Schoenberg's Rilke Settings and the Fragmentation of War

Title
Schoenberg's Rilke Settings and the Fragmentation of War
Publication Date
2004
Author(s)
Shaw, Jennifer
Editor
Editor(s): Michael Ewans, Rosalind Halton and John A. Phillips
Type of document
Book Chapter
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Cambridge Scholars Press
Place of publication
London, United Kingdom
Edition
1
UNE publication id
une:5542
Abstract
In January 1932, while Arnold Schoenberg was seeking refuge in Barcelona from the "swastika-swaggerers and pogromists" of Berlin (Stein 1964: 163), Hans Rosbaud, music director of Radio Frankfurt, invited the composer to prepare a lecture on his Four Orchestral Songs, Op. 22. These were Schoenberg's 1913 setting of Ernest Dowson's poem 'Seraphita' (in German translation by Stefan George) and his settings of three poems by Rilke: 'Alle, welche dich suchen' (1914), 'Mach mich zum Wächter deiner Weiten' (1915) and 'Vorgefühl' (1916). Schoenberg completed the lecture, which was read on radio by Rosbaud, but its language is extraordinary: Schoenberg wrote that one should approach the songs "as in a hall of mirrors" and, while they appeared complete, he felt that they were "skeletons" whose forms remained imperfect and unfinished (Spies 1965: 17). Moreover, his focus in the lecture on extreme motivic detail has the effect of fragmenting the songs: indeed, Schoenberg surmised that something other than compositional logic must hold the songs together, something "assisted by feelings, insights, occurrences, impressions and the like" (Spies 1965: 3).
Link
Citation
Music Research: New Directions for a New Century, p. 304-314
ISBN
1904303358
Start page
304
End page
314

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