On Saturday, the Boston-area chorus Spectrum Singers performed the final concert of their season. The concert included a performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden, and John W. Ehrlich’s program note caught my attention.
Schoenberg wrote Friede auf Erden in 1907, shortly after his op. 12 Ballades and just before the premiere of his watershed Second String Quartet. He was beginning to eschew traditional romantic harmony and had begun his quest toward a new form of musical expression ultimately to be dictated by serialism. Friede auf Erden, with its abundant chromaticism and its daring and challenging harmonic structure, can be heard as teetering on the cusp of the new harmonic language Schoenberg would soon embrace and promote. There are clear echoes of Brahms and Richard Strauss, but one can sense a yearning to break free of this musical vocabulary of the past. Scored as an a cappella work when first written, both Schoenberg (in 1911) and later Anton Webern supplied supportive accompaniments, presumably to encourage more frequent performances of this very rich score.
The unusual (and, frankly, confusing) verse for Friede auf Erden is that of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, a noted Swiss poet who lived from 1825 to 1898, and who was plagued by mental unrest. While the sentiments of the poem are laudable, the means the verse employs to present its case are curious. How a new order of youths forging danger-free flaming swords for the cause of right can assure peace on Earth is puzzling. And just what was the message the shepherds bore to the Holy Family, and once received, what outcome ensued? These questions are left for one to ponder. Fortunately this ambiguity did not adversely impact Schoenberg’s quest to create a beautiful work of musical art. Yet, one wonders what attracted the composer to this very strange poem—and poet.
(Thanks to Bernard Greenberg, who first raised these questions with me, and whose elegant translation of Friede auf Erden graces this program book.)
A poignant postscript to this work occurred in 1923. In that year, Schoenberg wrote to the conductor Hermann Scherchen, thanking him for a performance of Friede auf Erden. But in the letter Schoenberg wrote that he no longer thought worldly peace possible (after the horrors of World War I?), and that the concept now seemed to him to have been merely part of an illusion. Schoenberg’s own difficulties in being accepted by the musical establishment surely also played a role in this pessimism. Fortunately, the radiant D-major conclusion—a cadence reached after a two-measure preparation of extraordinary harmonic genius—gives listeners and performers reason to be cautiously optimistic.
Specifically, I appreciated,
• In a clear and sophisticated structure, the note interweaves guided listening and historical context in the first and last paragraphs, with poetic analysis in Paragraph 2.
• The principal objective of a program note is to enhance the audience’s experience with a work in performance, so frank critical assessment of any sort is risky. This note calls attention to the warts of the poetry (“unusual,” “curious,” and “puzzling”) but does so in a useful way, anticipating, validating, and giving reasons for the listener’s potential confusion.
• To my mind, the strongest program notes surpass factual content and guided listening to reveal something about the impact of a work on those who encounter it, whether it’s on the composer, performers, critics, or listeners, whether it’s then, now, or some time in between. In this way, the reader understands music as something more than a succession of sounds. It conveys an impression, or feeling, even if these are subjective and occasionally difficult to articulate in words. The work has an aura.
This program note suggests that Friede auf Erden unsettles. That squares with my own experience. The work nudged Schoenberg further along a path toward a new style of musical expression. Its congenital condition, unaccompanied voices, prompted both Schoenberg and Webern to furnish instrumental support. Its wide-eyed optimism prompted later misgivings from the composer. Despite its quirks, Friede auf Erden endures.
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