Romanticism
“During this decade, Gustav Mahler, Schoenberg’s great compatriot and predecessor was composing his greatest and most mature compositions, from the Fifth Symphony on. Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, which will receive its first performance in the Western United States on the 29th of this month in Hollywood Bowl, under the direction of Eugene Ormandy, bears interesting points of comparison with Schoenberg’s great cantata, the only work of these monumental dimensions, which Schoenberg ever composed.”
Do you see any romantic paintings?
Gurrelieder
Nature – God/Love – Death
“The story – involving King Waldemar and his beloved Tove, who is eventually murdered by the jealous Queen – can be traced back in various versions to the Middle Ages and Denmark’s trove of national sagas. The material underwent many changes in the course of time, as specific place names were added and the restlessly roaming King was introduced and the legend was eventually projected onto King Waldemar IV, who died in 1375 in Castle Gurre. This is the version which Jens Peter Jacobsen adopted as the basis for his 1868 poem, which strongly attracted Schönberg; Jacobsen had been intensively involved with religious issues, ultimately turning away from Christianity and embracing Darwinism...”
“Let God keep his heaven, if I can just keep Gurre”:
Romanticism in Danish literature happened in the winter of 1802-03 when the Danish poet Henrik Steffens gave his lectures on romanticism at Ehlers Kollegium in Copenhagen and ended when prof. Georg Brandes gave his lectures on modernism in 1871 at the University of Copenhagen.
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“Remarkably artistic and with sound effects that have never been heard before.” (Anton Webern, 1912)
“The premiere of Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder was a virtually unrivalled triumph, the likes of which are unlikely to be matched in the annals of the concert hall in the near future.”
(Neues Wiener Journal, 1913)
SPEAKER
Sir Goosefoot, Lady Amaranth, duck down, and quickly too, the summer wind's wild hunt is just beginning.
The gnats fly anxiously about the wood / grown thick with reeds, the wind has graven silver tracks into the lake.
It's much worse when it comes, than you have ever dreamed.
Ha, how eerily it laughs among the beech-leaves!
There goes Sir Glow-worm with his fire-red tongue, the heavy meadow-mist, a pale, dead shadow!
Such billowing and swaying! Such ringing and singing!
Among the sheaves, the wind beats with a melancholy sense, resounding through the shaking fields of corn.
With her long legs the spider fiddles, and the wind tears what she carefully has spun.
Ringing, the dew drifts down into the valley.
Stars shoot and vanish all at once.
Fleeing, the butterflies rustle through briars and hedges, the frogs leap to moist hideaways.
Hush! What can the wind want?
When he stirs the withered leaves, he is searching for what too soon has ended:
spring's blossoming verges blue and white, earth's transient summer dreams, they are long since dust.
But upward, above the trees he whirls now, upward through open spaces; for there, like an exquisite dream,
he knows, the flowers are sure to be!
And with a curious ringing through their leafy crowns, he greets the slender beauties once again.
Look! Now that too is past.
On airy stairs he freely whirls down to the clear mirror of the lake.
There in the waves' eternal dance, in the pale stars' reflected gleam, peacefully, he rocks himself to sleep.
How still it was, and all at once! Ah, and so bright, so clear!
From your flower-chalice, ladybug, fly now, ask of your mistress fair, sunshine and life!
The waves already dance about the cliff, already a bright-hued snail crawls through the grass.
The birds of the wood are all astir.
A flower shakes dew from her hair, and gazes upward at the sun.
Awaken, awaken, all ye flowers, to joy!
and the final chorus, ‘Seht die Sonne.’
MIXED CHORUS
Behold the sun, gay-colored, on the margin of the sky.
Morning-dreams greet her in the East!
Smiling, she rises out of the night-tides, and from her radiant brow there streams
the splendor of her locks of light.
“After a night in Spring spent partying with the Mödling Male chorus, he climbed the nearby Anninger mountain. Hiking through the forest that was covered with early morning fog and then watching the sun rise inspired his version of the melodrama ‘Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd’…” (Egon Wellesz, 1921)
THE WILD HUNT OF THE SUMMER WIND - ORCHESTRAL PRELUDE (No. 8)
Schoenberg in Moedling
"Unfortunately, concerts in Vienna are not set up as artistic affairs; they are political ones. How a thing should be received is determined in advance; people come to a concert with their opinions already firmly in place; in my view, that undermines
the success of the Gurrelieder."
Scandal in the Concert Hall
