Pierrot Lunaire: April 6, 2017

Program:

Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (Arnold Schoenberg) premiere 1912

Location/Cost:

Playhouse on the Square, 66 Cooper Street/$15 at the door

Performers:

Bathania Baray, voice

Chris James, flute and piccolo

Andrew McIntosh, violin and viola

Jonathan Kircsey, cello

Ben Makino, conductor

Dylan Evans, director

Joey Miller, image design

For Information:

Call 901-202-4533 or click here

Arnold Schoenberg

The first decades of the twentieth-century were a period of tumult and radical change in the works of Arnold Schoenberg, marked by a series of important new compositions including the Second String Quartet, the operas Erwartung and Die glückliche Hand, the song cycle Das Buch der hängenden Gärten and the writing and publication of his Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony) dedicated to the memory of Gustav Mahler.

Previously composing under the influence of the elder Mahler and Richard Strauss, in the first decade of the century Schoenberg embarked on a project of musical exploration and expansion that eventually developed into the “free atonality” characteristic of his work through the early 1920’s including Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (1912).

Commissioned by singer-actor Albertine Zehme, the Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds “Pierrot lunaire” was composed over the summer of 1912, and following a very thorough rehearsal process, was premiered on October 16 of the same year. What emerged from that summer is a hybrid work, a song cycle and monodrama at once startlingly progressive, yet with deep roots in the German romantic art song tradition.

Representative of its day, Pierrot lunaire addresses themes of alienation and uncertainty, exploration of the subconscious mind and unease with the weight of cultural and historical identities. The character Pierrot, drawn originally from the Italian theater by way of France, is a multifaceted persona representing different strata of society at different times throughout his history. By the early twentieth-century, he had come to represent the moonstruck artist, seeking his place in society, and this narrative is one of numerous ways of understanding Schoenberg’s brilliant cycle.