H-71251 (Stereo)
WOLD STOROLRO
PIERROT IL MIRE oro
Jan LeGae Oil. VOICE The art of every age eitan a bow works that we all
must confront. Some are seminal, some culminatory, and
some — like Pierrot Lunaire — demand our response
because of their inner strength, as well as the historical
') Emoorary ei [ WEN Ce moment that they reflect. Although Schoenberg himself,
atter he had developed the twelve-tone system, was to
give up the contextual atonality of Pierrot and his other
rh | - compositions from the same period, they must all be
UT C COI UIC oO considered crucial as specific steps toward the gener-
: ality of the twelve-tone system.
onesuc: Not only must every literate listener know Pierrot
Lunaire and come to terms with it; every composer must
deal with it. Indeed, since it was written no composer
has escaped its reckoning. Stravinsky recalled hearing
an early performance and called it ‘'the most prescient
confrontation in my life''; many others might echo his
response.
How best should a listener today approach Pierrot?
One way is internally — that is, by dealing with the
work's moment-by-moment continuity, the shitting com-
plex of pitch and rhythmic relations, the play of instru-
mental sonorities, and the progress of the text. Another
is externally — the over-all shape of the piece, the bal-
ance of its three parts, the permutation of the instru-
mental combinations throughout it, and the form of the
text itself.
In considering Pierrot from the inside, we are met ath
many obstacles. For it sums up, indeed exhausts, Schoen-
berg's attempts to replace the pitch-organizing system
of tonality with a contextual approach — that is, each
_- work built from its own unique autonomous structural
principle. For this reason, the way the notes move from
moment to moment is sometimes hard to follow. This is
only natural, because at the time of its composition
Schoenberg himself was searching, and hence many of
the local decisions in Pierrot were obviously made in-
tuitively, ad hoc. Thus it is impossible ‘for the mind to
draw from the work's unfolding a sense of general law or
pattern being observed, as one can when listening to
tonal or twelve-tone music. Even though the phrase-
shapes and other gestural entities in the work help to
draw notes together, one can never know what will hap-
pen next — there is no principle by which the ear can
predict. This is what still makes Pierrot, after sixty years,
new, abrasive, exciting, and even frightening. Yet,
though unpredictable, it never seems arbitrary. In re-—
ality, Schoenberg's seemingly intuitive pitch choices are
actually the result of a process of numerous elisions of
the more slowly-paced relations expressed in previous
music, here compressed to enormous density. However,
this elliptical process is too intense and strenuous to be
used in the creation of the whole music of a composer's
life, for as a device or technique it is not capable of
relaxation—the same rapid rate of unfolding persists
throughout. Indeed, if the work's thirty-five minutes were
not divided among so many separate numbers, this har-
monic density might become problematic. But its time
is broken up, thus relieving by external means the in-
tense internal compression.
MORTON GREEN
MEMORIAL
RECORD LIBRARY
Considering Pierrot externally —which is by no
means to suggest superficially — we must realize that
one of its most important aspects is in its unique mar-
riage of text and tone, its dependence on word in a
way unprecedented in tonal music. This relation mani-
fests itself in many ways, but most striking is the very
means by which the text is projected — Schoenberg's
famous "invention," Sprechstimme (a pitched declama-
tion, of an intensity almost verging on song). | suspect
that beyond any practical concern (including the rela-
tively greater ease of speaking as opposed to singing,
and the potentially swifter delivery of the text), beyond
any desire (never very strong in Schoenberg anyway) to
be "modern," Jay a notion of a new means of fusing
words and music, of bringing speech and song into
closer harmony, by creating a vocal projection half
spoken and half sung. His success in this direction can
be seen in the fact that Pierrot, although not Schoen-
berg's last work before the years-long silence in which
he conceived the twelve-tone system, may be called the
most complete. It is that because its form — directly
eae on the shape of the text — is so clear in the
arge.
The succession of Pierrot's twenty-one numbers and
their ordering in three parts are discussed in my trans-
lating colleague's notes, and | will not rehearse them
here. What was specifically important to Schoenberg
was the decision to create a work of so many short
numbers: his musical speech at the time would have
rendered virtually impossible the creation of a large,
continuous form. At this compositional stage, the use
of a repetitive poetic form ne rondeau) multiplied over
and over clearly provided him with a sense of stability
and security, despite the variety of ways in which he
treated the individual rondeaux, for his mind could thus
grasp entire the unfolding of each short movement. And
as these short movements served to clarify the prob-
lems of composing for him, so do they serve the same
function for us in listening; they can be grasped in their
entirety, remembered, and retained in the hearer's mind
to form building-blocks of the larger continuity that is
the work as a whole.
| have not tried to describe the complex compositional
devices used in Pierrot, although a deeper understand-
ing of the work does require at least an awareness of its
various contrapuntal operations. For present purposes,
| have felt it more important to attempt to establish a
basic approach to the work, for its abruptions still make
it difficult; even at this late date, listening to it occa-
sionally reminds one of attempts to befriend a porcu-
pine. It is also true, of course, that much of the soni¢
surface of the piece nowadays provides the listener with
a rather conventional impression, and it is easy to see in
Pierrot Wagnerian, not to mention Mahlerian, gestures
and phrase-shapes. Moreover, after the Pers
system had become established in Schoenberg's mind,
the expressionistic rhetoric of the earlier compositions,
including Pierrot, tended to remain in the surface of his
music, although his success in mastering basic structural
questions now enabled him to conceive and execute
large continuous forms.
—CHARLES WUORINEN
In 1960, Arthur Weisberg and about a dozen out-
standing New York instrumentalists, drawn from such
notable ensembles as the New York Woodwind Quintet,
the Beaux Arts Quartet, the Claremont Quartet, the
New York Brass Quintet, and the Manhattan Percussion
Ensemble, formed the Contemporary Chamber En-
semble and began giving concerts of modern music. The
H-71251 (Stereo)
nonesuch
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
(1874-1951)
PIERROT LUNAIRE, Op. 21 (1912}
Thrice Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's Pierrot Lunaire
(German by Otto Erich Hartleben)
Side One (18:46)
PART |
Mondestrunken — Columbine —
Der Dandy — Eine blasse Wascherin —
Valse de Chopin — Madonna —
Der kranke Mond (11:55)
PART II
Nacht — Gebet an Pierrot —
Raub — Rote Messe — Galgenlied (6:44)
Side Two (15:41)
PART II (concl.}
Enthauptung — Die Kreuze (4:24)
PART III
Heimweh — Gemeinheit! — Parodie —
Der Mondfleck — Serenade —
Heimfahrt — O alter Duft (11:12)
JAN DeGAETANI, voice
THE CONTEMPORARY CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
ARTHUR WEISBERG, conductor
Gilbert Kalish, piano
Thomas Nyfenger, flute & piccolo
Arthur Bloom, clarinet & bass clarinet
Jeanne Benjamin, violin & viola
Michael Rudiakov, cello
engineering & tape editing: Marc J. Aubort, Joanna Nickrenz (Elite Recordings, Inc.)
a Dolby-system recording
texts & translations enclosed
Ensemble's first five years of diligent efforts and out-
standing performances were rewarded by a grant from
the Rockefeller Foundation to set up a three-year resi-
dency at Rutgers University. This residency allowed the
Ensemble ample time to develop finished performances
of even the most difficult of contemporary pieces. Dur-
ing this period, the Ensemble built up a repertory of
about 100 new works, presented over 70 concerts, pro-
duced two programs for National Educational Tx 'evision,
and read and rehearsed a vast number of scores at
weekly composers’ workshops. Since the termination of
this residency, the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble
has continued to perform at colleges and universities
throughout the country, and is justly proud to have been
invited to perform at the Library of Congress for the
last nine consecutive years.
In 1969, Nonesuch Records released three albums con-
taining eight works, all premieres, recorded by the Con-
temporary Chamber Ensemble under a grant from the
Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation (SPECTRUM: New
American Music,H-71219, H-71220, H-71221). Each of
these albums won honors for the composers from the
1970 Koussevitzky International Recording Award. The
Ensemble has also recorded for Acoustic Research and
CRI.
Mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, born in Ohio, is a
graduate of the Juilliard School of Music. Since her New
York recital debut under a grant from the William Sulli-
van Musical Foundation, Miss DeGaetani has matured
into "that rare singer who has not only a rich, well-
produced voice and warm feeling for singing, but also
a precise intonation, an equally exact sense of rhythm
and a handsome stage presence’ (New York Times). She
has been heard in oratorio, opera, chamber music, and
solo recitals, on radio and television in the U.S.A. and
Europe, and is especially noted for her performances of
contemporary works. She has been a member of the
Abbey Singers, the Gramercy Chamber Ensemble, and
the Riverside Chamber Singers. As soloist she has ap-
peared with the Beaux-Arts String Quartet, the Fine
Arts Quartet, the Lark Quintet, the Penn Contemporary
Players, New York Pro Musica, Gunther Schuller's 20th-
Century Innovations, and with the the Contemporary
Chamber Ensemble.
Miss DeGaetani conducts master classes, was for
three summers Artist-in-Residence at the University of
Wisconsin, and is a former faculty member of the
Juilliard School of Music. She has perfomed in record-
ings for Decca, CRI, Music Guild, Acoustic Research,
and Nonesuch Records.
coordinator/Teresa Sterne art direction/Robert L. Heimall cover art/Peter Schaurnann cover design/Richard J. Nebiolo cover concept: Hess and/or Antupit
Printed in U.S.A. Nonesuch Records #15 Columbus Circle * New York, N.Y. 10023 @ Copyright 1971 by Nonesuch Records
SHOREPAK-U.S, PATENT NO. 3,301,467
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
(1874-1951)
PIERROT LUNAIRE, Op. 21 (1912)
Thrice Seven Poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire
(German by Otto Erich Hartleben)
Arnold Schoenberg wrote Pierrot Lunaire in 1912 at the request of
the actress Albertine Zehme, whose acquaintance the composer had
made shortly after he moved from Vienna to Berlin in 1911. As usual,
Schoenberg wrote with incredible speed: all but two of the pieces were
composed between March 12 and May 30, and fourteen of them re-
quired no more than a single day each for completion. The actress had
originally wanted only a piano accompaniment to her recitation;
Schoenberg extracted permission to use the other instruments one by
one. Thus economic considerations played a significant role in the form-
ation of the ensemble that lends Pierrot its remarkable timbral profile.
The first performance took place on October 16, 1912, in a small
theater in Berlin. Frau Zehme recited in a Columbine costume, while
PAIR T “il
1. MOONDRUNK
flute. violin, cello, piano
1. MONDESTRUNKEN
Schoenberg conducted the musicians behind a transparent scrim.
Schoenberg gave an important key to his attitude towards the texts
in his foreword to the published score, when he wrote: ‘In this work,
the performers at no time have the task of shaping the mood ana
character of the individual pieces according to the meaning of the
words, but rather according to the music. To whatever extent the com-
poser felt a tone-pictorial representation of the actions and feelings
indicated in the text to be important, it is simply to be found in the
music. Where the performer does not find such representation, he
should refrain from adding anything that the composer did not want.
In this instance he would not be adding, but rather detracting.”’
In the resonant bronze basin
Water spurts noisily with metallic laughter.
With a fantastical ray of light
The moon strikes sparks from the crystal flacons.
/n tonender, bronzener Schale
Lacht hell die Fontaine, metallischen Klangs.
Mit einem phantastischen Lichtstrahl
Erleuchtet der Mond die krystalinen Flacons.
Den Wein, den man mit Augen trinkt,
GieBt Nachts der Mond in Wogen nieder,
Und eine Springflut iberschwemmt
Den stillen Horizont.
Geliiste schauerlich und siB,
Durchschwimmen ohne Zahl die Fluten!
Den Wein, den man mit Augen trinkt,
GieBt Nachts der Mond in Wogen nieder.
Der Didter, den die Andacht treibt,
Berauscht sich an dem heilgen Tranke,
Gen Himmel wendet er verziickt
Das Haupt und taumelnd saugt und schlirit er
Den Wein, den man mit Augen trinkt.
2. COLUMBINE
The wine that only eyes can drink
Pours nighttimes from the moon in waves,
And its springtime tide floods over
The horizon’s quiet bowl.
Aching lusts, shocking and sweet,
Float beyond measure in the gushing philter!
The wine that only eyes can drink,
Pours nighttimes from the moon in waves.
The poet, under piety’s cover,
Gets fuddled on the holy brew;
Towards Heaven, rapt, tilts back his head
And giddily reeling laps and swills
The wine that only eyes can drink.
2. COLUMBINE
flute, clarinet in A, violin, piano
Des Mondlichts bleiche Bluten,
Die weiBen Wunderrosen,
Blihn in den Julinachten—
O brach ich eine nur!
Mein banges Leid zu lindern,
Such ich am dunklen Strome
Des Mondlichts bleiche Bliten,
Die weiBen Wunderrosen.
Gestillt war all mein Sehnen,
Dirft ich so marchenheimlich,
So selig leis—entblattern
Auf deine braunen Haare
Des Mondlichts bleiche Bliten!
3. DER DANDY
The moonlight’s pallid blossoms,
The white and wondrous roses,
Bloom in midsummer midnights —
O! could | pluck but one!
To still my luckless grieving
| seek in Lethe’s murky stream
The moonlight’s pallid blossoms,
The white and wondrous roses.
All my yearning would be sated
Could I, in fairytale secret,
In gentle bliss . . . rip petal from petal
And scatter in your auburn hair
The moonlight’s pallid blossoms.
3. THE DANDY
piccolo, clarinet in A, piano
Mit einem phantastischen Lichtstrahl
Erleuchtet der Mond die krystalinen Flacons
Auf dem schwarzen, hochheiligen Waschtisch
Des schweigenden Dandys von Bergamo.
With a fantastical ray of light
The moon strikes sparks from the crystal flacons
On that ebony high altar, the washstand
Of the laconic dandy from ‘Bergamo.
Pierrot mit dem wachsernen Antlitz
Steht sinnend und denkt: wie er heute
sich schminkt?
Fort schiebt er das Rot und des Orients Griin
Und bemalt sein Gesicht in erhabenem Stil
Mit einem phantastischen Mondstrahl.
4, EINE BLASSE WASCHERIN
He of the waxworks face, Pierrot,
Racks his brain and thinks: How shall |
make me up today?
Vetoes rouge and Orient green
And paints his phizz in loftier style —
With a fantastical ray of light.
4. A PALE WASHERWOMAN
flute, clarinet in A, violin
Eine blasse Wascherin
Wascht zur Nachtzeit bleiche Tiicher;
Nackte, silberweipe Arme
Streckt sie nieder in die Flut.
Durch die Lichtung schleichen Winde,
Leis bewegen sie den Strom.
Eine blasse Wascherin
Wascht zur Nachtzeit bleiche Tiicher.
Und die sanfte Magd des Himmels,
Von den Zweigen zart umschmeichelt,
Breitet auf die dunklen Wiesen
thre lichtgewobnen Linnen—
Eine blasse Wascherin.
5. VALSE DE CHOPIN
A washerwoman pale as a sheet
Washes nights her bleachpale linen,
Dips naked arms white as silver
Glistening down into the stream.
Through the clearing sidle breezes
Gently ruffling up the river.
A washerwoman pale as a sheet
Washes nights her bleachpale linen.
Heaven's lovely livid scullion,
By the branches gently tickled,
Lays out upon the darkling meadows
Her bedlinen woven of threads of light —
A washerwoman pale as a sheet.
5. VALSE DE CHOPIN
flute, clarinet in A, bass clarinet in Bb, piano
Wie ein blasser Tropfen Bluts
Farbt die Lippen einer Kranken,
Also ruht auf diesen Tonen
Ein vernichtungssiichtger Reiz.
Wilder Lust Accorde storen
Der Verzweiflung eisgen Traum—
Wie ein blasser Tropfen Bluts
Farbt die Lippen einer Kranken.
Hei8 und jauchzend, sii6 und schmachtend,
Melancholisch diistrer Walzer,
Kommst mir nimmer aus den Sinnen!
Haftest mir an den Gedanken,
Wie ein blasser Tropfen Bluts!
Like a spitwatered drop of blood
Rouging the lips of the phthisic sick.
So upon these morbid tones
There lies a soul-destroying spell.
Crimson chords of fierce desire
Splatter despair’s white-icy dream —
Like a spitwatered drop of blood
Rouging the lips of the phthisic sick.
Hot exultant, sweetly longing,
Melancholy nightwood waltz
Nagging sleepless at my brain,
Cleaving to my every thought,
Like a spitwatered drop of blood!
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:
It comes near to foolishness to venture yet another translation of the
free version that the German playwright Otto Erich Hartleben
(1864-1905) made of the youthful but subtly Saturnian post-Verlaine
French poems that the Belgian critic and dramatist Albert Giraud
(1860-1929) published in 1884 in a slim volume now very rare indeed;
to attempt, over and beyond this, to convey some of the passionately
expressionistic nuances those poems were given in the diffracting mirror
of Schoenberg's music is to tread where no fool rushes. What is offered
here is, for those reasons, neither a syllable-for-syllable nor note-for-
note translation, though here and there the words fall right and key
words receive some of the emphasis they have in the music. Nor is it
always literal. In a few places, to give something of the emotional
musical meaning, a hint has been borrowed from the French originals
(did Schoenberg know them?) and—more often—from the music itself.
Fairly often, words were chosen to reflect not the sound of the German
text but that of the music.
Solemn as we now tend to be about Schoenberg and his works, we
are likely to overlook the adroit wit with which he manipulated these
sharp-etched rondeaux. Even more, we.fail to see that Pierrot Lunaire
was a work of its time, a genuinely art-nouveau obeisance to much the
same themes treated in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, first performed
just one year earlier. For all the intense concentration and virtually
chemical refinement of Schoenberg’s Op. 21, it too opens with its poet
drunk on wine and likewise closes with a return homeward, with an
appreciation of “die liebe Welt’ of day, after night thoughts and
sorrows, and with the poet-composer’s surrender to the eternal and the
infinite which, in the extraordinary compression of Pierrot, means to
the “infinite nutshell’ of the handful of notes—not one too many or
too few—to which Schoenberg set the words ‘‘und traum hinaus in selge
Weiten."
Schoenberg himself chose from a total of 50 the ‘‘thrice seven”
poems he wished to set (a number corresponding to the opus number of
the work but certainly determined also by his lifelong preoccupation
with Cabalistic number-symbolism as applied here to a text that was
obviously of personal emotional significance to him), and his choice
was surely influenced by thought of Mahler’s titanic but intimate
symphony for two voices and orchestra. As with Mahler, there is
deliberate confusion—interpenetration, interaction, fusion and dis-
‘persion—between the | and the third-person-singular, between Poet and
Pierrot (who, in fact, appears in person in only eleven of the
twenty-one poems). Further, the work is genuinely cyclical, with what
is tantamount to a narrative underlying it, though all its events would
seem to take place in the mind or nightmare rather than in or on
Mahler’s “beloved earth.”’
In the first song, the Poet (the composer) gets divinely drunk on
moonwine, and what follows in the first seven is a whirlpool of love and
sexual longing (nos. 2, 4, 5, 7), neurasthenic tancies (5, 7), religious
hysteria (6), Beardsleyan trifling (3), and a nightworld metaphor that
seems like a sketch for Anna Livia Plurabelle (4). In the second
sequence of seven, the plunge is taken—literally—into the underworld
with obsessions of guilt and expiation, linked with the loss of innocence
(9), with pillage (10), blasphemy (11), or the voluntary martyrdom that
Schoenberg himself, we know, conceived to be the artist’s lot (14). The
final sequence represents the slow climb out of the lower depths, with a
prise de conscience (15), one last teasing (17), and a farewell to vulgar
sadism (16; Hartleben, interestingly, foisted on Giraud’s Pierrot cruel
the title of Gemeinheit!—Vulgar Horseplay!—and Schoenberg retained
it), a final obsession with guilt of a sort to make a Freudian smile (18),
a Pierrot still zany and prankish but—the music tells us—already caught
up in gentler dreams (19), the journey out of the art-nouveau gothic
night of the North with its vaulted sepulchers and storks and gaunt
Madonnas southward to the sun (20), and the homecoming (21), the
Poet’s sober return to himself, his rejection of moondrunkenness in
favor of the stirrings of spirit and senses in ‘‘daytime thoughts of world
| love’: Pierrot Lunaire was, in fact, the last major work but one of
Schoenberg’s expressionist aesthetic, to be succeeded after a virtual
silence of eleven years by his neo-classical first experiments with the
“method of composition with twelve tones.”
We are not likely now ever to learn if the composer had in mind the
program his work reveals, but his choice of poems, and his ordering and
setting of them, is no less meaningful for being conscious or
unconscious. By ten years later he could write about them (in a letter
to Marya Freund, December 30, 1922): “| apparently have taken a
decidedly more naive view of these poems than most people, and | am
still not entirely doubtful that this is so thoroughly unjustified.
Anyway | am not responsible for what people insist on reading into the
words. If they were musical, not one of them would give a damn for the
words. Instead they would go away whistling the tunes.”
nonesuch
H-71251 (Stereo)
coordinator/Teresa Sterne cover art/Peter Schaumann
cover design/Richard J. Nebiolo
art direction/Robert L. Heimall
© Copyright 1971 by Nonesuch Records e 15 Columbus Circle e New York, N. Y. 10023 © Printed in U.S.A.
6. MADONNA
6. MADONNA
flute, bass clarinet in Bb, violin, cello, piano
Steig, o Mutter aller Schmerzen,
Auf den Altar meiner Verse!
Blut aus deinen magren Briisten
Hat des Schwertes Wut vergossen.
Deine ewig frischen Wunden
Gleichen Augen, rot und offen.
Steig, o Mutter aller Schmerzen,
Auf den Altar meiner Verse!
In den abgezehrten Handen
Haltst du deines Sohnes Leiohe.
Ihn zu zeigen aller Menschheit—
Doch der Blick der Menschen meidet
Dich, o Mutter aller Schmerzen!
7. DER KRANKE MOND
Du nachtig todeskranker Mond
Dort auf des Himmels schwarzem Pfuhl,
Dein Blick, so fiebernd bergroB,
Bannt mich wie fremde Melodie.
An unstillbarem Liebesleid
Stirbst du, an Sehnsucht, tief erstickt,
Du nachtig todeskranker Mond
Dort auf des Himmels schwarzem Pfuhl.
Den Liebsten, der im Sinnenrausch
Gedankenlos zur Liebsten schleicht,
Belustigt deiner Strahlen Spiel—
Dein bleiches, qualgebornes Blut,
Du nachtig todeskranker Mond.
Mount, Madonna of all sorrows,
Upon the altar of my verses!
Blood from out thy milkless breasts
Spilled at the saber’s angry slash.
Thy wounds, fresh always, weeping blood,
Are sleepless eyes, red and staring.
Mount, Madonna of all sorrows,
Upon the altar of my verses!
In thy fleshless wasted hands
Thou holdst the corpse that was thy Son
As tidings to a careless world
But still they turn their eyes away
From thee, Madonna of all sorrows.
7. THE SICK MOON
flute
You darkgloomed lifesick deathbed moon
Splayed white on night-sky’s. pillow,
Your huge and feverswollen face
Holds me fast, like alien tones.
From stanchless quenchless ache of love
You'll die of yearning, choked and smothered,
You darkgloomed lifesick deathbed moon
Splayed white on night-sky’s pillow.
The lovedrunk lover on his way
Thoughtless to his lover’s bed
Applauds as charming silver rays
The hueless pain-born blood you spill,
You darkgloomed lifesick deathbed moon.
PART Il
8. NACHT (Passacaglia)
8. NIGHT (Passacaglia)
bass clarinet in Bb, cello, piano
Finstre, schwarze Riesenfalter
Toteten der Sonne Glanz.
Ein geschlossnes Zauberbuch,
Ruht der Horizont—verschwiegen.
Aus dem Qualm verlorner Tiefen
Steigt ein Duft, Erinnrung mordend!
Finstre, schwarze Reisenfalter
Téteten der Sonne Glanz.
Und vom Himmel erdenwarts
Senken sich mit schweren Schwingen
Unsichtbar die Ungetiime
Auf die Menschenherzen nieder . . .
Finstre, schwarze Riesentalter.
9. GEBET AN PIERROT
Sinister giant black butterflies
Eclipse the blazing disk of sun.
Like a sealed-up book of wizard’s spells
Sleeps the horizon—secret silent.
From dank forgotten depths of Lethe
Ascent floats up, to murder memory.
Sinister giant black’ butterflies
Eclipse the blazing disk of sun.
And from heaven downward dropping
To the earth in leaden circles,
Invisible, the monstrous swarm
Descends upon the hearts of men,
Sinister giant black butterflies.
9. PRAYER TO PIERROT
clarinet in A, piano
Pierrot! Mein Lachen
Hab ich verlernt!
Das Bild des Glanzes
ZerfloB—ZerfloB!
Schwarz weht die Flagge
Mir nun vom Mast.
Pierrot! Mein Lachen
Hab ich verlernt!
O gieb mir wieder,
Rofarzt der Seele,
Schneemann der Lyrik,
Durchlaucht vom Monde,
Pierrot—mein Lachen!
Pierrot! My laughter’s
All forgot!
The radiant image
Dissolved — dissolved!
Black blows the flag
That flies at my mast.
Pierrot! My laughter’s
All forgot!
O give me back —
Soul’s Veterinarian,
Snowman of Verse,
Your Way-Up-Highness the Moon,
Pierrot — my laughter!
10. RAUB
10. THEFT
flute, clarinet in A, violin, cello
Rote, fiirstliche Rubine,
Blutge Tropfen alten Ruhmes,
Schlummern in den Totenschreinen,
Drunten in den Grabgewolben.
Nachts, mit seinen Zechkumpanen,
Steigt Pierrot hinab—zu rauben
Rote, furstliche.Rubine,
Blutge Tropfen alten Ruhmes.
Doch da—strauben sich die Haare,
Bleiche Furcht bannt sie am Platze:
Durch die Finsternis—wie Augen!—
Stieren aus den Totenschreinen
Rote, fiirstliche Rubine.
11. ROTE MESSE
Red and princely rubies,
Bloody drops of fabled fame,
Slumber with dead men’s bones
Beneath the vaults of sepulchers.
At night, with fellow tipplers,
Pierrot breaks in—to steal
Red and princely rubies,
Bloody drops of fabled fame.
But there!—their hair’s on end—
Livid fear turns them to stone:
Through the dark like gleaming eyes
Goggle from the chests of bones
Red and princely rubies.
11. RED MASS
piccolo, bass clarinet in Bb, viola, cello, piano
Zu grausem Abendmahle,
Beim Blendeglanz des Goldes,
Beim Flackerschein der Kerzen,
Naht dem Altar—Pierrot!
Die Hand, die gottgeweihte,
ZerreiBt die Priesterkleider
Zu grausem Abendmahle,
Beim Blendeglanz des Goldes.
Mit segnender Geberde
Zeigt er den bangen Seelen
Die triefend rote Hostie:
Sein Herz—in blutgen Fingern—
Zu grausem Abendmahle!
12. GALGENLIED
At the gruesome Eucharist,
In the trumpery golden glare,
In the shuddering candlelight,
To the altar comes—Pierrot!
His hand, by Grace anointed,
Rips open his priestly vestment
At the gruesome Eucharist,
In the trumpery golden glare.
With hand upraised in blessing
He holds aloft to trembling souls
The holy crimson-oozing Host:
His ripped-out heart—in bloody fingers—
At the gruesome Eucharist.
12. GALLOWS DITTY
piccolo, viola, cello
Die diirre Dirne
Mit langem Halse
Wird seine letzte
Geliebte sein.
In seinem Hirne
Steckt wie ein Nagel
Die diirre Dirne
Mit langem Halse.
Schlank wie die Pinie,
Am Hals ein Zopfchen—
Wolliistig wird sie
Den Schelm umhalsen,
Die diirre Dirne!
13. ENTHAUPTUNG
The wood-dry whore
With rope-long neck
Will be the last lover
To hold him tight.
She sticks in his brain
Like a hammered-in nail,
The wood-dry whore
With rope-long neck.
Pinetree-scrawny
With hank of hair,
The lecher, she'll grab
The wretch’s neck,
The wood-dry whore!
13. BEHEADING
bass clarinet in Bb, viola, cello, piano
Der Mond, ein blankes Tiirkenschwert
Auf einem schwarzen Seidenkissen,
Gespenstisch groB—draut er hinab
Durch schmerzensdunkle Nacht.
Pierrot irrt ohne Rast umher
Und starrt empor in Todesangsten
Zum Mond, dem blanken Tiirkenschwert
Auf einem schwarzen Seidenkissen.
Es schlottern unter ihm die Knie,
Ohnmachtig bricht er jah zusammen.
Er wahnt: es sause strafend schon
Auf seinen Siinderhals hernieder
Der Mond, das blanke Turkenschwert.
The moon, a naked scimitar
Upon a black silk cushion,
Ghostly huge hangs threatening down
Through night as dark as woe.
Pierrot, who paces about in panic,
Stares up and feels the clutch of death
At sight of moon, a naked scimitar
Upon a black silk cushion.
Knees atremble, quaking, shaking,
He falls into a faint of fright,
Convinced it’s slashing down already
On his guilty sinful neck,
The moon, the naked scimitar.
14, DIE KREUZE
14. THE CROSSES
flute, clarinet in A, violin, cello, piano
Heilge Kreuze sind die Verse,
Dran die Dichter stumm verbluten,
Blindgeschlagen von der Geier
Flatterndem Gespensterschwarme!
In den Leibern schwelgten Schwerter,
Prunkend in des Blutes Scharlach!
Heilge Kreuze sind die Verse,
Dran die Dichter stumm verbluten.
Tot das Haupt—erstarrt die Locken—
Fern, verweht der Larm des Pobels.
Langsam sinkt die Sonne nieder,
Eine rote Konigskrone.—
Heilge Kreuze sind die Verse!
PART Ill
15. HEIMWEH
Poems are poets’ holy crosses
Where they, silent, bleed to death,
Eyes struck blind by beating wings
Of a spectral vulture swarm.
Their ragged flesh the prey of daggers
Reveling in their scarlet blood!
Poems are poets’ holy crosses
Where they, silent, bleed to death.
Bowed and wounded sinks the head,
Afar the silly mob still prattles.
Slowly solemn sinks the sun,
Gold and red of royal crown.
Poems are poets’ holy crosses.
15. HOMESICKNESS
flute, clarinet in A, violin, cello, piano
Lieblich klagend—ein krystallnes Seufzen
Aus Italiens alter Pantomime,
Klingts heruber: wie Pierrot so hélzern,
So modern sentimental geworden.
Und es tont durch seines Herzens Wiiste,
Tont gedampft durch alle Sinne wieder,
Lieblich klagend—ein krystallnes Seufzen
Aus Italiens alter Pantomime.
Da vergi$t Pierrot die Trauermienen!
Durch den bleichen Feuerschein des Mondes,
Durch des Lichtmeers Fluten—
schweift die Sehnsucht
Kiihn hinauf, empor zum Heimathimmel
Lieblich klagend—ein krystallnes Seufzen!
16. GEMEINHEIT!
Gently keening, a crystalline sighing
Voice out of Italy's old pantomime
Complains how Pierrot’s grown so wooden,
So trite and mawkish, inanely a la mode,
When its voice is heard in the wilderness
Of his heart and all his senses,
Gently keening, a crystalline sighing
Voice out of Italy’s old pantomime,
Pierrot drops his churlish sulking,
And through wan flame of moonlight,
Through tides of light, his homesick yearning
Soars abroad to happier skies,
Gently keening, a crystalline sighing.
16. VULGAR HORSEPLAY!
piccolo, clarinet in A, violin, cello, piano
In den blanken Kopf Cassanders,
Dessen Schrein die Luft durchzetert,
Bohrt Pierrot mit Heuchlermienen,
Zartlich—einen Schadelbohrer!
Darauf stopft er mit dem Daumen
Seinen echten tiirkischen Taback
In den blanken Kopf Cassanders,
Dessen Schrein die Luft durchzetert!
Dann dreht er ein Rohr von Weichsel
Hinten in die glatte Glatze
Und behabig schmaucht und pafft er
Seinen echten tiirkischen Taback
Aus dem blanken Kopf Cassanders!
17. PARODIE
Into Pantaloon’s bonebald head—
who screams and shrieks and rends the air—
Pierrot, that ace of hypocrites,
Drills—tenderly!—with a surgeon’s borer.
Then uses his thumb to pack and tamp
His choicest blend of Turkish tobacco
Into Pantaloon’s bonebald head—
who screams and shrieks and rends the air.
Ther screws a stem of cherrywood
Into the back of the polished pate,
Lights up and nonchalantly puffs away
At his choicest blend of Turkish tobacco
Through Pantaloon’s bonebald head!
17. PARODY
piccolo, clarinet in A, viola, piano
Stricknadeln, blank und blinkend,
In ihrem grauen Haar,
Sitzt die Duenna murmetind,
Im roten Rockchen da.
Sie wartet in der Laube,
Sie liebt Pierrot mit Schmerzen,
Stricknadein, blank und blinkend,
In ihrem grauen Haar.
Da plotzlich—horch!—ein Wispern!
Ein Windhauch kichert leise:
Der Mond, der bose Spotter,
Afft nach mit seinen Strahlen—
Stricknadein, blink und blank.
With knitting needles steely bright
Stuck in her mousegray hair,
The duenna sits there all atwitter
In her best red party frock.
She’s waiting ‘neath the bower,
Ablaze for Pierrot with passion,
With knitting needles steely bright
Stuck in her mousegray hair.
Suddenly—hark!—a whisper,
The titter of a puff of wind:
The moon, coldhearted cynic,
Is aping with quicksilver beams
Those knitting needles steely bright.
18. DER MONDFLECK
18. THE MOONFLECK
piccolo, clarinet in Bb, violin, cello, piano
Ejinen weiBen Fleck des hellen Mondes
Auf dem Ricken seines schwarzen Rockes,
So spaziert Pierrot im lauen Abend,
Aufzusuchen Glick und Abenteuer.
Plotzlich stort ihn was an seinem Anzug,
Er beschaut sich rings und findet richtig—
Einen weiBen Fleck des hellen Mondes
Auf dem Rucken seines schwarzen Rockes.
Warte! denkt er: das ist so ein Gipsfleck!
Wischt und wischt, doch—
bringt ihn nicht herunter!
Und so geht er, giftgeschwollen, weiter,
Reibt und reibt bis an den friihen Morgen—
Ejinen weiBen Fleck des hellen Mondes.
19. SERENADE
With a fleck of white—bright patch of moonlight-
On the back of his black jacket,
Pierrot strolls about in the mild evening air
On his night-time hunt for fun and good pickings.
Suddenly something strikes him as wrong,
He checks his clothes over and sure enough finds
A fleck 6f white—bright patch of moonlight—
On the back of his black jacket.
Damn! he thinks, There’s a spot of white plaster!
Rubs and rubs, but can't get rid of it,
So goes on his way, his pleasure poisoned,
Rubbing and rubbing till dawn comes up—
At a fleck of white, a bright patch of moonlight!
19, SERENADE
flute, clarinet in A, violin, cello, piano
Mit groteskem Riesenbogen
Kratzt Pierrot auf seiner Bratsche,
Wie der Storch auf einem Beine,
Knipst er triib ein Pizzicato.
Plotzlich naht Cassander—wiitend -
Ob des nachtgen Virtuosen—
Mit groteskem Riesenbogen
Kratzt Pierrot auf seiner Bratsche.
Von sich wirft er jetzt die Bratsche:
Mit der delikaten Linken
Fa®t den Kahikopf er am Kragen—
Trdumend spielt er auf der Glatze
Mit groteskem Riesenbogen.
20. HEIMFAHRT (Barcarole)
With grotesquely giant-sized bow
Pierrot draws cat-squeals from his viola.
Like a stork, on one leg balanced,
He plucks a doleful pizzicato.
Out pops furious Pantaloon
Raging at the night-time virtuoso—
With grotesquely giant-sized bow
Pierrot draws cat-squeals from his viola.
So the player drops his fiddle;
Delicately, with his skilled left hand,
Grabs old baldy by the collar—
And dreamily plays upon his pate
With grotesquely giant-sized bow.
20. HOMEWARD JOURNEY (Barcarole)
flute, clarinet in A, violin, cello, piano
Der Mondstrahl ist das Ruder,
Seerose dient als Boot;
Drauf fahrt Pierrot gen Suden
Mit gutem Reisewind.
Der Strom summt tiefe Skalen
Und wiegt den leichten Kahn.
Der Mondstrahl ist das Ruder,
Seerose dient als Boot.
Nach Bergamo, zur Heimat,
Kehrt nun Pierrot zuriick;
Schwach dammert schon im Osten
Der griine Horizont.
—Der Mondstrahl ist das Ruder.
21. O ALTER DUFT
With moonbeam as his rudder,
His boat a water lily,
Pierrot sails softly southward
Driven onward by the wind.
The river hums its watery scales
And gently rocks his skiff,
With moonbeam as his rudder,
His boat a water lily.
To Bergamo, his native land,
Pierrot is homeward bound.
Pale dawns already in the east
The green of morning's rim
—With moonbeam as his rudder.
21. O SCENT OF FABLED YESTERYEAR
flute, piccolo, clarinet in A, bass clarinet in Bb, violin, viola, cello, piano
O alter Duft aus Marchenzeit,
Berauschest wieder meine Sinne;
Ein narrisch Heer von Schelmerein
Durchschwirrt die leichte Luft.
Ein gliickhaft Wiinschen macht mich froh
Nach Freuden, die ich lang verachtet:
O alter Duft aus Marchenzeit,
Berauschest wieder mich!
All meinen Unmut gab ich preis;
Aus meinem sonnumrahmten Fenster
Beschau ich frei die liebe Welt
Und traum hinaus in selge Weiten.. .
O alter Duft—aus Marchenzeit!
O scent of fabled yesteryear,
Befuddling my senses with bygone joys!
Asilly swarm of idle fancies
Murmurs through the gentle air.
A happy ending so long yearned for.
Recalls old pleasures long disdained:
O scent of fabled yesteryear,
Befuddling me again!
My bitter mood has turned to peace;
My sundrenched window opens wide
On daytime thoughts of world | love,
To daydreams of a world beyond. . .
O scent of fabled yesteryear!
translation by ROBERT ERICH WOLF
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