schoenberg`s harmonic visions: a study of text painting in "die kreuze"

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 COilsciousness 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
SAN GILBERT
118
A STUDY OF TEXT PAINTING IN "D1E KREUZE"
Kreuze" (Pierrot Lunaire (No. 14).2 Hefe the artist's agony is revealed as
a profound spiritual suffering.
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 locksIn 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
Zeichnung von Oskar Kokoschka zu dem Drama
:llöraer, Hoffnung der Frauen
l!9
JAN G!LBERT
120
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."
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"
j
3-3
"\klth \L\li\-,'"
~~);",
•
IN'=
- -~
,
~#-
4-9
,:,-1_'I'
, - - - - - - , rl
I~!
I 1.\ !! !)b! I
:~i!
:
4-16-~11~ i
iI D i i j)~
4-13-~;
',,11
I
; Cy:
-"
/
4-7
4
/15
-
:-4-715
I!
I~,_~ff
--
'
JAN GILBERT
121
A STUDY OF TEXT PAINTING IN "DIE KREUZE"
123
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. "
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 2 First reprise
Example 3 Complex B "Verse"
---f
iI-t
,.'
fr
'r
tE
sind
dir
Ver
...
J
.,.
#0
sind die
"e,
ij Ver
------
8e,dran ciie Dich.ter
'<n.
qqA
~
q
:
ff
.Ir
)
i
8-19
4 - 18
F*
1)
4-17
B
4- Z29
C
H
Gb q
n Eb
G
I-F
4-16
(4-19)
Voice-Ieading
,
~{iif.ll;tr'~=+
T
4-16
4-16 (4 - 19)
4- 9
4 - 94 - 16
SI).!I1,Lt\lrl'
4-19
s..'t
(Esl:HBH; )
JAN GILBERT
124
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
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"
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.
,-:,,~
_ ",«"oo,d;),d>-,,,,,,,",,",, '",.
ff
'.,
Example 5 #210 alter Duft
(4
'0' 5
s
9 () :
1 5 S
~,,,,
4-19
,
~
Ti
~ 6 '0 : 1;
0:'
;;: ':8 S o,~:
'-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
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 7 Sprechstimme Dyads
Example 8 Expansion of 3-3 Motive
Trichord 3-3 /3-8
'r
t
blu. -
- ten,
blind _
3 - 3 "Moth MotIV(""
COmpll'tl'S thl' ChromatK
.--
4-17 . 4 - 19
4-19
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."
4 -19
~
,I.
f
4- 12_
[
'-0:
JJ- s_
J-S
J-S
J-S
...f Whole]
Tone
l
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
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
3-8 "Vulture Motive"
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).
4-7
(0,1,4,5)
6-Z19 (0,1,3,4,7,8)
4-9
(0,1,6,7)
6-Z44 (0,1,2,5,6,9)
(0,2,3,4,6,8)
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)
'Arnold Schoenberg, The Theory 01 Harmony, trans. Roy Carter (Berkeley / Los Angeles,
1978), p. 416.
3-3
(0,1,4)
3-8
(0,2,6)
3-12 (0,4,8)
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