Five orchestral pieces

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Arnold Schönberg, self-portrait, 1908

The Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 by the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951), composed in 1909, were premiered in 1912 in London . They are his only orchestral work in free atonality .

Origin and premiere

Arnold Schönberg began his Five Orchestral Pieces in May 1909 and completed them in August 1909 in Steinakirchen , Lower Austria , where he spent a vacation with his family, Alexander Zemlinsky , Alban Berg , Anton Webern and Max Oppenheimer . (Immediately afterwards, he completed his first stage work with the monodrama Expectation .) Even before completion, he offered it to Richard Strauss for the premiere in July 1909 . Aware of the complexity and novelty of his work, he wrote: “[...] I think this time it is really impossible to read the score. It would almost be necessary to list them on a 'blind opinion' basis. However, I expect a colossal amount of it, especially the sound and mood. It's just about that - absolutely not symphonic, directly the opposite of it, no architecture, no structure. Just a colorful, uninterrupted change of colors, rhythms and moods. But, and that is the advantage by which you might risk it: very short! […] ”In September 1909, however, Strauss politely refused:“ It is very painful for me to have to send you your scores back without confirmation that they will be performed. You know I like to help and have courage too. But your pieces are experiments so daring in terms of content and sound that for the time being I cannot dare to present them to a more than conservative Berlin audience [...] ”.

The five orchestral pieces were originally untitled. Only at the request of Henri Hinrichsen , whose publishing house Peters was to publish Schönberg's Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 in 1912 (the Universal Edition had refused), the composer found himself unwilling to find programmatic headings, as a diary entry from January 28, 1912 shows: “ On the whole the idea is not sympathetic. Because music is wonderful in the fact that you can say everything so that the knower understands everything, and yet you have not divulged your secrets, those that you confess to yourself. But title chatters. [...] "Schoenberg's title (I. anticipations , II. Past , III. Chord colorations , IV. Peripetie , V. The obbligato recitative ), however, met the requirements of the publisher in terms promotion so little that they were in the first edition but omitted and were only included in the revision published in 1922.

A partial premiere (pieces 1, 2 and 4) took place on February 4, 1912 in the Berlin Harmonium Hall in a version for two pianos eight hands that Erwin Stein had created. The first performance of the orchestral version took place, played by the Queen's Hall Orchestra , as part of the Promenade Concerts under the direction of Sir Henry Wood on September 3, 1912 in London . Schönberg found out about the planned premiere so late that, to his annoyance, he was unable to attend.

The performance met with widespread incomprehension. The music critic Ernest Newman wrote in The Nation : It is not often that an English audience hisses the music it does not like; but a good third of the people the other day permitted themselves that luxury after the first performance of the five orchestra pieces of Schoenberg. Another third of the audience was not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third seemed too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss… (“It doesn't often happen that an English audience wipes out the music it doesn't appreciate; however, it allowed itself a good third of the people recently had this luxury after the first performance of Schönberg's five orchestral pieces. Another third of the audience did not hiss because they laughed instead, and the remaining third seemed too confused to laugh or hiss ... ") .

In 1914 Schönberg was given the opportunity to conduct his work himself in London. The German premiere took place in 1920 at the 50th Tonkünstlerfest in Weimar .

Instrumentation and versions

The score of the Five Pieces for Orchestra Arnold Schoenberg sees the first version for large orchestra following occupation before: two flutes , two piccolos , three oboes , English horn , two clarinets in A, clarinet in D, bass clarinet in B, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons , contrabassoon , 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in Bb, 4 trombones , bass tuba , xylophone , timpani , bass drum , tam-tam , harp , celesta and strings .

In 1920, Schönberg created an arrangement for chamber orchestra in order to enable it to be performed as part of a concert by the Association for Private Musical Performances . The individual parts were lost soon afterwards, there is only a score of the first edition, in which Schönberg made notes. On Schönberg's initiative, his pupil and son-in-law Felix Greissle created a new version for chamber orchestra, which appeared in 1925.

After a revision of the first version had already taken place in 1922, Schönberg created a version for standard orchestras in 1949, mainly for performance reasons, in which the extensive woodwind section was reduced to the usual size.

characterization

The performance of the work is about 16 to 18 minutes. The five pieces are overwritten as follows (title according to revision 1922):

  1. Feelings (very quickly)
  2. Past (Moderate Quarters)
  3. Colors (moderate quarters)
  4. Peripetia (very quickly)
  5. The obligatory recitative (moving eighth notes)

In 1908/1909, Schönberg's musical language changed from a greatly expanded tonality to atonality (a term that he himself rejected because of its potentially negative connotation), which initially only appeared fully in individual parts or movements, such as the Three Piano Pieces op. 11 or some songs in the book of the hanging gardens op. 15. The Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 are Schönberg's only pure orchestral work in free atonality. Here the ties to a fundamental tone are given up, as is the idea that dissonances should be resolved as tense sounds in consonances . At the same time, formal principles based on key relationships no longer apply, which is expressed in the neutral designation as “five pieces”, which neither want to continue the monumental symphonies of Gustav Mahler nor the genre type of symphonic poetry .

In the first piece, the underground is formed over long stretches by a three-tone motif (D – A – C sharp), above which “one of the wildest ostinati is played out”, which canonically be enlarged and reduced.

In the second, with a playing time of a good five minutes, the longest piece with a more withdrawn and more transparent instrumentation compared to the first, Winfried Zillig recognizes sounds of an “astral delicacy and glass fragility” after initially “distant Tristan tragedy”.

The third piece achieved particular fame because it anticipates the term “ timbre melody ” in certain respects, which is discussed in the final chapter of Schönberg's theory of harmony (1911); an idea according to which the same tone can be given a melodic expression by simply changing the timbre. A five-note chord (C-G sharp-B-E-A) appears in alternating colors and wanders almost imperceptibly through the various groups of instruments in around 60 slow, small tone changes, in order to return to the starting position at the end. In the chamber line-up by Greissle (see above) as well as in the 1949 version for standard orchestra, the piece is poetically titled Farben (Sommermorgen am See) , apparently with Schönberg's approval .

The fourth piece, with its rapid three-four time and triplet formations, has the character of a scherzo .

In the fifth piece with its waltz echoes, there are no recitative passages in the traditional sense despite the title added later . However, a main voice reminiscent of a recitative can be made out, which consists of the smallest, mosaic-like connected motifs that are led through the various instruments.

literature

  • Manuel Gervink: Arnold Schönberg and his time. Laaber, 2000, ISBN 3-921518-88-1 , pp. 192-200.
  • Hans Renner , Klaus Schweizer : Reclam's concert guide. Orchestral music. 10th edition. Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-15-007720-6 , pp. 542-543.
  • Hansjürgen Schaefer: Concert book orchestral music. PZ. VEB Dt. Publisher f. Musik, Leipzig 1974, pp. 174-176.
  • Michael Mäckelmann: Arnold Schönberg - Five Orchestral Pieces op.16 (Edition 45 of Masterpieces of Music) , W. Fink, 1987

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cit. n. Arnold Schönberg Center
  2. ↑ cit. n. Manuel Gervink: Arnold Schönberg and his time. Laaber, 2000, ISBN 3-921518-88-1 , pp. 197, 198.
  3. ↑ cit. n. introduction to the work by Herbert Glass ( Memento from December 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Hansjürgen Schaefer: concert book orchestral music. PZ. VEB Dt. Publisher f. Music, Leipzig 1974, p. 175.
  5. ↑ Winfried Zillig: Variations on New Music. List Verlag, Munich 1964, p. 44.

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