At a Glance
Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 caps off the first period of his compositional development, which finds the composer working in the late
Romantic, chromatic idiom of Brahms, Strauss, and Wagner. The operatic monodrama Erwartung then belongs to the second, after the
“emancipation of dissonance” and break with traditional tonality. Brahms’s Second Symphony showcases what Schoenberg described as
“developing variation,” whereby motivic germs grow into variegated thematic complexes.
THE PROGRAMARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951)
About the ComposerSchoenberg began by writing tonal music in the late Romantic style: highly chromatic and expressive, yet still traditional in form and harmonic function. Between 1907 and 1909, however, he moved into uncharted tonal territory. Schoenberg enjoyed a great burst of creative energy during these two years—a period critical in his own compositional development and the whole of Western music history—and made his final break with tonality and conventional harmony, producing a series of atonal works. The term
atonality is generally used to describe music that lacks a traditional key or tonality; uses the full chromatic spectrum of pitches, rather than the hierarchy of seven in a traditional diatonic scale; and relies on dissonant harmonies rather than triads. Schoenberg himself preferred the term
pan-tonal.
Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9b
Schoenberg began his First Chamber Symphony in late 1905 and finished it in July 1906. The composer viewed the work to be the apex of his "first" period—meaning the period before he abandoned traditional tonality. In his own words, the Chamber Symphony exemplifies "a very intimate reciprocation between melody and harmony, in that both connect remote relations of the tonality into a perfect unity, draw logical consequences from the problems they attempt to solve, and simultaneously make great progress in the direction of the emancipation of the dissonance." (The "emancipation of dissonance" refers to his evolving dissolution of tonality.) The Chamber Symphony clings to tonality, but its role in determining the structure of the work is almost inaudible. Tonal harmony establishes a home key: Moving further away creates greater tension, released by a return. The Chamber Symphony is so unsettled, however, that the tension feels unflagging.
The Chamber Symphony, which begins ironically enough with a cadence, can be parsed into five large sections: exposition, scherzo, development, adagio, and recapitulation. The opening cadence lands on a lovely major chord; a rising horn motto then sends the movement off through two expositions. In each, the first theme is aggressive, searching; the second is quieter and more lyrical. The beginning of the exposition’s end is marked by horn blasts alternating with sharp chords in the orchestra; a mysterious, slow, murky passage paves the way for the scherzo, which opens with a chromatic ascent in the oboes above a roiling orchestral accompaniment. The slow movement is easy enough to grasp, thanks to its slackened tempo, and the piece concludes by recalling the many themes from the beginning, although all are endlessly varied and utterly fluid.
Performance Time: approximately 22 minutes
Erwartung, Op. 17
Schoenberg composed
Erwartung in a mere 17 days to a text by young medical student and amateur author Marie Pappenheim. The monodrama for soprano and orchestra follows an unnamed woman walking through a forest; she is frightened, anxious, unsure of herself and her surroundings. In the fourth and final scene (about one-third of the way through the work), she stumbles across the dead body of her faithless lover. Or so it seems … Is the corpse indeed her lover? Did she kill him? Is she imagining his body? Is it all a deranged hallucination? "The whole play
can be comprehended as a nightmare," Schoenberg explained.
The music of
Erwartung is as fragmentary and disjointed as the text itself. Yet despite its seemingly limitless invention, the score is actually constructed from a very small harmonic kernel. The initial harmony of three notes is, as Richard Taruskin elucidates, "Schoenberg’s basic harmonic building block … providing his music with a sonic norm much as the triad had done in ‘common-practice’ harmony." Likewise, there is a pervasive melodic motif that, although nearly impossible to hear, silently structures the score. The dramatic gestures, sickening dissonances, sharp contrasts, and unpredictable outbursts perfectly capture the neuroses of a hysterical episode as described in the famous case of the psychoanalyzed "Anna O.," Bertha Pappenheim—cousin to Marie.
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73
About the Composer Johannes Brahms struggled mightily with the symphony, recognizing that to compose one inevitably meant contending with the legacy of Beethoven. In the works of his "first maturity," roughly the years 1859 to 1865, he warily approached the fateful genre, honing his skills in formal design and thematic processes. In such pieces as the Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34, he deploys a motivic-thematic procedure that Schoenberg later dubbed "developing variation." Musical themes are less stable with only discrete melodies, rather than repositories of motivic ideas to be explored throughout a movement or even an entire piece.
About the Work
To leading music critic Eduard Hanslick, Brahms described his Second Symphony as "cheerful and lovely," with "so many melodies flying about that you must be careful not to tread on any." The composer’s confidante Clara Schumann predicted the new work would find "more telling success" than his gloomy, brooding First Symphony. As Walter Frisch observes, however, the contrast between the two works is not absolute; instead, Brahms manages to reconcile the seemingly competing tendencies of developing variation, with its dense motivic texture, and a simpler lyricism. "Historically, this synthesis reflects the dual heritage of Schubert and Beethoven," Frisch explains. "The result is pure Brahms."
A Closer Listen
The Second Symphony begins not with a single theme, but rather a group of motives: a four-note idea in the cellos and basses—the very first thing heard; an answer in the horns, and a rising scale in the flutes and winds. The pattern continues, with low strings, brass, and winds exchanging thoughts, until the strings seem to get lost in theirs, trailing off and running aground into an ominous timpani roll. A glorious new theme emerges, but it soon becomes unstable, transitional, leading to the lilting second theme carried by the viola and cello (many have heard an echo of Brahms’s famous lullaby here, "Guten Abend, gut Nacht"). The first section of the movement ends with a bold orchestral thrust that features wide upward leaps. The development takes up all of the motives and features a grand fugato of overlapping entrances, emphasizing the horns’ answer from the very second measure of the symphony.
The second movement showcases the technique of "developing variation," with themes composed of various fragmentary ideas that pile up to form the whole. The first theme comes to a close with a solo line in the horn that is taken up by oboe, flute, and cello in counterpoint; the second emerges quietly in the flutes and oboes with pizzicato (plucked) accompaniment in the strings. A densely inventive development follows: The return of the opening material is disguised by triplets in the violins. In the third movement (Brahms’s shortest, at some five minutes), the themes are more clear-cut, less subject to continuing development—at least initially—and the formal sections easier to discern. The first section, a triple-meter Allegretto, quite audibly contrasts with the second, a duple-meter Presto.
Like the first movement, the finale falls in sonata form, comprising an exposition with two themes, development, and recapitulation. The second, broad theme in the violins is marked by a musical iamb (short-long). These main themes return in the recapitulation, the transition of which involves an extreme
pianissimo (very soft), slow rhythms, and a held note in the low strings. The coda, a conformational closing section, features three trombones and tuba with the second theme, leading to sweeping scales and a grand orchestral burst with triumphant horn calls.
Performance Time: approximately 40 minutes