Arnold Schoenberg

Herzgewächse

Herzgewächse (Heart's Foliage, or Foliage of the Heart), Op. 20, is a brief (German art song) that Austrian (and later American) composer Arnold Schoenberg finished in late 1911 in Berlin, during his

Background#

After his second move to Berlin, Schoenberg composed Herzgewächse with speed characteristic especially of his atonal period, completing it on 9 December 1911 for facsimile publication in the 1912 almanac Der Blaue Reiter, edited by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Berg sent “Warm die Lüfte”, Op. 2/iv. Scholars like Bryan R. Simms emphasize a stream-of-consciousness approach to musical form in Schoenberg’s works of this period, with atomization of material, or musical ideas, into a kind of athematicism.

Song#

At three and a half minutes, Herzgewächse is Schoenberg’s shortest opus. The celesta and harp rest more than the harmonium, which uses stops to alter its timbre throughout. The music is generally polyphonic and saturated motivically with cells. These include many trichords, especially 0,1,4 , sometimes interpolated with other sets, including cyclic sets. These cells are varied by continuous transformation as distinct figures. The voice leading yields quasi-tonal or tertian harmonies and fragments of cyclic harmonic progressions, often by melodic implication. For example, this fragment is presented mostly as consecutive thirds. It unfolds as though in two voices. One voice repeats a kind of common tone parsimoniously as the other descends, followed by a voice exchange. : \new PianoStaff >

Opening#

The opening phrase of music begins on the harmonium with an A–C–G sonority, a particular 0,1,4 trichord, soon joined by the harp. This phrase contains two segments: *First, a dense texture using the harmonium’s clarinet stop (anacrusis and m. 1). *Second, a rising melody using the harmonium’s flute stop (mm. 2–3). This foreshadows the poem’s two-part narrative (stanzas 1–2 and 3–4). It also anticipates the song’s roughly binary form (mm. 1–15 and 16–30, notwithstanding subsections).

Poem, translation, and narrative#

The soprano sings Maurice Maeterlinck’s “”, a poem from the collection Serres chaudes (1889; English: Hothouses, or Hothouse Blooms) in the 1906 German translation of Karl Anton Klammer (pseudonym K. L. Ammer) and Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski. A Symbolist meditation, Maeterlinck’s poem portrays a lovesick soul mired in memories of sorrow, pleasure, and desire. It turns to the hopeful image of a lone lily. This pale flower rises above the others in a hothouse and is ensconced in radiant moonlight. The translation is loose and necessarily loses some of the original’s sound symbolism. Schoenberg changed "" (“melancholy”, opening line of poem) to "" (“longing”), by intent or error. He also changed "" (end of third stanza), in the accusative case, to "" in the dative case. The former conveys a direct, active becoming of sorrow into foliage, while the latter emphasizes sorrow as enduring and rooted in its presence, having become foliage.

Musical setting#

In word paintings of the poem’s imagery, Schoenberg uses the timbral palette of the ensemble, rhythmic patterns, and ornamented, interrelated cyclic and motivic figures. A passage of octave voicings reaching their height on staccato celesta (mm. 2–3) marks the greenhouse’s “blue glass” ("", opening line of poem). A low triplet ostinato (m. 6) paints snoring, like its cross-linguistic onomatopoeias, upon “slumber” ("", end of first stanza). Intricate, interlocking figures layered over increasingly turbulent low-register textures depict merely ornamental blooms and dark, entangled foliage inside, which the poem associates with emotions and drives. The song’s longest measure (m. 19) underscores their persistence as a sick, moonlit lily’s appeal to transcend them is evoked by figures incorporating interval cycles unfolding rhythmically and shimmering repetitively in arabesque passages for celesta and harp.

Vocal setting#

Ranging a nearly three-octave tessitura, the song’s vocal melody outlines the poem’s narrative using melodic motion, localized contouring, and a gradual rise in register. *rises to the first of several local maximums, C 6 (mm. 16–17), marked and held on the second syllable of "" (“upwards”, third line of third stanza); and *culminates in a passage with the soprano’s highest pitch, F 6 (m. 27), also marked and held at length on the first syllable of "" (“mystical prayer”, end of poem).

Ending#

The fleeting conclusion (mm. 29–30) reworks prior figures into musical gestures of falling lines. As the melody accelerates by rhythmic subdivison, harmonic motion is suspended without resolution. The song ends like the poem, without answer to the lily’s prayer and as if “in mid air”. Some analysts note that the song seems to return cyclically to its beginning, and so they likewise interpret the lily’s arc as merely part of a cyclical narrative.

Cultural context#

Klammer and Oppeln-Bronikowski translated Maeterlinck’s Serres chaudes as Im Treibhaus (), the same name as the third of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. Wagner’s song portrays sorrowful plants confined in a sheltered enclosure, longing for their distant (), and was a study for the Act 3 Prelude to Tristan und Isolde. Schoenberg likely knew it. Gordon Root argues that Schoenberg’s stylistically modernist setting offers “Herzgewächse” a nonetheless Romantic reading. Andreas Meyer compares the song, particularly in its imagery and instrumentation, to Bruno Taut’s 1914 Glass Pavilion (German: , sometimes shortened to ). In their respective media, both use what is colorful, opaque, and vitreous to symbolize hidden inner worlds, a hallmark of Expressionism. For Kandinsky, as in Herzgewächse, blue is linked not only with veiled sorrow, but also with desire for the infinite, the pure, and the supernatural. Paulo F. de Castro raises the possible links among Herzgewächse and Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2, Berg’s Violin Concerto, or Gustav Mahler’s music, noting shared themes of spiritual transcendence.

Performance history#

The early performance history of Herzgewächse is somewhat ambiguous, in part due to its first publication and circulation in Der Blaue Reiter from 1912. Universal Edition possessed a music engraving by 1914 but delayed publication until 1920 amid World War I and the Revolutions of 1917–1923, with economic disruption and rising inflation culminating in the Austrian hyperinflation. They issued a piano–vocal score by Felix Greissle in 1925. With its extreme vocal demands and some ambiguity as to the harmonium part’s realization, the song has been infrequently performed since its omission from a planned 1912 Berlin premiere. Uncertainties regarding the type of harmonium, intended sound, and registration have sometimes led to the use of electronic substitutes. A full registration is notated in an autograph manuscript from the 1912 Berlin rehearsal process attended by Schoenberg, enabling more historically informed performance.

Germany#

Schoenberg planned for Martha Winternitz-Dorda, an Austrian soprano at the Hamburg State Opera (1910–1933), to sing Herzgewächse at ’s , Lützowplatz, Berlin. Louis Closson was to play celesta, and , harp. Winternitz-Dorda cut Herzgewächse from the already printed all-Schoenberg concert program due to its vocal demands, short notice, or both. Eduard Steuermann accompanied her in The Book of the Hanging Gardens (1908) and later grouped in Opp. 2 and 6 (1899–1905). Closson and Steuermann joined Louis Gruenberg and Webern on two pianos (eight hands), led by Schoenberg in Nos. 1–2 and 4 of the Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909), using the transcription Webern adapted from Erwin Stein’s earlier draft. Filling in for Egon Petri, Closson played the Six Little Piano Pieces (1911). Ferruccio Busoni and Oskar Fried attended. Reviews were mixed. Schoenberg hoped Winternitz-Dorda might sing Herzgewächse later, perhaps at Max Reinhardt’s theater, also in Berlin.

Austria#

In 1912, an Austrian premiere of Hergewächse was planned through Vienna’s (, founded 1908; sponsor of the 1913 , ). Berg or Schoenberg asked Winternitz-Dorda to sing. Paul Stefan suggested that Schoenberg lecture on Mahler to the Association that March, but Schoenberg’s negative experiences in Vienna led him to decline a visit. He did send six aphorisms to the Association’s journal Der Ruf, edited by Stefan, , and Ludwig Ullman, but objected to how these were edited. Though Association concerts included his music, they never featured Herzgewächse.

1922: World premiere#

Jean Wiéner organized the 30 March 1922 world premiere of Herzgewächse at one of his (), officially billed as , at Paris’s Salle Gaveau. He challenged traditionalist and nationalist tastes in post-World War I France with pluralist "" (), including then-contemporary or avant-garde classical music from international scenes and crossover music inspired by African-American music. Wiéner played his own improvised Blues (danses américaines) and Igor Stravinsky’s Piano-Rag-Music. The Pro Arte Quartet played Alois Hába’s String Quartet No. 1, Milhaud’s String Quartet No. 4, and the French premiere of Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2 with soprano Marya Freund in the last two movements. Louis Vuillemin criticized the series in a 1 January 1923 Le Courrier musical review, "" (German: “”; English: “Concerts of Unpopular Foreigners”). In reply, André Caplet, Maurice Ravel, Alexis Roland-Manuel, and Albert Roussel supported Wiéner’s concerts in an open letter.

1923: United States#

Soprano Eva Leoni, conductor Carlos Salzedo or possibly E. Robert Schmitz It was paired with Béla Bartók’s Improvisations (1920), Arthur Lourié’s Synthèses (1914), the march and nocturne from Paul Hindemith’s Suite 1922, and Stravinsky’s Renard (1915–1916). Here Herzgewächse was a popular success, encored on audience demand. Lawrence Gilman lauded its “iridescent web of delicate and poignant beauty” and Leoni’s “beautiful voice” in the New York Tribune.

1925: Germany#

In their second season opening concert on 4 October 1925, Ewald Lindemann’s (, mostly Theater Freiburg volunteers) gave Herzgewächse its apparent German premiere at Freiburg im Bresgau’s Historical Merchants’ Hall. Lindemann secured City-funded free admission by promising to boost tourism and worked with the Collegium Musicum of , writing in the Freiburger Tagesblatt that he sought to educate the public on the ties between new and old music. He said the “remote and delicate” song, with its unusual instrumentation and bold vocality, prefigured Die glückliche Hand (1910–1913) and Pierrot lunaire (1912). The folded in 1928 when the City’s expert Wilibald Gurlitt opposed reimbursing it for a Pierrot performance that Lindemann said had required him to hire Viennese, not local, musicians.

1928: Austria#

Marianne Rau-Hoeglauer sang and Webern conducted the 17 April 1928 Austrian premiere of Herzgewächse with Schoenberg’s support, but not his presence, at one of the Kolisch Quartet subscription concerts in Vienna’s Kleiner Musikverein-Saal (Smaller Music Association Hall), later the Brahms-Saal (Brahms Hall). It was generally well received and repeated once. The program also included Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Paul Pisk hailed Rau-Hoeglauer as “master of all difficulties” in the . Webern took great care in conducting it and considered the music of “highest quality”, having called it the “pinnacle of music” when he first studied it in 1912. Darla Crispin notes his “gushing ‘operaphile’” enthusiasm for the wide-ranging coloratura of the soprano part. “We reveled in … sounds we had scarcely dreamed of”, Berg wrote Schoenberg. " E very one of your works creates an unprecedented sensation in the listener on first hearing", he added, “even if … 20 years old, like this one”. A critic (or critics) signed R. K. found the song "" (“oversaturated with revolutionary radicalisms”), beginning with what they described as its polytonality. They further described what they heard as its "" (“conversion of the singing voice into an instrument and the instruments into tone colors”), and its "" (“atomization of … bits of themes”).

1945: France#

After World War II, on 5 December 1945, Lucienne Tragin sang and René Leibowitz conducted Herzgewächse at the Paris Conservatory’s old , with Yvette Grimaud (celesta), Lily Laskine (harp), and Pierre Boulez (harmonium), who hand-copied the score. A 30 November 1945 Combat preview named Leibowitz the “principal representative in Paris of Schoenberg’s school” and remembered Webern as recently “assassinated by a Nazi”. The concert program focused on music of the Second Viennese School, with members of the Orchestre National de France also performing Leibowitz’s Chamber Concerto, Op. 18, Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, and Webern’s Symphony.

1950–1952: United States#

Between 1939 and 1954, writer Peter B. Yates and his wife, pianist Frances Mullen Yates, organized Los Angeles performances of most of Schoenberg’s chamber music, including several premieres on the West Coast of the United States. Their nationally covered, volunteer-run concert series, Evenings on the Roof (later the Monday Evening Concerts), promoted both modernist On 22 September 1952, she sang it again (and gave another encore) with her husband Ernest Gold conducting, as part of concerts marking Schoenberg’s 1951 death. One performance aired live on Julius Toldi’s Music of Today (KFWB), which often featured Schoenberg’s music. Late in life, Schoenberg said on air that his music was being shunned in the broader U.S. as “controversial”, drawing national attention. He apologized for this and thanked Toldi for his efforts, telling him, “should my work still be appreciated later on, this deed will never be forgotten”.

Composer: Arnold Schoenberg