SCHOENBERG'S HARMONIC VISIONS: A STUDY OF TEXT PAINTING IN "DIE KREUZE"

Jan Gilbert

The artist's creative activity is instinctive. Consciousness has little influence on 1t. He feels as if what he does were dictated to hirn. As if he did it only according to the will of some power cr other hidden from hirn, cf instinct, of his unconscious.

-Schoenberg (Harmonielehre, 1911)

The state of awareness of visions is not one in which v;e are either remembering or perceiving. It is farher a level of COil­

sciousness at which we experience visions within ourselves.

-Kokoschka ("On the Nature cf Visions," 1912)

Between 1909 and 1913, Arnold Schoenberg and Oskar Kokoschka created programmatic works which explored visions of the violent and grotesque. Kokoschka's play Murderer Hope of Warnen, produced in Vienna on July 4, 1909, was publicized with aposter depicting a skinned, blood-red Man enmeshed in the arms of a skeletonesque Woman (Figure 1). Schoenberg's Erwartung, completed on September 12, 1909, dramatized a Woman's discovery of her lover's corpse, and in Die glückliche Hand, an allegorical drama written between 1909 and 1913, Man is victim­ized by the "monster of dissatisfaction." A later film proposal for the monodrama included the composer's suggestion that Kokoschka design sets "with apparitions of color and form." I The most overpowering artistic vision of this turbulent prewar period is expressed in Schoenberg's "Die

118 SAN GILBERT

Kreuze" (Pierrot Lunaire (No. a profound spiritual suffering.

14).2 Hefe the artist's agony is revealed as

Heilige Kreuze sind die Verse, Dran die Dichter stumm verbluten, Blindgeschlagen von der Geier Flatterndem Gespensterschwärmel

In dem Leibern schwelgten Schwerter, Prunkend in des Blutes Scharlachl Heilige Kreuze sind die Verse, Dran die Dichter stumm verbluten.

Tot das Haupt-erstarrt die Locken­Fern, verweht der Lärm des Pöbels. Langsam sinkt die Sonne nieder, Eine rote Königskrone. Heilige Kreuze sind die Verse!

Holy crosses are the verses, On which poets silently

bleed to dealh, Beaten blind by vultures Which are like a fluttering

swarm of ghosts!

In their bodies swords carouse, Glamorous in bloody scarIet: Holy crosses are the verses ..

Dead the head. stiffened the locks-

In the distance the noise of the mob fades away.

Slowly the sun sinks, A red regal crown. Holy crosses are the verses!

Schoenberg and Kokoschka have chosen psychologically explosive literary themes: the persecution of the artist, and the bitter conflict for spiritual domination between the sexes. Through working with the emo­tionally-charged themes of violence and suppression, both artists estab­lished a dramatic framework which not only supported and justified their "instinctive" creative activity but also legitimized their need to break with tradition and invent a more expressive language. Kokoschka described his pen drawing for Murderer Hope of Women (Figure 2): "The drawings were entirely new ... ; they documented my own inner transformation."3

The following study of Schoenberg's harmonie text painting in "Die Kreuze" relates the composer's expressive atonallanguage to Kokoschka's innovative artistie teehniques. The detailed discussion of the harmonie voeabulary and voice-leading uses pitch-class set theory analysis to explore the inner logic and hidden syntax ofthe composer's "harmonie visions."

Kokoschka's drawings exhibit a radical style which includes breaking and distorting the smooth surface of an image, thereby making the figures transparent so that the veins and nerves become visible. In the Der Sturm illustration, the heads of the subjects are seen simultaneously in profile and fuH face, freeing the dimensions of space and volume. As a portrait artist Kokoschka was one of the first painters to suggest that his subjects be in motion, thus establishing "an essential image cf the kind that remains

A STUDY OF TEXT PAINTING IN "D1E KREUZE"

Zeichnung von Oskar Kokoschka zu dem Drama :llöraer, Hoffnung der Frauen

l!9

120 JAN G!LBERT

in memory or reeurs in dreams."~ Moreover, Kokosehka often look an aggressive role when he began work, squeezing the palnt out of a tube, scratching it around with a fingernail and saying that "one shouldn't be afraid to use a hammer if necessary." j

In comparing Kokosehka's artistie teehniques to Schoenberg's eompo­sitional methods, the following correspondances will be discussed: 1) the allegorieal symbolism of fixed harmonie images; 2) the breaking and distorting of the surfaee cf a harmonie vocabulary by fragmentaticn and juxtaposition; and 3) the reversal and expansion of perspeetive through rotating this harmonie vocabulary to reveal related shapes and colors.

Sinee the language of dreams and hallucinations is rooted in the sub­conscious, one method used to discover the meaning of dreams is to analyze the dreamer's visual fixed images, or archetypes. In the Kokoschka poster for Murderer Hope 0/ Women (Figure 1), the symbols of moon and sun, paradoxieally shining at the same time, represent the Jungian sun-mooD eonjunetion-the unification of opposing forces. 6 Color symbolism further enriches the allegorical theme, the colors red and white symbolizing life and death.

Sehoenberg uses an aural symbolism in "Die Kreuze" by representing the allegorieal subjeet of the artist's erueifixion with two separate harmonie vocabularies. These vocabularies will be called Set Complex A and Set Complex B. Both complexes serve not only to unify the formal developmem of the composition but also to present a double harmonie image.

Set Complex A, the "Kreuze-akkord'" (Example I) appears as a static musical symbol, weighted by the inclusion of tetrachords containing more than one per feet interval (4-9, 4-16).' In Harmonielehre, Schoenberg stated that his new harmonie vocabulary includes chord progressions in whieh the second chord eonsists of tones missing from the first chord and generally 1/2 step higher or lower. 9 Thus the second half of the "Kreuze­akkord" is derived from the 112 step voiee leading, forming two all-interval tetrachords (4-Z!5) which symmetrically expose the perfeet fifth boundary intervals. If one includes the first two notes of the sprechstimme (A?, G) in the analysis, the total chromatie is completed, thus binding the text "Heilige" to its harmonie setting. 10

The graee notes suggest aseries of seeondary fixed images. Of the five dyads resulting from contrary motion in the voice-leading' 1 CI C# is the most important, artieulating "Gespenster" in measure 4, "Blutes" in measure 7, and numerous other explosive text imagery.

The tight, metallic structure of [he HKreuze-akkord1> serves as a powerful formal deviee. Not only does this ehord frame the movemem, hammered out in literal repetition at its elose, but it also reappears in a twisted and disguised voice-leading in the first reprise of "Heilige Kreuze

A STL'DY OF TEXT PAINTING IN "DIE KREUZE" 121

Example 1 Complex A "Kreuze-akkord"

3-3 "\klth \L\li\-,'"

• IN'= - -~ , ~~);",

~#- '

4-9 ,------, rl ,:,-1 _'I' I~! I 1.\ !! !)b! I :~i! :

4-16-~11~ i 4

-

/15

i I D i i j)~ 4-13-~; ',,11 I ; Cy: :-4-715

-" I! --/ I f 4-7 ~,_~f

121 JAN GILBERT

sind die Verse" in measures 7- 8 (Example 2). The juxtaposition of subsets of Complex A through the use of register shifts, transposition and repeti­tion demonstrates how the composer distorts perspective. " The flatter and more romantic two-dimensional voice-leading has been shattered into a fragmented yet tightly ordered cubist structure. What makes this aural twisting so powerful is that one perceives both the traditional voice-leading and the radical juxtapositions at the same moment in time. Therefore Schoenberg has created a harmonic dialectic that uniquely fragments and binds the progression of the line. "

Example 2 First reprise

--- ... f iI- fr 'r tE J .,.

t

,.' sind dir Ver "e,

'<n. qqA

~

q :

ff

4-16 (4-19)

Voice-Ieading

, ~{iif.ll;tr'~= T +

4-16 4-16 (4 - 19) 4 - 9 4 - 94 - 16

A STUDY OF TEXT PAINTING IN "DIE KREUZE" 123

Complex B (Example 3) sets "Verse" and symbolizes the artist. Tbe tetrachord 4-Z29, the Z mate of 4-Z15 from Complex A, is placed in a prominent register and relates Complex B to A by similarity relations." The vertical placement of tetrachord 4-19 with its repetitions outlines the symbol of a cross, forming a musical ideogram. Furthermore, the formal division between Set Complex A (Cross) and Set Complex B (Artist) drama­tizes the text's symbolism-the alienation of the artist as Christ. Yet these two fixed harmonic images are unified through similarity of gesture and rhythm.

Example 3 Complex B "Verse"

8-19

i) 1)

4-17 B H Gb q n Eb

#0 sind die

4 - 18

4-19

F* C

G

ij ------Ver 8e,dran ciie Dich.ter

.Ir

4- Z29

I-­F

SI).!I1,Lt\lrl' s..'t (Esl:HBH; )

124 JAN GILBERT

In Complex B, core set 4-19 (a tetrachord favored by the composer in his atonal works) occurs on "Verse." Adding Fand Db to 4-19's C, E, G#, B inscribes Schoenberg's signature set 6-Z44. The first two hexachords in "Mondestrunken" (Pierrot #1) are 6-21 and 6-Z44; the trichord GI, E, C is a literal subset of the previously mentioned 4-19, (Example 4). The first cadential hexachord in "0 alter Duft" (Pierrot #21) is 6-Z44" and core

Example 4 #llviondestrunken

f, 1

set 4-19 is prolonged in the two measures leading to that cadence, (Ex­ample 5). The crossing of 6-21 and 6-Z44 on "Verse," therefore, suggests a far-reaching harmonie text painting involving literary, formal and even personal reference.

Example 5 #210 alter Duft

4-19

l\. STUDY OF TEXT PAl:\TlNG IN "DIE KREUZE" 125

Example 6 illustrates how the " creative" tetrachord 4~19 cf Complex Bis first presemed on "Verse," then immediately developed through the sharing of trichord 3-12 (augmented triad) in measures 2-3. (The bass fine of these measures will be discussed later.) CampIere variance (no cammon tones) contTals the text painting: "Verse" juxtaposes tetrachord A wirh B; B: was first occluded in the inner voices on "Verse," but surfaces to fuH exposure on "stumm"; "verbluten" presents new tetrachord C wirh its fresh subset D, G~, Bb. Although the shatteringly ciear E Tv1ajor triad at the climax cf the phrase on '"blindgeschlagen " appears to be a startling new coloT) the triad relates to the core set C, E, G~, B of "Verse." These centric pitch-classes serve to unify and shape the poetic images of "Die Kreuze"; they are identified as harmonie archetypes.

Example 6 Voice-leading of teuachord 4-19

~:'~J_::I'Z:~:j~2~ffi-Iff!Jt1 r~ 'E7"7"~,cc''Eic''CC.:c.... v" _ ",«"oo,d;),d>-,,,,,,,",,",, '",. ,-:,,~

ff

'0' 5

s 9 () : 1 5 S

~,,,, ,

(4 ~ Ti 0:'

;;: ':8 S o,~:

'.,

~ 6 '0 : 1;

'-I ::0 11 1~: 2 6 ,-J

126 JAN GILBERT

In painting, the "breaking of the skin" by distorting the surface struc­ture and revealing the inner skeleton allows the artist to manipulate the observer's view of reality, forcing a search for the truth through the dis­torted image. Kokoschka and Schoenberg were attracted to texts filled with descriptions of penetration and mutilation of a twisted human form. For the performance of Murderer Hope 0/ Women, Kokoschka exposed the human skeleton by actually painting nerves, veins and muscles on the arms and legs of the actors. Schoenberg, correspondingly, distorts the inner logic (organic body) of Die Kreuze's harmonie vocabulary by framing every chord with a "dissonant" dyad, (Example 7). These hard-edge dyads form

Example 7 Sprechstimme Dyads

3 - 3 "Moth MotIV(""

COmpll'tl'S thl' ChromatK

a rigid skeleton which is superimposed on the more flowing tetrachord voice-leading illustrated in Example 6. These dyads, however, also serve as an organie link, vitally connecting the vocal line to the instrumental texture. Thus the sprechstimme reflects and absorbs the structural flow of the piece through the formation of harmonie afterimages.

Schoenberg created a softer form of harmonic distortion by reversing and expanding perspective through the rotation and ma~ulation of the musical motive. The composer hinted at a "new way to deaJ with [poetic] images,"" describing the technique of augmentation and diminution of the motive. In "Die Nacht" (Pierrot #8), the trichord 3- 3 (mlnor second, minor third) represents the "moth motive."L7 This motive appears in "Die Kreuze" in measure 1 after the introduction of the "Kreuze-akkord."

A $TUDY OF TEXT PAINTING IN "DIE KREUZE" 127

In measures 2-3 of "Die Kreuze," Schoenberg transforms 3- 3 into 3-8 through augmentation (moth becomes vulture) (Example 8). The introduction of 3-8 creates a whole-tone segment in the bass. The tetra­chord that contains the trichord metamorphosis is 4-12, a lateral set formed from juxtaposed 4-19's in Complex B. The whole-tone scale, however, is "foreign" to the pitch-class set vocabulary of the phrase, for 3-8 is not a subset of the predominant tetrachords 4-17 and 4-19. The phrase con­geals in a distorted musical language of clashing tetrachords, intensifying the words "blindgeschlagen von der Geier" and forming a hallucinatory harmonie vocabulary which encompasses the listener with reflections of the same image in various shapes and textures.

Example 8 Expansion of 3-3 Motive Trichord 3-3 /3-8

'r t blu. - - ten, blind _

4-19 4-17 . 4 - 19

.--

4-J ­J-

12_ [

'-0: s_

,I. ~

f

J-S J-S

4 -19

...f J-S l

Whole] Tone

128 JAN GILBERT

The 3-3 and 3- 8 motives are further explored in measures 5 and 6, (Example 9). In measure 5, the piano solo displays a continuum of con­nected mirror images; in measure 6 the vocal and piano parts are linked together through the 3- 8 motive. Thus Schoenberg's motivic "hall of mirrors'''' has created a shifting perspective that paralleis Kokoschka's achievement of visual distortion in painting. The composer's manipulation of the specific intervallic collections in musical space can be compared to Kokoschka's technique of painting while observing his subject through a crystal in order to represent space by refraction into flat planes." It is

Example 9 Saturation of 3-3

5

3-8 "Vulture Motive"

A STUDY OFTEXT PAINTING IN "DIE KREUZE" 129

important to recognize that the striking spatial expansion revealed by these compositional techniques related to the setting of carefully selected images that were frequently psychologically disturbing.

Schoenberg attempted to describe the process of choosing a musical syntax for the dream imagery that inspired his composition: "Every chord I put down corresponds to a necessity of my urge to expression; perhaps, however, also to the necessity of an inexorable but unconscious logic in the harmonie structure."" It is only through an analysis of this logic that one is made aware of the complexity of the composer's art-that the nature of visions is revealed through the distortion of an existing language by breaking up and rearranging the surface textures, manipulating perspective, and developing a fixed symbolism. As reflections of a visual language, therefore, Schoenberg's harmonie text painting is unique to the artistic expression of visions and dreams .•

Notes

lOskar Kokoschka, My Life. trans. David Britt (New Vork: MacMiJlan, 1974), p. 181. In a aBC interview taped in 1965 Kokoschka stated that he first met Schoenberg in 1907 or 1908. (Arnold Schoenberg Archives) Kokoschka painted Schoenberg's portrait in Vienna in 1924, and Schoenberg's tribute to Kokoschka was published in a 1931 catalogue cf the Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, along with contributions from Adelf Laos, Hans Tietze, Egon Wellesz. and others.

lAlthough placed fourteenth in the final publication order, "Die Kreuze" not only was the last of the twenty-one movements to be completed but also required the most com­positional time-April 27 to July 9, 1912.

lKokoschka, My Life, p. 54. '/bid., p. 33. sQuoted in Henry Schvey, Oskar Kokoschka (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,

1982), p . 27. ' J. P. Hodin, Oskar Kokoschka (New York Graphie Society, 1966), p. 70. A direct

reference to Jung in Kokoschka's work is possibly revealed in the fact that the author rewrote the 1907 version of his play Sphinx and Sfrawman in 1913, chaoging the character of Lilly ioto an allegorieal representation of the feminine soul called "Anima. "

'See David Lewin, "Inversional Balance as an Organizing Force in Schoenberg's Music and Thought," Perspectives olNew Music, 6 / 2 (1968), p. 7.

'Trichords, tetrachords and hexachords discussed in this paper from Allen Forte, The Structure of Atonal Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).

3-3 (0,1,4) 4-7 (0,1,4,5) 6-Z19 3-8 (0,2,6) 4-9 (0,1,6,7) 6-Z44 3-12 (0,4,8) 4-12 (0,2,3,6) 6-21

4-13 (0,1,3,6) 4-Z15 (0,1,4,6) 4-16 (0,1,5,7) 4-17 (0,3.4,7) 4-18 (0,1,4,7) 4-19 (0,1,4,8) 4-Z29 (0, 1,3,7)

(0,1,3,4,7,8) (0,1,2,5,6,9) (0,2,3,4,6,8)

'Arnold Schoenberg, The Theory 01 Harmony, trans. Roy Carter (Berkeley / Los Angeles, 1978), p. 416.

130 JAN GILBERT

'O"fhe rationale for including the sprechslimme in this analysis is based on Schoenberg's own instructions for performance listed in the Preface to the score. "The performer is asked to transform this melody into a speech melody while paying elose attention to the written pitch of each note."

11 Lewin. p. 4. Itln Schoenberg's "Gedanke Manuscript," Journal 0/ [he Amoid Schoenberg Institute

2/1 (Oetober 1977), p. 22, the composer reveals an interest in perspective under (9). Arrange­ment

a) intensifying, growing-quasi 3 dimensional b) resting c) quasi 2 dimensional d) repetitions e) progression from the simple to complex f) liquidation !'In 1911, Kandinsky described the move towards abstraction in the visual arts in

Concerning Ihe Spiritual in Art, trans. Sadler (Dover: New York, 1977), p. 31. "So the abstract idea is creeping into art, although, only yesterday, it was scorned and obscured by purely material ideals. Its gradual advance is natural enough, for in proportion as the organic from faUs into the background, the abstract ideal achieves greater prominence. " "The interval vector for both sets is identical [1111111. ISDescribed by Allen Forte in "Sets and Nonsets in Schoenberg's Atonal Music,"

Perspectives of New Music, 11 / 1 (1972), p. 54. "Arnold Schoenberg, "Analysis of the Four Orchestral Songs, Opus 22," trans. Claudio

Spies, Perspeclives on Schoenberg and Slravinsky(New York: Norton, 1972), p. 31. 11Trichord 3-3 has been exploited by other composers: it represents the child in Berg's

Wozzeck and brotherhood in Dallapiccola's /J Prigioniero. This important intervallic coUec­tion gains its psychological force through the way it is integrated into the compositional structure.

"Schoenberg, "Analysis of Orchestral Songs," p. 35. "The various shapes will then be as in a hall of mirrors-continually visible from all sides ... "

'~Bernhard Bultmann, Oskar Kokoschka, trans. Michael Bullock (New York: Abrams), p.28.

I°Schoenberg, Harmony, p. 417.

THREE VERSIONS OF SCHOENBERG'S OP. 15 NO. 14: OBVIOUS DIFFERENCES AND HIDDEN SIMILARITIES

Harald Krebs

A mong the very few sketches of Schoenberg's atonal works which have been preserved, there are two early versions of the be· ginning of the song "Sprich nicht immer von dem Laub," Op. 15 No. 14. The original manuscripts are housed in the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles, but facsimiles and transcriptions are included in Jan Mae· gaard's Studien zur Entwicklung des dodekaphonen Satzes bei Arnold Schönberg (Supplementary Volume, pp. 26 and 101). The reader should refer to this volume during perusal of this paper.

Virtually the first thing which one notices about these sketches is that they look quite different from each other and from the finished song. ' The first version in particular (henceforth referred to as "v. I") contains several elements which combine to give it a highly distinctive character. lt is set apart from the later versions, for example, by the rigorous development of the broken third figure which is first stated in the piano part in m. 1. The figure is repeated, then transposed in m. 3, transposed once again in m. 5 and transposed and inverted in m. 6.' Other features which set v. I apart from the other versions are the rhythm ) J in mm. 3-4 (voice), the falling sixteenth-note figure in m. 4, the use of imitation, also in m. 4, and the chordal texture, none of which features are present in v. 2 and 3. Another less obvious feature which lends v. I its individual flavor is the blatant use of distortive inflection, that is, of vocal writing which conflicts with the natural inflection of the text. The wide melismatic upward leaps at "Laub" and "Raub" (mm. 3-4) are examples. In a spoken monosyllabic word, the first portion of the vowel sound is normally pronounced at a relatively high pitch, whereupon the pitch falls in a quick "glissando." A rising inflection at the end of a word is, in Western languages at least, associated only with questions. Schoenberg uses a violent rising inflection for "Laub" and "Raub" in a non-interrogative context. The vocal writing at "immer," "Zerschellen" and "Quitten" illustrates a second type of distortive inflection: the use of relatively high notes for unaccented syllables and lower notes for accented ones. In normal speech, the accented syllables