is Verklärte Nacht. (It is not surprising that Strauss presents a very traditional exposition before beginning to deviate from the formal model.) For one thing, the fashion in which Strauss lays out broad diatonic key areas and sustains them—at least in the background—for long periods is characteristic of sonata form, as are the prominent tonic-dominant relationships. The surface of Schoenberg's sextet is much more chromatic and—pace Swift—any diatonic background is less audible. Schoenberg also annexes (as will be seen) a greater number of key regions, and they tend to be more remote from the tonic than Strauss's keys (even than his G-C harmonic axis).
Another important difference involves the number of themes. Strauss's exposition is normative (even restrictive) in this regard: one main theme for the first "group," one for the second. Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht is, as we shall see below, characterized by a relative profusion of themes, most of them very brief. There are no fewer than five theme groups in the first part, some comprising two or more distinct ideas. To pigeonhole some of these into a "first group," others into a "bridge," others into a "second group," is fundamentally to falsify the thematic and formal processes of the sextet.
There is no question, however, that Verklärte Nacht employs certain techniques and has certain sections that are reminiscent of sonata form (as Pfannkuch suggests). The presentation and unfolding of themes up to m. 132 fulfills an "expository" function. The broad theme in E major at m. 105 (5a) can be heard to resemble a "second theme" because it is preceded both by more agitated developmental (transitional) material characteristic of a "bridge" and by dominant preparation. Even though there is considerable motivic variation and development, the portion of the sextet up to m. 132 is clearly different in nature from what follows, up to m. 180. This latter part functions and sounds like a "development," because of an almost schematic use of modulation, sequence, thematic fragmentation, and contrapuntal combination. The segment from m. 370 on, in which various earlier themes are combined in the tonic major, clearly acts as a kind of reprise or "recapitulation." But to try to force Verklärte Nacht into a sonata form (or two) is to create a Procrustean bed (or twin beds) that the material simply will not fit.
Thematic Style and Structure
Verklärte Nacht can more accurately be said to be shaped by thematic processes and large-scale harmonic procedures lying largely outside the sonata tradition. The thematic material in Verklärte Nacht is unfolded by continuous transformation that is more malleable and subtle than anything we have seen in Schoenberg's earlier works. Example 5.1 presents the basic thematic ideas; the numbering bears
Example 5.1
Verklärte Nacht, op. 4, principal themes.
no relation to sonata-form "groups," but attempts to reflect the way themes are clustered in the sextet, where sections tend to be separated off from one another by such articulative features as distinct ritardandos (as at m. 28, before 2a), fermatas (as at m. 49, before 3a), changes of meter (as at mm. 74—75, before 4a), or modulation and dominant preparation (mm. 100–4, before 5a). For ease of reference I shall refer to the section of the sextet that extends up to the arrival in D major in m. 229 as part I and to everything thereafter as part II. It is hoped this broad partitioning will be as uncontroversial as possible, so as to allow the thematic connections and processes to "speak for themselves." In ex. 5.1 the themes of each part of the sextet are aligned vertically to show relationships and derivations as clearly as possible. Relationships not easily or conveniently demonstrable in the example are suggested by "cf." and are explained more fully in the prose commentary that follows below. The example makes no attempt to show an entire thematic statement (or the harmonic context), but only the basic unit from which Schoenberg works.
It is one of the distinctive features of Verklärte Nacht that the basic thematic kernels tend to be very brief, usually only a measure long. A frequent pattern (as in themes 2a, 3a, and 5a) is a twofold presentation of the one-measure unit, which is then extended by means of sequence or variation. This practice represents a kind of compression and modification of the classical-romantic thematic structure that Schoenberg was to call a "sentence," in which a unit (usually of two measures) is first presented on the tonic, then on the dominant, and then "developed" and "liquidated" in a continuation (usually in four measures). The overall proportion is thus 1:1:2, or 2:2:4 (see Schoenberg 1967, 58–59). The themes of Verklärte Nacht differ significantly from this model in that the repetition is normally not on the dominant, but at the original pitch level; harmonic motion takes place in the continuation. The short thematic units of Verklärte Nacht serve to give part I of the piece a somewhat breathless, urgent quality unlike anything in Schoenberg's earlier instrumental work, but rather like the motivically intense Dehmel songs of 1899, especially Warnung.
Two other features are particularly characteristic of part I of the sextet: the themes tend to appear in pairs (indicated as "a" and "b" in the example), and the initial theme of each of the first three groups (1a, 2a, and 3a) is in the lower register, from which the range tends to rise during the unfolding of a section. Theme Ia is clearly intended to be somewhat "neutral" and introductory. It is characterized by the stepwise descent from the sixth to the first degree of the D-minor scale and by the dotted rhythms of the second and fourth beats. The dotted rhythm continues through mm. 9–10, then forms part of theme Ib, which can be heard as an elaboration of Ia; like la it has an upbeat, followed by a quarter note on the downbeat, then a dotted rhythm, then a longer note value. Theme Ib also prominently features the first and sixth degrees, now heard in disjunct
form rather than connected by a stepwise scale. Theme IC shares with Ia the upbeat moving down a half-step to a quarter note on the downbeat. As in both Ia and Ib, the second beat involves some kind of diminution—the dotted rhythm has now been fleshed out to four sixteenths—and the third beat has a longer note value.
Theme 2a, the woman's agitated first theme, is distinctly (and appropriately) different in mood from the theme I family, but the relationships are still strong. The theme returns to the low register of Ia, whose
In the third measure of 2a, the
Theme 3a, presented in
3a, mm. 50–62
3b, mm. 63–68
3a', mm. 69–74
4a, mm. 75–78
4b, mm. 79–82
4a', mm. 83–86
4b', mm. 87–90
Sequential development of 4a, mm. 91–99
Transition / introduction to 5a, mm. 100–104
5a, mm. 105–10
5b, mm. 111–14
5a', mm. 115–20
5b', mm. 121–23
Sequential development of 4a and 5b, mm. 124–32
What is perhaps most striking about this segment is the close relationship among the "b" themes. Theme 3b consists of descending semitones culminating in a turn figure; 4b keeps the semitone descent
The unfolding of the paired theme groups 3 and 4 seems so logical and persuasive that it is hard to imagine any other possible ordering. But the autograph manuscript of Verklärte Nacht (at the Library of Congress) reveals that Schoenberg originally set down the themes in a different arrangement:
3a (the present mm. 50–60)
3b (mm. 63–68)
4a (mm. 75–78)
4b (mm. 79–82)
4a' (mm. 83–86)
4b' (mm. 87–90)
3a' (mm. 69–74)
Sequential development of 4a, mm. 91–99
In this ordering, 3a' is separated off from 3a and 3b and inserted before the sequential development of 4a. It seems clear that Schoenberg conceived both 3a' and the sequential development of 4a as passages that would together form a kind of continuous development or developmental transition leading up to theme 5a. But he reconsidered this scheme, perhaps deciding that despite the close thematic relationship between 3a and 4a, 3a' would remain too isolated amidst all the material from the theme 4 group; or, to look at it the other way around, that 3a' would interrupt the continuous flow of theme 4 material.[9]
By moving 3a' back to just after 3b (and by adding the present mm. 60–62 between 3a and 3b), Schoenberg thus created a rounded ternary structure for the theme 3 group and a more plausible sequence from two presentations of the 4a–4b pair into a sequential development based on 4a. It could be said that the final arrangement "de-sonatifies" the passage. Where the original ordering tends to group developmental or transitional gestures together, the revision spreads them out so that each theme group has its own developmental segment and is more self-contained.
To return to the final version: given the constant and fluid evolution of thematic shapes and the relative lack of exact repetition up to this point in Verklärte Nacht, the presentation of 3b, 4b, and 5b—especially the identity between the latter two—has a powerful effect. It is almost as if the thematic discourse of the sextet is beginning to collapse, to double back on itself. And, indeed, the discourse does in a sense break down here with the collapse onto to the octave Ds at m. 132, followed by the awesome drop to the low unison E. This is the moment that marks the start of what is often called the "development."
Schoenberg introduces relatively few new themes in part II of Verklärte Nacht, largely because there is considerable recapitulation or reappearance of themes from part I. There is also less of an emphasis on paired or multiple theme groups. In general, the new themes of part II are broader and less chromatic than those of part I, although several of them still show a preoccupation with semitone movement. Themes 6 and 7a, both distinctly associated with the man, are closely
[9] The reshuffling of material in this section of Verkärte Nacht is discussed briefly in Stephan 1974, 270.
related. Theme 6 is so limpidly diatonic that the chromatic passing note in the accompanying voice in m. 232 (
Theme 7a relates not only to its immediate predecessor, but also to the numerous themes in part I that juxtapose a dissonant leap (here
The theme in
Schoenberg's basic strategy in part II of the sextet appears to be to increase the associations with part I across themes 7a–10, then to pull back for one especially distinctive final theme (11). The "recapitulation" continues with the return of the first theme of part II, theme 6, which in turn ushers in the actual return of theme 1a, in combination with 7a and 10, at m. 370. While some of these compositional procedures can be seen clearly to relate to traditional instrumental forms, the actual thematic-formal structure of both parts of Verklärte Nacht is sui generis.
Tonal-Harmonic Relationships
Equally distinctive is the web of harmonic or tonal relationships from which the sextet is spun. Throughout, Schoenberg explores the possible intersections between what might be called diatonic/dominant and chromatic/half-step worlds. By diatonic/dominant I mean those relationships that revolve mainly around the tonic-dominant axis, especially V-I (or V-I). Although, as Swift notes, the dominant is absent as a "large-scale key area" in Verklärte Nacht, it is nonetheless present as a significant harmonic force, especially in the recapitulatory portions of part II (as will be seen below, in the next section). Other significant relationships are based primarily on half-step motion around certain important pitches or key areas—hence the designation chromatic/half-step.
It has been suggested above how half-steps are also important motivic elements in many of the individual themes. This phenomenon, and its relation to the larger tonal dimension of the sextet, was articulated by Schoenberg himself in a remarkable two-page analytical document entitled "Konstruktives in der Verklärten Nacht," which was written out, as the composer notes on the manuscript, "on a sleepless night" in Barcelona in 1932 (see plate 1).[10] This document, which offers a good starting point for a consideration of tonal aspects of the sextet, consists of ten numbered examples (and several other unnumbered ones), each of which demonstrates the larger-scale harmonic resonances of semitones within the themes:
|
[10] The "Konstruktives" manuscript has been reproduced and briefly discussed twice before, in Thieme 1979, 216–21; and Bailey, 1984, 31–32 and 36–37.
[11] See the remarks reported by Dika Newlin in Newlin 1978, 214, and Newlin 1980, 229.
Plates 1A and 1B
"Konstruktives in der Verklärten Nacht," manuscript reproduced by permission of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute.
|
|
At the bottom of page 2 Schoenberg notes that "of all these motivic and structural connections, I was conscious only of those under III a-b-c-c1. Everything else was the diligent effort of my brain, working 'behind my back,' without seeking my approval."[12] In other words, Schoenberg claims to have intended only the symmetrical circumscription of the tonic a half-step above and below. (In the reports of Dika Newlin, however, Schoenberg is said to have claimed not to have been aware of this structural principle while composing. See Newlin 1978, 213–14; Newlin 1980, 229.)
Schoenberg frequently praised the power of his own subconscious in creating musical relationships (see, for example, Schoenberg 1975, 85–86). What should concern us here is less their documentable intentionality (or lack thereof) than their significance within the composition. Some of Schoenberg's observations in the "Konstruktives" analysis seem of minor importance for Verklärte Nacht —for instance, the demonstration in example VIII that certain notes of theme 7a outline
[12] The German reads: "Von all diesen motivischen und konstruktiven Zusammenhängen war mir nur die unter III a-b-c-c1 bewußt. Alles andere sind Fleißaufgaben meines Hirns, die es 'hinter meinem Rücken' gemacht hat, ohne meine Zustimmung einzuholen." I am grateful to Anita Lügenbuhl for help with the transcription of Schoenberg's handwriting.
analytical premise of "Konstruktives"—that Verklärte Nacht is built on both the large and small scale around a few specific tonal relationships—is undoubtedly appropriate. The areas surrounding the tonic by semitone from below and above,
Especially significant at the opening of the sextet are the symmetrical relationships pointed out by Schoenberg in the small example at the far right of II: those deriving from the half-step above the fifth degree,
Across the first fifty measures of the sextet, then, Schoenberg has reversed the original roles of the
The half-step manipulation is one part of a broader harmonic strategy at the opening of Verklärte Nacht. This strategy seems to have two goals: gradually to infiltrate a purely diatonic D-minor sound with chromatic tones and to unfold a large-scale cadential structure whose basic root motion is i-ii-V-i, as is suggested in ex. 5.2. Let us consider first the chromatic infiltration. As the opening section unfolds, the diatonicism is sustained, not only by the tonic triad, but by the subdominant-type chord, the half-diminished ii7 . This harmony is familiar from several of the songs examined in the previous chapter: the reader will also recall that it formed the central Klang around which Mädchenfrühling was shaped. It
[13] A stimulating essay about the function and the context of the "inverted ninth" chord in Verklärte Nacht is Lewin 1987.
Example 5.2
Verklärte Nacht, mm. 1–29, harmonic reduction.
likewise forms the most important non-tonic sonority in the first section of Verklärte Nacht. The first significant intimation comes at the sustained, double-dotted quarter note in mm. 5–6, the longest melodic note value up to this point. Locally, the E and G of this chord are upper neighbors to the D-F of the tonic triad; but if we add an implied or inferred
In m. 9, Schoenberg introduces the first non-diatonic pitch. The leading tone
Schoenberg has distinctly upped the level of dissonance: as the dominant of the leading tone, this
From m. 17 on, the dissonance level is intensified still further. The bass at last moves definitively off the D, rising chromatically up to the E. This E supports a ii7 chord with a raised fifth (
the piece. The sequence of mm. 22–23 is, like what has preceded it, based on vagrant chords, the diminished and half-diminished sevenths, and we end up in m. 24 on the familiar
From the viewpoint of root motion, the large cadential structure that extends over the first section of Verklärte Nacht is twice interrupted: i–ii-V // ii-V // ii-V-i (ex. 5.2). But, as I have suggested, this tonal scaffolding is by no means straight-forward or conventional, since the diatonic roots, very much as in mm. 14–17 of the song Jesus bettelt, often support vagrant chords. The cadential framework is also unusual in that the pre-dominant ii chord gets considerably more weight than the dominant by virtue of its presence in mm. 11–12, 18–20, and 24–27. The dominant pitch A never supports or is supported by an actual dominant harmony: in mm. 13–17, a D pedal underlies the "dominant hexachord" in the melodic voices; in mm. 18–21 the chords above the bass A are half-diminished and diminished; and in m. 28 there is no harmonization of the A at all.
The dominant withheld in the first section becomes more apparent—indeed, insistent—in the theme 2 group, mm. 29–49. Here the half-diminished ii chord returns in mm. 34–38, where the ascending stepwise bass outlines the diminished fifth
The Tonal-Formal Structure and Revisions of Part II
One of the most intriguing aspects of the large-scale design of Verklärte Nacht is the way in which Schoenberg sets about establishing the tonic major in part II, a process that forms a complement or corollary to the thematic plan discussed above, whereby part II takes on an increasingly recapitulatory function. The half-step approaches to D major of which Schoenberg was so proud, as represented in example III of plate 1, tell only part of the story. The actual confirmation of D takes place through strong dominant preparation, of the kind hinted at, but then left unfulfilled, before m. 50. Both Verklärte Nacht as we know it and the revisions evident in the autograph suggest that Schoenberg was entirely confident neither about how much dominant was necessary to assure closure, nor just
Example 5.3
Verklärte Nacht, key areas and dominant preparations in part II.
where the dominant should be applied. If there is any compositional weakness in the sextet, it lies in this area.
After the initial presentation of D major at m. 229, D is given dominant preparation (or at least persuasive cadential preparation) four different times in part II, as shown in the tonal overview in ex. 5.3. The first instance is at the approach to theme 11, where the tonic is actually withheld and the A7 resolves to
The autograph of Verklärte Nacht reveals that Schoenberg originally included yet a fifth passage of dominant preparation near the very end, comprising ten measures between what are now mm. 406 and 407 (ex. 5.5). Here the dominant gathers force during a big crescendo in the last five measures, then resolves to a subito pianissimo at m. 407. These ten measures are indicated for deletion in the autograph, and the present mm. 406 and 407 are linked together by the marks "VI-" and "-DE." Although Schoenberg rightly came to sense the redundancy of this passage, we might regret its omission especially because of the striking fashion in which the A7 is approached; in mm. 5–6 of the deleted passage, it is approached directly from the
Although he eliminated this redundancy, Schoenberg decided to let stand another that is much more striking and has greater formal ramifications: the triple forte climax of mm. 338–40 is replicated quite closely by the "Sehr gross" of mm. 391–93 (ex. 5.4b, d). At least one sensitive musician was disturbed by this "double" climax. In 1943, while preparing a performance of the string orchestra arrangement of Verklärte Nacht, the conductor Bruno Walter wrote to the composer to point out the repetition and to request a large cut, comprising the omission of my ex. 5.4b and the subsequent 46 measures leading up to ex. 5.4d. He
Example 5.4
Verklärte Nacht, dominant preparations of D.
noted, "For me it will create a difficulty in performance that the soulful development that follows these measures [338–42] of definitive status ends up in the same measures."[14] Even if Schoenberg could not approve such a large cut, asks Walter, would he consider eliminating the developmental-sequential passage in mm. 378–89? "Don't you find," he wrote, "that all conflicts have already been
[14] Letter in the Schoenberg Collection at the Library of Congress, dated 18 December 1943. The original reads: "Das die seelenvolle Entwicklung, die diesen Takten des Definitiven folgt, in die gleichen Takte muendet, wird mir . . . auch zum Auffuehrungsproblem."
Example 5.4
continued
Example 5.5
Verklärte Nacht, passage of dominant preparation deleted from autograph (reduction).
resolved with the passage at m. 338, so that here [at m. 378] we have attained spiritual readiness for the coda [probably mm. 401ff.]?"[15]
No reply from Schoenberg survives, but to judge from a subsequent letter from Walter, and from responses made by Schoenberg to other similar requests, the composer absolutely refused to join what he had in 1918 called the "cutting conspiracy" (Schoenberg 1964, 54). At that time, when Zemlinsky had requested a similar large-scale cut in Pelleas und Melisande (to be discussed in chapter 7), Schoenberg replied:
I am against removing tonsils although I know one can somehow manage to go on living even without arms, legs, nose, eyes, tongue, ears, etc. In my
[15] The original German reads: "Finden Sie nicht, dass alle Konflikthafte bereits mit der Periode um 338 geloest ist, so dass wir hier bereits die seelische Bereitschaft für die Coda erreicht haben?"
view that sort of bare survival isn't always important enough to warrant changing something in the programme of the Creator who, on the great rationing day, allotted us so and so many arms, legs, ears and other organs. And so I hold the view that a work doesn't have to live, i.e., be performed, at all costs either, not if it means losing parts of it that may even be ugly or faulty but which it was born with.
SCHOENBERG 1964, 54
Schoenberg obviously felt the same in the case of his sextet. He may also have felt that the "double" climax is no redundancy: although the passages at mm. 338–40 and 391–93 are similar, each leads into very different material. The first culminates in theme 6, the second in the chromatic progression taken over from mm. 41–45. Thus, the first returns us only to the beginning of part II of the sextet; the second takes us back further, to a significant element of part I, an element that, moreover, served as a climactic conclusion to part I in mm. 181–84. The chromatic progressions at mm. 181–84 and 394–97 therefore occupy analogous positions near the endings of parts I and II respectively. And, of course, only at the latter occurrence does the
It may be as hard for us as it was for Schoenberg to envision a reduction of 54 measures, or about 13 percent, in a work as seemingly compact as Verklärte Nacht. But Walter, a sensitive musician, was definitely on to something. What he isolated with his proposed cut was, in a sense, a symptom of Schoenberg's main compositional problem or task in part II of the sextet: the establishment of the tonic D major by means of its own dominant, and the concomitant fulfillment of the demands of the chromatic/half-step relationships.
The basic tonal structure of part II is outlined above in ex. 5.3. Initially, the large-scale key structure appears to point toward a symmetrical division of the D octave into major thirds:
After the D major of theme 6, the first tonal region touched upon is
Example 5.6
Derivation and function of the German sixth chord.
moves on toward F major at m. 291 (the harmony becomes more stable at m. 294). This F major leads on to the most developmental/sequential passage in part II, which culminates fortissimo on the A7 harmony of mm. 316–19. It is this harmony that resolves directly to the
This resolution represents the nexus of Schoenberg's chromatic and diatonic strategies in Verklärte Nacht, especially in part II: A7 , ostensibly the dominant of D, is redefined as the German sixth of
It is striking how the German sixth-tonic resolution not only introduces theme II, but becomes an integral part of it. The half-cadence that ends the first phrase in m. 322 is made not to the dominant, but to the German sixth (see ex. 5.4a). This progression is repeated in m. 324 and three more times at the climax in mm. 332–36. The goal of what follows could be said to restore to A its rightful function as the dominant of D. The process begins in earnest at m. 337, where the chromatic progression containing the A7 is at last pushed sequentially up a halfstep (see ex. 5.4b), thus reaching
In fact, the rehabilitation of the dominant is not completed at the approach to D at mm. 337–42. The bass resolves down to A, but not to a dominant seventh; instead, the A passes swiftly to a sustained G, which supports a subdominant type of sonority (ii6 on the downbeat of m. 339). The actual cadence to D in mm. 342–43 is made not via its own dominant, but from the subdominant. Only after the harmonic energy of the preceding
The autograph manuscript of Verklärte Nacht suggests that the harmonic elegance of part II was not easily achieved. While part I was written out with relatively few revisions (the most significant have been discussed above), Schoenberg apparently found it more difficult to balance the various demands of tonal resolution and thematic recapitulation in part II. Beside the removal of ten measures of dominant in the coda, discussed above (ex. 5.5), there are several other important revisions that relate specifically to the
The first revision involves the approach to theme 11. The present mm. 310–19 represent an actual addition or interpolation; in the earlier layer represented in the autograph, theme 11 (m. 320) was approached directly from something like the present m. 309, as shown in ex. 5.7a.[18] The
The most important changes come within theme II itself and in the "half-step" approach to D major. In the earlier version evident in the autograph, the second three-measure phrase of the theme is identical to the first; in the revision Schoenberg changes the
[17] In addition to the autograph manuscript for Verklärte Nacht, there survive four loose pages of sketches (numbered 984–87 at the Schoenberg Institute), most of which concern revisions for part II and were probably made in conjunction with changes evident in the autograph.
[18] In the autograph, all of the present mm. 309–44—incorporating the sequential passage just before the fortissimo A , theme ll itself, and the first big resolution to D major—are contained on a large Einlage that was inserted by Schoenberg into the manuscript between the numbered pages 26 and 27. Of the music on the Einlage, only mm. 310–19 represent an actual addition; the rest served to replace passages crossed out by Schoenberg. Measures 310–19 are also sketched or drafted on p. 987 of the sketches.
Example 5.7
Verklärte Nacht, passages from autograph (reductions).
second full measure in ex. 5.7b) is harmonized, not with a
Schoenberg's revision makes this passage much more powerful, not only by eliminating the seesawing and by focusing the harmonic motion, but by adding powerful metrical expansion and contraction. In mm. 331–35, the notated
The actual approach to and arrival on D major (cf. ex. 5.4b) are also handled very differently in the early version represented in the autograph, as shown in ex. 5.7c. The
The immediate aftermath and confirmation of the D-major arrival, corresponding to mm. 344–55, remained unchanged from the early to the final version, but the continuation from the present m. 356 was originally quite different. Especially significant or suggestive is that in the early version there is no hint of the elegant contrapuntal recapitulation of themes now at m. 370 (see ex. 5.4c). Instead, the developmental/sequential passage following m. 356 culminates in a return of theme 11 in the tonic, D major (ex. 5.7d). At this point, the autograph trails off to a single line, then after theme 11 breaks off altogether. Yet as far as
[19] The revision of theme 11 (melodic line only) is drafted on p. 985 of the sketches. This seems to represent an intermediate stage between the early and final versions in the autograph. The sequential seesawing has been eliminated, but the metrical expansion and contraction are not yet evident.
it goes, the early draft clearly suggests that Schoenberg planned to "recapitulate" theme II in the tonic, something that does not occur in the final version of the sextet.
As he came to a halt here and rethought his compositional strategy, Schoenberg must have realized that theme 11, first heard in
Thus it can be said that even in its final form, the sextet still reveals something of Schoenberg's struggle to achieve adequate formal, thematic, and harmonic closure. None of this takes away from the work's status as a masterpiece. In Verklärte Nacht, composed only two years after the D-Major Quartet, Schoenberg was working for the first time with a freer, extended instrumental form. To this endeavor, he brought (and to later such endeavors would continue to bring) all his basic instincts for assuring tonal and formal coherence, instincts that had only recently been put into the service of much more conservative, traditional forms.
Chapter Six—
Gurrelieder (1900–1901)
During the year following the completion of Verklärte Nacht in December 1899, Schoenberg was occupied principally with Gurrelieder, which evolved into his most ambitious composition to date. The broad outlines of the chronology of Gurrelieder were provided by Schoenberg to Berg when the latter was preparing his Gurrelieder-Führer, in which Schoenberg is cited directly (Berg 1913, 18). The genesis as described by Schoenberg can be summarized as follows:
March 1900: parts I, II, and "much of part III" composed
March 1901: part III completed
August 1901: orchestration begun
Mid 1902: orchestration continued
1903: orchestration continued up to ca. p. 105 of vocal score (near beginning of part III)
July 1910: orchestration completed up to final chorus
1911: final chorus completed
Although Schoenberg's chronology is probably in most respects accurate, it must be amended slightly in light of the piano-vocal drafts for the first nine songs (at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute), which bear dates in the composer's hand entered from March through 14 April 1900 and thus suggest that at least through mid April of that year, he was occupied almost exclusively with this portion of part I. The dates appear on songs 1, 3, 4, and 5 as follows (with the original keys):
|
|
Although Schoenberg stopped dating these manuscripts after song 5, we can reasonably assume that the first intensive compositional activity on Gurrelieder unfolded over the early spring of 1900. The portion composed at this time can be seen to draw together the major tendencies of the preceding Dehmeljahr: an interest in song, a desire to grapple with large-scale structures (as reflected in Verklärte Nacht), and intensive involvement with the work of a single poet. As before, Schoenberg's poetic enthusiasm was shared (and perhaps stimulated) by Zemlinsky, who also worked with Jacobsen texts at this time.[1]
It can be established with some certainty that Schoenberg did not first approach Gurrelieder as a lyric-dramatic whole; rather, he chose the first nine poems, which alternate between Waldemar and Tove, as the basis of a piano-accompanied song cycle. In his comprehensive dissertation on Gurrelieder, Simon Trezise has established, through consultation of the records of the Wiener Tonküntlerverein, that a competition for piano-accompanied song cycles had been announced in late 1899 or early 1900, and that about forty entries were submitted (Trezise 1987, 20). Zemlinsky, who was apparently to be one of the judges, recalled later:
Schoenberg, who wanted to win the prize, composed a few songs after poems by Jacobsen. I played them for him. . . . The songs were wonderful and truly original, but we both had the impression that precisely on that account they would have little chance of winning the prize. Schoenberg nevertheless went on to compose the whole large cycle of Jacobsen. But no longer for a single voice; he added large choruses, a melodrama, preludes, and interludes, and the whole was set for gigantic orchestra.
ZEMLINSKY 1934, 35
[1] There are three settings of Jacobsen in Zemlinsky's Lieder sets opp. 7 and 8, probably composed in 1900 (see Oncley 1977, 297–98). There is also a Jacobsen poem in Zemlinsky's op. 10 (probably composed in 1901).
In a remark reported by Dika Newlin, Schoenberg observed (in 1940) that he had begun the work as a cycle of nine songs for piano and voice but then "finished them half a week too late for the contest and this decided the fate of the work!" (Newlin 1980, 225). The excuse of the late completion date has a somewhat different implication from Zemlinsky's assertion that Schoenberg withheld the songs because they were unlikely to win. Nevertheless, it is clear from these various bits of verbal evidence, as well as from the manuscript materials, that Schoenberg did begin Gurrelieder as a cycle for soprano and tenor consisting of the first nine songs of the present work, without the transitions. It is not absolutely determinable from these sources just when Schoenberg's conception changed from that of a nine-song, piano-accompanied cycle to the massive cantata-like Gurrelieder that we know today. (In the drafts, the 16-stave paper, used by Schoenberg from the beginning, changes to a larger format only in "Die wilde Jagd," but as Trezise points out [1987, 26], parts of the draft of the Wood Dove's song are not executable at the keyboard.) In any case, that evolution must have occurred within a short span of time in the spring of 1900.
The poetic source, Gurresange, written by Jacobsen (in Danish) in 1868–69, had appeared posthumously in 1886. In 1897 the Gurresange were included in a collection of his poems published in a German translation (as Gurrelieder) by Robert Franz Arnold. These translations, further amended by Arnold, were taken over into a larger three-volume German edition, which appeared in 1898 (Glienke 1975, 22–23, 39). Trezise has established definitively that it was the original 1897 translation that served as the source for the Jacobsen settings of both Schoenberg and Zemlinsky (Trezise 1987, 57, 68, 85–86).
In the Danish original, the nineteen individual poems of Gurrelieder are arranged into nine divisions articulated by Roman numerals:
|
|
Although the Roman numerals were removed in the German translation used by Schoenberg, the divisions were retained by means of extra line spaces between the original groupings. This somewhat asymmetrical arrangement of the poems points up the diverse, highly heterodox nature of the Gurrelieder, which embraces a variety of literary styles and genres. Bernhard Glienke has suggested in his excellent study of the poetry that the cycle is
a lyrical-dramatic-musical development of the traditional northern romance cycle toward a concentration characteristic of the Singspiel. It functions as a seamless transition between romanticism, Biedermeier, and symbolism. With its folk-song strophic forms [parts I and II], with Edda pastiche [part VI], with Knittelvers[2] and madrigal verse, it reaches far back into tradition. With its four Lieder in free rhythms [poems 3–5 of part V; poem 7 of part VIII] . . . it partakes in the development of modern poetry.
GLIENKE 1975, 201–2
Jacobsen's divisions correspond essentially to scene-like articulations within the larger cycle. Glienke further groups these "scenes" into "acts." His act 1, which he calls "The Monologues," comprises Jacobsen's I–IV. Act 2, corresponding to the poet's V, is "The Dialogues." Act 3, called rather loosely "Hawk and Dove; King and Fool," comprises VI and VII. Act 4, "Die Nacht," comprises VIII; and act 5, "Morning," IX. Whatever the larger articulation that a reader can discern, it is clear that Jacobsen's cycle combines lyrical and dramatic or narrative elements in a distinctive fashion, one that Glienke aptly characterizes as filmic:
Instead of stage scenes and acts, we might speak rather of different camera positions, so that, for example, Waldemar's ride to Gurre [IV] and the whole "Wild Hunt" [VIII] are presented more from the angle of characters in motion, [and] the introductory poems [I–III] and "Together" [V] from that of the fixed camera. The sudden scene changes are like film "cuts."
GLIENKE 1975, 180
[2] According to the Oxford Companion to German Literature (Garland 1976, 478), Knittelvers is a verse form first used in the fifteenth century and then revived in the late eighteenth. In it, four stresses occur with an irregular number of unstressed syllables, varying from four to eleven. The lines usually occur in rhyming pairs.
Example 6.1
Gurrelieder, large-scale key structure of songs 1–9.
Schoenberg's Gurrelieder shows him to have been highly responsive to many of the kinds of techniques and devices outlined by Glienke. For the purposes of the present study, we shall concentrate only on "acts" 1 and 2—that is, the first nine songs. It is in the formal, thematic, and harmonic aspects of this portion of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder that we see most clearly a connection with, and growth from, the songs and instrumental music of 1899. The more overtly dramatic and extended sections, especially part III, are necessarily less coherent as closed formal and lyrical structures.
The Large-Scale Design of Songs 1–9
Although Schoenberg abandoned his original plan for a nine-song cycle, the first nine numbers made—and in the final form still make—a nicely rounded entity beginning and ending in the key of
Within the
In the third and fourth poems, the "action" begins with the increased anticipation of the meeting of Waldemar and Tove. Schoenberg shifts to a new tonal region, E major. Waldemar rides to Gurre, and in the last line of poem 3 actually sees Tove, who is probably watching from her window. Poem 4, set in B, the dominant of E, expresses Tove's jubilation at Waldemar's arrival. In the last four lines, Waldemar runs up the steps to her and falls into her arms.
In poems 5–9, or part V of Jacobsen's original, the two lovers participate in what Glienke calls the "dialogues" (or act 2). Like the first two songs of the cycle (in the original drafts), the first two of this section share a key, now D major. With Waldemar's announcement of midnight (song 7), the tonality shifts to D minor, but turns back to major for the central section (mm. 581–615) and the coda (646–52). For Tove's final song, the D resolves as dominant to G major. This move can be said to complement—actually to reverse—on another tonal plane, the move from E to its dominant B between songs 3 and 4.
Song 9, the final song of the original cycle, returns to the key, the mood, and even to some of the thematic-harmonic material of the first. As in song 1, there is considerable emphasis on the sixth degree, C, which is often sounded with the tonic harmony. Although it returns emphatically to the key of
Large-scale tonal design is only one of the devices by which Schoenberg gives a collective shape to the first nine songs of Gurrelieder. Another is the strategic placement of two large and distinctive musical climaxes. The first comes near the conclusion of the "monologues," in song 3, at the words "Volmer hat Tove gesehen (mm. 330–32). This represents the first contact (albeit eye contact) between the two lovers; the preceding songs (and the preceding portion of song 3) have all been concerned with the anticipation of their union. Schoenberg marks the moment with a broadening of the tempo and a fortissimo. The second large climax comes at the end of song 8, at Tove's "So laß uns die goldene Schale leeren," specifically at the word "Ku&geshp;!" in m. 705. This moment represents a still more significant peak within the first nine songs: physical union. After this climax near the end of song 8, song 9 functions as a kind of epilogue.
Individual Aspects of Songs 1–9
The great variety of formal structures among the individual songs in Gurrelieder goes well beyond anything we have encountered in Schoenberg's earlier Lieder,
and indeed beyond nineteenth-century song traditions. Trezise has rightly emphasized that despite the regularity of much of the poetry, Schoenberg's forms tend to be "progressive" rather than rounded or strophic:
An overwhelming impression left by the work is of forward, goal-directed movement. This is achieved by the weakening or absence of closure in the songs; the use of interludes that make only a veiled distinction between postlude, transition, and introduction. The tendency of the music to be exposing new material, rather than preparing major structural recapitulations of earlier material, is also a contributing factor.
TREZISE 1987, 188
Yet as in the best of Schoenberg's songs of the 1890s, and as in Verklärte Nacht, the urge to through-composition is tempered by an equally strong impulse toward recapitulatory structures. One of the most compelling aspects of Gurrelieder, at least for this listener, is the variety of ways in which Schoenberg handles returns or reprises within the separate songs, especially those in the "dialogue" section of part I.
Before turning to these songs, brief consideration should be given to the way Schoenberg manipulates form and harmony to delineate the individual characters, especially that of Tove, in the "monologue" section before their union. Waldemar's songs, 1 and 3, tend to be more complex; Tove's songs, 2 and 4, project the portrait of a far simpler personality. This image is reflected in the verse structure created by Jacobsen and his translator, Arnold. Poem 2, "O, wenn des Mondes Strahlen," cast entirely in rhymed couplets (six in all), may derive from the Knittelvers tradition to which Glienke refers, and which here seems to be regularized into something like iambic pentameter:
O, wenn des Mondes Strahlen leise gleiten,
Und Friede sich und Ruh durchs All verbreiten,
Nicht Wasser dünkt mich dann des Meeres Raum,
Und jener Wald scheint nicht Gebüsch und Baum.
Das sind nicht Wolken, die den Himmel schmücken,
Und Tal und Hügel nicht der Erde Rücken,
Und Form und Farbenspiel, nur eitle Schüume,
Und alles Abglanz nur der Gottesträume.[3]
[3] The orthography and layout of this and the other poetic texts from Gurrelieder cited below are reproduced from Berg 1913.
Oh, when the moon's beams glide gently, and peace and silence spread
themselves over everything, then the expanse of the sea does not seem like
water to me, and that forest does not appear like thickets and trees. Those
aren't clouds that decorate the sky, nor do hill and vale cover the earth, and
the play of forms and colors is only empty fluff, and everything is merely
the reflection of God's dream.
Schoenberg captures the uncomplicated faith of Tove, for whom each natural beauty is only a reflection of God, by returning to the tonic at the end of each line of poetry except line 6. Even though it ends on a different chord (
Jacobsen maintains this vision of Tove in her next song, as does Schoenberg in turn. "Sterne jubeln" (no. 4) is an overenthusiastic litany of subject-verb pairs expressing joy, pride, and similar emotions:
Text Musical Structure
Sterne jubeln, das Meer, es leuchtet, strophe 1
Preßt an die Küste sein pochendes Herz,
Blätter, sie murmeln, es zittert ihr Tauschmuck,
Seewind umfängt mich in mutigem Scherz,
Wetterhahn singt, und die Turmzinnen nicken, strophe2
Burschen stolzieren mit flammenden Blicken,
Wogende Brust voll üppigen Lebens
Fesseln die blühenden Dirnen vergebens,
Rosen, sie müh'n sich, zu späh'n in die Ferne, strophe 3
Fackeln, sie lodern und leuchten so gerne,
Wald erschließt seinen Bann zur Stell',
Horch, in der Stadt nun Hundegebell. (strophic structure breaks off)
Und die steigenden Wogen der Treppe
Tragen zum Hafen den fürstlichen Held,
Bis er auf alleroberster Staffel
Mir in die offenen Arme fällt.
Stars rejoice, the sea is shining, it presses the shore to its beating heart. Leaves are murmuring, their dewy cover quivers, sea wind enwraps me in bold play, weathervane sings, and tops of towers nod, young boys strut with sparkling glances, in vain do the blossoming girls repress the heaving
breast full of sensual life, roses try to peer out into the distance, torches blaze and shine happily, forest instantly reveals its magic, hear the barking of dogs in the city. And the rising waves of the staircase bear the princely hero to the harbor until, on the highest step, he falls into my open arms.
Until near the end of the song, the musical setting is organized into almost schematically clear two-and four-measure groups, which are placed into a modified strophic setting. The vocal melody swings along in a regular, unproblematically articulated triple meter. Even the harmonic rovings, among the most advanced in Schoenberg's work up to this time, take place with a bluntness that seems well suited to the character of Tove. As Berg points out (1913, 32), Schoenberg uses the same diminished-seventh chord to change gears abruptly from B to
The disruption of this regularity comes at m. 395 ("Horch, in der Stadt"), when Tove first becomes aware of the arrival of Waldemar. Until then, the first eight lines are set as two slightly varied musical strophes beginning in the tonic, B major. The third strophe begins in the mediant,
With the "dialogue" section of part I of Gurrelieder, Schoenberg attains new heights in the integration of form, theme, and harmony. Song 5, Waldemar's "So tanzen die Engel," is in this respect a miracle of recapitulatory subtlety. The poem comprises four four-line stanzas, each with an identical rhyme scheme (the stanzas are not actually separated by line spaces in the Arnold translation used by Schoenberg, although the structural divisions are readily apparent):
Text Musical Structure
So tanzen die Engel vor Gottes Thron nicht, A
Wie die Welt nun tanzt vor mir.
So lieblich klingt ihrer Harfen Ton nicht,
Wie Waldemars Seele Dir.
Aber stolzer auch saß neben Gott nicht Christ B
Nach dem harten Erlösungsstreite,
Als Waldemar stolz nun und königlich ist
An Tovelilles Seite.
Nicht sehnlicher möchten die Seelen gewinnen C
Den Weg zu der Seligen Bund,
Als ich deinen Kuß, da ich gurres Zinnen
Sah leuchten vom Oeresund.
Und ich tausch' auch nicht ihren Mauerwall D
Und den Schatz, den treu sie bewahren,
Für Himmelreichs Glanz und betaübenden Schall A'
Und alle der Heiligen Scharen!
The angels do not dance before God's throne as the world now dances before me. Their harps do not sound as lovely as Waldemar's soul does to you. Even Christ, after the hard struggle of redemption, did not sit beside God more proudly than Waldemar now proudly and royally sits at Tove's side. The souls could not desire more passionately to win access to the holy band than I to your kiss, when I saw Gurre's battlements shining from the Danish straits. And I wouldn't exchange its walls and the treasure they firmly guard even for the glow of heaven and the stupefying noise and all the holy bands!
As it unfolds, Schoenberg's setting seems to be almost entirely throughcomposed (see letters to right of text above; the music of the song appears in Appendix ex. N). Then at the third line of the final quatrain (m. 490) Schoenberg returns quite unexpectedly, and quite splendidly, to the opening theme, which appears not in the tonic, D major, but in the key of the Neapolitan,
Although it may seem unprepared, the
1. At m. 467 the tonic returns in first inversion and in minor. There is at this point no direct thematic reference to the "So tanzen" theme, although its A-D-A profile is suggested by the chromatic ascent and descent between A and D in the melody of mm. 467–69.
2. At mm. 471–72, the opening theme is adumbrated still more strongly by the setting of the words "ich deinen Kuß," which is also a recurrence of one of the principal leitmotives of Gurrelieder. The motive, which can be taken in a general sense to stand for the love between Waldemar and Tove (see Trezise 1987, 197–201), occurs first in song 2 at m. 223 (ex. 6.2a) and reappears frequently throughout the work. Here in Waldemar's song it also constitutes a decorated reprise of the opening theme. A juxtaposition of this passage with the opening of the song (ex. 6.2b, c) shows that the correspondence is quite close for four measures. The only significant melodic difference is the emphasis on E in m. 473, different from the
Measures 475–76 recall another portion of the opening of the song:
Example 6.2
Gurrelieder, "So tanzen die Engel," transformation of motive.
the approach to V/vi in mm. 456–48. The original harmonic motion from G to
3. The third stage, beginning in m. 477, brings the tonic in root position and another quotation from earlier in Gurrelieder: the first two phrases from the coda to Waldemar's first song (m. 146, "Und jede Macht"). In its original context, this passage served to depart from, and then confirm, a tonic (
4. At this point, the opening theme of the song returns at last, not in the tonic, but in the Neapolitan,
Example 6.3
Gurrelieder, "Nun sag ich dir zum erstenmal," tonal design.
chord prolonged here (
The ways in which harmonic, thematic, and formal returns are greatly expanded and kept out of phase in this song far surpass anything we have seen in Schoenberg's work to date, although there are clear points of contact with the kinds of practices examined in Verklärte Nacht. In "So tanzen" there is no single moment of return, but rather an intricate, multiphase reprise spread out over eighteen measures.
The withholding of the final tonic is intended to lead smoothly into Tove's song, no. 6 ("Nun sag' ich dir zum erstenmal"), in the same key, perhaps the most admired (or at least the most analyzed) individual number in Gurrelieder (see Webern 1912, 25–26; Wellesz 1925, 77–79; Gerlach 1985, 74–87). Several critics, including Schoenberg himself, have pointed to the main melody, with its broad leaps, as a harbinger of his later vocal style. In its harmonic practice, however, the song relates most directly to its immediate predecessor in the cycle and to Verklärte Nacht. We recall that in part II of the sextet the tonic D major forms the fulcrum or focal point for a wide range of tonal relationships: some third-based, as in the initial ascent from D to
The tonic D (unlike in the sextet or in "So tanzen die Engel") is not sounded in root position in the opening measures; rather, the harmony hovers around the dominant note A, which underpins the first "cadences" to D (in
major in mm. 513–15, but only as a way station for further forays. B minor is touched upon in m. 517, and a strong cadence is made to
From the viewpont of local harmonic syntax, the song might appear a patchwork, but in fact the principal bass motion since the beginning can be heard as two interlocking chains of thirds connected by half-step.[4] The first chain is
Together, songs 5 and 6 of Gurrelieder show Schoenberg exploring further the kinds of harmonic and formal issues adumbrated in the sextet, especially the sustaining of harmonic tension and formal expectation over a large span and the attempt to integrate dominant-related with chromatic or third-based tonal processes.
A similar mastery is evident in song 8, Tove's last song ("Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick"). The poem is one of the least regular in structure of any in Gurrelieder, perhaps one of the freest that Schoenberg had set up to this point in his career. Here Tove has, as it were, fully left behind the naive versifying of her earlier "monologues":
Text Musical structure
Part I
Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick A1, mm. 653–67
Und senkst das Auge,
Doch der Blick preßt deine Hand in meine,
Und der Druck erstirbt;
Aber als liebeweckenden Kuß
Legst du meinen Händedruck mir auf die Lippen.
Und du kannst noch seufzen um des Todes willen, A2, 668–74
Wenn ein Blick auflodern kann
[4] For another analysis of the song that stresses the role of third or mediant relationships, see Ballan 1986, 56–67.
Wie ein flammender Kuß?
Die leuchtenden Sterne am Himmel droben B, 675–79
Bleichen wohl, wenn's graut,
Doch lodern sie neu jede Mitternachtszeit
In ewiger Pracht.—
So kurz ist der Tod, transition, 680–82
Wie ruhiger schlummer
Von Damm'rung zu Damm'rung,
Und wenn du erwashst: A1', 683–90
Bei dir auf dem Lager
In neuer Schonheit
Siehst du strahlen
die junge Braut.
Part II
So laß uns die goldene A, 691–97
Schale leeren
Ihm, dem machtig verschonenden Tod:
Denn wir gehn zu Grab B, 698–705
Wie ein Lacheln, ersterbend
Im seligen Kuß! orchestra: A', 705ff.
You send me a glance of love and lower your gaze. And the glance presses your hand in mine, and the pressure dies away. But as a love-awakening kiss, you press your hand to my lips, and can you still sigh in longing for death, when a glance can flare up like a flaming kiss? The shining stars in the heavens above turn pale when dawn comes, but blaze anew in full glory
each midnight. Deat h is as brief as restful sleep, from dusk to dawn, and when you awake: next to you in bed you see the young bride gleaming in renewed beauty.
So let us empty the golden cup to him, to powerful, beautifying death: for we go like a smile, dying away in the blessed kiss!
With its increasing ecstasy, this poem is cast somewhat in the mode of the Isolde's Verklärung in Wagner's Tristan. There is, however, nothing patently Wagnerian about Schoenberg's setting, which is one of the most magnificent among his early Lieder. As indicated by the letters to the right of the poem, the setting divides into two parts of unequal length, each of which, as Berg plausibly suggested, might be said to have a highly modified ternary form (Berg 1913, 46). (In the analysis above, the A segments of parts I and II are independent of each other.) These two sections of the song stand in relation to each other somewhat in the way that songs 5 and 6 do: the second functions as a fulfillment or completion of the first. In part I, the tonic G major is continually withheld or avoided in what Berg considers a prime example of Schoenberg's "schwebende Tonalität" (Berg 1913, 45). In part II, G is given broad thematic and harmonic confirmation.
Example 6.4
Gurrelieder, "Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick," motives.
Schoenberg makes the division just before Tove's toast, "So laß uns," which represents the climax not only of this individual song, but also (as was suggested above) of the entire "dialogue" segment of part I of Gurrelieder.
The broader formal processes of Tove's song are linked up with, or generated by, motivic-thematic and harmonic procedures in ways that constitute a high point in Schoenberg's early tonal works. The song opens with the threefold statement, descending by octave, of an upward appoggiatura figure,
In the second section of A, A2 (m. 668), these thematic elements are retained but in a sense reversed (ex. 6.4b): the rising scalar figure z appears first, the neighbor-note figure y' second. (Although the interval content of z has changed—it contains several whole steps—its association with the earlier figure seems indisputable.) The lyrical B-major melody that forms the B section of part I represents a further transformation of the theme as it was heard in A2 (ex. 6.4c). Although the neighbor-note configuration of the original y has been altered to
Example 6.5
Gurrelieder, "Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick."
form a descending scale (hence y"), the motivic association with m. 668 is made clear by the similar rhythmic structure.
What I have called the transition back to A1' is preceded on the final eighth note of m. 679 by a D or dominant chord (Appendix ex. P). (In the piano draft of this song, the dominant preparation is more extensive: there is actually an extra full measure of D7 harmony between what are now the third and fourth beats of m. 679.) The transition, marked "Erstes Zeitmaß" (return to first tempo) by Schoenberg, begins with the disguised or ambiguous return to G in m. 680 and is based largely on motive z. At the actual return ("Bewegter, steigernd"), x, y, and z appear in their original sequence; but the thematic process is now speeded up—put into fast forward, so to speak—in order to prepare one of the most astonishing transformations in the song. In the accompaniment of mm. 686–88, the z motive evolves magically into the main theme of Tove's earlier song "Nun sag' ich dir zum erstenmal." The process, in which the earlier theme is "born again," as Berg puts it (1913, 49), is the splendid culmination of a motivic development reaching back to the beginning of the song.
The principal vocal melody of part II (m. 691) consists of essentially new material. Yet Schoenberg provides continuity with part I by introducing the rising semitones of x and z in the top line of the accompaniment:
and 702, a whole step at m. 700) is always followed by a descending leap. By analogy to the previous statements, we would expect
In part II of this song, the return to A' takes place simultaneously with the vocal climax of B: the opening melody associated with "So laß uns die goldene" reappears in the orchestra underneath "Kuß." The recapitulatory procedure is thus different from that in any of the other ternary or return-oriented structures in part I of Gurrelieder.
The treatment of phrase structure in Tove's song is no less remarkable than the large formal-thematic design. As Berg suggested in one of the most perceptive analyses in his Gurrelieder-Führer (1913, 46–47), the opening section of the song (section A1 of part I) is based almost entirely on a repeated harmonic-bass pattern treated in the manner of a chaconne.[5] The pattern consists of the bass progression
The pattern begins on the tonic G, which is, however, attenuated by the
The third statement of the pattern begins as if speeded up: each chord/bass note occupies a single beat in m. 663. As Berg points out, this acceleration brings about a harmonic displacement such that the E chord now falls on the strong beat of m. 664. Where, in the earlier presentations of the pattern, E major was just one stop on the circle, it now becomes the principal harmonic focus of the phrase: an E triad is articulated unequivocally in mm. 664 (here an augmented triad), 666, and 667. The veering from G major toward E implied at the beginning of the pattern is thus fully realized. Indeed, at the beginning of what would be the fourth statement of the pattern in m. 666, Schoenberg even substitutes
[5] It should be noted that Berg's measure numbering in his analysis, ex. 52 on p. 46, is off by one measure from that of the published vocal score; his starting measure, m. 650, is actually m. 651. In my analysis, I follow the vocal score.
Tove's song is at once one of the most ambitious and synoptic works of Schoenberg's early tonal period. If Verklärte Nacht can be said to have borrowed certain compositional strategies from the realm of the Lied—specifically from the Dehmel songs—for instrumental music, the song "Du sendest mir einen Liebesblick" repays the debt handsomely, and expansively. Tove's song is in fact the longest individual number in part I of Gurrelieder, lasting over five minutes. Schoenberg's ability to maintain structural and recapitulatory integrity over such a long span is a real triumph, of a kind that had in part eluded him in Verklärte Nacht.
Chapter Seven—
Pelleas und Melisande , op. 5 (1902–1903)
With Schoenberg's move to Berlin in December 1901 and his assumption of a position at the Überbrettl cabaret, the relatively intense flow of composition represented by the Dehmel works of 1899 and the Gurrelieder of 1900–1 slowed up. Schoenberg's stay in the German capital, which lasted until the summer of 1903, is dominated by a single work, Pelleas und Melisande, which was probably begun in the summer of 1902 (one sketch leaf is dated 4 July 1902) and completed in February 1903 (the full score is dated 28 February 1903 at the end).
With the creation of a large instrumental work, Schoenberg returned to many of the structural issues he had faced in Verklärte Nacht. He now brought to bear the experience in counterpoint, harmony, and thematic structure—and, of course, orchestration—gained in the Gurrelieder.[1]Pelleas is almost twice the length of Verklärte Nacht. The nature of the programmatic source is very different: a large play, as compared with a short lyrical poem. What Schoenberg achieved in the sextet, capturing in relatively compact form the entire spiritual-dramatic content of a poem, was not possible—or was at any rate not his goal—in the case of Pelleas.
From Schoenberg's own remarks (all printed in Bailey 1984) and from Berg's well-known analysis of Pelleas (Berg 1920), it can be determined that Schoenberg actually selected about eight of the fifteen scenes in Maurice Maeterlinck's drama: Melisande wandering in the forest (Maeterlinck act I, scene 2); the episode at the fountain in the park (II, 1); the tower scene where Melisande combs her hair (III,
[1] This chapter will not deal specifically with Schoenberg's orchestration, which is of course also an essential element of his early compositions. For an extended and sensitive treatment of this aspect of Gurrelieder, Pelleas, and the orchestral songs, op. 8, see Schubert 1975.
2); the vaults of the castle (III, 3); in the castle, when Golaud seizes Melisande by the hair (IV, 2); the love scene in the park (IV, 4); the entrance of the women servants in the castle (V, 1); the final scene of Melisande's death (V, 2). Schoenberg himself claimed that in Pelleas "I tried to mirror every detail of it [the play], with only a few omissions and slight changes in the order of the scenes" (cited in Bailey 1984, 61). As has long been realized, however, this process did not involve a mere translation of these scenes into music. Schoenberg used them to frame a genuinely symphonic work, based on a handful of themes that are continuously reshaped.
The large-scale form of Pelleas, like that of Verklärte Nacht, has stimulated different analytical interpretations. The one that has had the most authority is that of Berg, who proposes a four-part division according to the traditional symphonic model:
In the four principal sections of this symphonic poem we can even identify clearly the four movements of a symphony. Specifically, a large opening movement in sonata form; a second movement consisting of three shorter episodes, thus a three-part form (of which at least one scene suggests a scherzo-like character); a broadly spun-out Adagio; and lastly a finale constructed as a reprise.
BERG 1920, 3
Berg's detailed analysis also suggests how Schoenberg distributes elements of the first-movement form over the work as a whole. Although he is not always precise about the formal boundaries. Berg's scheme can be represented as in table 4 (a similar diagram is given in Bailey 1984, 70–71).
Schoenberg's strategy seems to be to introduce in part I a core of themes that are deployed almost continuously throughout the rest of the work. Like leitmotives, they are associated (as Schoenberg himself pointed out) with certain characters or more abstract concepts, and they undergo development that reflects the psychological or dramatic course of the play. For a work of such broad dimensions, there are actually relatively few recurring themes. These are shown in ex. 7.1, where the verbal labels, used mainly for ease of reference, correspond more or less to those provided in the commentaries of Berg and Schoenberg. In order to mark off the larger boundaries of the work—and to provide some needed contrast—Schoenberg presents new themes at or near the beginnings of parts II, III, and IV. Soon after, or even together with, their presentation, these themes are combined with the earlier themes of part I. As with Verklärte Nacht, a consideration of thematic relationships and thematic style is essential to an un-
| ||||||||||
derstanding of Pelleas. It is to this aspect we should turn before considering further the matter of sonata form and the large-scale structure.
Thematic Relationships, Style, and Structure
The process of thematic transformation in Pelleas und Melisande is richer and more elaborate than in any of Schoenberg's, earlier works. Some of the most obvious, audible relationships (many noted in Berg's thematic table of 1920) can be summarized as follows (see exx. 7.1 and 7.2):
1. The first theme of the work, MELISANDE 1, is based on a three-note motive, x, which is common to several important themes. The first three notes of MELISANDE 2 are clearly heard as an inversion of x, and the rising
Example 7.1
Pelleas und Melisande, principal themes.
2; in the latter spot, the inversion occupies the same metrical position with respect to the bar line as in MELISANDE 2. The programmatic import of these recurrences is clear: Melisande's chromatic motive x infiltrates the themes of the two men with whom she becomes involved, Golaud and Pelleas.
2. Another significant transformation on a larger scale involves the reworking of PELLEAS 2 into MELISANDE 4 (aligned in ex. 7.2b). Berg suggests further that MELISANDE 4 is a transformation of MELISANDE 2 (Berg 1920, "Thementafel," ex. 9).
3. Several elements of the themes of part I of Pelleas are reworked in the main LOVE theme of part III (ex 7.2c). Berg suggests that the first measure is a transformation of MELISANDE 1, although he is not specific
Example 7.2
Pelleas und Melisande, transformations of themes.
about the transformation. His example (Berg 1920, "Thementafel" ex. 16) seems to imply that the rhythmic pattern of x and the rising stepwise contour are taken over as
Example 7.3
Pelleas und Melisande, MELISANDE 2 theme.
Though important, these (and similar) transformations form only a small part of what is most characteristic about the individual themes in Pelleas. A proper understanding of the Pelleas style must take account of the harmonic, formal, and rhythmic contexts. In his often-cited autobiographical essay, "My Evolution," Schoenberg suggested that in Pelleas "many of the melodies contain extratonal intervals that demand extravagant movement of the harmony" (Schoenberg 1975, 82). This statement (for "extratonal" we can probably read "non-diatonic") seems to imply that at least on the local level, harmonic motion is determined or motivated by thematic forces. In fact, the relationship between theme and harmony in Pelleas is really one of mutual interdependence. Not only do the chromatic melodies require unusual harmonic successions; the harmony and the very careful accompanimental voice-leading also tend to give definition to themes that taken by themselves would be almost unintelligible as tonal entities.[2] What is striking in Pelleas is how this interdependence of theme, harmony, and voice-leading generates thematic structures that are highly chromatic on the detailed level, but are governed by conventional progressions or cadential structures on the higher level. This process can be seen by examining three themes of increasing length and complexity.
The two-measure theme of MELISANDE 2 (ex. 7.3) is based on an open-ended progression of dominant-seventh chords, moving from the E7 on the upbeat (spelled with
[2] A sensitive, if brief, discussion of the interaction between the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Pelleas is Harvey 1975, 375–79, who treats the "forest" music at rehearsal no. 2.
leading and the intermediate harmonies it produces are distinctive. The vagrant sonorities actually sounded on the beats of the first full measure—an augmented
The theme-complex PELLEAS (ex. 7.4) shows on a larger scale how an extremely chromatic melody and bass line can generate or fill out a harmonic skeleton and a phrase structure that are relatively conventional. The nine-measure theme consists of two phrases, divided 5+4. The first phrase moves from I (E major, in mm. 1 and 3) to V (m. 5); the second returns to the tonic (m. 9). The asymmetry, characteristic of Schoenberg (and of the Brahms themes he admired), is caused by the extension of the first phrase, and the concomitant delay of the arrival on the dominant, from m. 4, where we would normally expect it, to m. 5. The theme begins "on the run," with a remarkable superimposition of subdominant and tonic triads. The first three beats of m. 1 project a kind of rapid IV—V—I cadence; but, as in MELISANDE 2, the chords are produced or carried along by the interaction of a primarily stepwise bass line (and inner parts) with a highly mobile melody. In mm. 1–3 the bass traces a descent from A to the tonic E, then leaps down a major third to C, which moves down to the dominant, B. In the second half of the phrase there is a complementary stepwise ascent back to the tonic, whose final arrival is delayed by the upper chromatic neighbor,
Schoenberg fills out the initial I–V progression of mm. 1–5 by means of harmonic motion toward, respectively, chords a major third above and below the tonic. The first gesture is toward iii or
Example 7.4
Pelleas und Melisande, PELLEAS theme.
m. 5. The chord might initially be heard as a German sixth within C; but the outer voices resolve outward by step to the dominant seventh of E. A deceptive resolution of the dominant leads to an A-minor or iv triad on the downbeat of m. 6, then to a series of vagrant harmonies connected by stepwise voice-leading in the accompanimental parts, and finally back to the tonic in m. 9.
The filling out of diatonic Stufen and a normal phrase structure with chromatic harmonies and voice-leading is carried still further in the main LOVE theme (ex. 7.5). Although this theme is twice as long as the PELLEAS complex just examined, it is likewise clearly rooted in E major, and the principal secondary key is likewise the dominant, B, which is reached at about the halfway point, the end of m. 8, and at the conclusion, in mm. 16–17. On the way to the first dominant is a clear subdominant (m. 6), which is itself prepared by a dominant seventh in mm. 5–6. The mid-
Example 7.5
Pelleas und Melisande, LOVE theme.
Example 7.6
Pelleas und Melisande, rewriting of mm. 5–7 of LOVE theme.
point harmonic articulation is to some extent obscured by the thematic structure: four phrases, of which the third (mm. 9-11) is an almost exact sequence (up a whole step) of the second (mm. 5-8) and the fourth is an extended variation of the two preceding. The form might be schematized as:
A (mm. 1-4)
B (5-8)
B sequence (9-11)
B varied (12-17)
This is a theme that seems literally to get carried away with itself. Although the harmonic design is essentially symmetrical or balanced, the thematic content is progressive, abandoning A after four measures for sequential and variation treatment of B. The phrase structure, too, begins to unravel: after an initially well-balanced 4+4 measures, we get 3+6.
From the very opening, the theme also projects tension or asymmetry in an apparent conflict between the notated
thus "stretched" the notated
As suggested above, mm. 9-11 repeat the pattern of mm. 5-8 up a whole step, without the initial augmentation. The sequence seems about to continue with another leg in m. 12, but is broken by the appearance of the climactic half-diminished chord, B-D-F-A, which is sustained for two and a half beats, like the E of m. 5. This extension may be said to balance, or cancel out, the earlier one. It now brings the
As in the PELLEAS theme-complex, Schoenberg expands or fills out the basic diatonic framework of the LOVE theme by means of harmonic substitutions and extensions. The first of these comes in m. 3, with the abrupt move to the C7 chord. The relationship between this chord and the tonic, which, as we have seen, was central to Verklärte Nacht, is one Schoenberg exploits frequently in Pelleas und Melisande, where German sixths come to function almost as substitute dominants. Here, however, the chord moves neither to the real tonic nor to its own"tonic," F; it resolves to a half-diminished seventh on D, thence to a C-minor triad in first inversion. The result is that the first phrase, rather than concluding on the tonic, dominant, or another diatonic Stufe, ends on
The harmonic motion to this remote area has its corollary in the melodic avoidance of E in m. 3. Instead of ascending by step from
In one sense, the phrase's ultimate goal in the bass, the dominant B, is reached in m. 8 and is then embellished and extended by what follows. The sequence of mm. 9-12, up a whole step from mm. 6-8, can be heard to move in the bass from the B up to
At a fundamental level, the three themes from Pelleas that we have examined in some detail all show traditional diatonic harmonies or progressions, as well as strong traces of conventional phrase structure. The basic skeleton supports a highly mobile melodic style and flexible, largely stepwise voice-leading. In Schoenberg's ability to expand or flesh out the skeleton by means of chromatic harmony and voice-leading,
the thematic idiom or style of Pelleas goes far beyond that of Verklärte Nacht. The contrast can be seen most directly by comparing the LOVE theme of the symphonic poem with the somewhat similar theme 5 from the sextet (ex. 7.7). Both are slow, broad themes in E major that contrast with the more agitated passages preceding them. The Verklärte Nacht theme (incorporating 5a and 5b) is ten measures long, probably the longest individual theme in a work in which, as we have seen, themes tend to be quite brief. The first four measures of both themes show something of the "sentence" proportions and structure: 1+1+2. Both themes move, on the broadest span, between basic diatonic degrees, the tonic and dominant. But in the theme from Pelleas und Melisande the upper voice and the bass range much farther afield, and the span is filled in with denser chromatic harmonic motion and voice-leading.
Both themes show a certain metrical-rhythmic flexibility that overrides the notated bar lines. In Verklärte Nacht that flexibility is most apparent in 5b, where the basic unit is actually two beats long (a beat is a dotted quarter note) and begins not on the downbeat of m. 111, but on beat 2 (with a preceding upbeat). The metrical extension and displacement thus generated continue through m. 114 and are dispelled only with the return of 5a in m. 115. In the LOVE theme the metrical ambiguities begin right away and affect the entire theme up until the final cadence in mm. 16-17.
Tonality and Form
Having examined the thematic style of Pelleas und Melisande in some detail, we can now look again at the larger formal structure in which the themes are placed. Although there is some merit to Berg's analysis of the work as a sonata-symphony Mischform (see table 4), this approach becomes less persuasive the more specific it gets. Schoenberg himself, although he seemed on the whole to approve of Berg's analysis (Berg 1987, 293) and on two occasions referred to the first fountain scene as a "scherzo" (Bailey 1984, 61, 66), nowhere elaborated any sonata-like view of Pelleas (unlike in the case of the First Quartet, op. 7).
Berg's analysis is, as its title implies, almost purely thematic; he gives no tonal references for any of his sections. The sonata-form analogy becomes less plausible when the harmonic dimension is considered, as has been observed by both Philip Friedheim (1963, 207) and Walter Bailey (1984, 72). To be sure, Pelleas begins and ends in D minor, and the opening material is recapitulated in the final section (part IV). From the sonata-form point of view, however, the tonal relationships are odd: Berg's "introduction" is in D minor and the first theme (GOLAUD) in F major; in the "recapitulation" the introduction reappears (which makes one suspicious of calling it an introduction at all) and is not in the tonic, but in
Example 7.7
Verklärte Nacht, theme 5.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Reprise" at the reappearance of GOLAUD in F major at rehearsal number 14, he might more logically begin it seventeen measures earlier with what he calls the Schlußbsatz, the return of the "forest" themes of Melisande (MELISANDE 1 and 2; at 4 after 12 ), which leads into GOLAUD, as at the opening of the work.
If we avoid the urge to cast part I in sonata form and look instead at the tonal and thematic processes with a fresh eye—and an awareness of the programmatic source—a different kind of plan emerges (table 5). By stressing the status of F major, commentators on Pelleas und Melisande have ignored the large role played by A major in part I. The F major in which the GOLAUD theme appears at 5 is only a temporary stopping place on the way to A, whose key signature replaces that of D minor at 6. The GOLAUD theme is presented as a point of tonal repose in A major at 4 after 7, is interrupted by the FATE theme at 8, and is then restored in A at 6 after 8. Particularly in this latter passage, A has the feel of a fully established key area. Indeed, if there is a sonata-like "secondary key" in part I of Pelleas und Melisande, it would have to be A major, rather than F.
Up to the appearance of the PELLEAS theme at 9, then, the tonal scheme of the work is based on a chain of ascending thirds, D-F-A, which outline the tonic triad. The close harmonic association of the keys D, F, and A is programmatically and psychologically appropriate: Golaud has found the wandering Melisande and has "captured" and married her. The appearance of PELLEAS in E major literally breaks apart this scheme; it is intended to be tonally distinct (but not remote: just one notch on the circle of the fifths past A). During the initial presentation of the PELLEAS complex, up to 7 after 11, none of the previous themes is heard (I am ignoring in this context the relationship of the PELLEAS theme to the other themes).
At 4 after 12, MELISANDE 1 and 2 from the opening reappear, followed by PELLEAS and MELISANDE 3 together. Despite the additions, we have a clear sense of some kind of return; and although D minor is even less in evidence than at the actual beginning
of the piece, the distinct A7 harmony at 4-5 after 12 could be said to stand in for the key. As before, this section is followed by GOLAUD in F major (at 14 ), which is then followed by more MELISANDE and PELLEAS material, a climax, a ritardando, and the beginning of the "scherzo" at 16. The scherzo begins in A major and thus replicates the ascent from F to A at 6. Indeed, the A major of the scherzo could be said to fulfill or elaborate the earlier approach to that tonality.
The thematic-harmonic design outlined here suggests at the highest level an ABA ' form (as shown in table 5) whose basic tonal structure tends to override the actual formal boundaries of parts I and II. Even though many aspects of the scherzo-its mood, meter, and primary thematic material—are new, its key provides continuity with (or completes) what has preceded. It bears stressing, too, that the ABA ' structure is no conventional, tidy ternary form, but rather a skeleton, which Schoenberg fleshes out with an intricate layering of thematic and harmonic processes.
One of the harmonic relationships Schoenberg exploits most systematically throughout Pelleas und Melisande is that between the German sixth and the tonic. This tonal nexus, already prominent in Verklärte Nacht and Gurrelieder, can be said to govern many of the major articulation points of part I of the symphonic poem:
|
These cadential patterns, in each case circumventing the traditional dominanttonic resolution, create a distinctive harmonic syntax within part I of Pelleas. The question remains, however, just how these German sixths are actually preceived in context: do we come to hear the German sixth-tonic resolution as normative? Or, for instance at 7, do we hear the F7 clearly as pushing toward
that Schoenberg is working with conventional dominant expectations. The F7 that is (from one point of view) thwarted by the resolution to A at 6, at 4 after 7, and at 8 (here without the seventh), at last resolves normally at 15, where MELISANDE 4 enters in the key of
As was suggested by the scenario outlined in table 4, part II of Pelleas is more episodic, less formally and tonally focused than part I. Despite the scherzoarting opening, it certainly does not conform to a scherzo-trio-scherzo structure. Schoenberg may have intended the somewhat looser construction of part II to give freer rein to his powers of thematic transformation (and to his orchestral prowess). One is struck especially by the reworking of PELLEAS 2 and MELISANDE 4 into the theme that both Schoenberg and Berg refer to as "Golaud's jealousy" (first heard at 23 ) and by the further transformation of MELISANDE 2 into the "flowing hair" figure in the tower scene at 25.
We can pass on to part III, the love scene. The action of part III, in which the lovers meet, attempt to consummate their passion, and are interrupted by Golaud, is very close to that of act II of Wagner's Tristan, where the tryst is similarly broken off by King Mark. One commentator has suggested (but not demonstrated) that Schoenberg's movement is actually modeled on the love duet of Tristan (Nitsche 1974, 15). On the broadest level there may be some truth to this assertion. Schoenberg's love scene, like Wagner's, is based on increasing sexual passion, and the prominent half-diminished seventh chord in m. 12 of the theme (see ex. 7.5) seems an almost direct reference to the "Tristan" chord. But formally Schoenberg's scene has its own distinctive shape that is rondo-like and is also infused, like part I of Pelleas, with sonata-like elements (table 6).
The rondo aspect consists in the twofold return of the LOVE theme and its alternation with sections based on MELISANDE 1. The sonata-like features include the strong dominant reached and sustained before 43, the development-like quality of what follows, and the return (not in E major, however) of LOVE at 44. But both formal models, rondo and sonata, are overridden to a large extent by an ongoing developmental process that builds toward successive climaxes, the most powerful at 46-47. These climaxes are based on three appearances of the thematic-harmonic component introduced in mm. 12-14 of LOVE (see ex. 7.5). The high A in m. 12, supported by the half-diminished chord B-D-F-A, serves to break the sequential pattern of mm. 6 and 9. Underneath the melody, the half-diminished chord now moves in m. 13 through stepwise voice-leading to a diminished seventh on
The model of mm. 12-14 first recurs at 40, where, through overlapping imitation, it now unfolds over five measures. The second recurrence is still more prolonged: at 7 after 46 Golaud appears, but Pelleas and Melisande continue their lovemaking a half-step higher (the half-diminished chord is now on C). The third and final pre-
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Example 7.8
Pelleas und Melisande, climax of LOVE theme.
sentation, at 2 before 48, deviates strikingly from the earlier ones. The initial harmony is no longer a half-diminished, but a dominant seventh (with ninth and thirteenth) of
Berg suggests that part IV of Pelleas und Melisande serves the dual function of finale
Example 7.9
Pelleas und Melisande, half-step approach to D.
to a four-movement work and "free reprise" of a single large sonata form (Berg 1920, 10). According to this scheme, the reprise begins with the "introduction" (comprising MELISANDE 1), followed by the full GOLAUD melody (Berg's Hauptsatz) and LOVE. The recapitulation is then interrupted at the death of Melisande, which leads to an "epilogue" in ABA' form. A is the original Hauptsatz; B is based on earlier themes, including MELISANDE 1, 2, 3, PELLEAS 1, and LOVE.
As Bailey has rightly pointed out (1984, 73), the large-scale tonal scheme of this "finale" shows Schoenberg recreating almost exactly (although in reverse order) the procedures used in part II of Verklärte Nacht: the tonic D minor is approached first from a half-step below,
The scene of Melisande's death unfolds in
Just as the basic tonal strategy in part IV of Pelleas is similar to that of the sextet, so too is Schoenberg's apparent desire to combine or associate the "twin" approaches to D with the phenomenon of recapitulation. And it is here that he still shows himself less than secure, even three and a half years after Verklärte Nacht. It will be recalled from chapter 5 that in Verklärte Nacht, the recapitulatory part II makes frequent approaches to D and actually culminates twice in the same passage of music. In part IV of Pelleas, where the harmonic language is more complex, the tonic is not implied as often or as directly, but it could be said that there is too much thematic recapitulation, that part IV is overlong.
In this respect it is significant that, just as Bruno Walter picked up on the potentially redundant climax of Verklärte Nacht and requested a cut, so did a conductor of Pelleas. In 1918 Zemlinsky, who was to conduct the work in Prague, apparently
Example 7.10
Verklärte Nacht and Pelleas und Melisande, approaches to D from
wrote to Schoenberg requesting permission to cut from 50 up to 59— that is, from the beginning of the return of the introduction music in
From the viewpoint of tonal balance or symmetry (something Schoenberg does not raise in his letter), the composer was right to veto the cut: it would mean the loss of the approach to D from the half-step below. But despite Schoenberg's clever analytical pleading, it must be admitted that—as in the case of Verklärte Nacht— the conductor was on to something. It does seem redundant to have the GOLAUD/Hauptsatz theme recapitulated four different times in the tonic: at 55, and then three more times after Melisande's death, at 62, at 4 before 67, and at 69. In the first two instances the theme leads similarly to the LOVE theme, at 56 and at 5 after65, respectively. (In the latter case, PELLEAS I intervenes.) The thematic recurrences are not, of course, identical: each time the Hauptsatz theme is given a new bass line/ counterpoint, and the LOVE theme is presented differently. Yet in a work that despite its length has been, up to this point, as taut as Pelleas, the repetitions seem excessive. One could wish, with Zemlinsky, for a swifter denouement.
As in Verklärte Nacht, then, we see Schoenberg grappling with certain fundamental principles of large-scale form. Beneath all the brilliant thematic transformations and development in Pelleas und Melisande lies a basic uncertainty (not confessed by
[3] See Schoenberg 1964, 54-56. Bailey 1984, 67-70, cites and discusses the letter, as well as including portions that were cut from Schoenberg 1964.
Schoenberg, of course) about how much tonic and how much thematic return are enough. It was an issue that had occupied Schoenberg as early as the songs of the mid 1890s and that continued to occupy him as he tried to reconcile the apparent demands of traditional tonal forms with newer impulses coming from within.
Although there are many wonderful moments in Pelleas und Melisande, it is probably the least successful of the large-scale instrumental works of Schoenberg's early period. That it falls chronologically between Verklärte Nacht and the First Quartet seems to have had technical and expressive ramifications. We sense Schoenberg struggling to reconcile programmatic and thematic-formal demands. In the relatively compact dimensions of Verklärte Nacht, problems of this kind tended to be swept away by the bold strokes of inspiration. Despite compositional awkwardnesses, the sextet easily convinces us of its status as a masterpiece. Pelleas und Melisande fails to do so; it seems bloated, its shortcomings (or long-comings) more exposed.
Pelleas und Melisande also shows obvious affinities with Gurrelieder, but here too it suffers by comparison. Gurrelieder represents the very best in Schoenberg's extravagant late romantic style; under its decorated, overripe surface lies a taut synthesis of harmonic, thematic, and formal processes. In Pelleas und Melisande, the lush orchestration and rich harmony, outwardly similar to those of Gurrelieder, are put to different use: they too often become a cloak for intricate contrapuntal experimentation, as in the whole-tone canon based on MELISANDE 2 that begins at 2 after 2. Schoenberg soon came to realize that the cloak fitted such a technique poorly. In the songs of 1903-4, and then in the First Quartet, the contrapuntal preoccupations are laid bare in leaner textures that allowed (or inspired) Schoenberg to recapture something of the vitality of Verklärte Nacht and Gurrelieder.