Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht

I’m not sure there’s ever been a composer who changed as much
throughout his or her life as Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg would
become famous, or infamous, depending on who you talk to, for his
invention of atonality; the equalization of all keys so that the
system of harmony that had been followed, in one way or another,
in Western music for nearly a thousand years, was banished. 


This invention radically changed the course of contemporary
classical music, and it remains controversial to this day. Some
people think Schoenberg ruined classical music forever with this
invention, while others say he liberated it from
convention. 


But all of these inventions were in the future for Arnold
Schoenberg when he wrote his Verklarte Nacht, or Transfigured
Night, for string sextet. This piece, written in just 3 weeks in
1899, is hyper-Romantic in every sense and burning with passion
and yearning, as well as being almost hyper tonal throughout. It
is based on a poem by the German poet Richard Dehmel called
Transfigured Night and is an example of a composition that is
inextricably linked to the text it was based on, despite the
music being wordless. Almost every moment in the score can be
linked to a line of Dehmel’s poem, which is just as full of
passion and yearning as the music. So today I’ll take you through
the piece and the poem in parallel, showing you the links between
the two, and also trying to pick apart the remarkable complexity
within Schoenberg’s writing, all of which serves to whip up one
of the most emotionally dramatic and compelling pieces of chamber
music ever written. If you’ve ever been a skeptic of Schoenberg,
this just might be the piece for you. Join us!