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DER SIEBENTE RING (THE SEVENTH RING) #0309/ 2009
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Paintings: Landscape 2 | | Medium: | Acrylic on non-stretched canvas | | Size (inches): | 30 x 26 | | Size (mm): | 762 x 660 | | Catalog #: | PA_0136 | | Description: | Signed, titled, date, copyright in magic ink on the reverse.
Arnold Schoenberg -
Arnold Schoenberg (pronounced [ˈaːrnɔlt ˈʃøːnbɛrk]) (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian and later American composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. He used the spelling Schönberg until after his move to the United States in 1934 (Steinberg 1995, 463), "in deference to American practice" (Foss 1951, 401), though one writer claims he made the change a year earlier (Ross 2007, 45). Schoenberg was known early in his career for successfully extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic traditions of both Brahms and Wagner, and for his pioneering innovations in atonality. During the rise of the Nazi party in Austria, his music was labeled, alongside swing and jazz, as degenerate art. In the 1920s, he developed the twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motives without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea. Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking and, in some cases, passionately reacted against it.
Schoenberg was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and later John Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, Mark Wessel, and many other prominent musicians. Many of Schoenberg's practices, including the formalization of compositional method, and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics were crucial to many of the 20th century's significant musicologists and critics, including Theodor Adorno, Charles Rosen, and Carl Dahlhaus.
Schoenberg's archival legacy is collected at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.
Works and ideas:
Schoenberg's significant compositions in the repertory of modern art music extend over a period of more than 50 years. Traditionally they are divided into three periods though this division "obscures as much as it reveals" as the music in each of these periods is considerably varied. The idea that his twelve-tone period "represents a stylistically unified body of works is simply not supported by the musical evidence" (Haimo 1990, 4), and important musical characteristics—especially those related to motivic development—transcend these boundaries completely. The first of these periods, 1894–1907, is identified in the legacy of the high-Romantic composers of the late nineteenth century, as well as with "expressionist" movements in poetry and art. The second, 1908–1922, is typified by the abandonment of key centers, a move often described (though not by Schoenberg) as "free atonality". The third, from 1923 onward, commences with Schoenberg's invention of dodecaphonic, or "twelve-tone" compositional method. Schoenberg's most well-known students Hans Eisler, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, followed Schoenberg faithfully through each of these intellectual and aesthetic transitions, though not without considerable experimentation and variety of approach.
Beginning with songs and string quartets written around the turn of the century, Schoenberg's concerns as a composer positioned him uniquely among his peers, in that his procedures exhibited characteristics of both Brahms and Wagner, who for most contemporary listeners, were considered polar opposites, representing mutually exclusive directions in the legacy of German music. Schoenberg's Six Songs, op. 3 (1899–1903), for example, exhibit a conservative clarity of tonality organization typical of Brahms and Mahler, reflecting an interest in balanced phrases and an undisturbed hierarchy of key relationships. However, the songs also explore unusually bold incidental chromaticism, and seem to aspire to a Wagnerian "representational" approach to motivic identity. The synthesis of these approaches reaches an apex in his Verklärte Nacht, op. 4 (1899), a programmatic work for string sextet that develops several distinctive "leitmotif"-like themes, each one eclipsing and subordinating the last. The only motivic elements that persist throughout the work are those that are perpetually dissolved, varied, and re-combined, in a technique, identified primarily in Brahms's music, that Schoenberg called "developing variation". Schoenberg's procedures in the work are organized in two ways simultaneously; at once suggesting a Wagnerian narrative of motivic ideas, as well as a Brahmsian approach to motivic development and tonal cohesion.
Schoenberg's music from 1908 onward experiments in a variety of ways with the absence of traditional keys or tonal centers. His first explicitly atonal piece was the second string quartet, op. 10, with soprano. The last movement of this piece has no key signature, marking Schoenberg's formal divorce from diatonic harmonies. Other important works of the era include his song cycle Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten, op. 15 (1908–1909), his Five Orchestral Pieces, op. 16 (1909), the ominous Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (1912), as well as his dramatic Erwartung, op. 17 (1909). The urgency of musical constructions lacking in tonal centers, or traditional dissonance-consonance relationships, however, can be traced as far back as his Kammersymphonie, op. 9 (1906), a work remarkable for its tonal development of whole-tone and quartal harmony, and its initiation of dynamic and unusual ensemble relationships, involving dramatic interruption and unpredictable instrumental allegiances; many of these features would typify the timbre-oriented chamber music aesthetic of the coming century.
In the early 1920s he worked at evolving a means of order which would enable his musical texture to become simpler and clearer, and this resulted in the "method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another" in which the twelve pitches of the octave (unrealized compositionally) are regarded as equal, and no one note or tonality is given the emphasis it occupied in classical harmony. He regarded it as the equivalent in music of Albert Einstein's discoveries in physics, and Schoenberg announced it characteristically, during a walk with his friend Josef Rufer, when he said "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years" (Stuckenschmidt 1977, 277). A number of works in this period include the Variations for Orchestra, op. 31 (1928) piano pieces, opp. 33a & b (1931), and the Piano Concerto, op. 42 (1942). Contrary to Schoenberg's reputation for strictness, Schoenberg's use of the technique varied widely according to the demands of each individual composition. Thus the structure of his unfinished opera Moses Und Aron is very much unlike that of his Fantasy for Violin and Piano, op. 47 (1949).
Ten features of Schoenberg's mature twelve-tone practice are characteristic, interdependent, and interactive (Haimo 1990, 41):
1. Hexachordal inversional combinatoriality
2. Aggregates
3. Linear set presentation
4. Partitioning
5. Isomorphic partitioning
6. Invariants
7. Hexachordal levels
8. Harmony, "consistent with and derived from the properties of the referential set"
9. Metre, established through "pitch-relational characteristics"
10. Multidimensional set presentations
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg
String quartets (Schoenberg) -
The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg published four string quartets, distributed over his lifetime. These were the String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7 (1905), String Quartet No. 2 in F sharp minor, Op. 10 (1908), String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30 (1927), and the String Quartet No. 4, Op. 37 (1936).
In addition to these, he wrote several other works for string quartet which were not published. The most notable was his early String Quartet in D major (1897). There was also a Presto in C minor[1] (1895), a Scherzo in F major[2] (1897), and later a Four-part Mirror Cannon in A major[3] (ca. 1933). Finally, several string quartets exist in fragmentary form. These include "String Quartet in F major" (before 1897), "String Quartet in D minor" (1904), "String Quartet in C major" (after 1904), "String Quartet Movement" (1926), "String Quartet" (1926), "String Quartet in C major" (after 1927) and "String Quartet No. 5" (1949).
Schoenberg also wrote a Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra in B flat major (1933): an arrangement of a work by the Baroque composer George Frideric Handel.
String Quartet No. 2:
This work in four movements was written during what must have been a very emotional time in Schoenberg's life. Though it bears the dedication "to my wife", it was written during Mathilde Schoenberg's affair with their neighbour, Richard Gerstl, in 1908.
The third and fourth movements are quite unusual for a string quartet, as they also include a soprano singer, using poetry written by Stefan George. The first three movements are tonal, though as in his first string quartet this is the very extended tonality of the late Romantic period. The first movement is in a compressed sonata form. The second movement, the scherzo, quotes a Viennese street-song, 'Ach, du lieber Augustin' (Oh, dear Augustin). The fourth movement has no key signature, and may be considered Arnold Schoenberg's first experiment in atonality, making use of the entire chromatic gamut, though its adventurous harmony comes to a close on a haunting F sharp major chord. Its first performance was given by the Rosé Quartet and Marie Gutheil-Schoder in Vienna on December 21, 1908. The work was later revised in 1921; Schoenberg also made a version for full string orchestra.
1. Mäßig (Moderate), F sharp minor
2. Sehr rasch (Very brisk), D minor
3. "Litanei", langsam ("Litany", slow), E flat minor
4. "Entrückung", sehr langsam ("Rapture", very slow), No key
Text:
The later two movements of the second string quartet are set to poems from Stefan George's collection Der siebente Ring (The Seventh Ring), which was published in 1907.
Litanei
Tief is die trauer die mich umdüstert,
Ein tret ich wieder, Herr! in dein haus.
Lang war die reise, matt sind die glieder,
Leer sind die schreine, voll nur die qual.
Durstende zunge darbt nach dem weine.
Hart war gestritten, starr ist mein arm.
Gönne die ruhe schwankenden schritten,
Hungrigem gaume bröckle dein brot!
Schwach ist mein atem rufend dem traume,
Hohl sind die hände, fiebernd der mund.
Leih deine kühle, lösche der brände.
Tilge das hoffen, sende das licht!
Gluten im herzen lodern noch offen,
Innerst im grunde wacht noch ein schrei.
Töte das sehnen, schliesse die wunde!
Nimm mir die liebe, gib mir dein glück!
Litany
Deep is the sadness that gloomily comes over me,
Again I step, Lord, in your house.
Long was the ride, my limbs are weary,
The shrines are empty, only anguish is full.
My thirsty tongue desires wine.
The battle was hard, my arm is stiff.
Grudge peace to my staggering steps,
for my hungry gums break your bread!
Weak is my breath, bringing the dream,
my hands are hollow, my mouth fevers.
Lend your cool, douse the fires,
rub out hope, send the light!
Fires in my heart still glow, open,
inside my heart a cry wakes.
Kill the longing, close the wound!
Take my love away, give me your joy.
Entrückung
Ich fühle luft von anderem planeten.
Mir blassen durch das dunkel die gesichter
Die freundlich eben noch sich zu mir drehten.
Und bäum und wege die ich liebte fahlen
Dass ich sie kaum mehr kenne und du lichter
Geliebter schatten--rufer meiner qualen--
Bist nun erloschen ganz in tiefern gluten
Um nach dem taumel streitenden getobes
Mit einem frommen schauer anzumuten.
Ich löse mich in tönen, kreisend, webend,
Ungründigen danks und unbenamten lobes
Dem grossen atem wunschlos mich ergebend.
Mich überfährt ein ungestümes wehen
Im rausch der weihe wo inbrünstige schreie
In staub geworfner beterinnen flehen:
Dann seh ich wie sich duftige nebel lüpfen
In einer sonnerfüllten klaren freie
Die nur umfängt auf fernsten bergesschlüpfen.
Der boden schüffert weiss und weich wie molke.
Ich steige über schluchten ungeheuer.
Ich fühle wie ich über letzter wolke
In einem meer kristallnen glanzes schwimme--
Ich bin ein funke nur vom heiligen feuer
Ich bin ein dröhnen nur der heiligen stimme.
Rapture
I feel wind from other planets.
I faintly through the darkness see faces
Friendly even now, turning toward me.
And trees and paths that I loved fade
So I can scarcely know them and you bright
Beloved shadow--summon my anguish--
Are only extinguish completely in a deep glowing
In the frenzy of the fight
With a pious show of reason.
I lose myself in tones, circling, weaving,
With unfathomable thanks and unnamed love
I happily surrender to the great breath.
A violent wind passes over me
In the sway of commitment where ardent cries
In dust flung by women on the ground:
Then I see a filmy mist rising
In a sun-filled, open expanse
That includes only the farthest mountain hatches.
The land looks white and smooth like whey,
I climb over enormous canyons.
I feel as if above the last cloud
Swimming in a sea of crystal radiance--
I am only a spark of the holy fire
I am only a whisper of the holy voice.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_quartets_(Schoenberg)
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