Notes for: July 30, 2013
About The Schoenberg Arrangements
The concert continues with two orchestral works performed by reduced chamber-sized groups in arrangements by composer Arnold Schoenberg. The story behind the arrangements is as interesting as the arrangements themselves.
Following World War I, Schoenberg, with his disciples Alban Berg and Anton Webern, established the Vienna “Society for Private Musical Performances” (Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen) to present music by contemporary composers to the city’s conservative musical public. The society had to go out of business in December 1921, due to the postwar inflation in Austria, but in its four seasons it gave 353 performances of 154 works in a total of 117 concerts.
The Society’s range of music was wide – the “allowable” composers were not limited to the Schoenberg circle but drawn from all those who had “a real face or name.” The programs included works by Stravinsky, Bartok, Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, and Reger as well as Webern and Berg. During the Society’s first two years, in fact, Schoenberg, the father of atonality, did not allow any of his own music to be performed.
Concerts were normally given at the rate of one per week. The players were chosen from among the most gifted young musicians available, and each work was rehearsed intensively, either under Schoenberg himself or by a “Performance Director” appointed by him. The primary objective was audience education, with clarity and comprehensibility of the performance the over-riding aim. No applause was permitted, and complex works were sometimes played a second time at the same concert.
The audience was highly selective – only those who had joined the organization and had been issued photo ID cards were admitted. Such precautions were exercised to exclude “sensation-seeking” members of the Viennese public, who would often attend concerts with the intention of whistling derisively at “modern” works. Further, to prevent hostile criticism in the press, a sign was displayed on the door that “Critics are forbidden entry”.
Orchestral music was presented with reduced musical forces to minimize costs and to accommodate the small stage that was available. Schoenberg believed the arrangement of large works for reduced forces made possible “a clarity of presentation and a simplicity of formal enunciation often not possible in a rendition obscured by the richness of orchestration.”
In the Society’s first three seasons, orchestral works were generally performed in piano transcriptions, but in the fourth season performances were offered by a chamber orchestra of up to 16 of Schoenberg’s students. The two arrangements we hear this evening were among the ten manuscripts of such chamber-orchestra arrangements now known to exist. Some of these arrangements, however, were unperformed by the Society because of its abrupt termination midway through the fourth season.
Johann Strauss II was the best known and most prolific member of a Viennese family known for its light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas including Die Fledermaus, still a worldwide opera-house favorite. In his lifetime, he was known as “The Waltz King”, and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the latter half of the 19th century. His most famous waltzes include The Blue Danube, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Voices of Spring, and the Emperor Waltz that we hear this evening.
Strauss’s waltzes were favorites with Schoenberg and his followers as a way of luring conservative Viennese audiences in to hear more challenging music. In addition to the Emperor Waltz, Schoenberg also arranged Roses of the South and Lagunen (Lagoon Waltzes); Alban Berg, Wine, Women and Song; and Anton Webern, the Treasure Waltzes.
Strauss composed the Emperor Waltz in 1889. Originally titled Hand in Hand, it was intended as a “toast of friendship” by Austrian emperor Franz Josef on the occasion of his visit to the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. Strauss’ publisher, Fritz Simrock, suggested the title Kaiser-Walzer since that title could allude to either monarch and thus satisfy the vanity of both rulers. However, the original cover of the piano edition bore the illustration of the Austrian Imperial Crown.