No. 1: Mondestrunken (Moondrunk) (Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21)

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Musical Terms (3)

• Pierrot Lunaire German
  Op. 21 (1912) — Schoenberg's cycle of 21 melodramas for Sprechstimme and chamber ensemble (piano, flute doubling piccolo, clarinet doubling bass clarinet, violin doubling viola, cello). Settings of German translations of Albert Giraud's symbolist poems about the commedia dell'arte clown Pierrot. Organised in three groups of seven. The piano is present throughout and carries significant thematic weight in many pieces. Premièred in Berlin in October 1912 under Schoenberg's direction; one of the most performed and influential works of the 20th century.
  For pianists in a Pierrot ensemble, the primary challenge is blend and balance. The piano must support the Sprechstimme without covering it, lead the ensemble without dominating. Study each of the 21 pieces to understand when the piano has the primary voice (rare), when it accompanies (most pieces), and when it provides the harmonic skeleton from which other instruments project melody. The chamber size means every line is audible.
• Sprechstimme German
  Speech-voice — a vocal technique developed by Schoenberg for Pierrot Lunaire (1912) in which the performer uses pitches notated in the score as approximate guides, but realises them as a kind of heightened speech rather than sung tone. The voice touches the notated pitch and immediately slides away, neither singing nor speaking in the conventional sense. Schoenberg notated Sprechstimme with a special notehead (an 'x'). The technique was highly influential and used by many subsequent composers.
  Sprechstimme in Pierrot is famously difficult to notate and interpret. Schoenberg's own instructions emphasise that the pitches are not to be ignored (as in pure speech) but neither are they to be sustained as sung tone. The result should feel like inflected, musical speech — heightened beyond normal delivery but never operatic. The exact realisation varies between performers; study recordings by different singers to understand the range of legitimate interpretation.
• tone-row English
  Also called a twelve-tone row, series, or Grundreihe (basic row). The ordered sequence of all twelve chromatic pitches that forms the structural foundation of a twelve-tone composition. No pitch appears twice in the row until all twelve have appeared. The row is not a theme but a precompositional ordering constraint; themes, harmonies, and textures are all derived from the row in its four standard transformations (original, inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversion) at all twelve transpositions — giving 48 possible forms. Schoenberg believed the row gave atonal music the same kind of internal coherence that tonality had previously provided.
  Understanding the row analytically helps enormously when learning twelve-tone piano music, but the performance goal is always musical expression, not serial demonstration. In Op.25, the row is audible as a surface gesture in many places; in Op.42, the serial organisation is more absorbed into a lyrical, almost tonal surface. Let the row inform your understanding of phrase structure and motivic return without making it the basis of your expression.