Schönberg: Pelleas und Melisande op. 5
Fauré: Pelléas et Mélisande (suite) op. 80
hr-Sinfonieorchester (Frankfurt Radio Symphony) conducted by Paavo Järvi
Alpha 1058 • 59' •
Recording: Oct. 2012, Alte Oper Frankfurt (Schönberg); Jan. 2014, hr-Sendesaal Frankfurt am Main (Fauré)
Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande originated in the period 1902-1903, when the composer had not yet turned to the atonal vistas for which he would later become famous. This is Late Romanticism pure and simple, and perhaps the work would never have come into being had Richard Strauss not directed him to Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same name. At that time they got along excellently: Strauss and Schönberg, until Schönberg's Fünf Orchesterstücke op. 16, completed in 1909 (revised in 1922 and 1949), were published and Strauss subsequently dismissed the composition with the telling remark that Schönberg would do better to 'go sweep snow'. In a sense, no wonder, for those five orchestral pieces, together with Erwartung (1909), Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and Die glückliche Hand (1913), belonged among Schönberg's most boundary-breaking music.
For large orchestra
It certainly says something that Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande is 'properly' notated in d minor, with all the expressive energy that goes with this dark key. And—how could it be otherwise!—scored for 'großes Orchester', namely piccolo, three flutes (the third also second piccolo), three oboes (the third also English horn), English horn, four clarinets (including E-flat clarinet, the third clarinet also second bass clarinet), bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, four trumpets, alto trombone, four tenor-bass trombones, tuba, timpani (2 players), triangle, cymbals, tam-tam, large tenor drum, bass drum, glockenspiel, two harps and string section. A scoring that many a conductor could break his teeth on with regard to nothing more than the mutual balance and the required precision.
Alban Berg, a devoted pupil of Schönberg, had a warm heart for the piece and made an extensive analysis of it. His principal point of departure: that it was nothing other than a four-part symphony that followed the dramatic action almost to the letter. Simplified, it amounts to an introduction in sonata form ('Im Walde'), the fate theme (exposition) with its rising major seventh and descending triad (major third), the themes symbolizing the meeting between Mélisande and Golaud, and the 'Hauptsatz' with the transition to the second theme (Mélisande) and the conclusion (Mélisande's awakening love). Then the second movement, the 'Springbrunnenscherzo' with the chamber scene, the meeting between Pelléas and Golaud, and the descent of the two brothers into the ghostly cellar vault (extra 'lustre' added by the trombone glissandi, which Schönberg prescribed for the first time in his compositional career). The Adagio depicts the parting of Pelléas and Mélisande. It is concluded with a dramatic finale that depicts Mélisande's death. The use of harmonic diatonic and quartal chords sometimes push the music just over the threshold of Late Romanticism, but the most important thing is that Schönberg played an extremely expressive trump with this work that, both in detail and as a whole, continues to make a deep impression today. The composer himself conducted the premiere on 26 January 1905 at a concert of the Vienna Society of Creative Musicians. That the Maeterlinck drama inspired Schönberg greatly is hardly surprising: the same happened to Debussy, Fauré (more about which later), Sibelius, Scott and Wallace.
Ambiguity, sensuality
In 1902, Schönberg's chromaticism still stood in relatively linear relation to that of Wagner and Strauss. We find ourselves thereby—and not only in Pelleas und Melisande—in the thematic language as it held sway around the Viennese fin-de-siècle. Not only in music, but also in literature, the visual arts, architecture, furniture and even adjacent psychology. There too are the flaming eroticism and cosmic symbolism. Of course, that did not leave Schönberg untouched at that time either. In music, the boundaries of tonality blurred, the dominant chord seemed in some circles to have been declared dead. Instead, ambiguity, mixed with a not to be missed dose of sensuality. We got Verklärte Nacht (1899) and we got Gurre-Lieder (1901).
Schreker
In Schönberg's famous Harmonielehre (1911), Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang (1910) is cited, an opera that still bore the clear traces of Late Romanticism and which also left a deep impression on the then still young Alban Berg. So much so that he made a piano reduction of it. It also says something about Schreker's influence on composition in Vienna around the turn of the century. Paul Bekker even hailed Schreker as the savior of the stalled Wagnerian tradition, which led to heated discussions in the press ('Der Fall Schreker'). The European opera houses competed to perform his operas and there was no other living opera composer who got to taste so many performances per season. Schreker had dragged the late romanticism of Richard Strauss into a new dimension and then made good profits from it.
It had its reasons…
Vienna around 1895
In 1895, Vienna, as ever a liberal stronghold, the imperial city within the Dual Monarchy, was swept up in a veritable flood, driven by Christian-social sentiments of various kinds. Within that Dual Monarchy, farmers, burghers and outsiders formed various new social groups both in the countryside and in the major cities, wishing to have a say in their own fate by actively participating in political life, which until then had been successfully shielded by autocracy. They challenged liberal supremacy and achieved considerable successes. One of those successes was the appointment of Karl Lueger, an anti-Semite through and through, as mayor of the city of Vienna. It was unprecedented: the almighty emperor having to bow to the will of the citizens!
With Lueger's appointment in 1897, the new Christian-socialists could begin realizing their dream: rule over Vienna, the long-desired reckoning with virtually everything the city had stood for for decades. Away with liberalism, make way for anti-Semitism, socialism and clericalism. In parliament the ruling liberal power was broken, a setback from which the liberals would never recover. The new political order was henceforth in the hands of Christian, anti-Semitic, socialist and nationalist mass movements. The culture-hostile masses celebrated their victory even before the conditions for political enlightenment had been created, Carl Schorske wrote. In the 'Neue Freie Presse' it was said that during the carnival in 1897 the liberals wore nothing but false noses to hide their anxious faces behind. Instead of the cheerful waltz, one hears only the screams of an excited, noisy crowd and the loudly barked orders of the police to disperse the political opponents.
Sacred cows toppled
A bomb was laid under the old order to which music too could be said to belong. Tonal organization still dragged on, the triad was still the familiar, solid foundation in the musical hierarchy, but soon the idea developed that the dissonant had to break free from the consonant that traditionally held it in its grip. It had to go considerably further than the chromaticism which—according to Alfred Brendel—stood for suffering and uncertainty, and there was certainly no question of holding fast to the pure diatonic harmony that radiated faith certainty. According to Schorske, it had to be much more than Chaos and Light according to Haydn's Schöpfung model. The fin-de-siècle had arrived, the process of 'reorientation' toppled many sacred cows. The new laws of Schönberg, however gradually introduced, were ultimately aimed at hollowing out tonality. Nothing like that had been seen since Rameau, the court composer of Louis XV: that the strictly clear and unambiguous harmony theory was in need of replacement, had to be exchanged for the new harmony theory of Arnold Schönberg. The tonal system had reached its end. In Schönberg's eyes, that symbolized little more than cultural complacency, the key concept in his Harmonielehre:
'Unsere Zeit sucht vieles. Gefunden aber hat sie vor allem etwas: den Komfort. Der drängt sich in seiner ganzen Breite sogar in die Welt der Ideen und macht es uns so bequem, wie wir es nicht haben dürften. Man versteht es heute besser denn je, sich das Leben angenehm zu machen. Man löst Probleme, um eine Unannehmlichkeit aus dem Wege zu räumen. Aber wie löst man sie? Und daß man überhaupt meint, sie gelöst zu haben! Darin zeigt sich am deutlichsten, was die Voraussetzung der Bequemlichkeit ist: die Oberflächigkeit. So ist es leicht, eine 'Weltanschauung' zu haben, wenn man nur das anschaut, was angenehm ist, und das Übrige keines Blickes würdigt. Das Übrige, die Hauptsache nämlich. [...] Der Komfort als Weltanschauung! Möglichst wenig Bewegung, keine Erschütterung. Die den Komfort so lieben, werden nie dort suchen, wo nicht bestimmt etwas zu finden ist.'
Functionalism
Schönberg was clearly a non-conformist whose views on art must have been completely foreign to the Viennese en masse at the time. In practice, for Schönberg it must have amounted to fighting against the tide; he, the misunderstood one in a city whose social structure still bore strong feudal traits and was more oriented towards trade, industry and luxury consumption than towards relentless grinding, intellectual drive for renewal.
Schönberg's Harmonielehre arose in an environment permeated with Jugendstil, which was opposed to the characteristic individualism that typified the movement around Schönberg to such a high degree. Schönberg, who stood closer to Kokoschka than to Picasso. On the other hand, the Viennese cultured-aesthetic complacent milieu proved to be an excellent breeding ground for practicing 'Schönberg's doctrine'. Or in other words, it was precisely Viennese indifference that brought the greatest talents to fruition, a phenomenon not far removed from what happened exactly a century earlier, when young Beethoven thumbed his nose at convention and, with arms folded across his chest, went his own way with no small measure of success, against oppression. A revolutionary from Bonn who took up the struggle against the 'comfort' for which Haydn and Mozart before him had set the tone for years. It was Beethoven first who confronted musical society with 'Problems' and 'Inconveniences' of a high and pioneering caliber.
The image of composer Schönberg and his Viennese contemporary architect Adolf Loos fit together almost perfectly, with functionalism (form follows function) in both music and architecture. After all, in Schönberg's later twelve-tone system, once the 'romantic yoke' has been definitively cast off, it revolves around the (specific) functional relationships within design and construction, with the serial technique as its reflection. Pelleas und Melisande can be regarded as a preliminary stage in that development.
Fauré and Koechlin with successful rushed work
How different is the case with Gabriel Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande, which some still believe is the only work of the same name by the French composer. Hence this reminder of the prehistory, which began in spring 1898 with Fauré's acceptance of the commission to compose music for Maeterlinck's play of the same name. The French composer was in London at the time, where the celebrated actress Patrick Campbell offered him the commission to compose the incidental music. Debussy had indeed been the first choice, but showed no interest because he happened to be working on his own opera based on the same text around that time.
Whether Fauré was ultimately happy with Campbell's commission remains to be seen, as he was not given much time to compose: the premiere was set for 21 June and could not be changed. While it seemed impossible to deliver substantial incidental music within such a short timeframe. Good advice was hard to find, but the solution was found in one of Fauré's very talented pupils: Charles Koechlin, who managed to complete the orchestration in sketch form within a month and deliver almost twenty numbers of the incidental music itself.
All that hurried work (which does not mean it was sloppy!) did not, however, prevent a great London theatrical success: the audience proved to be wildly enthusiastic. Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande in English translation on stage, with the almost fragile, mysterious and fairy-tale-like, but far from saccharine and sentimental music as an ideal spiritual partner connected with Maeterlinck's dramatic text.
It was possibly a blessing in disguise that due to time pressure Koechlin could not allow himself too many instrumental digressions. By orchestrating 'economically', the time pressure could apparently be sufficiently compensated for, which moreover benefited transparency. It cannot be ruled out that partly because of this, the public success was so great, while text intelligibility also benefited (for Schönberg, the latter was of no importance whatsoever with regard to his conception of Pelleas und Melisande).
Symbolism
And to think that the play itself, which premiered on 16 May 1893 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, received no further attention from the public thereafter. While the very talented Belgian was indeed one of the most important exponents of emerging symbolism, a movement that between 1880 and 1910, particularly in France, reached a true peak in music, literature, visual arts and theatre. Symbolism as a counterpart to realism and naturalism, which in the mid-1850s was deemed in need of change, had to make way for symbolism, which for many artists was a new and indeed ideal source of inspiration and nourishment because it placed imagination, fantasy, the subconscious, intuition, the inexplicable and the unusual at the centre; with the symbol as the gateway to a non-sensory world. The inner life, the irrational, it was allowed to be celebrated, just as one was allowed to dream. There is also the threat, the misfortune that hangs in the charged air, there is death, but also the decadent, the powerless, yes even the apathetic.
Suite
The success had an important sequel when Fauré conceived the plan to assemble a suite from the incidental music once he was in calmer waters. Of course, he took the opportunity to also rework Koechlin's original work, starting with expanding the instrumentation to include oboe, bassoon, harp and two horns. The melodic and harmonic texture was also substantially altered, which for many connoisseurs, however, does not mean that it thereby became better than what Koechlin had achieved. Certainly different, in the sense of more expressive force but precisely thereby less freshness, mistier, vaguer too, although certainly befitting the content aspects of Maeterlinck's drama.
It may be considered remarkable that the incidental music as a whole remained unpublished for inexplicable reasons. This in contrast to the suite, which ultimately received opus number 80. First published in 1901, then still in three parts, and again in 1909 but now with the addition of the Sicilienne (as a third part, symbolizing the brief happiness of love of the couple), derived from incidental music that remained unfinished.
On some albums a fifth part still appears, Chanson de Mélisande or The Three Blind Daughters of the King, orchestrated by Koechlin, but the composer did not include it in his Suite.
The first performance, naturally without the Sicilienne, took place in February 1901 in the Paris concert series Concerts Lamoureux under the direction of Camille Chevillard. Fauré was present and later wrote to his wife that he was unhappy with it: the conductor had understood nothing of the piece.
Performance
It is certainly not a given that a successful performance of one work also applies to that of another, but here that is definitely the case. That is a performance of great stature, both by the broadcasting orchestra from Frankfurt am Main and by the Latvian conductor Paavo Järvi.
In Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande, the interpretation precisely reflects what the composer himself indicated: that he wanted to notate musically most of every (dramatic) detail of the drama. That entails quite a lot for the structure alone, and hence the interwoven leitmotifs that are meant to keep the listener on the right track. It is therefore justified that Järvi has given this 'compass' the required weight, in a work that combines all the characteristics of a 'wordless opera' disguised as a symphonic poem.
Grasping a piece like this well is truly a chapter in itself. Järvi makes its architecture clearly intelligible, but rightly avoids a constant striving for absolute clarity. Whoever follows the score closely immediately understands why: transparency as the highest commandment is certainly not what the composer continuously had in mind. This eleven-part symphonic poem precisely touches upon the world of Strauss and Wagner, where excitement must not be sacrificed to sheer excitement.
Järvi and his orchestra here approach the extremely sonorous performance by Karajan and his Berliner Philharmoniker (DG, 1974). A grandiose, evocative kaleidoscope unfolds in which expression and empathy have entered into a phenomenally calibrated union and possesses everything to transport us to practically the heights of Parnassus. It is quite something: to keep the fire burning for a long time, to let drama and lyricism reign supreme and to propel the contrast, also from fabulously drawn tension arcs, to great heights.
In Fauré's suite Pelléas et Mélisande, by contrast, the refined interplay of colours predominates in an extremely transparent orchestral ambiance. It guarantees an almost intoxicating brilliance and overwhelming atmosphere. In this work too, Järvi and the orchestra sense the characteristics of the piece flawlessly, the narrative is filled with exquisite beauty and no concession is made to dramatic power of expression. The splendid recording does the rest.
The conclusion can only be that this is a sublime album that does justice not only to both works, but also to conductor and orchestra optimally. No idea really why this release is only appearing now: the recordings are already a decade behind us.