Five Pieces for Orchestra

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Five Pieces for Orchestra (Fünf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16, 1909) by Arnold Schoenberg includes:

"Vorgefühle", Sehr rasch. ("Premonitions", very fast.)
"Vergangenes", Mässig. ("The Past", moderate.)
"Farben", Mässig. ("Summer Morning by a Lake: Chord-Colors", moderate.)
"Peripetie", Sehr rasch. ("Peripetia", very fast.)
"Das obligate Rezitativ", Bewegen. ("The Obligatory Recitative", moving.)

The titles were added reluctantly by the composer after their completion upon the request of his publisher.

The piece develops further the notion of "total chromaticism" and was composed by Schoenberg at a time of intense personal and artistic crisis, this being reflected in the tensions and, at times extreme violence within the score. At times deeply unsettling and disturbing, the music holds a distinct parallel with the expressionistic movement of the time, in particular its preoccupation with the subconscious and burgeoning madness.

[edit] "Summer Morning by a Lake"

Klangfarbenmelodie in mm. 8-11 of "Summer Morning by a Lake"

According to Robert Erickson ^[1], "harmonic and melodic motion is curtailed, in order to focus attention on timbral and textural elements." Blair Johnston[2] claims it is a motiveless piece generated from a single harmony: C-G♯-B-E-A treated to klangfarbenmelodie and chromatic alteration. Schoenberg explains in a note added to the 1949 revision of the score, "The conductor need not try to polish sounds which seem unbalanced, but watch that every instrumentalist plays accurately the prescribed dynamic, according to the nature of his instrument. There are no motives in this piece which have to be brought to the fore" ^[3]

[edit] References

Erickson, Robert. Sound Structures in Music. University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1975. ISBN 0-520-02376-5 ↑ p. 37.
Schoenberg, Arnold. Five Orchestra Pieces, Opus 16, score. Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, New York, 1999. ISBN 0-486-40642-3 ↑ p. 29.
Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea. University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1984. ISBN 0-520-05294-3