- Person
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Lived
- 1874–1951
- Field
- Composition
- From
- Austrian-American
The story
In his twenties Arnold Schoenberg earned a living orchestrating operettas while teaching himself to compose, with counterpoint lessons from Alexander von Zemlinsky. In 1899 he fell in love with Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde, whom he married in 1901, and in the same year, in just three weeks, he wrote Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), a string sextet for two violins, two violas and two cellos.
The piece was inspired by Richard Dehmel's 1896 poem of the same name. A man and a woman walk through a moonlit forest, and she confesses that she is carrying another man's child. He answers with forgiveness, and in the closing lines the whole night seems to shine. Schoenberg's single movement follows the five stanzas of the poem, making it one of the earliest examples of programme music written for a chamber ensemble.
It fused the rich chromatic harmony of Wagner with the closely worked motivic development of Brahms, two traditions many musicians then saw as opposed. That boldness caused trouble: the Vienna music society rejected it, in part because of a chord that textbooks did not recognise, and the 1902 premiere by the Rosé Quartet with two extra players provoked controversy. Dehmel himself was delighted, writing that he had meant to follow his poem in the music but was soon too enthralled to do so.
Schoenberg arranged the work for string orchestra in 1917 and revised that version in 1943, and the orchestral version is the one most often performed and recorded. It has also inspired several ballets, most famously Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, created for Ballet Theatre, now American Ballet Theatre, at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1942.
Audiences who find Schoenberg's later music difficult often come to him through this score, and it is perhaps the work for which he is best known. Together with Gurre-Lieder it stands as his most important tonal music, and it is played constantly by string ensembles and orchestras around the world.
Why it matters
Transfigured Night showed that a young Jewish composer from Vienna could unite the great musical traditions of his day in a work still loved worldwide.
About Arnold Schoenberg
Viennese composer who broke with traditional harmony, invented the twelve-tone method, and returned to Judaism in defiance of the Nazis, writing Moses und Aron and A Survivor from Warsaw.
More about Arnold Schoenberg
- Schoenberg's harmony textbook is still studiedArnold Schoenberg wrote his Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony) in 1910, a teaching book that musicians still study more than a century later.
- Arnold Schoenberg created the twelve-tone methodIn 1923 Arnold Schoenberg announced his method of composing with twelve tones, a new way of organising music that shaped composition for half a century.
- Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire created a lasting ensembleSchoenberg's 1912 Pierrot lunaire, 21 poems for a half-sung reciter and five players, created the 'Pierrot ensemble' that composers still write for today.
- Schoenberg's society gave 353 performances of new musicIn 1918 Arnold Schoenberg founded Vienna's Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave 353 carefully rehearsed performances of new music for its members.
- In America Schoenberg taught John Cage and Lou HarrisonAfter fleeing Nazi Germany, Arnold Schoenberg taught in Los Angeles, becoming a UCLA professor in 1936; his students included John Cage and Lou Harrison.
- Schoenberg taught Alban Berg and Anton WebernArnold Schoenberg's Vienna pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern became major composers in their own right, forming with him the Second Viennese School.
- Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw honoured the murderedArnold Schoenberg's 1947 A Survivor from Warsaw, for narrator, men's chorus and orchestra, ends with prisoners singing the Shema as they face death.
- Schoenberg's Moses und Aron wrestled with an unseen GodArnold Schoenberg's opera Moses und Aron, composed 1930–32, dramatises the Jewish idea of a God who cannot be pictured, through the clash of two brothers.
Sources
- Arnold Schoenberg Wikipedia
- Verklärte Nacht Wikipedia
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