Pierrot lunaire
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire", commonly known simply as Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21, is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg. It is a setting of 21 selected poems from Albert Giraud's cycle of the same name as translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben.
The work is written for reciter who delivers the poems in the sprechstimme style accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble. Schoenberg had previously used a combination of spoken text with instrumental accompaniment, called "melodrama", in the summer-wind narrative of the Gurre-Lieder, which was a fashionable musical style popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Though the music is atonal, it does not employ Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, which he did not use until 1921.
Pierrot lunaire is among Schoenberg's most celebrated and frequently performed works. Its instrumentation – flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano with standard doublings and in this case with the addition of a vocalist – is an important ensemble in 20th- and 21st-century classical music and is referred to as a Pierrot ensemble.
The piece was premiered at the Berlin Choralion-Saal on October 16, 1912, with Albertine Zehme as the vocalist. A typical performance lasts about 35 to 40 minutes.
History
The work originated in a commission by Albertine Zehme, a former actress, for a cycle for voice and piano, setting a series of poems by the Belgian writer Albert Giraud. The verses had been first published in 1884 and later translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben. Zehme had previously performed a 'melodrama' by composer Otto Vrieslander based on the translated poems. But, according to Eduard Steuermann, student of Schoenberg and pianist of the premiere, "the music was not strong enough, and someone advised her to approach Schoenberg."Schoenberg began work on March 12 and completed the piece on July 9, 1912, having expanded the forces to an ensemble consisting of flute, clarinet in A, violin, cello, and piano.
After forty rehearsals, Schoenberg and Zehme gave the premiere at the Berlin Choralion-Saal on October 16, 1912. Reaction was mixed. According to Anton Webern, some in the audience were whistling and laughing, but in the end "it was an unqualified success". There was some criticism of blasphemy in the texts, to which Schoenberg responded, "If they were musical, not a single one would give a damn about the words. Instead, they would go away whistling the tunes".
Structure
Pierrot lunaire consists of three groups of seven poems. In the first group, Pierrot sings of love, sex and religion; in the second, of violence, crime, and blasphemy; and in the third of his return home to Bergamo, with his past haunting him.Schoenberg, who was fascinated by numerology, also makes great use of seven-note motifs throughout the work, while the ensemble comprises seven people. The piece is his opus 21, contains 21 poems, and was begun on March 12, 1912. Other key numbers in the work are 3 and 13: each poem consists of 13 lines, while the first line of each poem occurs three times.
Music and text
Though written in a freely atonal style, Pierrot lunaire uses a variety of classical forms and techniques, including canon, fugue, rondo, passacaglia, and free counterpoint.The instrumental combinations vary between most movements. The entire ensemble is used only in Nos. 6, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, and 21. Musicologist Alan Lessem states about the work that "on the whole instrumental textures tend to become fuller as the work progresses" and that, in general, "the piano is the leading protagonist of the melodramas."
The poetry is a German version of a rondeau of the old French type with a double refrain. Each poem consists of three stanzas of 4 + 4 + 5 lines, with the first two lines of the first stanza repeated as the last two lines of the second stanza, and line 1 additionally repeated to close the third stanza and the poem. The first poem is shown below.
''Sprechstimme''
The atonal, expressionistic settings of the text, with their echoes of German cabaret, bring the poems vividly to life. Sprechstimme, literally "speech-singing" in German, is a style in which the vocalist uses the specified rhythms and pitches but does not sustain the pitches, allowing them to drop or rise, in the manner of speech. Schoenberg describes the technique in a foreword to the score:In the score, sprechstimme is indicated with small x's through the stems of notes. Though sprechstimme is used throughout the piece, Schoenberg also occasionally indicates that certain passages are to be sung.
Notable recordings
Notable recordings of this composition include:| Voice | Ensemble | Conductor | Record Company | Year of Recording | Format |
| Erika Stiedry-Wagner | Arnold Schoenberg | Columbia Records | 1940 | LP | |
| Helga Pilarczyk | Members of the Conservatory Society Concert Orchestra | Pierre Boulez | Ades | 1961 | LP, CD |
| Bethany Beardslee | Columbia Chamber Ensemble | Robert Craft | Columbia / CBS | 1963 | LP |
| Jan DeGaetani | Contemporary Chamber Ensemble | Arthur Weisberg | Nonesuch | 1970 | LP, CD |
| Cleo Laine | Nash Ensemble | Elgar Howarth | RCA Red Seal Records | 1974 | LP |
| Yvonne Minton | Ensemble InterContemporain | Pierre Boulez | Sony Music | 1977 | LP, CD |
| Barbara Sukowa | Schoenberg Ensemble | Reinbert de Leeuw | Koch Schwann | 1988 | CD |
| Jane Manning | Nash Ensemble | Simon Rattle | Chandos | 1991 | CD |
| Phyllis Bryn-Julson | New York New Music Ensemble | Robert Black | GM Recordings | 1992 | CD |
| Phyllis Bryn-Julson | Ensemble Modern | Peter Eötvös | BMG | 1993 | CD |
| Karin Ott | Cremona Musica Insieme | Pietro Antonini | Nuova Era | 1994 | CD |
| Christine Schäfer | Ensemble InterContemporain | Pierre Boulez | Deutsche Grammophon | 1997 | CD |
| Anja Silja | Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble | Robert Craft | Naxos | 1999 | CD |
Arnold Schoenberg himself made test recordings of the music with a group of Los Angeles musicians from September 24 to 26, 1940. These recordings were eventually released on LP by Columbia Records in 1949, and reissued in 1974 on the Odyssey label.
The jazz singer Cleo Laine recorded Pierrot lunaire in 1974. Her version was nominated for a classical Grammy Award. Another jazz singer who has performed the piece is Sofia Jernberg, who sang it with Norrbotten NEO.
The avant-pop star Björk, known for her interest in avant-garde music, performed Pierrot lunaire at the 1996 Verbier Festival with Kent Nagano conducting. According to the singer in a 2004 interview, "Kent Nagano wanted to make a recording of it, but I really felt that I would be invading the territory of people who sing this for a lifetime." Only small recorded excerpts of her performance have become available.
The American mezzo-soprano Mary Nessinger has performed Pierrot lunaire extensively with organizations such as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, and Sequitur at venues including Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.
In March 2011, Bruce LaBruce directed a performance at the Hebbel am Ufer Theatre in Berlin. This interpretation of the work included gender diversity, castration scenes and dildos, as well as a female to male transgender Pierrot. LaBruce subsequently filmed this adaptation as the 2014 theatrical film Pierrot lunaire.
Legacy as a standard ensemble
The quintet of instruments used in Pierrot lunaire became the core ensemble for The Fires of London, who formed in 1965 as "The Pierrot Players" to perform Pierrot lunaire, and continued to concertize with a varied classical and contemporary repertory. This group performed works arranged for these instruments and commissioned new works especially to take advantage of this ensemble's instrumental colors, up until it disbanded in 1987.Over the years, other groups have continued to use this instrumentation professionally and the Finnish contemporary group Uusinta Lunaire, and have built a large repertoire for the ensemble.