Arnold Schoenberg’s “Serenade,” Op. 24, puts me in the mind of Lorca’s weeping guitar.
Schoenberg employs the guitar as part of a loony ensemble that also includes two clarinets, mandolin, violin, viola, cello, and – in the work’s most prescient movement – voice.
On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear this Janus-like piece. The Serenade may contain the first published example of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method to employ multiple instruments (with voice) – a three-minute setting of a Petrarch sonnet – but of the other five movements, though they may push tonality beyond the breaking point, none of them are actually “twelve-tone.”
If you find yourself hanging on by your fingernails at the seeming lack of identifiable landmarks, it might be better to just let go and allow all the colors to wash over you.
The composer looks back to classical form through the use of repetitions in the opening “March,” the second movement “Minuet,” and the fifth movement “Dance Scene.” There is also a seeming affirmation of the past through the deliberate choice of Petrarch as a source of inspiration. The third movement is a set of “Variations,” and the sixth a “Song (without Words).” A “Finale” caps the piece,” which, all in all – by Schoenberg standards – is fairly light and easygoing.
We’ll hear a performance from the 1966 Marlboro Music Festival. Guitarist Stanley Silverman is one with an ensemble that also includes violinist Jaime Laredo, violist Samuel Rhodes, cellist Madeline Foley, B-flat clarinetist Harold Wright, bass clarinetist Don Stewart, mandolinist Jacob Glick, and (singing Petrarch) bass Thomas Paul. Leon Kirchner directs.
The guitar moves to the front and center in Niccolò Paganini’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor. Paganini, of course, was one of the great violinists – some posit, the greatest who ever lived – but he was also an exceptional guitarist. He composed 15 quartets for guitar and strings.
The last of these is from 1820. We’ll hear it performed in 1976, by guitarist Javier Calderon, violinist Daniel Phillips, and violist Luigi Alberto Bianchi. The cellist, 20 years-old at the time, is Yo-Yo Ma.
Marlboro musicians get a chance to exhibit their pluck, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
In a 1930 poll conducted by the Viennese newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold were elected two of the most influential Austrian composers of their time. The two artists couldn’t be more different, of course – Schoenberg, the godfather of dodecaphonic music, and Korngold, the progenitor of the “Hollywood sound.” Tune in a little early, at 4:00 EDT, to enjoy some of Korngold’s music, on his birthday. I’ll also be talking with Leon Botstein about this summer’s Bard Music Festival, at Bard College. The focus of this year’s festival will be on “Korngold and His World.”
