The New Music. Theodor W. Adorno

and that is precisely the last theme I just played you, the one that appears before the coda, but also in many other places. I mean this theme [plays]. And only at the end [plays] does he bring these two sealing themes together, these two brackets, and thus brings about the unity of their function – whereas, in all the analogous passages in the second part, where before there was this strange ninth chord, this inverted ninth chord, he instead has exactly this cadential theme. That too, incidentally, is an element, a formal element, that you will find used in a far more conscious way in the First Chamber Symphony, which, as well as the fourths, has its own cadential theme that enters whenever there are perfect cadences, namely this theme [plays]. And this theme I just mentioned has exactly the same function here, in a slightly more primitive way. So you see that the genuinely revolutionary innovations undertaken by Schoenberg in the great chamber works from op. 7 to op. 10 were, both in their idea and in the technical approach, already present to a considerable extent in Verklärte Nacht.

      Now I would like to consider a few details in Verklärte Nacht. But I will not analyse everything for you. I will not provide a complete analysis, least of all a purely thematic analysis, which is very simple in parts, and you can […]

[…] distinguish incredibly precisely between variable motifs and themes, that is, between themes that turn into something and themes that appear with a kind of claim to being, and which consequently have this form of exterritoriality I was describing to you earlier when I spoke about that inorganic quartal element, which is really one of the roots of the later dissonance. So he will not, for example, subject a theme like this [plays] to variation, because it is precisely the fact that this theme in its formal purpose always has a conclusive, a final character, if you will – if you were to develop variations on that, it would lose its whole sense. What he does, what he then does in the Chamber Symphony with incredible artifice, is to transform the endings of such themes in such a way that they always lead into new harmonic regions, that they always take on a different function. In their own substance, however, these themes are preserved. I would like to correct myself in a small matter, incidentally. You must not assume from what I have said that there are no adagio movements in the traditional sense in Schoenberg. The first movement of the Second Chamber Symphony, for example, is an adagio of the grandest kind, though somewhat exceptional in that respect – and indeed the Second Chamber Symphony as a whole, to which I would like to devote an entire lecture course one day, is one of the most exceptional of all works by Schoenberg.

      Well, that is really everything I wanted to say to you about Verklärte Nacht, but I would like to give you an opportunity, if you have any questions about these things I have touched on, an opportunity to have those questions answered. Can I assume, after everything I have said, that you are sufficiently familiar with the work to reconstruct approximately what I have said? Because obviously I was unable to carry out a typical thematic analysis here, which would also be entirely beside the point of such a lecture. So, do you have any questions about it? – Yes? Didn’t someone say something?

      Question from the auditorium: Just something that may be more peripheral. Should one view the arrangement for string orchestra as authentic, are they equally valid, the chamber work and the one for string orchestra?

      Adorno: I think Professor Kolisch can answer that question better than I can. Rudi, what do you think?

      Rudolf Kolisch: Yes, Schoenberg approved of both performances, though he preferred the original version.

      Adorno: He preferred the original version?

      Kolisch: Yes.

      Adorno: Yes.

      Kolisch: The string orchestra was […]. He made the arrangement himself.

Adorno: The arrangement is his own, yes.

      Kolisch: Yes. […]

Adorno: Well, then I can move on to Gurrelieder. So Gurrelieder has no opus number. That is a strange business; I do not know the exact reason. It probably has something to do with the fact that after finishing work on Gurrelieder – I think it was as early as 1900 – Schoenberg interrupted the orchestration at a certain point, either at the melodrama or the interlude before the melodrama in the third part, and completed it only in 1910, around the time of Die glückliche Hand. In its substance, however, this work is obviously an early Schoenbergian work through and through and should not be placed alongside those that were later changed. Although it is very typical of Schoenberg that all manner of works accompanied him over a very long period, and so his ambition to complete everything and present finished results, this ambition was not terribly great on his part, as indeed the idea of the result and the chef d’oeuvre and completing things are not really decisive with the greatest artists. Just think of Michelangelo: almost all of his major works somehow remained fragments. And this tendency towards the fragmentary is very strong in Schoenberg, and one can perhaps discover something of this kind in Gurrelieder, where the orchestration of the later parts indeed differs greatly from the rest. So, Gurrelieder is a kind of – well, one really has to call it a kind of Liederspiel, a song cycle, in which the very short second part is really just one great song that is contrasted with the other songs purely because of its very emphatic character, and in the third part this is combined with choral elements, namely the male choruses sung by King Waldemar’s troops, then with the long orchestral interlude and the melodrama ‘The Wild Hunt of the Summer Wind’ and the big final chorus. The approach in Gurrelieder as a whole is a two-pronged one, if you will, as I touched on with reference to Verklärte Nacht. On the one hand, it is a work that uses leitmotifs, much like Wagner’s music dramas, and those of you who still own the old version, the long version of Berg’s analysis¹² – I lost mine in the confusion of emigration – can find very detailed analyses of these leitmotif relationships there. At the same time, the piece is written in such a way that the characters of the individual songs are set off against one another, set apart from one another very sharply. Berg, who is largely – I think this has not been sufficiently emphasized until now – Berg’s specific technique consists largely in further developing the technical achievements of the early Schoenberg. While Schoenberg himself then continued in a completely different direction after op. 10, one might say that Berg transferred all the technical advances of the early Schoenberg to a freer material, and there are two works in particular by Schoenberg that were decisive for Berg’s entire development. The first is Gurrelieder and the second is the First Chamber Symphony, which you will more or less find with all its structural elements if you look at the Piano Sonata by Berg, so that Berg’s development must be understood largely in relation to these things and not so much to the later Schoenberg. That applies to Gurrelieder in a very special sense, in a twofold sense. As a teacher, Berg said with a certain – how shall I put it? – rigidity, though there was no doubt something very correct and profound about it – and I assume that this is a distinction he adopted from Schoenberg – that there are really two fundamentally different approaches to shaping music. On the one hand, there is the symphonic or sonata-like way, which I would describe as one where the element of mediation, of dynamic mediation and expansion, is decisive; and then there is a compositional method based on contrasting individual characters, each of them as self-contained as possible. If you look at Schoenberg’s output from this perspective, you will really find that there are a number of works of both types; there are actually quite pure examples of both these types. So, it is hardly worthy of comment that the major instrumental works generally belong to the symphonic type. On the other hand, works like the op. 15 George songs or Pierrot lunaire are extreme examples of a characterization of individual elements that are effective chiefly because of the contrasts, and because each piece does not lead smoothly into the next but is always set off very clearly against it. To say something about the interpretation of these works by Schoenberg, it is therefore one of the most important tasks to set off the George songs or the individual pieces in Pierrot against one another as sharply as possible through the characterization, the vocal tone, the instrumental tone and whatever else there is, to avoid at all costs any semblance of continuity; that is not what these works aim for; they aim for the opposite.

Now, a work such as Gurrelieder