The New Music. Theodor W. Adorno

the second part begins.

Perhaps, just this once, I can say something about the matter of performance. In the symphonic poems of the period, and this applies especially to Richard Strauss, there is a great danger that, when the schema happens to be ‘death and transfiguration’⁵ and we get to the transfiguration – which happens rather often – when that point is reached, one has the feeling that everything is essentially over, and therefore – this is incredibly strong in Strauss – has the impression of one coda after another; and what is unbearable about this kind of music is that, with these very strong cadences, one thinks that surely one has arrived at the goal and the boat has reached the harbour, and then it starts again and again and again. The same applies to many of Strauss’s operas; these are formal questions that are by no means limited to the shaping of symphonic works but, rather, apply to musical shaping in general. Now, it is of the utmost importance, and essential for understanding Schoenberg in general, to know that a work such as Verklärte Nacht has nothing to do with this scenario where the boat not only reaches the harbour and does so again, and is now very secure there, and is now in the innermost pool [laughter in the auditorium]. Schoenberg is truly free of this, which means that the second part is a genuinely and thoroughly composed second part, not a drawn-out coda or suchlike. And this is clear from the fact that it is just as rich in thematic work as the other themes. It would, incidentally, be worth comparing the musical quality, the quality of individual ideas, and comparing something like this theme here, which opens the second part, this D major theme, with the transfiguration theme from Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung, where you can already compare this incredible warmth Schoenberg has, which is devoid of anything decorative, with the boastful, self-regarding character of a theme like this [plays Tod und Verklärung] in the Strauss. I would say that the difference between such a theme and Schoenberg’s theme, this one [plays Schoenberg, op. 4], this difference is essentially the difference between bloated, decorative neo-Romanticism and New Music, even though Schoenberg is still using neo-Romantic material.

      But I wanted to say something about performance. I think it is very important that, with a theme like this one, which bears the marking ‘Very broadly and slowly’, one should still be clear that the theme is intended in minims, that it is an alla breve theme and should not be played in crotchets, for heaven’s sake, that one should not make it excessively definitive, but that one truly conveys through the presentation that this is not one of those wretched codas but genuinely the second part of the whole form. So I would say that the performance of such works should precisely reflect the formal relations within them, and naturally people generally forget that entirely.

Now I will show you in detail how the themes, the new themes from the second part, alternate with the preceding themes, and how the form is actually created in this second part. So first you have this new theme on page 26 [plays] that I just played you. And the cadence to F sharp major [plays] is followed directly by the one-bar phrase from the beginning, which leads into the main theme. So, here is the theme [plays]. And then comes this [plays]. Now Schoenberg appends this motif, which comes from the beautiful E major theme I played you, as a consequent [plays], so this theme has actually been added and becomes a consequent [plays]. This is followed by a sort of coda idea, and now there is another new theme at letter N on page 28 [plays]. Now, clearly this theme is not an entirely new theme but is probably connected to this theme from an earlier episode [plays], at least in the sense that the characteristic intervals are shared, but here it certainly has the quality of a fresh theme. So you see how he alternates: first he has the new theme [plays], then he introduces this first theme from the first movement and then this consequent [plays], and now he has another new theme. Then he brings back a familiar element by returning to the duet idea [plays], and so forth, meaning that he alternates once again between what was already there and what is entirely new, and then he also draws the introductory theme [plays] into the whole mixture. The duet idea then continues, and now the real second subject of the second part, which is also conceived with two themes, this is very fresh and is one of the most beautiful themes in all of early Schoenberg, I would say [plays]. And this is an entirely new theme but is followed by a familiar element from the first part [plays], and so forth. So, as you will have noticed, this is obviously the main theme but now in the major, this one [plays], and so on. This is elaborated for some time until finally this theme, well, the quintuplet theme, is brought back and then combined with the second subject theme, this one [plays], and when that is over, Schoenberg falls back on this cadential theme I mentioned to you [plays], but now he absorbs it into the symphonic fabric, in D flat major [plays]. And this is repeated and continues in the same vein. And then he brings back this motif, this shortened motif from the theme [plays]. I would prefer to spare you the detail of a thematic analysis, because you can all work that out for yourselves easily enough. So, what you find here is an alternation between a new theme, or a returning new theme from the second part, and a theme from the first part, as I have already shown you. The climax is reached with the cadential theme on page 42, where the cadential Abgesang theme is finally combined with the sealing theme, and this cadential turn reappears one last time at the very end before the coda. Though here, and this is very interesting, he uses the Abgesang theme in triple fortissimo at the climax [plays] but combines it not with the cadential theme but, rather, the main theme of the second part. Only at the very end, before the final coda, does he go so far as to use it in this form – no, excuse me [plays], instead of this [plays], because that is over; instead, it is bracketed together with the whole form once and for all by this [plays].

Incidentally, I would like to draw your attention to something else. In Wagner, the approach to leitmotifs is generally characterized by a certain ruthlessness and violence. That is, the variations often impose things on the themes that the themes cannot really carry. So if you look at Götterdämmerung and see everything that happens to Siegfried’s horn call there, one has the feeling that the whole leitmotif apparatus puts too great a strain on the individual character of the themes. After all, a theme is always two things at once: it is both ‘for itself’ and ‘for another’, something that exists for itself as something independent but is also an element from which other things are formed. And I would say that this is one of the most important tasks of composition […]

[…] and that is the song ‘Warnung’ [Warning].⁶ I would like to show it to you for two reasons: firstly, because I have set myself the task of showing you in statu nascendi, as it were, certain basic Schoenbergian characters that then run through the later oeuvre, and, secondly, to point out a certain phenomenon in Schoenberg that it is very difficult to formulate precisely, but which I consider rather important for understanding the specific nature of his music as such. So, let us first of all consider the character in question. It is a certain kind of abrupt, startled scherzo character. I think that Schoenberg’s reshaping of the great traditional formal types has generally been given too little serious analysis. It is fair to say that the spirit of the sonata certainly predominates in Schoenberg, and in a very strict sense. But one might also say that precisely the traditional type of the scherzo greatly inspired him, on the one hand, but that he decisively altered it, on the other. It inspired him in the sense that the scherzo in traditional music was essentially restricted – if you will forgive my using the word just this once for the sake of clarity, I would only ever say it, not write it – to the element one refers to in music as the ‘demonic’. In so far as Schoenberg’s music is very substantially defined by the element of the demonic, driven by the forces of expressionism – extending from the uncanny to a certain kind of quirky humour, Schoenberg undoubtedly absorbed a great deal of this spirit of the scherzo. On the other hand, he himself remodelled the form very significantly. To a certain extent, since Haydn replaced the traditional minuet with the fast scherzo, the scherzo has rather lacked a history. There have been all manner of changes, of course, such as a certain shift towards more generic, intermezzo-like types of the kind one finds in Brahms; I do not wish to discuss these music-historical matters now. But the inner constitution of this type has, to a certain extent, remained constant. And if Schoenberg did indeed exert such a great influence on the totality of musical forms, then one thing this means is that he was the first to overcome this element of stasis in the crafting of the scherzo, that he pulled the scherzo fully into music history, as it were. And that happened in keeping with characters like the one I will at least play for you now. There