Schoenberg: Verklarte Nacht / String Quartet No. 2 / Chamber Symphony No. 1

Featuring

Jean-Jacques Kantorow
Christina Högman
Tapiola Sinfonietta
Arnold Schoenberg

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Critical Reception

The 1902 premiere of Verklärte Nacht in Vienna was met with a mixture of applause and whistling, and critics attacked Schoenberg's choice of text rather than his musical style.

Composition History

Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10, includes a quote from the folk-song 'Ach, du lieber Augustin' with the words 'alles ist hin' (everything's gone), possibly referencing his wife's affair with painter Richard Gerstl.

Compositional Technique

Verklärte Nacht, originally for string sextet, is considered a 'symphonic poem in chamber format' because Schoenberg transferred characteristics of orchestral music to a chamber setting.

Compositional Technique

Despite being known as a revolutionary, only about half of Schoenberg's compositions were written using his dodecaphonic (twelve-tone) technique.

Composer Biography

Arnold Schoenberg, the composer, was furious with author Thomas Mann because Mann's novel Doctor Faustus depicted its hero as the inventor of dodecaphony and also as a syphilitic composer.

Compositional Technique

Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, features a famous chord built not on traditional thirds, but on five fourths, which the composer stated makes its mark on everything that happens in the piece.

Composition History

Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4, a classic of 20th-century music, was actually composed in 1899, before the turn of the century.