The kinds of internal conflicts we associate with Freud and his school of psychoanalysis are played out in exquisite musical detail. Arnold Schoenberg wrote Pierrot Lunaire in 1912 at the request of actress Albertine Zehme, whose aquaintence the composer had made soon after he moved from Vienna to Berlin in 1911.
What is the meaning of the song Pierrot Lunaire?
Albert Giraud’s “Pierrot Lunaire” – which means
“moonstruck Pierrot”
– is something more: not just melancholy and “moonstruck” (meaning “in love”) but lunatic as well, a commedia dell’Arte archetype reconstrued as a symbol for the modern, alienated artist.
What is expressionistic about Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire?
Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is a good example of an expressionist work. This is a
musical style
that represents the primitive through ostinato (rather than meter), static repetition, unprepared and unresolved dissonance, and dry timbres. Typical narratives include savages, human sacrifices, and worship of the earth.
What is the pitch of Pierrot Lunaire?
Pitch Structures
This piece predominantly uses the pitch collection (014).
Is Pierrot Lunaire polyphonic?
Pierrot Lunaire is a virtual encyclopedia of Schoenberg’s “emancipation of dissonance” compositional language: a compendium of developmental techniques, word-painting, and
polyphonic constructs
(including canons, fugues, and even a passacaglia).
Is Pierrot expressionist Lunaire?
It was composed during Schoenberg’s second period after the composer had turned to atonality but before he developed his twelve-tone method. The inward psychological focus of the text and the eerie combination of atonality and sprechstimme mark this as a clearly
expressionist
work.
What’s the meaning of Pierrot?
:
a stock comic character of old French pantomime usually having a whitened face and wearing loose white clothes
.
Is Pierrot Lunaire a serialist work?
In fact, Pierrot lunaire was essentially the last major work Schoenburg composed before the outbreak of the First World War, which left him essentially silent as a composer until he
unleashed serialism on the world in 1924
.
What are the characteristics of Pierrot Lunaire?
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 (including doublings) vary between most movements. The entire ensemble is used only in Nos.
What type of modernism is Pierrot Lunaire?
Pierrot Lunaire, neither concert piece nor fully fledged theatre, but something poised nervously between, systematised that atonal revolution and defined the
new modernism
. The matching of text and music in this work for female reciter (Sprechstimme as Schoenberg called it) and five instruments is totally symbiotic.
How many instrumentalists are needed for Pierrot Lunaire?
The performing ensemble, made up of conductor, vocalist , and
five instrumentalists
, totals seven members, and the seven-note Pierrot motif (G#, E, C, D, Bb, C#, G—one note for each letter in Pierrot’s name) is omnipresent throughout the music.
What is the 12 tone theory or technique?
The technique is a means of ensuring that all
12 notes of
the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes.
What is the title of a story about a moonstruck clown?
Arnold Schoenberg’s
“Pierrot Lunaire”
is the story of a moonstruck clown, a 20th Century descendant of the classic commedia dell’Arte clown.
Is Pierrot Lunaire an opera?
First Performance: Berlin (Choralion-Saal), 16 October 1912. First Performance in UK: tbc. First Performance in Scotland: Edinburgh 1964. It is definitely stretching the definition of
opera
to allow Pierrot Lunaire, even if we do include others of Schoenberg’s works for solo voice, such as Erwartung.
Is the best example of composition interpreted as sprechstimme?
Pierrot Lunaire
is the best example of composition interpreted as sprechstimme.
