Vienna: A New Era

Composers, too, drew inspiration from this motto. Gustav Mahler composed his final symphonies during this decade. Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg – three composers who together formed the so-called Second Viennese School – even developed a new musical language at the time. During the concert Vienna – A New Era, however, we will hear just how deeply rooted in tradition this new musical idiom actually was. The three works on the programme can undoubtedly be counted among the highlights of late Romantic music.

THE SECOND VIENNESE SCHOOL: SOME OBSERVATIONS

Let’s first consider the name ‘Second Viennese School’. Almost every word in it is problematic. The ordinal suggests that there was a ‘First’ Viennese School, of which the Second would be the continuation. One might then think of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. As the eldest of the three, Haydn would then have acted as the teacher. And yet, although Mozart greatly admired Haydn and dedicated a series of string quartets to him, he never took lessons from him. Likewise, while Beethoven did move to Vienna in 1792 to study under Haydn, he soon grew disillusioned with the experience. The few lessons in counterpoint that he took had not the slightest influence on his development as a composer. Therefore, there can hardly be any talk of a ‘First’ Viennese School with the same intensity and impact in the relationship between teacher and pupils as was the case with the later Viennese composers. The ‘Second’ Viennese School is a construct of music history, one which places its members in a direct relationship with the great masters of the Viennese Classical period.

The place indication also raises questions. Arnold Schoenberg – the teacher at this school – did indeed begin his teaching career in 1904 in his home town of Vienna. Alban Berg and Anton Webern were his first students there. Hanns Eisler is also among the better-known Viennese students. Schoenberg remained a passionate teacher until the end of his life. In 1925, upon Ferruccio Busoni’s death, he was appointed professor of composition at the Berlin Akademie der Künste, where he in turn gathered a following. His students in Berlin came from across Europe, with the Greek Nikos Skalkottas and the Catalan Roberto Gerhard being the best-known names. When the Nazis seized power in 1933, Schoenberg fled to America, where he was appointed professor of composition at UCLA. His most famous student there was, surprisingly, John Cage. Schoenberg thus taught not only in Vienna, but also in Berlin and Los Angeles.

For its part, the term ‘School’ does fully apply: an intensive programme over several years in which composers and musicians were initiated into their field in a well-structured manner. Strangely enough, Schoenberg himself had no formal training: he considered himself self-taught. However, in his younger years he often received advice from Alexander von Zemlinsky, whom he regarded as his only teacher. In a sense, Zemlinsky is therefore the founder of the Second Viennese School. At that school, Schoenberg instilled discipline in aspiring composers. Those who, drawn by Schoenberg’s reputation, wanted to study ‘modern music’ were, on the contrary, trained for years in strictly tonal harmony and rigorous counterpoint. Schoenberg was convinced that every composer had to find their own path and develop their own language: his sole task, he believed, consisted in training the musical muscles required for this purpose. A key part of his pedagogy was the in-depth analysis of classical masterpieces, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Johannes Brahms, with particular attention paid to Beethoven. ‘If you get stuck somewhere in a composition, turn to the old masters for the solution’ was his credo. It is therefore not surprising, for example, that Alban Berg based every scene in his opera Wozzeck on an instrumental form from the past. An invention, passacaglia, sonata form or rondo: Berg learned it all from Schoenberg. Throughout their lives, the composers of the Second Viennese School showed enduring respect for their teacher, and eventually formed a deep friendship with him.

A CLEAR MOONLIT NIGHT

Just how closely intertwined the lives of the three featured composers were is apparent from the genesis of the works on this concert programme.

In the summer of 1899, Schoenberg spent his holidays with the Zemlinsky family, where he developed a deep passion for his teacher’s sister, Mathilde Zemlinsky. Shortly after that holiday, he wrote his Op. 4 for her in the space of three weeks, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for string sextet. The title gives it away: this work is based on an extramusical programme, specifically a poem from Richard Dehmel’s collection Weib und Welt (Woman and World). In this poem, a couple stroll through a cold, dark night. With a sorrowful heart, the woman confesses that she is carrying another man’s child. The moon emerges and lightens the spirit of the betrayed partner, who shows understanding and comforts his beloved. As the ‘verklärte Nacht’ ends, both the moon and the couple are radiant.

Nine years later, the theme of the work took on a particular biographical resonance. In 1908 Mathilde ran off with Richard Gerstl, a painter friend with whom Schoenberg took painting lessons and for whom Mathilde posed as a model. Anton Webern visited Mathilde and persuaded her to return to Schoenberg. A few months later, the 25-year-old Gerstl committed suicide – a dramatic event that would influence not only the composer’s life but also his work. In 1909 Schoenberg wrote his first opera, Erwartung (Expectation), Op. 17, in which a woman wanders through the night until she comes across her lover’s corpse. Although the night-time settings of Erwartung and Verklärte Nacht are comparable, there is a considerable difference in musical terms between the fragmented and expressionist language of Erwartung and the romantic lyricism of Verklärte Nacht.

A MASTERPIECE FOR A ‘MASTERPIECE’

Just as an apprentice painter must produce a ‘masterpiece’ at the end of their years of training, so too must a composer establish themselves as an independent artist with an ‘Op. 1’. Anton Webern, too, produced a masterpiece in the form of his Passacaglia for orchestra (1908) to conclude his studies with Schoenberg. The choice of medium – a symphonic orchestra – was ambitious for a first opus, but with this work Webern immediately demonstrated his mastery of (orchestration) technique and sound innovation. The passacaglia technique allowed him to explore the harmonic and contrapuntal boundaries of tonality. A passacaglia is based on a short melody in the ground bass that is cyclically repeated. The other parts, however, vary with each repetition, so that the bass melody takes on a different colouring each time. Webern used this to build an impassioned work that resonates with the Romantic soundscape of, for example, Brahms: the final movement of the latter’s fourth and final symphony is also based on a passacaglia.

BETWEEN ORCHESTRAL SONG AND SYMPHONY

The title alone reveals just how closely Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) keyed his Lyrische Symfonie (Lyrical Symphony), Op. 18, from 1923 to the work of Gustav Mahler. Mahler wrote both orchestral songs (lyric poetry) and symphonies, but with Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) he created a symbiosis between two genres that, in terms of expression and structure, are in fact opposites. Like Das Lied von der Erde (tenor, mezzo), the Lyrische Symfonie (baritone, soprano) was moreover written for two vocal soloists, who sing alternately: the similarity could hardly be more striking.

When the Indian author and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, his poems suddenly spread across Europe. Zemlinsky chose the texts for his Lyrische Symfonie from the collection Der Gärtner, a German translation of Tagore’s poetry by Hans Effenberger (1916). While there are many similarities with European Romantic and Symbolist poetry - endless longing, nature as a mirror of human emotions – there is also a greater focus on its cosmic embedding. In his musical rendition, Zemlinsky steers clear of the Orientalism that might have resulted from his choice of text. His musical idiom is late Romantic, with strongly resonant influences from Richard Wagner and Mahler in terms of melodic structure, harmony and orchestration.

The seven songs flow into one another without interruption but contrast sharply with one another. That contrast is based not only on the alternation between a low male voice and a high female voice, but also on the chosen tempos and expressions. The long, dark opening movement is followed by a light-footed song with a scherzo-like character. The third movement functions as the symphony’s slow movement. The fourth is also slow, but has a very different character. This song is very tranquil and its orchestration is almost chamber music-like, with extensive solos for violin and wind instruments. The fifth movement is short and powerful, while the sixth has the character of a recitative, followed by an orchestral climax. The finale is – and how could it be otherwise, given the work takes Das Lied von der Erde as its model – a poignant adagio, which, according to the instructions in the score, must always be sung and played most calmly and quietly. The orchestral postlude unfolds in two phases: first a magnificent climax, followed by a very calm and solemn conclusion.

Zemlinsky kept his distance from the innovations for which the Second Viennese School is renowned; his musical language remains unadulteratedly Romantic. That Schoenberg and Webern both drew inspiration from this source will be abundantly clear from this concert. For those willing to listen attentively, that Romantic foundation is present in their later works as well.

Translation: Patrick Lennon