The most profound words heard
Sunday evening at the Concert:Nova presentation "Demystifying
Schoenberg" -- other than his music itself -- were these, uttered by actor
Michael Burnham:
"No one wanted to be,
someone had to be, so I let it be me."
As Burnham explained -- in an
astonishing performance as the composer who revolutionized music in the 20th
century -- this is how Schoenberg answered an officer in the Austrian army in
World War I who asked him if he were "this notorious Schoenberg."
His reputation as the composer who had
"emancipated dissonance" had preceded him.
The concert, held on the "garden" level ground floor of the Metaphor building on Reading Road in Over-the-Rhine, drew a capacity audience (well over 100 with extra chairs brought in). This is something of a feat for the still fear-inducing composer, especially on a rainy night with tornado warnings in effect.
Central to it was Burnham, whose
German accent, wire-rimmed glasses poised on the end of his nose, and wry and
often impassioned delivery imparted an unforgettable humanity to the
composer. His lines were drawn from
Schoenberg's writings and comments, tailored to the music on the concert. It was a tour de force that simply must
become a permanent part of C:N's repertoire.
So why did somebody have to be the "notorious"
Schoenberg?
When the Viennese composer (born 1874) came
along, traditional harmony --i.e.
key-centered music that sounds "good" to the ears -- had been
stretched to the breaking point by composers like Mahler, Richard Strauss,
Debussy, Scriabin, etc.
Now what? That was the question. Schoenberg did not
shrink from seeking an answer. Free
atonality (he preferred to call it "pantonality") was OK as far as it went, but it needed to have some kind of
structure to build on. After much consideration (and vitriol for freeing "dissonance"), he invented one with what he defined as the "method of
composing with 12 tones related only with one another."
So-called "12-tone" or serial music
was born and with it, the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg and his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg, as successors to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, or the First Viennese School).
The music on Sunday's program,
performed by members of the chamber ensemble Concert:Nova with soprano Meng-Chun Lin, pianist/Schoenberg
scholar Steven Cahn and conductor Kenneth Lam, spanned Schoenberg's stylistic
development.
There were excerpts from
his light-hearted, completely tonal Cabaret Songs (1901) to his Serenade, Op. 24 (1924), where
the possibilities of 12-tone composition bloom artistically (not just
intellectually).
In between were selections from
his Op, 23 Piano Pieces (1920-21), "Book of the Hanging Gardens" (1910)
and expressionistic "Pierrot Lunaire" (1912). In "Pierrot," now one of his most often performed works, the
"reciter" (singer) employs Sprechstimme or "speech-voice," where the voice falls away from sung pitches in speech-like fashion.
The concert ended with the 1909
Chamber Symphony No. 1, where Schoenberg's identity as an arch-romantic in the
Strauss/Mahler tradition speaks loud and clear.
Meng-Chun Lin, a splendid
soprano currently pursuing her doctor of musical arts degree at the University
of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, inhabited everything she sang,
beginning with three of the Cabaret Songs, "Galathea,"
"Mahnung" ("Warning") and Aria from "The Mirror of
Arcadia." All were delivered in a
full, rich voice shaded with expression and enhanced with delightful stage
acting. Cahn's accompaniment set the theatrical mood vividly.
Lin communicated stark
seriousness, her gaze fixed forward, in numbers three, four and ten from
"Book of the Hanging Gardens," a set of despairing love poetry for voice
and piano completed during a marital crisis (Schoenberg's first wife Mathilde eloped
briefly with a painter).
She handled her Sprechstimme to
telling effect in three excerpts from "Pierrot" --
"Mondestrunken" ("Moondrunk"), "Valse de Chopin" (a
horrific waltz) and "O Alter Duft" ("O Ancient Fragrance"),
conveying well its sickly mix of madness and calculation. She was joined here by C:N members Heidi
Yenney (violin/viola), Randolph Bowman (flute/piccolo), Ronald Aufmann
(clarinet/bass clarinet) and Marcus Kuchle (piano), all keenly in tune with the
bizarre melodrama.
Cahn, professor of theory at
CCM who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Schoenberg, exemplified one of the
composer's famous remarks in two of the Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23, "Sehr langsam" and "Sehr rasch" ("Very slowly" and "Very quickly"). These aphoristic works -- the two pieces are about three-minutes'
total -- were among his first experiments with 12-tone writing and, as such,
posed a challenge for its first listeners, including Berg. Said Schoenberg in effect:
"My music is not bad, just performed badly." Cahn, who obviously "gets" this
music, performed them commitedly and extremely well.
Following intermission -- a
delicious few moments with complimentary wine and snacks for the crowd -- the concert
concluded with two of the composer's works for larger ensemble.
Serenade, Op. 24, featured
violinist Tatiana Berman, violist Yenney, cellist Christina Coletta,
clarinetist Jonathan Gunn, bass clarinetist Aufmann, guitarist Richard Goering and
Brian Deyo on mandolin. Lam conducted. The Serenade is, as
Cahn put it, "one beautiful melody after another," and,
though composed using Schoenberg's 12-tone method, it is. The contrast of instrumental colors
contributes to the ear-pleasing effect, with guitar and mandolin against the bowed/plucked strings and woodwind timbres.
Heard were
"Lied" (a song without words) and "Tantzscene" ("Dance
scene"). Berman's distinctively
sweet tone illuminated "Lied," while "Tanzscene"
manifested shape, regular rhythms and melody, including a charming clarinet solo with accompaniment. What more could anyone want?
If there were any doubts about the emotion in Schoenberg's music -- an object of the program was to dispel
that notion, said artistic director/C:N clarinetist Ixi Chen -- they were dispelled with the concluding Chamber Symphony No.
1, led with considerable energy and insight by Lam.
The ensemble comprised violinists Mauricio Aguiar and Berman, violist Yenney, cellist Coletta, double bassist Owen Lee, flutist Bowman,
clarinetists Jonathan Gunn, Chen and Aufmann, oboists Dwight Parry and Lon Bussell, bassoonists Hugh Michie and
Jennifer Monroe and French hornists Elizabeth Freimuth and Lisa Conway. One would have thought an undiscovered work
by Richard Strauss had just come to light, so filled with passion (and downright
Straussian heroism) the music was.
The
20-minute work falls into several distinct sections,
including a lovely slow "movement" introduced by double bass
harmonics. At one point, there was a
clue of the direction the composer was about to take with harmony in an upward
succession of fourths. Tonal harmony is built on triads (thirds).
Freimuth and Conway soared at
the end in a full-bodied conclusion that drew whoops from the crowd.
Look for C:N, which has
performed in many different kinds of venues, including clubs, bars,
restaurants and museums, to appear in local jazz clubs in the near future. Spotted in the crowd Sunday were prominent members
of Cincinnati's jazz community.