Schoenberg at the Threshold

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Do curso por Curtis Institute of Music

O Mundo do Quarteto de Cordas

294 classificações

Curtis Institute of Music

O Mundo do Quarteto de Cordas

294 classificações

Arnold Steinhardt, first violin of the internationally acclaimed Guarneri String Quartet, invites music listeners to the world of the string quartet repertoire and ensemble. Journey with him and interpretive analysis instructor Mia Chung through the history and features of quartet music, colored by stories of legendary quartets and insights from the stage. This season's Curtis courses are sponsored by Linda Richardson in loving memory of her husband, Dr. Paul Richardson.

Na lição

The Explorers: Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Ives, Cage, and Reich

This program's quartets were written during the 20th century, a time of technological exploration and avant-garde expression. Visionary composers such as Schoenberg (Op. 10), Webern (Op. 5), Berg (Lyric Suite), Ives (No. 1), Cage (String Quartet in Four Parts), and Reich (Different Trains) used four string instruments in ways far different than Haydn. What did these composers dare to do, and how does one play works that present an entirely new and unexplored language?

Schoenberg at the Threshold7:18

Atonality and Expressionism8:50

Nuts and Bolts: Finales, Schoenberg5:58

Aizuri Demonstration: Quartet No. 2, IV. Entruckung9:14

Conheça os instrutores

Arnold Steinhardt
Performance Faculty
Dr. Mia Chung
Instructor of Interpretive Analysis
Musical Studies

Welcome to segment two of Program Six, entitled

The Explorers. In this segment, Arnold and I have the privilege

of delving into 20th century works that showcase innovations in musical

language as well as new kinds of interaction

for the string quartet players. Our first group of composers,

the Second Viennese School, includes Arnold Schoenberg

and his pupils, Anton Webern and Alban Berg.

They brought about change that sent music on a course towards dissonance,

atonality and finally a new system of pitch organization,

the serial or 12 tone technique. Our second group of composers is American

and they demonstrate a conscious effort to steer away from European influence.

This group includes Charles Ives, John Cage, and Steve Reich. All were

in some way affected by European composers include Schoenberg but sought a distinctly

modernist or experimental expression of their own. We begin with the founder

of the Second Viennese School, Arnold Schoenberg.

There is so much to talk about, write about and even gossip about

regarding Arnold Schoenberg's second string quartet written in 1908.

It was not only the boos, hisses, and laughter

that greeted the first performance of the work,

or the adding against all tradition of a soprano part,

it was not only that the quartet was written

during a turbulent time in Schoenberg's life

in which his wife first left him for another man

and that her return resulted in her lover's suicide,

it was also the moment when this particular work

flirted with leaving traditional harmony behind in the form of atonality,

which eventually led to a revolution in music

through Schoenberg's codified system of 12 tone composition.

In his Second String Quartet, Schoenberg rejected the idea that

any of its four movements were atonal.

He maintained that since each ends in a distance key,

the work as a whole represents only a transition towards atonality.

The first movement, massig moderato,

is clearly music of the late and very ripe romantic period and filled with a sense

of longing and melancholy. The second movement,

sehr rasch, very brisk, is a scherzo with occasional strings of notes that

seem to foreshadow strict 12 tone writing. The mood is somewhat playful, but

slightly macabre. With the introduction of "Oh du lieber

Augustin," oh dear Augustin, a popular Viennese

street song that Schoenberg transformed into

something more ghoulish.

[MUSIC]

The last two movements are with soprano and each employs the poetry

of Stefan George, "Deep is the sadness that suddenly

comes over me." The opening line of George's poem

"Litany" that is sung by the soprano conveys the third movement's atmosphere

of sadness, longing and anguish. The fourth movement Entruckung, "Rapture",

begins once again with the 12 tone like strings of notes

passed around the string quartet before the soprano sings

"I feel air from another planet," the eerie opening line of George's

poem. After the last line is sung,

"I am only a whisper of the holy voice," there is an extended coda for quartet

that builds to an emotionally charged peak before gradually fading away

in peace and resignation. There was never a time, either listening

to or performing the end of this quartet when I did not feel enormously moved,

but also acutely aware that the music was now poised at the threshold

of something entirely new and of utmost importance. This was not only a point

in history that created a before and after in compositions, but also a for and

against in the attitudes of music lovers. Some cherish this quartet and other older

Schoenberg works such as Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night) that have a late romantic glow to them.

They find this new order too cerebral and impenetrable. Others see Schoenberg's

atonal and subsequent 12 tone method as the inevitable outgrowths of the late

romantics and a way to hear music expressed with new sounds and new

meaning. Now a full century later, the pros and

cons of Schoenberg's 12 tone system continue to be discussed, sometimes

in very heated fashion.

And don't expect a resolution in my lifetime

or yours.

[MUSIC]

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