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If ever there was to be theme music for turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg\u2019s Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em> would surely fit the bill. The darkly romantic string sextet, later arranged for string orchestra, perfectly encapsulates the world-weary age of Freud and Klimt, Wittgenstein and Schiele.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Composed at an Austrian lake resort in the summer of 1899, the piece divided opinion. That December, Schoenberg \u2014 with help from his teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky \u2014 submitted the score to the influential Vienna Composers\u2019 Guild, but its members refused to mount a performance, ostensibly because of its use of an improper chord (an inverted ninth). Their rejection was accompanied by some catty remarks. \u201cWhy, that sounds as if someone had taken the score of Tristan<\/em> with the ink still wet and smudged it over,\u201d one member quipped, referring to Wagner\u2019s Tristan und Isolde<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But when the sextet was finally performed by the Ros\u00e9 Quartet in 1902, it found some notable admirers, including Gustav Mahler. The elder composer became a fierce champion of Schoenberg over the next several years, even when he found his music difficult to understand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Schoenberg based the sextet on a poem from Richard Dehmel\u2019s 1896 Weib und Welt<\/em> (Woman and World), a provocative collection of lyrics blending charged sensuality, mysticism and spirituality. The composer later told Dehmel that he found his creative voice \u201csimply by reflecting in music what your poems stirred up in me.\u201d There are five sections corresponding to the five stanzas of Dehmel\u2019s poem. Dehmel begins by depicting a couple walking through a dark forest on a cold, moonlit night, which Schoenberg evokes with a repeated descending figure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the second stanza, the woman admits that she is pregnant with the child of another man whom she doesn\u2019t love. \u201cI walk in sin beside you,\u201d she says. \u201cI have wronged myself profoundly.\u201d Her agitated and tender plaint is suggested by a series of frantic motives. Eventually, the man at her side forgives her and says he\u2019ll welcome the child as his own. Bathed in moonlight, the couple embrace and walk on. The acceptance of the woman\u2019s admission is evoked by lustrous chords and an ethereal violin melody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well predating Schoenberg\u2019s status as a modernist enfant terrible,<\/em> Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em> was, and likely still is, his most popular work. He arranged the sextet for string orchestra in 1917, and further revised it in 1943. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anton Bruckner\u2019s breakthrough work, the Fourth Symphony signals many hallmarks of his mature style: majestic grandeur, awed silences, and intense, Wagnerian climaxes. It was the culmination of a lengthy apprentice period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The son of a village schoolteacher in northern Austria, Bruckner was sent as a teenager to a monastery in St. Florian to become a choirboy. A late bloomer, he spent much of his twenties and thirties studying advanced harmony, teaching elementary school, and advancing to become one of the leading organists of his day. Bruckner was well into his forties when he accepted a university teaching post in Vienna and embarked on his first real symphony. He was 57 when Hans Richter conducted the 1881 premiere of the Fourth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The run-up to that performance was unpromising. Bruckner could not shake his reputation as a country bumpkin with odd manners. During rehearsals, he seemed all too eager to please. When Richter asked Bruckner to clarify what a particular note was, he clumsily replied, \u201cAny note you please. Just as you like.\u201d When the rehearsal was over Bruckner slipped Richter a tip. Pressing the coin in the conductor\u2019s hand, he said, \u201cTake it, and drink a mug of beer to my health!\u201d Richter accepted the money, not wishing to insult Bruckner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics were divided over the Fourth, but the public cheered it so enthusiastically that Bruckner took bows after each movement. The symphony received two performances in New York, the first performance in America of any Bruckner score. Even so, the composer had revised it extensively, under pressure from colleagues who urged him to prune or re-orchestrate whole passages. Consequently, it underwent major changes between its first version in 1874 and its final incarnation in 1881.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bruckner subtitled the Fourth Symphony \u201cRomantic,\u201d and he occasionally floated hints of a programmatic storyline to colleagues. It opens with a soft horn fanfare that Bruckner once said \u201cannounces daybreak\u201d in a medieval town. He further claimed that the second theme was based on the twittering of a titmouse. Bruckner once described the introspective slow movement as a \u201csong, prayer, serenade,\u201d according to one letter, though he also explained it as \u201can infatuated youth wants to climb through his sweetheart\u2019s window, but isn\u2019t allowed in.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The rustic Scherzo begins with hunting horns and later introduces a delicate l\u00e4ndler. The symphony\u2019s 1878 manuscript describes the trio section as a \u201cdancing tune during the hunter\u2019s meal,\u201d reminiscent of a hurdy-gurdy. The finale brings more stately horn solos, hushed string tremolos and glittering masses of brass chords. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Brian Wise<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arnold Schoenberg, Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht (\u201cTransfigured Night\u201d), Op. 4 If ever there was to be theme music for turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg\u2019s Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht would surely fit the bill. The darkly romantic string sextet, later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[386],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-program-notes"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 4, Romantic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n