The Classical Music Book

244 PIERROT LUNAIRE, OP. 21

The resulting music chimed well

with expressionism and had a

disturbing, often nightmarish effect.

Where Wagner’s unresolved

harmonies evoked anticipation,

yearning, or unrequited love,

Schoenberg’s created anxiety and

apprehension. Rather than express

emotions, his atonality dealt with

psychological states. Schoenberg

would have been aware of the

research being carried out in

Vienna at the time by the founder

of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

The unsettling nature of the

free chromaticism employed by

Schoenberg is due largely to its

lack of formal structure; without

some kind of organization or sense

of progression, it is unpredictable

and offers little relief or resolution.

Schoenberg, nevertheless, felt the

need to harness this freedom to

avoid a musical anarchy that could

limit his expressive range. He

turned to some pre-classical formal

structures in which the emphasis

was more on counterpoint than

harmony. These included imitative

devices, such as canons and

fugues, as well as simple forms,

such as the rondo and passacaglia

(a style using the repetition of

a theme or sequence of chords

over which there are certain

variations). Within these structures,

Schoenberg used as his building

blocks small fragments or motifs

that consisted of a handful of notes

with a distinctive structure of tone

intervals, which could then be

subjected to freer atonal treatment.

A new music takes shape

In 1912, the Viennese actress

Albertine Zehme commissioned

Schoenberg to write a song cycle,

setting verses from Pierrot lunaire:

rondels bergamasques by Belgian

symbolist poet Albert Giraud.

Schoenberg chose 21 of Giraud’s

50 poems for his Pierrot lunaire,

using the German translation by

Otto Erich Hartleben. He saw the

work, though, not as a collection

of songs sung in sequence but as a

melodrama. It was to be a dramatic

recitation accompanied by a small

ensemble of instruments, in a

“light, ironical, satirical tone,”

with echoes of both the Italian

comedy form commedia dell’arte,

from which the Pierrot character

originated, and contemporary

cabaret performances.

The poems present surreal

and often grotesque glimpses of

the world of the commedia dell’arte.

Their mystical quality is matched

by Schoenberg’s settings. Without

tonality, the music creates an

Pierrot and Columbine, played by

Alexander Zaitsev and Mara Galeazzi,

look to the moon in a production of

Pierrot lunaire at the Royal Opera

House, London, in 2007.

With a grotesque giant

bow, Pierrot scratches on

his viola. Like the stork

on one leg, He bleakly

plucks a pizzicato.

Albert Giraud

To call any relation

of tones atonal is as

little justified as to

designate a relation

of colors aspectral or

acomplementary. Such an

antithesis does not exist.

Arnold Schoenberg

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