Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)
Listen to “Sehr langsam.” Schoenberg's inverted 9th chord made him rejected from the Vienna Music Society! Hear it at 3:15.
In this chamber music and program music, listeners might hear six parts for the sextet playing many descending notes, whole and half steps.
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What expressive features are heard and performed as notated into the score? How does Schoenberg alter sense of time, dynamics, and articulation to communicate?
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How might you describe this piece? Does it sound like transfiguration? What does this transfigured night look like to you?
1899 Top Hits!
Joplin - Maple Leaf Rag
Sibelius - Symphony 1
Elgar - Enigma Variations
Debussy - Nocturnes
Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte
Sousa Hands across the sea
Erik Satie - Jack in the Box
R.Vaughan Williams - A Cambridge Mass
If you were used to hearing these songs,
how might you feel hearing Verklarte Nacht?
World war, depressions, science, technology, experimentation, economic cuts, chamber works, machine music, new objectivity (neue sachlichkeit), preservation - recordings/tapes and radio, expressionism, primitism, polytonality, neoclassicism, serialism, electronic music, jazz, traditionalism, music for everyday use (gebrauchsmusik), play music or game music (spielmusik).
Transitional times
"Called upon to say something about my public, I have to confess: I do not believe I have one.
[...]
It occurred to me: that I didn’t have to give up my faith in the half-wits, in the expert judges; that I could continue thinking that they had no clue about anything whatsoever. But whether the public really dislikes me as much as the expert judges always say, and whether my music really scares the public so much, seems rather doubtful to me at times."
My Public (1930)
How one becomes lonely
“To stop the creative process like this is to systematize ugliness itself, and mediocrity, and banality.”
Interview with myself (1928)
“There might come the promise of a new day of sunlight in music such as I would like to offer to the world.”
October 11, 1937