Drama
Lights, camera, action!
"It is not meant to be symbolic, but merely observed, felt. […] Most of all I would like to write for a magic theater."
(Schoenberg to Alma Mahler, 1910)
Did you know that I developed movie music (for a movie that doesn’t exist)?
I was already thinking about using technology from movies. I was friends with some movie directors and actors, and one of my future students, Hanns Eisler, composed film music. See his playlist:
The Lucky Hand - Drama with music in one act
What does it make you feel?
In Schoenberg’s aphorism of 1909: “The world moves inside him.” In front of the stage lies a man, face down. On his back crouches a cat-like, fantastic animal that seems to have sunk its teeth into his neck. Through slight gaps in the rear curtain peer the faces of six men and six women. They speak very softly. Driven by the desire for unfulfillable dreams and hopes of happiness, the man tries to face reality.
The voices warn: “You, who have the divine in you, and covet the worldly! You cannot win out.” Out of growing circle of light in the middle of the stage the man lets himself be drawn into the bright sunlight by reality in the shape of a beautiful young woman, who offers him a goblet. As he drinks, the woman watches him with waning interest; indifferently she turns to an elegant gentleman and leaves the stage on his arm. Although she returns, the man does not notice. He gazes at his hands while he speaks: “Now I possess you forever.”
Die glückliche Hand = lucky, happy, fortunate, fateful
“The man does not realize that she is gone. To him, she is there at his hand, which he gazes at uninterruptedly…”
Color & light
Watch and listen to the color crescendo of the Lucky Hand:
Do you hear and see the colors change throughout the piece?
“As sounds are treated, as playing with the appearances of colours and forms.”
“A spiritual event in the plot does not express itself only with gestures, movements and music” but also by means of “colours and light,” with which “music is made.” (Schoenberg, 1928)
“I want: The utmost unreality!
The whole thing should have the effect (not of a dream) but of chords. Of music. It must never suggest symbol, or meaning, or thoughts, but simply the play of colors and forms.”
Letter to Emil Hertzka, director of Universal Edition in Vienna and publisher
Kandinsky talked about the idea of an “inner sound” within the colour, causing “spiritual vibrations” and resulting with “a direct influence on the spirit.” Kandinsky wrote a play, “Der gelbe Klang”/“The yellow sound.” What did “yellow” sound like to him? How about to Schoenberg?
