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Pierrot LunairePierrot Lunaire is costumed, staged, and illuminated with sets, props and special effects in collaboration with the Phoenix Theatre Department. Students in the School of Music at the University of Victoria give its musical performance. My vision of Pierrot Lunaire, as a piece of music theatre, is a projected black Cabaret with Expressionist overtones (cf., Fritz Lang’s film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” - more fantasy than expressionism, some say). Its beautiful music, a music from a past of which its present predicted a brave, new atonal future, is rendered a sentimental, passionate and lyrical interpretation. As in “Dr. Caligari”, I wanted to explore a perceptual and psychological balance within watching a musical performance and dreaming it. The music, alone and by itself, is a breakthrough in early twentieth century music language; its resonance is still prominent and significant today. This is the first occasion in the performance history of the work that the vocal ‘sprechstimme’ part has been parsed into three different roles and set in three different languages with female and male singers. Why three singers and three languages? The project presented an opportunity, in my opinion, for a new rendition at combining aspects of its performance history while creating a new ambience, a whole new Pierrot - a Pierrot of fun, drama, polyphony and a little kitsch. The original composition, sung in German, was commissioned by the Cabaret reciter (diseuse) and actress Albertine Zehme. The ensemble, under the direction of Schoenberg, gave 100 hours in rehearsing for the premiere. Its success was immediate. The ensemble toured and recorded the work that included Schoenberg’s interpretive champion, pianist Eduard Stauermann. The composition marked the beginning of Modern Music in the 20th Century; all composers had to acknowledge its brilliance and vision (“Pierrot Lunaire is the solar plexus, as well as the mind, of early twentieth century music”, Stravinsky, a decade after Schoenberg’s death). In 1920, Schoenberg attended a performance in Frankfurt where a male gave the singing role; he approved. The next year, Darius Milhaud premiered it in Paris using the original French poetry; the Parisian audience loved it. In Berlin, students gave it an impressive performance. In the recent decade, the music scholar Andrew Porter translated the text into English for an excellent recording by Lucy Shelton and the Da Capo Players. In “The Relationship to the Text” (published in the 1912 ‘Blaue Reiter’ Journal, edited by painter Wassily Kandinsky), Schoenberg discussed the direct contact with the sound of the first words being essential to a linguistic exploration of music as language, a relationship that would contain the spiritual, political and psychological functions in the music’s immediacy. The Symbolist poetry of Albert Giraud mirrors extreme states: the madness of creativity, the symbol of the moon, disillusioned sentimentality as well as the satirical and demonic allusions of the Pierrot figure. Its pattern of lines and repetition suggested to Schoenberg a formal structure which the composer would utilize in the traditional forms of waltz, passacaglia and fugue. Yet, the composer would breach conventional expression in art and tonality through a suspension of the tonal system and the creation of a new vocal instrument, sprechstimme – spoken song. The interpretation of how to execute sprechstimme is still of interest and debate today. Our performance places emphasis on pitch and expression. In the orchestration, a different instrumental combination is used for each piece which ranges from a single instrument to the entire ensemble; a reaction, as noted by Pierre Boulez, to the “inordinately swollen and enriched orchestra of post-Wagnerian composers”. Arnold Schoenberg achieved a modernist innovation and discovery shared at the time by only the greatest masters: Debussy (“Jeux”), Webern (“Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 10”), Ives (“Fourth Symphony”) and Stravinsky (“Le Sacre du Printemps”). Acknowledgements I wish to praise the ensemble of talented School of Music musicians who asked to be a part of this production; and, who learned to share my vision and interpretation and make it their own. I am grateful to Bert Timmermans of the Phoenix Theatre Department who helped coordinate and advise the major contribution made by Theatre to this performance. And, I am deeply indebted to Dean Giles Hogya for his support through the Dean’s Special Events Fund. Michael Huston of the Fine Arts Studios for Integrated Media (http://finearts.uvic.ca/sim) assisted in the post-production DVD as did Mark Franklin in post-audio production. I am so very thankful and honoured. I hope you enjoy our effort, our accidents and euphoria! Everbest, The Pierrot ProjectSonic Lab Friday, March 9, 2001, 8:30pm, Thrice seven poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot
Lunaire Cabaret Noir Performers: Sabrina Schroeder, voice
Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (1912) Part I
1. Mondestrunken
[Moondrunk] (flute, violin, piano, violoncello) [Sabrina-German] Part II
8. Nacht
[Night] (bass clarinet, violoncello, piano) [Morgan-German] Part III
15. Heimweh
[Nostalgia] (flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano) [Morgan-English]
ReviewArts: Victoria Times-Colonist Sunday March 11, 2001Sonic Lab’s Pierrot sounds superbBy Deryk Barker Time-Colonist staff For Arnold Schoenberg, experimentation was not
an option, it was a necessity – “I am a conservative
who was forced to become a revolutionary,” he once remarked. - A University of Victoria Fine Arts Studios for Integrated Media Production -
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