Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire - op. 21 - 20th Century Classical LP
LP

Melodrama by Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire - op. 21 (1912)



Saga

UK Issue

LP
Record is VG++
Laminated Cover is VG+ some spine wear and ringwear

(voice, piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola, violoncello, piano)
(text: Albert Giraud; German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben)
(dedicatee: Albertine Zehme)



Tracklistings ..

Side A


Part I

Mondestrunken [Moondrunk] (flute, violin, piano, violoncello)
Colombine [Columbine] (flute, clarinet, violin, piano)
Der Dandy [The dandy] (piccolo, clarinet, piano)
Eine blasse Wäscherin [A pallid laundrymaid] (flute, clarinet, violin)
Valse de Chopin [Waltz of Chopin] (flute, clarinet & bass clarinet, piano)
Madonna [Madonna] (flute, bass clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano)
Der kranke Mond [The sick moon] (flute)


Part II

Nacht [Night] (bass clarinet, violoncello, piano)
Gebet an Pierrot [Prayer to Pierrot] (clarinet, piano)
Raub [Theft] (flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello)
Rote Messe [Red mass] (piccolo, bass clarinet, viola, violoncello, piano)
Galgenlied [Gallows’ song] (piccolo, viola, violoncello)
Enthauptung [Beheading] (bass clarinet, viola, violoncello, piano)
Die Kreuze [The crosses] (flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano)


Side Two

Part III

Heimweh [Nostalgia] (flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano)
Gemeinheit [Mean trick] (piccolo, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano)
Parodie [Parody] (piccolo, clarinet, viola, piano)
Der Mondfleck [The moon fleck] (piccolo, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano)
Serenade [Serenade] (flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano)
Heimfahrt [Journey home] (flute, clarinet, viola, violoncello, piano)
O alter Duft [Oh ancient scent] (flute & piccolo, clarinet & bass clarinet, violin & viola, violoncello, piano)









("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire'"), commonly known simply as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg. It is a setting of twenty-one selected poems from Otto Erich Hartleben's German translation of Albert Giraud's cycle of French poems of the same name.


Music

Pierrot Lunaire uses a variety of classical forms and techniques, including canon, fugue, rondo, passacaglia and free counterpoint.

The poetry is a German version of a rondeau of the old French type with a double refrain.

Each poem consists of three stanzas of 4 + 4 + 5 lines, with line 1 a Refrain (A) repeated as line 7 and line 13, and line 2 a second Refrain (B) repeated for line 8.

The instrumental combinations (including doublings) vary between most movements. The entire ensemble plays together only in the 11th, 14th and final 4 settings.

The atonal, expressionistic settings of the text, with their echoes of German cabaret, bring the poems vividly to life. Sprechgesang, literally "speech-singing" in German, meaning speak-singing, is a style in which the vocalist uses the specified rhythms and pitches, but does not sustain the pitches, allowing them to drop or rise, in the manner of speech.

Analysis

Pierrot Lunaire is a work that contains many paradoxes: the instrumentalists, for example, are soloists and an orchestra at the same time; Pierrot is both the hero and the fool, acting in a drama that is also a concert piece, performing cabaret as high art and vice versa with song that is also speech; and his is a male role sung by a woman, who shifts between the first and third persons.