ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874-1951) Pelleas and Melisande, op. 5 ca. 41 mins. Pelleas und Melisande is Schoenberg's only composition from his time in Berlin. It was there where he first met Richard Strauss, ten years his senior, who suggested him Maeterlink's play as a subject for a new composition. At first Schoenberg thought about composing an opera based on the play, but he soon abandoned this idea. In February 1903, after about six months of work, Schoenberg completed the piece – a tone poem, a large symphonic composition which tells a story without words. The work is deeply influenced by Richard Wagner in almost every respect. It is a programmatic work, conveying extramusical content, as opposed to an absolute piece, a musical composition without any extra-musical content (Wagner claimed decades earlier that absolute music had exhausted itself). It is written for a very big orchestra, which includes eight horns, at least four parts for each woodwind family, and two harp parts, so difficult to play that they are usually played by four different harpists. The main area of Wagner's influence is the work's harmonic language. From the Baroque period to the beginning of the 20th century, composers of Western classical music wrote tonal music – which is based on a key with a stable center (the tonic) to which all tones ultimately resolve. 19th century composers extended the tonal language by introducing many chromatic tones and modulating to many remote keys. Wagner was very radical in this aspect – in the opening bars of his Tristan und Isolde one cannot recognize the key in which the music is written. Pelleas und Melisande, as all of Schoenberg’s early compositions, is tonal, yet it is so full of chromaticism and dissonant chords, that it does not sound so different from atonal music. Indeed, not so many years later, Schoenberg composed completely atonal works. In 1920 Alban Berg, Schoenberg's student, wrote an analysis of the work. He claimed that although it is based on a program, it could be well understood as a symphony. While written in one movement, it actually has four different parts, comparable to the four movements of a symphony: a first movement with an introduction and a sonata form, a scherzo with two episodes, a slow movement and a finale. Most probably, Schoenberg read and confirmed Berg's analysis, so musicologists tend to accept it as representative of the composer's intentions. However, we have to be a bit more suspicious here. When Pelleas und Melisande was written, programmatic music was "out of fashion" and absolute music was once again more highly regarded. It is possible that Berg’s analysis was written in order to "save" his teacher's work from the critics of its time. The formal analysis, one has to admit, is not convincing, and the programmatic analysis explains the composition better. Schoenberg, as Berg showed, used musical themes that represent the three main characters, as well as abstract ideas such as fate and love. This approach is also highly influenced by Wagner, who used such leitmotives, as they are called, in his works. The first part of the piece presents the main
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