fundamental for the whole school and has not really been examined sufficiently – if one views
Gurrelieder in these terms for a moment, it is really in the middle between the two types. So, on the one hand,
Gurrelieder is a very sharply characterized work in the sense of contrasting, very clearly separated individual songlike numbers. On the other hand, it consistently seeks to mediate between the parts, not to set them off against one another. And this happens in the form of the orchestral interludes, which are of varying lengths, but in two cases there are very long orchestral interludes, namely before ‘Lied der Waldtaube’ [Song of the wood pigeon], which brings the news of Tove’s death, and then before the last part, ‘The Wild Hunt of the Summer Wind’, which marks the real shift from the mythological element of the work to that of natural symbolism. And these big orchestral interludes are really development sections in an exact sense, developments of the themes that appear in the songs and the vocal sections of the work. Here one finds exactly the same principle that one finds in Berg’s
Wozzeck in the large orchestral interludes, where the motifs first introduced in a relatively simple way to reinforce the vividness of the scenes are then developed and take on lives of their own by various means, especially through a very rich use of imitation. In
Wozzeck, much as in
Gurrelieder, you also have this very pointed contrasting characterization of each individual scene – each individual scene in
Wozzeck has its very specific colour, indeed many scenes even have their own orchestra: the scene, that short adagio scene in the slow movement, is mostly written for chamber orchestra, or the final scene is scored for a very reduced orchestra, and subsequently in
Lulu, as you know, all this was taken much further. So you have this urge to characterize individual parts combined with an urge towards a symphonic unification of the elements, and one might say that, in Berg especially, one of the main impulses was to let these two elements, the symphonic and the characterizing – if one wanted to use a very stupid term, then the genre piece, which always represents a very specific genre – become interwoven, and the central model for that is
Gurrelieder, where the big orchestral interludes have that character. Now, it is extremely gratifying to follow, especially in
Gurrelieder, by what subtle means this characterization is achieved. In its lyricism, its truly lyrical melodies, the first part of
Gurrelieder is among the greatest jewels in all of music. One now sees that the nature poetry often used here prefers a certain quality of muted colour, and this muted colour, this dulling of colours, had a great effect on Schoenberg’s later orchestra, which dispenses almost entirely with the sumptuous, flowering string tone; and, if we have now become so suspicious towards any kind of rich, rounded tutti tone, then this is an impulse that stems from this taste for equivocal, muted colours. One of the basic experiences embodied by all of Schoenberg’s music is that all that glitters is actually dirt. And I think this aversion to shimmer, to things that shimmer on the outside, despite the incredible wealth of colours, this is something you can already find very prominently in
Gurrelieder, where you will find that, in proceeding from the augmented triads in the first song, which are similar to those used by Wagner, that this process of dimming and muting results in whole-tone chords. I will play you a few bars from the first song [plays
Gurrelieder, Part 1]. Now, let me show you how such a melody is truly free from the sequencing principle, and how the connection here is brought about through this gliding [plays] of whole-tone chords and augmented triads into one another. You can also observe here that, unlike Wagner, Schoenberg almost never uses chromatic bass lines, or has only partly chromatic ones; there are always stronger diatonic progressions alternating with the chromatic ones [plays]. Now things turn chromatic [plays], then the strong progression again [plays], now chromatic again [plays]. Now, the melody goes like this [plays]. But now it continues quite differently [plays]. The relationship between the two parts is that of antecedent and consequent, or that of variation. Nonetheless, the second part does not repeat the first but is a kind of answer to it, like this [plays]. This is the first [plays]. So he arrives at the tonic again, but is already working with completely different melodic material. And now we have this chromatic transition [plays], now a different component [plays], and now a kind of consequent in the major, which I do not need to play for you. So then a second verse begins; it is a variation [plays] on the first, a high degree of variation. You see, at the start we had this [plays]. Now you also have these fifths, these fourths [plays], fifth [plays]. The harmonies themselves, as you all know, obviously come from the sleep harmonies in the
Ring,
13 but, whereas Wagner constantly sequences them, they are used here as independent chords that even act as degrees, with a complete avoidance of sequences. Now, Schoenberg’s sense of form also reveals itself in something else. He does not content himself with contrasting the minor part and the major part but instead, once the major part is finished, the second time, he has the feeling that the whole calls for a rounding-off of sorts and introduces something completely independent, namely an
Abgesang [plays]. Note the harmony that arises here [plays]. This is taken from the prelude [plays], and so on.
Now, the song of Tove that follows this introduces a very strong contrast because, even though it uses the same kinds of muted colours, it is now highly polyphonic, working with a very high degree of imitation. So, without any reduction in its dynamics or its strength, it remains in the same territory. And then there is a rather long, scherzo-like part, but I have no more time to go into that. Next time I would like to continue, and especially show you a few examples of the treatment of tonality in Gurrelieder, as well as the choral writing, and then we will focus on the op. 6 songs and I will try, proceeding from the op. 6 songs, to say a few things about op. 7 and about the Chamber Symphony, op. 9. You will have noticed today that I was already analysing these works teleologically – that is, with reference to the development towards those other works. – Thank you.
Notes
1 1. Dehmel’s poem “Verklärte Nacht” reads:Two figures pass through the bare, cold grove;The moon accompanies them, they gaze into it.The moon races above some tall oaks;No trace of a cloud filters the sky’s light,Into which the dark treetops stretch.A female voice speaks:I am carrying a child, and not yours;I walk in sin beside you.I have deeply sinned against myself.I no longer believed in happinessAnd yet was full of longingFor a life with meaning, for the joyAnd duty of maternity; so I daredAnd, quaking, let my sexBe taken by a stranger,And was blessed by it.Now life has taken its revenge,For now I have met you, yes you.She takes an awkward step.She looks up: the moon races alongside her.Her dark glance is saturated with light.A male voice speaks:Let the child you have conceivedBe no trouble to your soul.How brilliantly the universe shines!It casts a luminosity on everything;You float with me upon a cold sea,But a peculiar warmth glimmersFrom you to me, and then from me to you.Thus is transfigured the child of another man;You will bear it for me, as my own;You have brought your luminosity to me,You have made me a child myself.He clasps her round her strong hips.Their kisses mingle breath in the night air.Two humans pass through the high, clear night.(Trans. Scott Horton for Harper’s Blog, 25 January 2008: https://harpers.org/2008/01/dehmels-transfigured-night/)
2 2. In the second scene of Bertolt Brecht’s didactic play Der Neinsager [The naysayer] (1930), the boy says, ‘If someone says a, they needn’t say b. They might recognize that a was wrong’ (Bertolt Brecht, Werke, ed. Werner Hecht et al. [Frankfurt, Berlin and Weimar: Suhrkamp, 1988], p. 71).
3 3. René Leibowitz directed a course in composition. Describing the idea to Wolfgang Steinecke in a letter of 3 February 1955, he wrote that he wanted to show ‘how certain compositional conditions are met in all good music. One could include a few well-chosen examples, e.g. a song, a symphony movement and an opera scene, and try to show how the different composers (from Mozart to Schoenberg, shall we say) approached it, i.e. the way in which each of them solved this problem’ (quoted in Von Kranichstein zur Gegenwart: 50 Jahre Darmstädter Ferienkurse, 1946–1996, ed. Rudolf Stephan et al. [Stuttgart: DACO, 1996], p. 80).
4 4. In the text ‘Heart and Brain in Music’, Schoenberg writes:Thus it will be as astonishing to you as it was to all my friends when I came with the score of Verklärte Nacht and showed them one particular measure on which I had worked a full hour, though I had written the entire score of 415 measures in three weeks. This measure is indeed a little complicated since, according to the artistic conviction of this period (the post-Wagnerian), I wanted to express the idea behind the poem, and the most adequate means to that end seemed a complicated contrapuntal
