Piano Concerto (Schoenberg)

Opening melody (mm. 1-8), constructed from a statement of the tone row (P0) (Steinberg 1998, 396).  Play  Note the repetition of pitches nine through eleven (t, 6, 8).

Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942) consists of four interconnected movements: Andante (bars 1–175), Molto allegro (bars 176–263), Adagio (bars 264–329), and Giocoso (bars 330–492) (Alegant 2002–2003, 74). A concerto for piano, the piece features consistent use of the twelve-tone technique and only one tone row ("the language is very systematic, it's the true dodecaphonic Schoenberg" (Aimard 2010, 0:40)), though not as strictly as Schoenberg once required. The concerto was initially the result of a commission from Oscar Levant (Anon. 2009). Around 20 minutes long, its first performance was given February 6, 1944 (Meyer 2012, 312) at NBC Orchestra's Radio City Habitat in New York City, by Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, with Eduard Steuermann at the piano (Anon. 2009).

Twelve-tone technique

The opening melody of the concerto is thirty-nine bars long and presents all four modes of the tone row in the following order: basic set, inversion of retrograde, retrograde, and inversion. Both of the inversions are transposed (Anon. 2009). The composition uses four different types of partitioning of the row: linear, by dyads or tetrachords, free, and by trichords. Linear presentations are ordered, strict presentations of either complete rows or component hexachords, and dominate the Andante and Giocoso movements. The second type symmetrically divides the twelve-tone aggregate into either six dyads or three tetrachords, and is found in the Molto allegro. The third type consists of irregular presentations of segments or fragments of the row, and is used mainly in the Adagio section. The last type, trichordal partitioning, is found throughout the concerto, and is a two-dimensional design created from the discrete trichords of complexes made from pairs of inversionally combinatorial rows (Alegant 2001, 14).

Programmatic aspects

The piece is a late work, written in America. The manuscript contains markings at the beginning of each of the four movements, suggesting an autobiographical connection between this work and the composer, as well as German refugees in general. The markings are "Life was so easy", "Suddenly hatred broke out", "A grave situation was created", and "But life goes on", each matched with a suitable expression in the music (Anon. 2009). These markings were not included in the final published version, as Schoenberg disapproved of this kind of fixed musical interpretation: they were to guide his composition of the work, and not to provide a programmatic reference for the listener.

Neoclassicism and form

Former Schoenberg student Lou Harrison said, "One of the major joys ... is in the structure of the phrases. You know when you are hearing a theme, a building or answering phrase, a development or a coda. There is no swerving from the form-building nature of these classical phrases. The pleasure to be had from listening to them is the same that one has from hearing the large forms of Mozart. ... This is a feeling too seldom communicated in contemporary music, in much of which the most obvious formal considerations are not evident at all. ... The nature of his knowledge in this respect, perhaps more than anything else, places him in the position of torch-bearer to tradition in the vital and developing sense" (Miller and Lieberman 1998, 22). The concerto has been compared with the music of Johannes Brahms by Mitsuko Uchida (2007, 3:42), Sabine Feisst (2011, 74), and AllMusic (Woodstra, Brennan, and Schrott 2005, 1184).

Aimard (2010) described the sections as follows:

  1. "very Viennese," containing a "waltz"
  2. full of, "anxious fragmentation," and the "sort of free Expressionist gestures that fueled his middle period"
  3. "very expressive, sombre and tragic," "slow," containing a "Funeral March"
  4. "very ironic and very varied in terms of character"

Stravinsky has criticized the piano writing in the concerto (Musgrave 2001, 277). Mitsuko Uchida (2007), describing the work as very difficult for the pianist, points out that Schoenberg did not play the piano very well and that he "had no intention of writing effectively, or comfortably" for the instrument.

Sources

Further reading

First movement

First, third, and fourth movements

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, April 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.