Concerning "Sprechgesang"Author(s): Ralph W. WoodReviewed work(s):Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 2 (Dec., 1946), pp. 3-6Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/943969 .Accessed: 22/09/2012 04:28

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CONCERNING " SPRECHGESANG "

Concerning

"Sprechgesang" by Ralph W. Wood

IN PART III of Sch6nberg's Gurrelieder there is a section, Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd, that is described as a " melodrama " and that constitutes the only appearance in the work of the character listed among the soloists as "The Speaker." The words of this number are written under what would appear to be a normal vocal line (though perhaps of rather unusually simple nature), except that crosses are used instead of note-heads:

There are no directions in the score as to how the part is to be rendered.

More than ten years after the composition, but barely one after the completion of the scoring, of the Gurrelieder Sch6nberg wrote his Op. 21, " Three-times seven poems from Albert Giraud's Pierrot Lunaire (translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben) -for a speaking-voice [" Sprechstimme "] piano, flute (also piccolo), clarinet (also bass clarinet), violin (also viola) and 'cello-(Melodramas)."

Later still he said in a letter: " Here " (in the Gurrelieder) " the pitch notation is not at all to be taken so seriously as in the Pierrot-Melodramas. In no way is a song-like speech-melody to be created, but the rhythm has to be adhered to and the volume of tone regulated with the accompaniment. In several places in which it is almost melodic one could speak a little more musically. The pitches are more to be regarded as dif- ferences of level; that is to say, the respective passages (not the separate notes) are to be spoken higher or lower."

In the score of Pierrot Lunaire one does find an explanatory foreword. Here it is: " The melody given for the speaking voice in notes is (apart from a few specially indicated exceptions) not meant to be sung. The reciter has the task of trans- forming it, with a thorough regard for the prescribed intervals, into a speech- melody. He accomplishes that by (I) keeping the rhythm absolutely strict, as if he were singing; i.e. with no more freedom than he would allow himself for a song melody; (ii) fully realizing the difference between singing-tone and speaking-tone: the singing-tone holds fast to the pitch from beginning to end of a note, whereas the speaking-tone does give it at first, but then at once departs from it by either rising or falling. The performer must, however, watch care- fully not to fall into a ' singing' way of speaking. That is not at all what is meant. In no way, it is true, must a realistic-natural speech be striven for. On the contrary, the difference between ordinary speech and a speech that co-operates in a musical form is to be distinct. But it must never remind one of singing.

"Further there is to be said regarding the performance: the performer never has the task of bringing out the mood and character of the sense of the words, but only of the music. So far as the composer considered tone-painting of the events and feelings given in the text to be called for, it will be found in the

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music. Where the performer does not find it, he must beware of adding some- thing that the composer did not intend. For that would be not an addition but a subtraction."

The vocal line to which the performer is thus tutored to address himself (as a matter of fact, herself) is an extremely intricate one, full of the awkward intervals and of the conflicts with the accompaniment that are typical of all Sch6nberg's mature writing. The notes are written in the usual way, but (except when actual singing is intended-see the parenthesis at the beginning of the "Foreword ") with crosses through their stems.

The compass is:

(with, during one of the brief " sung " passages, a low E flat thrown in, for which however an octave-higher alternative is offered). Some notes are marked " toneless," and one group is to be "whispered tonelessly" and is notated without note-heads (i.e. pitch indications) at all. There are such things as acciaccaturas (e.g. jumping up an augmented fourth) and glissandos (e.g. dropping an augmented eleventh). A certain five detached notes all have shakes marked over them. It is worth noting that the composer uses the voice-part, for contrapuntal purposes, just as if it were an authentic melodic line (i.e. sometimes giving repetitions, imitations, etc., of it in various of the instrumental parts).

Pierrot Lunaire has been mentioned on the heels of the Gurrelieder, because of Schonberg's comparison in the letter cited; but in fact Die glickliche Hand, which was begun just after Erwartung, and thus well before Pierrot Lunaire (though the latter was finished first, being written with characteristic speed, whereas Die glckliche Hand was only composed by fits and starts over a long period), contains among its many extraordinary ingredients a chorus whose lines, delivered through holes in a velvet back-curtain just large enough to frame their faces and in a memorable lighting and colour-scheme, are largely spoken. All the notes in their parts, except those to be sung, are notated as in Pierrot Lunaire and marked either " whispered " or " spoken." Those who have heard this very rarely-performed work say that the effect of these passages for the chorus is extremely beautiful, above all the transitions from speech to song.

That the appearance of difficulty in the vocal line of Pierrot Lunaire is no layman's illusion is proved by the references to it made by some of its interpreters. Erica Wagner- who toured widely performing the work, and likewise made a gramophone recording of it, under the composer's baton-admits being brought to tears during the rehearsal period. Gutheil-Schoder, who performed it in Copenhagen, speaks of having " sworn at his too many, far too many, note-heads " and says that " his never-heard-of intervals " have given her a " nightmare." But they were, of course, devoted admirers of the thing that had brought them so much travail and tribulation.

Both Marya Freund (with whose interpretation English and French listeners are more familiar) and Gutheil-Schoder made their justly vast reputations as singers. Erica Wagner, though she had indeed studied music, is famous as an actress pure and simple. This brings us to a crucial ambiguity of the whole " Sprechgesang " situation. " Sprechgesang " is not a term employed by Sch6nberg himself; but it has been freely used by many of his critics, apologists and biographers, almost as if it were synonymous with his own " Sprechstimme." Percy Scholes, for one, has done well to point out that, on the contrary, there is a difference between the two words almost amounting to an antithesis; " Sprechgesang " means a ' parlando ' manner of singing, and indeed is translated in standard dictionaries as "recitative," whereas "Sprechstimme" in itself simply means " speaking voice."

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CONCERNING "SPRECHGESANG"

Louis Fleury, the flautist, writing of his experiences as a performer in a number of presentations of Pierrot Lunaire, illustrates the point clearly when he mentions that, for instance, the London performances of 1923 were "not exactly as the author conceived it... Marya Freund, excellent singer that she is, cannot quite forget that she is a singer, and sings consequently with a reciter's inflexions, whereas Sch6nberg intended it to be recited with musical inflexions . . . this most conscientious artist submitted her interpretation to Schbnberg himself, and he was delighted and surprised, and greatly admired her art in this new version."* Pierrot Lunaire was, as a matter of fact, composed upon the initial suggestion (as to both the vocal method and the text employed) of an actress, Albertine Zehme, to whom it is dedicated and who was its first interpreter.

Of the Freund performances mentioned by Fleury a London critic wrote that she "was wonderful . . . She used more of a singing tone than one expected. She maintained pitch in spite of every imaginable provocation ..." In Erica Wagner's rendering, which can be studied on the gramophone, there is certainly a very great deal more " Sprech" than " Gesang." But there is also only a very loose observance of the pitch indications, which are once or twice even contradicted (e.g. in the phrase "prunkend in des Blutes Scharlach," in Die Kreute)-contradicted, that is to say, as to direction of intervals, leave alone their exact dimensions (which seem hardly to enter even into the province of discussion). All the same, both kinds of interpretation are, on their own merits, quite effective.

When Hedli Anderson gave her interpretation, in England in 1942, under Erwin Stein's baton, the latter-who is probably as familiar with the work and its problems as any man alive, apart from the composer himself-found that she achieved Sch6nberg's intentions quite marvellously, more fully and exactly than ever had been done before.

Sch6nberg did not use the " Sprechstimme" again until, twenty odd years later, he composed the setting for " reciter," strings and piano of Byron's Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte. Here the vocal part is notated in the score on or around a single line (such as is sometimes found in use for a percussion instrument), to which is given at the beginning the normal bass-clef sign. "On or around" means that the note-heads lie sometimes on the line and sometimes at varying distances above or below it. The notes have accidentals sprinkled among them, just as if they were forming a melody on a stave of which only the one line is actually visible. The effect in performance is a declamation similar to that in Pierrot Lunaire, for all that the vast intervals often prescribed in the latter are absent here . . .

But meanwhile Sch6nberg's disciple, Alban Berg, had incorporated speaking-voice effects on a considerable scale in his operas, Wozeeck and Lulu. He uses there ordinary speech, ordinary speech harnessed into rhythm with the accompanying music, what he describes as "rhythmic declamation" (notated just as the vocal line of Pierrot Lunaire is, and for which he gives prefatory instructions that are a practically verbatim re-issue of Schonberg's, though with one or two significant added refinements of definition), "half singing " (sometimes called " half speaking," according to the con- text), and "parlando" singing. He employs for this elaborate range of values a correspondingly elaborate range of notations. Apart from the inescapable dubieties of the passages of declamation a la Pierrot Lunaire, i.e. the bordering-on-fictitious character of the wide-compassed and infinitely chromatic vocal line written out for such passages, Berg's use of the non-singing voice is extremely effective.

There is not much doubt about why he had recourse to such devices. He obviously had qualms, as it may well come to any sensitive artist to have, about one of the funda- mentals of the operatic medium, the singing of dramatic dialogue, etc. Not the only, but certainly the foremost, problem raised in that connection is the matter of tempo ; and it is interesting to note the fairly realistic speed of delivery of the words even in Berg's " Sprechstimme " passages (more so still, of course, in the absolutely spoken ones). His achievement is seen clearly if one compares the extraordinarily faithful mixture of

*Transl. A. H. Fox Strangways.

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tenderness and sadness in the music to which Marie sings the snatches of her half nonsense-words lullaby with the equally extraordinary, heart-breaking poignancy of her " rhythmic declamation " of the quotations she reads out from her Bible (" Es war einmal ein armes Kind und hatt' keinen Vater und keine Mutter," and the rest of them), and with her sung wailings of anguish that interrupt the latter.

It may be observed that Berg's vocal lines, of whatever category, are difficult, but considerably less so than those of Sch6nberg (and than those that Webern, too, gives singers). He offers more aid, too, in the accompaniment. And he'll even be found showing an enharmonic change on a note so as to help the vocalist to cope with an interval.

... Finally we must come to Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. Can anyone who has once heard it ever forget the remarkable intensity created by the Male Chorus's spoken commentary during the minute or so before the commission of the actual rape ? The printed notes to which his words are set are given exact rhythm and pitch values (even including ? glissando indication at one point) but have crosses instead of heads.

So far from its being like a normal, sung melody, only five notes are used:

C) *4

and clearly no more than the rough idea of various levels of the voice is intended to be conveyed by this pitch-notation. In performance (on the stage and as privately recorded for gramophone) the intonation seems very loose, in relation to the printed stave. There is a tendency to sing some of the highest notes; and, on the other hand, most of the other notes are rather whispered than spoken. Apart, incidentally, from the word "(spoken)" at the beginning of the section, the score contains no explanation of how it is to be rendered. The accompaniment (a further strong contrast to the Sch6n- berg-Berg specimens) is for indefinite-pitched percussion only - bass drum, tenor drum, side drum, cymbal-nothing else. These two simple-looking pages constitute something like a stroke of genius.

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