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.
Notwithstanding their 14-year difference in age, Mahler and Schoenberg had been friends and colleagues since the start of the 20th century. In 1899, Mahler, an international figure as a composer and conductor, attended the dress rehearsal of Schoenberg’s early masterpiece Verklärte Nacht, and became an enthusiastic supporter of Schoenberg’s music. They maintained their close relationship even after Schoenberg veered off into atonality, which Mahler never accepted. The friendship was terminated only by Mahler’s untimely death in 1911.
It is hardly surprising, then, that Schoenberg turned to the music of his deceased friend for the reduced-force concerts by the Society for Private Musical Performances. In fact, Schoenberg selected three of Mahler’s orchestral masterpieces for arrangement. Schoenberg himself handled Songs of a Wayfarer, and worked with Rainer Riehn on Das Lied von Der Erde. Erwin Stein was responsible for the Fourth Symphony, which was performed at this festival in 2011.
Songs of a Wayfarer was Mahler’s first song cycle – that is, a sequence of songs with a common subject-matter theme. While he had previously written other lieder, they were grouped by the source of their text or the time of their composition as opposed to a common theme. This four-movement cycle, for low voice (but often performed by a female singer), was inspired by Mahler’s unhappy love affair with soprano Johanna Richter, whom he met when he was conductor of the opera house in Kassel, Germany.
The work’s compositional history is complex and difficult to trace. Mahler appears to have begun composing the songs in December 1884, and to have completed them in 1885 with a piano accompaniment. He extensively revised the score between 1891 and 1896, and in the early 1890s orchestrated it.
The orchestral version was first performed in March 1896 by the Dutch baritone Anton Sistermans with the Berlin Philharmonic and Mahler conducting. The work was published in 1897 and is one of Mahler’s best-known compositions.
The lyrics were by the composer himself; though they were influenced by Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a collection of German folk poetry that was one of Mahler’s favorite books. The first song is actually based on the Wunderhorn poem “Wenn mein Schatz”.
There are strong connections between this work and Mahler’s First Symphony. The main theme of the second song is the main theme of the symphony’s first movement, and the final verse of the fourth song appears in the symphony’s third movement as a contemplative interruption of the funeral march.
Songs of a Wayfarer is the title by which the cycle has been known in English. However, Fritz Spiegl, an Austrian musician, has observed that the German “Geselle” actually means “journeyman”, that is, one who has completed an apprenticeship with a master in a trade or craft, but is not yet a master himself. Journeymen in German-speaking countries traditionally traveled from town to town to gain experience with various masters.
A more accurate translation, therefore, would be Songs of a Travelling Journeyman. This title suggests an autobiographical basis for the work. As a young, newly qualified, conductor and budding composer, Mahler was himself in a stage somewhere between “apprentice” and “recognized “master”. He had been moving from town to town, perfecting his skills and learning from masters in his field.
A summary of the four songs follows:
The text describes the Wayfarer’s grief at losing his love to another. He remarks on the beauty of the surrounding world, but that cannot keep him from having sad dreams. The orchestral texture is bittersweet.
This, the happiest music of the work, is a song of joy and wonder at the beauty of nature in simple actions like birdsong and dew on the grass. “Is it not a lovely world?” is a refrain. However, the Wayfarer is reminded at the end that despite this beauty, his happiness will not blossom anymore now that his love is gone.
The Wayfarer likens his agony of lost love to having an actual metal blade piercing his heart. He obsesses to the point where everything in the environment reminds him of some aspect of his love. The music is intense and driving.
The image of those eyes causes the Wayfarer so much grief that he can no longer stand to be in the environment. He describes lying down under a linden tree, allowing the flowers to fall on his face and body. He wishes the whole affair had never occurred: “Everything: love and grief and world, and dreams!” The music is subdued and gentle, lyrical and reminiscent of a chorale in its harmonies.