Schoenberg - Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)

Arnold Schoenberg wrote this work as a string sextet at the turn of the 20th century in 1899, and it was so modern that the Vienna Music Society refused to perform it. It was premiered in 1902 by the Rose Quartet (augmented by an extra cello and viola) at the Vienna Musikverein.  Between the highly chromatic music and its subject matter, the piece stirred up a lot of controversy.

This was Schoenberg's first important work and it showed the influence that Wagner and Brahms (whom Schoenberg always thought of as a modern composer) had on the young composer. It is not so much a revolutionary piece of music as it is an evolutionary piece of music, a product of what the masters had done before Schoenberg and his desire to continue the evolution.  It was written before Schoenberg developed his twelve tone technique and while Transfigured Night does go far afield in its harmonies it is still a work based on tonality. It is a rare example of a chamber music work that is also program music. It is based on a poem written by Richard Dehmel  called Transfigured Night.  The synopsis of the poem:

A woman and man are walking through the woods on a moonlit night. In love, but ashamed, she reveals that she is pregnant with another man’s child, a man she never loved. The man responds with loving acceptance of her and the child as though it were his own. The unborn child, the man, the woman and the night itself are transfigured from darkness into light.

Schoenberg composed the piece in one movement and followed the poem closely in music that is rich, complex, and emotional. Frequent time signature changes and key changes charge the music with an intensity that finally resolves into a shimmering 'transfiguration' at the end.  The music was arranged by the composer for full string orchestra in 1917 and revised it in 1943. It is this version that is heard on the video.

Schoenberg's first compositions written within his twelve tone system are over a hundred years old, and they still sound rather sour to many ears. Anyone that has not heard Transfigured Night before hearing any of his twelve tone works may wonder if Schoenberg wasn't more of a theorist than a feeling, emotional composer. Transfigured Night has glimpses in it of where Schoenberg was headed, but to my mind it is a late romantic composition and shows that Schoenberg was much more than a theorist. He was a composer of the first rank.

The complete poem by Dehmel:

Two people walk through a bare, cold grove;
The moon races along with them, they look into it.
The moon races over tall oaks,
No cloud obscures the light from the sky,
Into which the black points of the boughs reach,
A woman’s voice speaks:

I’m carrying a child, and not yours,
I walk in sin beside you.
I have committed a great offense against myself.
I no longer believed I could be happy
And yet I had a strong yearning
For something to fill my life, for the joys of motherhood
And for duty; so I committed an effrontery,
So, shuddering, I allowed my sex
To be embraced by a strange man,
And, on top of that, I blessed myself for it.
Now life has taken its revenge:
Now I have met you, oh you.

She walks with a clumsy gait,
She looks up; the moon is racing along.
Her dark gaze is drowned in light.
A man’s voice speaks:

May the child you conceived
Be no burden to your soul;
Just see how brightly the universe is gleaming!
There’s a glow around everything;
You are floating with me on a cold ocean,
But a special warmth flickers
From you into me, from me into you.
It will transfigure the strange man’s child.
You will bear the child for me, as if it were mine;
You have brought the glow into me,
You have made me like a child myself.

He grasps her around her ample hips.
Their breath kisses in the breeze.
Two people walk through the lofty, bright night.

Brahms/Schoenberg - Piano Quartet No. 1

With this work there is the rare opportunity of listening to what is one master composer's opinion of another master composer's work. Schoenberg orchestrated the 1st Piano Quartet of Brahms in 1937 after he had moved to Los Angeles, California to escape Germany and the persecution of Jews.  Schoenberg had converted to Christianity early in his life but in 1933 he changed back to Judaism, partly out of protest against the Nazi regime. He was soon labeled a decadent composer. His works were no longer allowed in the concert hall and he was most likely a doomed man.

He wrote a letter to a music critic in 1939 and explained his reasons for arranging Brahms' work for orchestra:

"My reasons: I like the piece. It is seldom played. It is always very badly played, because, the better the pianist, the louder he plays and you hear nothing from the strings. I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved. My intentions: To remain strictly in the style of Brahms and not to go farther than he himself would have gone if he lived today. To watch carefully all the laws to which Brahms obeyed and not to violate them, which are only known to musicians educated in his environment."

Perhaps another reason he did it was that at this time Schoenberg had already developed his "method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another". His method shook the world of serious music so he may have been trying to add legitimacy as a composer by orchestrating Brahms' work. He also gave a lecture and wrote a subsequent essay called Brahms The Progressive.  Schoenberg's objective was “to prove that Brahms, the classicist, the academician, was a great innovator in the realm of musical language, that, in fact, he was a great progressive.” He considered Brahms his musical ancestor, along with Wagner, Beethoven and Mozart. His new method of composing was not so much revolutionary as evolutionary, at least to Schoenberg.

Schoenberg began his composing life as a Late Romantic, but his compositions showed signs of breaking with tonality early on. Even after he developed and used his method, he would lapse back into his earlier style, especially in his older years.  Schoenberg was in some ways a paradox, as he expanded upon what Wagner and Liszt had begun while at the same time he championed Brahms as a progressive composer.  In his own compositions Schoenberg could be conservative in form as in many instances he stuck with traditional forms used by Romantic composers.

Schoenberg was faithful to Brahms' original work in that he changed no notes. His brilliant orchestration is another matter. Brahms' orchestration was like his solo piano music; not outwardly brilliant and colorful, but complex and well written. Brahms' orchestration suited the character of his symphonic works perfectly. Schoenberg's orchestration of the work is radically different from what Brahms would have done.  My post of Brahms original version of this work can be found here.

I wouldn't say that Schoenberg's arrangement suits Brahms' music like a glove, but it does have its moments. Shoenberg begins with a rather straightforward arrangement of the first movement, but after that each movement gets stamped with Schoenberg's style more and more. It leads to the final movement, an absolutely wild rendition of Brahms' Rondo alla Zingarese. With more and more percussion and quirky orchestral techniques, Shoenberg  pulls out all the stops and makes music that is pretty wild in its original form completely over the top.  Schoenberg had a liking for and understanding of Brahms' music, that much shows in the arrangement. Schoenberg's orchestration doesn't cancel out the greatness of the original, but it is interesting. And frankly, Schoenberg's last movement is incredible.

Schoenberg - A Survivor From Warsaw

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an Austrian composer that emigrated to America to escape Nazi Germany in 1934 and became a U.S. citizen. He was a great teacher and taught many composers and musicians in Europe before he emigrated and in America afterwards.  Schoenberg composed in many different forms from piano miniatures to complex pieces for orchestra. He is most famous (some would say notorious) for developing an entirely new way of composition based on the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, twelve tone technique

Twelve tone music has no tonal center like more conventional music.  Each tone of the chromatic scale is equal in importance harmonically and melodically with the other eleven. Schoenberg developed this 'new' system almost 100 years ago, and it is still so dramatically different from music based on tonality and keys that many cannot grasp it.  The subject matter for A Survivor From Warsaw is well suited for the music Schoenberg wrote for it.  The music is as difficult to listen to as the story itself.  The piece is for narrator, orchestra and chorus. The story depicted by the narrator:

The narrator tells the story of a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto during WW II, from the time in a concentration camp. He doesn't remember how he ended up living in the sewers of Warsaw. One day in the camp the Nazis held a roll call for a group of Jews.  As the group tried to gather the guards beat the old and sick who couldn't like up fast enough. Those left on the ground were assumed to be dead and the guards asked for another count to see how many would go to the gas chamber. The guard asks for a faster and faster head count and the work ends with the Jews singing the prayer Shema Yisroel.

Schoenberg's tribute to the victims of the holocaust - A Survivor From Warsaw