Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Gurrelieder

Schoenberg: Beyond the Twelve-Tone Legend

Okay, pointy heads! It’s back to school – the Second Viennese School – for the birthday of Arnold Schoenberg.

The dour high priest of twelve-tone music was full of surprises. I venture to guess that many would be nonplussed to learn that the greatest prophet of dodecaphonic music claimed artistic kinship with Johannes Brahms. But then, some conductors (notably Karajan and Solti) have tried to interpret him that way. Even so, he remains one of the most hated composers among concertgoers who prefer programs of unsullied Beethoven and Dvořák.

Schoenberg may have preached the death of tonality, but he composed at least three Romantic masterpieces, “Verklärte Nacht” (“Transfigured Night”), “Pelleas und Melisande,” and the opulent oratorio “Gurrelieder,” before venturing into Expressionism with works like his Chamber Symphony No. 1. In the meantime, he also orchestrated his share of Viennese operettas and arranged Strauss waltzes for performance by his friends.

By the time he came to America, Schoenberg was probably the least “popular” composer in the world (if one of the most influential), but at his new home in Los Angeles his tennis partner was none other than George Gershwin. The two also shared a love of painting.

Adding to this “beautiful mountain” of contradictions, Schoenberg, like that other titan of 20th century music, Igor Stravinsky, made a game attempt to break into films. He was courted to write music for the 1937 big screen adaptation of Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth,” but his proposed fee of $50,000 put an end to that.

Schoenberg did once prophesy that one day “grocer’s boys would whistle serial music on their rounds.” Maybe he actually meant cereal music. While to my knowledge that has yet to pass, I did once catch myself walking down the street humming the Golden Calf music from “Moses und Aron.”

Happy birthday, Arnold Schoenberg!

Schoenberg remembers his friend, George Gershwin

Gershwin films Schoenberg

Schoenberg home movies (Gershwin appears at the 30-second mark)

Schoenberg in private

Schoenberg on Alban Berg

“Gurrelieder,” Part I (1900-03, 1910)

Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1909)

“Pierrot Lunaire” (1912)

“Variations for Orchestra” (1926-8), conducted by Bruno Maderna

“Moses und Aron” (1930-32), The Golden Calf

A kinder, gentler Schoenberg – the Suite for String Orchestra (1935)

TWELVE IMAGES FOR TWELVE TONES: As this gallery demonstrates, Schoenberg wasn’t always the grim, humorless figure his portraits would suggest (images identified when you click through)

September 13, 2022
Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” A Halloween Ride

With Halloween only days away, take a wild ride with the undead in Arnold Schoenberg’s opulent masterpiece “Gurrelieder.”

Jens Peter Jacobsen’s dramatic poem synthesizes Danish legends concerning the illicit love of King Waldemar for a beautiful maiden, Tove, and the vengeance of his wife, Queen Helwig. The King curses God for the loss of his beloved and is condemned to gallop, night after night, alongside a terrifying cohort of gibbering spirits.

The orchestra is enormous – with 25 woodwinds, 25 brass instruments, four harps, a celesta, and 16 different percussion instruments, including an iron chain – larger even than those of Gustav Mahler. The work sports no less than 35 major leitmotifs, and the length is comparable to Mahler’s Third Symphony.

Schoenberg conceived of “Gurrelieder” at the age of 26, in advance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and “Das Lied von der Erde.” The composer claims to have finished it, at least in short score, in 1901. However, financial need prevented him from completing the orchestration for Parts II & III until after Part I proved to be a mega-hit. It wasn’t until 1911 that “Gurrelieder” reached its final form.

By then, Schoenberg was over it. Like something a doomed king himself, already he was hurtling into freely atonal territory. Success had come too late for an artist who had suffered a decade’s worth of critical brickbats. He didn’t give a damn, even as Waldemar received one.

Prior to “Gurrelieder,” on today’s Noontime Concert, we’ll have chamber works by Ottorino Respighi and Ernest Chausson, as performed at the Lake George Music Festival. Enjoy Respighi’s rarely-heard Piano Quintet in F minor and Chausson’s Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet.

Then it’s a tale of love and death – and death and love – in 14th century Denmark. We’ll hear the whole damned thing, between 12 and 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

October 29, 2019
Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder Halloween Terrors on WPRB

At its climaxes, Arnold Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” makes Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” sound like chamber music.

This Thursday morning on WPRB, we’ll sample from Schoenberg’s early exercise in Romantic excess, as we attempt to dodge the undead hordes on their wild hunt. It will be one of many wild rides we’ll endure, in our desperation to cling to life and soul, as we are assailed by wave after wave of Halloween terrors.

We’ll be set upon by Victor Hugo’s djinns (twice). We’ll be tempted and tormented by Goethe’s Erlkönig (three times). We’ll bolt for our lives with Robert Burns’ Tam O’Shanter (again, thrice). We’ll encounter a literal night mare in a Norwegian wood (once is enough). We’ll take a couple of short rides in fast machines. And we’ll ride with the Devil, over and over again.

You can flee the Abyss, but you can’t hide, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. We’re going to get you every witch way, on Classic Ross Amico.

October 26, 2017

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