Brano: Arnold schoenberg

TV 34315

PIERROT LUNAIRE, Op. 21

MARIE THBRÈSB ESCRIBANO, SPEAKER IVAN EROD, PIANO HELMUT RIESSBERGER, FLUTE ROLP EICHLER, CLARINET JOSEF PLICHTA, BASS CLARINET VIKTOR REDTENBACHER, VIOLIN EUGENIE ALTMANNCLOETER,

VIOLA FRIEDRICH HILLER, CELLO

FRIEDRICH CERHA, DIRECTOR

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/''ine of thè most distinctive milestones on thè long and ^ tortuous road travcled by western music, thè Pierrot Lunaire of Arnold Schoenberg* (18741951) is also one of those unfortunate masterpieces destined to be more often — and more heatedly — discussed than actually listened to. Certainly it is less often performed than any of thè other comparably significant achievements of twentiethcentury composers — Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps of less than a year later, say, or even Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande of a decade earlier. Yet it makes no such sizeable personnel demands, calling for only a single vocalist and no more than five instrumentai ists. Nor is it any harder on tender ears: its dissonances are re[...]

[...]le personnel demands, calling for only a single vocalist and no more than five instrumentai ists. Nor is it any harder on tender ears: its dissonances are relatively mild even by World War I standards, and its idiom is by no means as abstract as Schoenberg’s, and his pupils’, later works in thè twelvetone system — to say nothing of today’s serial, aleatory, computorized, or electronically synthesized music.

This is not to claim, however, that Pierrot Lunaire is not difficult. It is extremely hard to perform well, especially for thè vocalist who has to walk a precarious tightrope bctween recitation and song in Schoenberg’s idiosyncratic Sprechtimme requirements, which every performer interprets somewhat differently despite thè fact that thè score notation specifìes both thè rhythms to be observed and thè pitches to be touched (but never rested upon). For listeners there is thè even greater difficulty of persauding one’s sensibili ties (moral as well as aesthetic) to accept, or at least tolerate, thè work’s corrosive concentration of cynicism, sard[...]

[...]drte Nacht and GurreLieder. And we recognize it as a wholly unique, quite incomparable creation. Whether we consider it a sterile (yet fearsomely powerful) exercise of “counterpoint in convulsions,” or a lonely masterpiece of ironie fantasy and magisterial craftsmanship, it is something no one deeply concemed with music can afford not to know — and to know well by thè repetitive hearings and undisturbed study that only recordings can provide.

piERROT Lunaire is a setting “to tones” assigned to a * female voice (Sprechstimme) and a small instrumentai ensemble of 21 (“thrice seven’*) poems, each of three short stanzas. The se were originally written in French by thè Belgian poet Albert Giraud (pseud. of Albert Kayenberg, 18601929), published under thè overall title of Pierrot Lunaire in 1884 when “Giraud” was only twentyfour, and here translated into German by thè poet and dramatist Otto Erich Hartleben, 18641905. The score calls for flute (intcrchangeablc at times with piccolo), clarìnet (bass

Originally Schònberg, and stili sospelled in Germanspeaking countries. The composer himself sanctioned thè spelling “Schoenberg” after he carne to thè United States in 1933.

Side I — 23:15 Min.

Arnold Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (Beginning)

Part I (12:10 Min.)

Part II (11:00 Min.)

Side 2 — 11:22 Min.

Arnold Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (Conclusioni

Part III

clarìnet), violin (viola), ’cello, and piano, but many of thè settings demand no more than three or four of these, while only a single instrument is demanded in No. 7 and only two in No. 9. The instruments often are heard alone as well as with thè Sprechstimme, and even in thè latter case they supply no mere àccompaniment in thè usuai sense of thè term — rather a quasiautonomous mosaic of a myriad minute, abstract, tonai details.

Al though thè work gives thè impression (as noted by Cecil Gray) that thè settings were composed “with lightning rapidity and [...]