R. Louis Vajda - Dreams Transposed: The Legacy of Pierrot Lunaire

Pierrot Lunaire (1912)

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Almost a century after his death, Arnold Schoenberg remains a controversial figure in the history of 20th century music. In an essay published in 1974 titled “Schoenberg le mal-aimé?” [Schoenberg the Unloved?], Pierre Boulez stated that “Schoenberg inspires more respect than affection” and that “his disciples' admiration was unlimited. The feelings of his opponents, the hatred of what he stood for, were no less excessive.” Despite negative assumptions about Schoenberg’s personality based on the difficult nature of his music, Schoenberg was a sincere person who did not view his compositional ideas as particularly radical, simply misunderstood. Schoenberg’s friends and family members described him as having a sharp sense of humor, which can be seen in his writings, assembled by Joseph Auner. One of the more colorful examples is the quote “The artist never has a relationship with the world, but rather always against it; he turns his back on it, just as it deserves. But his most fervent wish is to be so independent, that he can proudly call out to it: L.m.i.A. [kiss my ass]!”

Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, comprising twenty-one musical settings of poems written by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud (three sets of seven poems), was Schoenberg’s Op. 21, premiered in Berlin on March 12, 1912 when he was 37 years old. Schoenberg was fascinated by magic, numerology, and all things supernatural; the connections between the date, opus number, number of poems, and Schoenberg’s age, were very intentional.

Schoenberg was initially commissioned by Albertine Zehme to write Pierrot Lunaire as a work for voice and piano alone, a genre in which he had a considerable amount of experience by 1912. However, early sketches of the work reveal that Schoenberg began conceiving of a piece for instruments quite early in the process, although piano and voice remain the clear protagonists throughout the work. Schoenbeg’s composition process for Op. 21 was fast, with each of the 21 melodramas written in less than a day. The first melodrama to be written was No. 9 Gebet an Pierrot, where Schoenberg requested Zehme’s permission to use the clarinet, with the full instrumentation of the Pierrot ensemble being determined within the first four weeks of writing. After accepting the commission on March 12, 1912, the full work was completed by mid-July and premiered in October of the same year.

Although the ensemble of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire consists of eight instruments played by five musicians, the majority of the 21 melodramas do not employ the full ensemble. In fact, only 9 of the 21 songs use all five performers, and only the final movement features all 8 instruments of the ensemble, requiring the clarinet, flute, and violin, to switch instruments during the movement. Although modern composers have written works for Pierrot ensemble (typically the quintet without doubling), it is very important to note that Schoenberg’s Op. 21 is mostly a collection of duets, trios, and quartets.

This gives a greater palette of colors for the composer to paint with, allowing for Schoenberg to write for only the instruments that are required for each movement while excluding the rest. Examples of this creative orchestration can be seen in the crystal-like harmonics of the violin heard throughout No. 15 Nostalgia, or in the bright sound of piccolo and clarinet in the upper range in the opening measures of No. 3 Der Dandy. The lowest sounds available in this ensemble are piano, cello, and bass clarinet, which are utilized in their lowest registers in the opening of No. 8 Nacht. Although the music itself isn’t always explicitly reflective of the text, Schoenberg uses the instruments of the Pierrot ensemble as a tool for highlighting the text, a technique called “text painting”.

After the initial Berlin premiere in 1912, Pierrot Lunaire experienced a brief period of success before it was mostly overlooked by the music community. The Boulez quote “All the art of the past must be destroyed” captures the sentiment shared amongst many Twentieth-Century composers that they must constantly be seeking out new sounds and ideas. In 1923 the International Composers’ Guild revived the work for a U.S. premiere at the Library of Congress, and then the work was not performed frequently again until the creation of The Pierrot Players in 1965 (later this group changed their name to The Fires of London). Since 1965, Pierrot Lunaire has become enshrined in the new music community due to its instrumentation of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, commonly used by composers in the late 20th century. The other two works on tonight’s program utilize slightly varied versions of the Pierrot ensemble, and serve as testament to Pierrot Lunaire’s lasting legacy.

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Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913)

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Maurice Joseph Ravel was born in Ciboure, France on March 7, 1875, and moved with his family to Paris before his first birthday. Encouraged to pursue music from a young age by his father, Ravel began his piano studies at the age of seven. He was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire to study piano in 1889 although he was dismissed in 1895 before he eventually returned to study composition under Fauré in 1897. After leaving the Conservatoire in 1903, Ravel became a member of the literary group “Les Apaches” [The Ruffians], which met frequently to discuss the latest ideas in literature, art, and music. It was through this group that Ravel became acquainted with the work of the French Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarmé.

Ravel began work on the Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé while collaborating with Igor Stravinsky on a ballet adaptation of Modest Musorgysky’s Khovanschchina in 1913. Stravinsky, having been inspired by the recent premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, showed Ravel his work Three Japanese Lyrics, which was written for the same instrumentation with the addition of a second flute, clarinet, violin, and viola. Ravel utilized this same instrumentation in his Trois Poemes, despite never hearing a performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.

The first movement is a setting of Soupir [Sigh] which was written in 1864. This poem is composed of two long sentences which are obscured by many modifying clauses. The first sentence essentially boils down to “My soul rises toward the sky”, and is set to a slowly ascending line for the vocalist and flute, accompanied by a screen of harmonics played by the strings. Whereas the first half of the poem contains many adjectives related to upward motion, the second half contains language related to stillness (e.g. “the great basins in its languor infinite”). For this half of the movement, the rocking harmonics in the strings fall away and are replaced by slowly wandering harmonies in the strings. In the final line of the poem, the string harmonics return as the text references the rays of the sun, but the reference is fleeting as the movement comes to a close.

The text for the second movement, titled Placet Futile [Futile Petition] is described by Ravel as “profound and exquisite tenderness.” The poem shifts from the protagonist’s longing for a beautiful woman to resignation that their love is not meant to be, and the musical transitions that Ravel crafts from one section to the next are incredibly delicate and nuanced. The tempo of this movement also shifts dramatically from one line of text to the next, which allows this movement to serve as both a reflective slow compliment to the first and third movements, as well as a lively waltz. The text “Name us” repeats multiple times in the poem, and is accompanied by the same descending musical ‘sigh’ before Mallarmé finally completes the sentence “Princess, name us shepard of your smiles.”

Although the harmonic language of the Trois Poèmes is sophisticated, the final movement Surgi de la croupe et du bond [Emerge from the Crupper and the Bound] is the only fully atonal movement. The seven-note motif first presented in the flutes returns in the final bars of the piece, with the final section written a half-step higher than the opening. The middle section is scored for strings, piano, and voice, only, with the strings and piano playing in two different keys and the vocal line alternating between the two. This creative use of tonal ambiguity sets the text of the second stanza “I truly believe that the two mouths did not…”. In reference to the doubling of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, this movement calls for the first flutist to switch to piccolo, and the second clarinetist to switch to bass clarinet.

Mallarmé, one of the great original Symbolist poets, was an inspiration for the works of Albert Giarud (the author of Pierrot Lunaire). In a 1927 interview with The New York Times, Ravel stated “I consider Mallarmé not merely the greatest French poet, but the only French poet, since he made the French language, not designed for poetry, poetical. It is a feat in which he stands alone.…He released winged thoughts, subconscious reveries, from their prisons.”

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Sept Exceptions (2013)

Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber (b. 19373)

Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber is a French-Swiss composer of contemporary music. Born in Strasbourg in 1973, Sinnhuber studied the flute and received musical training from the Paris Conservatory, IRCAM, and Voix Nouvelles at Royaumont. Sinnhuber’s fascination with everyday sounds has led her to create some very colorful works, such as her piece Little Box (2005) for amplified computer sounds, such as a mouse and keyboard clicking and microphone feedback, or Revers (2006) which calls for a flute to perform by clicking their keys without blowing air through the instrument.

Sept Exceptions receives its name from the seven french nouns that, when made plural, end in “oux” instead of “ous”. These seven nouns are: Bijou [Jewel], Caillou [Pebble], Chou [Cabbage], Genou [Knee], Hibou [Owl], Joujou [Toy], and Pou [Lice]. A common mnemonic device taught to children to learn these exceptions is “Come my darling, my jewel, on my knees, with your toys, throw stones at this ugly owl, who has lice.” Although these are typically listed in alphabetical order, Sinnhuber re-arranges the order of movements to Bijou, Chou, Genou, Caillou, Hibou, Joujou, and Pou.

Sept Exceptions merges Sinnhuber’s fascination with everyday sounds with her wish to reflect elements of the human voice through her compositions (e.g breath, prosody, phrasing, etc.). Each movement is named after one of the seven nouns, and musically depicts the word either symbolically, such as with the bright vibrant sound of crotales in Movt. 1 Bijou [Jewel] or the fluttering of wings in Movt. 5 Hibou [Owl], or physically with the sound of the spoken word reflecting the articulation or length of musical gestures, such as the short, murmured 3-note gestures of Movt. 7 Pou [Lice] or the clicking of flute keys in the opening of Movt. 4 Caillou [Pebble].

Much like Pierrot Lunaire, each movement features a specific instrument or combination of instruments, creating a wide palatte of colors with which the composer can paint. On her website, Sinnhuber includes the following program note:

“Seven brief moments like seven miniature portraits of each of the instruments, both isolated and connected, both islands and archipelago.”

Tonight’s performance is the United States Premiere of Sept Exceptions. Our 2023-2024 season also celebrates the 100th anniversary of the United States Premiere of Pierrot Lunaire.

Program Notes Written by R. Louis Vajda

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