Arnold Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht op. 4 (1899)
Programme notes
“Yesterday evening I heard your ‘Transfigured Night’, and I should consider
it a sin of omission if I failed to say a word of thanks to you for your
wonderful sextet. I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your
composition; but I soon forgot to do so, I was so enthralled by the music”
(Richard Dehmel to Arnold Schönberg, 12 December 1912). Arnold Schönberg
composed his op. 4 in just three weeks in September 1899, while vacationing
in Payerbach at Semmering with Alexander von Zemlinsky and Zemlinsky’s
sister Mathilde – who would become Schönberg’s first wife. The final version
of the manuscript is dated 1 December 1899. The subject of this programme
music, which “restricts itself to sketching nature and expressing human
emotions” (Schönberg), is Richard Dehmel’s poem “Verklärte Nacht,” from
the collection “Woman and World” (“Weib und Welt”) published in 1896.
Before the first World War Dehmel was one of Germany’s most highly regarded
lyric poets. His principal work, “Two Figures: A Novel in Romances” (“Zwei
Menschen. Roman in Romanzen,” 1903), essayed eroticism and sexuality within
the context of stylistic conceptions of art nouveau (Jugendstil). The
first main piece of the “Novel” is “Verklärte Nacht” (a poem already once
published, but without title), which is carried by the “pathos of a new,
anti-bourgeois sexual morality [and] the idea of an all-conquering Eros
that shuns every convention” (Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt). The five verses
of the poem sketch in sections of clearly contrasting content: a forest
scene with two figures (Nos. 1, 3, 5); the words of a woman who loves
one man but is expecting a child from another, and who thus reproaches
herself (No. 2); the words of the man, who comforts the woman and accepts
the child as his own (No. 4). Dehmel’s poem drew upon an autobiographical
episode, insofar as it alludes to his liaison with Ida Auerbach, whom
he met as she was already carrying a child by her husband, Consul Auerbach.
The daughter in an upper-class Jewish family played an essential role
in the constellation Stefan George – Richard Dehmel – Arnold Schönberg:
George elaborated upon his unspoken love for her in his autobiographically
composed “Book of the Hanging Gardens” (“Buch der hängenden Gärten”),
fifteen poems of which Arnold Schönberg would set as op. 15. The genre
of programme music appears to have occupied Schönberg intensely in the
year preceding composition of his op. 4. So much, at least, is suggested
by those compositions which remain as fragments: “Hans, the Lucky One”
(“Hans im Glück”), “The Death of Spring” (“Frühlingstod”), and “Blind
Corner” (“Toter Winkel”), the latter also a string sextet. His blossoming
relationship with Mathilde Zemlinsky in 1899 may also have been decisive
in his specific choice of programme for op. 4. As a one-movement form,
“Verklärte Nacht” represents a conjunction of two developmental trends
in the music of the late 19th century: the inclination towards the one-movement
sonata (Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B-minor stands as historical model) and
the one-movement symphonic poem. The formal arrangement in Schönberg’s
op. 4 by and large adheres to the literary model, whereby the narrative
sections (the woods scenes) and internal episodes (direct discourse) find
their parallel in rondo form. The first section unfurls in dense motivic
mastery and epic gestures a picture of a clear, moonlit night, that in
the second section, through the confession of a tragedy (the first theme
is linked by D minor to the preceding episode), leads to a “dramatic outburst”
(Schönberg, 1950, in his Programme Notes to “Verklärte Nacht”). The first
section now clearly set off by a fermata, the second theme follows in
B-flat minor to illustrate the misfortune and loneliness of the woman.
A third theme in C minor elucidates the compulsion for fidelity: after
the woman “finally obeyed her maternal instinct, she carries a child from
a man she does not love. She had even considered herself praiseworthy
for fulfilling her duty towards the demands of nature.” This section of
Dehmel’s poem is expounded by a fourth theme in E major, which in its
further elaboration quotes motives from material heard previously and
leads to a distinct caesura. There follows a contrasting, homogenous passage,
with new shadings of timbre, as bridge to the third formal section. This
in turn draws upon the principal opening motive, thereafter continuing
in the style of ‘developing variation’ (reminiscent of Johannes Brahms).
The discourse of the man, “whose generosity is as noble as his love,”
modulates in the fourth section to the ”extreme contrast of Dmajor.” Mutes
and harmonics express in new sound effects the “beauty of the moonlight.”
According to Schönberg, this episode “reflects the mood of a man whose
love, in harmony with the splendor and radiance of nature, is capable
of ignoring the tragic situation.” The fifth section assumes the function
of an all-encompassing coda based not only on the opening motive, now
transformed to major (and as its counterpoint the principal theme of the
fourth section), but also on thematic components of the third section.
At the end of 1939 the American publisher Edwin F. Kalmus approached Schönberg
with the wish to publish a new edition of “Verklärte Nacht.” Schönberg
agreed, provided it be an improved edition (alterations in dynamics, bowings,
etc.) in an arrangement for string orchestra. Even as early as 1917 the
composer had prepared for Universal Edition a version of op. 4 for string
orchestra with a supplementary part for contrabass (the first known performance
of the work in this form took place in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 14 March
1918); but the experience of numerous performances had pursuaded him to
reshape this version as well. When the contract with Kalmus failed to
materialize, Schönberg approached Associated Music Publishers in New York.
The modifications in the arrangement for string orchestra (which was issued
by AMP in 1943) concern primarily dynamics and articulation, but also
tempo markings. In a letter of 22 December 1942 Schönberg describes the
essential improvements over the edition of 1917: “The new version [...]
will improve the balance between first and second violins on the one hand,
and viola and cello on the other, and restore the balance of the original
version of the sextet with its six equivalent instruments.”
Therese Muxeneder
© Arnold Schönberg Center
