| Pierrot Lunaire |
Article Index for Pierrot |
Shopping Pierrot |
Articles about Pierrot Lunaire |
Website Links For Lunaire |
Information AboutPierrot Lunaire |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT PIERROT LUNAIRE | |
| song cycles | |
| compositions by arnold schoenberg | |
|
Pierrot, as it is also known, has a characteristic ensemble, afterwards known as the "''Pierrot ensemble''", consisting of Flute (doubling on a Piccolo ), Clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet), Violin (doubling on Viola ), Cello , and Piano . ''Pierrot plus Percussion '' (or ''Pierrot plus'' for short) is a common variation. The solo soprano sings the poems in the Sprechstimme style, which complements the mood of the poems aurally. The work is atonal, but not twelve-tone as Schoenberg did not begin experimenting with twelve-tone music until later in his career. Its debut was in 1912 . The show took to the road throughout Germany and Austria later in 1912, with mixed reviews. "Pierrot Lunaire" consists of three groups of seven poems with each poem being of two four-line verses followed by a five-line verse, and each begins and ends with the same line. Schoenberg plays the role of the puppeteer through the character Pierrot, a traditional lovesick and petulant character from the Commedia Dell'arte style of Italian theatre. The work has many contradictions: the instrumentalists are soloists and the orchestra at the same time, for example. Pierrot is both hero and fool, acting in a drama that is also a concert piece, performing cabaret as high art and vice versa, and doing it with song that is also speech. # Mondestrunken (Moon-drunk) # Colombine # Der Dandy (The Dandy) # Eine blasse Wäscherin (A Faded Laundress) # Valse de Chopin # Madonna # Der kranke Mond (The sick Moon) # Nacht (Passacaglia) (Night) # Gebet an Pierrot (Prayer to Pierrot) # Raub (Theft) # Rote Messe (Red Mass) # Galgenlied (Gallows Song) # Enthauptung (Beheading) # Die Kreuze (The Crosses) # Heimweh (Homesick) # Gemeinheit! (Mean Trick!) # Parodie (Parody) # Der Mondfleck (The Moonspot) # Serenade # Heimfahrt (Barcarole) (Journey Home) # O alter Duft (O Old Perfume) The instrumentation of each song is varied so that no two successive numbers have the exact same tone colors. The entire ensemble plays together only during the last poem. Schoenberg used the technique of Klangfarbenmelodie in this work, as well as innovative musical techniques to add some sort of structure between the poems. With tonality, such structure would be trivial to produce because of expected Resolution . However, with Atonal ity, this is more difficult. One such solution was Ostinato patterns to aid in creating aural structure and divisions between the work. Pierrot's yearnings and aspirations heighten every emotion to the ultimate degree, and the expressionistic settings with their echoes of German cabaret and musical parodies bring the text vividly to life. In Part I, Pierrot, under the influence of the moon, fantasizes about love, sex and religion. In Part II, Pierrot is in a nightmare underworld of violence, crime and blasphemy. Part III finds Pierrot heading home to Bergamo , with his past haunting him. Sprechstimme, literally "speech-voice" in German, meaning speak-singing, is a style in which the vocalist uses the specified rhythms and pitches, but does not sustain the pitches, allowing them to drop, in the manner of speech. Schoenberg also used a variety of older forms, including Canon , Fugue , Rondo , Passacaglia and Free Counterpoint . The poetry is a German version of a rondeau of the old French type with a double refrain. Each poem consists of three stanzas of 4 + 4 + 5 lines, with line 1 a Refrain (A) repeated as line 7 and line 13, and line 2 a second Refrain (B) repeated for line 8. BIBLIOGRAPHY
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|