Transfigured night

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arnold Schönberg, painting by Richard Gerstl , 1906

Transfigured Night for String Sextet is Opus 4 by the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951) and was inspired by a poem of the same name by Richard Dehmel . The work from 1899 was first performed in 1902. Schönberg himself created a version for string orchestra in 1917, which he revised again in 1943.

Emergence

Schönberg composed the work in the fall of 1899 during a vacation stay with his composition teacher Alexander von Zemlinsky and his sister Mathilde (whom he was to marry in 1901) in Payerbach, Lower Austria . According to the autograph , the composition was completed on December 1, 1899. The programmatic model for this first larger composition by Schönberg, provided with opus numbers, is the poem “Transfigured Night” from the poet Richard Dehmel's collection “Woman and World” published in 1896 . Schönberg had already set Dehmel's poems to music in his piano songs op. 2 and 3.

At the same time (1901), independently of Schönberg, Oskar Fried set the poem to music as a song for mezzo-soprano, tenor and orchestra.

Text basis

The five-stanza poem that precedes the score describes the walk of a couple in the moonlight, in which the woman confesses to her lover that she is expecting another child. In doing so, she meets generous understanding with the man who wants to accept the child as his own.

Transfigured night.

Two people walk through a bare, cold grove;
the moon goes with it, they look inside.
The moon runs over tall oak trees,
not a single cloud obscures the light of the sky
into which the black spikes reach.
A woman's voice says:

I am bearing a child, and not from you,
I am walking next to you in sin.
I wronged myself badly;
I no longer believed in happiness
and yet had a heavy longing
for the
fruit of life, for motherly happiness and duty - I was delighted
, I let
a strange man embrace my sex with a shudder
and I blessed myself for it.
Now life has avenged itself,
now I have met you, oh you.

She walks with an awkward step,
she looks up, the moon walks with her;
her dark gaze is drowned in light.
The voice of a man says:

The child you have conceived
is not a burden on your soul,
oh see how clearly the universe shimmers!
There is a shine around everything,
you are floating with me on the cold sea,
but a warmth
of your own shimmers from you into me, from me into you;
she will transfigure the strange child,
you will give birth to me, from me,
you brought the shine into me,
you made me a child yourself.

He grips her strong hips,
her breath mixes in the air,
two people walk through the high, bright night.

characterization

As a clearly intended program music, Schönberg's composition for string sextet (2 violins, 2 violas and 2 violoncellos), the duration of which is around 25 to 30 minutes, transfers the idea of symphonic poetry into the field of chamber music. “Transfigured Night” is in one movement, but consists of five parts that continuously merge into one another and that follow the changing moods of the poem's stanzas.

“Transfigured Night” is a work from Schönberg's first tonal creative phase and is in the basic key of D minor. In terms of composition, Schönberg falls back on a method frequently used by Johannes Brahms to replace thematic work with permanent processing of smaller motifs ; Schönberg himself later referred to this Brahmsian principle as "developing variation". In contrast , “Transfigured Night” is harmoniously in line with Richard Wagner's successor . The alteration harmonics , melodic jumps and sound gestures that can be recognized in this work are elements "that make up the later Schönberg".

In 1950, Schönberg himself wrote program notes on “Transfigured Night” , which, using 16 musical examples, make it clear that individual motifs and shapes can definitely be assigned to certain text passages of the poem.

World premiere and reception

After the board of the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein had initially rejected a performance of the work suggested by Zemlinsky (one member is said to have said: "That sounds as if you had wiped over the still wet" Tristan "score"), the premiere of the String sextets “Transfigured Night” only came about more than two years after its completion. It took place on March 18, 1902 in the Kleiner Musikvereins-Saal in Vienna and was taken over by the Rosé Quartet with the line-up of Arnold Rosé and Albert Bachrich (violin), Anton Ruzitska (viola) and Friedrich Buxbaum (violoncello), expanded by Franz Jelinek (2nd viola) and Franz Schmidt (2nd violoncello).

The first performance was met with widespread incomprehension and was the first scandal in the history of the performance of Schönberg's works in Vienna. In addition to the unfamiliar tonal language, the rejection also applied to the original poem with its explicitly erotic content, which was denied musical feasibility, while the composer was at least certified as having a certain talent. So it said in the features section of the Wiener Neue Freie Presse:

“Program music, which has already started a sham life more than once and is now celebrating a temporary resurrection, now seems to want to encroach on chamber music as well. A. Schönberg, the composer of a string sextet based on Richard Dehmel, brought us to this old and new matter. Anyone who followed the course of the strange work will probably recognize that this time he remained so far from the goal like many others who tried to make the impossible possible [...] In addition to deliberately confusing and ugly things, some moving, moving, that conquers the listener with irresistible force, rushes into his heart and mind. Only a serious, deep nature can find such tones, only an unusual talent can shine through such a dark path in such a way. The reception of the novelty was divided. Many kept quiet, some hissed, others applauded, on the ground floor a few young people roared like lions. "

Today is one of "Transfigured Night" the most performed works of Schoenberg and is both as a sextet as well as in developed later version for string orchestra in numerous recordings before.

Frames

The string sextet version was published in 1905 by the Berliner Verlag Dreililien (Richard Birnbach). In 1917 Schönberg created a version for string orchestra for the Universal Edition , which, in addition to the violoncellos, contains an additional part for double bass and differentiates between ensemble and solo passages. In 1943, AMP published a version of this orchestral version, revised by Schönberg, with modifications which, in the interests of a more balanced sound balance, particularly affected dynamics and articulation as well as tempo indications.

The pianist and composer Eduard Steuermann , a student of Schönberg, created a transcription for piano trio in 1932 .

Ballet / dance

In 1942 Schönberg authorized the choreographer Antony Tudor to use the music from "Verklierter Nacht" in his ballet "Pillar of Fire" . Tudor intervened in Dehmel's plot structure and brought an entire ballet ensemble to the stage in the Metropolitan Opera House . This choreography is still part of the classic repertoire of the American Ballet Theater today . The numerous later adaptations include those by Jiří Kylián in 1986 at the Hamburg State Opera and by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in 2014 at the Ruhrtriennale .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Dehmel: Transfigured Night. In: Woman and World. Poems and fairy tales. 2nd Edition. Schuster & Loeffler, 1901, pp. 61-63. Digitized at Bielefeld University Library]
  2. ↑ Sybill Mahlke: "Transfigured Night": Nothing to laugh about , tagesspiegel.de , December 14, 2000
  3. ↑ cf. Information from the Arnold Schönberg Center, section "Arnold Schönberg: Program Notes (Analysis)"
  4. ↑ Alexander Zemlinsky: Jugenderinnerungen. In: Arnold Schönberg on his 60th birthday. Vienna, September 13, 1934, p. 34; quoted after Manuel Gervink: Arnold Schönberg and his time . Laaber, 2000, ISBN 3-921518-88-1 , p. 70.
  5. ↑ cit. after Eberhard Freitag: Arnold Schönberg . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek, 1973, ISBN 3-499-50202-X , pp. 14-16.