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Schoenberg Kabarett
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Schoenberg Kabarett
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Por: COFIAC

Uno de los principales exponentes de las artes escénicas de la actualidad es sin duda Peter Stein. Por primera vez en México se presenta este talentoso director alemán con un espectáculo cuyo eje es la música de Arnold Schönberg, "el padre de la dodecafonía" quien, en 1901, escribió los Brett-Lieder, música con elevada factura para el cabaret berlinés y con textos del poeta simbolista belga Albert Giraud (Pierrot Lunaire, 1912) en los que presenta a Pierrot en tres diferentes etapas: primero al poeta sensible y melancólico, después a un "clown" sarcástico y brutal y por último, el personaje regresa a sus raíces de la Commedia de l' arte. La excelente actriz y cantante Maddalena Grippa interpreta a ocho personajes (hombres y mujeres) haciendo gala de un travestismo continuo.
Peter Stein, director
Maddalena Crippa, actriz y cantante
Überbrettl Ensemble
Alessandro Nidi, director
Moidele Bickel, vestuario
Change Performing Arts, Milan, producción de la gira
Programa
Arnold Schoenberg
Pierrot Lunaire op. 21
1. Mondestrunken
2. Colombine
3. Der Dandy
4. Eine blasse Wäscherin
5. Valse de Chopin
6. Madonna
7. Der kranke Mond
8. Nacht (Passacaglia)
9. Gebet an Pierrot
10. Raub 11. Rote Messe
12. Galgenlied
13. Enthauptung
14. Die Kreuze
15. Heimweh
16. Gemeinheit
17. Parodie
18. Der Mondfleck
19. Serenade
20. Heimfahrt (Barcarole)
21. O alter Duf

Brettl-Lieder
1. Galathea (Franz Wedekind)
Introducción de Kaiser-Walzer
(versión para flauta, clarinete, cuarteto de cuerdas y piano de Arnold Schoenberg) 5. Mahnung (Gustav Hochstetter)
Walzer no. 4 de Kaiser-Walzer
2. Gigerlette (Otto Julius Bierbaum)
Walzer no. 1 de Kaiser-Walzer 6. Jedem das Seine (Colly)
Walzer no. 2 de Kaiser-Walzer
3. Der genügsame Liebhaber (Hugo Salus)
Final de Verklärte Nacht
(versión para piano, violín y violonchelo de Eduard Steuerman) 7. Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arkadien (Emanuel Schikaneder)
Die eiserne Brigade (para cuarteto de cuerdas y piano)
4. Entfältiges Lied (Hugo Salus)
Walzer no. 3 de Kaiser-Walzer 8. Nachtwandler (Gustav Falke)
Idioma: alemán
Funciones supertituladas en español
Duración aproximada: 1 h. 50’ (con intermedio)

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~randols/PS01/PS01_008.HTM

Schoenberg and the Audience: Modernism, Music, and Politics in the Twentieth Century

LEON BOTSTEIN

I. Polemical Preliminaries


These festival weeks have had nothing to do with music. Schoenberg's followers have overdone it. What the consequence of the absolute domination by dodecaphony will be ... is that in ten years, I am convinced, no one will talk about the twelve-tone system.--G.F. Malipiero, June 1932
It seems that the last twenty years of eclecticism in contemporary music may have finally undone what "Schoenberg's followers" have "overdone" for nearly half a century. It is now respectable and even fashionable to concede that perhaps audiences have been right all along. Abstract, inaccessible, unfriendly, harsh, hard to follow, dense, even boring are still the adjectives applied by most concert-goers to Arnold Schoenberg's music. The twentieth-century composer, once most highly respected by generations of academics, whose music and theoretical writings reveal a daunting intellect and capacity for analysis, and whose own legendary contempt for others became routinized posthumously among those who specialized in his defense, now appears entirely vulnerable. With a slight edge of delight, critics are increasingly able to declare?along with Malipiero, and only superficially in imitation of Boulez, decades later?that Schoenberg is "dead."

Although thinking and writing about Schoenberg remain valued academic pursuits, to the public beyond academic circles Schoenberg, except for a few early works, commands little spontaneous affection, and at best a grudging respect. If his music is as great as he and his disciples claimed, why does it remain so difficult, so merely intellectual for so many; why after three quarters of a century are essays in the genre of Alban Berg's 1924 classic "Why is Schoenberg's Music so Difficult to Understand?" still appropriate?

Five basic factors currently stand in way of a sympathetic reconsideration of Schoenberg. First and foremost is the success of the so-called "post-modern." With the collapse of the perceived tyranny of those who viewed Schoenberg as the true prophet of new music, voices have emerged (some of them repentant former adherents to the cause) who actually relish the slaughter of the main sacred cow. From 1945 until the early 1980s, the accepted wisdom among composers and scholars echoed Ernst Krenek's closing comments at the Second International Schoenberg Conference in Vienna in 1984: Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School had altered musical thinking forever. No composer in the future would be able to circumvent Schoenberg and his influence, even if he was to write minimalist and tonal music. Just fifteen years later most successful younger contemporary composers appear to have paid little or no attention to Schoenberg. This has altered the paradigm of the history of twentieth century music that held sway into the mid-1970s, in which Schoenberg played the central role.

Second is the accumulated weight of sustained historical reevaluation. Those who question how modern Schoenberg really was challenge a facile equivalence between the terms "modernist" or "avant-garde" and the twentieth century. Perhaps, they seem to say, modernism in the sense of Schoenberg and his school refers merely to one limited historical period and group within the twentieth century. Or there is the line of argument first put forth decades ago independently by Pierre Boulez and Elliott Carter questioning how far Schoenberg had really traveled from a dependency on late nineteenth-century musical models. Were not Webern, Varèse, Ives, Messiaen, and even Stravinsky equally innovative and significant? This differentiation within modernism sought to help emancipate post-World War II composition from too exclusive a bias in favor of Schoenberg. A divergent view of the century and modernity emerges from these types of revisionism, one in which Schoenberg holds merely one place of prominence among many. Schoenberg may have been less a radical conservative and more a radical reactionary, one who carried Wagner's belief in a progressive imperative for music to an absurd extreme into an age in which history would no longer matter.

By refusing to see Schoenberg as the pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century music, these revisionists create a third factor: they detach Schoenberg's music and its aesthetic and historical valuation from the social and political projects to which it was once inextricably linked. During the 1920s, Hanns Eisler, who retained an unqualified admiration for Schoenberg, his teacher, was among the first in Schoenberg's circle to speculate independently about the function of new music in modernity. Schoenberg's modernism consistently offended its audience. If that audience had been merely made up of smug owners of capital and their bourgeois apologists, there might have seemed something redeemingly "progressive" about Schoenberg's brand of modernism. But the failure of Schoenberg's modernism to gain any audience beyond its own elite of admirers?however constituted?revealed just how hollow were his supporters' appeals to historical necessity or a Platonic belief system that legislated a normative ideal of musical thought and form and therefore a typology of proper listening.

Since Schoenberg's brand of innovation as well as his Jewish identity became the focus of anti-Semitic right-wing politics early in the 1920s and later the object of Nazi persecution in the 1930s, the dissonances between the progressive in politics and the modernist in music were left unresolved. The alliance between the two went largely unquestioned for decades, even well after 1945. In the context of Cold War politics, Eisler's challenge to Schoenberg and his school from the left could be discredited as "Stalinist" and reactionary, while Schoenberg's brand of modernism continued, until the late 1960s, to appear as a non-subversive but forward-looking contemporary line of defense of individuality and freedom against uniformity and tyranny within the "free world."

Adorno's analysis of Schoenberg and his influence created a powerful critical and philosophical framework that buttressed Schoenberg's post-war influence, particularly in academic circles. According to this line of interpretation, modernism in music of the sort audible in Webern and in the work of the younger composers supported at Darmstadt and Donaueschingen in the 1950s and 1960s eloquently confronted the corrupting influences represented in the West by commercialism and mass society, the very ills that had helped fascism succeed.

With the receding prestige of socialist and progressive politics in the early 1980s, the growing critique of the liberal welfare state in England and America and ultimately the collapse of Communism and and fall of the Berlin Wall, the critique of capitalist culture and society put forward by Adorno and other Frankfurt School contemporaries, particularly Herbert Marcuse, became less attractive in the West to new generations of young people. Schoenberg and his notions of musical modernism were gradually detached from a plausible justifying political and historical logic locating them on the side of freedom and anti-fascism, and therefore of the angels.

While the later twentieth century heirs of the left have largely rejected modernism in favor of popular musical culture as an important dimension of political resistance, neo-conservatives have taken their own peculiar revenge on Schoenberg. Some have risen to Schoenberg's defense, citing his work and legacy as a bulwark against the collapse of cultural standards after the mid-1960s. Other neo-conservatives, however, have delighted in the idea that the largely liberal and leftwing post-war academic community's "emperor had no clothes" after all.

The fourth factor working against Schoenberg is the reemergence of an empirical and principled set of arguments prevalent at the turn of the century that defend tonality (or something very much like it) as natural and objective. According to this argument, which makes an appeal to normative philosophy, psychology, and physics, certain ways of organizing sound and time in music correspond to facts and laws of nature. In the early twentieth century, Schoenberg found himself on the side of those who argued against the idea that the Western system of harmony was privileged and rooted in nature, rendering tonality normative and objective. The sophisticated revival of the idea of a "natural" music has been fueled partly by linguistic theory (e.g. Chomsky and generative grammar), language philosophy (from the late Wittgenstein on) and the analysis of syntax.

Theorists as disparate in their approaches as Boretz and Epstein have suggested that when we look carefully at music as a reflexive system of communication we need to explain rather than dismiss the failure of any music to gain response, engage listeners or be easily preserved in memory. Perhaps it is not tonality that is natural. But the need for particularly evident patterns in music: repetition, focal points, continuities, tensions, resolutions and regularity?the accumulation of classes of events that can be processed and associated readily by the brain?may be universal. Schoenberg's modernism may lack these requirements because of an inherent conflict between the way we are as humans and the way twelve-tone music is organized. The wide dissemination (or to put it more plainly, the popularity) of a form of music need not be considered a sign of vulgarity, ignorance or concession to corrupt fashion or style. Populist politics and high theory have now merged: Schoenberg's brand of modernism, particularly in its twelve-tone phase, becomes a failed experiment that cannot intersect effectively with wider human experience cognitively and therefore either aesthetically or politically.

The fifth and final barrier to a sympathetic rehearing of Schoenberg today is ironically the difficulty we have in transcending the accumulated traditional rhetoric of criticism and defense surrounding the question of Schoenberg. Schoenberg and his disciples in the 1920s can be compared properly to the circle around the poet Stefan George, to whose work Schoenberg turned at a pivotal moment when the composer took a decisive step away from tonality. But the most apt comparison is with Richard Wagner. Not only did they both have disciples and demand uncommon degrees of loyalty from their followers, but Wagner and Schoenberg invented and institutionalized a rhetoric of self-defense and description. They both brilliantly placed themselves within music history and connected their work to past and future. Institutions designed to preserve and defend the Schoenberg legacy were created, first in Los Angeles, then in Vienna. Schools of composition and criticism that developed after 1945 relied heavily on Schoenberg's analysis of compositional methods, his views on form and structure, and his readings of Mozart and Brahms. To generations of Schoenberg admirers, followers and scholars, any departure from this self-constituted (or auto-poetic) code of discourse of defense and description was tantamount to ignorance or betrayal.

Schoenberg's philosophy of music and his logic of self-estimation have cast a decisive shadow over music theory and musicology in this century. Whether it is the concept of "idea" (as opposed to "style"), the "Grundgestalt," "developing variation," the "emancipation of the dissonance" or the relation of music and text, the way Schoenberg thought and wrote about music and its meaning has had perhaps more influence in the arenas of performance practice and critical approaches to music in this century than his own music has had on the writing of new music. At the end of this century, almost fifty years after Schoenberg's death, it is in part the institutionalized charisma of Schoenberg the teacher and theorist that retards a new appreciation of his music. Perhaps if we successfully challenge the rhetoric of Schoenberg and his most ardent posthumous defenders, we will be able to open up new avenues of access to his music.




II. Music and Psychology




TO MUSIC





Music: breath of statues. Perhaps:
stillness of paintings. You language where languages end. You time,
placed vertically on the course of hearts that expire.




Feelings ... for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings ... into what??: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heartspace
grown out of us. Innermost thing of ours,
which, exceeding us, forces us out, ?
sacred farewell:
when the inner surrounds us
as the most practiced distance, as the other side
of the air:
pure,
like a giant,
no longer livable.
?R. M. Rilke, Munich, January 11-12, 1918



In 1926 the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski completed a draft of an essay on contemporary music. It was not published in his lifetime and appeared first in 1958 (see Appendix, p. 47). In it, Szymanowski argues that Schoenberg alone represents a true break with the past; Schoenberg was the only one to "cross the Rubicon" into modernity. Szymanowski understands Debussy, Stravinsky and Strauss as tied to pre-war traditions. At the same time Szymanowski remains entirely aware of the extent to which Schoenberg is not just a European but distinctly a German. He clearly identifies Schoenberg with a tradition of German composition and sees him as the heir to Wagner: the composer who represents the future of German music. Szymanowski echoes Berg's 1924 conclusion that Schoenberg would "predominate in German music for the next fifty years." Yet Szymanowski accepts the universal consequences of Schoenberg's achievement. He is unstinting in his praise and admiration for Schoenberg's philosophical vocabulary and rhetoric of self-assessment. The essay is curious in part because Szymanowski?unlike Stravinsky and Copland later on in the 1960s?never sought to emulate Schoenberg in his own approach to composition by experimenting with twelve-tone composition.

What struck Szymanowski was Schoenberg's remarkable sojourn from Wagnerism to a new modernism. No other composer had worked so well in the pre-World War I expressionist idiom and yet had shown the courage to break away. The decisive step was the explicit severing of a long tradition of parallelism between musical form and structure and "direct psychological truth." Schoenberg put forward a notion of absolute music that cut against the traditions of emotional response and attachment to music so eloquently witnessed by Rilke's 1918 poem. Yet Szymanowski remained ambivalent about this. On the one hand, the "natural" development of music required that music somehow become finally independent, in the twentieth century, of reality and life, and reverse the exaggerated emotionalism of romanticism. Szymanowski shared a Hanslick-like prejudice about the inherently "absolute" non-representational character of music. On the other hand, he realized the power of an historical achievement, beginning in the nineteenth century and culminating with expressionism, in which the "horizontal" dimension of music became gradually influenced by the vertical, creating an "enriched" sound world which, metaphorically speaking, ran parallel with the "lyrics of direct life reality." Music became "rooted in life's psychological rhythm," just as Rilke suggests in his response to hearing music. Extended tonality and extreme chromaticism, strengthened by the expanded palette of orchestral sound, made the Rilke-like parallelism between feeling and sound irresistable.

Schoenberg brought this historical process to completion and ultimately abandoned the residual framework of the "horizontal"; the "vertical" dimension of music was placed in the foreground. He rendered the "vertical" in music absolute. Gone were issues of "mood" and "color" or even the contrast between the static and the dynamic highlighted by modulation. The "absolute vertical" found a value in itself, not as a function of musical "expression." This led to "the essential atomism" of Schoenberg's modernism, by which Szymanowski means the twelve-tone compositional breakthrough of the 1920s. Szymanowski's essay ends abruptly, incomplete, with praise for Schoenberg's ethical authenticity and seriousness as well as a reference to the consequences of the opening up of a "limitless domain" in which truth became subjective and relative. Schoenberg had created a space in which everything seemed now permissible.

Crucial to the contemporary and posthumous defense of Schoenberg and the modernist tradition linked to his innovations from the 1920s has been an explicit and implicit assent to his critique of the traditions and character of how audiences listened, followed and understood music. An audience that was truly musically literate, which thought purely musically i.e. could grasp music without any refuge in psychological allegory, either of narrative or mood?such an audience could truly appreciate the music of Schoenberg and his followers. As Schoenberg himself pointed out, his greatest success as a composer derived from his capacity, in his pre-twelve-tone music, to facilitate with great originality and inventiveness the listener's capacity to listen allegorically and through the use of allusion, without refuge in illustration or representation. Furthermore, as Szymanowski observed, the extension of tonality and the virtuosity in the use of modulation displayed by Schoenberg in Gurrelieder, for example, expanded the utility of music as a framework?independent of the text?for internal psychological reflection on the part of the listener. But then Schoenberg stopped himself and history short, interrupting the continuity of these traditions. (A typical pictorial representation of the sort of listening common at the end of the nineteenth century is the 1895 painting by the English painter Francis Dicksee [1853-1928], entitled A Reverie, reproduced in figure 1.)

One can locate the cause for the widespread contemporary and posthumous perception that Schoenberg was the creator of a unique radical modernism in precisely this interruption, the self-conscious break with the parallelism between music and life (and therefore language) as expressed in the expectations of generations of European composers and audiences. By creating a new mode of pitch relationship and therefore a new basis for constructing the basic cells or thematic elements for works of music, Schoenberg in the 1920s explicitly attacked the dominant habit of listening within nineteenth-century musical culture, rendering it irrelevant and useless. With the fundamental abandonment of tonality, music lost its connection to the Rilke-like internal psychological dialogue conducted by the individual and therefore, as Szymanowski suggests, its evident connection to life. The aesthetic dimension had been emancipated from the psychologically instrumental. But the question remained: into what and for what?

It is well to remember that many of Schoenberg's earliest and most ardent defenders and advocates were young listeners who sought a new and different inspiration from music; they were not professional musicians or critics. Consider for example the fascinating fragment by Arnold Zweig from 1913 entitled "A Quartet Movement by Schoenberg." In this short prose work Schoenberg emerges as the prophetic and triumphant outsider who has arrived to rescue Europe through art exactly one hundred years after Napoleon's defeat at the battle of Leipzig in 1813. The story takes place in 1913. An Eastern European Jew is on his way to Palestine. After travelling through Berlin he visits his brother in Leipzig The young man, the protagonist, is both impressed and revolted by the middle-class opulence and self-satisfaction evident in the architecture and the people he encounters in Leipzig. In Leipzig the sound of the Saxon dialect reminds him of the French and of Napoleon. The reunion with his brother is unsatisfactory. He becomes bored.

He wanders into a concert without seeing what is on the program. It is a quartet concert. The first work is by Haydn and the young man is lost in a quite typical reverie. He dreams of nature and the simple pleasures of life. A pre-modern idyllic world appears before his eyes. After enthusiastic applause the quartet plays the next work. The audience is stunned; it does not know how to react. But the young man is transported. He is inspired: he senses through the music the power of modernity, the city, and of science and progress. He also senses the alienation of the modern individual. He perceives the extent to which an excessive optimism about modernity prevalent within the audience has gone awry. A nameless artist, the composer of this new music, reveals through sounds the contradictions of modernity and truthfully celebrates the possibilities of cultural renewal. Aesthetic innovation and ethical truth merge in the music.

Although the audience is at a loss, the young man leaves the concert hall suddenly seized by doubt about his own plans to leave Europe for the more primitive and yet-to-be-realized new social order of Palestine. As he wanders about on his way to the train station to resume his journey, he sees a poster and notices the name of the composer whose music he has just heard: Arnold Schoenberg, a fellow Jew. Although he proceeds with his plans, he senses that he must ultimately return to Europe to take on the cause of the rebirth of European culture along the path set forth by Schoenberg. Schoenberg's music has awakened the young man to the idea that he has not exhausted his identity as a European. A sense of homelessness, triggered by the pogroms in the East he is fleeing, has been assuaged by the music. The possibilities for a cultural and political future, for internal personal are rekindled, forcing him to reconsider his Zionism, his life's plan and his sense of self. The story ends with the hero repeating the words "O return, o return."

It is more than likely that the music Zweig had in mind was either Schoenberg's Op. 7 or Op. 10, both of which were performed in Berlin in 1912 and 1913, the year the fragment was written. Zweig therefore implicitly refers to at least two works which created a great uproar in Schoenberg's career and helped established his reputation as a radical. (At issue, therefore, is not Verklärte Nacht or Gurrelieder.) Although the music Zweig alludes to is not the same repertoire Szymanowski discusses, Schoenberg's break with the past was well underway in Opp. 9 and 10. Op. 7, however, possessed a "very definite but private program." Nevertheless, Szymanowski's 1926 construct of Schoenberg's project can be applied to Op. 7, Op. 9, and Op. 10. Despite the presence of poetic texts, Schoenberg's first decisive breaks with habits of listening based on psychological parallelism between musical space and time and real life sensibilities, particularly the internal clock of reflection, took place before the invention of twelve-tone composition, particularly in Op. 9.

Zweig's account is all the more remarkable for its political overtones. Indeed, as the story develops Schoenberg functions for the young man as modernity's Napoleon: the new-world historical hero from humble origins. Napoleon was a hero to most Jews because of his role in their emancipation. The image of the Jewish composer as a new Napoleon redeeming the possibilities of European culture in the name of freedom, ethical progress, and enlightened modernity, fits quite closely to Schoenberg's own self-assessment before his stunning and disillusioning encounter with anti-Semitism in the 1920s. Zweig and Schoenberg also implicitly agree in their critique of the pre-World War I audience. Zweig gives us a picture of an uncomprehending group of affluent middle-class Europeans, suffused with culture, who delighted only in the familiar. There is however no description of booing or hissing, as took place in Vienna. Zweig's account of his fellow audience members is critical but not entirely dismissive (the experience after all raises his hopes about the use of art as an instrument of cultural and social renewal). One comes away from the fragment with a sense that confronting the public with a radical new art may in fact set in motion a social and political transformation.

Leaving aside the many implications imbedded in Zweig's strange story, it is curious that Zweig's protagonist's habit of listening did not change with the music. He listened to Schoenberg the way he listened to Haydn. Indeed, one way to understand what was going on in concert halls between the years 1909 and 1913 at performances of Schoenberg's music?events that attracted furious response and intensive critical attention?is to concentrate on one consistent thread within the notion of psychological listening shared by Zweig's protagonist, his audience, and one which is implicit in Szymanowski's analysis: the act of listening with the visual imagination. Rilke confirms the pervasive attachment to music as inspiring of a species of sight; music is the breathing statue, the stillness of paintings, the audible landscape.

The visual imagery inspired by the idea of music at the turn of the century, particularly in light of Schoenberg's own brief career as a painter and his life-long engagement with the connection between the musical and the visual, merits close historical scrutiny. What changes in Zweig's story is the substance and character of that which is visualized or imagined through music. It is in turn the perceived failure of this mode of listening to music that drove Schoenberg, after World War I, to the complete break with expressionism, a break whose courage so impressed Szymanowski.

AVANT-GARDE THEATRE

?Avant-garde? has become a rubbery term which is applied to art that is considered to be anti-traditional or new. At its most basic level, it is a descriptive term for what is new at any given time. That is, any new artistic direction. Avant-garde art is characterised by a radical political posture. It is also hostile to other artistic formats. In many ways, it is easier to define the avant-garde by what it is against. All the different varieties of avant-garde reject oppressive social structures, condemn conventional artistic forms and are antagonistic towards the public. The avant-garde is essentially a philosophical grouping. Artists working in this area are linked by common views of the Western social order as well as a particular aesthetic approach. The term ?avant-garde? is a military term for the front section of an army which prepares the way for the troops. The literary sense of the word came into usage at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no single ?avante-garde? theatre. We can, however, note certain characteristics which may denote the avant-garde. "The essence of avant-gardism is that it is never satisfied with accepted standards and is constantly searching" (Pronko 3).

Early avant-garde artists were primarily concerned with creating a revolution in society. Alfred Jarry, with his Ubu trilogy, is often considered to be the founder of the avant-garde. It is a play which reflects the anarchy of Jarry?s revolt against society and the artistic ?rules? of realism and naturalism. Cabaret provided a nurturing environment for many avant-garde artists.




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CABARET
Cabaret was the product of changes in urban life and artistic taste at the start of the twentieth century. "The disruptions of big-city life encouraged the creation of forms of art and entertainment that were likewise heterogeneous and fragmented" (Jelavich 10). The variety show was the most popular of these new diversions and cabaret copied this format but the artists sought to give it a "higher" literary and artistic content.

Today when we speak of Cabaret, images of sleazy nightclubs operating as strip joints, dimly lit back alleys and smoke filled corners are often conjured up. These versions of cabaret are distant relatives of the literary cabaret which began in late nineteenth century France and evolved into a vehicle for the political and cultural satire of the German Kabarett of the 1920s and 1930s. "They share with the artistic cabaret only the presence of spectacle and an intimate space in which people can smoke and talk, eat and drink (Appignanesi 9).

Cabaret began to function as a laboratory for young artists to exchange ideas and opinions as well as providing the opportunity to hold a critical mirror up to topical events, morals, politics and culture. By positioning itself somewhere between the stage proper and variety, cabaret established its own defined performance space. "A flexible medium - with its impromptu stage, setting and programme - it shifted its focus with the times, without ever on the whole losing its rebellious wit or dissident, innovative nature" (Appignanesi 10). Therefore it is difficult to say what content went into a "typical" cabaret. A Cabaret could have included about 15 essentially unrelated series of acts including song, sketches, dance, monologue and poetry. This format is challenged by some programs which privilege one form over another (eg 1 hour play in the midst of unrelated material). The structural elements of cabaret may provide one way of defining the artform as a distinct style despite these contradictions:

small stage
smallish audience
an ambience of talk and smoke
audience-performer relationship is one of intimacy and hostility.
The cabaret performer plays directly to the audience. The actor never vanishes into the role (like Brecht, the actor is ever present).

Variations in the mode of Cabaret are enormous so today I?ll only identify some of the major manifestations of the art form.

The birthplace of Cabaret is unquestionably Paris in 1881. The first cabaret performers created an eclectic performing cat who could sing, dance, recite, write music and lyrics and entertain. The cat became a symbol of grace and magic and its prey was always the silly bourgeois society.

The movement emanated from a Parisienne club called the Chat Noir in Montmartre. The founder of this first artistic cabaret was the poet and painter, Rodolphe Salis. An initial feature of this new genre was to introduce satire into the cult of naturalism. "To shock the middle-class spectator into a realization that his respectable values were merely a thin veneer hiding a lust for the sewer which he had himself partially helped to create" (Appignanesi 16).

Montmatre was known to be the haunt of social outcasts: criminals, prostitutes, poor workers (both unemployed and employed). The choice of location has helped to ink the outcasts with the literary and artistic bohemia. Initially, poets, composers, writers, and painters gathered to chat and read each other?s work. They started serving drinks to those participating. Early programs offered at the Chat Noir were unstructured, involved improvisational spontaneity designed to shock and surprise. Participants include: Emile Goudeau (novelist) and Claude Debussy (composer). When representatives of the Paris establishment went to the Cabaret, they knew they were going to be insulted. The songs and poems were designed to parody middle-brow culture.

The Chat Noir artists lived like the people in Montmatre. Their works reflected the lives of the people. They used their speech rhythms and forms in an attempt to raise popular culture into an art which would ultimately influence mainstream literature.

Due to its expanded audience and a series of violent attacks on their elite audience, the Chat Noir was forced to move to the rue Victor Massé where it was to become the "focal point of the Paris night life and avant-garde" (Appignanesi 20). The performers were daring and directly insulted/attacked specific members of the elite while they were in the audience. One of the roles of cabaret was to be an artistic laboratory, "a revitalizing ground for tired artistic formulas" (Appignanesi 24). Alphonse Allais was a prominent figure at the Chat Noir. He was a consummate absurdist in his performances of monologues, sketches and story-telling. From the most mundane situation/idea "he would logically deduce the looniest, most macabre, and most unexpected of results" (Appignanesi 24).

The Chat Noir closed in 1897, but by this time, Montmartre was the artistic centre of Paris. (Chatnoiresque had become a current adjective of the period. It entered the argot dictionary to describe all events blending fantasy, and humour with a degree of impudence).

Other Cabarets formed around Montmatre including La Lune Rousse, Les Pantins, and most significantly, Le Mirliton. This last Cabaret was the home of Aristide Bruant whose work with street poetry and socio-critical songs meant that these became fundamental to the cabaret repertoire. One of the few women working in Cabaret at this time was Yvette Guilbert. She sang many of Bruant?s songs. Cabaret had to travel to Germany before women became an integral part of its makeup.



Cabaret in Paris at the turn of Century:

"The cabaret was a natural environment for the avant-garde. Spectacle was of its essence, and the avant-garde needed to make a spectacle of itself in order to be heard" (Appignanesi 64). The nature of cabaret program, that is, its discontinuity supplemented by ironical commentary reflected the basic composition of the experimental work of the time. "This kinship of cabaret and the early twentieth-century avant-garde was a two-way dynamic: one created the other and was in turn influenced by it" (Appignanesi 64).

The painters and writers who flocked to the cheap living quarters of Montmartre at the turn of the century extended the definition of artist so that it included lifestyle. That is, their pranks, banquets, festivities had the same imaginative source as their poems and paintings.

Fraudulence of avant-garde was tested by Lolo the donkey under the pseudonym of Joachim Raphael Boronalis.



CABARET IN GERMANY: 1900-1914:

Less free-spirited environment under Kaiser Wilhelm. Censorship, especially of drama, was strict and rigid sexual morality prevailed. Contributing factors to German cabaret:

1. Gossip of bohemian ambience of Montmartre and birth of Cabaret. Germany, however, lost some of the playful tone of the French original, and cabaret here takes on a more serious and satirical aggressive role.

2. Another starting point was Otto Julius Bierbaum?s 1900 attempt to raise the status of poplar variety show to serious art.

Ernst con Wolzogen (aristocrat and poet) opened Überbrettl? [brettl? is a term for the popular stage, while über added the meaning to ennoble/transcend the popular stage] In a theatre seating 650, Wolzogen attempted to create the mixture of satire, eroticism and lyricism which French Caberet originated. The size of the theatre made intimacy impossible while censorship softened the satirical edge of the work. The opening night program comprised:

PART A:

a part of Arthur Schnitzler?s Anatol cycle
pantomime Pierrot play
shadow play by Liliencron
subtle lyricist
mixture of poems and chansons performed by both women and men.
PART B:

parody by Christian Morgenstern (famous for his ?nonsense? verse/important German avant-garde poet), of d?Annunzio.
Bierbaum?s operetta-play, The Merry Husband.
This became the toast of the season
Although not strictly cabaret, it opened the door for smaller ventures to set up around it, including Max Reinhardt?s 1901 one-off performance of one-act parodies interspersed with commentaries on monarchy, songs and poems. So successful they decided to continue a program of literary parody. They were strictly censored a few times. This group became the Kleine Theatre which can be considered to be one of Germany?s first experimental theatres.

Berlin also used Cabaret as a meeting place and locale for performance, providing a bistro atmosphere. Max Tilke?s Der Hungrige Pegasus (The Hungry Pegusus) was a direct copy of the French Cabaret. Once a week, poets, writers and painters gather to smoke, talk and perform samples of their work. The laws were so strict that these performances were always the subject of police suspicion. Hans Hyan?s songs about the plight of the unemployed and adverse social conditions were extremely courageous.

Munich was a thriving art centre before World War I. It was famous for its bars and cafés which were the focal point for Bohemian artist, poets, actors and writers. Two key personalities were Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball (married). Munich?s Simplicissimus cafe was often referred to as one of the ?intimate theatres? and was the venue for all kinds of eccentricities. Frank Wedekind was notorious for his ability to provoke, especially with respect to sexual topics. He was frequently called a libertine, an anti-bourgeois exploiter of sexuality and a threat to public morality. He would perform cabaret whenever his full-length plays were thwarted by censorship. His performances bordered on the obscene yet were extremely popular within Munich?s artistic community. His censorship trials hurled him into prominence (and prison). "Wedekind?s performances revelled in the licence given the artist to be a mad outsider, exempt from society?s normal behaviour" (Goldberg 35). Little of his work was performed without a scandal.

This pre-war development of Cabaret lead to a special style of performance which became known as DADA.

Tradutor automático:

(parece propaganda de curso de inglês!)

Arnold Schoenberg

(1874-1951), compositor Austrian-carregado, criador do sistema do doze-tom da composição musical, e um dos compositores os mais influential do 20o século.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fundo
O choenberg de S foi carregado setembro em 13, 1874, a uma família jewish em Viena. Ensinou-se que a composição, com ajuda no counterpoint do compositor austrian Alexander Zemlinsky, e em 1899 produziu seu primeiro trabalho principal, o poema Verklärte Nacht do tom (noite de Transfigured) para o sextet da corda. Em 1901 casou a irmã Mathilde de Zemlinsky, com quem teve duas crianças. Os pares moveram-se para Berlim, onde por dois anos Schoenberg ganhou uma vida por operettas orchestrating e dirigir um orchestra do cabaré.

Carreira em Viena, em Berlim, e nos estados unidos
I n Schoenberg 1903 retornaram a Viena para ensinar. Lá encontrou-se com seus estudantes mais bem sucedidos, os compositores austrian Anton Webern e Alban Berg, que se transformaram his amigos próximos. Em suas composições, Schoenberg empregou harmonias far-reaching, um traço que se tornasse mais tarde o atonality. Por causa deste, os motins erupted em ambos os premieres de seus primeiros dois quartets da corda em 1905 e em 1908. Tais experiências conduziram-lhe frequentemente à sensação persecuted por um público que não poderia compreender sua música.

Schoenberg também começou a pintura durante estes anos e exibiu seu trabalho com um grupo dos artistas no círculo do pintor russian Wassily Kandinsky. Este período foi marcado pela tragédia quando Mathilde teve um caso com seu professor da pintura, que cometeu o suicide depois que retornou a Schoenberg. Em 1911, o ano em que Schoenberg publicou sua teoria do livro da harmonia , aceitou uma posição ensinar em Berlim. Lá compôs um de seus trabalhos mais influential, Pierrot Lunaire (1912). Retornou a Viena em 1915. Os interruptions ocasionados pela guerra de mundo I, combinada com a busca de Schoenberg para que uma maneira assegure a lógica e a unidade na música do atonal, impediram que produza muitos trabalhos entre 1914 e 1923. Por 1923, entretanto, tinha terminado o formulation de seu método do doze-tom da composição. Morte de Mathilde que o mesmo ano era um sopro sério a Schoenberg, mas em 1924 encontrou-se com e casou-se Gertrud Kolisch, irmã de um violinist austrian. Com o invitation em 1925 ensinar a composição no academy das artes em Berlim, Schoenberg obteve finalmente uma posição prestigiosa, uma segurança financeira, e uma vida de família estável. Em 1932, o ano onde a filha do par foi carregada, ele terminou o segundo ato de seu und Aron de Moses da ópera (produzido posthumously, 1957).

O choenberg de S e sua família fujiram Nazi Germany a Paris em 1933. Em 1934 immigrated aos estados unidos, e aceitou uma posição ensinar em Boston. O ano seguinte, por causa de sua saúde, moveram-se para Los Angeles, onde seus dois filhos mais novos foram carregados. Após um ano como um lecturer na universidade de Califórnia do sul (1935), ensinou na universidade de Califórnia em Los Angeles de 1936 a 1944. Transformou-se um cidadão de ESTADOS UNIDOS em 1941. Schoenberg caiu seriamente doente em 1946, e em um ponto seu coração parou de bater; esta experiência é refletida em sua corda Trio (1946), escrito após sua recuperação. Na aposentadoria continuou a ensinar e compôr. Morreu julho em 13, 1951, em Los Angeles.

Evolução Musical
O estilo musical dos choenberg de S progrediu do romanticism 19th-century atrasado à técnica do doze-tom. Seus trabalhos adiantados do tonal são reminiscent da música do compositor alemão Johannes Brahms, mas antes por muito tempo do assimilated o chromaticism do compositor alemão Richard Wagner. Nos trabalhos tais como Verklärte Nacht Schoenberg conseguiu a intensidade do sentimento com as harmonias ricas e as melodias soaring longas suportadas por uma textura contrapuntal densa de motriz curtos, constantemente variando. Começando aproximadamente 1907 estes traços tornaram-se mesmo mais pronunciados em seus trabalhos do expressionist, em que o tonality foi abandonado e o formulário musical se tornou comprimido. O exemplo principal deste período é Pierrot Lunaire ; neste ajuste do verso macabre, o ensemble acompanhando da câmara emprega uma combinação diferente dos instrumentos para cada uma das 21 canções poema-baseadas do ciclo, e o soloist vocal usa o Sprechstimme (alemão para do "a voz discurso"), ou Sprechgesang (do" canção discurso"), uma mistura do discurso e a canção.

Um bout Schoenberg 1920 começou a formular sua técnica do doze-tom e a extrai-la em formulários musicais classical para estruturar suas composições. Todos seus estilos, entretanto, são destilados em sua realização mais maciça, und Aron de Moses . Schoenberg retornou ocasionalmente à composição do tonal, mas na maioria seus trabalhos dos de os 1930s e '40s onde tentou synthesize a técnica do doze-tom com os princípios formais tinha empregado durante seu período do expressionist. Esta síntese pode ser ouvida em seu piano Concerto do um-movimento (1942) e no trio monumental da corda.

O hrough Schoenberg e seus estudantes de T, o método do doze-tom transformou-se uma força dominando na composição do século de mid-20th e exerceu-se uma influência profunda no curso da música ocidental.

Jerry L. McBride, Arquivista (1981-86), Instituto De Arnold Schoenberg
Parte traseira

Copyright Microsoft do texto, 1993-1995. Usado com permissão.

Op.12 no.1 "Jane Grey"

Text by Heinrich Ammann (1864-??)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 12 no. 1 (1907)



Sie führten ihn durch den grauen Hof,
Daß ihm sein Spruch gescheh';
Am Fenster stand sein junges Gemahl,
Die schöne Königin Grey.

Sie bog ihr Köpfchen zum Fenster heraus,
Ihr Haar erglänzte wie Schnee;
Er hob die Fessel klirrend auf
Und grüßte sein Weib Jane Grey.

Und als man den Toten vorüber trug,
Sie stand damit sie ihn seh';
Drauf ging sie freudig denselben Gang,
Die junge Königin Grey.

Der Henker, als ihm ihr Antlitz schien,
Er weinte laut auf vor Weh,
Dann eilte nach in die Ewigkeit
Dem Gatten Königin Grey.

Viel junge Damen starben schon
Vom Hochland bis zur See,
Doch keine war schöner und keuscher noch
Als Dudley's Weib Jane Grey.

Und wenn der Wind in den Blättern spielt
Und er spielt in Blumen und Klee,
Dann flüsterts noch oft vom frühen Tod
Der jungen Königin Grey.

Frank Wedekind
(24.7.1864, Hannover - 9.3.1918, München)




Der Anarchist
Reicht mir in der Todesstunde
Nicht in Gnaden den Pokal!
Von des Weibes heißem Munde
Laßt mich trinken noch einmal!
Mögt ihr sinnlos euch berauschen,
Wenn mein Blut zerrinnt im Sand.
Meinen Kuß mag sie nicht tauschen.
Nicht für Brot aus Henkershand.
Einen Sohn wird sie gebären,
Dem mein Kreuz im Herzen steht,
Der für seiner Mutter Zähren
Eurer Kinder Häupter mäht.



Galathea

Ach, wie brenn' ich vor Verlangen, Galathea, schönes Kind,
Dir zu küssen deine Wangen, weil sie so entzückend sind.
Wonne die mir widerfahre, Galathea, schönes Kind,
Dir zu küssen deine Haare, weil sie so verlockend sind.

Nimmer wehr mir, bis ich ende, Galathea, schönes Kind,
Dir zu küssen deine Hände, weil sie so verlockend sind.
Ach, du ahnst nicht, wie ich glühe, Galathea, schönes Kind,
Dir zu küssen deine Knie, weil sie so verlockend sind.

Und was tät ich nicht, du süße Galathea, schönes Kind,
Dir zu küssen deine Füße, weil sie so verlockend sind.
Aber deinen Mund enthülle, Mädchen, meinen Küssen nie,
Denn in seiner Reize Fülle küsst ihn nur die Phantasie.

Lieder ? index:



op.? Am Strande
op.?? Gedenken
op.??? Im Fliederbusch ein Vöglein saß
op.???? Mailied

op. 1.
no. 1. Dank
no. 2. Abschied

op. 2.
no. 1. Erwartung
no. 2. Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm
no. 3. Erhebung
no. 4. Waldsonne

op. 3.
no. 1. Wie Georg von Frundsberg von sich selber sang
no. 2. Die Aufgeregten
no. 3. Warnung
no. 4. Hochzeitslied
no. 5. Geübtes Herz
no. 6. Freihold

op. 4. Verklärte Nacht

op. 6.
no. 1. Traumleben
no. 2. Alles
no. 3. Mädchenlied
no. 4. Verlassen
no. 5. Ghasel
no. 6. Am Wegrand
no. 7. Lockung
no. 8. Der Wanderer

op. 12
no. 1. Jane Grey
no. 2. Der verlorene Haufen

op. 14.
no. 1. Ich darf nicht dankend
no. 2. In diesen Wintertagen

op. 15. Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (song cycle)

op. 48
no. 1. Sommermüd
no. 2. Tot
no. 3. Mädchenlied

aa) "Brettl-Lieder"
a) Galathea
b) Gigerlette
c) Der genügsame Liebhaber
d) Einfältiges Lied
e) Mahnung
f) Jedem das Seine
g) Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arcadien

bb) "Deutsche Volkslieder"
a) Der Mai tritt ein mit Freuden
b) Es gingen zwei Gespielen gut
c) Mein Herz ist mir gemenget
d) Mein Herz in steten Treuen

cc) "Gurrelieder"
I.
II.
III. Die wilde Jagd
IV. Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd

dd) "7 frühe Lieder"
a) Mein Herz das ist ein tiefer Schacht
b) Mädchenlied
c) Mädchenfrühling
d) Waldesnacht
e) Nicht doch!
f) Mannesbangen
g) Deinem Blick mich zu bequemen

ee) "Pierrot Lunaire"


op.? "Am Strande"


Text by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, 1907-9



Vorüber die Flut.
Noch braust es fern.
Wild Wasser und oben
Stern an Stern.

Wer sah es wohl,
O selig Land,
Wie dich die Welle
Überwand.

Noch braust es fern.
Der Nachtwind bringt
Erinnerung und eine Welle
Verlief im Sand.



Op.?? "Gedenken"


Text by Anonymous
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. posth.



Es steht sein Bild noch immer da:
Auf seine Züge hingemalt
Manch Seufzer ward und manch Gebet.
Das Schicksal weigerte sein Ja.

Die Lampe brennt, ich bin allein.
Die Uhr nur hör' ich an der Wand.
Wie viel des Kummers kann gebannt
In eine kleine Stube sein!



Op.??? "Im Fliederbusch ein Vöglein saß"


Text by Robert Reinick (1805-1852)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, "Im Fliederbusch ein Vöglein saß" (189-?)

See also:

Carl (Heinrich Carsten) Reinecke (1824-1910), "Zwiegesang", from Kinderlieder
Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859), "Zwiegesang", op. 103, from Sechs deutsche Lieder für eine
Singstimme, Klarinette und Klavier, no. 2



Im Fliederbusch ein Vöglein saß
In der stillen, schönen Maiennacht,
Darunter ein Mägdlein im hohen Gras
In der stillen, schönen Maiennacht.

Sang Mägdlein, hielt das Vöglein Ruh,
Sang Vöglein, hört das Mägdlein zu,
Und weithin klang der Zwiegesang
Das mondbeglänzte Tal entlang.

Was sang das Vöglein im Gezweig
Durch die stille, schöne Maiennacht?
Was sang doch wohl das Mägdlein gleich
Durch die stille, schöne Maiennacht?

Von Frühlingssonne das Vögelein,
Von Liebeswonne das Mägdelein;
Wie der Gesang zum Herzen drang,
Vergeß ich nimmer mein Lebelang.



Op.???? "Zwischen Waizen und Korn"


Text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, "Mailied" (189-?)

See also:

Robert Franz (1815-1892), op. 33 no. 3, "Mailied", published 1864
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner (1880-1951), op. 6 no. 2, "Mailied" (singable in Russian and German)
Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), op. 13 no. 3, "Mailied" (1876)
Karl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832), "Wo gehts Liebchen?" (1810)
Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), op. 2, i, 5 "Mailied" (1894-6)



Zwischen Waizen und Korn,
Zwischen Hecken und Dorn,
Zwischen Bäumen und Gras,
Wo gehts Liebchen? Sag mir das.

Fand mein Holdchen nicht daheim.
Muß das Goldchen draußen sein.
Grünt und blühet schön der Mai,
Liebchen ziehet froh und frei.

An dem Felsen beim Fluß,
Wo sie reichte den Kuß,
Jenen erste[n] im Gras, seh ich etwas,
Ist sie das? [Das ist sie, das!]



Op.1 no.1 "Dank"


Text by Karl von Levetzow (1871-1945)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op.1 no.1



Großes hast du mir gegeben in jenen Hochstunden,
Die für uns bestehen im Zeitlosen.
Großes hast du mir gegeben: ich danke dir!

Schönheit schenkten wir uns im stets Wachsenden,
Was ich mir vorbehielt im Raumlosen.
Schönheit schenkten wir uns: ich danke dir!

Ungewollt schufst du mir noch das Gewaltigste,
Schufst mir das Niegeahnte: den schönen Schmerz!
Tief in die Seele bohrtest du mir
Ein finsteres Schwertweh.
Dumpf nächtig trennend
Und dennoch hell winterlich leuchtend.

Schön! dreifach schön! denn von dir kam es ja!
Ungewollt schufst du mir noch das Gewaltigste,
Schufst mir das Niegeahnte: ich danke dir!



Op.1 no.2 "Abschied"


Text by Karl von Levetzow (1871-1945)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op.1 no.2



Aus den Trümmern einer hohen Schönheit
Laß mich bauen einen tiefen Schmerz.
Weinen laß mich aus den tiefsten Schmerzen
Eine Träne, wie nur Männer weinen.
Und dann geh!

Und nimm noch ein Gedenken heißer Liebe,
Freudig dir geschenkt;
Ewig mein bleibt, was du mir gelassen;
Meiner Wehmut sternloses Dunkel.
Und dann geh!

Und laß mich stumm erstarren;
Du zieh fürder deine helle Bahn,
Stern der Sterne! frage nicht nach Leichen!

Sieh', mir naht der hehr'ste Göttertröster,
Meine selbstgebor'ne Urgewalt.
Tief in mir die alte Nacht der Nächte
Weitet sich zur großen Weltumnachtung.
Der Alleinheit schwere Trümmer,
Schmerzen wachsen, wachsen zur Unendlichkeit.

Sieh! Ich selber werde Nacht und Schönheit.
Allumfassend unbegrenztes Weh!
Ziehe weiter, heller Stern der Sterne.
Unerkannt, wie meine große Liebe;

Dunkel schweigend, wie die großen Schmerzen,
Wo du wendest, wo du siegend leuchtest,
Stets umwogt dich meine große Nacht!



Op.2 no.1 "Erwartung"


Text by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863-1920)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op.2 no.1 (1899)



Aus dem meergrünen Teiche
Neben der roten Villa
Unter der toten Eiche
Scheint der Mond.

Wo ihr dunkles Abbild
Durch das Wasser greift,
Steht ein Mann und streift
Einen Ring von seiner Hand.

Drei Opale blinken;
Durch die bleichen Steine
Schwimmen rot und grüne
Funken und versinken.

Und er küßt sie, und
Seine Augen leuchten
Wie der meergrüne Grund:
Ein Fenster tut sich auf.

Aus der roten Villa
Neben der toten Eiche
Winkt ihm eine bleiche
Frauenhand.



Op.2 no.2 "Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm"


Text by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863-1920)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op.2 no.2 (1899)



Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm;
Jeder Morgen soll dich mahnen,
Daß du mir die Haare küßtest.
Schenk mir deinen seidenen Schwamm;
Jeden Abend will ich ahnen,
Wem du dich im Bade rüstest,
O Maria!

Schenk mir Alles, was du hast;
Meine Seele ist nicht eitel,
Stolz empfang ich deinen Segen.
Schenk mir deine schwerste Last:
Willst du nicht auf meinen Scheitel
Auch dein Herz, dein Herz noch legen,
Magdalena?



Op.2 no.3 "Erhebung"


Text by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863-1920)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op.2 no. 3 (1899)

See also:

Erich J. Wolff (1874-1913), op. 8 no. 2, published 1907



Gib mir deine Hand,
Nur den Finger, dann
Seh ich diesen ganzen Erdkreis
Als mein Eigen an!

O, wie blüht mein Land,
Sieh dir's doch nur an!
Daß es mit uns über die Wolken
In die Sonne kann!



Op.2 no.4 "Waldsonne"


Text by Johannes Schlaf (1862-1941)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op.2 no. 4



In die braunen, rauschenden Nächte
Flittert ein Licht herein,
Grüngolden ein Schein.

Blumen blinken auf und Gräser
Und die singenden, springenden Waldwässerlein,
Und Erinnerungen.

Die längst verklungenen:
Golden erwachen sie wieder,
All deine fröhlichen Lieder.

Und ich sehe deine goldenen Haare glänzen,
Und ich sehe deine goldenen Augen glänzen
Aus den grünen, raunenden Nächten.

Und mir ist, ich läge neben dir auf dem Rasen
Und hörte dich wieder auf der glitzeblanken Syrinx
In die blauen Himmelslüfte blasen.

In die braunen, wühlenden Nächte
Flittert ein Licht,
Ein goldener Schein.



Op.3 no.1 "Wie Georg von Frundsberg von sich selber sang"


Text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 3 no. 1 (1899-1903)



Mein Fleiß und Müh hab ich nie gespart
Und allzeit gewahrt dem Herren mein;
Zum Besten sein schickt ich mich drein,
Gnad, Gunst verhofft, dochs Gemüt zu Hof
Verkehrt sich oft.

Wer sich zukauft, der lauft weit vor
Und kömmt empor, doch wer lang Zeit
Nach Ehren streit, muß dannen weit,
Das sehr mich kränkt, mein treuer Dienst
Bleibt unerkennt.

Kein Dank noch Lohn davon ich bring,
Man wiegt g'ring und hat mein gar
Vergessen zwar, groß Not, Gefahr
Ich bestanden han, was Freude soll
Ich haben dran?



Op.3 no.2 "Die Aufgeregten"


Text by Gottfried Keller (1819-1890)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 3 no. 2 (1899-1903)



Welche tiefbewegten Lebensläufchen,
Welche Leidenschaft, welch wilder Schmerz!
Eine Bachwelle und ein Sandhäufchen
Brachen gegenseitig sich das Herz!

Eine Biene summte hohl und stieß
Ihren Stachel in ein Rosendüftchen,
Und ein holder Schmetterling zerriß
Den azurnen Frack im Sturm der Mailüftchen!

Und die Blume schloß ihr Heiligtümchen
Sterbend über dem verspritzten Tau!
Welche tiefbewegten Lebensläufchen,
Welche Leidenschaft, welch wilder Schmerz!



Op.3 no.3 "Warnung"


Text by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863-1920)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 3 no. 3 (1899-1903)



Mein Hund, du, hat dich bloß beknurrt,
Und ich hab' ihn vergiftet;
Und ich hasse jeden Menschen,
Der Zwietracht stiftet.

Zwei blutrote Nelken schick' ich dir,
Mein Blut du, an der einen eine Knospe;
Den dreien sei gut,
Du, bis ich komme.

Ich komme heute Nacht noch,
Sei allein, du!
Gestern, als ich ankam,
Starrtest du mit jemand ins Abendrot hinein!
Du: Denk an meinen Hund!



Op.3 no.4 "Hochzeitslied"


Text by Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 3 no. 4 (1899-1903)



So voll und reich wand noch das Leben
Nimmer euch seinen Kranz,
Und auf den Trauben spielt in kühnem
Schimmer der Hoffnung Glanz.
Im Laube welch ein Glüh'n des farbigen Saftes,
Und wie die Töne klar zusammenfließen!
Ergreift das Alles, schafft es,
Erlebt es im Genießen!
Der Jugend Allmacht kocht in eures Blutes
Feuriger Kraft,
Nach Taten drängt, nach Schöpfung freien Mutes
Der frische Saft.
So spannt denn eurer Welt tollkühne Bogen,
Die schlanken Säulen hebt zum Himmelzelt;
Füllt mit des Herzens Flammenwogen
Die neue Welt!



Op.3 no.5 "Geübtes Herz"


Text by Gottfried Keller (1819-1890)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 3 no. 5 (1899-1903)

See also:

Felix Weingartner (1863-1942), op. 22 no. 1, published 1896



Weise nicht von dir mein schlichtes Herz,
Weil es schon so viel geliebet!
Einer Geige gleicht es, die geübet
Lang ein Meister unter Lust und Schmerz.

Und je länger er darauf gespielt,
Stieg ihr Wert zum höchsten Preise;
Denn sie tönt mit sichrer Kraft die Weise,
Die ein Kund'ger ihren Saiten stiehlt.

Also spielte manche Meisterin
In mein Herz die rechte Seele.
Nun ist's wert, daß man es dir empfehle,
Lasse nicht den köstlichen Gewinn!



Op.3 no.6 "Freihold"


Text by Hermann von Lingg (1820-1905)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 3 no. 6 (1899-1903)



Soviel Raben nachts auffliegen,
Soviel Feinde sind auf mich,
Soviel Herz an Herz sich schmiegen,
Soviel Herzen fliehen mich.
Ich steh allein, ja ganz allein,
Wie am Weg der dunkle Stein.

Doch der Stein, es gilt als Marke,
Wachend über Menschentun:
Daß dem Schwachen auch der Starke
Laß das Seine sicher ruh'n.
Wind und Regen trotzt der Stein,
Unzerstörbar und allein.

Wohl, so will auch ich vollenden,
Unrecht dämmen, bis es bricht.
Mag sein Gift der Neid verschwenden,
Mich erlegt er nicht;
Blitze, schreibet auf den Stein:
"Wer will frei sein, geh' allein!"



Op.4 "Verklärte Nacht"


Text by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863-1920)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 4



Zwei Menschen gehn durch kahlen, kalten Hain;
Der Mond läuft mit, sie schaun hinein.
Der Mond läuft über hohe Eichen
Kein Wölkchen trübt das Himmelslicht,
In das die schwarzen Zacken reichen.
Die Stimme eines Weibes spricht:
Ich trag ein Kind, und nit von Dir
ich geh in Sünde neben Dir.
Ich hab mich schwer an mir vergangen.
Ich glaubte nicht mehr an ein Glück
Und hatte doch ein schwer Verlangen
Nach Lebensinhalt, nach Mutterglück
Und Pflicht; da hab ich mich erfrecht,
Da liess ich schaudernd mein Geschlecht
Von einem fremden Mann umfangen,
Und hab mich noch dafür gesegnet.
Nun hat das Leben sich gerächt:
Nun bin ich Dir, o Dir begegnet.
Sie geht mit ungelenkem Schritt.
Sie schaut empor, der Mond läuft mit.
Ihr dunkler Blick ertrinkt in Licht.
Die Stimme eines Mannes spricht:
Das Kind, das Du empfangen hast,
sei Deiner Seele keine Last,
O sieh, wie klar das Weltall schimmert!
Es ist ein Glanz um Alles her,
Du treibst mit mir auf kaltem Meer,
Doch eine eigne Wärme flimmert
Von Dir in mich, von mir in Dich.
Die wird das fremde Kind verklären
Du wirst es mir, von mir gebären;
Du hast den Glanz in mich gebracht,
Du hast mich selbst zum Kind gemacht.
Er fasst sie um die starken Hüften.
Ihr Atem küsst sich in den Lüften.
Zwei Menschen gehn durch hohe, helle Nacht.



Op.6 no.1 "Traumleben"


Text by Julius Hart (1859-1930)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 6 no. 1 (1903-5)



Um meinen Nacken schlingt sich
Ein blütenweißer Arm.
Es ruht auf meinem Munde
Ein Frühling jung und warm.

Ich wandle wie im Traume,
Als wär mein Aug' verhüllt.
Du hast mit deiner Liebe
All' meine Welt erfüllt.

Die Welt scheint ganz gestorben,
Wir beide nur allein,
Von Nachtigall'n umklungen,
Im blühenden Rosenhain.



Op.6 no.2 "Alles"


Text by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863-1920)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 6 no. 2 (1903-5)



Laß uns noch die Nacht erwarten,
Bis wir alle Sterne sehn;
Falt die Hände; in den harten
Steigen durch den stillen Garten
Geht das Heimweh auf den Zehn.

Geht und holt die Anemone,
Die du einst ans Herzchen drücktest,
Geht umklungen von dem Tone
Einst des Baums, aus dessen Krone
Du dein erstes Fernweh pflücktest.

Und du schüttelst aus den Haaren,
Was dir an der Seele frißt,
Selig Kind mit dreißig Jahren,
Alles sollst du noch erfahren,
Alles, was dir heilsam ist.



Op.6 no.3 "Mädchenlied"


Text by Paul Remer (1867-1943)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 6 no. 3 (1903-5)



Ach, wenn es nun die Mutter wüßt,
Wie du so wild mich hast geküßt,
Sie würde beten ohne Ende,
Daß Gott der Herr das Unglück wende.

Und wenn das mein Herr Bruder wüßt,
Wie du so wild mich hast geküßt,
Er eilte wohl mit Windesschnelle
Und schlüge dich tot auf der Stelle.

Doch wenn es meine Schwester wüßt,
Wie du so wild mich hast geküßt,
Auch ihr Herz würde in Sehnsucht schlagen
Und Glück und Sünde gerne tragen.



Op.6 no.4 "Verlassen"


Text by Hermann Conradi (1862-1890)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 6 no. 4 (1903-5)



Im Morgengrauen schritt ich fort -
Nebel lag in den Gassen...
In Qualen war mir das Herz verdorrt -
Die Lippe sprach kein Abschiedswort -
Sie stöhnte nur leise: Verlassen!

Kennst du das Marterwort?
Das frißt wie verruchte Schande!
In Qualen war mir das Herz verdorrt -
Im Morgengrauen ging ich fort -
Hinaus in die dämmernden Lande!

Entgegen dem jungen Maientag:
Das war ein seltsam Passen!
Mählich wurde die Welt nun wach -
Was war mir der prangende Frühlingstag!
Ich stöhnte nur leise: Verlassen!



Op.6 no.5 "Ich halte dich in meinem Arm"


Text by Gottfried Keller (1819-1890)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, "Ghasel", op. 6 no. 5 (1903-1905)

See also:

Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957), "Ich halte dich in meinem Arm", op. 38 no. 7 (1923), from Gaselen



Ich halte dich in meinem Arm,
Du hältst die Rose zart,
Und eine junge Biene tief
In sich die Rose hält.

So reihen wir uns perlenhaft
An einer Lebensschnur,
So freun wir uns, wie Blatt an Blatt
Sich an der Rose schart.

Und glüht mein Kuß auf deinem Mund,
So zuckt die Flammenspur
Bis in der Biene Herz,
Das sich dem Kelch der Rose paart.



Op.6 no.6 "Am Wegrand"


Text by John Henry Mackay (1864-1933)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 6 no. 6 (1903-1905)



Tausend Menschen ziehen vorüber,
Den ich ersehne, er ist nicht dabei!
Ruhlos fliegen die Blicke hinüber,
Fragen den Eilenden, ob er es sei...

Aber sie fragen und fragen vergebens.
Keiner gibt Antwort: "Hier bin ich. Sei still."
Sehnsucht erfüllt die Bezirke des Lebens,
Welche Erfüllung nicht füllen will.

Und so steh ich am Wegrand-Strande,
Während die Menge vorüberfließt,
Bis erblindet vom Sonnenbrande
Mein ermüdetes Aug' sich schließt.



Op.6 no.7 "Lockung"


Text by Kurt Aram (Hans Fischer) (1869-1934)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 6 no. 7 (1903-1905)



Komm, komm mit nur einen Schritt!
Hab schon gegessen,
Will dich nicht fressen,
Komm, komm mit nur einen Schritt!

Kaum zwei Zehen weit noch zu gehen
Bis zu dem Häuschen,
Komm, mein Mäuschen,
Ei sieh da, da sind wir ja!

Hier in dem Eckchen
(Pst) nur kein Schreckchen,
Wie glüh'n deine Bäckchen,
Jetzt hilft kein Schrein,
Mein bist du, mein!



Op.6 no.8 "Der Wanderer"


Text by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 6 no. 8 (1903-1905)



Es geht ein Wand'rer durch die Nacht
Mit gutem Schritt;
Und krummes Tal und lange Höhn -
Er nimmt sie mit.
Die Nacht ist schön -
Er schreitet zu und steht nicht still,
Weiß nicht, wohin sein Weg noch will.

Da singt ein Vogel durch die Nacht.
"Ach Vogel, was hast du gemacht!
Was hemmst du meinen Sinn und Fuß
Und gießest süßen Herz-Verdruß
In's Ohr mir, daß ich stehen muß
Und lauschen muß -
Was lockst du mich mit Ton und Gruß?"

Der gute Vogel schweigt und spricht:
"Nein, Wandrer, nein! Dich lock' ich nicht
Mit dem Getön.
Ein Weibchen lock' ich von den Höhn -
Was geht's dich an?
Allein ist mir die Nacht nicht schön -
Was geht's dich an? Denn du sollst gehn
Und nimmer, nimmer stille stehn!
Was stehst du noch?
Was tat mein Flötenlied dir an,
Du Wandersmann?"

Der gute Vogel schwieg und sann:
"Was tat mein Flötenlied ihm an?
Was steht er noch?
Der arme, arme Wandersmann!"



Op.12 no.1 "Jane Grey"


Text by Heinrich Ammann (1864-??)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 12 no. 1 (1907)



Sie führten ihn durch den grauen Hof,
Daß ihm sein Spruch gescheh';
Am Fenster stand sein junges Gemahl,
Die schöne Königin Grey.

Sie bog ihr Köpfchen zum Fenster heraus,
Ihr Haar erglänzte wie Schnee;
Er hob die Fessel klirrend auf
Und grüßte sein Weib Jane Grey.

Und als man den Toten vorüber trug,
Sie stand damit sie ihn seh';
Drauf ging sie freudig denselben Gang,
Die junge Königin Grey.

Der Henker, als ihm ihr Antlitz schien,
Er weinte laut auf vor Weh,
Dann eilte nach in die Ewigkeit
Dem Gatten Königin Grey.

Viel junge Damen starben schon
Vom Hochland bis zur See,
Doch keine war schöner und keuscher noch
Als Dudley's Weib Jane Grey.

Und wenn der Wind in den Blättern spielt
Und er spielt in Blumen und Klee,
Dann flüsterts noch oft vom frühen Tod
Der jungen Königin Grey.



Op.12 no.2 "Der verlorene Haufen"


Text by Viktor Klemperer (1881-1960)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 12 no. 2 (1907)



Trinkt aus, ihr zechtet zum letzenmal,
Nun gilt es Sturm zu laufen;
Wir stehn zuvorderst aus freier Wahl,
Wir sind der verlorne Haufen.

Wer länger nicht mehr wandern mag,
Wes Füße schwer geworden,
Wem zu grell das Licht, wem zu laut der Tag,
Der tritt in unsern Orden.

Trinkt aus, schon färbt sich der Osten fahl,
Gleich werden die Büchsen singen,
Und blinkt der erste Morgenstrahl,
So will ich mein Fähnlein schwingen.

Und wenn die Sonne im Mittag steht,
So wird die Bresche gelegt sein;
Und wenn die Sonne zur Rüste geht,
Wird die Mauer vom Boden gefegt sein.

Und wenn die Nacht sich niedersenkt,
Sie raffe den Schleier zusammen,
Daß sich kein Funke drin verfängt
Von den lodernden Siegesflammen!

Nun vollendet der Mond den stillen Lauf,
Wir sehn ihn nicht verbleichen.
Kühl zieht ein neuer Morgen herauf -
Dann sammeln sie unsere Leichen.



Op.14 no.1 "Ich darf nicht dankend"


Text by Stefan George (1868-1933)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 14 no. 1, "In diesen Wintertagen" (1907/8)



Ich darf nicht dankend an dir niedersinken.
Du bist vom geist der flur aus der wir stiegen:
Will sich mein trost an deine wehmut schmiegen,
So wird sie zucken um ihm abzuwinken.

Verharrst du bei dem quälenden beschlusse,
Nie deines leides nähe zu gestehen,
Und nur mit ihm und mir dich zu ergehen
Am eisigklaren tief-entschlafnen flusse?



Op.14 no.2 "In diesen Wintertagen, nun sich das Licht verhüllt"


Text by Karl Friedrich Henckell (1864-1929)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 14 no. 2, "In diesen Wintertagen" (1908)

See also:

Richard Strauss (1864-1949), op. 48 no. 4, "Winterweihe" (1900)



In dieser Wintertagen,
Nun sich das Licht verhüllt,
Laß uns im Herzen tragen,
Einander traulich sagen,
Was uns mit innerm Licht erfüllt.

Was milde Glut entzündet,
Soll brennen fort und fort,
Was Seelen zart verbündet,
Und Geisterbrücken gründet,
Sei unser leises Losungswort.

Das Rad der Zeit mag rollen,
Wir greifen kaum hinein,
Dem Schein der Welt verschollen,
Auf unserm Eiland wollen
Wir Tag und Nacht der sel'gen Liebe weih'n



Op.15 "Das Buch der hängenden Gärten"


Text by Stefan George (1868-1933)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 15 (1908-9)



a)

Unterm schutz von dichten blättergründen,
Wo von sternen feine flocken schneien,
Sachte stimmen ihre leiden künden,
Fabeltiere aus den braunen schlünden
Strahlen in die marmorbecken speien,
Draus die kleinen bäche klagend eilen:
Kamen kerzen das gesträuch entzünden,
Weisse formen das gewässer teilen.



b)

Hain in diesen paradiesen
Wechselt ab mit blütenwiesen,
Hallen, buntbemalten fliesen,
Schlanker störche schnäbel kräuseln
Teiche, die von fischen schillern,
Vögel-reihen matten scheines
Auf den schiefen firsten trillern
Und die goldnen binsen säuseln -
Doch mein traum verfolgt nur eines.



c)

Als neuling trat ich ein in dein gehege;
Kein staunen war vorher in meinen mienen,
Kein wunsch in mir, eh ich dich blickte, rege.
Der jungen hände faltung sieh mit huld,
Erwähle mich zu denen, die dir dienen
Und schone mit erbarmender geduld
Den, der noch strauchelt auf so fremdem stege.



d)

Da meine lippen reglos sind und brennen,
Beacht ich erst, wohin mein fuss geriet:
In andrer herren prächtiges gebiet.
Noch war vielleicht mir möglich, mich zu trennen;
Da schien es, daß durch hohe gitterstäbe
Der blick, vor dem ich ohne lass gekniet,
Mich fragend suchte oder zeichen gäbe.



e)

Saget mir, auf welchem pfade
Heute sie vorüberschreite -
Daß ich aus der reichsten lade
Zarte seidenweben hole,
Rose pflücke und viole,
Daß ich meine wange breite,
Schemel unter ihrer sohle.



f)

Jedem werke bin ich fürder tot.
Dich mir nahzurufen mit den sinnen,
Neue reden mit dir auszuspinnen,
Dienst und lohn, gewährung und verbot,
Von allen dingen ist nur dieses rot
Und weinen, daß die bilder immer fliehen,
Die in schöner finsternis gediehen -
Wann der kalte klare morgen droht.



g)

Angst und hoffen wechselnd mich beklemmen,
Meine worte sich in seufzer dehnen,
Mich bedrängt so ungestümes sehnen,
Daß ich mich an rast und schlaf nicht kehre,
Daß mein lager tränen schwemmen,
Daß ich jede freude von mir wehre,
Daß ich keines freundes trost begehre.



h)

Wenn ich heut nicht deinen leib berühre,
Wird der faden meiner seele reissen
Wie zu sehr gespannte sehne.
Liebe zeichen seien trauerflöre
Mir, der leidet, seit ich dir gehöre.
Richte, ob mir solche qual gebühre,
Kühlung sprenge mir, dem fieberheissen,
Der ich wankend draussen lehne.



i)

Streng ist uns das glück und spröde,
Was vermocht ein kurzer kuss?
Eines regentropfens guss
Auf gesengter bleicher öde,
Die ihn ungenossen schlingt,
Neue labung missen muss
Und vor neuen gluten springt.



j)

Das schöne beet betracht ich mir im harren,
Es ist umzäunt mit purpurn-schwarzem dorne,
Drin ragen kelche mit geflecktem sporne
Und sammtgefiederte, geneigte farren
Und flockenbüschel, wassergrün und rund
Und in der mitte glocken, weiss und mild -
Von einem odem ist ihr feuchter mund
Wie süsse frucht vom himmlischen gefild.



k)

Als wir hinter dem beblümten tore
Endlich nur das eigne hauchen spürten,
Warden uns erdachte seligkeiten?
Ich erinnere, daß wie schwache rohre
Beide stumm zu beben wir begannen
Wenn wir leis nur an uns rührten
Und daß unsre augen rannen -
So verbliebest du mir lang zu seiten.



l)

Wenn sich bei heilger ruh in tiefen matten
Um unsre schläfen unsre hände schmiegen,
Verehrung lindert unsrer glieder brand:
So denke nicht der ungestalten schatten,
Die an der wand sich auf und unter wiegen,
Der wächter nicht, die rasch uns scheiden dürfen
Und nicht, daß vor der stadt der weisse sand
Bereit ist, unser warmes blut zu schlürfen.



m)

Du lehnest wider eine silberweide
Am ufer, mit des fächers starren spitzen
Umschirmest du das haupt dir wie mit blitzen
Und rollst, als ob du spieltest dein geschmeide.
Ich bin im boot, das laubgewölbe wahren,
In das ich dich vergeblich lud zu steigen...
Die weiden seh ich, die sich tiefer neigen
Und blumen, die verstreut im wasser fahren.



n)

Sprich nicht immer
von dem laub,
Windes raub,
Vom zerschellen
reifer quitten,
Von den tritten
Der verrichter
spät im jahr.
Von dem zittern
Der libellen
in gewittern
Und der lichter,
deren flimmer
wandelbar.



o)

Wir bevölkerten die abend-düstern
Lauben, lichten tempel, pfad und beet
Freudig - sie mit lächeln, ich mit flüstern -
Nun ist wahr, daß sie für immer geht.
Hohe blumen blassen oder brechen,
Er erblasst und bricht der weiher glas
Und ich trete fehl im morschen gras,
Palmen mit den spitzen fingern stechen.
Mürber blätter zischendes gewühl
Jagen ruckweis unsichtbare hände
Draußen um des edens fahle wände.
Die nacht ist überwölkt und schwül.



Op.48 no.1 "Sommermüd"


Text by Jakob Haringer (1883-1948)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 48 no. 1 (1933)



Wenn du schon glaubst,
Es ist ewige Nacht,
Hat dir plötzlich ein Abend
Wieder Küsse und Sterne gebracht.

Wenn du dann denkst
Es ist alles, alles vorbei,
Wird auf einmal wieder Christnacht
Und lieblicher Mai.

Drum dank Gott und sei still,
Daß du noch lebst und küßt:
Gar mancher hat ohne Stern
Sterben gemüßt.



Op.48 no.2 "Tot"


Text by Jakob Haringer (1883-1948)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 48 no. 2 (1933)



Ist alles eins,
Was liegt daran!
Der hat sein Glück,
Der seinen Wahn.
Was liegt daran!
Ist alles eins,
Der fand sein Glück
Und ich fand keins.



Op.48 no.3 "Mädchenlied"


Text by Jakob Haringer (1883-1948)
Music by Arnold Schoenberg, op. 48 no. 3 (1933)



Es leuchtet so schön die Sonne
Und ich muß müd' ins Büro;
Und ich bin immer so traurig,
Ich war schon lange nimmer froh.

Ich weiß nicht, ich kann's nicht sagen,
Warum mir immer so schwer;
Die anderen Mädchen alle
Gehn lächelnd und glücklich einher.

Vielleicht spring ich doch noch ins Wasser!
Ach, mir ist alles egal!
Kam doch ein Mädchenhändler
Und es war doch Sommer einmal!

Ich möcht' ins Kloster und beten
Für andre, daß ihnen besser geht
Als meinem armen Herzen;
Dem hilft kein Stern, kein Gebet!

Crítica de Conciertos: Galicia

Arnold Schönberg, el cupletero

Xoán M. Carreira

Santiago de Compostela, 10 de julio de 2000, Teatro Principal. Schönberg Kabarett Arnold Schönberg: Pierrot Lunaire Op. 21, Brettl-Lieder, arreglos de Roses aus dem Süden y Kaiserwalzer de Johann Strauss II, obras propias y de otros autores. Maddalena Crippa, actriz-cantante; Überbrettl Ensemble con Igor Canterelli, violín y Luca Moretti, viola; Alessandro Nidi, director musical. Peter Stein, director de escena. II Festival Internacional de Música de Galicia

El cabaret fue una de las formas de expresión experimentadas por los compositores europeos en torno al cambio de siglo. En 1900 Otto Bierbaum publicó Deutsche Chansons, una compilación de poemas paródicos y satíricos cuyo enorme éxito lo convirtió en el espejo de la desilusión política y fue el germen de la moda del cabaret político que encontró su plaza principal en Berlín. Ciudad en la que abrió sus puertas el Teatro Überbrettl, dirigido por Ernst von Wolzogen en otoño de 1901. Wolgozen ofreció a Schönberg el puesto de director musical de su compañía, motivo del traslado del compositor a Berlín en diciembre de 1901, cuando estaba trabajando en los Gurrelieder, recibió una oferta de trabajo en Berlín. Schönberg tenía a Deutsche Chansons en gran estima y se propuso dar vida a esas canciones fusionando la atmósfera descuidada, densa, casi maliciosa del café-chantant con una música de origen y factura más elevada. El Teatro Überbrettl se cerró a finales del verano de 1902 sin que Schönberg hubiese tenido tiempo de estrenar sus canciones, salvo quizás "Nachtwandler" que es la única cuya instrumentación (Piccolo, trompeta, tambor y piano) tuvo tiempo de terminar. Como otras muchas composiciones "menores" del autor, las 8 canciones alemanas se recuperaron con ocasión de la conmemoración del centenario del nacimiento de Schönberg y fueron publicados en 1975 con el título Brettl-Lieder.
Con destino al espectáculo Schönberg Kabarett, Alessandro Nidi realizó un arreglo para flauta, clarinete, cuarteto de cuerdas y piano de siete de las 8 canciones alemanas, respetando la agria instrumentación original de "Nachtwandler" e intercalando entre ellas arreglos instrumentales del propio Schönberg, entre ellos una fascinante reducción para trío con piano de su Verklärte Nacht y el Vals del emperador que Schönberg transcribió para quinteto con piano con destino, al parecer, a una gira española con el Pierrot Ensemble, para ser interpretado después de su Pierrot Lunaire. Peter Stein retomó con ternura no exenta de ironía los caracteres convencionales del cabaret modernista, recreados con desbordante talento por Maddalena Crippa, una actriz elegante y sutil, con enormes facultades vocales y corporales que la hacen heredera de lujo de los míticos actores "todo terreno" de los años de entreguerras. El Überbrettl Ensemble consiguió una afortunada reproducción no sólo del estilo sino también del sonido característico de las orquestinas de cabaret. Merece mención especial la ductilidad del clarinetista Massimo Ferraguti, de enormes capacidades miméticas e histriónicas, que exhibió sin pudor alguno evocadores defectos como cerdeos y escapes de boquilla, propios de los modestos clarinetistas de cafetín.

El melodrama es un género caracterizado por el recitado con acompañamiento musical o interpolado de interludios musicales. La obra que más fama y dinero proporcionó a Schönberg fue Pierrot Lunaire Op. 21 (1912), un ciclo de veintiún melodramas sobre el ciclo homónimo de poemas de Albert Giraud. Un quinteto con piano que requiere dos instrumentistas de viento (flautas y clarinetes) y dos de cuerda (violín/viola y violoncello). En las más diversas combinaciones, los ocho instrumentos proporcionan un fondo sonoro a los soliloquios de un Arlequín crepuscular, decadente y morboso, tratados por Schönberg mediante una técnica de fusión de canto y recitado denominada Sprachgesang. Aunque las partes instrumentales no tienen especiales dificultades, Pierrot Lunaire requiere un arduo trabajo de concertación para lograr los refinamientos texturales y rítmicos exigidos por Schönberg. Objetivo conseguido plenamente por Alessandro Nido, un director que, rara avis, parece "preferir la belleza a la perfección" y que obtuvo resultados óptimos del Überbretl Ensemble, un grupo de músicos competentes y entusiastas.

La propuesta escénica de Peter Stein se basó exclusivamente en dos elementos sustanciales del lenguaje teatral: el movimiento y la luz. Toda una lección de sobriedad y precisión, frente a la epidemia de horror vacui que infecta las regias en todo el mundo desde hace unos años. Una dirección al servicio de una deslumbrante Maddalena Crippa, con la que nos embriagamos de luna, compartimos los sufrimientos de la Madonna Dolorósa, bajamos a robar a las tumbas, cantamos a la soga del patíbulo, hicimos una pipa con la cabeza de Casandro y, dominados por la añoranza, retornamos a Bérgamo para refugiarnos en nuestras añoranzas. Por una vez, se produjo el milagro y el Teatro fue simple y llanamente Teatro y la Actriz, la dueña y soberana de nuestras emociones, como debe ser. Signóra Crippa, ¡la amo!.

Brettl-Lieder

Schönberg accepted the invitation to move to Berlin in order to work as music director of a cabaret company, the Überbrettl Theatre. The most of Brettl-Lieder texts are taken from Deutsche Chansons, a poetry book in the cabaret style, published in 1900 by Otto Julius Bierbaum.
Bierbaum wished to create songs combining the carefree atmosphere of the café-chantant and music from higher origins: Schönberg fully accomplished his expectations, composing ironic and amusing pieces with sexual hints and witticisms.

Recebi a letra da Nachtwandler.
Gentilezíssima de Emily Ezust, que mantém o site
The Lied and Song Texts Page: http://www.lieder.net/



Hi there,
Here's the text you requested!
Emily

--


===================================================================
Gustav Falke: Nachtwandler

Trommler, laß dein Kalbfell klingen,
Und, Trompeter, blas darein,
Daß sie aus den Betten springen,
Mordio, Michel, Mordio! schrein.
Tuut und trumm, tuut und trumm,
Zipfelmützen ringsherum.

Und so geh' ich durch die hellen,
Mondeshellen Gassen hin,
Fröhlich zwischen zwei Mamsellen,
Wäscherin und Plätterin:
Links Luischen, rechts Marie,
Und voran die Musici.

Aber sind wir bei dem Hause,
Das ich euch bezeichnet hab',
Macht gefälligst eine Pause,
Und seid schweigsam wie das Grab!
Scht und hm, scht und hm,
Sachte um das Haus herum.

Meine heftige Henriette
Wohnt in diesem kleinen Haus,
Lärmen die wir aus dem Bette,
Kratzt sie uns die Augen aus.
Scht und hm, scht und hm,
Sachte um das Haus herum.

Lustig wieder, Musikanten!
Die Gefahr droht nun nicht mehr;
Trommelt alle alten Tanten
Wieder an die Fenster her!
Tuut und trumm, tuut und trumm,
Zipfelmützen ringsherum.

Ja, so geh' ich durch die hellen,
Mondeshellen Gassen hin,
Fröhlich zwischen zwei Mamsellen,
Wäscherin und Plätterin:
Links Luischen, rechts Marie,
Und voran die Musici.

100 Years of Cabaret in Germany

alt="Baron Ernst von Wolzogen" border="1">

The first German cabaret was born on 18 January 1901 in Berlin in the form of Baron Ernst von Wolzogen's Buntes Theater (Colorful Theater), which was nicknamed the Über-Brettl or "Super-Music-Hall" in homage to Nietzsche's Übermensch. This entertainment hall with 650 seats was followed five days later by Max Reinhardt's Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke), and then in April 1901 by Munich's Elf Scharfrichter (Eleven Executioners), both offering a more impudent and critical version of cabaret. Frank Wedekind, an outstanding satirist of the Wilhelmine Era, sang his lute songs attacking prudish morality and philistinism here and also in the Munich Simpl, the longest-lived cabaret of the early years, which was run by Kathi Kobus. This great art of the small form was modeled after Paris, where the first cabaret, the Montmartre artists' pub Chat Noir, had opened twenty years earlier. The early cabarets were dominated by young, bohemian artists and intellectuals; literary cabaret was all the rage. In Germany, it soon appeared as "Kabarett" and became the experimental battlefield of café poets, dadaists, and expressionists--for instance Jakob van Hoddis. Kurt Tucholsky and Walter Mehring, bitterly mocking satirists who also penned lyrical or delightfully comical texts to entertain their audiences, were among the outstanding cabaret authors of the exciting 1920s. The secret was getting the right blend It is no coincidence that the word cabaret is derived from the salad tray, divided in different sections--always available for a colorful mixture, juxtaposition, and contrast of different forms for various tastes and temperaments. And in the middle of the platter was a dish for the sauce that connected everything. This was the role of the conférenciér or emcee; Rudolf Salis, the founder of the Chat Noir, was the first member of this guild.

Bertolt Brecht drew inspiration from the cabaret for his theory of the Epic Theater. Cabaret reached into huge revues and variety theater stages in the form of chansons by Friedrich Hollaender and Rudolf Nelson, and it even spread into the seedy honky-tonk, on the edge of respectability. The popular Bavarian comic Karl Valentin, on the other hand, cut an absurd, estranged, and ultimately melancholy figure. And Werner Finck, whose artistic estate is held by the German Cabaret Archives in Mainz, found like many others that this double-edged humor could become a risky, even fatal business. The books of many satirists fell victim to Nazi bonfires on 10 May 1933, and countless cabaret artists and satirists spent the so-called "Thousand-Year Reich" in exile, or worse yet, in concentration camps.

The cabaret was reborn after the Second World War. In the western zones, it sang of the survivor's joy in defiantly melancholy tones, as in Dusseldorf's Kom(m)ödchen the cabaret set new standards for political and literary fare, and in Berlin it saw the Insulaner (Islanders) launch into the Cold War with their swinging melodies. On the stage of Wolfgang Neuss, the cabaret drummed the bitter lessons of the economic miracle into the West German consciousness, and soon it celebrated the new year on television with the Munich Lach- und Schießgesellschaft and Berlin's Stachelschweine (Porcupines). Here, a broad middle-class audience became acquainted with the cabaret. In the sixties, the cabaret sang out against the resurgence of Neo-Nazis in the person of Franz-Josef Degenhardt alias Väterchen Franz, while it agitated in the streets alongside the extra-parliamentary opposition, and, as Hanns Dieter Hüsch's Hagenbuch, declared everything and everyone sick and insane. The main target of the cabaret's satire in the eighties was Helmut Kohl; through Richard Rogler it unmasked the cynicism of the new brands of intellectual and moral "freedom". And with the rise of´commercial television in Germany, cabaret discovered its own marketability.

Meanwhile, politically committed cabaret has taken a back seat to entertainment, although this applies not just to the nineties and certainly not to all performers. The cabaret forms have been pepped up for television tastes; farces have become sitcoms, satirists have turned into comedians. Everyone raves, no matter how banal or coarse it is. "Nowadays you need a sense of humor to endure what others see as humorous," Wolfgang Gruner said. At its best, it has inspired stylish, clever television entertainment for amusement-seekers. Nobody is quicker than Harald Schmidt, who uses cabaret-style quickies in his evening show to parody and mock everything and everyone. For many writers, producing jokes on the assembly line for television stars has become an attractive source of income. The soloist Dieter Nuhr from Dusseldorf, on the other hand, uses his own ideas and sets new standards for contemporary, satirical entertainment with a healthy dose of philosophy, without worrying about how people will label his show and its author. And the juicily egocentric, sometimes morbid and nihilistic performances of Josef Hader, who stands out in the Austrian creative scene of the Nineties, revolve around the old question, "why bother?" and invite the audience to join the Josef Hader Fan Club on the Internet.

German unification has revealed how different the cabarets of the two societies were--and how different they remain within the realm of the former borders. This is a chapter in its own right. Ensemble cabarets can be found mainly in the East, while evenings of cabaret songs survive more or less in the shadows across the country. It has not become any easier to launch political cabaret in the comedy circus of the Nineties, especially on television. Making the transition from the little cabaret stage, that forum for fresh talents, to the big TV screen works best if the young performers generally avoid real problems. What counts here is fun and money, cults and ratings. People are annoyed if causes and effects are analyzed too deeply--jokes about the superficial symptoms are enough. Throw those punchlines for all they're worth. The story, our history, is no longer in the spotlight, but instead the performers; not their ideas count, but rather their gimmicks. Whoever combines a good delivery technique with stage presence and a good appearance fits into the media world just fine and is welcome there. And that's what counts, for this is the center of the world--even for those not very interested in the world around them. All too often, this gives an impression of provincialism.

The new "Kom(m)ödchen", under the direction of Kay S. Lorentz, is resisting this trend and resurrecting the old traditions. The former comedy ace Dieter Hallervorden is trying to bridge the gap between grotesque, comic performance and socially critical contents. As the classic old man of the political cabaret, Dieter Hildebrandt still stands under the protection of the ARD television network for his "Scheibenwischer" (Windshield-Wipers), filled with the charm of the studio cabaret. (Will it last?) Hanns Dieter Hüsch reflects that his public reflections in entertaining form still give rise to hopes--but nobody wants them any more. Has the bell tolled for thought and depth, for poetry and politics in the cabaret? Will the idealists give way to the cynics, the analytical thinkers bow to the populists, the individualists cave in to the marketing strategists? In any event, it's time for a new generation in the cabaret.

And yet there is hardly a community in which one doesn't find cabaret events offered for those interested in culture, and never have there been so many performance opportunities. The stage is the freedom of the cabaret. Let us hope that today's young artists never lose their courage and their commitment.This will be all the more likely if today's star television performers still remember their roots and remain faithful to the cabaret
scene.
It's so basic...

Translated by Alan Lareau, Feb. 2000