Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht

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!

Jaksot(283)

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 (Part 2)

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 (Part 2)

In a letter to Tchaikovsky's nephew Vladimir Davydov, Tchaikovsky wrote: "I'm very pleased with its content, but dissatisfied, or rather not completely satisfied, with the instrumentation. For some re...

2 Huhti 47min

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 (Part 1)

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 (Part 1)

The great and somewhat controversial conductor Leopold Stokowski said this about Tchaikovsky: "His musical utterance comes directly from the heart and is a spontaneous expression of his innermost feel...

21 Maalis 50min

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 59, No.2

Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 59, No.2

I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions, like which standard canon works begin in a major key and end in a minor key? I'll give you one, but please comment others below: Mendelssohn's 4th Symp...

5 Maalis 56min

Brahms Symphony No. 2 LIVE w/ The Aalborg Symphony

Brahms Symphony No. 2 LIVE w/ The Aalborg Symphony

Brahms spent much of his adult life battling with his ambition to write the next great symphony and his terror at the shadow of Beethoven standing behind him. Brahms tortured himself for 14 years with...

19 Helmi 58min

Zemlinsky: The Mermaid

Zemlinsky: The Mermaid

The story of Alexander von Zemlinsky's The Mermaid begins with a passionate love affair and ends in heartbreak of the most unabashedly big-R Romantic kind. In 1900, the young, fabulously talented, and...

5 Helmi 1h 1min

Pergolesi Stabat Mater

Pergolesi Stabat Mater

Many aspects of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's life seem relatively normal when it comes to composers of the Baroque era. He was prolific, died young, and his music became very famous only after his de...

22 Tammi 59min

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2

We humans seem to love comeback stories, and there is no comeback quite as compelling in the classical music world as Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. It was written three years after the disastr...

8 Tammi 52min

Handel Messiah w/ Aram Demirjian

Handel Messiah w/ Aram Demirjian

A piece that I have been asked to cover probably a dozen times is Handel's Messiah. It's a piece I love, but a piece that I've never conducted or played, and so therefore I don't know it incredibly we...

18 Joulu 20251h 9min

Suosittua kategoriassa Viihde

anni-jaajo
tuplakaak
grekovit
hei-baby-3
terveisia-perheesta
the-harlin-show
dear-shirly
antin-palautepalvelu
bella-table
antin-elokuvakerho
nonsensepodi
dear-shirly-ja-arttu
verhon-takaa
ootsa-kuullut-tasta-2
get-jassud
hollywood-love-stories-2
tahtitehdas
tervo-halme
everypodi
terkuin-jenna