Arnold Schoenberg - Five Piano Pieces | Текст песни

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Five Pieces for piano, Op. 23 (1920-1923)

I. Sehr langsam
II. Sehr rasch
III. Langsam
IV. Schwungvoll. Mässige
V. Walzer

Glenn Gould, piano

Between Schoenberg's Six Piano Pieces, Op. 19 and his Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23 lay the First World War and the ensuing depression. The period was also a compositional void for Schoenberg, whose output nearly ceased. He had reached an artistic crisis and sought a way to reach his true aim: \"unity and regularity.\" That this was to be achieved without the procedures of tonality was of paramount importance, for Schoenberg felt that tonality had run its course. This led to his \"discovery\" of the \"method of composing with 12 tones which are related only with one another.\" This did not happen overnight. Schoenberg experimented with the serialization of smaller groups of notes before applying the idea to all 12. We can find evidence of Schoenberg's experiments in the Five Pieces for Piano, Op. 23, a pivotal work in the composer's career.

The pieces that make up the Op. 23 set were not composed at the same time. Schoenberg wrote Nos. 1-2 and part of 4 in July 1920; the rest of Op. 23 in February 1923. By the time he began composing the 12-tone fifth movement, \"Walzer\" (Waltz), Schoenberg had already written works in the new idiom that would be published as part of the Suite for Piano, Op. 25.

The first of the Five Pieces, Op. 23, marked Sehr langsam (Very slow), demonstrates Schoenberg's approach to the principle of developing variation. When the opening melody reappears, the pitches are the same, but they have been moved to different octaves, changing the shape of the phrase, and are presented in a different rhythmic configuration. The retention of the pitches alone is enough to constitute a return to the theme, and through this piece we can gain insight into how Schoenberg uses pitches, not rhythms or melodic shapes, at the core of a composition. This concept lead directly to his formation of the 12-tone method.

Variation procedures continue in the second movement, Sehr rasch (Very fast), although some analysts have uncovered a sonata form structure. In this brief piece, the vertical aspect of the music is a result of the linear melodic movement.

The third piece of the set, Langsam (Slow) -- sometimes referred to as a fugue because of the alternating entrances at the beginning -- is again driven by variation technique. A five-note motive is put through metamorphoses so intense that at times it seems a single pitch could be considered part of any one of several forms of the motive.

Rhythmic freedom characterizes the fourth piece, Schwungvoll (Full of vitality). Here, Schoenberg juxtaposes sections of dense and sparse textures, separated by brief pauses.

Although the first four works of Op. 23 exhibit 12-tone techniques to a limited degree, these apply to smaller collections of pitches, not the entire 12 of the chromatic scale. The fifth and final work of the set (Walzer), however, is based on the repetition of a series or row of all 12 pitches. Everything that happens in this piece, both vertically and horizontally, is derived from the same series of pitches appearing in the same order. This is Schoenberg's most transparent and straightforward usage of these techniques. Schoenberg's next works, particularly the Suite for Piano, Op. 25, and the Quintet for Winds, Op. 26, would witness an expansion of the method and a greater self-assuredness on the part of the composer. [allmusic.com]