The Book of the Hanging Gardens

Biographical and cultural context#

The Book of the Hanging Gardens served as the start to the atonal period in Schoenberg’s music. Atonal compositions, referred to as “pantonal” by Schoenberg, typically contain features such as a lack of central tonality, pervading harmonic dissonance rather than consonance, and a general absence of traditional melodic progressions. This period of atonality became commonly associated with the expressionist movement, despite the fact that Schoenberg rarely referred to the term “expressionism” in his writings. Whether or not he wanted to be associated with the movement, Schoenberg expresses an unambiguous positivity with his discovery of this new style in a program note for the 1910 first performance of The Book of the Hanging Gardens: Schoenberg’s libretto transcends the tragic love poems of George and becomes a deeper reflection of Schoenberg’s mood during this period when viewing his personal life. The poems tell of a love affair gone awry without explicitly stating the cause of its demise. In 1908, Schoenberg’s wife Mathilde left him and their two children for Richard Gerstl, a painter with whom Schoenberg was a close friend and for whom Mathilde often modeled. She returned to the family from her flight with Gerstl eventually, but not before Schoenberg discovered the poems of George and began drawing inspiration from them.

Structure#

Although the 15 poems do not necessarily describe a story or follow a linear development, the general subjects can be grouped as follows: a description of the paradise (poems 1 and 2), the paths that the lover takes to reach his beloved (poems 3–5), his passions (poems 6–9), the peak of the time together (poems 10–13), premonition (poem 14), and finally, love dies away and Eden is no more (poem 15). :

Critical reception#

Upon its initial debut in 1910, The Book of the Hanging Gardens was not critically acclaimed or accepted in mainstream culture. Hanging Gardens complete lack of tonality was initially disdained. Although a limited number of his works, including The Book of the Hanging Gardens, had been played in Paris since 1910, there was little attention from the French press for Schoenberg’s music in general. The reviews received elsewhere were usually scathing. James Huneker in the New York Times in 1913 went so far as to call Schoenberg “A musical anarchist who upset all of Europe.” Deemed the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg and his students Anton Webern and Alban Berg helped to make Hanging Gardens and works like it more acceptable. By the 1920s, a radical shift had occurred in the French reception of Schoenberg, his Hanging Gardens, and atonality in general. “For progressives, he became an important composer whose atonal works constituted a legitimate form of artistic expression.”

Critical analysis#

Alan Lessem analyzes the Book of the Hanging Gardens in his book Music and Text in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg. However, how to interpret the work remains debated. Lessem maintained that the meaning of the song cycles lay in the words, and Richard Evans (critic) finds his proposed relation of words and music fits Hanging Gardens better than the other songs treated in his book, and speculates that this may be because the theory was originally inspired by this cycle. Lessem treats each interval as a symbol: “cell a provides material for the expression of poignant anticipations of love, cell b of frustrated yearnings” …the structure of the cycle may, viewed as a whole, give the impression of progression through time, but this is only an illusion. The various songs give only related aspects of a total, irredeemable present." Moods are conveyed though harmony, texture, tempo, and declamation. The ‘inner meaning,’ if, in fact, there is one to be found, is in the music itself, which Lessem already described in great detail. Anne Marie de Zeeuw has examined in detail the “three against four” rhythm of the composition’s opening and its manifestation elsewhere in the work.

The garden as a metaphor#

As argued in Carl Schorske’s groundbreaking study of Viennese society, the Book of the Hanging Gardens uses the image of the garden as a metaphor of the destruction of traditional musical form. The garden portrayed in George’s poem, which Schoenberg puts to music, represent the highly organized traditional music Schoenberg broke away from. Baroque geometric gardens made popular during the Renaissance were seen as an “extension of architecture over nature.” So too did the old order of music represent all that was authority and stability. The destruction of the garden parallels the use of rationality to break away from the old forms of music.

Sources#

• (cloth); (pbk).
• Reprinted 1981, New York: Da Capo Press.

Further reading#

• Dick, Marcel (1990). “An Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s The Book of Hanging Gardens, op. 15”. In Studies in the Schoenbergian Movement in Vienna and the United States: Essays in Honor of Marcel Dick, edited by Anne Trenkamp and John G. Suess, 235–239. Lewiston, New York: Mellen Press.
• Domek, Richard C. (Fall 1979). “Some Aspects of Organization in Schoenberg’s Book of the Hanging Gardens, opus 15”. College Music Symposium 19, no. 2: 111–128.
• Dümling, Albrecht (1981). Die fremden Klänge der hängenden Gärten. Die offentliche Einsamkeit der Neuen Musik am Beispiel von A. Schoenberg und Stefan George. Munich: Kindler.
• Dümling, Albrecht (1995). “Öffentliche Einsamkeit: Atonalität und Krise der Subjektivität in Schönbergs op. 15”. In Stil oder Gedanke? Zur Schönberg-Rezeption in Amerika und Europa, edited by Stefan Litwin and Klaus Velten. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag.
• Dümling, Albrecht (1997): “Public Loneliness: Atonality and the Crisis of Subjectivity in Schönberg’s Opus 15”. In: Schönberg and Kandinsky. An Historic Encounter, edited by Konrad Boehmer, 101-138. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
• Schäfer, Thomas (1994). “Wortmusik/Tonmusik: Ein Beitrag zur Wagner-Rezeption von Arnold Schönberg und Stefan George”. Die Musikforschung 47, no. 3:252–273.
• Smith, Glenn Edward (1973). Schoenberg’s ‘Book of the Hanging Gardens’: An Analysis. DMA diss. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1973.

External links#

• • in Stefan George: . Complete works, vol. 3, Berlin 1930