This extraordinary set of pieces was premiered at the Proms in 1912, having been composed in 1909. Thanks to the BBC Proms archive (available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/events/by/date/2023) we can see that the premiere was on Tuesday 3 September 1912 at the Queen’s Hall (destroyed during the Second World War), and that the programme included:
Engelbert Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel, ‘Overture’
Georges Bizet: Carmen, Suite No. 1 & 2 (excerpts: Prélude, Aragonaise, Intermezzo, Les dragons de Alcala, Danse bohémienne)
Camille Saint‐Saëns: Samson et Dalila, Recitative & Aria ‘Samson, recherchant ma présence…Amour! viens aider ma faiblesse!’
Charles‐François Gounod: Hymne à Sainte Cécile
Arnold Schoenberg: Five Orchestral Pieces
INTERVAL
Felix Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No 1 in G minor
Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dances, No. 5 in G minor: Allegro, and No. 6 in D major: Vivace
(Unknown arr Wood): Sigh no more, ladies
William Aikin: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Richard Wagner: Huldigungsmarsch, WWV 97
Granville Bantock: Comedy Overture ‘The Pierrot of the Minute’
John Hullah: Three fishers went sailing
Graham Peel: In summertime on Bredon
Léo Delibes: Coppélia, Valse and Entr’acte
London had a series of promenade concerts from around 1838, which a series established by Arthur Sullivan in the 1870s that combined light music (as you can see in the latter section of the programme above), with major classical works. In 1895 Robert Newman wanted to use the superb acoustics of the Queen’s Hall (which was otherwise very drab and shabby), and took on young and relatively unknown conductor Henry Wood as conductor of the whole season.
One of the aims of the seasons were to include ‘novelties’, or as we would call them ‘world premieres’! Imagine being in the audience for the concert above, and just before the interval after some suitably Romantic (and romantic) French music by Gounod, Bizet and Saint-Saëns you have the atonality and huge orchestral stylings of the 38-year old Arnold Schoenberg unleashed upon you – I’d love to know the conversation in the bar at the interval…
In 1908 Schoenberg’s wife, Mathilde (daughter of the conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky) left him for a young Austrian painter called Richard Gerstl (who later committed suicide and so Mathilde returned to Arnold). During this separation Schoenberg embraced full atonality in his song cycle “Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten” (Op. 15), and in his String Quartet No.2. Both works are influenced by the German mystical poet Stefan George and whilst not fully atonal, there is certainly a break from tradition.
1912, when the Five Pieces were first performed, is the year of one of Schoenberg’s most important works, “Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds”, or as we know it, “Pierrot lunaire”, which he wrote that spring and had premiered a little over month after the Five Pieces.
So as to today’s choice, the Five Pieces develop the atonal and total-chromatic world he had explored in 1908, and further in his Three Piano Pieces Op.11, moving away from the tonal works of Wagner, Mahler, Strauss, and his own “Verklärte Nacht” of 1899. It can be considered an Expressionist work, similar to the artwork of Munch, Kandinsky, Schiele, and Marc’s “Die großen blauen Pferde” of 1911.
Allegedly during the rehearsal Henry Wood said to the orchestra “Stick to it, gentlemen! This is nothing to what you’ll have to play in 25 years’ time”. The reaction of the audience was captured by critic Ernest Newman:
“It is not often that an English audience hisses the music it does not like, but a good third of the people at Queen’s Hall last Tuesday permitted themselves that luxury after the performance of the five orchestral pieces of Schoenberg. Another third of the audience was only not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third seemed too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss; so that on the whole it does not look as if Schoenberg has so far made many friends in London”
Beside that facetious attempt at humour, he goes on to say:
“Nevertheless, I take leave to suggest that Schoenberg is not the mere fool or madman that he is generally supposed to be…. May it not be that the new composer sees a logic in tonal relations that to the rest of us seem merely chaos at present, but the coherence of which may be clear enough to us all some day?”
The orchestration is huge – quadruple woodwind (including Clarinet in D, Contrabass clarinet, and a large percussion section). Strauss said of it:
“The greatest difficulty in performing these pieces is that…it is really impossible to read the score. It would be almost imperative to perform them through blind faith. I can promise you something really colossal, especially in sound and mood. For that is what they are all about – completely unsymphonic, devoid of architecture or construction, just an uninterrupted changing of colours, rhythms, and moods.”
Think of this in comparison with other works of 1912:
- Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps
- Mahler: Symphony 9 (which had a serious impact on Schoenberg)
- Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé (composed for Les Ballets Russes)
- Gliére: Ilya Murometz
- Prokofiev: Piano Concerto in D flat
Finally, Schonberg said of the work:
“The music seeks to express all that swells in us subconsciously like a dream; which is a great fluctuant power, and is built upon none of the lines that are familiar to us; which has a rhythm, as blood has a pulsating rhythm, as all life in us has its rhythm; which has a tonality, but only as the sea or the storm has its tonality; which has harmonies, though we cannot grasp or analyse them nor can we trace its themes. All its technical craft is submerged, made one and indivisible with the content of the work.”
Fortunately the LA Phil have written excellent programme notes, by Herbert Glass, to help us better understand the piece:
I) Vorgefühle — Premonitions, of unnamed, fearful events. Based on a theme heard at the outset, in muted cellos and then clarinet. Virtually all of the movement, including the tensely expressive climax, is derived from that theme.
II) Vergangenes — The Past: looking back on faces seen and emotions experienced. Based on a five-note theme, announced by muted solo cello. Don’t even try to keep up with Schoenberg’s complex counterpoint and development. Concentrate instead on the gorgeous variety of tone colour.
III) Farben — Colours — a title much later changed to “Summer Morning by a Lake”. In his 1911 treatise, Harmonielehre, Schoenberg wrote: “I cannot unreservedly agree with the distinction between colour and pitch. I find that a note is perceived by its colour, one of whose dimensions is pitch…. If the ear could discriminate between differences of colour, it might be feasible to invent melodies built of colours [Klangfarbmelodien].” He might have been referring to this very movement, written two years earlier.
IV) Peripetis — Wandering About — marked sehr rasch, very quick. In its nervous scurrying, reminiscent of No. 1. This time, however, a more dense structure, with overlapping contrasting figures, and a raucous climax.
V) Das obligate Rezitativ — Schoenberg authority Leonard Stein describes this movement as “essentially one, long cantus firmus theme of 136 measures in triple meter, constantly developing in waves to higher and higher pitches, followed by quiescent liquidating passages. The density of the five- and six-part counterpoint often obscures the main line, which is marked carefully in the score and is handed around constantly from instrument to instrument.”
Herbert Glass, https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/1777/five-pieces-for-orchestra-op-16
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