The New Music. Theodor W. Adorno

the two movements completely separate from each other, and place them alongside each other purely as contrasts, it is obvious that the whole genuinely consists of two movements, that there is actually no overarching organization. But if, on the other hand, you organize the second movement or the second part only in the sense of reworking the thematic components that are already given, then it is naturally extremely difficult – especially if the first part does not return at the end to round things off – to keep up the idea of contrast without compromising. Perhaps I can say here that, when people speak of thematic work and the relationship between form and thematic work, they are almost always thinking of how the composer has worked with the material that is already given. It is at least as important for the true formal instinct, however, the true sense of form, that a composer detects at which point something new must appear, at which point something needs to enter that is not derived from what is already given, as it is for the composer’s organizing faculty to use this derivation in order to shape the existing elements. So we should not, in my view, make things too easy for ourselves by thinking that our souls are saved if we can trace everything we write to something that already appeared somewhere else. Especially when analysing, one very easily falls prey to the danger of this cult of derivation, and that, I would say, is a somewhat pre-artistic position, whereas the true sense of form lies in the balance between a sensitivity to the underivable, to the character of the Abgesang, one might almost say, and what came before it and is thus derived. And Schoenberg in particular was incredibly finely attuned to these subtle questions of formal shaping. So now, to come to the question of how Schoenberg fundamentally solved the matter of this bipartite form, we find something highly ingenious. For, in the second part, he used and introduced a large number of genuinely fresh thematic elements and also – how shall I put it? – certain thematic seals, certain thematic frames. But he made these alternate – with a certain regularity, which indicates a compositional intention – with parts, with verses or sections, that were taken from the first part. So there is always, crudely speaking, an alternation in the second part of this work between new themes and themes already present in the first part, and the latter are of course placed in relation to one another and interwoven, and the introductory section should be understood as the introduction not only to the first part but to the whole piece, and the coda consequently corresponds to the introduction. So here you can already see hints in Schoenberg of a phenomenon that later became very important for Berg in particular, and to which I will return later in the context of Gurrelieder. What we find is different principles of organization being superimposed, as it were; the form is organized at different levels because the traditional, conventional formal types are no longer really there, and consequently the form has to be constructed far more tightly than would otherwise be possible. In a sense, Verklärte Nacht – and what I am saying applies equally to Gurrelieder – is a neo-German work in its use of leitmotifs. Several of the main themes have the significance of leitmotifs, as well as this characterizing function of leitmotifs; I will show you a number of these themes in a moment. At the same time, the whole work is symphonically organized, in so far as the first movement genuinely has certain sonata-like elements with a development section, while the second has this very productive division into new thematic elements and the alternation with earlier material, born out of this necessity of balance between the new and the familiar, so that the form is secured both by the leitmotifs at the micro-level, in the details, and by an extremely original and unconventional architecture at the macro-level.

But before I come to the details of this work, I would draw your attention to another matter. You are all familiar with the quartal harmony from the First Chamber Symphony, whose introductory theme is the motto for the Kranichstein course.¹⁰ Those of you who know the First Chamber Symphony well also know that these fourths are not, as people like to say, the theme of the Chamber Symphony but act only as architectural fastenings, whereas the main theme is this [plays] and not the fourths. Now, it is very interesting to observe that Schoenberg already has something very similar to the quartal harmonies of the Chamber Symphony in Verklärte Nacht. You recall these resolutions [plays] or this [plays] and all the others that appear in constant variation in the Chamber Symphony. Now, there is a characteristic central chord, a kind of seal, at the most characteristic turning points in Verklärte Nacht. And this is the famous chord that does not really exist, namely the inverted ninth chord where the suspended note is sustained beneath the resolved note, which, as you know, is forbidden in traditional harmony. This first appears on page 6 [plays Verklärte Nacht], and so forth. The same chord returns later, really at the climax of the development, before a kind of intermediate reprise, one might say, of the slow introduction. So this is the main theme [plays], and then this returns [plays], then you have the chord again [plays]. […] And then you have it appearing importantly for a third time in a later passage – one second – I can’t find the passage just now. I am sure I can point it out to you later when I analyse it. Ah yes, on page 48, directly before the coda, this passage [plays], and there you have the chord again [plays], and so on. Now, this chord is not only interesting because it does not actually exist, but also for another reason, namely its quartal composition [plays]. It takes only a small alteration and you already have this fourth chord [plays]. Why did Schoenberg choose those chords at those turning points here and in the First Chamber Symphony, where it is very well known? Evidently because the function of holding the form together called for something that was remote from the chromatic material. The fastening cannot be made from the same material as the thing it is meant to fasten together; rather, in order to fulfil its function, it must have a certain transcendence, a certain character of otherness in relation to the immanent development of the music. Now, this material you have here is very much based on chromatic leading-note harmony in the manner of Wagner. In order to give these passages a real articulation, however, something has to be introduced as a kind of seal that is as different as possible from this chromatic leading-note material, namely chords: they have none of this urging, dominant-like character, no suggestion of leading notes, and in a sense they are inorganic. With the greatest skill, inorganic elements are sprinkled into the material for the purpose of articulation because this pan-organic material, this thoroughly chromatic material, could hardly be organized and crafted convincingly without this element of contradiction, without this inorganic component. In other words, the articulation of this expressive music occurs, to an extent, through the fact that expressionless elements are introduced at decisive moments to set the expression in relief. And that is where we must seek the root of an entire shaping approach in Schoenberg, or the origin of an entire layer of Schoenberg that, if one formulated a phenomenology of Schoenberg, would have to be described very closely. And that is the layer of coldness, the layer of which the conductor Kunwald once said, referring to the big resolution passage in fourths at the end of the Chamber Symphony’s development section, that it was a kind of glacial landscape.¹¹ And this layer of coldness, which in a sense opposes expression in order to balance out the forces of expression, this layer is the one you first find in this famous chord [plays], and which you then find in the quartal chords and time after time.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, what I have told you here has, I think, extremely far-reaching implications for an understanding of one of the most characteristic phenomena of Schoenberg’s music, namely an understanding of Schoenbergian dissonance. We all tend at first, if we are coming from the Wagnerian perspective, to understand dissonance in the sense of an expressive principle and to say that it really emerged from the increasing need for expression. And I have, to this day, essentially adhered to this belief that dissonance should be explained only and essentially in terms of expression. But I think that, at the same time, it has an entirely different root. In Schoenberg it comes from both these inorganic elements, which – like silver ribs or pieces of metal put into a soft mass, have the function of articulating and holding together. So I would say that when, later on, Schoenberg’s complex sonorities are sometimes expressive, but sometimes the exact opposite of expressive, and have this peculiar – perhaps one can call it objectivity, an objective constructive power – that this already lies inside them, that these articulating, inorganic leading chords appear in this way in the early works. Let me now just note in advance that Schoenberg’s incredible sense of form is also evident, for example, in the fact that he does not simply take this main theme from the first part of Verklärte Nacht to articulate the second part too but, rather, introduces a second theme; he invents a kind of cadential theme that has the same function