Pelleas and Melisande (Schönberg)

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Arnold Schönberg, painting by Richard Gerstl , 1906

The symphonic poem Pelleas and Melisande is op. 5 by the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951). The literary model is the play Pelléas et Mélisande by the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck . The composition was written in 1902/03, the premiere in 1905 in Vienna was a failure.

Emergence

Arnold Schönberg stayed in Berlin from the end of 1901 , where he initially worked as Kapellmeister at Ernst von Wolzogens Überbrettl until July 1902 , and later, on the initiative of Richard Strauss, was given a teaching position at the Stern Conservatory . It was also Strauss who drew Schoenberg's attention to the drama Pelléas et Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck . In 1902 Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande was premiered in Paris , the existence of which Schoenberg was apparently not known at the time. Schönberg also initially planned an opera, but then processed the subject in the form of a symphonic poem , which began in April 1902 and was completed at the end of February 1903 and which was to become his op.5. In the summer of 1903 Schönberg returned to Vienna with his wife and daughter who was a good one year old .

From the late 1890s onwards, Schönberg dealt intensively with the possibilities of program musical design . In 1899 he wrote his string sextet Verklänge Nacht, Op. 4, a year earlier the fragmented orchestral composition Spring Death by Nikolaus Lenau . Schönberg also planned further one-movement symphonic poems, for example on Hans im Glück based on Grimm's fairy tales. In 1901, the powerful Gurre-Lieder (which premiered only 12 years later) were largely completed.

Instrumentation

The score of Schönberg's Pelleas and Melisande provides for the following scoring : piccolo , 3 flutes (3rd also piccolo), 3 oboes (3rd also English horn ), English horn, clarinet in Eb, 3 clarinets in A (3rd also bass clarinet ), bass clarinet , 3 Fagotte , Kontrafagott , 8 horns in F, 4 trumpets in F and e, Alt trombone , 4 tenor trombone, contrabass , drums (2 players), percussion mechanism ( pelvis , Large tenor drum , bass drum , tom-tom , triangle , chimes ), 2 Harps and large strings (32 violins, 12 violas and cellos each, 8 double basses).

With this orchestral apparatus, which clearly exceeds the traditional line-up of the symphony orchestra , Pelleas and Melisande stand in a row with works by other composers that were also composed shortly after the turn of the 20th century ( e.g. An Alpine Symphony by Strauss or Le Poème de l'Extase by Alexander Scriabin ).

characterization

The performance of the work is about 45 minutes.

In his own analysis from 1949, Schönberg explains that the musical system closely follows the program of Maeterlinck's literary model. This describes the story of Golo (Golaud), who finds the beautiful, weeping Melisande in the forest and takes her to his castle to marry her. Golo's younger stepbrother Pelleas also falls in love with Melisande and is killed by the jealous Golo. In the end, the pregnant Melisande dies and Golo goes mad.

In an analysis of Alban Berg from 1920, Alban Berg identified four main parts in the consistently composed music, which correspond to the four movements of a symphony : The first part follows the sonata form, a second, in turn three-part part corresponds to a scherzo (there is found for the first time in the musical literature a trombone glissando ). This is followed by an adagio and a finale with a free recapitulation .

The tonal language is strongly chromatic and leads the basic key of D minor to the limits of a tonally bound system. A variety of themes are performed and combined in dense counterpoint . The three main characters are each represented in the manner of Wagner's leitmotifs , plus a short “fate motif ”, which is voiced by the bass clarinet shortly after the start.

World premiere and reception

The high complexity and overloaded polyphony of the work caused Schoenberg's teacher and mentor Alexander von Zemlinsky, despite all recognition of Schoenberg's ability, to doubt whether it was adequately performable. The premiere on January 25, 1905 (according to other information on January 26) in the Vienna Great Music Club Hall with the orchestra of the Vienna Concert Society under Schönberg's own direction met with incomprehension from the audience and critics alike. For example, a critic of the Wiener Sonn- & Mondagszeitung wrote, in a modification of the “heavenly lengths” often quoted by Franz Schubert, another one recommended that Schönberg be put in an asylum and that music paper be kept out of his reach.

In the following years, however, the work found increasing acceptance and, along with the other early works by Schönberg belonging to the late Romantic sphere of expression, is still one of Schönberg's compositions that sound more frequently.

A revision to a ballet suite, which was planned to be made into a ballet suite, in the wake of the impression of the ballet version of Schönberg's Transfigured Night performed in New York in 1942 , did not materialize.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arnold Schönberg Center: "Spring Death", fragment
  2. ^ Arnold Schönberg Center: "Hans im Glück", sketches
  3. ↑ Pelleas and Melisande: Brief thematic analysis by Alban Berg, Universal Edition
  4. ^ Arnold Schönberg Center, introduction by Therese Muxeneder
  5. ↑ Manuel Gervink: Arnold Schönberg and his time . Laaber, 2000, ISBN 3-921518-88-1 , p. 96.
  6. ↑ February 2, 1905, cit. after Eberhard Freitag: Arnold Schönberg . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek, 1973, ISBN 3-499-50202-X , p. 22.
  7. ↑ cit. after Manuel Gervink: Arnold Schönberg and his time . Laaber, 2000, ISBN 3-921518-88-1 , pp. 95-96.

literature

  • Manuel Gervink: Arnold Schönberg and his time . Laaber, 2000, ISBN 3-921518-88-1 , pp. 82-85, 95-96, 343.
  • Christopher Cole Hill: Schoenberg's Pelleas and Melisande - An exegesis and analysis , University of Arizona, 1978

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