Pierrot Lunaire. Albert Giraud: Otto Erich Hartleben: Arnold Schoenberg

2006 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 427
Author(s):  
Esteban Buch ◽  
Mark Delaere ◽  
Jan Herman
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire

scholarly journals Pierrot lunaire in Studio and in Broadcast: Sprechstimme, Tempo and Character

2007 ◽  
pp. 69-91
Author(s):  
Avior Byron
Keyword(s):  
Full Text ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Excellent Performance ◽  
Recording Studio ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Live Broadcast ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire

A comparison of a recently-discovered broadcast of Pierrot lunaire with the famous 1940 commercial recording of the work, both with Arnold Schoenberg conducting performers of his circle (notably Rudolf Kolisch, Edward Steuermann and Erika Stiedry-Wagner), shows that the different contexts of the recording studio and the live broadcast, as well as other factors, had considerable influence on the performances. This article demonstrates how tempo, character and Sprechstimme contour were affected by these different contexts. Such factors caused many listeners to experience the broadcast as an excellent performance, one which was described as superior to the commercial recording. In increasing our awareness of the distinctions between live and studio recordings, a study such as this of historical performances contributes to our view of performance as a critical element in an understanding of Western art music. The article contains 18 sound examples from the original recordings, in mp3 files that may be streamed from the journal’s website: links are embedded in the full-text PDF file.

scholarly journals “Give a man a mask and he’ll tell the truth”: Arnold Schoenberg, David Bowie, and the Mask of Pierrot

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire ◽  
Alter Ego ◽  
Self Examination

There are striking parallels between Arnold Schoenberg’s treatment of the Pierrot character in 1912 and David Bowie’s adoption of Pierrot as an alter ego in 1980. For both musicians, Pierrot is a necessary mask, and each uses the “insolent clown” in his own way, but in the service of the same delicate negotiations between past and future, and between artifice and truth in art and self. In Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Bowie’s song “Ashes to Ashes,” we see and hear the music of the past alongside “a nostalgia for the future”: Pierrot provides the means—the mask—behind which musical reflection, self-examination, and psychological purgation can occur.

scholarly journals The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting Pierrot lunaire: Sprechstimme Reconsidered

2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Avior Byron
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Pitch Contour ◽  
Great Freedom ◽  
Time Interaction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire

Newly discovered recordings of Schoenberg conducting Pierrot lunaire open a window into the workshop of Arnold Schoenberg (the conductor) and Erika Stiedry-Wagner (who performed the Sprechstimme). These recordings reveal that in a period of not more than three days, Schoenberg accepted relatively great freedom in the Sprechstimme pitch contour; as well as a contradictory tendency towards consistency and a certain systematic approach towards pitch, which does not always adhere to the score. Before examining the recordings it was not possible to know whether the relation between the performed Sprechstimme and the score was controlled, systematic, or simply a matter of chance. The recordings shed new light on what has been described by Boulez, Stadlen and others as the “Sprechstimme enigma:” namely, how Schoenberg expected the Sprechstimme to be performed. The history of Schoenberg’s writings on Sprechstimme demonstrates that his perception of it changed along with the development of his performance aesthetics in general. Based on evidence from the recordings as well as on recent performance studies theory, I will claim that the Sprechstimme enigma is greatly clarified when one understands that there are simultaneously two types of notation in Pierrot lunaire: one for the instruments that tends towards a reproduction of a sound object, and another for the Sprechstimme which involves a process of greater real-time interaction between performer and score. Although the Sprechstimme from the workshop of Schoenberg and Stiedry-Wagner may be regarded as an extreme case study, it magnifies in a way what also happens in performances of other types of music.

On the Development of the Structural Potentialities of Rhythm, Dynamics, and Timbre in the Early Nontonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tenney
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire ◽  
Basic Ideas

In this essay, James Tenney discusses the development of the structural potentialities of rhythm, dynamics, and timbre in the early nontonal music of Arnold Schoenberg. Beginning with the Three Piano Pieces op. 11, and continuing through Pierrot Lunaire and the Four Songs with Orchestra opp. 21 and 22, Schoenberg developed a style that he later characterized as one based on “the emancipation of the dissonance.” His further descriptions of the developments of the period are almost exclusively in terms of harmonic innovations. Analytical writings by others have reflected this same concern with the harmonic (and, to a lesser extent, the melodic) aspects of the music. Tenney considers the twelve-tone method in music and argues that it is a partial systematization of procedures that Schoenberg had used. He hopes that his observations on rhythm, dynamics, and timbre that are articulated in this essay might later serve as the basis for a broader generalization of the basic ideas underlying twelve-tone music.

A Letter from Arnold Schoenberg

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
Joseph Yasser ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Iddon ◽  
Philip Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Piano Solo ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
Similar Basis ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

The book is a comprehensive examination of John Cage’s seminal Concert for Piano and Orchestra. It places the piece into its many contexts, examining its relationship with Cage’s compositional practice of indeterminacy more generally, the importance of Cage’s teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, on the development of his structural thought, and the impact of Cage’s (mis)understanding of jazz. It discusses, on the basis of Cage’s sketches and manuscripts, the compositional process at play in the piece. It details the circumstances of the piece’s early performances—often described as catastrophes—its recording and promotion, and the part it played in Cage’s (successful) hunt for a publisher. It examines in detail the various ways in which Cage’s pianist of choice, David Tudor, approached the piece, differing according to whether it was to be performed with an orchestra, alongside Cage delivering the lecture, ‘Indeterminacy’, or as a piano solo to accompany Merce Cunningham’s choreography Antic Meet. It demonstrates the ways in which, despite indeterminacy, the instrumental parts of the piece are amenable to analytical interpretation, especially through a method which exposes the way in which those parts form a sort of network of statistical commonality and difference, analysing, too, the pianist’s part, the Solo for Piano, on a similar basis, discussing throughout the practical consequences of Cage’s notations for a performer. It shows the way in which the piece played a central role, first, in the construction of who Cage was and what sort of composer he was within the new musical world but, second, how it came to be an important example for professional philosophers in discussing what the limits of the musical work are.

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