Pierrot lunaire Premieres
Berlin, 1912, where speech-song carried atonality onto the stage as expression.
Related
Time and place
16 October 1912, at the Choralion-Saal in Berlin. Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire was recited by the actress Albertine Zehme, with the composer conducting a five-player ensemble.
What happened
The work consists of twenty-one short pieces on French poems by Albert Giraud, translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben. Flute, clarinet, violin and cello change instruments from number to number, and the piano anchors the harmony. Schoenberg asked the reciter for a speech-song voice, with pitches written in the score but not held for full value. The melody leaps through an atonal space, and the moon, wine and death of the poems are broken into fragments.
What changed
The voice was no longer limited to singing or speaking; speech-song became a notation for expression. Atonality moved from theory into stage experience, and expressionist sharpness, grotesquerie and lyricism could appear together. Berg's Wozzeck, Weill's theatre music, later film scores and popular vocal styles all find a precedent here.
Listen to the turn
Begin with the Suite Op. 25, where twelve-tone writing still keeps a dance-like frame at the piano. Then the Five Piano Pieces Op. 23, where atonality takes shape through colour, silence and dynamics. Finally an early song, still tonal but already standing at the edge. After three steps, the ear listens differently.
Related
This turn belongs to Modern; see Melodrama and Texture, and Clarinet.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- Grove Music Online, entry "Pierrot lunaire" — premiere, performers and notation checked, not quoted
- Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language (Cambridge University Press) — pitch language checked, not quoted
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.