Romantic Schoenberg....

Pierrot Lunaire

Dreimal siben Geichte aus Albert Girauds ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ Op.21 are a collection of songs composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1912. They are based on 21 selected poems of the German translation, performed by Otto Erich Hartleben about Albert Giraud’s cycle of poems. The protagonist of the poems is Pierrot, a comic servant of the French Commedia dell’Arte, which was created in Italy in the late 17^th-century.

The figure of Pierrot was very emblematic and serves in the late 19^th century as an alter-ego for some of the most remarkable artists. Pierrot represents the growing materialism and crude reality that characterized late nineteen-hundreds. The narration immerses the artist into an interior world that worships the disturbance of the senses by the ecstasy of music and the use of drugs.  This creation of art, just because of art, was one of the main ideas in Giraud’s works.  His view took away all philosophical, religious, or social implications form art creation. The atmosphere that surrounded the work is also full of the aesthetics conveyed by Schopenhauer.  The poems are conceived by the idea that art has a purpose to provide a temporary refuge from the world and its misery, one of Schopenhauer main thoughts. The poems are also filled with this new definition of love and art, full of the skepticism of the era.
 All of this was used by Schoenberg for the creation of his Pierrot Lunaire. According to him, it was more than a musical piece. It was an attempt in the drama field. The piece has some echoes of Schoenberg’s time in Berlin. In 1902, he moved to Berlin to serve as musical director for high-minded revues at the Uberbrettl Cabaret. The cabaret was founded by Ernst von Wolzogen who wanted to bring to Germany the Parisian Cabaret concept. The idea did not work, and Schoenberg returned to Vienna.

The work was commissioned by Albertine Zehm., who used to recitate dramas accompanied by music in Cabarets. The music in the piece is atonal, which represents Schoenberg resistance to maintain the popular mainstream. The piece was conceived by Schoenberg to get the main attention on the text and its literal context. It was conceived as almost background music. The work consists of three groups of seven poems each. The numerology plays an important role in the genesis of the piece. It was conceived by Schoenberg in March 12 of 1912.  Is his opus 21 and contains 21 poems, and his musical motifs consist of 7 notes each. The main topics in the first group are love, sex, and religion .The second group of poems are all about violence and crime. The third group reminds us of the journey home by Pierrot and the implications of his latent past. The premiere of the work was surrounded by criticism. The music quality and the blasphemy contained in the lyrics made the audience react in mixed ways. Although all this, the premiere was a success.

The Sprechstimme style that Schoenberg uses to highlight the drama factor introduces the listener to Pierrot’s world and maintains the attention on the significance of the work. Pierrot’s duality, the inner hero and the buffoon, are perfectly synchronized with the music that we heard. The piece was original commissioned for vocals and piano but Schoenberg felt the necessity of expand the sound spectrum. At the end the piece was composed for Flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, conductor and vocals.
In the version of Sally Burguess, a South Africa-born British operatic lyric mezzo-soprano, we can find all that reminiscences of the original premier of the piece. The musicians are hidden behind the scenario in order to maintain the mystery and the mood of the original idea. Burguess, more than a singer, is presented to us as a drama narrator. She is dressed as Pierrot with a dark suit and white face. The melancholy disposition of the character is suggested by the first chords on the piano. They formed a downward sequence that sets the atonality and dark character of the music. From then on, she guides us from irony to bad taste and also from sentimentalism to horror. The cabaret character of the piece is maintained by Schoenberg with the use of an atonal composition in which we can find shocks, traumas, and a language that is direct and does not hesitate. All of this converted the work in an extravagant piece that is exhibited with spectral melancholic, hysterical and modern. But, deep down, with a close relation with romantic ideals.