Carpenter, Alexander - Erwartung & The Scene of Psychoanalysis (PHD Diss, 2004)

ERWARTUNG AND THE SCENE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS:
INTERPRETING SCHOENBERG'S MONODRAMA

AS A FREUDIAN CASE STUDY
By
Alexander Carpenter
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Music
University of Toronto
© Alexander Carpenter 2004
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•••
Alexander Carpenter
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (2004)
Faculty of Music
University of Toronto
Erwartung and the Scene of Psychoanalysis:

Interpreting Schoenberg's Monodrama as a Freudian Case Study
Arnold Schoenberg's 1909 monodrama Erwartung is regarded as his first major

work in a free atonal idiom, written without keys, recurrent themes or functional
harmony. The text of the work is the fragmented monologue of an unnamed woman, lost
in the woods at night. Given this and the work's milieu, Vienna ca. 1909, Erwartung has
come to be seen as a monodrama about hysteria, perhaps even based on a Freudian case
history. This study contends that the monodrama, as a surrogate analysis of Schoenberg
himself, constitutes a case history in its own right.
This study addresses not only the work's genesis and historical context, but also
decades of musicological discourse that has often uncritically characterized Erwartung as
related to psychoanalysis and hysteria. This characterization, based on the assumption
that the monodrama's text was based on a Freudian case history, is examined in detail in
this study.
Traditional analytic approaches to Erwartung are also considered in this study.
This survey is revelatory in two respects: firstly, it often provides insight into the motivic,
structural and textural details of the monodrama; secondly, it reveals the desire of musical
analysis to impute conscious logic where it does not exist and to impute tonality where it
does not and cannot function.
This study offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of the monodrama that considers
the work as Schoenberg's own case history. The influence of other psychological operas
are examined, and a chain of interpretation linking these works and a number of
Schoenberg's own early songs is constructed, pointing to the monodrama as haunted by
the past, as hysterical in its own right. Erwartung and its sole character serve as
Schoenberg's analytical surrogates: the monodrama is a Freudian work, a dramatization
of the scene of psychoanalysis and the act of psychoanalysis.
11
Acknowledgements
This thesis would not have been possible without the unfailing love, patience and
understanding of my wife Stacy and my children, Sydney and Declan. Every word and
thought herein is in some way marked by their presence and importance in my life.
I would also like to thank my parents, John and Margaret, for their unflagging
faith in me. Without their unequivocal support I could not have devoted so many years to
the study of musicology and could not have completed this thesis.
I would like to acknowledge the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto for
their support over the past five years, along with The School of Graduate Studies and the
Joint Initiative for German and European Studies, who kindly provided the financial
means for my research in Vienna. The assistance of the Arnold Schoenberg Centre in
Vienna was invaluable to me and I thank the archivists and staff for the use of the archive
and library during the summer of 2001. I have also been very generously assisted by
Keith Davies, librarian at the Sigmund Freud Museum in London, who has patiently and
thoughtfully answered many questions for me over the past few years. I also received
some useful advice on music and psychoanalysis in the early stages of the thesis from Dr.
Hannah Decker, Dr. Stuart Feder and Dr. Fadi Abu-Rihan.
My thesis advisor, Robert Falck, has been a bottomless font of knowledge. His
kind encouragement and insightful criticism have guided and shaped this project from the
start. He is a model scholar and I have been very fortunate to benefit from his tutelage.
James Kippen and Julian Patrick, members of the thesis committee, have made this
project as easy as it could have been through their willingness to meet at any time to
discuss ideas and with their penetrating criticism and thoughtful suggestions. Dr. Patrick
has been an enthusiastic and invaluable resource regarding questions of psychoanalytic
theory and Dr. Kippen not only provided many useful ideas and editorial suggestions but
has also been a stalwart supporter from the beginning, for which I am grateful. I could
not have asked for a more efficient, congenial and well-rounded thesis committee. My
thanks also to Dr. Bryan Simms of the University of Southern California for his
Willingness to participate in this project as the external examiner and for his insightful
criticim.
My good friend and fellow doctoral candidate Achilles Ziakris was my

companion and intellectual sounding board throughout the process of writing the
dissertation. I am indebted to him for providing me with much-needed friendship during
trying times and also for constantly reminding me of the importance of taste, seriousness
and courage in scholarly endeavours.
Finally, it remains for me to thank my wife's family for their assistance in the
final leg of this project. When it looked as though I would never finish, David, Geri and
Ellie opened their home to me. They provided me with a quiet sanctuary for the final
push, offered me a pat on the back or a plate of cookies when needed, and in so doing
gave me a wonderful gift.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT 11
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER ONE: SCHOENBERG, FREUD AND ATONALITY 8
Schoenberg's Vienna, Freud's Vienna 8

The Music Preceding Erwartung: Schoenberg's Early Atonal Period 16
Erwartung: Synopsis and Overview 28
Atonality and Marital Crisis 38
After Erwartung 45
CHAPTER TWO: PSYCHOANALYTIC TAXONOMY AND ERWARTUNG 48
Adorno on Schoenberg's Psychoanalytic Music 48

Wilfrid Mellers' Caliban Reborn and the
Dark Wood of the Unconscious 55
Lewis Wickes and the Reception of Psychoanalysis
in Schoenberg's Vienna 61
Christopher Butler's Early Modernism:
Erwartung and the Modernist Subject 67
Bryan Simms and Schoenberg's Atonal Music 73
Robert Falck on Pappenheim, Erwartung and "Anna 0," 77
John Bokina, Opera and Hysteria 84
Allen Shawn and Schoenberg's Journey 87
Diane Penney and the Monodrama as Melodrama 92
Feminist Musicology and Erwartung 97
Robert Craft: Erwartung as Schoenberg's "Angsttraum" 104
CHAPTER THREE: ERWARTUNG AND FREUDIAN CASE HISTORIES 108
Hysteria 109
Bertha Pappenheim (Anna 0.) 115
Is there a Family Relation?: Marie and Bertha Pappenheim 119
Erwartung and Anna 0 122
Other Case Histories and Erwartung 126
"Dora" 128
Dora and Erwartung 135
Elizabeth Keathley and Erwartung's "New Woman" 137
IV
CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYTIC APPROACHES TO ERWARTUNG 154
Buchanan's "Key" to Erwartung 155

Fixed Tone Groups: Maegaard and Erwartung 161
Stuckenschmidt and Erwartung's "Analysable Events 164
Charles Rosen and Erwartung's Musical Texture 167

Erwartung and Subconscious Motivic Cohesion 170
Laborda, Erwartung and Momentform 174
David Fanning and Erwartung's Structure 177
Erwartung and Grundgestalt Analysis 184
Elizabeth Keathley and Erwartung: Text Setting, Melodrama
and Form 192
CHAPTER FIVE: ERWARTUNG AND THE SCENE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 198
The Tristan Connection 200

Richard Strauss' Elektra and the Scene of Psychoanalysis 209
Three Early Songs, Verkliirte Nacht and Erwartung 223
i. "Erwartung," op. 2, no. 1 223
ii. "Am Wegrand," op. 6, no. 6 227
iii. "Traumleben," op. 6, no. 1 229
Erwartung as the Scene of Psychoanalysis 232
POSTLUDE 255
BIBLIOGRAPHY 260
INTRODUCTION
In August of 1909, Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg began working on
what would become known as his first opera, a monodrama entitled Erwartung. Quickly
setting the text provided to him by a young poet, Dr. Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg
completed the short score for the work in only seventeen days. This was a remarkable
achievement, as the resultant work would prove to be one of the most challenging and
controversial compositions of the early twentieth century. Erwartung is a free atonal
work, one of Schoenberg's first in this idiom: it has no key signature, it makes no use of
tonal harmony, it contains no true thematic development and is alleged to have been
composed by unconscious intuition. How do we approach such a work interpretively, a
work whose dense polyphonic textures and atonality provide almost no frame of
reference, no perspective? The text of Erwartung-it is text that determines structure and
shapes meaning in other atonal works by Schoenberg and his followers-is at first glance
a seemingly inchoate collection of phrases, exclamations and disconnected thoughts; it
does not immediately provide meaningful access to the work. Erwartung is a
monodrama, and so there is but one dramatic character: how can we make sense of the
drama, if there is any, with only one character? As is true of the music, there is a
problem of perspective: with no other characters to relate to, it is difficult to establish
boundaries and norms. We are also unsure of the setting, almost from the start: there is a
forest, but is unclear whether it is real or hallucinated, as there is a profound sense of
unreality to this work (although its emotional kaleidoscope is almost claustrophobically
real). The text begins by situating the monodrama's single character, "the Woman," at
the edge of a wood, before a path. We understand, almost immediately, that this path is a
2
significant metaphor. Where does this path lead? Does the Woman dare to follow it into
the dark woods? Do we dare follow her?
Experiencing Erwartung can leave one bemused and overwhelmed; listening to
it, one can easily be overcome by the force of the orchestral gestures, by the obvious
complexity of orchestration, the sheer variety of melodic ideas and by the expressive and
unpredictable vocal line. There is at once a sense of movement, of tumbling along with
the seemingly ceaseless movement of the music, and then of having traveled nowhere at
all, as busy surface details belie a disturbingly static foundation. Erwartung's only
character is a problematic guide, as her mental state is in question from the outset: she
appears to talk to herself, then to a lover who is not there, then to a corpse she stumbles
upon in the woods. At the end of the monodrama, music and action simply stop and we
are left with a decidedly non-traditional operatic ending: there is resolution, no
apotheosis, no redemption. Erwartung is the great operatic enigma of the century, and
initially appears as a work of such complexity-and invested with so much subjectivity-
that it rebuffs interpretation. It soon becomes clear, however, that there are many paths
through the monodrama's many levels of meaning, and that it invites interpretation from
all sides. Thus far, no purely analytical approach has offered a satisfying explanation of
the musical and dramatic effect of the work; musicological discussions of the work
almost invariably perpetuate the same psychological-historical narrative; and textual
criticism tells only half the story. How, then, to unlock the mystery of Erwartung?
3
In this thesis, I propose a psychoanalytic interpretation of Erwartung. This kind
of interpretation seems obviously appropriate to me; it is perhaps the only interpretation
that can adequately take into account all of the monodrama's diverse influences and other
forces at work within and without. By psychoanalysis, I mean the theoretical corpus
assembled by Sigmund Freud, a contemporary of Schoenberg and an important key, I
will argue, to Erwartung's secrets. It is my contention that Erwartung is a
psychoanalytic opera, a work in which Schoenberg had a deep psychological investment,
and a work that closely mirrors the psychological tumult of its milieu and parallels the
ideas of Freud, who sought to understand and codify the causes of this psycho-sexual
unrest and its treatment. In order to unravel the mystery of the monodrama, it is essential
to see it first as a work closely tied to Freudian theories of the unconscious workings of
the mind, theories to which Schoenberg himself subscribed as of 1909. Erwartung is not
only the reflection of a Freudian Zeitgeist, however; it is also a "case study" in its own
right, in which music, text, personal history and musical tradition come together in an
analytic scene: it is a case of musical psychoanalysis.
My thesis begins with an overview of Freud and Schoenberg's Vienna, and the
socio-cultural conditions that gave birth to both psychoanalysis and free atonality. This is
followed by a discussion of Schoenberg's music preceding the atonal period, of the early
music of the atonal period, and finally a general description of Erwartung itself: its
genesis, text, and musical characteristics. The first chapter also contains a substantial
discussion of what I take to be a definitive moment in Schoenberg's life, his wife
Mathilde's affair with the painter Richard Gerstl in 1908. The affair, I argue, is the
4
subject of a number of Schoenberg's works from 1908-09, and may have precipitated
Schoenberg's rejection of tonal composition in favour of free atonality: atonality is, I
believe, as much a barometer of the psyche as it is the result of evolutionary inevitability.
The chapter concludes with a brief account of the atonal works following Erwartung,
concluding that the monodrama is the locus classicus of the atonal period, with no
predecessor or successor.
Chapter 2 is a survey of the musicological literature that characterizes Erwartung
as a psychological or psychoanalytic work. I have included this survey to show how the
understanding of the monodrama has been hindered by the evolution of a now-exhausted
taxonomy that fails to look deeply into the monodrama's genesis, milieu, and meaning in
relation to psychoanalysis. Beginning with Theodore Adorno's claim that the
monodrama is a psychoanalytic case study, the second chapter tracks the dissemination,
evolution and dilution of this theory over the course of the twentieth century.
In Chapter 3, I examine in detail the connections between Freudian case histories
and Erwartung, asserting that the monodrama's text is based, in large part, on these
histories. The chapter begins with a brief synopsis of the history of hysteria as a prelude
to a discussion of early psychoanalytic case histories. One of these cases, that of "Anna
0.," is commonly regarded as having influenced the monodrama. Many scholars have
posited a familial connection between Anna 0., whose real name was Bertha
Pappenheim, and Erwartung' s librettist, a connection used to explain textual
correspondences between the libretto and the case history. I contend that this connection
5
is not the only one between Freudian hysterics and Erwartung, and I examine a handful
of Freud's case histories in order to compare them to Erwartung' s text and show how
Freudian symptoms and symbolism dominate the libretto. The chapter concludes with
my assertion of the monodrama's Freudian roots through a critique of a recent attempt to
re-interpret the monodrama as an early feminist-and therefore anti-Freudian-text.
The fourth chapter is a survey of the analytic literature on Erwartung. There have
been relatively few concerted efforts to analyse the work, and among the small number of
extant analyses only a few come close to explaining persuasively how this monodrama
may have been composed and how it achieves its stunning effect. The majority of these
analyses posit some kind of normative tonal model for the monodrama, in which tonally-
derived motives and motivic procedures suggest an underlying tonality. Others examine
the work in terms of word painting, still others in terms of texture as a unifying element.
I conclude that objective analysis will only ever tell part of the story of Erwartung at
best.
The fifth and final chapter comprises my own critical interpretation of Erwartung.
This interpretation is predicated on several ideas: first, that Erwartung is modeled in part
on operas by Wagner and Richard Strauss, namely Tristan und Isolde and Elektra. I note
the general correspondences between Erwartung and these works-they are all concerned
with the theme of destroyed relationships-and suggest that all three works share a tacit
psychoanalytic program: in each opera, the act of analysis takes place. To this end, I look
at textual congruencies along with larger structural parallels. My interpretation also
6
takes into account the presence of musical and textual elements borrowed from some of
Schoenberg's own early songs. These songs, from the era of his courtship with Mathilde,
reappear in some form in Erwartung; this, I conclude, is key to a psychoanalytic
interpretation of the work, as it shows how Schoenberg, like the Freudian hysteric, suffers
from reminiscences. Ultimately, I believe that Erwartung represents the scene of
psychoanalysis: in the monodrama, the text suggests that the Woman may be undergoing
psychoanalysis and that her unconscious is exposed in the music, its free atonal
polyphony an analogue to the chaos of the dark side of her psyche; it is also the scene of
Schoenberg's own psychoanalysis, with the Woman acting as the composer's surrogate,
her psychic collapse accompanied by fragments of melodies from Schoenberg's own
past. What is exposed, in the Woman's case, is her neurotic condition, predicated by the
traumatic discovery of her lover's infidelity; in Schoenberg's case, the monodrama
reveals the lingering effect of his wife's infidelity, the memory of which is concealed in
the musical and textual borrowings from his own past that constitute the monodrama.
My thesis concludes with what I regard as a "coda," a discussion of one of the
psychoanalytic music dramas that follows Erwartung and that uses the scene of
psychoanalysis as a means of structuring both text and music: Kurt Weill's musical
comedy Lady in the Dark. This musical rendition of the drama of the hysteric, presaged
by Wagner but ultimately made possible by Schoenberg's explicit dramatic conflation of
the unconscious content of the psyche with music, is another example of the
psychoanalytic scene as dramatic conceit; Erwartung, I believe, is the one and only
operatic work to combine this conceit with real personal tragedy, making the monodrama,
7
cast in Schoenberg's nascent atonal idiom, a perfect analogue to Freudian psychoanalytic
theory and therapy, and a kind of therapy itself.
CHAPTER ONE
Schoenberg, Freud, and Atonality
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the historical and creative links between
Freudian psychoanalysis and Arnold Schoenberg's monodrama Erwartung, op. 17, towards an
informed psychoanalytic interpretation of the work. To this end, an introduction to the work
in question and the people and ideas that formed the milieu of its conception and genesis is
essential and will provide the background for my interpretation. This first chapter begins with
a brief discussion of Vienna at the turn of the century, and Freud and Schoenberg's place
within the city's intellectual and cultural life. This overview is followed by a discussion of
Schoenberg's atonal music that precedes Erwartung, and then an examination of the music
and libretto of the monodrama itself. The relationship between atonality and personal crises is
also explored in this chapter. I conclude with an evaluation of the works immediately
following Erwartung.
Schoenberg's Vienna, Freud's Vienna
It is not my intention here to discuss in detail ''fin de sieele Vienna," as there are
1
already a number of excellent sources on the subject. Instead, I will simply offer a brief
introduction, clarifying and contextualizing what and who is under investigation here and
ultimately setting the stage for a detailed psychoanalytic interpretation of Schoenberg's atonal
masterpiece.
1See Carl Schorske, Fin de Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Knopf, 1980); Stephen Eric Bronner
and F. Peter Wagner, ed., Vienna, The World of Yesterday (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1997);
Allan Janik and Stephen Toulrnin, Wittgenstein's Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster; 1973); Jane Kallir,
Arnold Schoenberg's Vienna (New York: Galerie St. EtiennelRizzoli, 1984).
9
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Vienna was at once a city of dreams and a city
of nightmares. Many writers and historians have documented fin de siec1e decay in Vienna,
describing its paradoxical lighthearted sentimentality and profound repression and pessimism.
Satirist and publisher Karl Kraus was the most rigorous critic of Viennese high society, and he
focused his scathing attacks on what Allan Janik describes as "an altogether vile constellation
of corrupt politicians, greedy entrepreneurs, and unscrupulous journalists as well as fickle
aesthetes, Zionism, psychoanalysis .. .in short, everything that made the world of Vienna at the
turn of the century an 'inverted world' .,,2 The attitude of the Viennese at the turn of the
century is commonly characterized as self-deluding, a willful ignoring of that which was
wrong in favour of a kind of artificial happiness. This rutifice permeated all aspects of
Viennese culture, a culture of ambiguous values in which an obsession with ornament and
beauty fostered an unhealthy and uncritical brand of aestheticism. With its fecund musical
heritage, vibrant dramatic and literary traditions, and advances in science and medicine
juxtaposed with political corruption, censorship, horrible poverty and rabid anti-Semitism, fin
de siec1e Vienna can justifiably be called "a city of paradoxes" facing a "cheerful
apocalypse.,,3
At the turn of the century, Vienna was a city struggling to hold on to tradition in spite
of a plethora of disparate forces pulling at the fabric of society. Malcolm MacDonald has
described Vienna as a city whose late nineteenth century "rough edges" have been smoothed
by time, which has
2 Allan Janik, Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001),18.
3 Janik, Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited, and quoting Hermann Brach ("froliche Apokalypse"), 2-3.
10
bestowed a lustre that in some respects the city really deserves-glittering

capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, cultural and commercial crossroads:
the prosperous, stable, easy-going, infmitely leisured high-summer realm of the log
king Franz Joseph n and the waltz king Johann Strauss n. Yet, the colourful surface
often concealed disillusionment and despair, and the cross-currents of social spite,
growing anti-Semitism and political and intellectual ferment. 4
Economic and political troubles, disgruntled ethnic minorities and a crumbling morality all
contributed to Vienna's malaise at the tum of the century. There was explicit religious tension
between Christians and Jews in the city, fuelled in part by a small handful of prominent
politicians. Karl Lueger and Georg Ritter von Schonerer, whose political careers were built
on anti-Semitic platforms, were opposed by Zionists like Theodore Rerzel. As Diane Penney
has noted, the class divisions between rich and poor, aristocrat and commoner were articulated
by the design of the city itself: power and wealth were largely concentrated in the Innenstadt,
the formerly walled city now encircled by the Ringstrasse. Beyond the inner city lay the
second wall, also now a street, the Giirtel. Within this second ring lay the dwellings of the
bourgeoisie, lavishly decorated in imitation of the aristocracy of the inner city. Beyond the
Giirtellay the agricultural lands and the dwellings of the working class. This geography of
concentric rings effectively divided the classes and kept the poor from the wealthy.s
Vienna was also a city of sexual tension. Women constituted a distinctly repressed
class, forced to adhere to strict standards of morality, and ultimately expected to marry as a
means of securing a modicum of social standing and identity. hmnoral behavior on the part of
a woman could constitute a kind of social death. Men, on the other hand, were free to marry
4 Malcolm MacDonald, Arnold Schoenberg (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1976), 17.
5 Diane Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung: Its Musko-Dramatic Structure and Relationship to the
Melodrama and Lied Traditions," Ph. D. dissertation, University of North Texas, 1989,32-33.
11
late and to frequent brothels. For many women, the only avenues of escape from this
oppressive cycle were dangerous extramarital affairs, death or madness, ideas expressed in a
many artistic works of the early century.6 This very Viennese sexual tension and anxiety was
also the subject of a number of scientific works, including those of Sigmund Freud, whose
theories on the hidden meanings of dreams and the sexual aetiology of neurosis were echoes
of the malaise underlying Viennese society.
In this slowly degenerating city, cultural and artistic life was particularly fecund.
Artists recognized and articulated through their works the crumbling fas;ade of Vienna and its
underlying sickness. Despite its resistance to new ideas, or perhaps because of this resistance,
Vienna became a city in which artists oriented themselves against stagnancy and sought to
create new forms, new languages, and new modes of expression. MacDonald describes this
orientation as an "ethical opposition" and a "response to social pressure": for these artists and
thinkers, seeking new languages constituted a kind of social protest, a belief that "a
determined critique of the various idioms in which a society expresses itself is a critique of the
society itself.,,7 The satirist Karl Krauss pointed out the sickness of Vienna with brutal clarity
in his journal Die Fackel [The Torch], simultaneously expressing the deeply-felt alienation of
the group of young revolutionaries-artists, musician, and writers-who comprised his circle
of friends and supporters. In both art and literature, a reaction against ornament and attifice
was evident in the works of artists and writers like Wassily Kandinsky, Alfred Loos, Peter
Altenberg, and Oskar Kokoschka. The gilded fas;ades of the Secessionists were rejected by a
6 Diane Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 3l.
7 MacDonald, Schoenberg, 18.
12
new generation of Expressionists, artists devoted to articulation of the same dark, sometimes-
incoherent inner world described by Freud. Many of these young artists in fin de siecle
Vienna were a closely-knit group, sharing ideas in coffee houses throughout the city and
allowing a kind of "cross-fertilization" in the arts, in which close personal relationships were
fostered and mutual influence encouraged. 8
Struggling to be heard within this atmosphere of ferment and cross-fertilization were
two of most important figures in the intellectual history of the early twentieth century, Arnold
Schoenberg and Sigmund Freud. Freud, a young Jewish neurologist originally from Freiberg,
a small town in Moravia, lived most of his life in Vienna. After studying briefly with Jean-
Martin Charcot in Paris in the 1880s, Freud devoted himself to the study of neurosis, turning
away from neuropathology and embracing first hypnosis, and then the cathartic method as a
means to uncovering deeply buried psychical traumas believed to be at the root of disorders
like hysteria, a condition common to many young women in Vienna around the tum of the
century. Freud's earliest texts, including the Studies on Hysteria and The Interpretation of
Dreams, provided physicians, poets, writers, dramatists and musicians with fodder for new
modes of understanding and expressing the self. While these early texts were neither widely
circulated nor enjoyed large print runs, Freud nonetheless became a well-known figure in
Vienna, and was part of a number of intellectual and artistic circles. 9 Arnold Schoenberg, also
a Jew, was born in Vienna in 1874 and was Freud's junior by eighteen years. A largely self-
8Penney, Schoenberg'S Janus-Work Erwartung," 36. As an example, Penney cites Schoenberg's inscription in
Karl Kraus' copy of the Harmonielehre: "I have learned more from you, perhaps, than a man should learn, if he
wants to remain independent."
9 See Chapter 3 regarding the dissemination of Freud's early texts.
13
taught musician and composer, Schoenberg ultimately became an anathema to conservative
Viennese audiences, challenging the legacy of Viennese high classicism and the hegemony of
the Strauss waltz through the creation and vigorous promotion of music that threatened to
shatter the boundaries of comprehension and taboos of personal expression. Like Freud,
Schoenberg was part of a number of important artistic and intellectual circles in Vienna, and
participated in the city's cultural life as composer, writer, critic, and painter.
Schoenberg and Freud probably never knew each other personally: there is no
evidence to suggest they ever met, although their circles overlapped.lO Freud, who discusses
music only in passing in just a few of his books, and claims to have been largely unmoved by
it, never mentions Schoenberg. Schoenberg's library contained none of Freud's works, and
there is no mention of Freud, to the best of my knowledge, in any of Schoenberg's letters
(certainly not in the published ones). Gustav Mahler, a friend and mentor to Schoenberg in
the early years of the new century, was acquainted with Freud, and was even treated by him,
attending one session in 1910. Both Anton Webern and Alban Berg, Schoenberg's two most
devoted and most famous students, were familiar, to some extent, with Freud and
psychoanalysis: Webern was treated by the psychologist Alfred Adler, beginning in the
summer of 1913 (Adler had been a member of Freud's circle, meeting weekly with the
Wednesday Psychoanalytic Society until 1911); Berg, in a letter to his wife Helene in 1923,
wrote that for her psychiatric treatment "we should have gone to Dr. Freud or Dr. Adler, both
of whom we have known well for many years."ll We can reasonably assume that, given the
10 See Chapter 2.
11 Alban Berg, quoted in Joan Allen Smith, Schoenberg and his Circle (New York: Schirmer Books, 1986), 4n.
14
closeness of Schoenberg's relationships with Mahler, Berg, and Webem, he would have had at
least some peripheral knowledge of Freud and his burgeoning psychosexual theoretical
enterprise.
According to SalIm Viertel, sister of the pianist and composer Edward Steuermann,
Schoenberg and his friends often discussed their Viennese contemporaries, including Karl
Krauss, Carl Jung, and Freud. Schoenberg, a polymath, was interested in the ideas of his
contemporaries and, according to Viertel, would engage in lively debates, "invent[ing]
immediately another method, another science" in these discussion on psychoanalysis. 12 Joan
Allen Smith contends that Schoenberg "would have been interested in Freudian theory, if only
because he himselfloved to theorize, and Freud's ideas would have given him an interesting
starting point. ,,13 She concludes, however, that given the lack of documentary evidence, it is
impossible to assess the influence that Freud might have had on Schoenberg. As I discuss in
the second and third chapters of this dissertation, there is some indirect evidence linking these
two men, including Schoenberg's remarks in his Harmonielehre on music as a product of the
unconscious, as the result of instinctive processes of mind. Would Freud have known of
Schoenberg? This is even more difficult to say, given the lack of evidence, but also in light of
the fact that Freud seemed to have had little use for music. In his essay on Michelangelo's
Moses, Freud asserts that since he cannot explain music's effects, he is "almost incapable of
obtaining any pleasure [from it]. Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic. tum of mind in me
rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus affected and what it is
12 Salka Viertel, quoted in Joan Allen Smith, Schoenberg and his Circle, 5.
13 Joan Allen Smith, Schoenberg and his Circle, 4.
15
that affects me.,,14 This claim by Freud has been refuted by recent evidence that suggests he
did enjoy certain kinds of music and that music was often discussed at the meetings of the
Wednesday Psychoanalytic Society15; however, we may never know whether Freud ever
heard Schoenberg's music. Ultimately, it probably does not matter; however, Janik describes
a phenomenon prevalent in "Old Vienna" that may be relevant to this issue. He identifies a
prevalence of insecurity and self-doubt among the "gifted individuals" of the city and suggests
that this explains, in part, why they "often chose not to know each other when it was easily
possible to do so, if there was a danger that their originality might be compromised ... people
often get the false impression that everybody was on intimate terms with everyone else in Old
Vienna, which was hardly the case.,,16 While both Schoenberg and Freud enjoyed close
relationships with a variety of writers, poets, artists, musicians and scholars, it is possible that
their paths never crossed, perhaps because each may have perceived in the other a threat to
their respective originality.
Despite their lack of familiarity with each other, Freud and Schoenberg shared a
number of things. They were both modernist iconoclasts, building something decidedly new
on the back of the old; they both suffered from ostracism and both sparked controversy with
their work; they both surrounded themselves with an intimate circle of staunchly partisan
supporters; they shared a number of friends and acquaintances; their respective works, as I
14Freud, "The Moses of Michelangelo," in Freud, Art and Literature, ed. James Strachey (London: Penguin,
1985),
15 A number of operas are also mentioned with some frequency in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), including
The Magic Flute, Tannhiiuser, Fidelio, The Marriage of Figaro, La Belle Helene (Offenbach), Der FreischUtz,
and Don Giovanni.
16 Janik, Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited, 3.
16
will argue later, were responsible in large part for the construction of the modern human
subject. In an hysterical Vienna shared by Freud and Schoenberg, the subject was cast into the
epistemological void by an unknowable darkness within, bereft of familiar and stable
references to self and other, all to the accompaniment of appropriately atonal music that
collapses the stable, normative relationship between consonance and dissonance in order to
express that fundamentally human darkness. For the remainder of this chapter, I will explore
the historical and aesthetic context of the "Schoenbergian" subject, as articulated in his atonal
music, together with an overview of the music preceding and following the atonal period.
The Music Preceding Erwartung: Schoenberg's Early Atonal Period
Schoenberg began writing free atonal music around 1908, continuing in this idiom
until his "discovery," in the early 1920s, of the method of composing with twelve tones.
Before 1908, Schoenberg's music falls loosely into the category of "post-Romantic." The
influence of composers like Wagner and Brahms is evident in these early works:
programmatic music, increasingly complex motivic relationships, and the expansion of
chromaticism begun in earnest with Wagner in the latter half of the nineteenth century
increasingly becomes a feature of Schoenberg's music around the turn of the century. Free
atonality, as Schoenberg saw it, was the logical continuation of the innovations of Wagner and
Brahms, the evolution and synthesis of two traditions. Wagner's dramatically-deployed
chromaticism and ever looser tonal centres led to Schoenberg's "emancipation of dissonance,"
the equivalence of all pitches and a liberation from the gravitational pull of tonal/triadic
relationships. On the other hand, Brahmsian motivic manipulation led to Schoenberg's
concept of "developing variation," a means to construct and develop musical material that
17
depends on motivic and not strictly tonal coherence. Taken together, these two
complementary concepts simultaneously describe the collapse of tonality as such and the
evolution of an atonal style of composition.
I would argue that Erwartung is at the centre of Schoenberg's atonal works: it is
atonality'S locus classicus. The works preceding and contemporaneous with the monodrama
are preliminary essays in free atonal writing, exemplifying the early Modernist ethos: a desire
for truth, purity of emotional-psychical expression and something of what Karl Krauss
identified as "the new aim of art": not "what we bring" but "what we destroy."n
Schoenberg's music of the early atonal period is concerned primarily with expression and with
the newness necessary for saying something original and true, hence the apparent break with
the tonal tradition and, to an extent, traditional form. In Style and Idea, Schoenberg wrote
"Art means: New Art," and insisted that "in higher art, only that is worth being presented
which has never before been presented. There is no great work of art which does not convey a
new message to humanity.,,18 The early atonal works preceding Erwartung are: the Second
String Quartet, Op.i0 (1907-08); Das Buch der hiingenden Garten, Op.15 (1908-09); Three
Piano Pieces, Op.ii (February!August 1909); and Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op.16 (J une-
August, 1909). Along with these works, Schoenberg began sketching the music drama Die
glilckliche Hand in 1908-09, but it remained incomplete until 1913.
17Karl Krauss, quoted in Frank Field, The Last Days of Mankind: Karl Kraus and his Vienna (London: Macmillan
1967),18.
18 Arnold Schoenberg, "New Music, Outmoded Music," in Style and Idea, trans. Dika Newlin (London: Williams
and Norgate, 1951), 114-15. .
18
We can locate the birth of Schoenberg's atonal period in the [mal two movements of
his Second String Quartet, Op.l0. Schoenberg began writing the quartet as early as March
1907, around the same time he began painting. Both the quartet and the foray into painting
mark the beginning of Schoenberg's search for new and more potent modes of personal
expression. The beginning of the atonal period is also almost exactly contemporaneous with
Mathilde Schoenberg's affair with the painter Richard Gerstl, an event that caused Schoenberg
so much distress that he drafted an angry and, I would argue, schizophrenic will, his
Testamentsentwuif, mostly like during the summer of 1908. 19 The Testamentsentwulj
documents Schoenberg's feelings towards his wife-Schoenberg claims that Mathilde never
really knew him, so therefore he was not a cuckold, as you cannot cuckold a man you do not
know-and includes some statements about the nature of artistic genius. The will is
concerned, in each case, with alienation of husband and artist. The early atonal works, I
would argue, express a similar sentiment: the dissolution of traditional relationships in the
music, together with poetic texts that describe heartbreak and failed love, effectively record
Schoenberg's mental state at the time. The Op.lO quartet is especially poignant as it was
completed during the summer of 1908, just before or perhaps during the affair, and is
dedicated to Mathilde?O
Though the Op.l 0 quartet has a nominal key signature of F# minor and a tonal
closure, there are moments in the work when tonality is suspended: it simply ceases to
function as such. This is evident in the final two movements of the quartet, both of which
19 For more on the Testamentsentwuif, see Chapter 5.
20 See below for details of the Gerstl affair.
19
feature a soprano soloist. The final movements were actually composed more than a year after
Schoenberg began the first and second and, as mentioned above, under very different
circumstances. In the last two movements, Schoenberg sets two poems by German poet and
aesthete Stefan George: "Litanei [Litany]" and "EntrUckung [Rapture]," from George's
collection Der siebente Ring [The Seventh Ring]. Like Schoenberg, George amassed a
devoted, cult-like following and gave private performances of his works. He became
Schoenberg's poet of choice in the latter part of the first decade of the twentieth century.
Before the op. 10 quartet, Schoenberg had set two poems of George's in his op. 14 songs, "Ich
darf nicht dankend [I must not in thanks]" and "In diesen Wintertagen [In these winter days]."
Bryan Simms suggests that "Ich darf nicht dankend" may represent Schoenberg's first atonal
composition, but notes that this atonality was a "mixed idiom," and that the song, despite its
"vagrant chords, fourth chords, and triadic tetrachords," also has many traditional elements
and is similar to Schoenberg's earlier tonal songs in many respects?l The two final
movements at the end of the op. 10 quartet also conform to tradition in many respects, and in
them (as Schoenberg insisted) the final steps to atonality have not yet been decisively taken;
however, there are moments in the work wherein tonal chords are very nearly depleted,
serving as mere structural markers-as opposed to establishing a tonal context-in an
increasingly atonal soundscape. As Schoenberg noted, "the overwhelming multitude of
dissonances cannot be counterbalanced any longer by retums to such tonal triads as represent
a key.',22
21Bryan Simms, The Atonal Music ojArnold Schoenberg: 1908-1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
33.
22 Schoenberg, "My Evolution," in Style and Idea, 86.
20
"Litanei," the third movement of the quartet, describes the misery of love, beginning
with the lines "Tief ist die trauer,ldie mich umdi..istert [Deep is the mourning which clouds
round me]" and ending with a sorrowful request: "Tote das sehnen,lschliesse die
wundellNirnrn mir die liebe,lgib rnir dein gli..ick! [Kill the longing,lclose the wounds!!Take
love from me,lGive me your joy!]." "Litanei" is in effect the plea of the heartbroken, begging
God for release from love. Simms suggests that the intensity of some of the music in
"Litanei"-in particular the climax beginning at measure 60, culminating with the words
"Take love from me!"-is so great that "it is hard to imagine that it is not connected with the
Gerstl affair, not a vivid musical representation of the composer's own anguished voice.,,23
The movement is a theme and variations, employing thematic material from the previous
movements. While the movement is formally cohesive, employing traditional formal
structures, and though Schoenberg himself insisted that the quartet was not an atonal work,
there are nonetheless moments here of profound tonal instability, moments in which
traditional harmony ceases to function (as, for example, in the chromatically saturated
measures 50-60). Schoenberg's references to tonal triads serve as a reminder of the quartet's
overarching tonal orientation but also emphasize the over-stressed version of tonality offered
in these last two movements of the quartet. The Eb minor triads to which Schoenberg returns
at the end of each variation and at the end of the movement are, in some respects, "empty
vestiges of tonality, having a purely symbolic value and exerting no constructive control over
the music that flows between them.,,24 The triads in this movement do not contribute to a
sense of harmonic movement: there are no obvious tonic-dominant relationships, no stable key
23 Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 42.
24 Simms, The Atonal Music ofArnold Schoenberg, 43.
21
areas, and in this respect the quartet closely mirrors contemporaneous music by composers
like Mahler, Strauss and Debussy. With Schoenberg's music, however, we find ourselves on
the cusp of an aesthetic shift comparable, in my view, to the epistemological shift implicit in
Freudian depth psychology ofthe time. Mahler, who died in 1911, never composed atonal
music; Strauss' extended tonality, evident especially in his operas Salome and Elektra, was a
limited foray into expressive chromaticism; Debussy's blurry, quartal harmonies, echoed in
Schoenberg's own music in the first decade of the twentieth century, do not bespeak the same
kind of engagement with the question of the replacement of tonality that we see in
Schoenberg's atonal works. The profundity and seriousness of Schoenberg's search for new
modes of expression and their consequences is hinted at in the second movement of the Op.1 0
quartet, into which Schoenberg inserts a pregnant quotation from the Viennese street tune Ach
du Zieber Augustin: "Alles ist hin [All is lost]." ill "Litanei," the phrase "All is lost" assumes a
twofold literal meaning, as a reflection on both Schoenberg's life and his art: love is lost,
tonality is lost.
The fourth movement of Op.1 0, "Entriickung," goes even further. There is no key
signature: the work begins with muted, chromatically-inflected ascending arpeggios passed
from the cello up to the first violin. These arpeggios become ostinati that seem to frame the
ostensible tonic of the movement, F# major, but otherwise give no sense of key or tonal
centre. This brief introduction prepares the movement's famous opening line: "Ich fiihle luft
von anderem planeten [I feel air from other planets]." Here, measures 21-26, the text is set to
a slowly ascending melodic line in D minor (though it is quasi-modal-i.e. D dorian-with a
flattened leading tone), supported by a colourful succession of major, minor, diminished,
22
augmented, major seventh, and ninth chords, beginning with an ambiguous open fifth D-A/Ab
25
and ending on F# major. These chords also support a countermelody in the first violin, a
descending chromatic figure beginning on G# and ending on Bb, the latter an enharmonic
unison with the vocal melody. At this, the last vestiges of late-Romantic tonality dissolve, and
the text becomes literal as the music makes its transcendent "otherness" clear, the violin
countermelody against the voice articulating the otherworldly divide suggested in the text and
also the split between tonality and atonality. The movement, and so the quartet, closes tonally
in F# major, but a decisive step towards the new atonal style has nonetheless been made.
The op. 10 quartet, completed in 1908, was quickly followed by the song cycle Das
Buch der hiingenden Garten Op.15, probably begun as early as March of 1908 but not
finished until early 1909. It is difficult to date these songs accurately: the drafts dated by
Schoenberg offer a dubious and incomplete chronology, as drafts for all fifteen songs do not
26
exist. Das Buch is a song cycle that sets poems by Stefan George from his collection of
poems entitled Die Bucher der Hirten-und Preisgedichte, der Sagen und Sange, und der
hangenden Garten [The books of eclogues and eulogies, of legends and lays, and the hanging
garden]. There are thirty-one poems in the Hanging Gardens, but Schoenberg chose to set
only fifteen?7 In the first part of George's book, set in ancient Babylon, a king travels back in
25 An example of tonality as structural marker: "key is presented distinctly at all the main dividing-points of the
formal organization." Schoenberg, ''My Evolution" in Style and Idea, 86. In other words, at tl1e main structural
points in the work, the music has a sense of key, suggesting that this nascent atonal work was still partly conceived
in terms of functional tonality, though the establishment of key here is more symbolic than functional.
27It is worth noting that Schoenberg chose to set poems from a closed collection in George's work, and that he did
use them in George's order, as opposed to Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, in which the poems are set completely out of
order.
23
memory to his childhood, recalling friends and "creating his own realm close to nature.,,28 In
the central part of the collection-the part Schoenberg set-the king (as an adolescent prince)
falls in love with a beautiful woman. Some of the poems are from a narrator's perspective,
others are written in the first person, from the perspective of the prince. The young man
awkwardly declares his love, prostrating himself at the feet of his beloved; she has taught the
young man about love, only to leave him. Here, the garden, as Malcolm MacDonald notes, is
both "background and objective correlative": the garden symbolizes first beauty and
fecundity, then destruction and isolation?9 Carl Schorske echoes MacDonald as he describes a
fundamental tension in George's garden, a tension between "the socially ordered nature of the
garden and the eruptive passion of an initiate to love.,,3o Over the course of the song cycle, the
garden is transformed, beginning as a kind of structured background, awakening as love
awakens, and then finally fading and dying as the lovers part. In the fmal group of poems
from George's collection, those not set by Schoenberg, the king describes how his failed love
affair has destroyed him: love has "emasculated him, causing him to lose his zest for power,
conquest, and duty. He has resigned his throne and become a eunuch ... ashamed at his state,
he resolves to drown himself in a river.,,3!
As Albrecht Dtimling has noted, Schoenberg was attracted to George's view of rut for
its own sake, but more importantly he identified with George: facing increasingly hostile
29 MacDonald, Schoenberg, 175. I argue later that this garden also foreshadows the overgrown garden that is
Erwartung (in which both forest and garden figure symbolically).
30 Carl Schorske, Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980),349.
24
audiences and a lack of understanding for his work from the listening public, Schoenberg
"turned to George as the model of the isolated artist creating the future and no longer caring
for a contemporary audience.,,32 George's texts decisively altered Schoenberg's
compositional style, as the composer noted in his essay "How one becomes lonely," in which
he describes his settings of George's poems as revealing "a style that was quite different from
everything I had written before. And this was only the first step on a new path, but one beset
with thorns.,,33 In the preface to the program for the first perfonnance of the song cycle in
1910, Schoenberg wrote "Mit den Liedern nach George ist es mir zum erstemnal gelungen,
einem Ausdrucks-und Fonn Ideal nahezukommen, das mir seit J ahren vorschwebt [With the
George Songs I have succeeded for the first time to approach an ideal of expression and form
that I have already had in mind for years].,,34 In setting George's texts, as Simms has noted,
Schoenberg allowed the texts to structure his music: he had to "relinquish some of the
fonnative laws of absolute music and allow new shaping forces to grow into their own.,,35
Though George's poems are not fonnally innovative-rather, they are conservative, fonnally
rigid and metrically strict-Schoenberg responded in general to their expressiveness, and to
their themes of alienation and isolation, identifying with George's protagonist, lost in the
garden of destroyed love. Schoenberg's response to George's garden was the true birth of the
atonal idiom.
32 Albrecht Dilmling, "Public Loneliness and Atonality," in Konrad Boehmer, ed., SchiJnberg and Kandinsky: An
Histone Encounter (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), 112.
33 Schoenberg, "How one becomes lonely," in Style and Idea, 49.
34 Arnold Schoenberg, quoted in Albrect Diirmling, "Public Loneliness and Atonality," in Schoenberg and
Kandinsky,135-136.
35 Sirnrns, The Atonal Music ofArnold Schoenberg, 57.
25
There are two other precursors to Erwartung that require mention here because they
serve as purely musical, rather than psychological models for the monodrama. Since
Schoenberg sketched only a few tiny fragments of Erwartung, I am inclined to believe that the
two major works he composed immediately before the monodrama function as preparation for
Op.I7. These are the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op.l6 and the Three Piano Pieces, Op.ll.
The latter contains the fIrst instance of athematic atonal composition in Schoenberg's oeuvre.
The fIrst and second pieces in the set contain clear themes, and both are cast in a ternary form,
with exposition, development and recapitulation sections. The main themes are stated in the
opening measures and then developed. Each piece has a contrasting middle section, and each
ends with the return of the opening motivic material, followed by some further development.
It is worth noting, I think, that the second piece comes to a rather abrupt end: it "does not
conclude," Schoenberg noted, "it simply stops; one must have the impression that it could go
on for some time.,,36 Here, Schoenberg could just as easily be describing Erwartung, which
also comes to a sudden and perfectly ambiguous conclusion. The third piece in the op. 11 set
is of particular interest to this study, for two reasons. First, it is an athematic, atonal piece,
with none of the thematic coherence of the two pieces that precede it. There is no
recapitulatory conclusion, no overarching formal design. Instead, the piece is comprised of
what Simms calls "motivic particles," distinct from motives as such insofar as they do not
37
possess the same kind of recognizable or memorable shape. These particles are the tiniest of
motivic cells, lacking referential force but still tenuously holding the contrapuntal fabric of the
36 Arnold Schoenberg, quoted in Simms, The Atonal Music ofArnold Schoenberg, 63. These kinds of ambiguous
endings-"inconclusive 'non-endings' ," as John Crawford describes them (Expressionism in Twentieth Centwy
Music, 74)--are also a feature of some of the op. 15 songs.
26
work together. Also of interest, in terms of establishing Op.11, no.3 as an important precursor
to Erwartung, is the fact that this piece is a succession of mostly unlinked sections.
Erwartung, as I discuss below, shares this kind of moment-to-moment structure of loosely or
unconnected sections. I regard this piece as important for establishing a musical context for
Erwartung because, unlike nos.l and 2, which were composed in February of 1909, no.3 was
written in early August of 1909 in Steinakirchen, mere weeks before Schoenberg would meet
Erwartung's future librettist, Marie Pappenheim, and begin composing the monodrama.
The other instrumental piece that strongly foreshadows Erwartung is found in the Five
Orchestral Pieces, Op.16, also composed in the summer of 1909. The fifth piece in this set,
which Schoenberg later named "Das obligate Rezitativ [The Obligatory Recitative]," shares
with Erwartung a number of important features. In this piece, the orchestra is heard against a
solo part, an obbligato line that is passed from instrument to instrument. The obbligato part is
indicated in the score with the stylized letter H, which stands for Hauptstimme. This kind of
notation also appears in Erwartung. 38 Unlike the other four pieces in the set, no.S is in an
open or free form, similar to Op.ll, no.3. It was composed immediately after the piano piece,
and shares with it the use of motivic particles or fragments. It is hard to say whether or not
Schoenberg was thinking of this work as an instrumental recitative when he first composed it,
as its title was not added until 1914; however, Simms postulates that "in Schoenberg's mind
the image of recitative may have evoked the impassioned and flexible expressivity of the
38In fact, in the first edition of the Op.l6 pieces the Hauptstimme was indicated with only brackets; subsequent
editions included the Hauptstimme symbol. While the main line is indicated as such in op. 16, the Hauptstimme
symbol is used for the first time in EIWartung.
27
opera singer.,,39 It is not difficult, then, to imagine how "Das obligate Rezitativ," an athematic
work for large orchestra in which a solo line-perhaps conceived as a voice pmt--<iances
from instrument to instrument, and which was composed immediately before Schoenberg
began writing Erwartung, could easily have been a model or sketch for the monodrama.
The two instrumental models for Erwartung, op. 11, no. 3 and op. 16, no. 5 provide
the musical context for the genesis of Erwartung: they are essays in athematic, free atonal
composition that significantly prefigure the ceaseless development and complex linearity of
the monodrama. With the op. 10 quartet, cryptic messages ("Alles ist hin," "Ich filhle luft von
anderem planeten") are combined with the partial collapse of the tonal system; in op. 15, the
theme of destroyed love, of "gesWrten Beziehungen [disturbed relationships] ,,,40 is in full
flower in George's-and Schoenberg's-garden. These early atonal works, contemporaneous
with both Schoenberg's professional isolation and loneliness but also with the collapse of his
marriage, suggest an important corollary, namely that the atonal idiom was not only a
metaphor for Schoenberg's psychic distress, but also its product. Psychoanalysis becomes
tentatively implicated in this drama when it seems-as Schoenberg himself suggests-that
this early atonal music is the product of the unwilled, unconscious mind; an expression of the
true content of the psyche. So, then, what is atonal music? The unconscious made manifest,
or catharsis, or music as suffering? Since the early atonal works parallel Schoenberg's
39 Simms, The Atonal Music ofArnold Sclwenberg, 81. Schoenberg also noted that, at one time, he had
considered calling this piece 'The Endless Recitative," a title that, I think, strongly evokes the texture and spirit of
Erwartung. Schoenberg, "Attempt at a Diary," translated by Anita M. Luginbuhl, Journal of the Arnold
Schoenberg Institute (1986): 14, cited in Simms, 74.
40 Eva Weissweiler, ''Frau und Musik: Schreiben Sie mir doch einen Opemtext, Fraulein!": Marie Pappenheims
Text zu Arnold Schonbergs Erwartung." Neue Zeitshrift flir Musik (June 1984),4. Stuckenschmidt uses the
phrase "drama of destroyed love" to describe both Erwartung and Die gliickliche Hand." Stuckenschmidt, Arnold
Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work, trans. Humphrey Searle (New Yark: Schirmer Books, 197), 122.
28
personal and artistic crises of 1908-09, and since the birth ofthe idiom itself is intrinsically
connected to a poetics of nihilism and alienation, a consideration of Schoenberg's personal
circumstances at the time of atonality's birth and an exploration of the relationship here
between personal tragedy and musical expression is necessary. Before any such
consideration, a detailed overview of the music and text of Erwartung, the principle object of
this study, is required.
Erwartung: Synopsis and Overview
Schoenberg composed Erwartung in the late summer of 1909. Though categorized as
an opera, the work is technically-and also so designated by Schoenberg and his librettist
Marie Pappenheirn-a "monodrama"; that is, a dramatic work with only one character, in this
case set to music. As of 1909, Schoenberg had been struggling for almost a decade to
compose an opera, but without success. He made four abortive attempts at the genre,
beginning in 1901 with sketches for three operas, Odoakar, Aberglaube, and Die
Schildbiirger; in 1906 Schoenberg began setting Gerhart Hauptmann's play Und Pippa tanzt!
to music but did not complete it. 41 In 1909, Schoenberg began considering a new opera
project and sought a collaborator: he found a young doctor named Marie Pappenheim, who
was also a published poet,42 Pappenheim and Schoenberg began work on Erwartung in
August of 1909: Pappenheim completed the first draft of the text in three weeks; Schoenberg
began setting her handwritten draft on August 27th , completing the work on September 1ih.
41 Bryan Simms, The Atonal Music ofArnold Schoenberg, 89.
42Marie Pappenbeim is often referred to as a "medical student" in the secondary literature. According to Dr. Kurt
Miihlberger, director of the University of Vienna's archives, Pappenheim became a doctor on June 16, 1909.
Personal correspondence with the author, January 29, 2004.
29
For a dramatic musical work, Erwartung is quite short at a mere 426 measures: its
single act takes only half an hour to perform. It is regarded as one of the seminal works of
musical expressionism in opera, along with Richard Strauss' one-act operas Salome (1905)
and especially Elektra (1909). In the latter part of the twentieth centmy, it was successfully
paired in performance with Bela Bartok's short, expressionistic opera Bluebeard's Castle
(1911).43 Though Schoenberg's monodrama, with its violent portrayal of social and
psychological erosion, certainly owes something to Richard Strauss and perhaps to the Italian
verismo operas of the 1890s, Erwartung has no true predecessor: as Simms asserts, "its
musico-dramatic conception has no direct prototype anywhere in the operatic literature.,,44
According to Schoenberg, Erwartung was meant to be a work in which "the aim is to
represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual
excitement, stretching it out to a half an hour.,,45 This often-quoted but rather vague
description by the composer does not really do justice to the complexities and ambiguities of
the monodrama; however, it is at the same time a strangely appropriate facet of the mythos of
this equivocal work, a work that invites interpretation but remains nebulous. 46
Pappenheim's libretto is the fragmented monologue of a woman wandering through a
forest at night (her monologue is in fact a mixture of monologue and dialogue, and this mayor
43 The most successful recent staging of Erwartung and Bluebeard's Castle was produced by the Canadian Opera
Company in 1993, under the direction of film director Robe11 Lapage. This award-winning production toured the
world successfully in the later 1990s.
44 Bryan Simms, The Atonal Music ofArnold Schoenberg, 95. I would suggest that Erwartung also has no true
successor.
45 Arnold Schoenberg, "New Music: My Music," in Edwin Stein, ed., Style and Idea: Selected Writings (London:
Faber, 1975), 105.
46 I believe that Erwartung demands analysis, just as dreams do in Freudian psychoanalysis, by offering a plethora
of interpretive paths, by being exegetically "over-determined." See Chapter 5.
30
may not be a real forest: see my Chapters 2, 3 and 5). The woman is identified in the text only
as "Frau," a convention of early expressionist drama, exemplified by playwrights such as
August Strindberg: in Strindberg's Dream Play of 1902 or The Ghost Sonata of 1907, for
example, most of the characters are identified by title: "The Lady," "The Friend," "The
Husband," etc ..47 Die Frau wanders through the moonlit woods over the course of four
scenes, which are separated by Verwandlungen [Transformations]. There are no breaks
between scenes: the music is continuous. The text setting is generally declamatory, though the
soprano part varies between recitative-like passages and short, more lyrical fragments. Die
Frau's music is expressively unrestrained: it closely follows the dramatic and emotional
content of the text, reflecting anxiety and confusion through its disjunct lines, sudden leaps,
and unexpected changes in dynamics. Pappenheim's text-in which the protagonist's
emotions are constantly in flux and the line between reality and nightmare is blurry at best-is
a true proto-Expressionist document, contemporaneous with works by important figures in the
development of Expressionist dramaturgy, including Strindberg and Kokoschka.
The scenic divisions of Erwartung are unequal: at 301 measures long, scene four is
48
longer than the first three scenes together. Scene 4 also contains virtually all of the drama;
scenes one through three are comprised largely of monologue (or autologue) that sets the
47 I identify Erwartung's "Woman" as "Die Frau" for the remainder of the thesis.
48 It is worth noting that Schoenberg's fifteen-song cycle Das Buch der Hiingenden Garten, Op.15, completed in
early 1909, is also unbalanced in this way: the last song of the cycle is at least twice as long (three or four times as
long, in some cases) as most of the songs in the cycle at 51 measures (the next closest is the tenth song at 32
measures; the fourteenth song is only 11 measures long). The final piece in the Five Orchestral Pieces, Op.16
(1909) is also the longest of the five, though admittedly not by much. See also the long postlude to the Op.lO
string quartet and similar precedents in the music of Mahler, including symphonies no.3, no.9, and Das Lied von
der Erde, among others.
31
49
scene and establishes the mood. In scene 4, there is an increase in dramatic tension,
something like dialogue, and several major climaxes. While it has been argued that the work
ends with a kind of resolution, symbolized by daybreak, I will argue in subsequent chapters
that there is no resolution at all at the end, but instead the circularity and ambiguity of the work
is emphasized by both the text and the music. In fact, the ending of Erwartung is a keystone
of both its ambiguity and its psychoanalytic program.
Scene 1 begins at the edge of a dark wood as Die Frau appears, dressed in white. She
is clearly anxious about going into the forest and cannot see the path: her anxiety is expressed
in the stage directions, which indicate that she is fearfully looking all around her, crouching
then standing, wringing her hands. She sings first of silvery tree trunks, shining in the
moonlight, then offers a telling reminiscence: "Oh, unser Garten .. Die Blumen fUr ihn sind
sicher verwelkt [Oh, our garden ... the flowers for him have surely withered]."so Suddenly, she
exclaims, "Ich fUrchte mich [I'm afraid]," and describes the oppressive night air, "schwere
Luft .. So grauenvoll ruhig und leer [heavy air. .. so quiet and empty]." The man evoked in her
earlier reminiscence, who is nowhere to be seen, is then, inexplicably, addressed directly-
49Robert Falck, Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien iiber Hysteric," in Claus Reschke and Howard
Pollack, ed., German Literature and Music, An Aesthetic Fusion: 1890-1989 (Houston German Studies Vol. 8).
Falck divides the text of Erwartung into episodes of "Autologue," "Memory," and "Dialogue" and relates this to
the work's psychoanalytic subtext (i.e. as a musical representation of hysteria). See Chapter 2.
50 Pappenheim uses two dots for ellipses in her original German text. Most subsequent English translations use
three. All of the German text quoted in the synopsis above is from the 19]6 Universal Edition publication of the
text of Erwartung. Paraphrases of Arthur Jacobs' Universal Edition English translation (1962) are also included in
my synopsis.
This line is subtle but pregnant foreshadowing. In indicating that her lover's flowers have withered, Die Frau
sets the stage for not only the garden symbolism that dominates the work, but also pOltends the discovery of the
lover's corpse. Surely withered flowers also suggest, in this very Freudian work, some kind of sexual failure.
32
"Nicht sprechen ... es ist so sliB bei dir" [Don't speak: .. .it is so sweet with you]"51-before Die
Frau admonishes herself for not looking for him: "Feig bist du .. willst ihn nicht suchen? So
stirb hier [Coward ... would you not seek him? Then die here]." As the first scene ends, the
moon, so bright when Die Frau first appeared but fading midway through the scene, has now
become terrible, "voll Entsetzen [full of horror]," and Die Frau is alone in the darkness. Here
the librettist indicates the first Verwandlung, Transformation. Die Frau summons the courage
to enter the woods, and reassures herself that if she sings, the absent man will hear her. 52
Scene 2 begins with Die Frau on a path deep in the dark forest. She is terrified, and
imagines creatures crawling around and touching her. Midway through the scene, her anxiety
is suddenly transformed into quiet reminiscence, as she recalls again the peaceful garden
where she and the man, perhaps her lover, used to meet. She is thoughtful, then sad as she
remembers: "Aber du bist nicht gekommen [But you did not come]." At once, she seems to
hear crying, and then a rustling sound from above. Terrified, she exclaims "Es kommt auf
mich zu ..Nicht her! LaB mich .. Herrgott, hilf mil'.. [It is over my head ... Not here! ... Leave
me ... God help me ... J" The Transformation of the second scene ends with portentous
foreshadowing: Die Frau runs and then stumbles, exclaiming "Oh, oh .. was ist das? ..Ein
korper..Nein, nur ein Stamm [Oh, what is this ... A body ... No, only a log]."
51 I believe that Die Frau is not speaking to herself here when she says "don't speak," as it is immediately followed
by the dative pronoun "dir," meaning "you."
52 Schoenberg's response to the text is to accompany this line with a Sh011 "song" from the solo violin, a lyrical
five-note tune heard once and then repeated a third lower. It is worth noting that the pitches of this little "song" are
the same as those of the vocal line in measures 18-19, setting the text "immer die Grille .. mit ihrem Liebeslied
[always the crickets ... with their love song]". Schoenberg thus creates a subtle connection between two instances
of song, and blurs the line between the woman and her surroundings. See Chapter 5.
33
Scene 3 is the shortest of the work and is comprised of a combination of monologue
and dialogue. Die Frau speaks to herself as she emerges from the darkness of the forest into a
moonlit clearing, again imagining that she sees something in the shadows. She then addresses
the absent man again: "Oh! wie dein Schatten auf die weiBen Wande fallt..Aber so bald muBt
du fort .. [Oh! how your shadow falls on the white walls ... but you have to leave so quickly]."
As she peacefully speaks of waiting for evening, she notices mushrooms, staring at her as
though they were eyes on stalks: "Gelbe, breite Augen .. wie an Stielen .. [Yellow, bright
eyes ... as if on stalks]." She becomes terrified again as she hears a noise in the grass. As the
scene ends, Die Frau cries out to the man: "Liebster, mein Liebster, hilfmir .. [Beloved, my
beloved, help me]." Another Transformation leads to the final scene.
In scene 4, there is a moonlit road coming out of the woods, alongside meadows and
fields. A path leads from the road to a shuttered house with a white balcony. Die Frau's
appearance is the antithesis of the opening of the first scene: while she does appear slightly
disheveled as the opera begins-her dress adorned with dying roses-here she is exhausted,
her white dress is dirty and torn, and her hands and face are cut and bloody. She first reflects
on the vista before her, describing the dead fields, the lifeless road, and the cloudless sky. She
rests on a bench, and then walles into the trees, striking something with her foot in the dark: the
bloody corpse of her lover. Die Frau denies her discovery at first, but then accepts that it is her
lover, the man she has been seeking in the woods. She tells the corpse how much she loved
him, how she had been waiting for him. She caresses the corpse, touching him tenderly and
sorrowfully. At once, she becomes suspicious of a look in his eyes, then jumps up, accusing
him of a love affair with "Die Dime, die Hexe [The slut, the witch]," an unidentified woman
34
with white arms who perhaps lives in the nearby house. She kicks the corpse, but her anger
soon abates and turns to sorrow. Sobbing, Die Frau recalls her love for him. As morning
comes, she becomes peaceful as she speaks again of her love and asks, "Was soll ich allein
heir tun? [What shall I do here alone?]" She admits that he was all that she knew: "Denn
meine Grenze war der Ort, an dem du warst [My border was the place where you were]."
Though the sun is rising, Die Frau exclaims that it is dark, that her lover's kiss is "wie ein
Flammenzeichen in meiner Nacht [like a flaming beacon in my night]." The monodranla ends
with Die Frau's enigmatic cry "Oh bist du da..ich suchte [Oh are you there? I was
,,53
100king ....
]
The music of Erwartung, as mentioned earlier, is in a free atonal idiom, with no sense
of key or tonality, and no use of functional harmony. The music unfolds over time as dense
polyphony, with small motives and melodic fragments appearing and disappearing with no
real development. The orchestra is large and the orchestration colourful: Schoenberg uses
orchestration techniques derived from chamber music, such as "unmixed colours," to
54
emphasize polyphonic structures. The vocal line, declamatory throughout, reaches to the
upper and lower extremes of the soprano range, from low Sprechstimme-like passages to
piercingly-high cries of terror. The monodrama is "athematic"-that is, identifiable, unifying
53Arthur Jacobs' translation employs a question mark ("Oh, are you there?"); there is no such punctuation in the
original text, but it is definitely a question and not the statement "Oh, there you are," as some translations would
have it (John C. Crawford suggests "Oh, you are there .. .I searched." Expressionism in Twentieth Century Music,
82). My preference for the translation is "I was looking" and not "I looked" or "I searched."
54Carl Dahlhaus, "Expressive principle and orchestral polyphony in Schoenberg's Erwartung," in Schoenberg
and the New Music, trans. Derek Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 150. I
take Dahlhaus to mean that there is no instrument doubling; in other words, each instrument group makes its own
contributions to the orchestral polyphony without "mixing" or sharing its part with other instrument groups. He
notes that bassoon may be occasionally doubled by contrabassoon, or violin by viola; however, by generally
avoiding these "mixed colours" the dense polyphony of the work is clarified though tone colour.
35
themes do not recur, nor are specific themes connected to the text like leitmotifs. Text
painting is applied in a limited sense, with dripping blood suggested by a pizzicato harp figure
(measures 258-60), or references to the moon (measures 16-17, 318) underpinned with an
ethereal ensemble of harp, solo violin, and celesta. "Der Weg [the path]," perhaps the central
metaphor of the work, is distinguished by spare instrumentation and harmonic stasis, as are the
transformations between scenes. The orchestra, when not directly "painting" the text,
nonetheless closely follows the emotional and expressive highs and lows of Die Frau's text
and melodic line: the orchestra softly underscores her moments of introspection and
remembrance, sung as quasi-arioso, then frenetically follows her distress and anguish, often
echoing her angular, disjunct vocal melody. Die Frau's constantly shifting emotional state is
represented adroitly by Schoenberg musically, through the use of "a maximal diversity in
musical figures,',55 wherein stock gestures are largely eschewed in favour of a kind of pure
psychological, almost arhetorical method of text setting and tone painting. Ostinati, for
example, are used to suggest dripping blood, as mentioned above, but also crickets (celesta,
measures17-19), whose love song is represented by a simultaneous melodic fragment in the
clarinet. It is, perhaps somewhat ironically, Schoenberg's variegated orchestration, text
setting, and textures that actually give Erwartung some of its structural coherence: the music
helps to differentiate between Die Frau's disparate emotional states and divides the work into
a succession of unconnected but distinguishable scenes.
A number of scholars have attempted to establish a motivic coherence in Erwartung,
suggesting the fabric of the work is comprised of small motivic cells. Stuckenschmidt claims
36
that what appears as anarchy when approached from the perspective of "thematic working" is
in fact a "series of analysable events, a train of motives bound together for long stretches ... the
product of an extremely bold and radical type of variation.,,56 The most commonly cited cell
is the trichord cell of D-F-C#, suggesting a d minor tonality. This cell, perhaps borrowed from
an early song by Schoenberg, "Am Wegrand" that is also directly quoted towards the end of
the monodrama, has been posited as a principle building block of Erwartung, offering a
certain motivic consistency if nothing else. 57 This kind of interpretation seeks to situate the
monodrama as the product of an evolved form of developing variation, rather than a work of
"mere" feeling, an exemplar of fevered creativity and unbidden ideas. I am tempted to
disagree with this kind of interpretive approach-i.e. Erwartung as motivically coherent, if
one looks hard enough-as I regard the sheer variety of intervallic combinations offered in
Erwartung as a kind of interpretive soup, out of which any desired combinations could easily
be culled, particularly a trichord comprised of a minor third, semitone, and diminished fourth,
the principle intervallic building blocks of atonality and commonplaces in Schoenberg's
music. Simms suggests that the D-F-C# trichord does not explicitly function as a motive, but
rather "as a prominently placed fragment. . .It is not systematically associated with any
recurrent musical theme, dramatic idea, or special orchestral color. ,,58 The question that begs
asking is: what kind of functionality does a musical fragment unassociated with any particular
themes, dramatic ideas or colors actually have? What kind of coherence can such a fragment
create? Simms seem to suggest that it serves the same kind of purpose that tonal chords serve
in the Op.1 0 quartet, namely that of a structural marker, appearing at points of division but not
56 Stiickenschmidt, Arnold Schoenberg, 120.
57 See Chapter 4.
37
functioning explicitly as a motive. Ultimately, while I understand all too well the desire to
find a key that will unlock the musical mysteries of Schoenberg's atonal masterpiece, the idea
that it is found exclusively in esoterically concealed motives from an early tonal song needs to
be qualified. While I do believe that the song-and a few others-is important to the
interpretation of the monodrama, I am not inclined to accept the postulate that it creates
something like tonal oases in the work. 59 The working assumption in this thesis is that the
interpretive key to Erwartung is found in its musico-dramatic relationship to Freudian
psychoanalysis.
Musically, though prefigured by the two texted atonal works that hinted at
Schoenberg's emotional state and modeled on the last two instrumental pieces he completed in
August of 1909, Erwartung was a unique work. It was unlike the music that preceded it
insofar as it dwarfs them in scope, deployment of orchestral colour, complexity of polyphony,
and in the freedom with which melodic ideas are employed. As of 1909, Erwartung came
closest to Schoenberg's desire to create music unmediated by consciousness or will, music of
pure expression "at the borderline of conscious control,,6o; I would argue that he never
surpassed the monodrama in this respect. The works leading up to Erwartung trace the
dissolution of the tonal system via Wagnerian chromaticism and Brahmsian motivic
manipulation; the works that follow Erwartung eschew its psychologically-derived structure
and its athematicism, reminiscent of free association. Erwartung, as I argue below, is a locus
59 This is Buchanan's postulate. See Buchanan, "A Key to Schoenberg's Erwartung (op. 17)," Journal of the
American Musicological Society 20 no. 3 (Fall 1967), 440. Again, see also Chapter 4, in which I offer an
overview of the major analytic approaches to Erwartung.
60 Crawford, Expressionism in Twentieth Century Music, 80.
38
of both atonality and of Schoenberg's psychological (and psychoanalytic) music, a nexus
between two halves of his atonal oeuvre.
Atonality and Marital Crisis
In a concert note to the first performance of the Op.l5 songs, Schoenberg wrote of
having "approach[ed] an ideal of expression and form" in these songs. Here Schoenberg
effectively admits that George's poetry had, at the very least, a catalytic effect on the
development of his atonal style. George's poetry is at the crux of Schoenberg's so-called
"crisis years," in which the composer made the leap to atonality. The crisis, or rather crises,
comprised not only his increasing isolation from contemporary audiences and composers but
also his marital crisis, which is reflected in a number of the early atonal works with text,
including Opp.lO and 15, along with Erwartung, Die gliickliche Hand and Pierrot Lunaire.
Schoenberg had married his first wife, Mathilde Zemlinsky, in 1901. Mathilde was the sister
of Schoenberg's close friend and first and only composition teacher, Alexander Zemlinsky.
By all accounts, Schoenberg and Mathilde were deeply in love in the early years of their
6l
marriage; indeed, several of Schoenberg's early songs reflect his longing for Mathilde.
Mathilde, however, though allegedly a talented pianist, was not included in Schoenberg's
professional life: this, coupled with financial worries and her husband's increasing bitterness
over his lack of success, may have led to Mathilde's own crisis of loneliness. Certainly, the
picture painted by biographers of the marriage at this time suggests neglect on Schoenberg's
part, neglect that caused Mathilde to seek the love of another man. The other man in this love
61 Simms, Atonal Music ofAnwld Schoenberg, 20. One of these early songs reflecting Schoenberg's and
Mathilde's burgeoning love and courtship was, interestingly, the song "Erwartung" Op. 2, no. 1 of 1899. See
Chapter 5.
39
triangle was the young expressionist painter Richard Gerst!. Gerstl, whom Jane Kallir
describes as "the first Austrian expressionist,,,62 was an iconoclast who sought companionship
with musicians rather than painters. He attended the Vienna Academy for several years,
beginning in 1898. He left the Academy in 1901, turning to self-directed study instead. He
returned to the Academy in 1904 but was expelled after two semesters, returning again in
1905 at the invitation of Heinrich Lefler, whose painting classes he attended until 1907.63
Gerstl's early style was born out of an assimilation of the techniques of French impressionism
and a profound rejection of Klimt and Viennese Jugenstil. Gerstl was disgusted with Klimt
and the Wiener Werkstatte, responding instead to the passion of the Fauvists. Like
Schoenberg, Gerstl was largely self-taught, working his way through-and out of-tradition
towards a hyper-expressive approach. He was influenced by Van Gogh, whom he idolized

64
during the early years of the century, and perhaps also Munch. Ultimately, Gerstl rejected
most outside influences and created an almost entirely unique style, through which the unity of
a painting was achieved through the unifying force of expression as manifest in each
individual brush stroke. The surfaces of Gerstl' s later paintings are somewhat chaotic and
form is fragmented, allowing each brush stroke its own "expressive identity.,,65 In this way, as
Kallir insightfully notes, Gerstl achieved in painting the equivalent of Schoenberg's
emancipation of dissonance, minimizing superficial coherence in a work while maximizing
62 Jane Kallir, Arnold Schoenberg's Vienna, (New York: Gallerie St. EtiennelRizzoli, 1894),47. Allen Shawn
calls Gerstl the "first German Fauvist." Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2002),44.
63 Jane KaHir, Austria's Expressionists (New York: Galerie St. EtiennelRizzoli, 1981), 25-26.
64Jane Kallir, Austria's Expressionists, 26. Kallir also suggests that Gerstl may have harbored a "secret
admiration" for Klimt, as there are many parallels between the two, including an emphasis on subjectivity and the
subordination of the whole to its component parts (29).
65 Kallir, Arnold Schoenberg's Vienna, 51.
40
deeper structure, creating a microcosm of meaning by emphasizing-and thereby

66
emancipating-the smallest units of expression.
Perhaps seeking membership in Schoenberg's circle as early as 1905, Gerstl had likely
been introduced to the Schoenbergs through Zemlinsky, whom he had met early in the new
century. By 1907 the young painter was quite close to the Schoenberg family: he vacationed
with them at Gmunden on the Traunsee during the summers of 1907 and 1908. In Vienna,
Gerstl moved into a studio in the Lichtensteinstrasse, in the same building where the
Schoenberg family lived. Both Schoenberg and Mathilde studied painting with Gerstl, who in
tum painted a number of portraits of the composer, his wife, and the Schoenberg family.
Though he took instruction from Gerstl, and though the "avant-garde qualities" already
evident in some of Gerstl' s paintings-including a portrait of Zemlinsky from 1908-"must
have excited Schoenberg's initial admiration of Gerstl,,,67 Schoenberg would later claim that
Gerstl effectively learned how to paint from him, that the young painter, upon seeing the
composer's paintings, exclaimed: "Jetzt habe ich von Ihnen gelemt, wie man malen muB
[Now I have learned from you how one must paint].,,68 According to Schoenberg, Gerstl then
immediately adopted a new style: " ... unmittelbar daraufbegann er, 'modem' zu malen
[ .. .immediately thereafter he began to paint 'modem,].,,69 Schoenberg's amateurish but also
strikingly raw paintings may have appealed to the young painter and led him to abandon more
66 Kallir, Arnold Sclwenberg's Vienna, 51.
67 Comini, "Though a Viennese Looking Glass Darkly," 112.
Nuria Schoenberg-No no, ed., Arnold Schoenberg, 1874-1951: Lebensgeschichte in Begegnungen (Klagenfurt,
68
Austria: Ritter Klagenfurt, 1992),49.
69 Schoenberg-Nono, Lebensgeschicte, 49.
41
traditional craftsmanship and techniques-such as the pointillism of the French
impressionists-for the sake of greater expression. I would also argue that Schoenberg's
claims of influence and priority over Gerstl suggest the composer, ultimately betrayed by his
young friend and cuckolded by his wife, sought to posthumously take something back from
Gerstl, who had taken so much from him. It is worth noting, too, that Schoenberg did not
begin to paint his most haunting and expressive works, the "Visions" and "Gazes" series, until
after Gerstl's death.7o While it is argued that Schoenberg turned to painting as a means to
satisfy his need for creative outlets, a need that could not be satisfied through music alone, it
seems to me that Schoenberg's pmticularly fecund period of painting in the years following
Gerstl's death (1909-1911) is significant: it is as though Schoenberg was painting-out the
presence and influence of the younger man, just as he was working through the Gerstl affair in
music: the music drama Die gliickliche Hand, which appears to be an autobiographical
account of the affair, is contemporaneous with these paintings, its genesis and composition
spanning the years 1908-1913.
The relationship between Gerstl and Mathilde, as Gerst! biographer Otto Breicha has
suggested, evolved as relations between Schoenberg and the painter began to deteIiorate:
"Wie Gerstl fUr Schoenberg zum Problem wurde, war Schonberg fUr Gerst! eines [As Gerstl
became a problem for Schoenberg, so Schoenberg became a problem for Gerstl],,,7l Gerstl,
suggests Breicha, became desperate to escape the dominance of Schoenberg's influence, to
break the "bedrUckenden Bann [oppressive spell]" of his "geistigen Vaterfigur [spiritual father
70I discuss, in Chapter 5, the significance of looking and being looked at in the monodrama (the "gaze," in post-
Freudian psychoanalytic terminology).
71 Otto Breicha, Gerstl und SchOnberg (Salzburg: Verlag Galerie Welz, 1993),21.
42
figure]."n For Breicha, Gerstl's paintings from the summer of 1908-the group portraits of
the Schoenberg family and Alexander von Zemlinsky-represent an effOlt to escape
Schoenberg but were also a means to cope with his own guilt about Mathilde and the
transformation of his relationship with Schoenberg: from member of the composer's circle to
a "Rivalen in einer Liebesbeziehung" [romantic rival].73 The portraits, a vhtual analogue of
the dissolution of tonality in Schoenberg's music, are studies in the dissolution of detail; faces
are blUlTed beyond recognition, colours swirl angrily, and borders between figures are
indistinct. They suggest a kind of disturbing impressionism but are far too expressive and
intense in terms of colour and brush stroke to fit that generic designation. While Gerst!
struggled with Schoenberg's presence, Schoenberg was becoming increasingly troubled by
Gerst! and the growing closeness between the young painter and Mathilde. Mathilde, who sat
as Gerstl's model several times and began taking painting and drawing lessons from him
sometime in 1908, must have spent a considerable amount of time with the young painter.
She may already have been lonely by this time, and was drawn to the young, rebellious artist,
a stark contrast to her older, brooding husband. According to Breicha, Schoenberg's daughter
74
Trudi reported having seen Mathilde and Gerstl kiss as early as the summer of 1907.
Schoenberg, interestingly enough, seems to have been somewhat ambivalent about Mathilde
during this period, but less so about Gerstl, as evidenced in Schoenberg's reported
admonishment to Gerstl, as described by Breicha: "Let's not let a woman come between US.,,75
72 Otto Breicha, Gerst! und SchOnberg, 21.
73 Breicha, Gerstl und SchOnberg, 21.
74 Breicha, Gerstl und SchOnberg, 22.
durch ein Frau auseinanderleringen lassen sollten." Breicha, Gerstl und SchOnberg, 22. I think that
75 " .•• nicht
this ambivalence is characteristic of the works of the atonal period that touch on the question of the role of the
43
While the pairing of the brash young Gerstl and the seemingly much older, decidedly
matronly Mathilde seems somewhat strange, it has been suggested that the painter may have
been intrigued by Mathilde's motherhood, as suggested by his ca. 1906 pOltrait of her with her
daughter Gertrude?6 This colourful portrait adroitly depicts both the matronly Mathilde and
the innocent Gertrude, their images gently blending and almost creating a single figure.
Gerstl's 190511906 pOltrait of Schoenberg, on the other hand, depicting the composer partially
reclining on a divan, is formal and cold. It is composed of rather hard lines, gives Schoenberg
a severe countenance, and places him in a somewhat awkward pose. Comini remarks on
Schoenberg's "reserved and restively analytical" expression in the portrait, and evocatively
claims that this expression was "appropriate to the developing atonality of the situation"
between Schoenberg and Gerstl.77 Comini takes a psychoanalytic glance at the relationship
between composer and painter, suggesting that Gerstl's portrait of Schoenberg may contain, in
78
the background, one of Schoenberg's own self-portraits. The Schoenberg portrait is also a
artist and the artist's relationship to others: for Schoenberg, the importance of the artistic life could clearly
complete with romantic life.
76 Alessandra Comini, 'Through a Viennese Looking Glass Darkly: Images of Arnold Schoenberg and his
Circle," Arts Magazine 58, no. 9 (1984), 112. I see an interesting progression in Gerstl's portraits of Mathilde
Schoenberg, the first dating from 1905, the last from the summer of 1908. The earliest portraits are rather dark and
cool; subsequent portraits become more colourful and floral as the subject becomes more blurred; the latest
portrait, perhaps a picture of Mathilde and Gerstl together in front of the trunk of a tree, features a smiling Gerst! in
a hat, beside a red-haired Mathilde in a fiery red dress. While the POltraits trace the evolution of Gerstl's style
away from representational painting towards a more abstract expressionism, they also seems to reflect his
deepening emotional evolvement with Mathilde as they become increasingly bright and intimate, the plant-life
images perhaps symbolizing (consciously or not) their sexual relationship. See Chapter 3 on Freud and plant-life
symbols in dreams.
77Comini, 'Through a Viennese Looking Glass Darkly," 112. Atonality, in other words, is a metaphor for social
and emotional dissonance, but also, I think, of the exposed psyche itself. Comini describes tonality as a "fac;ade,"
as a "screen" for the psyche, analogous to the kind of ornament or symbolism that disguises truth-as-pure-
expression (108-109). "Atonal" is a provocative way to describe the de-evolution of the relationship between
GerstI and Schoenberg, but it may not have yet been "atonal" as of 1905, as Comini suggests. Comini dates
Gerstl's pOltrait from 1906, whereas Breicha's date is 1905. As of yet, there is no definitive source for accurate
dates of Gerst!' s paintings.
78It is not clear what Contini thinks the psychoanalytic significance of the pOltrait-within-a-portrait is. It seems to
me that tile obvious psychoanalytic interpretation (if indeed one is wan-anted) of the Schoenberg-Gerst! situation is
44
stark contrast to Gerst!' s portrait of Berg: both men are reclining, Schoenberg to his left, Berg
to his right; however, the Berg portrait is softly impressionistic, the face and background
blurred, the figure relaxed. Taken as foreshadowing the strange tum the relationship between
Gerst! and Schoenberg took, the harshly-drawn portrait of the latter is compelling.
In the summer of 1908, Mathilde and Gerst! ran off together. During this time,
Schoenberg and Mathilde corresponded, though only her letters survive. In these letters, she
challenges, presumably, Schoenberg's characterization of her in his missing letters: "Am I so
awful?"·she asks. She also laments being separated from her children. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that Anton Webern spoke to Mathilde on Schoenberg's behalf, imploring her to
come home for the sake of the children. Mathilde acquiesced and left Gerstl. On November
th
4 , 1908, Gerst! destroyed a number of his works in his studio, along with notes and letters.
th
He was discovered on the morning of November 5 with a knife in his chest and a rope
around his neck. The putative future of Austrian Expressionism was dead at the age of
twenty-five.
that the configuration of Schoenberg-Gerstl-Mathilde constitutes an Oedipal triangle, in which Gerstl is the son
who desires his mother and is in conflict with his father. In light of Schoenberg's attempts to reduce Gerstl-i.e.
Gerstl was lost until Schoenberg showed him how to paint-to a dependent, this seems to me a possible
interpretation. Gerst!'s suicide, in this interpretation, would have been the result of his inability to surrender his
mother figure and be subsumed under the law of the father. Alternatively, does the portrait-within-a-pOltrait point
to Schoenberg's self-absorption, justifying a priori Mathilde's impending transgression? In fact, given the date of
this portrait-19051l906--it is likely that the portrait-within-a-pOltrait is not a painting of Schoenberg's at all: he
did not begin to paint until 1907, and not in earnest until after 1908.
The true nature of tile relationship between Schoenberg and his first wife is not very clear, and is fUlther
clouded by the Gerst! affair. The fact that Schoenberg asked Gerstl to "not let a woman come between us" hints
not at a homoerotic bond, but rather a bond between two alienated modern artists in a city about to experience the
birdl pangs of Expressionism. It also hints at the alienation Mathilde must have felt, as she was not really a part of
Schoenberg's circle offellow mtists and thinkers and may have turned to Gerst! out ofjeaJousy: as she may have
been jealous of Schoenberg'S relationship with the creative muse (Gerstl?), a relationship that largely excluded his
wife. Could she have begun a relationship with Gerst! as a means of revenge? Or was Gerst! a kind of object of
desire for both Arnold and Mathilde," an object for which they competed? It is a strange love triangle, and an
important aspect of the psychoanalytic interpretation of Erwartung.
45
Kallir notes that, for a short time, Schoenberg and Gerstl "worked side by side towards
the same goal, each in his chosen medium.,,79 Both sought to free expression from
convention, to strip down their art to its core and offer a subjective, self-contained world of
emotion. Kandinsky suggested that Schoenberg, in both his music and paintings, "proceeds
along a direct path to the essential" 80: the same is true, I would argue, for Gerstl.
Schoenberg's move to atonal composition, while foreshadowed in some earlier pieces, is
exactly contemporaneous with the Gerstl affair. Can we then understand atonality, at least in
pmt, as a response not only to an aesthetic crisis, but also to a personal one? I would suggest
that, for Schoenberg in 1908-09, there is no distinction between purely aesthetic and purely
personal concerns: they are wed in his new, free atonal, highly expressionistic style. The
dissolution of conventional methods of music form, expression, and structure-free atonality,
as it occurs in Erwartung-serves as a convenient metaphor for the collapse of Schoenberg's
marriage: in each case, relationships are strained to the breaking point, rules are broken, and
new and contingent relationships are forged.
After Erwartung
A gradual progression of subordination of form to expression characterizes the em'ly
atonal works up to and including Erwartung; afterwards, a concern for comprehensibility and
a return to traditional form accompanies the works leading to the twelve-tone period. After
Erwartung, Schoenberg composed only a handful of works in the free atonal idiom: the
fecundity of 1909 would never be repeated. Schoenberg's post-Erwartung works include: Six
79 Jane Kallir,Austria's Expressionists, 28.
80 Kandinsky, quoted in Kallir,Austria's Expressionists, 28.
46
Little Piano Pieces, Op.19 (February-June 1911); Herzgewache, Op.20 (late 1911); Pierrot
Lunaire, Op.21 (1912); Die gliickliche Hand, Op.18 (begun 1908, completed 1913); Four
Orchestral Songs, Op.22 (1913-16); and Die lakobsleiter (1917-1922, unfinished). Die
gliickliche Hand is, in a sense, a companion piece to Erwartung; begun the year before and
finished some four years later, it frames the monodrama. Die gliickliche Hand is a work for a
single male singer and two mute parts, exploring the themes of destroyed love and the
alienated artist. The two mute roles are a man and a woman, probably representing Richard
Gerst! and Mathilde Schoenberg. Like Erwartung, it is a work featuring a love triangle, but
here what appears to be an explicit representation of the Gerstl affair, with the protagonist, the
male singer, ultimately betrayed: he is cuckolded, and then literally and figuratively crushed
through the machinations of his former love and her new lover. Schoenberg hoped that the
two dramatic works might one day be performed as a pair; however, it is my contention that
Op.1S, roughly contemporaneous with Op.l?, marks a turning point in Schoenberg's atonal
period. In Erwartung, Schoenberg creates the inexplicable, an uncanny work that does not so
much defy interpretation as it is "over-determined," to borrow from Freud: in other words, the
monodrama, composed intuitively as a kind of musical "free association," is overloaded with
interpretive possibilities. On the other hand, Die gliickliche Hand, possesses a formal and
thematic clarity (both musical and dramatic) absent in Erwartung, along with a complex
staging scheme that calls for the elaborate use of colour symbolism. As Alan Lessem has
noted, Erwartung is a work comprised of "discontinuities" and "continuous transformation of
its motivic content," while Die gliickliche Hand is a work whose music "is determined less by
dynamic, ongoing processes than by architectonic recurrences, parallels and symmetries."SI I
81 Alan Lessem, Music and Text in the Work ofArnold Schoenberg (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979), 119.
47
would also contend that Die gliickliche Hand is not the psychic "seismograph" represented by
Erwartung; that is, the former is a carefully crafted musical drama as biographical portrait; the
latter is something closer to what Allen Shawn calls a psychological "narrative in sound," a
musko-dramatic representation of the Freudian psyche-perhaps enmeshed with
Schoenberg's own-and of the scene of psychoanalysis.
In the following chapters, this dissertation examines the psychoanalytic taxonomy
associated with Erwartung, analytic approaches to the work, its historical and textual
connections to Sigmund Freud and psychoanalytic case studies, and finally seeks to provide a
new interpretive "key" to the monodrama, predicated on psychoanalytic theories of hysteria
and on the idea of Erwartung as a Freudian music drama.
CHAPTER TWO
Psychoanalytic Taxonomy and Erwartung
The purpose of this chapter is to critically survey the major sources that connect
Schoenberg's early atonal music to psychoanalysis. A critical survey is a necessary
foundation for my own investigation into this connection and for the subsequent
psychoanalytic interpretation I wish to propose for Erwartung. I will begin with a
discussion of Theodore Adorno's Philosophy of Modem Music, in which he offers the
first-and an axiomatic-psychoanalytic interpretation of Erwartung. It is my
contention that Adorno's psychoanalytic interpretation of the monodrama, together with
the revelation of the identity of Freud's patient Anna O. in the 1950s, represents the
starting point for subsequent evaluations of the work as a psychoanalytic case study in the
abstract, a case study in fact, or both. I provide, below, an overview of what I regard as
the most significant sources on this subject. 1
Adorno on Schoenberg's Psychoanalytic Music
Adorno's Philosophy of Modem Music, first published in 1948, is the earliest and
most important commentary on Schoenberg's atonal music and its relation to Freudian
psychoanalysis,2 Adorno's book is, as far as I know, the original source of the idea that
1 The sources under consideration here are not all musicological, simply because my investigation of
Erwartung is necessarily interdisciplinary. An understanding of this work, I believe, requires taking into
account a variety of social, cultural, and intellectual trends circa the early 1900s. To that end, I have
included a number of non-musicological sources, including Adorno's treatise-a philosophical approach to
Schoenberg'S music-'-along with books on art history and intellectual history.
2Theodore Adorno, Philosophy of Modem Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster (New
York: Seabury Press, 1973). While the book was first published in Germany in 1948, the Schoenberg study
48
49
such a relation exists, particularly between Freudian theory and Schoenberg's
monodrama Erwartung. Adorno does cite German music critic Paul Bekker as having
described Schoenberg's atonal music as "psychological music,,,3 and that may be the first
instance of a critic or commentator making the connection between Schoenberg's music
and psychology; however, it is Adorno who first makes the explicit link between
Schoenberg and Freud.
As of the late 1930s and early 1940s, while Adorno was living in exile in the
United States, he began to use Freudian theory to an increasingly greater extent in his
theoretical work, almost to the point where psychoanalysis threatened to supplant his
previous Marxist orientation. 4 Adorno criticized Freud's efforts at psychobiography (i.e.
explaining a work of art through a psychoanalytic study of the life of the artist), but
recognized that psychoanalytic theory could "make a useful contribution to the
demythologization of art through penetrating art's hermetically sealed world and relating
it to that which is not art-particularly through providing some insight into its
connections with the instinctual drives.,,5 While Adorno did not accept psychoanalysis as
having all the answers, and remained critical of many of its tenets, he did adopt a number
of Freud's most important ideas for his own work, including sublimation, repression, and
the unconscious drives.
that comprises the first part of the book was completed in 1941. According to Adorno, the idea for the
study came to him around 1938, but he did not begin writing until 1940. (Philosophy of Modern Music, xi).
3Adorno, quoting from Paul Bekker's article "Schonberg: Erwartung," Musikbliitter des Anbruch 6 (1924):
275-82.
4 Max Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1993), 128.
5 Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 129.
50
Philosophy of Modem Music constructs a polemical argument for modem [neue]
music, juxtaposing Schoenberg and Stravinsky and ultimately identifying the former as a
true modem composer and the latter as a classicist. 6 Schoenberg's atonalism is, for
Adorno, evolutionary, guided by an inner psychological necessity; Stravinsky's
primitivism, on the other hand-as exemplified by the Rite of Spring-is regressive and
devoid of meaning. 7 In Stravinsky's music, one hears a kind of empty barbarism, an
objectivism, rather than the (Freudian) subjectivism that Adorno praises in Schoenberg's
atonal works. Adorno even goes as far as describing Stravinsky as "the anti-
psychologist."g The Rite of Spring is thus, for Adorno, a conservative, anti-evolutionary
work, sharply contrasted with Schoenberg's revolutionary monodrama Erwartung.
Evaluating Adorno's critique of Stravinsky is not within the scope of this project: for the
purposes of this dissertation, the real interest in Adorno's book lies in its invocations of
Sigmund Freud in relation to music, especially to Schoenberg's early atonal works. 9
Adorno cites Freud early in the introduction to the Philosophy of Modem Music, using
him to identify the modem artist who "has become the mere executor of his own
6 Here, I think the sense of "neue" is important. For Schoenberg and Adorno, the ideas of "new music" and
"modern music" are not synonymous: "neue Musik" is "new" insofar as it is constituted by a constant
striving for true expression; music, in Schoenberg's view, had to be something new each time, or one was
simply repeating one's self and not expressing the essential, that which is unconscious and instinctive.
7 Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 140.
8 Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, xiii.
9Christopher Butler suggests that both Schoenberg and Stravinsky's music of this period share a
"very significant loss ... compounded by the appeal to the primitive, collective and mythical depths of the
unconscious." This loss is the destruction of individuality, and Butler finds both composers complicit in a
"regressive objectification of the individual, as merged into the archetypal and the unconscious." Butler,
Early Modernism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 118-119. Bryan Simms echoes this thesis,
suggesting that while Marie Pappenheim's libretto is concerned with an individual and her suffering,
Schoenberg's interpretation universalizes Die Frau and turns the monodrama into a work concerned with
"the emotions per se." Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 95.
51
intentions, which appear before him as strangers-inexorable demands of the
compositions upon which he is working."l0 For Adorno, the modern artist labours as a
Freudian artist, one whose will is subjugated to the will of the unconscious, and for
whom the artistic work-as a product of the unconscious-becomes something
"independent or even alien." 11
Erwartung, writes Adorno, is a quintessentially modern work, a "portrayal of
anxiety ... [that] develops the eternity of the second in four hundred bars.,,12 It is also
representative of Schoenberg's break from the traditional "espressivo" style, a
"revolutionary moment" in which music is able to function, expressively, in a new way:
"Passions are no longer simulated, but rather genuine emotions of the unconscious-of
shock, of trauma-are registered without disguise through the medium of music." 13
Adorno's "unconscious" here is clearly the Freudian unconscious, the realm of registered
"shock" and "trauma"; but more significant is that Adorno identifies the early atonal
works as "case studies in the sense of psychoanalytic dream case studies.,,14 In conflating
11 Freud, quoted in Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 17 -18n. This is interesting, because it echoes
Schoenberg's words to Ferruccio Busoni in the summer of 1909 in the weeks before Schoenberg began
writing Erwartung. Schoenberg sent Busoni a letter indicating his new compositional credo, that music
should be created instinctively, unconsciously. Moreover, Schoenberg tells Busoni that he composes so
quickly in this unconscious mode that he often requires some time to get used to his own works once they
are done: they are, in a sense, alien to Schoenberg himself and he must reacquaint himself with them. See
Ferruccio Busoni: Selected Letters, edited and translated by Antony Beaumont (London: Faber and Faber,
1987), 381-402. See Chapter 4 for an excerpt from this letter.
13 Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 38-39.
14 Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 39. This idea is, as Adorno's English translators note, a
"recurrent motif' in Philosophy of Modern Music, signifying the importance of Freudian theory to both
Adorno and the Frankfurt school as a whole.
52
Schoenberg's early atonal works with Freudian psychoanalytic case studies and the
revelation of the unconscious, Adorno is thinking specifically of Erwartung: he points to
specific measures in the score of Erwartung as containing "blotches" made by the id,
Freud's source of instinctual energy. These blotches are "scars," according to Adorno,
"heralds of the id against the compositional will," signifiers of the genuine expression of
"authentic suffering.'.l5 These scars and blotches, representing the discourse of the
unconscious, threaten the formal homogeneity of Erwartung and of all true modern music
as a whole. For Adorno, modern music can no longer possess the self-assurance of
traditional music, a self-assurance provided by form. Schoenberg as arch modernist is
thus credited with the collapse of the autonomy of the musical work:
Authentic suffering has implanted these [scars and blotches] in the

work of art as a sign that the autonomy of the work is no longer
recognized by this suffering. The heteronymy of scars-and the
blotches--challenges music's fat;ade of self-sufficiency. This
fat;ade is based on the fact that in all traditional music the formally
defined elements are employed as if they were the inviolable
necessity of this one individual case; or this fat;ade appears as
though it were identical with the alleged language of form. 16
Adorno's scars, marring and undermining the homogeneity of the surface of the work,
betray the underlying presence of the authentic, of truth-as-suffering. The "genuine
emotions of the unconscious" threaten the fat;ade of formal unity, attacking "the taboos of
form because these taboos subject such emotions to their own censure, rationalizing them
and transforming them into images."l7 This is clearly the language of Freudian
psychoanalysis, strongly evoking Freud's theory of the functioning of the unconscious.
15 Adorno, Philosophy of Modem Music, 39.
53
Wishes and desires, the truth of the unconscious, seek expression but are censored by the
ego. They are censored in light of social and cultural restrictions on the expression and
fulfillment of primal desires, but ultimately bubble up to the surface in one form or
another. Adorno's dichotomy of surface versus substance, or form versus content in the
Philosophy of Modern Music is the Freudian split between latent and manifest content:
what is evident at the surface is underlain by the true content of the unconscious. This
content, authentic suffering in the case of Schoenberg's expressionist music, breaks
through and scars the surface. Thus, Erwartung, along with the other early atonal works
and Schoenberg's paintings from this time become, for Adorno, "acts of the mind.,,18
The idea that Erwartung is a case study is made more explicit by Adorno in his
evaluation of the monodrama's single character, Die Frau, the "heroine" of the
monodrama. She is subjected to all of the terrors of a nightmarish forest at night before
the traumatic discovery of her lover's corpse, and through the course of her experience is
"consigned to music in the very same way as a patient is to analysis.,,19 The music,
according to Adorno, registers Die Frau's trauma, wrenching out of her "the admission of
hatred and desire, jealousy and forgiveness ... and the entire symbolism of the
unconscious.,,20 In this role, Schoenberg's music is thus formally dependent upon its
function as analyst, as registrar of shock and trauma, as confessor and consoler:
Erwartung's music is in a kind of state of dynamic suspension, a Hegelian sublation of
18 Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 39. Schoenberg's mind, obviously, but Adorno is also tacitly
positing here a more general psychoanalytic poetics.
54
convulsive "gestures of shock" and a "crystalline standstill" provoked by anxiety.21
While Adorno does not fully develop this provocative idea, it nevertheless opens a
hermeneutic door that I would argue cannot be closed. My own interpretation of
Erwartung in Chapter 5 is predicated in part upon Adorno's insights into the relationship
between Die Frau and the music-as-analyst.
Adorno's invocation of Freudian psychoanalysis in his commentary on
Schoenberg and Erwartung owes much to Schoenberg himself. Adorno often echoes
Schoenberg's own assessment of his music as found in the latter's Harmonielehre
[Theory of Harmony] of 1911. Ostensibly a theory textbook, the Theory of Harmony also
provides a clear picture of Schoenberg's compositional aesthetic at the end of the first
decade of the twentieth century and hints at a connection between the composer and
Freudian psychoanalytic theory. In a long paragraph in the final chapter of the book,
Schoenberg writes of the role of "instinct" in the process of composition, insisting that
the "artist's creative activity is instinctive. Consciousness has little influence on it. .. He
is merely the instrument of a will hidden from him, of instinct, of his unconscious.,,22
Schoenberg identifies in the unconscious the inherited knowledge of the past, of musical
ancestors: this inherited knowledge is part of the artist's "instinctual compulsion, which
21Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 42. I think that this is a function of the free atonal style, the
apotheosis of which is Erwartung: the removal of the tension and release function of tonality, of the
gravitational force of triadic harmony, and its replacement with total c1u'omaticism creates music that is at
once both "still," in terms oflarge-scale movement, and remarkably active from moment to moment.
22Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983),416. Translator Roy Carter cites both Freud and Jung as the inspiration for this view, noting that
Freud's impact on Schoenberg and fellow modernist artists "invites investigation and speculation." (416n.)
55
he must obey.',23 While Adorno takes a more explicitly Freudian approach, insisting that
it is unconscious emotion, or authentic suffering, which does not so much compel the
artist to create as it does break through the surface of the work of art in spite of conscious
intention, for both Schoenberg and Adorno artistic truth is unconscious truth. The
unconscious shapes and determines the subjectivity of the work of art, serving as a
guarantor of the genuine: for Adorno, truth is found in the authentic expression which
undermines the illusory in music, while for Schoenberg it is the "true artist" who learns
from his unconscious, from the unwilled resurrection of the "old knowledge" of the
unconscious. 24
It seems obvious to me that Schoenberg's own ideas about the nature of the
musical unconscious are echoed in Adorno's Freud-inspired commentary on Erwartung
in the Philosophy of Modem Music. The original idea that the monodrama is a kind of
Freudian case study, however, belongs solely to Adorno.
Wilfrid Mellers' Caliban Reborn and the Dark Wood of the Unconscious
Mellers' monograph Caliban Reborn addresses twentieth century music in
general and postulates that music, as of 1968, is in some kind of crisis, arising out of the
23 Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, 416. This, presumably, is the Jungian aspect of Schoenberg's music, as
identified by Roy Carter (see pg. 416, footnote 11).
24 Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, 416. In comparing Adorno's and Schoenberg'S views on the
unconscious and the creative artist, what interests me is a seemingly innocuous and therefore neglected
sentence in the oft-quoted passage from the Theory of Harmony, above. While Schoenberg writes of the
unconscious compulsion to create as "musical nature .. .inherited ... from a musical ancestor," he also
mentions, as a kind of aside, that the composer's instinctual compulsion may also be "the outflow of an
energy that is seeking new paths." This strikes me as a Freudian construction, parallel with Freud's theory
of the discharge, by one path or another, of libido or sexually-charged psychic energy.
56
process of change. The rate of physical changes in the twentieth century, Mellers asserts,
is discordant with our ability to deal psychologically with change. Caliban Reborn is an
investigation of just how much music has changed over several centuries, and just how
different music in the twentieth century is from its predecessors. Much of Mellers' book
is dedicated to a psychological or psychoanalytic perspective, using Freud and Jung,
themselves theorizers and explicators of the new century and its psychological crises, as
an interpretive wedge for the music of composers from Wagner to Debussy to
Schoenberg. It is for this reason that Mellers' book is included in this survey, for it offers
a thoroughgoing, if brief, psychoanalytic interpretation of modem opera in general and
Erwartung in particular.
Mellers situates Erwartung at the end of a chain of works that begins with
Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, and also includes Schoenberg's Verkliirte
Nacht op. 4 of 1899. In Tristan, the harmonic tension represents the deification of "the
ego in its most fundamental impulse, that of sex ... Wagner started, more primitively, from
the most fundamental reality known to him: the surge of harmonic tension which was his
own erotic life."z5 In other words, Tristan is in part an autobiographical work in which
harmonic tension is used explicitly to represent sexual tension. In the final act of Tristan,
trauma and reminiscence are described by Mellers in terms of Freudian regeneration:
when Tristan hears the Shepherd's melody, he recalls and relives his past in a cathartic,
clearly psychoanalytic process. The Shepherd's tune, with its "fluid, noncorporeal
rhythm and ... chromatically intensified melismata" becomes "the empty sea: the unknown
25 Wilfrid Mellers, Caliban Reborn (London: Victor Gollancz, Inc., 1968), 34.
57
and the unconscious, to which Tristan must surrender" in order to purge his guilt. 26
Wagner's Ring operas, on the other hand, hint at the "Dark Forest" of the mind and
concludes that man can no longer be totally responsible for his destiny, but rather is
consigned to the "waters of the unconscious.,,27 According to Mellers, Parsifal, the
companion piece to Tristan, represents Wagner's ultimate understanding of the
unconscious, and reveals "the path through the Dark Forest" in its renunciation of the
"dominance of the will."
"After Wagner," Mellers writes, "submission to the dark forest or the waters of
the unconscious becomes an obsessive theme.,,28 Debus' A Village Romeo and Juliet and
Schoenberg's Verkliirte Nacht~op. 4 are the next pieces in Mellers' continuum. Delius'
opera represents, for Mellers, a glance backwards into the past: Romeo and Juliet,
struggling with the conflict between love and the material world, seek a return to
childhood (the preconscious), then ultimately surrender themselves, in a sinking boat, to
the waters (of the unconscious). Schoenberg's tone poem, on the other hand, looks to the
future, to a "renewal of life within the psyche itself... a positive sequel to Tristan.,,29
Tristan and Isolde seek perfect love, but ultimately the desired consummation is not
perfect: the opera "tells us that perfect love can be realized only in nirvana, [but] it
affirms and reaffirms the nobility of man's aspirations.,,3o In Verkliirte Nacht, a tone
26 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, 36-37.
27 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, 39.
58
poem that follows the text of Richard Dehmel' s poem of the same name, the lovers suffer
guilt-the woman is carrying the child of another man-but their love, experienced in a
forest "transfigured" by the moonlight, releases their guilt and allows them to love the
child as their own. Mellers, who describes this story as a "regeneration myth," also notes
that musically, Verkliirte Nacht moves closer, with its "air-borne polyphony," to an
acceptance of chromaticism that would free the music from "the earth-pull of harmonic
tension.,,31 The work that ultimately achieves this freedom is Erwartung.
For Mellers, Erwartung is clearly a drama of the psyche: everything that happens
in the drama takes place in Die Frau's mind, which is highly charged with sexual passion.
Erwartung's forest is, for Mellers, unequivocally the "dark wood of the unconscious."
While at the beginning of the monodrama, Die Frau's tentative wanderings in the wood
are "a mingling of her memories and inchoate desires," once the body of her lover is
discovered-the body represents "her recognition of loss"-the monodrama becomes
entirely about the workings of the unconscious, as "text and music become
hallucinatory ... [with] 'free' atonality [as] the musical synonym for this subconscious
expressionism. ,,32 In the latter half of the monodrama, Die Frau's "submission" to the
unconscious is described by Mellers as the continuation of the pattern of Tristan and
Verkliirte Nacht, in that submission yields release, and here a kind of transfiguration as
day seems to break and the lover seems to have returned?3 Since we know of the
33 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, 42-43.
59
relationship between Die Frau and her lover only as it exists in Die Frau's mind, we
cannot know if their love was or ever could be "fulfilled" in the world. The drama of
Erwartung, then, is purely musical: the orchestra, as it absorbs the vocal line into its
texture, connects itself to Die Frau's experience, to her cries and to her song. It also
creates the "atmosphere of the Dark Forest [and] the realities of the imaginative life about
which the woman is murmuring or crying in self-communion. ,,34 In Mellers' view,
Erwartung is a psychoanalytic drama, an objectification of the unconscious mind in a
music drama and the musical and dramatic realization of the process begun in earnest by
Wagner with Tristan: the operatic representation of desire, passion and fulfillment.
While it seems that Erwartung ends ambiguously, with no real sense of closure or
fulfillment, Mellers nonetheless makes several direct connections between Tristan,
Verkliirte Nacht and Erwartung that I believe are worth taking note of and will in part
inform my own analysis in Chapter 5. Mellers finds in Tristan three important ideas:
first, that "personal passion" is the "only fulfillment," as ambiguous chords, falling
sequences, dissonance and endless melody all work to underscore a desire for sexual
fulfillment; second, that this fulfillment cannot be achieved in the corporeal or material
realm; and finally that this fulfillment cannot be achieved within "Time. ,,35 This
description of Tristan can be readily mapped onto Erwartung: the monodrama is
propelled forward by the passion of Die Frau, who reveals, in the end, that what she
desires is the unity she once had with her lover. The fact that the monodrama takes place
60
within what can be interpreted as a psychic landscape echoes Mellers' second point, that
perfect unity is unachievable in the real world, as it is, after all, an imaginary relationship.
Finally, both Tristan and Erwartung share timelessness: in Tristan, the hero is out of time
in the end, lost in reminiscences; in Erwartung, Die Frau's entire experience in the forest
is temporally displaced through memory episodes and her confusion over day and night.
As both dramas near their conclusions, Tristan and Die Frau each have, according to
Mellers' description, what appears to be a psychoanalytic breakthrough:
Perhaps one could almost say that during the course of the opera's
'stream of consciousness' she learns that the tree trunk she had
stumbled over (which let loose her nightmare) and the trunk of her
murdered lover which she later discovers are the same. They are
her own guilt, and she knows, like Tristan, that it was 'I myself who
brewed the potion.' Then, with self-knowledge, the guilt can be lifted
and as morning glimmers through the blackness, she can have a vision in
which she sees her lover, alive. 36
Mellers suggests that the ending of Erwartung-the final measures, in which the work
dissolves into a shimmering, chromatic haze-is the same watery unconscious realm as
Tristan's "empty sea," The Ring's gurgling waters and Delius' watery grave for his
Romeo and Juliet. The longed for fulfillment in Erwartung, a longing hinted at in the
monodrama's title, is realized, as in Verkliirte Nacht, through "transfiguration," at the
edge of the same moonlit forest. Die Frau's final vision of her lover alive again is
possible only because she, like Tristan, relinquishes her consciousness, allegorically
heard in the music as the relinquishment of "corporeal rhythm, of thematic definition and
61
of harmonic volition.,,37 The chromatic dissolution of the forest into water portends,
perhaps, rebirth. For Mellers, it is a beginning and an end.
Lewis Wickes and the Reception of Psychoanalysis in Schoenberg's Vienna
Musicologist Lewis Wickes' 1989 article on Schoenberg and psychoanalysis has
become a primary resource for scholars interested in Erwartung and its relationship to
psychoanalysis?8 Wickes convincingly connects Schoenberg's milieu with Freud's in his
article as he investigates "a possible psychoanalytic background" for the monodrama. 39
Wickes believes that Schoenberg likely had some familiarity with Freud's theories,
though Schoenberg never met Freud personally nor did his library contain any of Freud's
books. The psychoanalytic background that Wickes describes is traced to three main
sources: Schoenberg's direct association with members of Freud's circle, the composer's
familiarity with Karl Krauss' journal Die Fackel and with other contemporary Viennese
advocates and critics of psychoanalysis, and to the supposed familial relationship
between Erwartung' s librettist and a famous patient of Freud's.
Wickes notes that three members of Schoenberg's circle-David 10sefBach, Max
Graf, and Hugo Heller-were also members of Freud's Psychologische Mittwoch-
Gessellschaft, which met weekly between 1902 and 1907 and in 1908 became the Wiener
38Lewis Wickes, "Schoenberg, Erwartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis in Musical Circles in
Vienna Until 1910111," Studies in Music, XXIII (1989): 88-106.
39 Wickes, "Schoenberg, Erwartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis," 95.
62
Psychoanalytische Vereinigung. 40 Max Graf in particular represents a likely point of
contact between composer and psychoanalyst, as Graf was not only a member of Freud's
society and close to Schoenberg during the first decade of the century, but was also the
author of several psychoanalytic studies of composers, including Wagner and Beethoven.
Most significantly, he was also the father of "Little Hans," the subject of one of Freud's
major case studies. 41 The case history of "Little Hans" was published in 1909, the year of
the genesis of Erwartung. While there is no obvious connection between the monodrama
and Freud's case history of a little boy suffering from a phobia of horses, the overlapping
of Freud's and Schoenberg's circles is here most pronounced. From this, Wickes
concludes that Schoenberg must have had some familiarity with Freudian theory around
1910. This familiarity is strongly implied by Schoenberg's use of the term "instinct" in
his writings on music and composition, primarily in his Theory of Hannony and in his
contemporaneous letters to Kandinsky. Schoenberg's use of the term "instinct" is not
explicitly Freudian; rather, Schoenberg's "instinct" reflects, according to Wickes, a more
generalized understanding of the newly-popular science of psychoanalysis. While
Schoenberg's "unspecific (or undefined)" use of the term "instinct" suggests that he was
not aquatinted in a detailed way with Freud's writings, it nonetheless implies "a general
understanding of the conditions embodied by the term, which in turn presupposes at least
a basic knowledge of contemporary psychoanalytical modes of thought.,,42 Schoenberg's
41In fact, Max Graf himself undertook his son's analysis and then reported it to Freud: Freud interviewed
the boy only once. The case history is comprised of Freud's transcription of Graf's account of the
"analysis" followed by Freud's own commentary. "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy (,Little
Hans'), in Sigmund Freud, Case Histories I (London: Penguin Books, 1990).
63
use of "instinct" is important to note, according to Wickes, "because it indicates the
sphere in which [Schoenberg's] thinking was moving ... at the time of the composition of
such significant works as Erwartung.,,43
Wickes suggests a second possible source for Schoenberg's knowledge of
psychoanalysis, which includes Karl Krauss and his contemporaries. Krauss, the witty,
outspoken, and often-irascible editor of the periodical Die Fackel, published a number of
articles concerning Freud and psychoanalysis, which Schoenberg as a "regular reader"
would likely have read. 44 Wickes also mentions Hermann Bahr, an acquaintance of
Schoenberg's around 1909 and also a supporter of Freud's theories. It was Bahr who
allegedly gave Hugo von Hofmannsthal a copy of the Studies on Hysteria in 1903, which
the latter is thought to have used in his re-writing of Sophocles's drama Elektra. Richard
Strauss later collaborated with Hofmannsthal in composing an opera based on Elektra:
Hofmannsthal's text and Strauss's opera together represent the first use of psychoanalytic
ideas in music. Schoenberg's exposure to Elektra may have provided some of the
inspiration for Erwartung, as Schoenberg was "a genuine admirer of Strauss's work at
43 Wickes, "Schoenberg, Erwartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis," 89. It is worth noting here Carl
Dahlhaus' argument concerning Schoenberg and the word "instinct." For Dahlhaus, psychology, theology,
and aesthetics are linked in Schoenberg's work. Dahlhaus notes that Schoenberg uses the "language of art
religion" to describe the unconscious inspiration that led to initially unperceived thematic connections
between themes in the Op.9 Chamber Symphony. Schoenberg speaks of "the miraculous contributions of
the subconscious" in his 1949 essay "My Evolution," and Dahlhaus suggests that Schoenberg uses terms
from both "aesthetic theology" and "depth psychology" interchangeably. Dahlhaus also quotes
Schoenberg's 1911 essay "Franz Liszt's Work and Being," in which Schoenberg, discussing the "great
artist," states that great men are "possessed by a faith" and that the great artist also listens closely to his
instincts in order to produce great works. Here, again, "faith" and "instinct" are used interchangeably. It is
also worth noting that Wickes, citing the Liszt essay, extracts the idea of instinct from it but not "faith."
See Carl Dahlhaus, "Schoenberg's Aesthetic Theology," in Schoenberg and the New Music.
64
this time [ie.1909], in particular of the opera Salome-and subsequently, too, of
Elektra.,,45
Finally, Wickes examines the familial relationship between Schoenberg's
librettist Marie Pappenheim and Freud's first hysteric, Bertha Pappenheim, known as
"Anna 0." This ostensible relationship is one of the most significant and contentious
aspects of the investigation into the psychoanalytic background of the monodrama.
Wickes, for his part, denies any familial relationship between the two Pappenheims: his
evidence is the testimony of Marie Pappenheim's sister-in-law (the wife of Marie's
brother, Martin). Wickes does insist, however, that even if Marie and Bertha were not
related, Marie would still, like Schoenberg, have had some kind of general familiarity
with Freudian theory. In fact, she would likely have been more familiar than
Schoenberg, as she was a contributor to Die Fackel, she studied medicine at the
University of Vienna (where Freud lectured as a Professor Extraordinarius), and was
sister to a successful neurologist and psychiatrist, Martin Pappenheim.
Ultimately, Wickes connects Erwartung and psychoanalysis, but problematizes
this connection in several interesting ways. First, he does not insist that Schoenberg's
usage of "instinct" is necessarily a Freudian usage (indeed, he thinks it probably is not),
leaving room for doubt. Secondly, he denies the familial relationship between Marie and
Bertha Pappenheim, the most direct connection between the monodran1a and a real
Freudian case history. Finally, he recounts David Josef Bach's critical review of Strauss'
45Wickes, "Schoenberg, Erwartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis," 98. See chapter 5 regarding
psychoanalysis, Erwartung and the Elektra connection.
65
Elektra in which Bach, a close acquaintance of Schoenberg's, decries the use of
psychoanalytic ideas in art, and in Elektra in particular. Schoenberg would no doubt
have been aware of Bach's opinions, voiced in the April 1909 editions of the
Osterreichische Rundschau, just five months before Schoenberg began to compose
Erwartung. 46 Bach did not approve of Hofmannsthal reducing the dramatic action in the
work to "an elaboration of a basically clinical pathological finding.,,47 Bach insists that
artistic truth and psychological truth are incompatible; that is, he writes that the "ethical
idea" of art should not become subordinate to psychological theory, that artists ("poets")
should not concern themselves with the articulation of psychological theory in their work.
Criticizing Strauss and Hofmannsthal, Bach claims that, in reducing the psychology of
the character Elektra to a "perverse instinct. .. the meaning of the drama is lost. ,,48 Wickes
supposes that Schoenberg may have discussed this article with Bach, and even suggests
that a discussion between Schoenberg, Bach, and Hermann Bahr concerning opera and
psychoanalysis may have occurred. 49
Wickes' conclusion, answering the question of a psychoanalytic background to
Erwartung, is subtle: the work bears the marks of an awareness of Freud and his theories,
particularly his theory of hysteria, for which Schoenberg had "an informed and
sympathetic understanding"; but Schoenberg, sensitive to Bach's critique, circumvented
46 Wickes, "Schoenberg, Envartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis," 99.
48 Wickes, "Schoenberg, Envartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis," 98. Wickes also notes that
Freud read and agreed with Bach's finding: Freud concluded that psychoanalysts could analyze the works
of artists, but that "it is not the right of the artist to fashion poetry out of analysis." (99)
66
Strauss' error by avoiding "any suggestion of a psychoanalytical explanation for the
Woman's condition.,,5o Schoenberg accomplished this through textual deletions in the
libretto, deletions that effectively eliminated "dramatic causation" and any suggestion
that the monodrama was based on a "real situation" or real pathology.51 Instead, Wickes
insists, in Erwartung we are faced with the "symptom" separated from reality and cause.
What is represented in the monodrama is a kind of pure psychic or emotional reality,
whose disjointed, dream-like qualities are neatly-and necessarily-matched by
Schoenberg's free atonal approach. This is an interesting but unsatisfying conclusion.
Wickes' arguments for Schoenberg's awareness of psychoanalysis are thorough and
convincing, but his argument against a familial relationship between Marie and Bertha
Pappenheim, based on third-hand knowledge and gathered many years after the fact, is
not. Nor are his arguments against a direct psychoanalytic interpretation of Die Frau,
who I will later contend, after Adorno and based on textual parallels between the libretto
text and Freud's case histories, is really the subject of a musical case study in hysteria.
Wickes argues that Die Frau's "symptom" is the "subject-matter" of Erwartung; there is
no "given psychoanalytic subject-matter" as in Elektra. But what is Die Frau's
symptom(s), if not a hysterical one? Die Frau has a "condition," according to Wickes,
but it does not bear psychoanalytic explanation; hers is a "disturbed inner world," but
what does this mean? Is Wickes evoking the unconscious here? Schoenberg, claims
Wickes, musically represents Die Frau's "disturbed psychological state of mind ... a state
in which all forms of logical (i.e. normal conscious) association and continuity are
50 Wickes, "Schoenberg, ElWartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis," 99-100.
51 Wickes, "Schoenberg, ElWartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis," 99.
67
intrinsically excluded"s2: in essence, Erwartung is a creative musical rendering of the
unconscious. So then, as Wickes allows that Schoenberg was aware of Freud and likely
aware of his writings on hysteria and was influenced by Strauss' avowedly
psychoanalytic/hysterical Elektra, why is Die Frau not an hysteric? Wickes' conclusion
seems to be based in part on the assumption that Bach's critique of Elektra would have
resonated very strongly with Schoenberg, but also assumes that Erwartung is first and
foremost a work concerned with the expression of "feeling at a new level."s3
Christopher Butler's Early Modernism: Erwartung and the Modernist Subject
Christopher Butler's monograph Early Modernism examines not only music but
also literature and painting in Europe between 1900-1916. Butler's emphasis, in fact, is
on painting, but he does discuss a wide range of important modernist figures from a
variety of disciplines, including Schoenberg, Stravinsky, R. Strauss, James Joyce, Joseph
Conrad, and Freud. Butler examines the historical move towards modernism before
addressing main two issues: the development of a modernist aesthetic and a modernist
self. His consideration of the modernist aesthetic is concerned almost exclusively with
painters-Matisse, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Braque in particular-but he does include
Schoenberg and atonality in this discussion as well. Schoenberg is also placed in the
foreground of Butler's consideration ofthe modernist self, alongside Freud and
Stravinsky. Schoenberg's Erwartung, for Butler, constitutes an important aspect of the
development of the modernist subject, in which "a relationship between symbolic fantasy
68
and unconscious processes is part of a basic development in the ideas which underpin
much of the Modernist movement.,,54 Butler's reading of Erwartung is important to this
study because it contextualizes the monodrama historically and culturally, connecting the
work, though not uncritically, with Freud and psychoanalysis. In so doing, Butler
identifies two essential aspects of Erwartung, namely its uniqueness and its resistance to
interpretation.
This supposition that Freud and Schoenberg's monodrama are connected is
premised initially on the fact that Schoenberg had been profoundly influenced by Richard
Strauss' opera Elektra, which premiered in 1909, the same year of Erwartung's genesis.
The scene in which Klytemnestra describes her dreams to Elektra-"I dream, dream that
in my bones/all the marrow melts, again I startlawake55-had, according to Butler,
"considerable influence" on Schoenberg, and is reflected in Erwartung's treatment of
some of Elektra's main dramatic themes, namely "suppressed antagonism, nightmare,
and guilt.,,56 For Butler, however, Schoenberg's approach lacks the sophistication of
Strauss' opera and is more of an experimental work. Erwartung, notes Butler, is also
much more like an actual Freudian case study than Elektra, despite the fact that Strauss'
librettist Hofmannsthal may have used real Freudian case studies as a model for Elektra' s
"hysteria.,,57 Erwartung, writes Butler, is "perhaps the most psychologically disturbed
54 Christopher Butler, Early Modernism, 114.
55 Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, Elektra, translated by Anthony Hose in SalomelElektra-Opera Guide

(London: John Calder, 1988), 101.
56 Butler, Early Modernism, 112. See Chapter 5.
57Christopher Wintle notes the parallels between Hofmannsthal's text and the theories of Carl Jung, not
Freud (the "Elektra complex" is a Jungian theoretical construct, the female counterpart to Freud's Oedipus
69
work that Schoenberg ever wrote ... [and] comes close to the presentation of a Freudian
case history in art.,,58 This is attributed in part to the monodrama's text, whose
inarticulate, stream-of-consciousness style recreates the "hidden logic of the dream," or
in this case, of nightmares. 59
The "Freudian case history" that Erwartung comes close to presenting is provided
by librettist Marie Pappenheim, whom Butler unproblematic ally describes as a relation of
Bertha Pappenheim. This is not central to Butler's argument for a Freudian influence on
Erwartung~ however, Butler suggests that the connection between the monodrama and
Freudian case studies is "contingent," dependent upon Marie Pappenheim's genealogy.60
In characterizing the work as "psychologically disturbed" and in recalling Schoenberg's
account of the perception of his early atonal music as "this nightmare ... unintelligible
ideas ... [and] methodical madness," Butler is less concerned with the Pappenheim family
and more with Erwartung's fragmentary, unstable nature and its "random association of
ideas" in the text, reinforced by the seemingly random appearances of new motifs and
complex, first appearing in 1912 in Jung's Freud and Psychoanalysis). Ultimately, Wintle suggests that
the relationship between Elektra and Jung's Elektra complex may simply be "chance." Christopher Wintle,
"Elektra and the 'Elektra Complex,'" in SalomelElektra-Opera Guide 37, ed. Nicholas John (London:
John Calderl988), 63. The relationship between Hofmannsthal and Freud's Studies on Hysteria has yet to
be clarified. See Jill Scott, "Electra After Freud: Death, Hysteria and Mourning," Ph. D. dissertation,
University of Toronto, 1998, 139-144.
58 Butler, Early Modernism, 112. Butler is a little confused here: he notes that Schoenberg "set
Pappenheim's text "as it stood, in a feverish eighteen days," but also describes Erwartung's text as having
been written by Schoenberg ("the most psychologically disturbed work that Schoenberg ever wrote: the
tortured illogical monologue of a woman who ... [my italics])," 112-113. The work was in fact written in
seventeen days; the woman's "tortured illogical monologue" was of course written by Marie Pappenheim,
not Schoenberg. See Chapter 5.
59Butler, Early Modernism, 112. Schoenberg noted that Erwartung could be viewed as a "nightmare of
anxiety [Angsttraum]." See Arnold Schoenberg, Briefe, ed. Erwin Stein (Mainz: B. Schott's Sohne, 1958),
149.
60 See Chapter 3.
70
their almost immediate abandonment. 61 Butler also falls back on Adorno's original
insight, namely that the work is psychological or psychoanalytic insofar as it recreates the
feeling of a dream through the suspension of time. Unlike opera up to and including
Wagner and Strauss, Schoenberg's monodrama achieves the effect of slowing the
psychological drama, making it somehow more real. In other words, the musical rhythm
and the forward motion of the singer's line in Erwartung do not propel the text's
"psychological processes" forward at an unrealistic pace, as is the case with opera
generally. In Erwartung, movement and stasis are balanced in such a way as to evoke
"subconscious, fantasy processes,,,62 and not to simply represent dramatically certain
psychological motivations of characters.
Ultimately, Butler makes two important claims regarding Erwartung that I would
like to address. The first is his suggestion that there is such a close-"inexorable"-
connection between the monodrama's "nightmare symbolism" and dissonance that a kind
of de facto link is forged between "all atonalism and dissonance" and "angst and
irrationality" (or more broadly, I would suggest, with disturbed psychological processes
in general, such as hysteria).63 This is an interesting point, one that asks that we accept
61 Butler, Early Modernism, 113. Here, Butler cites Schoenberg'S 1947 speech to the National Institute of
Arts and Letters, wherein he described the difficulties he had faced as a composer ("I had the feeling as if I
had fallen into an ocean of boiling waters, and not knowing how to swim or to get out in another manner, I
tried with my legs and arms the best I could .. .1 never gave up. But how could I give up in the middle of an
ocean?"). Schoenberg also questioned the animosity of his opponents (those who regarded his music as
"unharmonious torture" and "methodical madness"), to whom he ultimately credits his success. Quoted in
Charles Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996),2-3. Butler's use of part
of this speech, above, to characterize Schoenberg's feeling about his own music ca. 1909 is inaccurate and
misleading.
62 Butler, Early Modernism, 114.
71
consonance and tonality as normative and, in this case, sane, as pitted against the insanity
of atonality. It is fundamentally counter to Adorno's claims for Erwartung, namely that
it represents the pure, unmediated expression of the unconscious as music; for Butler,
Erwartung's atonal idiom is simply well-suited to the musico-dramatic representation of
disturbed psychology.
The second claim that Butler makes is that Erwartung's Woman "hardly amounts
to a case history," by virtue of the fact that the monodrama's text and music situate Die
Frau in a "decontextualized world, in which the identity of the speaker is at risk.,,64
Butler suggests, furthermore, that "Erwartung does not aim at an interpretable
symbology,,,65 but this seems to me to contradict his claims, above, for Erwartung and its
"nightmare symbolism," so "inexorably" linked to its atonal idiom. There is certainly an
interpretable symbology in Erwartung-a psychoanalytic symbology, as I will show in
chapters 3 and 5-but also, as other scholars have pointed out, a symbology derived
directly from the Romantic and early Modern operas of Wagner and Strauss
respectively.66 Moreover, the "decontextualized" world that Butler describes, wherein
the identity of Die Frau is "at risk," is obviously part of what makes the monodrama so
close to a case study, especially Freud's case histories of hysterics who, suffering from
66 See, for example, David Hamilton, "Schoenberg's First Opera," Opera Quarterly 6/3 (Spring 1989): 49-
58. Hamilton notes that Erwartung's night/day, light/darkness imagery is strongly reminiscent of Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde, and that the monodrama shares the symbol of the moon with Strauss' opera Salome.
Hamilton does conclude, however, that the imagery of Erwartung's libretto is "symptomatic rather than
symbolic ... raw mental data rather than metaphor." (54). I do not agree with Hamilton's conclusion here, as
I am not sure you can have it both ways: if we are asked to recognize that Erwartung shares certain
72
hallucinations, disorientation, and loss of language, are equally "at risk" of losing their
identity.67 Butler concludes his argument by suggesting that the inherent misogyny of
Erwartung, a product of its cultural and historical context (i.e. turn-of-the-century
Austria), results in the work being "more like revenge than therapy.,,68 Die Frau is
"tortured by the music" according to Butler, not analyzed by it, as Adorno claimed; she is
effectively abused rather than treated, "driven to hysterical jealousy, and prone to a
primitively murderous treachery.,,69 Of course, the fact is that we do not known that Die
Frau has committed any "treachery" at all-the libretto, in its final form, does not
indicate who killed the lover; in fact, it could be read as suggesting that he was killed by
the "other woman" or perhaps another jealous man, or that he is still alive come the end
of the monodrama, or that he does not exist in reality at all-but here Butler would like
Erwartung to be two contradictory things at once, both a decontextualized nightmare
world and a kind of representation of real events; that is, both dream and reality. Die
Frau is "sacrificed ... to madness,,,7o writes Butler, "tortured by the music," but who
sacrifices her? Moreover, whose revenge is Butler talking about? Who is taking revenge
symbols and images with other operas, can we then be asked to ignore the intertextual symbolic referential
force that they then can assume?
67Indeed, as post-Freudian psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has noted, the fundamental structure of neurosis is
an ontological question: "whether phobic, hysterical, or obsessive, the neurosis is a question that being
poses for the subject." (Lacan, "The Agency of the Letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud," in
Bcrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997), 168). What is
interesting, furthermore, is that the specific question the hysteric asks, "Am I a man or a woman?" or
"What is Woman?" (see Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London:
Routledge, 1996),78) seems to me a psychoanalytic question of identity also posed by Erwartung. See
Chapter 3 regarding Elizabeth Keathley's feminist interpretation of the monodrama.
73
on Die Frau? Schoenberg? Pappenheim? Interestingly, the misogyny Butler finds in
Erwartung seems to come largely from the libretto, which was written by a woman, and a
rather liberated woman at that: Pappenheim was a published poet and a graduate of the
male-dominated medical faculty of the University of Vienna. 71
In the end, Butler's short reading is interesting if flawed, placing the monodrama
at a pivotal point in the development of the subject in art at the tum of the century while
simultaneously denying the importance of psychoanalysis to an understanding of the
work. The absence of an "interpretable symbology" in the work leads Butler to conclude
that Erwartung does not represent the scene of Freudian psychoanalysis, a claim I will
refute in Chapter 5.
Bryan Simms and Schoenberg's Atonal Music
Simms' The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg: 1908-1923 represents the first
and thus far only extant monograph concerned with Schoenberg's atonal period. Simms
begins with an overview of the pre-atonal works before discussing opp. 10-24 in
chronological order but also grouped into chapters according to genre. Simms provides
some fairly detailed prefatory context to the atonal works, linking Schoenberg's
"evolution toward atonality" with contemporaneous developments in music (especially
with Strauss and Debussy) while closely examining Schoenberg's pre-atonal works as
harbingers of the atonal idiom. Simms' critical discussion of the atonal works themselves
involves some analysis along with a good deal of important historical context. While
71See Elizabeth Keathley's Ph.D. dissertation "Revisioning Musical Modernism:" for a detailed discussion
of Marie Pappenheim's role as librettist. See also my overview of Keathley's argument in Chapter 3.
74
Simms' book is an invaluable resource-and indeed is cited liberally in my own
project-I am concerned here mainly with his discussion of Erwartung and its relation to
Freudian psychoanalysis.
Simms begins his discussion of Erwartung with a brief biographical overview of
Marie Pappenheim and an evaluation ofPappenheim's role in the genesis of the
monodrama. Simms' identifies Pappenheim's libretto as "an uncanny precursor of the
new German theatre of the period after 1910 ... the "Ich-Drama" later associated with such
writers as Reinhard Sorge."n According to Simms, while clearly presaging post-1910
German expressionist drama with its nameless character symbolizing a universal type, its
nightmarish landscape, pervasive sense of foreboding, and its "theme of violence as
symptomatic of psychic and social disintegration," the libretto to Erwartung is also a
unique document in that it seems to have failed to conform to any existing literary
models.73 Simms looks to Pappenheim's other poetry for a hermeneutic key to the
monodrama and finds that in Erwartung, Pappenheim brings to bear the same kind of
clinical perspective that one finds in her melancholic poem "Seziersaal [Autopsy
Room]," written from the perspective of a physician "who explores emotions in a
heightened state" as he or she empathizes with the dead. 74 Simms finds a similar conflux
of medical/clinical perspective and emotional empathy in Erwartung, as Pappenheim
"brings to bear the clinical condition of hysteria as the context for a portrait of the
75
emotions out of control.,,75 Simms cites Charcot, Breuer and Freud as the figures
primarily responsible for bringing hysteria to the attention of world at the end of the turn
of the century; implicit in this is the idea that Pappenheim, as a student of medicine in
Vienna in the first decade of the twentieth century, would have had some awareness of
the burgeoning scientific study of hysteria. Indeed, Simms suggests that the
monodrama's Die Frau was, to the clinician Pappenheim, like a "patient,,,76 and
moreover, a patient suffering from hysteria.
Simms allows that, if hysteria is at the heart of Pappenheim's monodrama, then it
is the hysteria of Anna 0.: Die Frau displays symptoms of hysteria that are "strikingly
close to those of Anna 0.'.77 Simms compares and links symptoms between the two
women-hallucinations, amnesia, and a problem with language-and concludes that
Breuer's case history of Anna O. was "at least in part, a model used by Pappenheim in
writing the libretto.,,78 Simms also asserts, unproblematically, that Marie Pappenheim
and Anna O. were related, describing Anna O. as Pappenheim's "kinswoman.,,79 He
compares the mental states of Anna O. and Die Frau in terms of their shared dissociative
77 Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 93. See Chapter 3 regarding hysteria.
79Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 93. Simms cites Dianne Penney's Ph.D. dissertation
"Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," as the source of this information. There are other sources that
contradict this claim. See Chapter 3.
76
tendencies: both women seem to display a split consciousness, exemplified by amnesiac
episodes. 8o
Simms makes an interesting claim in his evaluation ofErwartung, namely that
while Pappenheim's libretto is obviously a text inspired by contemporary developments
in the theory and treatment of hysteria, Schoenberg himself would not have been
interested in her text as such. Rather, Simms asserts, Schoenberg's interest lay in the
emotional intensity of the text, and he chose to see the work as a drama of the emotions, a
musico-dramatic representation of a chaotic simultaneity of emotions in a human subject.
This Schoenbergian subject is, ironically, more of a universal than Pappenheim's Die
Frau: Simms suggests that Pappenheim saw Die Frau as an "individual" suffering from
hysterical symptoms; Schoenberg, on the other hand, saw her not as a individual but as
the objective embodiment of the human subject, or perhaps rather a cross-section or
freeze-frame of the human subject in a heightened emotional state. "The individuality or
psychology of the Woman," writes Simms, "were secondary, even arbitrary for
Schoenberg ... Erwartung dealt with the emotions per se."Sl This, I think, is not wholly
true. Simms insists that since the monodrama is written in the atonal idiom, and since
this music "according to the composer, flowed directly from the emotions and depicted
their untamed diversity," then Schoenberg's realization of the libretto text produced a
study of the emotions: this, concludes Simms, is a better interpretation of the monodrama
than Pappenheim's psychological one. Simms omits here the fact that Schoenberg,
81Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 95. See my discussion, above, on Christopher Butler
and the question ofthe universal versus the individual in Erwartung.
77
whatever his understanding of the word, also wrote of music flowing directly from the
"unconscious," not only from the emotions. 82 In 1911, Schoenberg wrote a now-famous
letter to Kandinsky, in which he claimed: "art belongs to the unconscious! One should
express oneself! Express oneself immediately .. .unconscious forming ... that alone really
creates form.,,83 Moreover, as I noted above, in the Theory of Harmony, Schoenberg
writes of the artist as an instrument of the unconscious. This is not to say that
Schoenberg was not concerned with the expression of emotions, but rather I am asserting
that he was also concerned with the expression of the unconscious, and that the
unconscious was not simply the realm of the emotions to him, but also something very
much like the Freudian unconscious, a source of "knowledge" which makes itself heard
and is resurrected, whether the artist wills it or not. 84
Robert Falck on Pappenheim, Anna 0., and Erwartung
Robert Falck's 1989 essay "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien iiber
Hysterie" has become, in recent years, an important text in the investigation into the
connection between psychoanalysis and Erwartung. Though published in a somewhat
obscure collection of essays on German music and literature, the article is nonetheless an
important piece of the puzzle of Erwartung. 85
82See Wickes, above, on the question of Schoenberg's use of psychoanalytic terminology, especially
"instinct. "
83Arnold Schoenberg, letter to Wassily Kandinsky dated 24.1.1911, in Jelena Hahl-Koch, ed. Arnold
Schoenberg-Wassily Kandinsky: Letters, Pictures and Documents, trans. John C. Crawford (London:
Faber and Faber, 1984), 23.
84 Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, 416.
85 Robert Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien iiber Hysteria," in German Literature
and Music, An Aesthetic Fusion: 1890-1989 (Houston German Studies Volume 8): 131-144.
78
Falck's thesis is that Erwartung "is connected in a surprisingly direct way to the
early history of psychoanalysis.,,86 He offers a brief overview of the monodrama before
presenting a biographical sketch of Marie Pappenheim. The sketch includes a number of
imp0l1ant details about Marie's adult life in Vienna, including the fact that her husband
Hermann Frischauf was a psychiatrist in Vienna, and her brother Martin was also a
psychiatrist. Pappenheim herself was, of course, a dermatologist, and her younger sister
Gisela was a chemist. From this, Falck concludes that "Marie belonged to a family of
intellectuals and scientists who were, in addition, notably liberal, even socialist, in their
politics.,,87 This circumstantial evidence suggests that Pappenheim certainly could have
been well informed about contemporary trends in psychiatry in 1909, and by extension
the increasingly popular new "science" of Freudian psychoanalysis.
Falck asserts, however, that there is a more direct link to psychoanalysis here,
"something else [which] connects [Marie] to the very root of psychoanalysis. ,,88 In this
regard, his biographical sketch of Pappenheim is perhaps the most useful of its kind in the
extant literature on Erwartung insofar as it actually attempts to link Marie to Bertha
Pappenheim genealogically, rather that suggesting a familial relation based on anecdotal
evidence (or no evidence at all). Falck suggests that Bertha and Marie are related by
virtue of a shared great-grandfather, Wolf Pappenheim. Wolf was Bertha's grandfather,
and Falck assumes he would have been Marie's great-grandfather. This assumption is
86 Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien iiber Hysterie," 131.
87 Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien iiber Hysterie," 131-32. Falck reminds us that
Marie may not have yet known her future husband at the time of writing Erwartung.
79
based on the fact that "all the Viennese Pappenheims" are thought to have corne from the
Pressburg ghetto, "so it may be that all were related to Wolf Pappenheim, who brought
the name to Pressburg in the late eighteenth century."S9 Marie Pappenheim was actually
born in Pressburg, while Bertha was born in Vienna, her family having moved there from
Pressburg in the 1840s. 9o Though their relationship may have only been a "distant
one;,9l Falck concedes, the Pappenheim family (i.e. Marie's family) would have known
that Freud's Anna O. was their kinswoman Bertha; Marie, then, could have learned of the
details of Bertha's illness from other family members, or at the very least could have
been compelled-out of a medical and/or familial curiosity-to read the Studies on
Hysteria to find out more about her distant cousin. Falck concludes his biographical
sketch with the assertion that "[w]hatever the relationship between Marie and Bertha, the
influence of the Studien fiber Hysterie on Erwartung is unmistakable, and it becomes
more meaningful if we assume that the author of the latter knew the identity of one of the
subjects of the former.,,92
The real point that Falck makes in his article is that Erwartung and the Studien are
linked textually: the case history of Anna O. influenced the writing of the monodrama's
libretto text, whether the two Pappenheims were related or not. The text of the
monodrama is divided into three types: autologue or "internal monologue"; dialogue
(between Die Frau and the dead lover); and a different kind of autologue Falck calls
89 Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien aber Hysterie," 132.
9! Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien aber Hysterie," 132.
80
"memory episodes.,,93 These three types are then organized into two charts: the first
divides the text, scene by scene, according to "dichterlich-musicalische Perioden
[musical-poetic periods]"; the second chart lists the memory episodes and their respective
cues. It is this issue of memory that is central to Falck's argument, which equates the
"alternation of autologue and memory episodes" with "Anna O.'s two separate
Bewuj3tseinszustiinde [conscious states].,,94 He suggests that Die Frau's memory
episodes are triggered in such a way as to resemble Anna O.'s dual or split
consciousness. This split consciousness-Anna O.'s day time hallucinations versus
nighttime narration-is paralleled by Die Frau's shifts from autologue to memory
episode; moreover, this parallel is emphasized by the fact that at least half of Die Frau's
episodes take place at night or in the evening. After Falck has described the various
memory episodes, he postulates that they "represent deep-seated experiences of the kind
that would need to be purged in a classic psychoanalytic cure.,,95 In Erwartung, we are to
understand through memory episodes that Die Frau is reliving a traumatic past event-
the violent death of her lover, presumably-just as Anna O. relives the death of her father
in the course of her psychoanalytic treatment. 96
Falck explores this parallel between Anna O. and Die Frau towards a
psychoanalytic interpretation of the monodrama. He focuses his attention on the end of
94 Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien iiber Hysterie," 136. See Chapter 3 regarding
hysteria and Anna O.
81
the work, on the final line sung by Die Frau: "Oh, bist du da ... Ich suchte [Oh, are you
there? ..! was searching]." This single, enigmatic line of text represents, for Falck, a
"two-fold mystery": how are these words to be understood, and how is it that they came
to be included in the final version of the text?97 I take the first question to be the most
important one, and Falck offers three possible answers to it. One, the words have a "non-
Freudian" meaning, and suggest that at the end of the monodrama, the nightmare is over,
the day has dawned, and Die Frau's lover has appeared ("Oh, are you there?"). Two,
these words represent the end of analysis: "the "talking cure" has run its course," Die
Frau has survived a series of hallucinations towards the elimination of her hysteria, and
her "drastically telescoped" psychoanalytic cure is complete.,,98 Three, Erwartung
represents a lucid, nighttime narration, after Anna 0., with the final measures
representing the onset of a new daytime hallucination. Falck allows that the two
Freudian meanings he proposes are perhaps too far-fetched to be credible-"too
obscurely 'Freudian' for their time,,99-but I disagree. Falck is echoing Adorno here,
evoking the idea of the monodrama as a psychoanalytic scene and significantly
developing Adorno's original insight of Die Frau as psychoanalyzed by the music. The
parallels that Falck notes between the monodrama and the Anna O. case-not just
97Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien Uber Hysterie," 138-39. It is interesting to note,
too, that in the second draft of the libretto, these words are absent. This typewritten draft ends at the third
last line of the published version: "dir entgegen [towards you, or rushing to you; that is, Die Frau's lips are
rushing to meet her beloved]." The enigmatic "Oh bist du da.. lch suchte" is missing, and this absence adds
to the mystery of the work. Why would Pappenheim have left out the last two lines of the monodrama
here? Could this have been her attempt, in the end, to direct the work in a more realistic direction by
omitting the lines that throw the entire reality of Die Frau's experience into question?
98 Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien Uber Hysterie," 139.
82
symptoms, but also the "therapeutic" parallels-are striking and must be taken into
account in any investigation into the meaning of Erwartung.
Falck's article makes one final, and I believe very significant, contribution to the
further understanding of Erwartung: he finds a new possible instance of self-quotation in
the music. Of course, the presence of motives from Schoenberg's song "Am We grand"
in the monodrama were revealed as early as 1931 by Stuckenschmidt lOO ; Falck, many
decades later, reveals what could be a second instance and concludes that it could have
psychoanalytic implications. In the fourth scene, the moment at which Die Frau refers to
the "die fremde Frau [the other woman],,-that is, her lover's lover-as "die Hexe, die
Dime ... die Frau mit den wei Ben Armen [the witch, the slut ... the woman with the white
arms]," Falck notes that the fragment of melody accompanying this last phrase is doubled
over four octaves in the orchestra parts, drawing attention to the phrase because "such
doubling is highly unusual in this extremely dissonant style."lOl Falck traces this
fragment of melody back to Schoenberg's song "Traumleben," which is from the same
collection of songs as "Am Wegrand," the eight Op.6 songs. The opening of
"Traumleben" echoes the line in Erwartung, above: "Um meinen Nakken schliest sich
ein bWthenweiBen Arm [Around my neck presses a blossom-white arm]." What is
quoted is a tiny fragment, essentially a three-note-motive, E-F-E, found in the piano line
of the song. As Falck allows, this is not by itself convincing evidence; however, he notes
J(]() I am grateful to Bryan Simms for pointing out to me the fact that Stuckenschmidt (and not Adorno, as I
had thought) first revealed the presence of this quotation in print. It is found in the article "Arnold
Sch6nbergs 'Erwartung'," DerScheinwerfer, January, 1931.
JOJ Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien iiber Hysterie," 140.
83
that this melodic fragment from "Traumleben" is not, like the quote from "Am
Wegrand," buried in the accompaniment, but rather becomes the "model for the vocal
setting" of the Erwartung text. 102 Falck concludes that this quotation represents "a
musical analogue" to psychoanalytic therapy, to "the talking cure," insofar as Erwartung
can be described as Schoenberg "reliving bits of his own musical past in the trance under
which this work seems to have been composed.,,103 If we accept this argument, then
perhaps these moments of self-quotation are "blotches" or "scars" as well, as Adorno
would have it: Schoenberg's musical unconscious speaking through a hallucinatory haze.
What is compelling about this interpretation is that it suggests that there is not only a
textual link between the Anna O. case and Erwartung, but also a musical one: Falck
asserts that "Schoenberg understood the general principals of psychoanalysis" and so
may have knowingly-though perhaps this is unconscious knowing--composed a work
that emulated the cathartic method of psychoanalysis through the inclusion of musical
fragments from the past as "memory episodes" in their own right. This claim is
contentious; it is founded on the assertion that Schoenberg understood, and indeed agreed
with, the principles of psychoanalysis as they would have been known in 1909, an
assertion that cannot be proved. I do believe, though, that Falck's basic thesis is correct
and that the case of Anna O. clearly influenced the libretto of the monodrama. I also
agree with what I take to be implicit in Falck's conclusions, namely that Schoenberg's
music reflects some kind of understanding of the "unconscious," if not the therapeutic
process of psychoanalysis itself.
102 Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien libel' Hysterie," 142.
lO3 Falck, "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien libel' Hysterie," 142.
84
John Bokina, Opera, and Hysteria
John Bokina's short essay "Opera and Hysteria: Elektra and Erwartung" is an
examination of the transformation of the "mad scene" in opera to actual "mad operas"
around the tum of the century. 104 This transformation occurs in Vienna, according to
Bokina, under the aegis of what he calls the "new psychological sensitivity permeating
Viennese cultural life at the tum of the century.,,105 Elektra and Erwartung, according to
Bokina, have been erroneously interpreted in the past as sharply contrasting polar
opposites, when in fact they share this psychological sensitivity. They also reflect the
importance and influence of Freud's burgeoning psychoanalytic enterprise insofar as they
offer a psychologized version of the familiar music drama in the case of Strauss, and an
attempt musically to "replicate psychic distress" in the case of Schoenberg. 106
Ultimately, Bokina's essay seeks to situate the two operas, synchronically and
diachronically as he notes, at the crossroads of psychological sensitivity in Vienna and
the history of madness in opera.
Both of these operas take operatic madness to the extreme, transforming an entire
opera into a musico-dramatic representation of madness where formerly only a mad scene
would do. For Bokina, this is a continuation of the Wagnerian tradition, wherein
chromatic music is used for characters whose emotions transcend the boundaries of
convention. Bokina cites Tristan und Isolde as an example, noting that
104 John Bokina, "Opera and Hysteria: Elektra and Erwartung" in Vienna: The World of Yesterday, 1889-
1914, ed. Stephen Eric Bronner and F. Peter Wagner (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997).
105 Bokina, "Opera and Hysteria," 119.
85
Wagner goes beyond words and gestures and beyond mere orchestral
commentary to depict the madness of Tristan. Tristan's love for Isolde
violates the conventions of society, and his delirious vision of Isolde
violates the tonal conventions-that is, the musical analogue of social
conventionality-in an outpouring of chromaticism and dissonance. 107
Elektra and Erwartung, then, extend this Wagnerian convention. Wagner, according to
Bokina, "established the orchestra as a kind of psychoanalyst avant la lettre of the
characters' conscious motivations,,108; Strauss and Schoenberg take this a step further,
using anew, transformed musical language to depict a kind of Freudian dreamscape in
which alienation and anxiety whirl around an hysterical murderess.
The libretto of Elektra, writes Bokina, is "a 'family drama' displaying the
psychological imprint of early twentieth century Vienna." 109 The librettist Hofmannsthal
may have read Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria, but then again, he might not
have; according to Bokina, this does not contradict the fact that the text is clearly a
"psychoanalytic approach to the Greek classics.,,110 But, while Elektra is rife with
allusions to psychoanalysis, Erwartung is something different. As Bokina notes, the
monodrama "goes beyond Elektra's evocation of Freud and psychoanalysis via the
representation of fragments of familiar psychoanalytic ideas. Rather, Erwartung
... attempts the aesthetic replication of the stream of inner consciousness." III Erwartung's
107 Bokina, "Opera and Hysteria," 121. In Tristan und Isolde, it is worth noting, chromaticism is reserved
for night, while diatonicism is used for day. For Wagner, chromaticism is not used solely to represent mad
characters, but also attributes a certain madness to the night itself.
108 Bokina, "Opera and Hysteria," 121. Here Bokina is echoing Thomas Mann, whom he does cite.
III Bokina, "Opera and Hysteria," 127. Does Bokina mean "unconscious" here?
86
Woman finds herself walking through a forest, but this is ultimately an ahistorical,
apolitical, asocial scenario; she is lost nowhere but in the haunted forest of the mind.
Indeed, as Bokina insightfully notes, the "odyssey of the walk appears to be a metaphor
for the course of psychoanalytic treatment, with moments of clarity and revelation mixed
with The Woman's often hysterical responses to her surroundings. Shards of a repressed
memory, of repressed guilt ... keep breaking through her reverie." 112 Schoenberg's music
goes a step beyond Strauss in its free atonality, which enables the composer to more
adroitly follow Die Frau's shifting emotional state and moods. At the conclusion of
Erwartung, though, Bokina finds some welcome "familiarity," as Die Frau appears
disheveled, dirty, her hands bloodstained: this is the traditional representation of operatic
madness. Die Frau, in the end, joins her "many ... mad operatic sisters."ll3
Bokina's article is interesting, and I agree with his thesis that Elektra and
Erwartung both share the heightened "psychological sensitivity" of Vienna in the first
decade of the twentieth century (even though Strauss himself was not Viennese, Elektra
owes much to Hofmannsthal and Freud's Vienna). There are some major problems with
this short essay, though. Bokina's treatment of Erwartung is very brief, just two pages,
while Elektra gets five and a half pages, despite Bokina's instance that Erwartung "goes
much further" than Elektra "in the direction of a new sensibility.,,114 Thus the essay is
thus simply is not balanced, and Bokina's assessment of Erwartung is, in the end, too
lJ4 Bokina, "Opera and Hysteria," 127.
87
shallow and facile to be of much use. Bokina's also makes a conclusion that is troubling.
Citing Lukacs on the "solipsism of expressionism," Bokina suggests that Lukacs' theory
that the expressionist writer himself is always the central character of an artistic work
applies to Schoenberg and Erwartung, since Schoenberg wrote "this score about conjugal
infidelity in a mere seventeen days, immediately after he was abandoned by his first
wife."IIS Here we have two problems. The first problem is that Bokina simply has his
dates wrong: Schoenberg's wife left him, and later returned, in the summer of 1908, not
in the summer of 1909, and so not immediately before he composed Erwartung but one
year earlier (to the day, in fact, which makes, I think, an even stronger argument for
expressionistic solipsism; see Chapter 3). The second problem is that, while I agree that
Schoenberg-as-cuckold could have identified with Die Frau and her unfaithful lover, he
did not write the text of the monodrama, even if, as Bokina claims, the text was written to
Schoenberg's "specifications.,,116 The text is nominally "about" infidelity; Bokina begs
the following question here: is the "score"-that is, the music itself-"about conjugal
infidelity"? And if so, how, exactly? Bokina's catchall phrase "psychological
sensitivity" does not adequately answer this question.
Allen Shawn and Schoenberg's Journey
Composer Allen Shawn's very recent monograph on Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg's Journey, is, according to the author, intended as a "handshake" with its
subject. Indeed, the book offers little new information, and is by no means a rigorous
88
investigation either analytically or biographically. It does, however, offer old
information in a new way; that is, it is written with considerable warmth and a more or
less balanced reverence, as Shawn seeks to integrate the many extant versions of
Schoenberg-the man and his music-into a single, reasonable account. The book takes
a loosely chronological approach to Schoenberg's life and works, focusing on the major
works and major events in the composer's life. Shawn also offers a very brief overview
of writings about Schoenberg and his "critics and disciples," and between discussions of
the musical works includes explorations of a variety of disparate topics, from
Schoenberg's art to the relationship between Schoenberg and Stravinsky to Schoenberg's
height. The discussion of the early and atonal music is the weightiest, and Shawn offers
some interesting insight into Erwartung and Die gliickliche Hand in particular.
Erwartung. Shawn claims, is one of a handful of Schoenberg's works inspired by
the theme of "thwarted love," along with Pelleas und Melisande, Die gliickliche Hand,
Von Heute auf Morgen, the Gurrelieder and Das Buch der hangenden Garten. 117 He also
connects Erwartung to Pierrot Lunaire and Verklarte Nacht by virtue of the fact that all
three works share a "moonlit monologue." 118 Shawn begins his discussion of Erwartung
by crediting Marie Pappenheim as the author of the libretto text. This is immediately
contradicted, however, as Shawn writes that the text "contains many of the elements of
the Gerst! episode: an affair, jealousy, anxious waiting, a corpse that is discovered." I 19
117 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 24.
89
This seems to put the authorship of the text in question, and Shawn goes on to note that
Schoenberg claimed to have directed the writing of the libretto, while Pappenheim later
claimed to be the text's sole author. Shawn ultimately seems to conclude that the text
was Pappenheim's creation, and that Schoenberg was responsible largely for deletions to
the text that removed the some of the literal references to the murder of Die Frau's lover.
Thus the elements from the "Gerstl episode" in Erwartung's text could be construed as
hinting at the affair and its aftermath, but it remains unclear whether he is suggesting that
they are direct allusions to the affair, or merely appear as coincidences. If we are to
accept Pappenheim as the sole author of the text, then we must assume that she knew
about the affair, and then allow that she would offer Schoenberg a monodrama based on
what would obviously be a painfully fresh memory for him. This is an exciting but
unlikely scenario, perhaps just as unlikely as Schoenberg consciously making deletions to
Pappenheim's text to make it more reminiscent of his wife's recent infidelity; however,
as I discuss in Chapter 5, if Pappenheim, who likely did know of the affair, participated
with Schoenberg in the construction of a work designed as an allegory of
psychoanalysis-and perhaps based in part on actual case studies-then can the
monodrama be understood autobiographically as a kind of surrogate analysis?120
Shawn also notes, albeit in passing, that Marie Pappenheim was Bertha
Pappenheim's "cousin,,,121 basing this conclusion on the findings in Bryan Simms' essay
120 See my discussion of Susan McClary's essay on woman and operatic madness, below.
90
"Whose idea was Erwartung?,,122 Moreover, he echoes Simms' assertion that
Schoenberg may have implicitly rejected the realistic portrayal of hysteria that
Pappenheim offered in the original version of the libretto in favour of "a more purely
emotional expression of the unconscious mind.,,123 This expression is accomplished by
Schoenberg through the use of what Shawn provocatively calls "dream form or
psychological form.,,124 Shawn theorizes that Erwartung shares a number of important
characteristics with dreams in general:
A dream eliminates transitions; in a dream we find ourselves somewhere,

we don't show ourselves how we got there. In a dream we do not need
to establish character or identify ourselves. We already know who "I" is.
A dream is not concerned with the development of an idea, or even with
remembering itself as it passes. All these things also seem true of
Erwartung, which gives the sense of taking place in a continuously
shifting present. 125
This is a compelling description of Erwartung as a dreamscape, and I agree at least in
part with Shawn, as far as the monodrama eschewing transitions (though each scene is
divided by a "Transformation," accompanied by static music) and possessing a dreamlike
quality of temporal and spatial displacement. Shawn's formulation of the work as
122 See Simms, "Whose Idea was Erwartung?," in Constructive Dissonance (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997).
123 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 94. See also Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg:
"Schoenberg's elimination of these passages has the effect of making the realistic or clinical context of the
poem less apparent and heightening instead its nightmarish tone"(94); "The physician Pappenheim was
concerned in Erwartung with the Woman ... as a 'a patient.' For the musician Schoenberg, Erwartung dealt
with the emotions per se." (95) These quotes are included in my discussion of Simms' monograph, above.
It is interesting, and no doubt purely coincidental, that the page numbers of Shawn's and Simms'
discussion of Erwartung's realism vs. emotionalism correspond exactly.
124 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 95. Shawn fails to indicate that "psychological form" was used
by Eric Salzman to describe the monodrama in the late 1960s. Salzman, Twentieth Century Music: An
Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 1967),35.
125 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 95. I have to take issue with Shawn's assertion that "We already
know who "I" is": it seems to me that this is, in large part, the question around which the monodrama
revolves, is it not?
91
occurring within a "continuously shifting present" is interesting too, though as Robe11
Falck and others have shown, Erwartung seems to be as much about the past as the
present.
Shawn seems certain, from the outset, that Erwartung is a work about mental
instability, a work concerned with the psychology of both its single character and its
creator (i.e. Schoenberg). Die Frau is a hysteric, he asserts, and possibly insane. Indeed,
he describes her monologue as "perhaps psychotic," suggesting that there is more to her
psychic disintegration than mere hysteria. 126 In the first half of the monodrama, Shawn
finds "scraps of "sanity," but in the second, more "panic and disorientation."] 27 While
Die Frau mayor may not be "mad," she is certainly an hysteric, according to Shawn:
even though Schoenberg's deletions make the text less about a realistic case of hysteria
and more about the exploration of unconscious emotions, Shawn nonetheless refers
unproblematic ally to Die Frau's hysteria, going as far as offering a "feminist
interpretation of the text" in which "the woman's hysteria is the result of having no outlet
for her emotions other than through a man and no place in the world other than with
one.,,128
126 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 93. Hysteria is a neurosis; psychosis is of a different diagnostic
class, and implies an even more profound break with reality than the former. In 1924, Freud published a
paper entitle "Neurosis and Psychosis" (Standard Edition, XIX), in which he differentiates between the
two, determining that psychosis represents the extremes of mental illness. It has occurred to me that
Erwartung might be a kind of blending of neurosis and psychosis (especially in light of the possibility that
the entire work is a grand hallucination); however, Die Frau's use of language-she is verbose, and is able
to use language to describe her situation-implies neurosis rather than psychosis, in which there is typically
a complete breakdown of language. It may be, however, that at some point in Erwartung there is kind of a
psychotic break. See Chapter 3 regarding hysteria.
127 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 100. Adorno describes Die Frau as insane.
128 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 101. Though I would suggest that a feminist interpretation of
Erwartung might, as is true of Elizabeth Keathley's dissertation (see Chapter 3), disown the concept of
92
Shawn's conclusion of his discussion of Erwartung is particularly significant, and
here he makes three valid points: first, that Schoenberg, by layering repeating figures
used to build tension on top of a slower-moving harmonic background, creates moments
of disorientation, of "internal motion without external motion" 129; second, he likens these
moments to Schoenberg's paintings of this time, the "Gazes," with their immobile heads
barely containing burning eyes; and third, he makes what I think is an obvious but
important claim, namely that "it is not possible to separate thepsychology, the music, or
the artistic meaning" of Erwartung. 130 Shawn also suggests that the monodrama's path is
a metaphor not only for Schoenberg's artistic development, but is also a psychological
one, "the dark wood in which the nightmarish events of the preceding year in his personal
life occurred.,,131 I explore this in detail in Chapter 5 of this thesis.
Diane Penney and the Monodrama as Melodrama
Dianne Penney's Ph.D. dissertation, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung: Its
Musico-Dramatic Structure and Relationship to the Melodrama and Lied Tradition," has
long been the accepted last word on the familial relationship between Marie and Bertha
Pappenheim. Penney interviewed Marie's son, Dr. Hans Frischauf, in Vienna in 1987.
In that interview, Frischauf claimed that Marie and Bertha were indeed cousins;
moreover, and perhaps most significantly, he indicated to Penney that he believed his
hysteria entirely or might interpret hysteria, as some feminist critics do, as a mode of female protest, and
not simply a condition to which women fall victim at the hands of men, as Shawn would have it.
129 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg'S Journey, 102. This suggests Adorno's "crystalline standstill." See
footnote 19, above.
131 Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg's Journey, 102. See Mellers, above, who describes Erwartung's forest as
"the dark wood of the unconscious."
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mother was influenced by the Anna O. case in writing Erwartung,l32 This secondhand
account represented, until very recently, the closest any scholar had come to definitively
answer the question of the genesis of the text of the monodrama. With this understanding
of Erwartung, Penney can assert throughout her thesis that Die Frau, modeled on Anna
O. is hysterical or insane, and that the monodrama documents her dramatic escape into
madness. Penney's analysis of the monodrama posits a relationship between it and the
melodrama and Lied genres, and also claims that Erwartung's musical substance is
derived from Schoenberg's song "Am Wegrand," motives from which she finds operating
in the opening bars of the monodrama and subsequently developed in the work through
the process of developing variation. I discuss Penney's analytical approach to Erwartung
in Chapter 4 of the thesis; here, I am interested in Penney's characterization of the Die
Frau as mad, and of the monodrama itself as owing much to the thought and writings of
Sigmund Freud.
Penney prefaces her discussion of the origins of the text of Erwartung with a
general discussion of the Zeitgeist in Vienna in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Penney locates Erwartung as a post-Wagnerian opera, its staging-a "supra-real, self-
contained world,,133_a function of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk and its expressionistic
tendencies a reflection of the art and stage works of the time. While Penney notes that
Expressionism as such post-dates Erwartung, certain elements of the movement, evident
in the writings and stage works of Oskar Kokoschka, pre-date or are contemporary with
132 Dianne Honoway Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung, 61, 94n.
133 Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 49.
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Schoenberg's monodrama. She describes, in particular, Kokoschka's Marder, Hoffnung
der Frauen [Murder, Hope of Women], first staged in Vienna in July 1909, as a likely
influence on both Schoenberg and Pappenheim, and notes similarities between the works,
especially that fact that both feature the "annihilation" of a woman: in Kokoschka's
drama, she is killed; in Erwartung "she lapses into madness.,,]34
The Freudian elements that Penney finds in Erwartung stern from both the
influence of other contemporary dramas-Marder, Hoifnung der Frauen especially,
whose "Freudian themes of nightmares, dramas, fantasy, and murder"135 mark the
beginnings of the Expressionist movement-and also from the personal experiences of
the works' librettist, Marie Pappenheim. Penney's account ofPappenheim and the
genesis of the monodrama's text, however, is problematic, to say the least. Penney
identifies Marie Pappenheim both as the cousin of Bertha Pappenheim and as a "young
psychology student,,,136 when she was actually studying dermatology and moreover was
no longer a student as of the summer of 1909. The psychological or hysterical content of
Erwartung, Penney goes on to imply, may have had its origins in Pappenheim's own
personal experiences walking in a wooded area at night, but also in her own hysteria,
which Penney characterizes as "emotional fragility.,,137 Penney suggests that
Pappenheim must have been "suffering from some sort of mental anguish" because she
137 Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 64. She bases this conclusion upon a Jetter from
Pappenheim to Schoenberg, in which Pappenheim writes of having been "very agitated." The letter is
quoted in Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 121.
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complained of having been "agitated" and was unable to finish anything. 138 This, to my
mind, is not a compelling argument for Pappenheim as an hysteric; rather, it suggests,
based on what we know about Pappenheim's life and work, a person who was extremely
busy and involved in many different activities, and also a young poet, who may have
been insecure about her work at the time, introduced into a circle of prominent artists and
musicians.
Ultimately, Penney turns away from Pappenheim to the text and music of the
monodrama itself. Therein, she finds the influence of Freud in the. text's symbolism and
fragmentation, suggesting that Pappenheim's collection of incomplete and sometimes
incoherent phrases evoke the anarchy of the dream as represented in Freud's work.
Penney finds a direct connection to Freud through Pappenheim's inclusion of mushrooms
into the monodrama. In Scene 3, the mushrooms, like eyes on stalks, evoke Freud
symbolically, but also directly, as Freud liked to collect mushrooms in the Vienna woods.
Regarding the plot of Erwartung, Penney lists psychoanalysis among a number of
influences, including Maeterlinck's poem Pellaes und Melisande (Erwartung's "other"
woman shares the same white arms as Melisande), and the role of women in general in
Expressionist drama (including the plays of Strindberg and the one act operas of Richard
Strauss). As a medical student, Pappenheim would have been interested in
psychoanalysis; as a cousin of Bertha Pappenheim, she presumably would have an even
greater interest and familiarity with Freud's early case studies. This, Penney asserts,
would have been concomitant with an interest in dream theory and analysis aroused by
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the publication of the Interpretation of Dreams, together with a Viennese fin-de-siecle
fascination with the female psyche. Moreover, Penney notes that Schoenberg's closest
friends and allies, including Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg, had been to see Freud for
treatment. 139 Berg may have stimulated Schoenberg's interest in Freud, Penney
imagines, by asking Freud questions about his theories and later discussing them with
Schoenberg. 140
In the end, Penney's interpretation of the text concludes that Die Frau is mad: her
abnormal actions and words-in the absence of other characters or a more coherent plot,
against which an audience might make deductions about her mental state-consign her to
delirium. The "decisive elements" that convince the audience of Die Frau's madness
include her hearing voices and seeking out a lover who is obviously dead. Penney
describes Die Frau as "laps[ing] into madness,,141 in Erwartung, but does not connect this
madness directly with hysteria, nor does she liken Die Frau's "fragmented" speech to free
association and psychoanalytic treatment: she is not, in other words, a Freudian hysteric.
Instead, we are asked to understand Die Frau as simply slowly going insane, perhaps a
woman pushed to murder and insanity through her lover's infidelity. We are not given a
clinical picture here, but rather the suggestion that Freud and psychoanalysis were one of
several influences on Erwartung, and that Freud's presence in the monodrama is
confluent with the presence of other equally important influences, from the lugendstil
139 Though Mahler did not see Freud until 1910, and Berg did not see Freud for psychiatric counseling but
for treatment for his asthma. See Chapter 1.
140 This, according to Karen Monson's Alban Berg (London: MacDonald, 1977),77-78. Cited in Penney,
88.
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movement in art to the melodrama and Lied genres to Existentialism. In Penney's
evaluation of the psychology of the monodrama, Erwartung becomes something of a
catch-all, coterminous with any and all of the precursors to Expressionism.
While Penney is not always clear about the extent of Freud's influence on
Erwartung, she does make a number of important points, foremost among them the
presences of Freudian themes and symbolism in the work, derived from both
contemporary dramas and from Marie Pappenheim's own background, including her
professional and personal connections to psychoanalysis and her own putative mental
instability. Penney's dissertation offers a useful look at the historical context of the
genesis of Erwartung, along with some cogent analysis; what is lacking is a more careful
and thoroughgoing interpretation of the psychology of the work.
Feminist Musicology and Erwartung
One of the most provocative interpretations of Erwartung' s psychoanalytic/
hysterical content is a feminist one. Susan McClary's essay "Excess and Frame: The
Musical Representation of Madwomen" describes how composers from Monteverdi to
Donizetti to Schoenberg have dramatically represented madwomen in their operas. 142
McClary posits that composers are drawn to madwomen as compelling subjects for
dramatic treatment and that audiences are likewise drawn to mad scenes as the most
exciting, titillating parts of a given opera. While musicologists and theorists tend to
overlook issues of madness and gender in opera, she suggests, these issues are essential to
142 Susan McClary, Feminine Endings (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).
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the understanding and interpretation of dramatic music from the early Baroque to the
twentieth century. McClary examines in detail Monteverdi's nymph from Lamento della
Ninja, Donizetti's Lucia, and Strauss' Salome, and finds that their musical representation
is comprised of the use of "repetitive, ornamental, or chromatic excess," framed by
"normative procedures" that contain these women and prevent "contagion.,,143 The
spectacle of the madwomen, McClary concludes, is not only played out in the drama, but
is inscribed in the music itself, and this spectacle reflects contemporary cultural
perceptions of women, gender differences, and madness.
McClary addresses madness in Erwartung as a kind of coda to her examination of
Strauss'Salome. In Strauss' opera, Salome's chromaticism, which pervades the opera, is
contained, musically and dramatically, by Herod's death sentence: Salome is crushed
beneath the shields of the palace guards for her sexual transgressions-namely her desire
for John the Baptist and the consummation of that desire with John's severed head-as
the music attempts to assert social norms and narrative consistency through the
imposition of tonal closure. In Erwartung, McClary notes, the framing device of normal
narrative-procedures is absent, though the semiotics of (feminine) madness is still
operative: the monodrama is overwhelmingly chromatic, but there is no stopgap, no tonal
closure, no harmonic stability or goal:
the semiotic construction of the madwoman through discontinuity and extreme

chromaticism [ ... ] is still intact in Erwartung, but the protective frame-the
masculine presence that had always guaranteed the security of rationality within
the music itself, is absent, ostensibly murdered by our madwoman. 144
143 McClary, Feminine Endings, 81.
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The step that Schoenberg has taken with Erwartung, a step beyond the sound world of
Salome, is "ultimately fatal," McClary suggests, eliminating the possibility of containing
the madness it symbolically represents, a gendered madness that is frighteningly
irrational, a "monstrosity.,,145
McClary does not describe Erwartung explicitly as a psychoanalytic work, nor
does her interpretation include any mention of Freud; however, she does describe the
monodrama, and Schoenberg, using terminology that strongly evokes psychoanalysis,
suggesting to me that perhaps it is almost impossible to interpret the monodrama outside
of this context. McClary describes Die Frau's "paranoid utterances," which "range from
catatonic paralysis to chaotic flailing,,146: these are hysterical symptoms, echoes of
Elektra. She also offers a kind of case study of Schoenberg himself, couched in the
language of psychoanalysis. Schoenberg, McClary insists, in describing the conflict
between tonal procedures and destabilizing dissonance, aligns himself with the latter, the
traditionally feminine side "of all the binary oppositions governing tonal procedures and
narratives.,,147 Schoenberg does not identify these oppositions-the struggle between
strong and weak, between fundamental tone and other, usurping (chromatic) tones-in
terms of gender, but rather in political terms, as revolution against a kind of tyranny.
McClary does note, however, that Schoenberg also uses sexual language to describe
musical "transgression" or resistance against authoritarian tonality: these "tropes"-
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desire, "excitement of the forbidden," conservative morality against "immoderate
desire,,148-are found not only in Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony as abstract ideas, but
are also ideas that underlie his experimental, atonal compositions of 1908-09. The
conclusion that McClary thus suggests is that Erwartung represents, musically,
Schoenberg's appropriation of a "surrogate" in order to accomplish the radical break
from tonality he desired. 149 This surrogate was the madwoman, a personification of
feminine excess and a perfect analogue to the destabilizing, uncontrolled desire implied
by a music drama unconfined by a narrative or tonal frame:
[In Erwartung] Schoenberg's celebrated "emancipation of the dissonance"

is self-consciously presented as the liberation of the female lunatic, of
the feminine movement of desire and dread that had driven most nineteenth-
century narratives. If he managed in his theoretical writings to construct
transgression as a heroic deed, his artistic enactment of that transgression
in Erwartung betrays his inability to dismiss or transcend traditional binarisms
and their associations. lso
I think that McClary is implying that Schoenberg was drawn, unconsciously, to the
madwoman of Erwartung, to the metaphorical surrogate of his desire. His terms for
describing the relationship between tonal and atonal music, an unsteady blend of political
and sexual tropes, shows that Schoenberg was ultimately unable to escape the prevailing
views of female sexuality-as-Iunacy. His emancipation of dissonance was, in McClary's
terms, a "fantasy"; Erwartung was the acting out of the "fantasy of uninhibited
transgressions.,,151 She insists that Schoenberg's creation of the twelve-tone system was
148 Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, 48. Quoted in McClary, Feminine Endings, 107.
149 McClary, Feminine Endings, 107. Presumably, this would make Die Frau a "drag queen." (110)
Schoenberg too?
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a way to re-establish control, to re-establish the frame of normative discourse; or rather,
to enjoy the excesses and desires of the chromatic discourse of the feminine within a
strictly disciplined order. The intellectual rigor of the twelve-tone system and its inherent
logic ends the anxiety of the atonal period, re-establishes the rational order destroyed by
Erwartung's transgressive, desire-( over)ridden music language.
What is at stake, for McClary, is the question of social order, as defined through
gender roles. The tonal "frame" that contains and prevents the spread of the contagion of
feminine chromaticism is analogous to social structures that serve the same function: to
preserve the orderly, the rational, the masculine. McClary concludes that this need for
order and the fear of the excesses of feminine desire are at the heart of Schoenberg's
invention of the twelve-tone system, which allowed him both "dissonant raving with
supreme rational control.,,152 Dodecaphony afforded Schoenberg, and those who
followed him, desire without the attendant chaos; a transgression that is "always already
contained."l53 Erwartung's woman, she concludes, represents the ne plus ultra of
feminine desire cast in musical form, and the return of the repressed for Schoenberg: his
heroic transgressions into atonality, as described in the Theory of Harmony in terms of
victory and revolution, instead convey, in Erwartung, "a mixture of guilt, confusion, and
alarm ... desire in its rawest, most murderous form runs rampant through the piece.,,154
152 McClary, Feminine Endings, 108. Schoenberg's flight from feminine desire into twelve-tone music, as
McClary describes it, reminds me of Joseph Breuer's flight from his patient Anna 0., the hysteric whose
desire (and his own) was too overwhelming to bear. See Chapter 3.
102
The problem with McClary's account of Erwartung is perhaps first and foremost
a linguistic one: the language of her analysis is so hyperbolic that, like Schoenberg's
desire for conscious control, it offers one rigid interpretative path through not only the
monodrama but the whole of the history of opera. Rhetoric aside, there are some basic
factual errors that also erode McClary's interpretation, namely the fact that Schoenberg
did not turn to the twelve-tone system immediately after the dangerous "transgressions"
of Erwartung, as her essay suggests, but rather went on to compose some of the most
important music of the early twentieth century, including Herzgewachse and Pierrot
lunaire, along with four songs for orchestra and two large scale works, Die gliickliche
Hand and the oratorio Die lacobsleiter. If Schoenberg was feeling anxiety about atonal
composition and its implications (gendered or otherwise) after completing Erwartung, it
would be fourteen years before he would effectively act on this anxiety in order to regain
conscious control of his materiaL 155 While I agree with McClary as she tacitly posits
Erwartung as a both a singular achievement and a work riddled with desire, and suggests
too that atonal music might in fact be "crazy,,,156 in the end I am reluctant to accept her
analysis wholesale. For McClary, Erwartung and the other atonal works from the period
are products of Schoenberg's anxiety about women, and by extension cause anxiety to
theorists and analysts who, like Schoenberg, really want to contain that which is feminine
and therefore transgressive, chaotic and disruptive. There does not seem to be much
room in McClary's analysis for meanings beyond the politics of gender (whereas it seems
155 McClary does not mention, interestingly, that some of Schoenberg's anxiety over feminine desire may
have stemmed from his wife's recent infidelity, a personal and not political reality for the composer. Nor
does McClary say much about the libretto, which was written by a relatively liberated woman.
103
to me, as I have already suggested, that Erwartung, from the perspective of analysis, is
"over determined," like a dream); rather, her analysis leaves us with the binarism of
control/lack of control, in an essay where binary thought is decried. Moreover, I find
McClary's entire analysis of Schoenberg and Erwartung to be "contained" within an
unacknowledged Freudian discourse, wherein terms like desire, paranoia, and the return
of the repressed are used to describe Schoenberg's psyche with no mention of
psychoanalysis or the importance of psychoanalysis to an interpretation of the
monodrama; McClary even goes so far as to liken the analysis of atonal compositions to
the analysis of psychiatric patients. 157
We are expected, in McClary's final analysis, to appreciate performer/composers
like Diamanda Galas who, through a certain lack of control manifested through extended
vocal techniques, "enacts the rage of the madwoman" for political ends: "she seizes the
signs of dementia in order to give voice to political outrage, she defies and dispenses with
the conventional framing devices that have aestheticized previous portrayals of women
and madness.,,158 For McClary, Galas' representation of women and of the feminine is
new, unconventional, and gives a voice to women, who have only existed with the
musical canon as male constructs, as fantasy objects. While the frame that contains
Erwartung and protects the masculine by containing the feminine is shattered, allowing
irrational female desire to run rampant, in McClary's view Schoenberg is not to be lauded
157 McClary, Feminine Endings, 109. It seems to me that McClary is studiously avoiding the term
"psychoanalysis" in her essay, perhaps because of the gender issues that surround it. In her critical
paradigm, psychoanalysis would, presumably, be an anathema.
104
for this achievement, since it took his surrogate madwoman to "murder" the frame in the
first place.
Robert Craft: Erwartung as Schoenberg's "Angsttraum"
Conductor Robert Craft's "Notes on the Dramatic Structure" of Erwartung,
accompanying his Columbia recording of the monodrama, suggests that "Nightmare"
could be a helpful descriptive subtitle for listeners struggling to understand the work. Its
difficulty lies in the work being, in effect, the product of extreme anxiety: it was born out
of Schoenberg's creative isolation and loneliness, composed in such a short period of
time as to suggest that "Schoenberg must have experienced an 'Angsttraum' [anxiety
dream] " himself in composing Erwartung. 159 Craft describes the monodrama as one of
Schoenberg's most important works: its brevity belies its substance and its harmonic
language has evolved far beyond that of his contemporaries. Erwartung, in less than half
an hour and because of its lack of literal repetition, is characterized by Craft as being
equivalent to many Wagner operas: "a few measures of it are equivalent to, say, a whole
summit conference between Fricka and Wotan.,,160 Wagner and Debussy are invoked
regarding Schoenberg's treatment of harmony in Erwartung, as Craft concludes that
Schoenberg, more so than Wagner in his time, is a innovator; as for Debussy, Craft finds
him "describing the same circle again and again" when compared to the sheer harmonies
in the monodrama. 161
Robert Craft, "Notes on the Dramatic Structure," program notes for The Music of Arnold Schoenberg,
159
Volume One, Columbia M2L 279 (1963).
160 Craft, "Erwartung: Notes on the Dramatic Structure."
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Craft identifies Erwartung as the "first Freudian music drama" and asserts that
Die Frau's "anacoluthic" text "suggests a patient on an analyst's couch remembering in
discontinuous bits and snatches.,,162 He claims, further, that this facet of the work is key
to understanding both the music and the drama. This insight, together with Adorno's
description of the monodrama as case study, is at the heart of my thesis: taken together,
these theories lead me to conclude that a psychoanalytic interpretation is what Erwartung
both invites and requires. As Craft notes, Schoenberg's music sets the text of an "interior
monologue," the exception to interiority being Die Frau's cry for help-"Hilfe!" at
measures 190_193. 163 The plot of the monodrama, such as it is, unfolds through
"memory association," as Die Frau's reminiscences-as-narrative are triggered by a
variety of objects, including the trees and the moon. 164 She is "apparently in traumatic
shock" in scene 2, where she makes what Craft calls a Freudian confession as her
"dialogue" with her absent lover begins. 165 This confession is Craft's solution to the
mystery of Erwartung: in his view, Die Frau has actually killed the man she is searching
for, and the monodrama depicts her returning to the scene of the crime in a delirium.
When she stumbles over a tree trunk and mistakes it for a body at the end of scene 2, for
Craft this is an admission of guilt, presumably a Freudian slip of the worst kind: Craft
163 Die Frau also asks her lover for help at the end of scene 3 (mm. 112-113): "Liebster, mein Liebster, hilf
mir.."
165 Craft, "Erwartung: Notes on the Dramatic Structure." Though Craft first asserts that Erwartung is
entirely an interior monologue, he freely alternates between the terms monologue and dialogue thereafter.
106
describes it as "the most overtly Freudian association of all.,,166 Craft concludes that,
ultimately, Die Frau's guilt as revealed in her slip is "the only probable explanation of the
drama,,,167 and is the psychological/psychoanalytic key to the work. Die Frau is,
moreover, insane in Craft's account, much as she is for Adorno. In the third scene, she
speaks to her absent lover in the present tense-"Aber so bald muEt du fort.. [But you
have to leave so soon ... ],,-and then, after hearing him call-"Rufst du? [Are you
calling?]"-ironicaUy sings of awaiting evening, though the opera takes place at night:
"Und bis zum Abend ist es so lang .. [And it won't be evening for ages ... ]." This is
evidence, for Craft, of Die Frau's "dementia," here fully exposed. 168 The work ends with
Die Frau's quest for her lover unfulfilled, the events of the monodrama slipping away
from her "conscious mind": in other words, Erwartung is to be understood as the
revelation of Die Frau's unconscious at work, as guilt is exposed through cracks in
consciousness and real events are consigned, through trauma, to the unconscious realm.
She is, Craft concludes, Isolde after a nervous breakdown, a post-Wagnerian operatic
anti-heroine condemned to repeating the Liebestod over and over again. "Her
Erwartung," insists Craft," is not over [at the close of the monodrama] and it will never
be.,,169
166 Craft, "Erwartung: Notes on the Dramatic Structure." In Chapter 3, I argue that there are a number of
much more explicitly Freudian associations, paralleling Freud's "Dora" case history.
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Schoenberg and Freud apparently never met, Craft concedes, and neither man's
work contains direct references to the other. Association with Freud is a "coincidence"
of time and place, the result of a shared milieu. Erwartung is a Freudian drama, then, by
virtue of the text resembling the discourse of the analysand and a plot driven by repressed
guilt, together with music that represents emotional crisis and stasis, the inner world of
the human subject. Erwartung is suffused with the Freudian "climate," with guilt and
confession, angst, love, hate and horror all co-mingled in a musico-dramatic exploration
of the psyche. While Craft is not explicit about exactly how Freudian theory and
Schoenberg's Erwartung are connected, I believe that his interpretation is fundamentally
correct, and perhaps the one of the best interpretations of the work to date. I disagree
with only two aspects of his interpretation: first, I think that Erwartung is clearly not an
"interior monologue" in its entirety, and perhaps Craft does not either, given that he
describes aspects of the text as dialogue; and second, I disagree with his suggestion that
Die Frau is the equivalent of an insane Isolde and believe instead that, while Tristan und
Isolde was an important model for Schoenberg's monodrama, as I discuss in Chapter 5,
Die Frau is in some ways a very different drama tis persona, less operatic heroine than
participant in the scene of psychoanalysis that is Erwartung.
CHAPTER THREE
Erwartung and Freudian Case Histories
As the literature survey in chapter two of this thesis shows, the idea that
Erwartung is a psychological or psychoanalytic work-that is, a work invested with some
kind of specific unconscious content or that demonstrates or dramatizes some function of
the psyche-is not new. The monodrama, born in Vienna in 1909, a city with a
heightened, fin-de-siecle "psychological sensitivity," has long been associated with
contemporaneous developments in the study of the mind. Vienna at the tum of the
century is often described as "Freud's Vienna": as Malcolm Bowie has shown, the
Freudian unconscious is a Viennese unconscious, belonging specifically to the cultural
and artistic ferment of Vienna, a phenomenon directly and "variously re-connectable to a
given cultural epoch and its ingrained intellectual habits."! Thus Freud, as chief
"publicist" of the "positively fashionable" unconscious in Vienna, is necessarily
implicated in this study.2 As of 1909, Freud had published in Vienna a number of his
most important texts on psychoanalysis, including the Studies on Hysteria (1895),
Interpretation of Dreams (1899, dated 1900), lakes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
(1905), Three Essays on Sexuality (1905), and Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of
Hysteria (Dora) (1905). It is the first and last texts in this list that are of particular interest
here, as they relate directly to the question of whether or not Erwartung is based, in whole
or in part, on a Freudian text. Musicology has yet to provide a satisfactory answer to this
I Malcom Bowie, "A Message from Kakania"; Freud, Music, Criticism," in Modernism and the European
Unconscious, ed. Peter Collier and Judy Davis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990),4.
2 Bowie, "A Message from Kakania: Freud, Music, Criticism," 4.
108
109
question, though in the preceding chapter we have seen that many scholars have posited-
with or without direct evidence-a Gonnection between Schoenberg's monodrama and
Freudian psychoanalysis in general andlor case histories of hysteria in particular. I will
begin this chapter with an overview of hysteria to provide a sense of how it was viewed in
Freud's Vienna around the tum of the century. I will follow this overview with a detailed
and critical examination of the notion that the libretto of Erwartung is based on Freud and
Joseph Breuer's case history of the hysteric "Anna 0.," comparing the texts of the
monodrama and the case history. I will also consider the other case histories in the Studies
on Hysteria in an effort to uncover more evidence for a psychoanalytic background for the
monodrama, and will offer another case history for consideration, namely the "Dora" case
of 1905, which I believe may also have been a textual source for the monodrama. Finally,
I will address a substantial dissenting rejoinder to this argument, Elizabeth Keathley's
1999 doctoral dissertation, which posits a feminist interpretation for Erwartung that
precludes psychoanalysis.
Hysteria
Hysteria can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. The word "hysteria" comes
from the Greek word for womb--hystera or hustera, meaning "of the womb"-because
hysterical illness, a disorder specific to women, was thought to originate from the womb.
Hippocratic texts describe hysteria as an illness derived from the wanderings of the womb
in the female body: wherever a woman was experiencing somatic disturbances of
110
unknown cause, then the womb was assumed to have migrated there? In the eighteenth
century, hysteria was postulated to be one of the neuroses, a disorder of the nervous
system rather than of the "wandering womb." Well into the nineteenth century, however,
hysteria was still a term used to describe a wide range of illness in women, used in
particular for illnesses that otherwise lacked definition and defied conventional diagnoses.
It was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that the study of hysteria became an
important aspect of psychiatry, evident especially in the work of Jean-Martin Charcot,
with whom Freud studied in Paris between 1885 and 1886. Charcot became famous for
his treatment of hysterics and for his insistence that hysteria was a neurological disorder.
For Charcot, hysteria "was resolutely somatic: an organic disorder of the higher nervous
system, with unknown or diffuse ... anatomical and physiologicallocalization.,,4 Charcot
employed hypnosis in his treatment of hysterical symptoms, and his twice weekly lecture-
demonstrations at the Salpetriere asylum in Paris became legendary: the "performances"
of Charcot's hysterics were very dramatic and not without a certain erotically charged,
voyeuristic aspect, as a male doctor dominated the complicit female patient in a "drama of
the encounter between master and hysteric."s Charcot also attempted to establish male
hysteria as a diagnostic category and to destroy the myth of hysteria as a manifestation of
the inherent weakness of the female sex. Despite his efforts, the prevailing view of
hysteria was that of a female illness, whose symptoms reflected the "failings to which the
3The idea of hysteria as a Hippocratic tenn referring to any and all disturbances of the womb is challenged by
Helen King in her essay "Once upon a text" in Hysteria Beyond Freud (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993), pp. 3-90. King insists that what is called "classical hysteria" actually originated in the Middle
Ages.
4 Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrester, Freud's Women (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 64.
5Appignanesi and Forrester, Freud's Women, 65. Here, we see the idea of hysteria as a kind of "drama." See
below regarding Anna O.'s hysteria as her "private theatre."
111
entire female sex were condemned.,,6 In the nineteenth century especially, hysteria was
viewed as an illness linked to any and all sexual "failings" in women: either an excess of
sexuality, or too much restraint. The disease was also the quintessential woman's disease
because it possessed the same character as the "weaker" sex: fickle, ever changing,
deceitful and perverse.
After Charcot's death in 1893, hysteria fell largely out of favour as a diagnostic
category for some time. Freud continued studying the therapeutic use of hypnosis at
Nancy after his studies with Charcot at the Salpetriere, but would eventually abandon
hypnosis in his treatment of hysterics. In the early 1890s, however, determined to
construct both a practice and a theoretical corpus on the back of hysteria, Freud continued
to experiment with hypnosis, increasingly employing it to search for the origins of
symptoms rather than using it to suppress them. His earliest published writings on
hysteria were undertaken in collaboration with his friend Josef Breuer, from whom he
leamed the technique of using hypnosis to encourage a patient to remember and relate the
origins of their symptoms, thus causing them to disappear. Freud and Breuer published
the largely-ignored paper "On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena:
Preliminary Communication" in ·1893, followed by the Studies on Hysteria in 1895. It
was in the Studies that some of the major concepts of psychoanalytic theory and
treatment-including free association, repression, the cathartic method, and
6 Appignanesi and Fon-ester, Freud's Women, 66.
112
transference-were born, and, as James Strachey notes, the book is "usually regarded as
the starting point of psychoanalysis." 7
In the "Preliminary Communication," Freud and Breuer suggest that psychical
trauma causes hysteria, and that "fright, anxiety, shame, or physical pain" may all "operate
as a trauma of this [i.e. psychical] kind."g A traumatic experience, which carries with it a
considerable amount of "affect," has a lasting effect on the psyche because the affect that
accompanies it has not been "discharged" or otherwise "worn away by association with
other conscious material.,,9 In a "normal" person, this affect would be discharged,
returning the mental apparatus to its stable, unexcited state, thereby maintaining Freud's
"principle of constancy," later called the "pleasure principle." In the hysteric, affect is not
discharged, but rather "strangulated": thus, "affected memory ... is thereafter manifested in
hysterical symptoms, which may be regarded as 'mnemic symbols'-that is to say as
symbols of the suppressed memory." 10 For Freud and Breuer, psychical trauma could
cause hysteria when something traumatic is experienced while in a hypnoid state, thus the
experience by-passes consciousness and settles in the unconscious; or, hysteria could be
brought on when a traumatic experience is fought by the ego, which represses the
experience because it is found to be incompatible with the ego. In the ll;ltter case, the
repressed memory of the trauma "acts like a foreign body which long after its entry must
7James Strachey, "Editor's Introduction," Studies on Hysteria, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London:
Penguin Books, 1991) 34.
8 Freud and Breuer, "Preliminary Communication," in Studies on Hysteria, 56.
9 Strachey, "Editor's Introduction," Studies on Hysteria, 36.
10 Strachey, "Editor's Introduction," 37. See below regarding Erwartung and Freudian symbolism.
113
continue to be regarded as an agent that is still at work.,,11 This "foreign body,"
undischarged affected memory, manifests itself through somatic symptoms, most
commonly paralysis, neuralgia (pain along the course of a nerve, often in the hands or
face), seizures, vomiting, hallucinations, and a kind of split consciousness, an unsteady
balance between two psychic states. Because of the effects of this repressed memory,
Freud and Breuer could state that the hysteric "suffers mainly from reminiscences.,,12
Affected memories that have not been "abreacted" or discharged can be discharged later
through psychoanalytic treatment: by being talked-out in detail, memories are brought to
consciousness through speech and then dismissed. This is the fundamental discovery of
psychoanalysis, the "talking cure" invented by Breuer and his patient Bertha Pappenheim.
Breuer and Freud asserted a sexual origin for hysteria in their theoretical
contributions to the Studies, as opposed to hysteria caused by psychical trauma
experienced in a hypnoid state Breuer, near the end of his theoretical essay, states the
following: "Experience shows that sick-nursing and sexual affects also play the principal
part in the majority of the more closely analysed case histories of hysterical patients."l3
Breuer also notes that the "sexual instinct is undoubtedly the most powerful source of
persisting accretion of excitation (and consequently of neuroses)." 14 Freud, for his part,
11 Freud and Breuer, "Preliminary Communication," 58. Freud favored this theory and abandoned the theory
of hypnoid states, which he attributed to Breuer, by 1905.
12 Freud and Breuer, "Preliminary Communication," 58.
13 Breuer, "Unconscious Ideas," in Studies on Hysteria, 314. Breuer did not hold this theoretical position at
the conclusion of his treatment of the hysteric Anna 0., whose sexuality he described as underdeveloped.
Breuer may actually have been overwhelmed by both her sexuality and his own over the course of the
treatment See below.
14 Breuer, 'Theoretical," in Studies on Hysteria, 276.
114
writes that, in employing Breuer's psychotherapeutic method (i.e. "the talking cure"), he
discovered that "in so far as one can speak of determining causes which lead to the
acquisition of neuroses, their aetiology is to be looked for in sexual factors."J5 These
comments mark an important moment in the history of psychoanalysis, presaging Freud's
later investigations into the relationships between sexuality and the human psyche. He
would soon directly link hysteria with sex, and this linkage played an impOltant role in
literary and dramatic representations of the female hysteric in fin-de-siecle Vienna.
The descriptions of the symptoms and behavior of hysterical women in the last
decades of the nineteenth century, as found in the Studies, are thought to have provided
inspiration to a number of artists and writers around the tum of the century, not the least of
whom was Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the author of the play Elektra, which would serve as
the libretto for Richard Strauss' eponymous opera in 1909. While a handful of
musicological studies of Erwartung suggest possible connections between the libretto of
monodrama and the Studies, there are very few critical accountings of the details of these
connections. Robert Falck's short essay "Marie Pappenheim, Schoenberg, and the Studien
tiber Hysterie," summarized in the previous chapter, is perhaps the only example of this
kind of detailed study. Falck documents a number of parallels between Breuer's case
history and Erwartung, providing two tables to show how the libretto's narrative, in its
juxtaposing of monologue, autologue, dialogue, and memory episodes, resembles the
15 Freud, "Psychotherapy of Hysteria," in Studies on Hysteria, 339-340 (Freud's emphasis). It is interesting

here to consider James Strachey's observation regarding Freud, Breuer, and a sexual etiology for hysteria: it is
Breuer, and Iwt Freud who, as of 1895, is more strongly suggesting a sexual origin for neuroses, despite
Breuer's apparent sexual squeamishness in treating Anna O. Strachey, "Editor's Introduction," 42.
115
course of the hysteric Anna 0.' stalking cure. 16 I would now like to further explore the
question of a connection between Anna O. and Erwartung, and then offer what I believe
are some other significant details about the case of Anna 0., comparing them to details in
the libretto of monodrama.
Bertha Pappenheim (Anna 0.)
The case of Anna O. is the first case history in the Studies. Josef Breuer undertook
her treatment between 1882 and 1883. The details of this case history are relevant here
because Anna O. mayor may not provide a direct link between Erwartung and
psychoanalysis. Freud described Anna 0., whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim, as a
"pure" hysteric,17 and as noted above, her case history provided many of the foundational
theoretical principles of psychoanalysis. She was the first person to undergo
psychoanalysis, which she herself dubbed "the talking cure.,,18 Breuer notes early in his
case history that there was a history of psychosis in Bertha's family, but limited to some
distant relatives. Bertha came from a wealthy family and was, according to Breuer,
intelligent and intuitive: in fact, he writes that she was "markedly intelligent," with a
16 See Chapter 2.
17 Freud described Anna O.'s hysteria as a "pure hysterical disorder." Freud, "Psychotherapy of Hysteria," in
Studies Of! Hysteria, 342.
18 Anna O. was Joseph Breuer's patient: Breuer co-authored the Studies with Freud, and is considered by
many, along with Anna O. herself, to be the co-founder of psychoanalysis, not Freud alone. Others insist that
Freud's role in this fIrst case of psychoanalysis was truly foundational: it was Freud who identified and
interpreted, after the fact, the transference relationship between Breuer and Bertha, a relationship fundamental
to the clinical process of psychoanalysis. Transference is the process by which the analysand's unconscious
ideas are transferred onto the analyst: it is a relationship that develops over the course of clinical treatment and
contributes positively to the treatment by bringing the patient's past into the present, in the form offeelings
about the analyst. As of the late 1800s, Freud perceived the transference negatively, as a form of resistance.
In the early 19OOs, he recognized the transference as paradoxically essential to psychoanalysis: it is both an
obstacle and the driving force behind the analysis.
116
"sharp critical common sense.,,19 Bertha also derived joy and satisfaction from nursing
the sick, even during her own illness (this feature of her personality is important to the
case history because Bertha had acted as her own father's nurse, and in the process
developed an unusually close bond with him: she was emotionally devastated by his
subsequent death). While Bertha was intelligent, she was also moody, and her moods
tended to swing between extremes of exaggerated "cheerfulness" and "gloom." Perhaps
Breuer's most famous observations, however, were that the "element of sexuality was
astonishingly undeveloped in her" and that "the patient had never been in love.,,2o Breuer
went on to emphasize this point, noting that "in all the enormous number of hallucinations
which occurred during her illness that element of mental life [i.e. sexuality] never
emerged.'.21 Most of Freud's case histories in the Studies contain examples of hystelia
related to frustrated sexuality or repressed sexual traumas, but sexuality and repression do
not figure explicitly in Breuer's account of Bertha's treatment, though he does perhaps
hint at repression and a sexual aetiology for Bertha's condition when he notes that her
family was "pulitanically-minded." 22 Bertha became ill at the age of twenty-one while
nursing her father. She developed a severe nervous cough, a "tussis nervosa," and later
19 Breuer, 'The Case of Anna 0.," 73.
20 Breuer, "Anna 0.," 73.
22 Breuer, "Anna 0.," 74. Breuer may also have been traumatized himself by Bertha's sexual attraction to
him (an effect of the "transference"), and it appears that among what he calls the "large number of quite
interesting details" that he "suppressed" is the fact that Bertha, in an hysterical fit, is repOlted to have said "Dr.
B.'s baby is corning," proof of what Freud called the "positive transference" between Bertha and Breuer
(Strachey, Studies on Hysteria, 97n). In this account, Beliha was likely in love with Breuer, and was
expressing a desire to be impregnated by him. Breuer, whose own wife had been pregnant almost exactly one
year earlier at the time of Bertha's statement, was shocked, recognizing that Bertha was closely monitoring
his personal life: "her demonstration of her repressed sexuality became interpreted by Breuer as a sign of an
unacceptable intertwining of his personal with his professional life." (Appignanesi and Forrester, Freud's
117
more serious symptoms, including neurasthenia (fatigue, particularly at night), neuralgia
(nerve pain), paresis (partial paralysis), psychosis, disturbed vision, and periods of
somnambulism alternating with normal states. At the peak of her hysteria, Breuer noted
that Bertha displayed two distinct conscious states: a normal, "melancholy" state and a
"naughty," abusive, abnormal state?3 As these two distinct states became increasingly
differentiated, Bertha would experience "absences"; that is, something experienced while
she was in one state was lost or unknown to her when she returned to the other state,
giving her the impression of having "lost time.,,24 Another important aspect of Beliha' s
hysteria was her aphonia or loss of speech. Bertha's language skills diminished over the
course of her illness: she spoke less and less German, switching to English when her
speech was not lost entirely. Bertha also suffered from hallucinations, an important
feature of this case history insofar as it relates to Erwartung. Bertha's hallucinations
included seeing "black snakes,,25 in place of snake-like things such as ribbons, fingers, and
hair, and also skeletons and death's heads. She also suffered from "negative
hallucinations," during which she could not recognize people and objects, or could not see
them at all, even when they were immediately in front of her eyes. Beliha's hallucinations
tended to occur during the day, while in the evenings she was lucid and relatively normal.
In the evenings, Bertha would be visited by Breuer, who would listen to her as she
narrated the hallucinations she experienced during the day. Bertha would thus talk away
Women, 84). Breuer may also have been shocked by the force and effects of the "countertransference"; that
is, he was likely strongly attracted to Anna O. He would never treat hysterics again after this case.
2S Freud notes "the enormous exaggeration in neurotics of the natural human dread of snakes" in The
Interpretation of Dreams (London: Penguin Books, 1991),463.
118
her symptoms: once the origin of each symptom was discovered and described, the
symptom would disappear and not return.
According to Breuer, Bertha's habit of daydreaming laid the foundation for her
subsequent mental illness. She would daydream-she referred to this as her "private
theatre,,26-to escape the monotony of her life: her lively intellect, blunted by her home
life, sought occupation in fantasy, resulting in a "disassociation of her mental state,'.27 The
event that likely caused Bertha's hysteria, according to Breuer, was a waking dream she
experienced while in a state of high anxiety, concerned for her father's failing health. In
the waking dream, she saw snakes coming to bite her father, and could not move to help
him because her arm, draped over her chair, had fallen asleep. Terrified, she tried to pray,
but was so frightened she could not speak. She finally remembered some children's
verses in English, and began to recite them. Following this event, Anna's hysteria
developed, from which she suffered for two years. Breuer noted that it was "remarkable
how completely the earliest manifestation of her illness in its beginnings already exhibited
its main characteristics [i.e. snake hallucinations, aphonia, paresis]".28 Her cure, according
to Breuer, was completed on the last day of treatment, during which Bertha and Breuer
rearranged her room to resemble her father's sickroom. Bertha then "reproduced the
26The idea of the theatricality of hysteria is important since it may have been featured in at least two of the
most important musico-dramatic works of the early Modernist period: Elektra and Erwartung. See above,
concerning the "drama" of the treatment of Charcot's hysterics.
119
terrifying hallucination" she experienced during her waking dream years ago: "In this
way," writes Breuer, "the whole illness was brought to a close.,,29
Presenting the details of this case is important: they need to be in plain view so
that a comparison between this case and the libretto of Erwartung can be made objectively
and assessed critically; however, before any such comparison can be made, the issue of
the familial relationship between Erwartung's librettist Marie Pappenheim and Bertha
Pappenheim must be addressed and reassessed fIrst.
Is There a Family Relation?: Marie and Bertha Pappenheim
As I mentioned in Chapter 2, a connection between Freudian case histories and
Schoenberg's monodrama was postulated, if somewhat obliquely, by Adorno in his
Philosophy ofModem Music, who wrote of the parallels between Schoenberg's early
atonal works and psychoanalytic case histories. Musicologists took Adorno's insights
literally, and in chapter two we saw that a number of authors have posited direct
connections between the monodrama and actual psychoanalytic case histories. Ultimately,
it seemed that the Studies, and the case of Anna O. in particular, was a likely source of
inspiration, if not direct borrowing, for the libretto of op.l7.30 There are, I suspect, a
number of reasons why this conclusion may have been drawn, including the fact that the
libretto of Richard Strauss' 1909 opera Elektra was also apparently inspired by the
30I assume that the "Anna 0." was and is presumed to be the main source of inspiration to both
Hofmannsthal and Pappeuheim because the case is the first and most substantial case history in the Studies
and is the most detailed and dramatic account of a female hysteric in the book.
120
31
Studies, and that Elektra precedes Erwartung by mere months. Furthermore, the
psychological drama or "Ich-drama [Drama of the Selfj," a hallmark of the Expressionist
era, had become increasingly popular in Vienna at the tum of the century, and the parallels
between this kind of theatre of the mind and the interiorized drama of the hysteric as
recounted in the Studies are obvious. Most significant, however, is the possible familial
relation between Erwartung's librettist Marie Pappenheim and Bertha Pappenheim. The
question of the familial relation between Bertha and Marie, introduced in the literature
sUlvey in Chapter 2, is important: if it exists, it stands as concrete evidence of Marie's
likely familiarity with the details of the case of Anna 0., and perhaps with Freud's work in
general.
As I have noted, Robert Falck asserts that the two Pappenheims were related,
though he notes that "the relationship was almost certainly a distant one.'.32 Both Marie
and Bertha moved to Vienna from the same town, Pressburg, now Bratislava, though they
were a generation apart. Beltha's family moved to Vienna in the 1840s, after the
Pressburg ghetto was opened up, and Bertha was born there in 1859. Marie was born in
Pressburg in 1882, moving to Vienna in 1905 to study medicine. Both Pappenheims were
born into relatively affluent families: Bertha's family made its money in grain dealing,
while Marie's parents were also wealthy merchants?3 Falck suggests that all of the
31Schoenberg was, in the flrst decade of the century at least, an avid admirer of Strauss' operas and knew
Salome quite well; I argue in Chapter 5 that Schoenberg'S knowledge and understanding of Elektra is an
important aspect of Erwartung. Elektra was first performed in Dresden on January 25, 1909, and received its
Viennese premier in March of 1909; Schoenberg began composing Erwartung in August of 1909.
33See Appignanesi and Forrester, Freud's Women, 73, regarding Bertha's family; see Dianne Penney,
"Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 61, regarding Marie's family.
121
Viennese Pappenheims originated from Pressburg and were all descendents of Wolf
Pappenheim (1776-1848), Bertha's grandfather. 34 The identity of Anna O. could therefore
have been known to the Pappenheim family, Marie included; however, while Falck asserts
that the two Pappenheims were related, he concludes that we can only "assume" that
Marie knew of Bertha as Anna O?5 As I have shown in my literature survey, a number of
sources accept the relationship between Bertha and Marie as given, that they were cousins
(even sisters!) or otherwise somehow related. It seems, though, that we may never know
the truth of their relation or non-relation: the claims made in what has long been taken as
the definitive source for the answer to this question, a doctoral dissertation by Dianne
Penney, have been refuted in a subsequent dissertation by Elizabeth Keathley?6 In
Chapter 2, I described Penney's conclusion, based on information gathered in an interview
in 1987 with Marie Pappenheim's son Dr. Hans Frischauf. Frischauf attested to the fact
that Bertha and Marie were cousins and that Marie likely based the monodrama, at least in
part, on Bertha's case history. This seemed to have settled the question. Keathley,
however, asserts that the two women were not related, also basing her conclusion on a
later interview with Frischauf, together with Lewis Wickes' interview with Martin
Pappenheim's widow, who also denied any relation. This is awkward. Who are we to
believe, Penney or Keathley? Should we accept Penney's claim because she spoke to
Pappenheim's son when he was younger and had a fresher memory? Alternatively,
should we accept Keathley's assertion because her interview is more recent, effectively
36 See below for my discussion of Keathley's thesis.
122
the last word on the subject?37 It is tempting to suggest that it does not matter, and yet
there is the sense that without this knowledge, certainty will forever remain elusive. It is
possible to find compelling parallels between the libretto of Erwartung and Freudian case
histories-the case of Anna O. in particular-without the link between Bertha and Marie;
however, the leap from Erwartung directly to the Studies on Hysteria then becomes
somewhat more precarious, the connection less immediate; Erwartung and the Studies
could well be falsely connected. Can a comparison, then, between the details of the case
history and libretto-in effect a comparison of the symptoms that Anna O. and Die Frau
share-make a strong enough case without a familial relationship?
Erwartung and Anna O.
Bryan Simms insists that Die Frau in Erwartung "has symptoms that are strikingly
close to those of Anna 0.,,38 For Simms, there is no question of the connection between
the monodrama's libretto and psychoanalytic case histories: he uses the word "symptom"
without qualification, and insists that Pappenheim's libretto represents a clinical picture of
hysteria. Like many other commentators on Erwartung, Simms assumes that the case of
Anna O. served, in part, as a model for Pappenheim's libretto. He likewise makes this
assumption based on the fact of family ties between Bertha and Marie Pappenheim. A
comparison of the details of the libretto and case history does yield some interesting
evidence for a strong connection between the texts, one that can exist independent of a
familial relation. While Elizabeth Keathley has asserted that the clinical picture of the
37I do not know if Marie Pappenheim's son is still alive and have not sought out him for an interview, as it
seems to me that, given the discrepancies mentioned above, he is not necessarily a trustworthy source.
123
Anna O. case is not replicated in the monodrama, that Die Frau is not an hysteric,39 I
would like to offer some similarities for consideration.
Both women, Anna O. and Die Frau, suffer from hallucinations, including zoopsia
(hallucinating animals: black snakes in Anna's case, shadowy monsters in Die Frau's).4o
Both suffer from amnesia and disturbing memory episodes, during which repressed
elements return in fragmentary form. Anna O.'s aphonia is also reflected in Die Frau's
text, which is marked by sudden gaps and pauses: in the Studies, Breuer notes that Anna
0., while suffering from "absences"-lost time caused by her divided personality-would
"stop in the middle of a sentence, repeat her last words and after a short pause go on
talking. These interruptions gradually increased ... ,,41 Furthermore, Anna O. had difficulty
recognizing people during her illness, a condition mirrored by Die Frau throughout
Erwartung: not only does she fail to recognize the body of her lover as such several times,
but also sings, at the end of the work, of a thousand people passing her by, but she does
not see her lover. This hints at what Breuer described as Anna's negative hallucinations.
Anna's snake hallucinations are triggered by things that look like snakes, such as ribbons;
Die Frau's hallucinations are triggered by objects that look like creatures, such as
mushrooms seen as eyes, and branches seen as a monster with a hundred hands. Anna O.
recounts her hallucinations at night; Die Frau's hallucinatory voyage through the woods
39 See my discussion of Keathley's argument, below.
40In scene 2, Die Frau exclaims "kein Tier [no animal (or "beast")]," but presumably something else; in scene
3 she sings of "dart tanzt etwas Schwarzes.. hundert Hande [something black dances there ... a hundred
hands]." I take this creature with a hundred hands-perhaps in reality tree branches--to be something
monstrous. Also in scene 2, she sings "es ist etwas gekrochen [it is something crawling]"and of something
moving from branch to branch above her head: "Jetzt rauscht es oben .. Es schlagt von Ast zu Ast."
124
takes place at night. As Falck observes, both Anna and Die Frau remark on the same
particular period of time, three days: Anna O. does not eat or sleep for three days at one
point in her treatment; Die Frau recalls in scene 4 her lover's lack of time for her, noting
that he had been away from her for three days. He also recounts how Anna and Die Frau
seem to be caught in a reverie that spans a year. These congruencies, I believe, are not
merely coincidental, and support the hypothesis that the Anna O. case history served as a
model, at least in some part, for Marie Pappenheim's monodrama.
'It is also possible, though perhaps only a coincidence, that "three days" and "one
year" have biographical significance for Schoenberg as well, implicating him in the
work's psychoanalytic background. Schoenberg began composing Erwartung one year to
the day of his wife Mathilde leaving him for Richard Gerstl; he also makes an error in
accounting for the time it took him to complete the work, claiming fourteen days in
1946,42 when the dates on the short score of 1909 indicates seventeen, a difference of three
days. It is curious to me that Schoenberg should, in the first instance, mark the first
anniversary of his cuckolding-perhaps unconsciously? See Chapter 5-by composing a
monodrama around the theme of betrayed love and the death of a lover, and in the second
instance, should have "lost" exactly three days in the process of mis-remembering the
composition of Erwartung. These echoes of "Anna O."-and of the importance of time
and the past in general in psychoanalytic theory-in Schoenberg's own life make the
connection between the monodrama and Freudian case histories a little stronger, but at the
same time contribute to the polysemous and enigmatic quality of the work.
42 Schoenberg, "Rernt and Brain in Music" in Style and Idea, 55.
125
The difficulty in connecting the "cases" of Anna O. and Die Frau in a more
profound way is the absence of a key element in the Anna O. case, namely sexual trauma.
Recall Breuer's claim, cited above, that "the element of sexuality was astonishingly
undeveloped in her." Erwartung, of course, is a tale of love, betrayal, obsession, and
jealousy, centred on an implied love triangle. These elements are absent from the Anna O.
case, with the possible exception of obsession: Anna O. 's mother allegedly had an
obsessive disorder, and Anna's own relationship with her father bordered, it seems to me,
on obsession. As mentioned above, Keathley discounts the possibility of the Anna O. case
as inspiration for the libretto because the latter does not present a true clinical picture of
hysteria: Die Frau would not be suffering from hysterical symptoms mere days, perhaps
merely hours or moments, after the discovery of either her lover's affair and/or his death.
Keathley insists that hysteria evolves out of the repression of memories of sexual trauma,
and that this repression takes time. I address Keathley's dissenting rejoinder below, but in
light of her rejection of the Anna O. case as a model for Erwartung, I think it is worth
noting two things here: fIrstly, Pappenheim's portrait of Die Frau does not have to be an
explicitly clinical one for the monodrama to have been based on psychoanalytic case
histories; rather, as with Hofmannsthal and Elektra, hysteria becomes a literary trope and
tool, and a signifier of the Zeitgeist; secondly, Anna O.loomed chronologically much
nearer the genesis of Erwartung than Keathley suggests, as she does not mention in her
dissertation that there was a 1909 edition of the Studies on Hysteria, published in Vienna
in late 1908. While the text is unchanged from the first printing, it does represent a
resurfacing of the Studies at an interesting time, mere months before Pappenheim began
the libretto for Erwartung. The Studies, I believe, thus becomes a more viable source for
126
Pappenheim's text, more viable than had it existed only as an 1895 edition in 1909. If, as
Falck has suggested, Pappenheim already had the idea for a monodrama in mind when she
was commissioned by Schoenberg in the summer of 1909, and if this idea was in part
inspired by the Studies, the appearance of this edition is both timely and more than
coincidental. If the two Pappenheims were related, it seems more likely to me that Marie
would have been more aware of and more interested in this case history-in the medical
and psychological condition of a kinswoman-as a recently-surfaced document, coming
into print later in her own life; that is, the case history would be newly relevant to her as a
medical student and poet in her twenties, and not a fifteen-year old relic from her
childhood. Moreover, if they were related, Marie may also have been aware of Bertha's
activities in Frankfurt early in the century as an outspoken advocate for women's rights.
ill this (fantasy) scenario, Marie-herself a kind of proto-feminist-would have known of
and read the new 1909 edition of the Studies with even greater interest. The coincidences
between the text of the case history and the text of Erwartung thus become not so
insignificant, not so circumstantial, and not so coincidental.
Other Case histories and Erwartung?
Is Anna O. the only possible source of inspiration for the monodrama? Hugo von
Hofmannsthal allegedly wrote his play Elektra with a copy of the Studies on Hysteria
open beside him on his desk. 43 A claim of this kind has certainly never been made for
Schoenberg and Pappenheim, and I do not make it here. I will suggest, however, that the
case of Anna O. is not the only Freudian source implicated in the monodrama's text.
43 See Chapter 5 for a detailed discussion of Elektra.
127
There are significant traces of at least one (and I think likely more than one) Freudian case
history within the pages of the libretto.
If we can accept, provisionally, that Erwartung and the case of Anna O. are
somehow connected, then a consideration of the remainder of the case histories in the
Studies on Hysteria is the next logical step. There are four other case histories after Anna
0., all compiled and written by Freud. The first two case histories, those of "Lucy R" and
"Katherina," seem to have little bearing on the content of the Erwartung libretto: both are
concerned with domestic sexual politics and intrigue. Both cases address sexual desire
and sexual trauma, it is true, but the symptoms and other details of each case appear
unrelated to Pappenheim's loosely-woven text. The fifth and final case history in the
Studies, that of "Fraulein Elizabeth von R," also seems to have little bearing on
Erwartung, though it does possess a certain number of similarities with the Anna O. case.
Fraulein R, like Anna 0., was intellectually frustrated, unable to study and follow her
ambitions because she was female. She was forced to spend much of her time nursing her
sick family, including her mother and father, as well as one of her sisters. Her primary
symptom, again like Anna 0., was paresis, in this case, in the legs.
It is the fourth case history, "Frau Emmy von N.," which resonates most
significantly with Erwartung. In this case history, Freud describes a woman who
develops a hysterical condition after the death of her husband. She is sexually frustrated
and prone to severe delirium. Like Anna 0., she alternates between states of delirium and
normal consciousness, and in her hallucinatory state would repeat, always in the same
128
order, the words "Keep stilll ... Don't say anything! ... Don't touch mel" Her
hallucinations resemble those of Anna 0., but represent what Freud calls zoopsia because
Frau N. often saw objects tum into animals, including snakes, lizards, worms, toads, and
various monsters. 44 Frau N. also developed a pronounced fear of strangers, and suffered
from memory gaps like Anna O. Perhaps most interestingly, she would sometimes make
an involuntary clacking noise, like a cricket. It was rumored by her family that her
husband, whom she watched die, was in fact poisoned by her. We are reminded of
Erwartung several times in assessing the details of this case: first, there is the death of a
male lover, in this case a husband; second, there is an alternation between states, from
delirium to relative normalcy; third, there is the zoopsia, an important feature of
Erwartung, particularly in the first two scenes where die Frau sees ill-defined creatures in
the forest; fourth, there is the cricket noise, echoed in Erwartung both textually and
musically; fifth and [mally, there is the question of the suspicious death of a woman's
lover, a key dramatic element in Erwartung. This confluence of minor details proves little
on its own, but does bolster the argument that the text of the monodrama was based on a
psychoanalytic case history, and perhaps more than one.
"Dora"
Now, we can tum our attention to what I believe is another source for the libretto
of Erwartung, perhaps the most important source of both inspiration and some specific
details for Marie Pappenheim. This is Freud's case history of "Dora." Published in 1905
as "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ('Dora')," this case represents Freud's
44 Freud, "Frau Emmy Von N.," in Studies on Hysteria, 119.
129
first true application of the psychoanalytic method as a treatment for hysteria. In the case
histories in the Studies, Freud was still making use of hypnosis-Charcot's method-and
only tentatively employing Breuer's new "cathartic" method. In his analysis of Dora,
however, Freud actively encourages Dora to free associate, and he virtuosic ally interprets
two of her dreams in an effort to bring her unconscious desires to consciousness. The
Dora case is also considered by some to be Freud's most spectacular failure, as Dora
ultimately rejected his interpretations and abruptly ended her treatment. It is the details of
Dora's case, in particular the content and analysis of her dreams, which seem to me
immediately relevant to the libretto of Erwartung. I will now offer a brief overview of the
case of Dora, and then will examine parallels between Dora's dreams and Pappenheim's
text.
The "Dora" case follows closely on the heels of The Interpretation of Dreams: the
latter was published in 1900, while the former was written in 1901 but not published until
1905 for the sake of the anonymity of the patient. Dora's real name was Ida Bauer, and
she lived with her family in Vienna at Berggasse 32, just down the street from Freud.
Dora's hysteria, as Freud narrates, was precipitated by an inappropriate sexual proposal by
a family friend, a certain Herr K Herr K was the husband of Frau K, a woman who had
been Ida's father's nurse while he had been il1. 45 Frau K and Ida's father began an affair,
of which Ida was aware. Ida's mother suffered from a kind of obsessional neurosis: she
cleaned the house constantly, and was preoccupied with the idea of contamination, a
condition no doubt brought about in part by her husband's syphilis (both Ida and her
45Here, again, is more domestic intrigue. It is interesting to note the significant role played by nurses and
governesses in the sexual politics of the horne in Freud's Vienna.
130
mother were terrified of venereal disease and were disgusted by the vaginal discharge that
they both suffered from, courtesy of Ida's father).46 The entire case history is an
unraveling of the complex love quadrangle between Ida, her father, Frau K., and Herr K.
Ida developed hysterical symptoms two years after Herr K. made an inappropriate
proposition to her (she was fifteen at the time), which precipitated her father referring her
to Freud for treatment. Ida had grown distant from her father, and had insisted that
relations with Herr and Frau K. be severed. When they were not, and her father continued
his affair with Frau K., Ida threatened suicide, suffered from convulsions, and began to
experience memory loss. She had, according to her father, suffered from various illnesses
since she was a young girl, with symptoms including aphonia, dyspnoea, and tussis
nervosa, what Freud would refer to as her "petite hysterie.,,47 Lisa Appignanesi and John
Forrester have written extensively on Freud and the women whose treatment informed and
shaped the theoretical and clinical development of psychoanalysis: regarding Ida Bauer,
they conclude that Freud was enthusiastic about taking her on as a patient because she
would be
a patient who would provide him with a suitable test of his theories of hysteria, his
technique of analysis and of the interpretation of dreams. The picklock he took to
Ida's case was his claim that 'sexuality is the key to the problem of the psycho-
neuroses ... No one who disdains the key will ever be able to unlock the door.48
Ida's treatment comprised the detailed analysis of two dreams. The first dream, according
to Freud was related by "Dora" as follows:
46 Appignanesi and Fon'ester, Freud's Women, 148,
47 Appignanesi and Forrester, Freud's Women, 149.
48 Appignanesi and FOiTester, Freud's Women, 149.
131
A house was on fire. My father was standing beside my bed and woke me up.
I dressed quickly. Mother wanted to stop and save her jewel-case; but Father
said: "I refuse to let myself and my two children be burnt for the sake of your
jewel-case." We hurried downstairs, and as soon as I was outside I woke Up.49
This was a recurring dream, which Ida first experienced the night after the attempted
seduction by Herr K Freud interpreted it as representing, superficially, Ida's desire to
leave Herr K' s villa, where she had been staying. On a deeper, unconscious level, Freud
asserted, the dream represented Ida's hidden desire for Herr K, against which she
summoned the image of her father as protector, rescuing her from the "fire" of sexual
desire which threatened to bum up a jewel-case, her genitals.50 The concern for the jewel-
case in the dream, furthermore, reflected Ida's concern for her own genitals, that they not
be contaminated or soiled (with venereal disease) through heterosexual contact; however,
the jewel-case also represents sexual temptation, and thus Freud posits a conflict within
Ida, a conflict between temptation and disgust. This conflict is typical in the Freudian
hysteric.
The second dream is of greater importance to this thesis than the first. Freud's
account of this dream is much longer than the first, and is excerpted below:
I was walking about in a town which I did not know. I saw streets and squares
which were strange to me. Then I came into a house where I lived, went to my
room, and found a letter from Mother lying there [saying that her father was
dead] ... I then went to the station and asked about a hundred times: "Where is the
station?" .. .I then saw a thick wood before me which I went into and there I asked
a man who I met. .. He offered to accompany me. But I refused and went on alone.
49 Freud, "Fragment of an Analysis of a Clliie of Hysteria ('Dora')," in Case Histories J (London: Penguin
Books, 1991),99. This is James Strachey's translation. Patrick Mahony takes issue with this translation,
which he describes as distOlted and failing to take into account Freud's "grammar of dreams." Strachey's
translation is in the past tense, for example, while the original German is in the present tense. Patrick
Mahony, Freud's Dora (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996),77.
132
I saw the station in front of me and could not reach it. At the same time I had the
usual feeling of anxiety one has in dreams when one cannot move forward. Then I
was at home ... The maidservant opened the door to me and replied that Mother
and the others were already at the cemetery.51
Freud's interpretation of Ida's second dream is also sexual: the thick woods stand for the
exterior of the female genitalia, the train station the interior. The cemetery-its graves,
presumably-also represents the female genitalia. The man in the dream is a young
engineer, a suitor of Ida's with whom she was identifying in her dream. Freud's
conclusions were that the dream concerned Ida's "defloration" and a revenge fantasy
against her father, whose affair with Frau K. had effectively turned Ida into a pawn, a gift
to Herr K. in exchange for the continuance of the affair. 52 Freud also concluded, at the
end of his case history, that Dora had not actually been offended by Herr K.' s original,
inappropriate proposal; rather, she was offended that Herr K, who had also attempted to
seduce his governess, was treating Dora like a governess, a mere servant. Furthermore,
Dora was jealous of the governess, because of her own unconscious desire for Herr K.
Dora ended her analysis with Freud during the session following this dream analysis.
In the "Postscript" to the Dora case, Freud made two important admissions. First,
he admitted that he had failed to take into account the transference; that is, an important
feature of the case was Dora's transference of a desire for revenge from her father onto
Freud. The process of transference-the shifting of strong emotional feeling towards or
against one's analyst-is an essential aspect of psychoanalytic treatment, as Freud was
51 Freud, "Dora," 133-34.
133
learning. 53 In the Dora case, Freud used the transference as an excuse for Dora's
premature termination of the analysis: she quit to exact revenge on Freudlher father. His
second and more important admission was that he had overlooked the homosexual
attraction between Frau K. and Dora. As Freud wrote in a footnote: "the fault in my
technique lay in this omission: I failed to discover in time to inform the patient that her
homosexual (gynaecophilic) love for Frau K. was the strongest unconscious current in her
mentallife."s4 These details are all important in considering the parallels between the
Dora case and the libretto of Erwartung.
Dora's case could have been a likely source for the libretto as it was published in
1905 and certainly could have come to the attention of Pappenheim, a progressive and
educated young woman studying medicine. Keathley notes that, as of 1909, the Dora case
was the last word in Freud's theory of the hysteria as far as Pappenheim would have been
concerned, but that Pappenheim, as a kind of proto-feminist would likely have rejected
Freud's misogynistic interpretations and conclusions. As we have already seen, however,
there was a 1909 edition of the Studies in Hysteria, probably available as early as the
55
autumn of 1908. Moreover, Freud published two papers on hysteria that were roughly
contemporaneous with Erwartung: "Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to
53 Freud describes the transference in the Studies on Hysteria and in the postscript to the Dora case, but the
concept is not fully developed until his 1915 paper on the subject. See ''Dora'' (Postscript), 159n.
54 Freud, "Dora," 162.
55 According to Dr. Albrecht HirschmiiHer of the Institute for the History of Medicine, Freud wrote to J ung on
August 13 of 1908 to say that the new edition of the Studies on Hysteria was going through corrections; in
October of 1908, Freud wrote to American psychiatrist Abraham Arden Brill, describing the new edition of
the Studies as "im Umlauf [in circulation]." Hirschmiiller notes that the first review of the new edition
appeared in early 1909 in the Miinchener Medizinischen Wochenschrift Bd. 56 (1909), S. 140. Personal
correspondence with Albrecht Hirschmiiller, October 4,2001.
134
Bisexuality" (1908) in the Zeitschr(ft fur Sexualwissenschaft Bd.1; and "General Remarks
on Hysterical Attacks" (1909) in the Zeitschrift fur Psychotherapie und medizinische
Psychologie, Bd. 1. "Dora," then, would by no means have been the last word on
Freudian hysteria in 1909; rather, it would have been one text among several in
circulation.
If Dora was one source of inspiration for Pappenheim's text, it was a good one;
certainly better that the Anna O. case, from a literary perspective. Freud's writing style is
much better that Breuer's, and the Dora case is an excellent example of Freud's skill as
both writer and storyteller. Patrick Mahony, who has written extensively on Freud's
major case histories, notes that while some view the case histories as "antiquated" or as
fetish objects for students of classical psychoanalysis, others-see these histories as having
positive literary value. 56 Freud, insists Mahony, possessed a "scriptive talent" that was
"unsurpassed"; moreover,
[Freud's] classic cases manifest a blending of associative and critical processes

that transmits a flavor of the clinical situation ... a powerful rhetorical interweaving
of clinician, author, patient, and reader; a theoretical and expository sensitivity
to language; and an ability to shift easily among many frames of reference. 57
For all of Freud's theoretical missteps and miscues that hindsight allows us to see, he was
a fme writer, and even if Freud was unhappy about his case histories being read as stories,
they do stand on their own as literature: literary critic Harold Bloom reads Freud as
literature; the Dora case history contains compelling and often humorous dialogue
56 Patrick Mahony, Freud's Dora, xi-xii.
57 Mahony, Freud's Dora, xii.
135
between Freud and his patient; the case contains some of Freud's most imaginative and
virtuosic dream analysis; and most importantly, the Dora case is an exciting and multi-
layered tale of sexual intrigue. Inside family knowledge of Anna O. aside, if a Freudian
case history drew Marie Pappenheim's poetic attention and inspired her own "scriptive
talent," I believe it would have been the Dora case. The case's sexual intrigue, in the form
of a bizarre love quadrangle, is its most significant feature, especially in light of possible
parallels between the case and Erwartung. Moreover, the Dora case brings together two
of the most important aspects of psychoanalytic theory, hysteria and dream analysis, both
of which figure prominently in most interpretations of the monodrama. If Die Frau is an
hysteric, could she not be a synthesis of several of Freud's patients, Dora included? And if
Erwartung can be interpreted as a nightmare, according to Schoenberg, is it not possible
that Freud's desire-laden dream world, with its "symbolic geography of sex,,,58 is the one
evoked in the monodrama's own symbolically rich landscape?
Dora and Erwartung
The most obvious parallel between the Dora case history and the libretto text is the
shared presence of a love triangle (in Dora's case, a kind of love quadrangle). Both
feature trauma of a sexual nature: Die Frau discovers her lover's corpse and his affair, and
Dora is molested repeatedly by a family friend. While Dora's symptom's were not as
serious as Anna O.'s-Dora's was only a case of "petite hysterie"-Dora suffered from a
similar aphonia, in her case contiguous with the absence of her ostensible love object, HelT
K.: "When the man she loved was away she gave up speaking; speech had lost its value
136
since she could not speak to him. ,,59 Similarly, Die Frau, bereft of her lover after his
death, sings that she knew nothing but him, that he was the limit of her knowledge, of her
world. Die Frau sings of the other woman, "die Frau mit den weissen Armen," while
Dora describes Frau K., the woman with whom her father is having an affair, in terms of
her "adorable white body." These are perhaps nothing more than coincidences, but even a
cursory glance at the symbolism in the case history and the monodrama reveals some
compelling connections between Freudian dream analysis and the psycho-symbolic
landscape of Erwartung.
The most significant parallels emerge when we compare Dora's dreams to the text
of Erwartung. The monodrama has been likened to a dream many times over.
Schoenberg himself, of course, described it as a nightmare, an "Angsttraum." The Dora
case centres on Freud's analysis of two dreams, in which he discovers a number of
significant symbols. In the first dream, there is a house on fire, within which a jewel-case
is threatened with being burnt-up. In the second dream, Dora wanders through a forest, in
which there is a train station and a strange man. She discovers that her father is dead, and
that her mother is already at the cemetery. All of these symbols-the house, the jewel
case, the woods, and the cemetery-are interpreted by Freud as sexual in nature. What is
immediately striking to me is the sharing of these symbols between the works: for
example, Erwartung is set in a wood within which there is a house and a man (the corpse
of Die Frau's lover); Die Frau is described by Pappenheim at the beginning of scene 1 as
137
wearing jewelry when she appears ("Schmuck,,).60 It seems to me that there is a
specifically Freudian sense to a house in a deep wood, to Die Frau's "jewels," and to a
number of other symbols exclusive to ElWartung, including the walled garden. As will be
discussed later, both the case history and the monodrama have in common the psychology
of desire, of confronting and pursuing one love object or another in a circuit of desire.
Elizabeth Keathley and Erwartung's "New Woman"
Elizabeth Keathley's 1999 dissertation "Revisioning Musical Modernism: Arnold
Schoenberg, Marie Pappenheim, and ElWartung's New Woman" represents a radical
centering of Marie Pappenheim in the musicological narrative concerning ElWartung. It is
Keathley's intention to examine the mythologies that surround ElWartung, and to question
the largely unquestioned interpretation of the monodrama as "Schoenberg's Erwartung":
in other words, to challenge "the dominant belief that Erwartung has little if anything to
do with empirical women.,,61 Her focus, then, is on Pappenheim rather than Schoenberg,
in order to show how the work represents a different kind of modernism, a women's
modernism that is closely related to women's culture and "speaks of women's experience
of modernity using modem verbal and musicallanguage.,,62 Keathley's research shows
the extent to which ElWartung's libretto was an original work ofPappenheim's, not
60This tenn, "Schmuck," as it appears in Pappenheim's description of Die Frau at the beginning of the
monodrama, is somewhat ambiguous. As Iunderstand it, it can also mean, for example, "tidy," though the
wilting flowers on Die Frau's dress belie that interpretation. In Arthur Jacob's Universal Edition translation
for Covent Garden, he renders "Schmuck" as "She wears jewelry." Gery Bramall's translation for The Decca
Record Company Ltd., as it appears in the 1995 EMI recording conducted by Simon Rattle (CDC 5552122),
reads: "A woman approaches; slight, in a white dress with red roses pinned to it, already losing their petals,
and jewelry."
61 Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 3.
138
written under the direction of Schoenberg, as is sometimes suggested, but collaboratively
with the composer and reflecting Pappenheim's own ideology and especially her nascent
feminism. Keathley carefully examines Pappenheim's poetry, the content of the libretto
and also the original libretto manuscript, to determine where and when Schoenberg
participated in the process of writing or editing the monodrama's text. Through this
examination, Keathley portrays Pappenheim as an author and poet in her own right,
distinct from Schoenberg and possessed of a particular modernist-feminist point of view,
representative of fin-de-siecle Vienna's new, progressive woman.
Pappenheim's concerns about women and their right to identity is extrapolated by
Keathley's from Pappenheim's poetry and from Envartung, in which Keathley finds a
powerful collection of gendered metaphors-including the garden and the path--designed
to articulate contemporary relations between the masculine and the feminine and
revelatory of gender ideology at the heart of the work: Pappenheim's intention in the
monodrama, Keathley concludes, is a representation of a woman's path to self-discovery.
Keathley suggests too that Schoenberg, though likely not a feminist, was probably
complicit in the monodrama's program: Keathley interprets Schoenberg's musical settings
of key scenes, words and phrases as a reading of the text as a melodrama rather than an
opera, thus facilitating a depiction of Pappenheim' s modern woman as a heroic victim-
"melodrama's archetypal persecuted heroine"-rather than as a demented operatic diva. 63
63 Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 8. Keathley identifies the melodrama as connected to

women's culture: they typically were based on novels by women and portrayed "sex-type stock characters of
Victorian melodrama [male villain, male hero, heroine]. . .A Manichean opposition of good and evil was
played out over the body of the heroine." (261) The melodrama, moreover, while depicting the heroine as
passive insofar as she requires rescuing by the male hero, places the woman at the centre of the drama, and
"presented her frustrations and dilemmas from her point of view. Although she suffered passively, she did so
from a position of moral superiority." (263)
139
As a work designed to speak to a female audience, as Keathley argues, Erwartung
is something of an anathema to the psychoanalytic theories that have long been posited as
pmt of the work's genesis and ideological constitution. Her POltrait of Die Frau as heroine
rather than hysteric is also a thoroughgoing critique of psychoanalysis and obviates, in my
view, the possibility of a psychoanalytic "reading," though she claims that such a reading
is possible, provided the "ideological underpinnings of psychoanalysis" are taken into
64
account. Keathley's feminist reading focuses in large part on the metaphors of the path
and the garden, arguing that the path represents modem woman's active journey of self-
discovery, while the garden suggests passivity and containment. A Freudian
interpretation, she claims, is anachronistic, based on the post-Second World War
popularization of psychoanalytic theory, and not reflective of Erwartung' s contemporary
65
milieu. Keathley asserts that Pappenheim, and Schoenberg by extension, would likely
have eschewed writing a music drama based on Freudian psychoanalysis, and on hysteria
in pmtic,ular, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Keathley identifies the ideology of Freudian
psychoanalytic theory as antithetical to Pappenheim's own feminist program. The "Anna
0." case, then, represents the worst kind of subjugation of a woman, consigned to hysteria
and abused by male doctors. Of course, Bertha Pappenheim was, according to Keathley,
also unrelated to Marie, a convenient fact for Keathley's analysis as it bolsters the
Pace Susan McClary, Keathley evidently views opera as phallocratic rather than a potential site of
resistance; where McClary finds Erwartung's Woman an operatic heroine disrupting representation and
resisting containment from within through total chromaticism, Keathley finds her outside of the operatic
tradition altogether. See footnote below concerning Cixous, Clement and contrasting views of the hysteric as
inside or outside of the bourgeois family.
64 Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 208. One could offer the same caveat about feminist
readings.
65Preferable to anachronistic post-war Freudian interpretations, according to Keathley, would be

contemporary literary criticism's use of applied psychoanalytic theories, which go "far beyond their Freudian
140
argument against case histories as inspiration for the monodrama. Other case histOlies,
such as "Dora," are equally untenable for their ideological dissonance. Secondly,
Pappenheim and Schoenberg would have rejected a monodrama based on psychoanalytic
case histories because they were both lewish. In Austria at the tum of the century,
Keathley notes, hysteria-mental illness in general-and lewishness were often confiated,
and neither Schoenberg nor Pappenheim, already living in a city that was a hub of anti-
Semitism, would likely have wanted to invite this stereotype by portraying a hysteric in
their monodrama. Finally, Keathley cites the problem of what either Pappenheim or
Schoenberg would have known of Freud and his work: as of 1909, Keathley writes, Freud
was not the well-known figure he became in the decades to follow, and indeed, only short
runs of his books had been printed. The general public, certainly, would not have been
widely aware of Freud at this time. Keathley's argument appears compelling: she has the
force ofPappenheim's son's statement that Bertha and Marie were not related; she has the
fact ofPappenheim's feminism and lewishness, both anathemas to psychoanalytic theory
as it peltains to women and hysteria; and she offers the fact that Pappenheim may not have
known of Freud, since his works were not widely distributed at that time. I would like to
refute Keathley's claims here, however, and in so doing offer some of my own arguments
for Erwartung as a Freudian text.
Elizabeth Keathley suggests that Die Frau is not mad, and certainly not hysterical.
Pappenheim, she insists, would have rejected both the Anna O. case, the putative source of
inspiration for the monodrama, and the Dora case as possible models because they are
origins to make a variety of claims about subconscious processes," rather than focus exclusively on hysteria.
Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 208.
141
ideologically incompatible with Pappenheim's feminist orientation. The monodrama does
not paint the same clinical picture as the Anna 0. case, Keathley claims, nor is the former
necessarily a clinical picture of hysteria at all. Rather, Erwartung is a text about a
woman's legitimate fears and emotions in light of the collapse of a relationship, the death
of a lover, and being lost in the woods at night. Die Frau is not, according to Keathley, an
hystelic like Anna 0., suffering from fragmented speech, hallucinations, and repressed
memory, but is instead the product of "literary technique," which portrays Die Frau as
"thinking out loud ... and where her speech is fragmented, it represents inchoate thoughts
and fleeting impressions-quite normal thoughts which were increasingly recorded by
modern writers concerned with realistic portrayals of subjective existence. ,,66 I have
already described, above, what I regard as the important correspondences between the
Anna O. case and Pappenheim's text. Keathley's suggestion that, as clinical pictures, the
texts are incompatible, is a reasonable one; however, I would argue that Pappenheim's
hysteric is, as Keathley herself implies, a literary one, her symptomology itself a function
ofliterary technique: not simply the direct transcription of a case history into a
monodrama, but rather a trope that allows the language and symbolism of psychoanalysis
access to a literary work. Like Elektra, Erwartung is concerned with the mysteries of the
unconscious mind and with the dramatic effects of hidden causes, as revealed in the
therapeutic scene of psychoanalysis.
One of Keathley's main arguments against Anna O. as a model for Erwartung is
the aetioiogical one; that is, that Die Frau's "hysteria" does not exhibit the necessary
66 Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 233. Keathley cites Arthur Schnitzler's Leutnant Gustl as an
example of "internal monologue."
142
aetiology, does not reflect the process of the development of the disorder. The necessary
"chain of causal factors that includes a relatively recent sexual precipitant and a
preconditioning infantile sexual experience or fantasy" is not in evidence in the
67
monodrama. We do not know, in other words, whether Die Frau has the necessary
psychoneurotic constitution or predisposition to hysteria that a fresh trauma would
awaken. Citing Freud's "Aetiology of Hysteria" from the Studies, Keathley writes that
"no 'traumatically operative scene' [presumably Die Frau's discovery of her lover's
corpse, or perhaps her discovery of her lover's affair and his subsequent murder at her
hands-see below] can of itself produce hysterical symptoms.,,68 Freud, however, writing
in 1905, suggests that the relationship between what is "innate" and what is "accidentally
experienced" is of "relative aetiological importance": "Where the constitution is a marked
one it will perhaps not require the support of actual experiences; while a great shock in
real life will perhaps bring about a neurosis even in an average constitution.,,69 Die Frau,
in this case, could have been traumatized by a single "great shock," perhaps the death of
her lover, or simply the failure of their relationship, without necessruily having an
hysterical constitution. The resultant "symptoms," as manifested in Erwartung, are not
necessarily hysterical, as Keathley reminds us, but may be in part responses to real events,
or merely normal "daydreams, fantasies, reflections and reveries,,70; however, given the
69Freud, 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," in On Sexuality (London: Penguin Books, 1991),86.
Keathley cites these essays as evidence of the ideological differences between Freud and Marie Pappenheim,
suggesting that Freud's view of women as predisposed to mental illness would not have been well-regarded
by Pappenheim.
143
confluence of details between the monodrama and the Anna O. case history, together with
the monodrama's milieu and contemporaries, the ever-tightening circle that connects
Freud, Schoenberg and Pappenheim and the unsolved mystery of the relationship between
Bertha Pappenheim and Marie Pappenheim, Anna O. remains a possible source of
inspiration for Erwartung.
Die Frau's journey through the forest, Keathley concludes, is not Anna O.'s
journey through analysis; rather, it is the journey of a woman who does not repress
memories so much as she mourns her lover, a loss is compounded by his infidelity and by
her recognition of her dependence on him. Die Frau, insists Keathley, is ultimately
liberated by the loss of her illusions (i.e. the illusion that she was protected "from life's
exigencies" by her lover): "her loss of illusion permits her to create herself anew according
to her own choices.,,7l Just as we do not have a clear picture of Die Frau's situation prior
to the start of the monodrama, we do not have a clear picture of what the future holds for
her as the work ends. Keathley's suggestion that she "creates herself anew" is, I would
argue, a rather dogmatic and anachronistic one: it accords with her (post-modem) feminist
re-evaluation of both Pappenheim and her heroine while rejecting the possibility of a
literary portrait of hysteria as the topos of the monodrama. As I will argue later, feminist
and psychoanalytic interpretations of Erwartung do necessarily have to be mutually
exclusive: the challenge is to avoid an anachronistic approach in both cases.
144
I have already discussed Keathley's claim that Marie Pappenheim would have
perceived the Dora case, the "last word" in hysteria as of the writing of Erwartung, as an
example of Freudian misogyny and would have regarded Dora as a victim of Freud's
theoretical enterprise, which subjugates female psychical development to the male psyche.
This view would have been in line with contemporary feminist critiques of
psychoanalysis, Keathley argues, critiques that rejected Freud's gender ideology and
"unequal evaluation of men and women."n What Keathley identifies as contemporary
critiques, however, are those supposed to have existed prior to the first documented
opposition to Freud by feminists, which date from the 1920s: "Although it probably
preceeds this date, feminist opposition to Freud's gender ideology is documented by the
1920's.,,73 She cites one 1909 feminist text, Grete Meisel-Hess' Die sexuelle Krise, but
also notes that in this text, Freud and Breuer are cited in support of the author's thesis
concerning women's need for "fulfilling sex lives.,,74 Keathley's dissertation asks that
Marie Pappenheim be "revisioned," that she be seen as part of the feminist vanguard of
the early twentieth century and, as such, necessarily anti-Freud. We see, however, that
although it may well have existed, Keathley offers no evidence of feminist opposition to
Freud around 1909; as I have described above, Freudian psychoanalysis was, if anything,
on the rise in Vienna, receiving some favorable press, reprinting and selling more copies
of its major texts, and gaining an international reputation. Pappenheim surely would have
been aware of Freud, and as Keathley insists, may have disagreed with his theories. If we
are to accept this, however, what do we make of subsequent reinterpretations of Dora as a
72 Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 216-217.
73 Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 216. My emphasis.
145
proto-feminist herself, as thwarting Freud's clumsy attempts at interpretation, as a model
of a feminine sexuality that can neither be contained nor explained through Freud's
patriarchal models?7s Are we to accept Keathley's vision ofPappenheim as proto-
feminist, but dismiss the possibility that Pappenheim too might have read Dora's case
history as a triumph of the feminine psyche over Freud's normative masculine model?
For Keathley, the problem of Dora's (and Die Frau's) "madness"-as-hysteria is that it
signifies the "deviancy" of women who seek to articulate "legitimate fears, anger, and
grief': "[e]ven when the ascription of madness is made in the interest of social
critique ... or in celebration of transgression against patriarchal authority ... the label [i.e.
hysteric] does not shed its reference to psychopathology .. .it remains a stigma with social
consequences for real women.,,76 One of the most important questions that the revisioning
of Pappenheim and Erwartung asks, then, and one my thesis aspires to answer, is "Why
would Pappenheim write a monodrama about an hysteric?" One possible answer to this
question might be that Pappenheim saw in psychoanalysis not merely misogyny, but also
the struggle of feminine subjectivity to articulate itself, a struggle given voice by Freud
and his hysterics rather than suppressed at every turn.
74 Keathley, "Revisioning Musical Modernism," 216n.
75 See, for example, Appignanesi and FOlTester, Freud's Women; Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement, The
Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy Wing (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Charles
Bernheimer and Claire Kahane, eds. In Dora's Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990); Hannah Decker, Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1991). The dialogue between Cixous and Clement, which comprises the latter part of The Newly Born
Woman, is particularly interesting insofar as the two theorists disagree over ''Dora'': Cixous argues that her
hysteria is disruptive of the patriarchal family model, while Clement believes that Dora is well-contained by
the family. For Cixous, the hysteric makes war on the family and is, in Jane Gallop's words, "unambiguously
nonassimiable"; in Clement's view, the hysteric is conservative, essential for the revitalization of the family
"through the assimilation of something outside itself," because her dissent does not "disperse the bourgeois
family, which only exists through her dissention." Catharine Clement and Helene Cixous, quoted in Jane
Gallop, "Keys to Dora," in In Dora's Case, 203.
146
In discussing Pappenheim's feminist use of certain metaphors and symbols in
Erwartung-the garden, the path, the forest-Keathley neglects to mention, by accident or
design, that they are all explicitly Freudian symbols. As noted above, the garden is
obvious; the forest too, though perhaps less so; the staring mushrooms from scene 1 are
decidedly phallic, a strange omission in Keathley's feminist reading of Erwartung77 ; the
house is also a Freudian symbol, a house wherein there lives a "slut," the woman with the
white arms. As I have shown, these symbols are all echoes of the dream symbols in the
"Dora" case, but are also catalogued in The Interpretation of Dreams, wherein Freud
describes in particular the prevalence of "architectural symbolism for the body and
genitals" and the sexual nature of "plant-life" symbolism, for which "the way has been
well prepared by linguistic usage, itself the precipitate of imaginative similes reaching
back to remote antiquity: e.g. the Lord's vineyard, the seed, and the maiden's garden in the
Song of Solomon. ,,78 In other words, "architectural symbolism"-such as gates, buildings
and perhaps garden walls-is common in dreams, as is "plant-life symbolism," which
includes flowers, gardens, and branches (the latter two figure prominently, of course, in
Erwartung). These symbols, asserts Freud, are "seemingly innocent," but "the symptoms
of hysteria could never be interpreted if we forgot that sexual symbolism can find its best
hiding-place behind what is commonplace and inconspicuous.,,79 Moreover, these
77Penney describes the mushrooms as phallic. See Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung." It is
worth noting, too, that Freud had an avid interest in mushrooms, and spent many hours in the woods, often
with his children, collecting various kinds of mushrooms. In my opinion, the mushrooms serve as one of
several Freudian avatars. See Chapter 5.
78Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 462-463. Like the Studies on Hysteria, Freud's dream book was
reprinted in 1909 in an expanded second edition. The preface dates from the summer of ] 908; it is my
understanding that the book, like the Studies, would have been available in late 1908 or early 1909, celtainly
early enough to have come to the attention of Marie Pappenheim.
79 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 463.
147
"disguises" that the neuroses take are well-worn "paths along which all humanity passed
in the earliest periods of civilization-paths of whose continued existence to-day, under
the thilmest of veils, evidence is to be found in linguistic usages, superstitions and
customs."SO Freud's account of dream symbolism, as of 1909, suggests that symbols like
gardens, branches, faded blossoms, and roads or paths are explicitly sexual: if we take
Schoenberg at his word that Erwartung could be viewed as a nightmare or an "anxiety
dream," and if we allow for the possibility that some of the details of the monodrama may
have been adapted from Freudian texts, do we not then need to allow the symbolism of the
monodrama its Freudian dimension?
The issue of Schoenberg's and Pappenheim's lewishness in this context is, to my
mind, almost not worth addressing. Both the librettist and the composer, in Keathley's
view, would have been sensitive to the contemporary stereotypes of Jews, sexual
degeneracy and mental illness, and so neither would have considered psychoanalytic case
histories an appropriate source. I find this difficult to believe. Schoenberg had converted
to Protestantism before the tum of the century, and his return to the Jewish faith would not
S1
corne for over a decade after the completion of Erwartung. Pappenheim, it is likely, was
also not a practicing Jew as of 1909, like Schoenberg and so many other Jews in Vienna
80Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 463. Of course, ''the path" is a central metaphor in Erwartung and as
a number of commentators have noted, the path may represent in Erwartung the progression of
psychoanalytic treatment. Keathley's path to feminist self-discovery could just as readily be the analyst's
zigzag, labyrinthine paths-"die verschlungensten Wege"-into the mind of the analysand as described by
Freud in the Studies on Hysteria. See Chapter 5 for a more detailed account of the Freudian path.
81Schoenberg, who as a young man described himself as an "unbeliever," converted to Protestantism in 1898.
Malcolm MacDonald has observed that Schoenberg's religious ambivalence was likely a product of his
household, wherein his mother Pauline was "attached to the old Jewish beliefs" while his father Samuel was a
skeptic, "a romantic, idealistic freethinker of a combative, iconoclastic cast of mind." MacDonald,
Schoenberg, 18-19. Freud's own situation was similar: his family members were non-practicing Jews, while
his wife Martha came from a family of conservative Jews. See note below.
148
probably a convert to the Christian faith. Many Jews in fin-de-siccle Vienna convelted to
Christianity because they sought assimilation, and many, including such high-profile Jews
as Karl Kraus (who converted to Catholicism), openly rejected Zionism. Of course, a Jew
converting to Christianity in Vienna at the tum of the century obviously does not
necessarily betoken a disengagement with Judaism, but rather may have been a political,
professional and social necessity; however, it is difficult simply to accept Keathley's
asseltion that both Schoenberg and Pappenheim would have rejected out of hand the idea
of dramatizing, even in part, a case of hysteria because of the conflation of J ewishness and
82
mental illness. It seems unlikely to me that either Schoenberg or Pappenheim would
have simply rejected Freud out of sensitivity for anti-Semitic stereotyping. Schoenberg
was a pluralist, deeply immersed in the artistic and intellectual life of Vienna, and his
circle overlapped considerably with Freud's; Pappenheim was a young intellectual, a poet,
and also a medical student, probably familiar with and possibly personally interested in
Freud's work. Freud himself, having rejected much of the Jewish faith and traditions as a
young man and spending much of his life "a completely godless Jew," never denied his
Jewishness, as Schoenberg did early in the century.83 Freud, no less that Schoenberg,
would have been sensitive to perceptions of Jews as mentally ill and deviant, yet he
publicized mental illness, with roots in sexual factors, in his books. IsKeathley
suggesting that Schoenberg and Pappenheim would have been more sensitive than Freud
to issues of Jewishness and hysteria? According to Hannah Decker, Freud was aware, as
early as 1900, that resistance to his work on dreams was not only a product of his
83 See Peter Gay, A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of PsycJwanalysis (New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1987). Appignanesi and Fon-ester claim that, "under the influence of the
149
Viennese Jewish background and interest in sexual interpretations, but was a function of
the unwillingness of professional medical writers to recognize the psychical value of
84
dreams. In other words, Jewishness is only a small part of the picture, too small to have
prevented Freud from advancing his theories of sexuality and the unconscious: I would
argue that the same is true for Pappenheim and Schoenberg's "psychoanalytic"
monodrama.
Finally, would Pappenheim have known of Freud circa 1909? Keathley suggests
that this is not likely, given that Freud was not very well-known in Vienna at that time.
She also notes that Freud's "Dora" case of 1905 would have been, for Pappenheim, "the
last word on hysteria," and as such would have offered a view of gender and hysteria
inimical to Pappenheim's own ideology. What Keathley does not take into account, as
mentioned above, is that the Studien ilber Hysterie was first printed in 1895 but was
reprinted in 1909, after the first print run of 800 copies had been sold. Moreover, there
were two papers on hysteria published by Freud in 1908 and 1909. Of course, there was
also a 1909 expanded reprint of The Interpretation of Dreams, not likely to have gone
unnoticed in Pappenheim's circle, especially given her brother's occupation. 85
"Pappenheim, as a doctor, would not have contented herself with some outdated model
Enlightenment-inspired movement of the early and mid-nineteenth century, [Freud's family] had dispensed
with virtually aU religious rituals and habits, with the sole exception of the Seder." Freud's Women, 43.
84 Hannah Decker, Freud in Germany: Revolution and Reaction in Science, 1993-1907 (New York:
International Universities Press, 1977),290.
85 According to Keith Davies, librarian at the Freud Museum in London, the fIrst print run of The
1nterpretation of Dreams was only 600 copies, a fairly small run that took ten years to sell out. One third of
these copies sold between 1906-1908; 49 copies are unaccounted for. The 1909 edition, on the other hand,
sold out in only two years, selling somewhere between 1,000-1,500 copies from 1908-1910, a considerable
increase (there is some discrepancy over the correct number of copies sold: it is either 1,050 or 1,500). I
believe that this speaks to an increasing interest in Freud's work around the time of Erwartung' s genesis.
Personal correspondence with Keith Davies, July 25th, 2003. .
150
had she planned to portray a clinical condition," writes Keathley; "rather, she would have
utilized the most current sources available in order to depict accurately the symptoms and
etiology of the condition [i.e. hysteria).,,86 As of 1909, that would have comprised the new
edition of the Studies on Hysteria, which Freud was still citing in the Dora article,
indicating that, as of 1905, he still regarded it as a "current source.,,87 As Hannah Decker
has noted, psychoanalysis was already becoming popularized in Germany in 1907, and
Freud's theories were being discussed extensively, and frequently favorably, in lay
periodicals throughout the first decade of the twentieth century.88 Karl Kraus, who is
often described as having had a falling out with Freud and psychoanalysis, well-publicized
in Die Fackel, in fact engaged in a respectful, dialectical relationship with Freud between
1904 and 1910, publishing favorable reviews of Freud's books, supporting Freud in the
journal in his dispute over the origin of bisexuality with Wilhelm Fleiss, and attending
Freud's lectures. 89 According to Edward Timms, Kraus clearly read at least parts of
Freud's major texts from the first decade of the century, and made frequent reference to
90
Freudian theories in the journal during the years 1907-1908. While Keathley suggests
that Pappenheim would have been aware of Kraus' negative critique of Freud and
psychoanalysis, there are no "hostile or derisive" remarks about Freud to be found
86 Keathley,"Revisioning Musical Modernism," 231.
87Freud mentions the Studies on Hysteria in the first sentence of the prefatory remarks to the Dora case,
describing the case history as a substantiation of both the Studies and the I 896 paper "The Aetiology of
Hysteria." In the first section of the Dora case history, "Clinical Picture," Freud notes that he has not
abandoned his theory of a sexual aetiology for hysteria, but rather has "gone beyond it. .. that is to say, I do not
today consider that theory incorrect, but incomplete." Freud, "Dora" in Case Histories I, 57n.
88 Decker, Freud in Germany, 288.
Edward Timms, Karl Krauss: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (New
89
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986),94-95.
90 Timms, Karl Krauss: Apocalyptic Satirist, 95.
151
anywhere in Die Fackel, and that Kraus' critique of psychoanalysis comprised an attack
on Freud's imitators, never Freud himself, and only vigorously after 1910. 91 In sharp
contrast to Keathley's assertion, it is Kraus himself who advocated and perhaps presaged
the merging of psychoanalysis and artistic endeavors, asselting the value of "the scientific
investigation of sexual life ... providing its results are confirmed by the artistic
imagination.,,92 In fact, Keathley notes Kraus' hostility toward "psychiatry" and not
psychoanalysis, recounting a 1904 article by Krauss in which Krauss criticizes Count
Coburg and his use of psychiatrists to confine his wife, who he accused of being mentally
ill because she had "taken up horseback riding and developed a dislike for her husband.,,93
Keathley describes Krauss' distaste for the "misuse of psychiatric power" but notes that he
fails to recognize "the gender implications of the Coburg story.,,94 Keathley concludes
that Schoenberg, as a regular reader of Die Fackel, may have shared Krauss' attitude
towards "psychoanalysis"; however, what she is describing here is psychiatry, a discipline
distinct from psychoanalysis as of 1909; moreover, Krauss' attitude towards the problem
of psychiatry (or psychoanalysis, as Keathley would have it) is a decidedly non-gendered
one, an attitude that Schoenberg and Pappenheim may have shared.
There are other important facts that Keathley omits in her account of the
popularity of psychoanalysis in Vienna in the first decade of the twentieth century,
including the fact that the first International Congress on Psychoanalysis met in Salzburg
91 Timms, Karl Krauss: Apocalyptic Satirist, 97.
92 Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist, 97.
152
in April of 1908. The argument that Freud and psychoanalysis was something of a
localized phenomenon (indeed, so localized that many educated Viennese would even
have been unaware of Freud) seems untenable, given that an international meeting of
people aware of and interested in Freud and psychoanalysis was possible in 1908.95 By
the end of 1908, Freud's international reputation was such that he was invited to lecture in
the United States, and did so with Jung in 1909. Marie Pappenheim, a progressive, "new"
woman" was not only a doctor but also a poet and a member of one of the most exciting
circles of intellectuals, artists and musicians in Vienna; as such, she may well have been
one of the literati whom Decker Claims became Freud's most important audience. 96
While Keathley, as I have shown, believes that the evidence against such an
argument is very strong-the stigma of lewishness/femaleness and madness, the
ideological dissonance between feminism and psychoanalysis, the lack of a true clinical
picture of hysteria in the monodrama, and lack of symptomatic correspondences between
Anna O. and Die Frau-I am convinced that there are some compelling parallels between
Erwartung and the Dora case, which I have shown, above, and which, to the best of my
knowledge, have yet to be discussed in either psychoanalytic or musicological literature in
any detail. 97 Moreover, while Keathley rejects an interpretation of madness as social
95 There were approximately forty participants at the Congress.
96 While Decker states that the adoption of Freud's dream theories by the literati is most pronounced in the
years immediately following World War One, she also notes that many German psychoanalysts practicing in
the 1920s "reported a strong literary influence in their adolescent years, which was immensely gratified by
reading Freud at that period in their lives." Freud in Germany, 292. Presumably, this could be as early as the
latter part of the first decade of the century.
97 Alan Street's essay "The Ear of the Other" in Charlotte Cross and Russell A. Berman, eds., Schoenberg
and Words: The Modernist Years (New York: Garland Press, 2000)-at times an almost impenetrably
jargonistic and unfocused mix of postmodern exegesis and musicology--mentions Dora briefly in the context
of Erwartung and Schoenberg's Op.6 songs. For Street, whose primary concern is the songs and not the
153
critique or transgression, she fails to consider that Pappenheim's portrayal of a woman
trying to find her way in a dark forest could constitute a critique of psychoanalysis, or at
the very least may reflect Pappenheim's own understanding of the difficulties of defining
and determining femininity in a socio-cultural milieu infused with Freudian notions of
sexuality and neurosis. The monodrama also reflects Schoenberg's concerns, which I
perceive as marginalized in Keathley's ideologically-charged interpretation. In the fifth
and final chapter of this thesis, I offer my own interpretation of the music and text of
Erwartung, an interpretation that posits a psychoanalytic program for the work and places
Freud and Schoenberg at the centre of the argument.
monodrama, Erwartung is a nexus of interpretive possibilities, as evidenced by the presence of a number of

musical quotations. These quotations, which include not only the text and melody from "Am Wegrand" but
also the fragment from 'Traumleben" (Op.6, no.1) postulated by Robert Falck, along with two others
advanced by Street: one from "Der Wanderer" (Op. 6, no.8) and one fromPierrot Lunaire (no.4, "Eine blasse
Wascherin"). The first and last pieces are implicated in the interpretation of the monodrama by virtue of their
texts, which includes in each case some reference to white arms, likened to the white arms of the unknown
other woman in Erwartung. In this way, Street connects Dora to the monodrama (as I have done, above),
invoking the "adorable white body" of Frau K. Street's interpretation of the monodrama, given the obscurity
of the quoted material he has found, is that it is ultimately not, as is often suggested, a response to actual
adultery-like the Op.l 0 quartet and Die gliickliche Hand-but rather that, through reference to Freudian
case histories it may represent Schoenberg's attribution of hysteria to "female suspicion." This suspicion,
suggests Street, is the kind of suspicion that Mathilde Schoenberg may have felt towards her husband, a
suspicion arising from his "extended creative communion with the rutistic muse," which would have been
"proof positive of unfaithfulness, or at the very least of distracted mru'ital neglect." (126).
The possibility for "latent cross-relations" from the Op.6 songs and Erwartung to mutually
"saturate" one another in an analysis is raised by Street, as is the problem of "biographical fallacy," which
would presumably place far too much hermeneutic weight on Schoenberg's marital crisis in an evaluation of
the monodrama; however, Street does assert that the cultural context of Erwartung and in particular its
potential "alignments of a Freudian kind" are important and valid when interpreting the work.
CHAPTER FOUR
Analytical Approaches to Erwartung
"Erwartung," declares Charles Rosen, "is traditionally supposed to be the despair
of musical analysis."l Indeed, the inimical relationship between analysis and Erwartung
is, in a way, at the heart of this dissertation: Schoenberg's atonal works, and in particular
the "psychoanalytic works" (as I've chosen to characterize them) require more than
traditional musical analysis to be understood. One of the most important analysts of
twentieth century music of recent years, George Perle, has made the same observation
about Erwartung, namely that it exemplifies "a kind of stream of c.onsciousness writing
that defies objective analysis.,,2 Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt notes that Erwartung has
long resisted analysis because it was long-perceived as "anarchical and merely the
product of feeling as regards form.',3 While Rosen insists that the ongoing
characterization of the monodrama in negative terms-as athematic, atonal, non-
structured, anarchic, etc.-fails to take into account a certain harmonic and textural
coherence (see the discussion on Rosen, below), I contend, here and in other chapters,
that it is in this negativity or lack that the meaning of the work, in part, inheres. I will
develop this argument further in Chapter 5. For now, the purpose of this chapter is to
critically assess the relatively small number of attempts to analyse Erwartung musically.
Rosen insists that we must not "throw up our hands at Erwartung,,,4 and I agree
1 Charles Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996),40.
2 George Perle, quoted in Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg, 42.
3 Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 120.
4 Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg, 42.
154
155
wholeheartedly; however, I also believe that objective analytical approaches to the work
can only ever be contingent if they do not embrace the deeper psychological meaning of
the work, which is bound to cultural milieu, personal circumstance, and above all, a
desire to articulate the newly born Freudian unconscious.
My survey of analytical approaches to Erwartung is offered, below, in
chronological order: the evolution of the orientation and methodologies of analysis is, in
my opinion, as interesting and revelatory as the analyses themselves.
Buchanan's "Key" to Erwartung
Herbert H. Buchanan's 1967 article, "A Key to Schoenberg's Erwartung" is a
seminal one for Schoenberg scholars. Buchanan identifies an instance of self-quotation
in the monodrama, then endeavors to show how this quoted material functions
motivically, providing unity and coherence in the work. The quotation, mentioned above
in my discussion of Stuckenschmidt's assessment of Erwartung, is from one of
Schoenberg's early, tonal songs, "Am Wegrand," Op.6, no.6. Composed between 1903
and 1905, the eight op. 6 songs are comprised of settings of texts by Julius Hrut, Richard
Dehmel, Hermann Conradi, Paul Remer, Gottfried Keller, Kurt Aram, Friedrich
Nietzsche, and John Henry MacKay. "Am We grand [By the Roadside]" is by MacKay
and describes a lonely person waiting by the side of a road as "A thousand people pass
by." The waiting is in vain, for "Longing fills the confines of my life, IFulfillment which
will not fill." As the poem ends, the longed-for person has not appeared and, tired of
waiting, the narrator's "tired eyes close." Part of the text of the poem is quoted in
156
Pappenheim's text, specifically the line "Tausend Menschen ziehen vortiber [A thousand
people pass by]" at measure 411. Buchanan's article is concerned with the thematic
material taken from the song and used as musical material for the textual quotation, and
with the song as the source of several germinal motivic cells in Erwartung. In the end, it
may be that Erwartung's "key" lies in its reliance on tonal material: in other words, the
work is somehow tonal and is in a key.
There is an initial problem with Buchanan's analysis that needs to be addressed
before a summary and discussion of his analysis can take place. The problem is
Buchanan's claim that the presence of the "Am Wegrand" quotation "has not been
discussed at all in the copious literature on Schoenberg's music."s This either is a gross
oversight on Buchanan's part, or is profoundly disingenuous. The presence of the "Am
Wegrand" quotation is clearly documented, as I have already mentioned, in both
Stuckenschmidt's 1931 article on the monodrama, and then in Adorno's Philosophy of
Modem Music, first published in 1948. It occurred to me that Buchanan may not have
had access to Stuckenschmidt's article, nor to an English translation of Adorno's book,
unavailable until 1973; however, his article does include citations of several early
German sources, including articles by Anton Webern and Paul Bekker. Adorno identifies
the quotation in the section of his book entitled "Loneliness as Style," and suggests that
the loneliness expressed in Mackay's poem, and Schoenberg's song, is both the
loneliness of the "city dweller" and the universal loneliness of the Expressionist. 6 I will
5 Buchanan, "A Key to Schoenberg'S Erwartung," 434.
157
return to Adorno's insights into the "Am We grand" quotation as part of my critique of
Buchanan's analysis; for now, it suffices to say that Buchanan's discovery of the
quotation was not original.
Buchanan takes a dramatic and controversial stance at the beginning of his article,
rejecting the claims that Erwartung is both athematic and atonal. He bases this claim
upon the presence of quoted thematic material from "Am Wegrand," a tonal song.
Because some of this thematic material is repeated, and because the quoted material has
tonal origins, Buchanan insists that "the descriptions of Erwartung as 'athematic' and
'atonal' must be revised and qualified.,,7 The quoted material appears both as quotation
and in anticipation of the quotation. The textual quotation, "Tausend menschen ziehn
vortiber," occurs at measures 411-412; in the bassoon and bass clarinet Hauptstimme,
Buchanan notes, the main theme from "Am Wegrand" is present, emphasized in the
monodrama through octave doubling. This same theme is anticipated in the monodrama
in measures 401-402, also in the bass part as a cello Hauptstimme. This anticipation at
measures 401-402 is a half-step higher than the quotation at measures 411-412, beginning
on E-flat rather than D. In measure 410, Buchanan identifies the presence of transitional
material from the song's piano part in the monodrama's viola and bassoon parts,
prefacing the textual quotation beginning in measure 411. He further notes the
simultaneous presence of two thematic ideas from "Am Wegrand" at measure 411: the
song's main theme, heard in the bass Hauptstimme, and a subordinate theme from the
song in the clarinet Hauptstimme. After identifying these complex thematic
7 Buchanan, "A Key to Schoenberg's Erwartung," 434.
158
relationships, Buchanan offers an important insight, namely that the quotations from "Am
We grand" are heard almost exclusively in Erwartung's orchestra. Even where the actual
quotation from the song occurs, Schoenberg assigns the vocal line of the song to the
clarinets~ in the bass Hauptstimmen, the main vocal theme of the song is heard,
underpinning its original text and moving in contrary motion to Die Frau's vocal line. 8
This manipulation and repetition of thematic material, asserts Buchanan, demands a
reappraisal of Erwartung as "athematic."
Buchanan also insists that Erwartung can no longer be called an "atonal" work,
by virtue of the fact that "tonal material from Am Wegrand appears in Erwartung without
disturbance to the stylistic consistency of the work [,] suggest[ing] that Erwartung is
more tonal than heretofore believed.,,9 The question that Buchanan poses and seeks to
answer is, how much referential force can a tonal quotation have in an ostensibly atonal
work? The quotation itself (the main textual-musical quotation at measure 411) occurs at
a dramatically significant place, at the start of what Buchanan identifies as the final
climax of the work: "Thus Schoenberg reserves the quotation for use at the final climactic
point. This placing of the quoted material cannot have been casual." 10 Moreover, the
quotation has a tonal function, established through the anticipatory quotation in measure
401, and proven throughout the work by the use of specific motives derived from the
quotation. The quotation in measure 411 is, according to Buchanan's analysis,
approached from above by half-step (i.e. the anticipatory statement of the theme in
159
measure 401 begins on Eb; the actual quotation begins on D). This approach from above
is likened to a similar procedure evident in the tone poem Verkliirte Nacht, OpA (1899),
in which the focal point of the work, the beginning of the fourth section, is "approached
harmonically from a half-step above ... and subsequently from a half-step below."ll
Buchanan thus concludes that the two quotations, though they appear in the context of an
atonal work, exemplify an explicitly tonal compositional procedure, "a later
manifestation-tonal to an extent-of an earlier, tonal structural device of
Schoenberg's." 12
Ultimately, it is Buchanan's contention that the inclusion of this quotation and its
use as a motivic resource in Erwartung constitutes a foreshadowing of the twelve-tone
system: it is an early example of Schoenberg's "desire for conscious unity ... Thus
Erwartung points to the future style of Schoenberg while clearly containing elements of
his earlier style as well."l3 Buchanan's thesis is that Erwartung is a work comprised of
elements of Schoenberg's tonal and twelve-tone style. "Am Wegrand," he notes, is close
enough in style to Erwartung that its inclusion in the monodrama is not disruptive; thus,
Erwartung must necessarily be more tonally oriented than originally thought. At the
same time, Buchanan insists, the quotation serves as the kind of "single central idea," a
basic idea that regulates other aspects of the composition, an important feature
160
Schoenberg's twelve-tone music. I think that Buchanan's thesis and conclusions speak to
the view of Schoenberg's free atonal music as transitional, as stemming from one valid
tradition, namely tonal composition, and pointing the way to another, dodecaphony. If
Erwartung can be seen as a "tonal" work, then it can be analysed using the
methodologies of tonal analysis: there must be logical, unifying compositional processes
at work in the monodrama; otherwise, it is unacceptably chaotic, athematic and atonal in
the most pejorative sense.
The fundamental problem with Buchanan's thesis, as I see it, is his insistence that
the inclusion of the quotation from "Am We grand" exemplifies Schoenberg's later desire
for conscious unity: "Schoenberg later expressed a desire for conscious unity in his
compositions by means of a single central idea.,,14 Buchanan cites a letter from
Schoenberg to Nicolas Slonimsky, in which Schoenberg discusses the use of "a unifying
idea" that produced "all the other ideas" and "regulated ... the 'harmonies,.,,15 This
statement by Schoenberg refers to the music he began writing after 1914; as of 1909, a
single unifying idea and conscious unity were the last things on Schoenberg's mind. The
more contemporary Harmonielehre describes Schoenberg's desire for unconscious
processes to take over in his music, and for freedom from consciousness. In
Schoenberg's letters to Ferruccio Busoni from the summer of 1909, moreover, just
months before the composition of the monodrama, the composer indicates this desire for
freedom:
15 Schoenberg, quoted in Buchanan, "A Key to Schoenberg's Erwartung, 442.
161
I strive for: complete liberation from all forms

from all symbols of cohesion and of logic
Thus: Away with 'motivic working out'
My music must be brief

Concise! In two notes: not built, but 'expressed'!!
[My music] should be an expression of feeling, as our feelings, which

bring us in contact with our subconscious, really are, and no false child
of feelings and 'conscious logic' .16
Buchanan does suggest first that Schoenberg may have had the "Am We grand" quotation
in mind "consciously or unconsciously from the very beginning as a basic unifying
element,,,l7 but then concludes, anachronistically, that Schoenberg's desire for unity and
for structure predicated on a single basic idea may be part of the organization of
Erwartung, pointing towards the twelve-tone method and retrospectively giving the
monodrama an improved status as a willful, logically-conceived work. The monodrama,
in this guise, is thus less of a break with tradition, less a unique work of nearly pure
expression, and more of merely a closed door concealing a tonal work, awaiting its
"key."
Fixed Tone Groups: Maegaard and Erwartung
Jan Maegaard's two-volume study of Schoenberg's oeuvre, an important resource
for Schoenberg scholars, contains the earliest truly comprehensive analysis of the
monodrama. The second volume of Maegaard's Studien zu Entwicklung des
dodecaphonen Satzes bei Arnold Schonberg published in 1972, includes not only his
16Schoenberg, undated letter to Ferruccio Busoni, written sometime between August 2nd and August 20 th ,
1909. In Ferruccio Busoni: Selected letters, trans.led. by Antony Beaumont (London: Faber and Faber,
1987),389.
17 Buchanan, "A Key to Schoenberg's Erwartung," 442. My emphasis.
162
analysis of Erwartung but also of Schoenberg's Opp.1O-16. It is the monodrama,
however, which receives the most attention, with over one hundred and twenty pages of
discussion and analysis. I will focus here generally on his analytical approach and will
then assess some of his conclusions.
Maegaard begins his assessment of Erwartung with a brief overview of some of
some of the important commentaries on the work that precede his own, including the
assessments of Stuckenschmidt, Adorno, Paul Bekker, Rene Leibowitz and Egon
Wellesz. Maegaard also discusses Buchanan's analysis of the "Am Wegrand" quotation,
concluding that its claim of discovering a "key" to the monodrama is perhaps too grand.
Maegaard notes that, in general, while there is a lot of literature concerned with
Erwarfung, much of it characterizes the monodrama as very difficult to analyse. He
describes, too, the variety of contrasting approaches, from Stuckenschmidt's three-note
motive to Friedrich Herzfeld's leitmotif chords. He concludes the preface to his analysis
with the assertion that Schoenberg's treatment of the drama illustrates an "absolute-
musikalischen Kraft [completely musical force],,,18 as the music of the monodrama-its
atonal idiom--corresponds exactly to the movement of the drama.
Maegaard begins his analysis by dividing the monodrama in half at measure 158,
the "Generalpause." This division corresponds to the division of the text into two parts,
defined by Die Frau's search for her lover and her reaction to the discovery of his corpse.
Maegaard then divides his analysis into a number of discrete sections, beginning with
18 Jan Maegaard, Studien zur Entwicklung des dodekaphonen Satzes bei Arnold Schonberg (Frankfurt:
Wilhelmiana Musikverlag, 1972), 314.
163
"Declamationsmotive [declamatory motives]"-such as "Das ist jemand [someone is
there]" and "es ist nicht wahr [it is not true]"and their function as musical rhetoric. He
also examines the opening figures of instrumental and vocal phrases and fixed tone
groups. It is the latter element that comprises a large portion of his analysis. Maegaard
identifies a variety of triads built on D, beginning with Stuckenschmidt's D-F-C# trichord
and including D-A#-C#, D-F#-C#, D-A-C#, D-G-C# etc. These fixed tone groups are
then divided into lists (A, B, C) according to how close the presentation of the tone group
comes to the original. List A, for example, contains the instances of the various tone
groups appearing as above. This is presented as a series of charts, also indicated their
transposition, and their placement in the voice part, Hauptstirnrne, or elsewhere. Lists B
and C, then, represent instances of the fixed tone groups that become increasingly
dubious,19 also presented in chart form. In subsequent charts, Maegaard catalogues the
occurrence, measure by measure, of the various lists (A, B, C) and then tallies the number
of occurrences of each fixed tone group and its transpositions for each list. His analysis
progresses to a bewildering array of charts that enumerate occurrences of specific pitches
in combination with their respective lists and placement in the voice, Hauptstimme or
elsewhere. Maegaard also identifies four-note "Konstellationen" or chords, combinations
of the fixed tone groups. These "Viertonkombinationen [four-tone combinations]" are
then catalogued according to their occurrence in the voice, Haupestimme or elsewhere.
In the end, Maegaard attributes percentages to each of the various fixed tone groups, in
the context of three or four tone chords, determining which tone groups comprise the
largest part of the work.
19 Maegaard, Studien zur Entwicklung, " 326.
164
Maegaard's analysis is astounding in its detail, but ultimately difficult to
understand and bordering on obsessive: it is an accounting but not really an explanation
of the monodrama. Maegaard concludes that Erwartung reveals Schoenberg's total
integration of his musical material: the vertical and horizontal elements, melody and
harmony, are perfectly integrated into a collection of interval combinations. With
Erwartung, Maegaard asserts, Schoenberg achieves true atonality-that is, both melodic
and harmonic elements are atonal-for the first time.
Stuckenschmidt and Erwartung's "Analysable Events"
Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt's Schoenberg, Leben, Umwelt, Werk, published in
1974 and translated into English in 1977, is an important biographical resource but does
not contribute any significant musical analysis or interpretation. It is here in my survey
of the analytical literature, however, because it is one of a handful of sources that insists
on the presence of motivic unity in Erwartung, where other sources would describe the
work as "athematic." Stuckenschmidt echoes Rosen's statement concerning the difficulty
of analysing the monodrama, noting that "for a long time [Erwartung] was regarded as a
work un susceptible to analysis and representative of tonal anarchy, of themelessness, and
of creative willfulness.,,2o As I noted in Chapter 2, Stuckenschmidt claims that a little
historical distance from the work allows for a new perspective, one in which analysis is
possible and that regards Erwartung as "a series of analysable events, a train of motives
bound together for long stretches, and partly as an extremely bold and radical type of
165
variation.,,21 This kind of variation and motivic working-through is not analysable by
traditional methods, and goes beyond the procedures found in the music of Schoenberg's
predecessors in the German tradition--especially Wagner and Brahms. Connections do
exist between variants, however, and Stuckenschmidt insists that these subtle variation
techniques can be observed through careful study. The first three notes of the vocal
melody in measure 6, C#-B-C, setting the text "Hier hinein [In here]" constitute a motive
that is immediately repeated, slightly varied, as E-F-Eb-E?2 Stuckenschmidt notes that
this motive "wanders" through the score, and he is correct: it appears not only quoted
almost exactly in measure 26 as F#-G-E#, setting the text "Wie drohend [How
menacing]" and as D-Eb-Db, setting the text "Stille ist [the silence is]" and in the "aria"
in measures 389 to 390 as an accompanying oboe figure (as E-F-Eb and E#-F#-E) but
also, for example, at measures 11-12 ("flirchte mich [I'm frightened],,: D#-E-D) and
measure 30 ("Ich will singen [I'll sing]": A-Bb-Ab, prefaced in the oboe Hauptstimme as
D-Eb-Db).23 I think that "wanders" is the correct word here, and that the motivic
consistency that Stuckenschmidt finds is more a product of the infinite number of
possible intervallic combinations offered by Erwartung than any kind of perversely
subtle motivic thought. Stuckenschmidt finds longer motives and their subsequent
restatements, including the sequence D-E-G-C#-A#, setting the text "ist das noch der
21 Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 120. See my discussion, below, of Herbert Buchanan's analysis of

Erwartung. Buchanan's analysis, concerned with the use of the "Am Wegrand" quotation, predates
Stuckenschmidt's: both analyses present the same thesis, namely that the monodrama is motivically
coherent, and that this coherence inheres from cells derived from the song. In critiquing Buchanan, I
include an excerpt from one of Schoenberg's letters to Busoni (written in August, 1909), in which the
former effectively eschews the motivic construction that Stuckenschmidt and Buchanan find at work in the
monodrama.
22Stuckenschmidt erroneously describes the opening vocal motive as "E#-B-C" in the English translation
(Schoenberg, 120).
166
Weg [is this still the path]" in measures 38-39, an echo of the opening line of the
monodrama at measure 4, "Man sieht den Weg nicht [The path can't be seen]," which is
also set using the notes D-E-G-E-G#. Indeed, the similar notes and contour of the
openings of scenes 1 and 2 are suggestive of "thinking in motivic connections," but are
also "only some examples from hundreds.,,24 I believe this is simply another example of
the kinds of connections that can be summoned by the analyst determined to find a
coherence that may not be there. In Stuckenschmidt's case, despite his assertion that
traditional analysis cannot capture these kinds of motivic connections, this is exactly the
perspective he brings to bear on the work. He finds Schoenberg's variation technique to
be hyper-advanced: the motivic manipulation is complex, but not necessarily
"untraditional." The most significant motive in the work is the trichord cell D-F-C#,
implying a D minor tonality. Stuckenschmidt notes the connection between this motive
and Schoenberg's song "Am Wegrand," from the op. 6 songs. The song, in D minor,
provides the D-F-C# cell, which becomes "dominant" after measure 150 and is quoted
directly in measures 411-412?5 Finally, Stuckenschmidt claims that "harmonic events"
are repeated, including the "12-note chord" found in measure 269,heard again in
measures 382-383: the notes are "arranged in a different order, certainly, but it is still
recognizable.,,26 With twelve-note chords, in the context of an atonal work, the veltical
order of the notes is hardly an impediment to hearing two chords as the same. I would
suggest, moreover, that these two chords are only audible, if at all, as similar "harmonic
events" because of their context: they are both sustained, pianissimo chords
24 Stuckenschrnidt, Schoenberg, 120.
25 Stuckenschrnidt, Schoenberg, 121.
167
accompanying a reminiscence of happier times by Die Frau. Separated by over a
hundred measures of dense atonal orchestral polyphony, their role in a chain of
analysable events is questionable.
What is notably absent from Stuckenschmidt's description of the motivic
workings of Erwartung is any kind of interpretation. Why is one motive given
precedence over others? What is the contextual significance of recurring motivic ideas?
I contend that an objective analysis of the work (e.g. an analysis of motivic connections)
is necessarily incomplete: Erwartung requires an analytic approach similar to that of
psychoanalysis, one that takes into account what is said and what is not said; an approach
that admits historical, personal, and cultural context into its methodology.
Charles Rosen and Erwartung's Musical Texture
Charles Rosen's little monograph, Schoenberg, was originally published in 1976.
Rosen, like Stuckenschmidt, does not offer a detailed analysis of Erwartung; however,
his insights are significant and worth recounting here. Rosen describes the problem of
motivic coherence in atonal music, and in Erwartung specifically, noting that the
recognition of motives from section to section in the work-indeed, from moment to
moment-is nearly impossible. Thematic/motivic construction is bound, insists Rosen,
to tonal harmony, to music oriented around a "central triad": the motive requires the
context of movement "away from, and back to, a perfect triad" forjts significance?7
168
Ultimately, it is the monodrama's harmonic texture that gives it stability and coherence,
and Rosen identifies several types of recurring chords that serve this purpose. He
suggests that virtually all of the chords in Erwartung are comprised of six notes, creating
a particular harmonic texture. These six-note chords are comprised of two three-note
chords, outlining the interval of a seventh. The three-note chords are often comprised of
two fourths, one perfect, one augmented. Rosen also identifies the presence of major
seventh chords, plentiful in the first two measures of the work and so pervasive that
Rosen can claim for them a kind of tonicizing function: such is the complex chromatic
texture of the monodrama that these chords function as "point[s] of rest," and are very
nearly stable sonorities of the same order as perfect triads?8 There is, however, no
resolution as such with these chords; instead, Rosen describes Schoenberg's concept of
implied resolution at work in the monodrama, in which dissonant chords appear to
resolve because of the implicit resolutions-vestiges of tonal composition-that the
chord structures themselves suggest.
Rosen goes on to describe how Schoenberg uses non-harmonic methods to
articulate the tension and release of tonal harmony. Rhythm is used to this end through
the juxtaposing of free and regular rhythms, or ostinato versus non-repeating rhythms.
Rosen suggests that the ostinato, paradoxically, creates instability as the incessant
repetition creates tension; when the ostinato gives way to a section of non-repeating
rhythms, there is a sense of either movement or calm, "a clear resolution after the tension
28 Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg, 44. Tonal logic is the sine qua non of Rosen's analysis.
169
of the ostinato.,,29 Rosen also describes Schoenberg's use of chamber music textures-
large orchestras divided into smaller ensembles, with instrument combinations constantly
shifting-in both Erwartung and in the Five Orchestra Pieces, op. 16. With this
treatment of instrumental colour, according Rosen, each phrase is "consequently
characterized less by its harmonic content than by instrumental combination,,,3o fUlther
means by which traditional dissonant/consonant relationships are re-inscribed. In fact,
Rosen audaciously claims that Schoenberg's radical reinterpretation and recreation of
consonant/dissonant relationships through different compositional techniques means that
pitch becomes less important, and that "wrong notes matter less in Schoenberg ... than
they do in Mozart or Wagner. ,,31
I agree with Rosen's claim that pitch is something of a secondary concern in an
analysis of Erwartung: the work has a structure and a coherence that cannot be dependent
on pitch as such, because its motivic, chromatic, and contrapuntal complexity make the
perception of pitch structures very difficult. Indeed, Rosen describes the harmonic and
motivic consistency of the work, tiny nuclear motives related to the seventh chords that
underlie the work, as unifying forces only in the "passive and negative" sense, as they
"cannot determine the shape of a work, and Erwartung has a shape. ,,32 This shape comes
from the work's goal-directedness, the goal being not a tonal one but rather total
31Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg, 49. As Professor James Kippen has insightfully pointed out to me, "wrong
notes" matter in Schoenberg'S atonal music insofar as they might form tonal mistakes.
170
chromatic saturation. Ultimately, according to Rosen's analysis, Erwartung is racing
towards resolution, but not the grand and complete closure represented by the tonic chord
of tonal harmony; instead, at the conclusion of the work Schoenberg fills the musical
space through chromatic glissandi, creating in this plenitude of colour and pitch a kind of
repleteness that substitutes for the tonic chord. This is characterized by Rosen as the
strong form of chromatic saturation, unique to Erwartung and a mere handful of other
works; the weak form of chromatic saturation is the use of hexachords, combined to
deploy all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, also seen in Erwartung (this weak form
culminates in the formation of the twelve-tone system). For Rosen, the use of hexachords
throughout the monodrama creates moments of small-scale stability, a partial filling-in of
the musical space through chord combinations and octave equivalence, foreshadowing
the "consonant fullness" at the end of the work achieved through total chromatic
saturation. 33
Erwartung and Subconscious Motivic Cohesion
Alan Lessem's 1979 dissertation on Schoenberg's music with text places
Erwartung in the tradition of the melodrama and also notes the resemblance between it
and Strauss' operas Salome and Elektra. He also links Erwartung to the Expressionist
movement, though he takes issue with the idea that Schoenberg's music of the crisis
years represents a radical break with the past or with art as such, and insists that the
monodrama-and the atonal works preceding it-is not cast in a formless
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"Momentform,,34 in which feeling completely subjugates formal organization, but rather
has the appearance of formlessness because it was composed intuitively. The formal
relationships are "buried in [the music's] deeper tissues. They are the 'subconscious'
controlling forces from which stem the logic of all dreams and visions, and which it is the
primary task of analysis to reveal. ,,35 Lessem' s description of the music of 1909
obviously evokes Freudian dream interpretation, in which deeper relationships are sought
beneath seemly non-cohesive superficial details; here, Lessem's "analysis" is ambiguous,
suggesting both a musical and psychological unraveling.
Lessem's analysis begins with the proposal that Erwartung belongs to the
tradition of "the improvised fantasy, conceived and executed with lightening speed and
portraying, as Schoenberg once remarked, dream-like expectations of things to come.,,36
Despite this claim, Lessem insists that characterizing Erwartung as formless or non-
structured fails to apprehend the work's intuitive motivic cohesion, which, as such, is "as
trenchant as is more apparent in his earlier works.'.37 Lessem cites Buchanan's article
and the "Am We grand" quotation as evidence of thoroughgoing motivic thought in
Erwartung: he concludes that there are two motivic cells, D-C#-F and D-C#-A#, the
latter derived from transitional material in "Am Wegrand," the former directly from the D
minor scale, which Buchanan fails to note. These cells, then, operate throughout the
monodrama, giving the work a kind of D minor orientation (though Lessem, after
34 See my discussion of Laborda and Momentform, below.
35 Alan Lessem, Music and Text in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 64.
36 Lessem, Music and Text in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 74.
172
Buchanan, does not pursue this hypothesis very far), but are also linked to the text,
forming a kind of musico-dramatic symbiosis.
According to Lessem, Erwartung's "motivic materials ... are associated throughout
with the content of the text in the following manner: a with the memory and anticipation
of love, b with the anxiety of guilt, and c with intimations of death.,,38 Motive a and its
derivatives are the two "d minor" cells, as above; motive b and its derivatives appears to
be a scalar figure beginning on D and descending through C#, B-natural, A#, and G#; and
motive c appears to be an inversion of motive "b3" (D-natural, G#/G-natural-C#). These
motives are all extrapolated from measures 3-4 and measures 19-20 of "Am Wegrand,"
and are, according to Lessem, deployed in various forms throughout the monodrama. He
cautions, however, that musical meaning in the work is equivocal and contingent: due to
the flux of emotions and the "ambiguity of feelings" presented in the monodrama,
motivic fragments may change contexts, or may replace one another in order to describe
hybrid situations (e.g. situations in which love and desire, or memory and anxiety are
conflated).39 Moreover, he asserts, the use of motivic material may be determined not
only by dramatic context, but also by structural necessity. Lessem is ultimately able to
associate a number of motives or motivic fragments with particular dramatic situations or
feelings, including anxiety and desire motives, a recognition motive, interlocking thirds
which are associated with "love," and a jealousy chord, comprised of an augmented triad
together with the c motive, yielding a chord of six notes.
173
The opening measures of the monodrama, in Lessem's thesis, contain "the opera's
full motivic substance.,,4o He finds motive a3, two occurrences of motive a2, one
occurrence of motive b2, and four occurrences of motive c (two horizontal statements,
two vertical). Passages where Die Frau recollects happiness with her lover, interspersed
with moments of fear, are musically comprised of material derived from the a2 cell (D-
C#-A#), which establishes a "sense of D minor.,,41 Lessem finds D minor again at the
start of scene 2, with the al and a2 cells comprising not only the opening of the scene,
but also beginning the "arioso" middle section, in which "interlocking thirds" create, over
42
the course of two measures, total chromatic saturation. In the third scene, Lessem finds
new harmonic-motivic material in the form of whole tones, found in both ostinati and in
Die Frau's vocal line. Against these whole tones Lessem describes the insistence of the
pitch D, and suggests that the end of the scene comprises a "modulation" that leads into
the fourth and final scene. This final scene, which the preceding scenes have prepared,
contains the work's plot (insofar as there is something like dramatic action here, namely
the discovery of the dead lover, "dialogue" between woman and corpse, and the closing
lament) and also more tonal elements.
In the final measures of the opera, Lessem finds what he identifies as the essential
tonal antipodes of the work, D and B: leading up to these measures, from about measure
400 onwards, the tonality of D minor is established through the "Am Wegrand" quote
and D ostinati; he identifies in measure 424, the last texted measure, three triads, A
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minor, E minor and B minor. Here, in this measure, "the essential relationship in the
opera between the tonalities of D and B .. .is conclusively restated before being finally
dissolved by the equivocal parallel 'augmented triads' of the orchestra's closing quasi-
glissando.,,43 This symbolic tonal closure (i.e. the contrasting tonalities, D and B, are
meant to symbolize expectation and frustration respectively), the culmination of several
hundred measures of dense and esoteric motivic manipulation, links Schoenberg to
Wagnerian music drama, wherein long-range tonallkey relationships are analogous to
dramatic content; it also, as Lessem hints, connects the monodrama to Freudian thought,
as seemingly "irrational or confusing," unconsciously motivated content is in fact" as
Sigmund Freud was demonstrating at the time, strictly governed by discoverable
controlling forces.,,44 Lessem seems to be arguing, then, for a latent tonality guiding the
musical content of the monodrama: D as a tonal centre, d minor as a guiding tonal region,
recurring fixed pitch structures, etc. I would agree with Lessem insofar as I believe that
the monodrama is effectively haunted by tonality as a signifier of the past; in Chapter 5 I
will show how Schoenberg's tonal procedures are reminiscences.
Laborda, Erwartung, and Momentform
Jose Maria Garcia Laborda's book-length analysis, Studien zu Schonbergs
Monodram "Erwartung" Op.l7, like David Fanning's dissertation discussed below,
comprises a virtual measure-by-measure account of the Erwartung's musico-dramatic
175
features. What I will offer here is discussion of Laborda's idea of "Momentform," along
with a brief overview of his analysis of the monodrama.
The first part of Laborda' s book is dedicated largely to establishing a context for
analysis: Laborda describes Erwartung's place in the historical development of
Expressionism, its place in Schoenberg's atonal oeuvre, and features of the libretto. He
also addresses the issue of "Am Wegrand" as a musical quotation and its tonal
implications, along with the monodrama's general musical features-ostinato, intervallic
structure-and their overall structural function ["als Gliederungsmittel der
Gesamtform"]. Laborda's main emphasis, however, is on the concept of "Momentform,"
which he takes as the starting point of his analysis. He insists that the key to
understanding Erwartung comes from this concept, originating from a compositional
practice based on uninterrupted changes of colour, rhythm, and mood, determined by the
text: "in der ERWARTUNG ist der ununterbrochene Wechsel von Farben, Rhythmen und
Stimmungen allerdings textbedingt.,,45 Laborda finds in Erwartung, as in the Five
Orchestra Pieces, a new expressive freedom coupled with "Negation der Form [negation
of form]": the result is a new kind form, "ein neues Form-Moment," based on the
principle of "stetig Verandernden [constant change]. ,,46 Along with the negation of form
is the negation of tonal architecture, eliminating the possibility of Brahmsian thematic
development or the use of Wagnerian Leitmotifs. 47 Laborda thus turns to the concept of
45 Jose Maria Garcia Laborda, Studien zu Schonbergs Monodram "Erwartung" op. 17 (Laaber-VerJag,
1981),167.
46 Laborda, Studien zu Schonbergs Monodram, 167.
47 Laborda, Studien zu SchOnbergs Monodram, 167.
176
"Momentform" as a way to understand how a work like Erwartung holds together. He
takes the idea from K. H. von Womer, who describes the technique of "Momentform" as
comprising no repetition and no systematic formal relations; instead, each and every
situation is unique and unrepeatable. 48 Laborda's analysis divides Erwartung into a
number of parts, of "Momentformen," each with its own character or function: there are
Momentformen comprised of complete and incomplete ostinato structure; each scene
transformation is a Momentform, as is the "Generalpause"; certain Momentformen are
descriptive in character, including those that describe nature; and there are also
Momentformen connected to memory. Each Momentform is analysed in terms of a set of
characteristics, including intervallic structure, melodic and harmonic "continuum," the
integration of vertical and horizontal elements, and how the orchestra is used. 49
A thoroughgoing account of Laborda's analysis is inappropriate here; it suffices
to say that the most significant analytic tool that Laborda brings to bear on Erwartung is
this concept of Momentform, which allows for a measure-by-measure classification of
the musical features of the work, which may then be linked to the text. What this
facilitates is a comprehensive understanding of the intuitive relationship between music
and text in this and other works by Schoenberg. It is necessary, Laborda suggests, to
adopt a new method of analysis in order to understand a new kind of work: Erwartung
represents this new work, a product of the crisis of form that began at the tum of the
48Laborda, Studien zu SchOnbergs Monodram, 169. I am under the impression that the term Momentform
was coined by Karlheinz Stockhausen around 1960 to describe music that is non-recapitulating and not
directed towards a specific goal, but rather comprised of a succession of moments of experience.
177
century.50 The monodrama is likewise the product of a concomitant crisis of tonality and
the collapse of a traditional musical logic. The text, Laborda asserts, ultimately shapes
the musical character of the work and also its form: Momentform analysis reveals the
constant correspondences between music and text that structure the work and shape its
meaning.
David Fanning and Erwartung's Structure
David Fanning's 1984 Ph.D. dissertation, "Schoenberg's Monodrama Erwartung:
Text, Structure and Musical Language," is a seldom-cited but important text in the
relatively small collection of analytical approaches to the monodrama. Fanning's study is
comprised of two volumes: the first contains the analysis itself, a discussion of the work's
structure and how it is articulated; the second volume is a piano reduction for four hands.
The analytical portion of the dissertation is a valuable contribution to the analytic
literature on both Erwartung, as it is very detailed and well-considered explication of
music that otherwise seems to rebuff objective analysis. The questions that Fanning
seeks to answer in the study are: "What explains Erwartung's powerful dramatic
impact?" and "How does the work sustain musical interest, given its free atonal idiom?"
Fanning himself notes the difficulty of approaching Erwartung analytically. His
analysis is concerned with the articulation of structure and meaning in the monodrama,
which he takes to be function of texture more so than harmony or melody. His analysis
emphasizes tempo, orchestration, texture and metre as key aspects of Schoenberg's
178
interpretation of Pappenheim' s libretto. For Fanning, Pappenheim is something of a
marginal figure, and he characterizes her text as little more than a catalyst or "trigger" for
Schoenberg's creative impetus. 51 The overarching emphasis, in fact, of this study, is on
Schoenberg's musical response to the text: Fanning insists that the text is not the
structuring force behind the work, and that "the reliance on text for structure is
exaggerated-this structuring is only crude and superficial.,,52 While Pappenheim's text
is related to both large-scale structure and surface features to a considerable extent, the
relationships between structural landmarks, the timing, characterization and specific
musical elements are all aspects of Schoenberg's interpretation of the text, and as such
transcend the text itself. The text, in other words, does not force an interpretation on
Schoenberg and is not the guiding principle behind the work, as it is sometime taken to
be; rather, Schoenberg's musical realization of the text and its clarification (and
presumably, its sublimation) are what elevates the work to the status of masterpiece.
Regarding the authorship of the text itself, Fanning claims that Pappenheim's
other poetry is not sufficiently similar to Erwartung to draw conclusions about how much
of the text is attributable to Pappenheim and how much to Schoenberg. This obviously
leaves open the questions of how much of Schoenberg's personal life is reflected in the
monodrama and how much ofPappenheim's putative interest in psychoanalysis is to be
found the work. Regarding the relationship between Marie Pappenheim and Anna 0.,
Fanning makes the startling claim that Bertha Pappenheim was Marie's sister
51 David Fanning, "Schoenberg's Monodrama Erwartung," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Manchester,

1984,30.
52 Fanning, "Schoenberg's Monodrama Erwartung," 52.
179
(chronologically unlikely: Bertha and Marie were a full generation apart, the former born
in 1859, the latter in 1882). This is a mistaken conclusion presumably based on Jose
Maria Garcia Laborda's monograph on Erwartung, which makes the same error.
Regarding Erwartung and psychoanalysis, Fanning allows that
the workings of the subconscious mind are a vital part of the continuing
suggestive power of the drama ... to take the concealed logic of the music as
a metaphor for this is hardly avoidable, but it is not necessarily a helpful step
towards the demonstration of that logic. 53
This is the crux of Fanning's argument, namely that Erwartung is not a work that can be
explained in terms of the freedom of its musical language, but rather a work that is
demonstrably logical and structured. Fanning insists that "it is not necessary to elevate
[psychoanalysis and madness] to the status of the definitive message of the work.,,54
Towards this question of the work's "definitive message," Fanning does not
interpret Pappenheim's text himself, but instead allows that two different interpretations
are possible. The first is the realistic view, in which Die Frau has killed her lover (after
Robert Craft's interpretation) and is in a state of denial. In this view, both the woods and
the lover's corpse are real, neither psychotic hallucinations nor psychic/psychoanalytic
metaphors. The second view is the non-realistic view, in which the monodrama's
elements may be seen as allegorical. This second view explains away the illogical
elements of the text. Fanning draws no conclusions from Schoenberg's insistence that
the work be staged as though the action takes place in a real forest, nor does he take as
definitive Schoenberg's suggestion that the work can be seen as a nightmare. For
53 Fanning, "Schoenberg'S Monodrama Erwartung," 25.
180
Fanning, the meaning of the work seems to inhere in a combination of "personal events"
from Schoenberg's life, the surface details of Pappenheim's text and their subsequent
interpretation by Schoenberg in the interest of creating a compelling dramatic work. In
other words, the meaning of Erwartung is located in its musico-dramatic impetus and in
its role as exemplar of Schoenberg's creative process; it is not to be found in the text (a
superficial interpretation) nor in the historical and cultural context of its genesis.
Fanning's analysis is concerned primarily with texture. Consistent textural
associations, he suggests, can be used to establish a structural pattern in which subtle
relationships between emotional states, as represented in the text, are possible. Textures,
moreover, can be superimposed to suggest more complex or simultaneous emotional
states. These kinds of textural associations are essential to the drama, allowing
foreshadowing, character development and the representation of emotional progression.
Particular text and textures in Erwartung are thus linked to facilitate associations: text
types, like "expressionistic," "reminiscence," "descriptive" are linked to texture types
like lyrical or angular Hauptstimme, or what he calls Expressionisticor Impressionistic
textures. His analysis focuses on the "middle ground," the level at which structural
forces are at work. The background of Erwartung-the level of harmonic and melodic
procedures-is "relatively neutral": it is against this background that the work's
"articulative forces" operate.,,55 The demarcation of units and the suggestion of larger
structural forces through association are all functions of the orchestral texture.
55 Fanning, "Schoenberg'S Monodrama Erwartung," 13.
181
Fanning discounts the significance of motivic cells in the work, at least in terms
of any structural functionality they might have. If there are cells in the work, they are
deeply hidden or too localized to direct the structure. 56 He does suggest that there is a
tendency towards D minor referentiality, due to the ubiquity of the C#/D "element."s7 If
Fanning discounts motivic cells in his study, he does take into account what he calls
referential pitch structures, and. summarizes the various claims to supremacy given to
different pitch structures, noting their frequency, role and "degree of fixed-pitch
referential status as against general motivic or harmonic consistency.,,58 Ultimately,
however, Fanning's focus on the middle-ground forces forswears motivic activity in
favour of the relationships between phrases, the definition of phrases, and sectional
structure. Fanning seeks to prove, here, that meaningful structure exists in the work,
despite its athematic and non-repetitive character.
The analysis divides the monodrama first into "movements," which correspond
roughly with the work's general dramatic divisions and not to Pappenheim's scenic -
divisions. Movement one, subtitled "Premonitions," spans measures 1-124; movement
two, "Catastrophe," spans measures 125-192; movement three, the "scherzo," spans
measures 193-353; and the fourth and final movement, the "adagio-finale," spans
measures 353-426. The work is then subdivided into sections A-J. Scenes 1,2, and 3
each constitute a section (A, B, C); the beginning of the fourth scene, Fanning's second
182
movement, is divided into two sections, as are the third and fourth movements (in other
words, the fourth scene is divided into six sections). In counting the number of bars for
each section, Fanning finds that they are divided into "balanced structural units,,59:
sections A-E are on average about 35 measures long; sectionsF and G are each 80
measures; sections H and J are 36 and 38 measures long respectively. Each section is
then divided into 4-10 subsections, determined by changes of tempo and texture, with an
accompanying dramatic shift.
The analysis is as intricately structured as the work it seeks to analyse. Fanning
examines each movement in terms of the dramatic orientation, definition of subsections,
background structure, interrelationships between subsections, transitions, text illustration
and linear or melodic forces. Fanning uses a series of ideograms to classify, for example:
thematic lines versus accompaniment, the quality of the Hauptstimme line (which he
takes as generally personifying Die Frau), the quality of the accompaniment (i.e.
Expressionistic versus Impressionistic), held chords versus chord progressions, imitative
versus non-imitative polyphony, and ostinato. These ideograms facilitate the tabulation
of textural events in the monodrama, events that articulate its structure. Fanning's
analysis concludes with a large table that summarizes his findings and describes each
movement in terms of its major musical and dramatic features. Particularly interesting
are the conclusions that Fanning's structural analysis yields with regards to the "structural
mode" of each movement: the first movement is an "open-ended Rondo," the second
"repeated binary," the third "double-variation/dialectic," and the fourth "repeated
59 Fanning, "Schoenberg's Monodrama Erwartung," 40
183
binary." The attribution of traditional form to what is commonly characterized as a non-
traditional, formless work, is perhaps the most significant finding Fanning offers, and it
suggests a radically new way of listening to the work.
What is most interesting about Fanning's dissertation, from my perspective, is his
characterization of Schoenberg as the "interpreter" of the text, and de Jacto of Die Frau's
emotions and the course of her emotional journey, which resonates with the relationship
between psychoanalyst and patient. Adorno touches upon this when he suggests that Die
Frau is psychoanalysed by the music; what Fanning's study suggests is that she is
psychoanalysed by Schoenberg, through the music. Schoenberg occupies here the role of
the analyst, of interpreter of Die Frau's speech. His musical setting of the text reflects
not only the specific details of her speech, but also organizes her discourse into larger,
logical units, as an analyst would the discourse of the analysand. Fanning, who does not
identify Schoenberg with the role of psychoanalyst, nonetheless evokes the role strongly,
especially when he states, for example, that Schoenberg's interpretation of the text in
scene 1 "clarifies the inner dialogue behind the apparent monologue.,,6o Indeed, as
Fanning treats melody and textual details as superficial, and looks to the underlying
structural forces for the work's meaning, he seems to be something of a psychoanalyst
himself. When Fanning posits, for example, that overlapping textures represent
"simultaneous opposed states of mind" for Die Frau, or that the edge of Erwartung' s
wood is the "threshold of consciousness,,,61 it is easy to see that the "workings of the
61 Fanning, "Schoenberg's Monodrama Erwartung," 82 and 89.
184
subconscious" as they are manifest in the music and text of Erwartung are difficult to
discount. It is a deeply inscribed but dark interpretive path that even the most objective
analysis stumbles upon.
Erwartung and Grundgestalt Analysis
In Chapter 2 of this dissertation, I offer an overview and critique of Dianne
Penney's dissertation, in which she seeks to identify the influence of the Lied and
melodrama traditions on Erwartung. Penney, as I have shown, suggests that
Schoenberg's monodrama owes something of its genesis to the Viennese milieu, of which
Freud was part, and also its symbolic content to psychoanalysis in general and to
watchful Freudian "mushrooms" specifically. Penney's thesis also offers a detailed
analysis of the musical structure of the work, an analysis predicated on the idea of
Grundgestalt [basic shape]. For Penney, Erwartung owes much of its coherence and
cohesion to the use ofmotivic material from the song "Am Wegrand," and Penney's
analysis attempts to reveal and explain the workings of a variety of small motives in the
work. The goal of her analysis is to show that Erwartung is not unanalysable, nor
necessarily formless; instead, by examining its generic precursors-the monodrama and
Lied-and by analyzing the development of motives and their dramatic applications,
Penney attempts to prove that the monodrama is organized and coherent, and that it
expresses, through its organization, the main idea of the work, expectation.
Penney prefaces her analysis with an overview of the major compositional
techniques operating in Erwartung, namely ostinato, developing variation and substitute
185
tones. Ostinato, she concludes (after George Perle), has a structural function in the
monodrama, creating "a sense of tonal stability within an atonal environment. They
function as architectural pillars that articulate the main sections.,,62 Ostinato also serves a
dramatic purpose as it is able to create tension through lack of movement. Substitute
tones are a theoretical postulate of Schoenberg's that belongs to his later years, when he
was teaching in California. A substitute tone is a chromatic note that stands for its own
note of resolution, one half step above or below. Penney cites, for example,
Schoenberg's use of C# as a substitute tone for D; C# would be the never-resolving
leading tone to D, a "natural scale tone," as Erwartung's ostensible "key" is D minor. 63 In
using substitute tones in Erwartung, Penney argues, Schoenberg is able to purposefully
create and maintain tonal ambiguity by introducing "centrifugal" and "centripetal" forces
that simultaneously work towards the tonic and against it. 64 In terms of the concept of
developing variation, Penney's analysis posits the three principle motives of "Am
Wegrand" as seminal to Erwartung, and suggests that their constant transformation-
which ultimately leads to the quotation of the song itself-creates unity in Erwartung,
together with Schoenberg's Grundgestalt concept.
The Grundgestalt concept appealed to Schoenberg not only as an underlying
concept that determined surface details, as a priori guarantor of unity, but also as that
which connected the Second Viennese School to the classic-romantic Viennese school.
62 Penney, "Schoenberg'S Janus-Work Erwartung," 245.
186
For Schoenberg, the Grundgestalt concept linked the musical traditions of the two
schools:
The same contrapuntal procedures that were used by composers of the

classic-romantic Viennese school are also fundamental to Schoenberg's
compositional technique. And common to [both schools] .. .is an approach to
composition involving a strict hierarchy of structural levels that are intenelated
motivically.65
The basic idea or basic shape of a musical work is comprised of the smallest
compositional building blocks,namely motives. While Schoenberg asserted that motives
should appear "in a characteristic and impressive manner at the beginning of the piece,,,66
Penney notes that in Erwartung (as in the Variations for Orchestra op. 31), this is not the
case. Instead, the work's "musical logic" is gradually revealed piecemeal, until the basic
idea-"the working out of motives from Am Wegrantf'-is finally stated towards the end
of the composition. 67 Penney's analysis uses the Grundgestalt analysis merely as a
starting point, and also considered musico-dramatic concerns, and the importance of the
text to the monodrama's structure and unity.
Penney's analysis of the first movement begins with an insistence on the
importance of ostinati, which divide the scene into four and suggest the form of a strophic
Lied. For Penney, the musical importance of the Lied tradition in Erwartung may have
been suggested by Marie Pappenheim's allusions to song in the monodrama's text. The
first scene contains two references to singing: the cricket's love song and Die Frau's final
65 Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 255
66 Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition (New Y ark: St. Martin's Press, 1967), 8.
187
line, in which she says she will sing and her lover will hear her. Penney follows this
observation with a series of interesting if audacious claims: first, that Die Frau is a
modern day Orpheus, bringing back her dead lover through the "power of song"; second,
that Pappenheim's allusions to the Lied tradition suggest that the dead lover's "initial
attraction was nothing but a romantic illusion"; and finally, that Schoenberg's musical
setting of the first scene was influenced by Pappenheim's allusions to the Lied, leading
Schoenberg to compose the scene as "a gloss or parody of his own song Am Wegrand.,,68
The bulk of Penney's analysis of the first scene is concerned with demonstrating
the structural placement of ostinati, and with the uncovering of motivic dyads in the
Hauptstimmen of the opening scene. These dyads, which Penney first identifies in the
opening measures of the monodrama, have not only local significance but, according to
Penney, even foreshadow the chromatic melt-down at the end of the opera. They are also
connected to "Am Wegrand": the dyads G#-B and C#-A# are enharmonic equivalents to
dyads found in the piano accompaniment of "Am Wegrand," evidence of Schoenberg
"abstracting elements of the accompaniment from Am Wegrand, using both the waltz
68 Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 259. Penney does not mention here that the importance
of the Lied is further reinforced by the fact that the two instances she describes, above, are musically
connected by Schoenberg: the phrase "So immer die Grille .. mit ihrem Liebeslied," begins with a leap of a
diminished octave (Eb to E), while the phrase "lch will singen .. dan hort er mich" ends with a leap from B
to Bb, another diminished octave. "Immer die Mit ihrem Liebeslied" is set vocally with the pitches E, D#,
A, G#, G, G#, F#, A, F, E, A#, in that order; "!eh will singen.dann hort er mich" is set against a
Nebenstimme in the violin comprising the pitches: G#, A, F#, G, D#, E, F, E, E, C#. These two examples,
in other words, share all of the same pitches: the A# in the first instance is reproduced enharmonic ally as B-
flat in the vocal line of the second instance; the C# of the Nebenstimme is the first note in the vocal line
immediately following the word "Liebeslied." While this may be a coincidence, I think the fact that both
textual phrases share exactly the same pitches reinforces Penney's claim that the idea of the Lied is
important here.
188
rhythm and the thirds as generating motives for Erwartung.,,69 Penney also finds
evidence of "abstraction" in the melodic lines of both "Am Wegrand" and Erwartung,
citing the ascending opening melody of the song as similar to the ascending second vocal
phrase in the opening of Erwartung. 70 Her analysis of scene 1 also contains the assertion
that the use of the dyadic thirds in the scene creates tonal orientation, culminating in the
establishment of the pitch A as the dominant of the pitch class D, the putative tonal centre
of the piece. The analysis of the first scene concludes with Penney's determination that
the movement is in strophic form, that the use of strophic form suggests the importance
of the Lied in Pappenheim's text and the importance of the Lied for Schoenberg, and that
the Lied genre is invoked in the first scene "in all possible ways.,,71
Penney's analysis of scene 2 contends that the movement is in an ABA form in
which the A sections are fast, dramatic and recitative-like, flanking a lyrical arioso B
section. Penney notes the scarcity of ostinati in this movement, but also points out that
the music here is more descriptive and responsive to the text. Thereduced number of
form-articulating ostinati in the scene lead Penney to find repeated rhythmic patterns that
help to define the important dramatic moments in the scene. She does find, however, one
of the most important ostinati in the work, the one that underpins her false discovery of
the lover's corpse. The use of ostinato here, Penney insists, is "an expressively powerful
gesture that aptly conveys the Woman's ambivalence towards the imagined object, the
70 Penney's examples, in this case, are contentious: there is a similarity of contour, and some coinciding
pitches; there are also many differences.
189
unfaithful lover who has abandoned her."n Ostinato is clearly one of the most important
musical features of the opera: it is capable of conveying tension, stasis and ambivalence.
The remainder of Penney's analysis of scene 2 comprises an account of the tonicization
of the pitch D, in this case through the C#-D dyad. This dyad occurs most often in the
configuration D-F-C#, which emphasizes both the key of d minor and the seventh chord,
which Penney had previously described as chords that can replace the tonic in late-
Romantic/early-twentieth century music. 73 The dyadic waltz thirds of the opening
movement are also identified here by Penney, but in varied form. "Am We grand" and
the Lied genre is recalled in this scene through the form. Penney identifies "Prelude:
ABA: Postlude" as a common Lied form of the Nineteenth century, and notes that "Am
Wegrand" is itself cast in an ABA form.
At the beginning of her analysis of scene 3, Penney reminds us that Pierre Boulez
suggested that Erwartung was organized as a song cycle, but notes too that Boulez never
explained this interpretation. The song cycle theory, she notes, is applicable to the
monodrama until the third scene, which, like the fourth, is non-sectional. Ostinati fail to
perform the same form-articulating function in the third scene, simply because there are
so many ostinati in use. While Penney is reluctant to abandon her theory of Erwartung as
a collection of Lied-like structures, she does admit that the third scene calls for a
reevaluation of the initial perception of the monodrama. With the coherence of the work
in question, and obvious formal structures not present, Penney turns to the text for
73 Penney cites the importance of Tristan und isolde in this regard, and notes that Schoenberg, as a teacher,
devoted a lot oftime to the study of seventh chords (and so presumably to Tristan). Penney, 248.
190
structure. In scene 3, Penney finds an interpretive key to the formal organization of
Erwartung as a whole: a cycle of "Illusion" and "Reality" sections in the text.
Schoenberg's treatment of these disparate sections structures the third scene (it is in a
tripartite form-illusion, Reality, illusion-based on the text). Musically, ostinati are so
pervasive in this scene that when they stop (as when Die Frau seems to be succumbing to
insanity) they are expressively very effective and serve to isolate specific moments in the
scene. Penney finds, once again, the waltz thirds of the preceding movement, along with
the C#-D dyad. She posits scene three as pivotal in the work: not only is it the most
lyrical, but its opening vocal pitches are not variants of the opening pitches of the first
two scenes, taken from the vocal line of "Am Wegrand," but rather are taken from the
waltz thirds; the third scene also concludes, Penney notes, with a "cadential ostinato" that
contains all of the pitches the chromatic scale and so foreshadows the chromatic scales at
the conclusion of the monodrama. 74
For Penney, scene 4 is a Liebestod modeled, dramatically, on Wagner's Tristan
und Isolde. She describes the movement as in a binary AB form with a postlude, with the
Liebestod beginning at the point where she discovers her lover's body. She cites as
evidence of a connection between Tristan and Erwartung Die Frau's complaint that she is
not allowed to die with her lover, an echo of Isolde's lament. The prevailing character of
the movement is that of expansion: Penney describes an expanding vocal line (i.e. from
recitative to a longer, more lyrical arioso line), the expansion of ostinati into larger
patterns with greater range, and the addition of a new musical feature, chromatic scales,
74 Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 301-302.
191
which serve to articulate form and to heighten expression. 75 The bulk of Penney's
analysis here is concerned with describing text painting and occurrences of the main
motivic cells of the work, the "waltz thirds," the "Am Wegrand" motives and the cells
that tonicize D. She concludes her analysis of the piece with a chart outlining
Erwartung's "tonal orientation" (a quasi-Schenkerian graph that isolates D as tonic but
also offers a B-D polarity, after Fanning, at the end of the work as an analogue to Die
Frau's ambivalence) and a comprehensive chart of Erwartung's motivic cells, as derived
from "Am Wegrand."
Ultimately, what Penney's thesis seeks to prove is that Erwartung is motivically
coherent: an example of Schoenbergian developing variation, with a Grundgestalt
derived from "Am Wegrand." While much of her analysis is descriptive, and as such not
particularly revelatory, Penney nonetheless makes a strong case for a greater role for
"Am We grand" in the interpretation and analysis of Erwartung. She identifies her thesis
as the first study to attempt a musico-dramatic analysis of the work, an analysis that does
not focus on a single aspect. This is laudable; however, her attempts to employ a
Schoenbergian analytic methodology to the work strike me as sometimes forced and
anachronistic. Desperate for coherence and determined to situate the work in a generic
tradition, Penney occasionally fails to appreciate that Erwartung is, in many ways, a
stand-alone work, deeply invested in its milieu but also a deeply personal, revolutionary
piece. When Penney cites Schoenberg's discussion of substitute tones, she seems to be
suggesting that Erwartung is something like an Impressionist painting, a tonal work
75 Penney, "Schoenberg's Janus-Work Erwartung," 313. Penney identifies "scalar configurations" as "a
traditional melodramatic device for expressing emotional intensity."
192
shifted out of focus by means of chromatic tones substituting for a "natural" scale tone.
This is one possible interpretation; but it is self-evident on hearing Ei'wartung that the
work is shifted so far out of focus that it no longer points convincingly back to functional
(normative) tonality; instead, it is a new sound world, full of echoes of the old but in
essence a dream world in which complex subjective associations, as in the libretto text,
are played out in the music as well.
Elizabeth Keathley and Erwartung
I discuss Elizabeth Keathley's rejection of a psychoanalytic background to
Erwartung in detail Chapter 3; here, I would like to consider her musical analysis of the
work, which comprises a substantial portion of her dissertation and is the most cutTent
analytic approach to the work. While the majority of Keathley's study concerns her
interpretation of the monodrama in terms of gender roles, and in the end constitutes a re-
centring of Marie Pappenheim in the musicological narrative, she also examines how
Schoenberg sets Pappenheim'stext, and identifies what she calls "melodramatic effect"
versus "formal effect." Keathley's analysis, like Penney's, considers the monodrama as
part of the melodrama tradition and is concerned with Schoenberg's music as it relates to
the text and dramatic situation; on the other hand, she seeks to balance her analysis with
an evaluation of the musical elements that create formal coherence. Her argument is that
"the interaction of the melodramatic and formal that makes Erwartung such a significant
musical achievement and which should give the work much broader appeal than it has
193
enjoyed: the subtle formal effects invite repeated analysis, but the melodramatic effects
may be appreciated by anyone.,,76
Keathley's analysis begins by looking at the vocal melody in the work, and
Schoenberg's settings of the textual elements she takes to be the most meaningful and
significant: "der Weg" and "der Garten." These two elements symbolize the essential
ideological drama at the heart of the work, namely the subject-object polarity of Die
Frau-as-woman, and her struggle to transcend the stereotypical passivity attributed to her
gender in favour of an active journey along "the path." Keathley insists that
Schoenberg's treatment of these two textual elements "reflects Pappenheim's concern
with 'der Weg' as a crucial plot element as well as her sensitivity to dramatic
subtleties."n Keathley identifies a succession of "Weg phrases" that are treated similarly
in the vocal melody by Schoenberg at each recurrence, and are associated by pitch
content, register, contour, and rhythm. Schoenberg's treatment of the vocal line in each
instance places some kind of emphasis on the word "Weg," either through duration, pitch,
or placement within the phrase, thereby "emphasizing the path as a significant constituent
of the piOt.,,78
Keathley notes that the initial treatment of "Weg phrases" versus "Garten
phrases" further emphasizes the division between the two symbols: the first treatment of
"der Weg" is declamatory, while the first appearance of "Garten" is heralded by lyricism,
194
and more rhythmic and dynamic variety. Schoenberg's treatment of these special phrases
is underscored by the accompanying Hauptstimmen, which echo or reinforce the vocal
texture. In terms of formal effect, Keathley uses set theory to show that the "Weg
phrase" also demonstrates localized formal coherence through overlapping and
"embedded" pitch class sets in the vocal orchestral parts. Subsequent appearances of the
"Weg phrase" are audibly connected, according to Keathley, even when the
accompaniments differ: the accompaniment changes with the dramatic context, while
"der Weg" is treated similarly each time. For the more lyrical third "Weg phrase,"
Keathley opines that its newly lyrical character threatens to elide it with "der Garten": in
the context of a romantic reminiscence, "the idea of the path becomes tangled with her
passive idealization of the lover, and the garden threatens to overwhelm her willful act of
searching.,,79 Keathley observes, at "Weg phrase" number four, a palindromic
relationship between it and an earlier "Garten phrase": "Es war so .still hinter den Mauern
des Gartens." The two phrases also share the same melodic compass, length, pitch
collection and metrical feel. By creating an equivocal relationship between two
otherwise disparate symbols, Keathley asserts, Schoenberg is responding to the
increasingly complex relationship between activity and passivity, between Die Frau's
journey of self-discovery and her sentimental reminiscences. Her observation is a good
one, namely that "[w]e listeners, like the Woman herself, find the world of Erwartung an
ambiguous, equivocal place whose meanings are subject to variation and inversion. 8o
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Keathley's final "Weg phrases," five and six, demonstrate the complexity and
subtlety she finds in Pappenheim's text: in these phrases, references to "der Weg"
become more abstract, to the point where the sixth "Weg phrase"-"Ich will fort ..ich
muss ihn finden"-contains no reference to the path as such, but rather suggests Die
Frau's desire to continue her search. The quotation from "Am Wegrand" represents the
ultimate abstraction of "der Weg," which now is only present through the "poetic
allusion" that accompanies the musical and textual material from the song. SI In her
efforts to "revision" Marie Pappenheim and the importance of her role in the genesis of
Erwartung, Keathley suggests that Pappenheim may have been familiar with the poem
"Am Wegrand," a claim in sharp contrast to previous commentators who assumed that
the inclusion of quoted material must have been Schoenberg's idea. While Keathley does
not reach a conclusion concerning this, she does note that Pappenheim's "adaptation" of
the quotation contributes to the general feeling of alienation in the monodrama. The
quotation from the poem, in the text ofthe monodrama, is a substitute for "Weg," as it
represents the poem's themes of searching and longing. Keathley describes Schoenberg's
setting of the "Am Wegrand" text, prepared by the vocal melody heard in the low winds
and accompanied by a Hauptstimme melody that echoes the first strophe melody of the
song. The text itself is of course set using motives from the second strophe melody of the
song, a descending passage of thirds and half steps that circle around the tonic pitch D
(Gb-F-D-C#-Bb-A-F#-D-C#-E-F), The anticipation of the quotation, the song melody, is
heard in measure 401 in the 'celli, then in measure 411 in the low winds but a half step
80 Or condensation and displacement, as in Freudian dreams.
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lower. Keathley identifies this as a formal effect "woven into a melodramatic effect."s2
She asserts that the linking half step relationship between anticipatory statements of the
vocal melody is fully realized in measure 415, where Die Frau cries "Wo bist du?": the
melody is comprised of a descending third G#-E#, flanked by the descending half step A-
G#. While Keathley disagrees with Penney's assertion that "Am Wegrand" serves as the
monodrama's Grundgestalt, as any reference to D minor in the monodrama could be
taken aspointing to the characteristically D minor motives in the song, she does claim
that the first phrase of "Am Wegrand" does have some similarities with the various "Weg
phrases" that Keathley identifies. These similarities transcend pitch content (the problem
with Penney's analysis) and included pitch sequence, register, contour and rhythm. It is
"Am Wegrand," Keathley asserts, which
is the point of reference that confirms associations among the 'Weg'

phrases which would otherwise be vague. This associative network
of similarities among the 'Weg' phrases and "Am Wegrand" is emblematic
of the way in which the Woman negotiates her travel along the path, as well
as her process of memory and discovery. 83
In chart form, Keathley compares the various features of the "Weg phrases" in
Erwartung-pitch class collection, metre, rhythm, an emphasis onD, etc.-with the
opening vocal phrase from "Am Wegrand," to reinforce her point that the "Am Wegrand"
quotation is in fact a model for the musical settings of the dramatic motif of the path.
Keathley draws an important conclusion from her analysis, one I agree with
unreservedly. The "Am Wegrand" quotation, she declares, is a "moment of arrival" in
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Erwartung, due to its tonal preparation in the measures preceding it, and not because it is
the culmination of a process of motivic development. 84 Keathley is led to conclude that
the tonal stability of the musical quotations from "Am Wegrand," qua moments of
stability, do not suggest resolution or "psychic stability"; instead, "it calls attention to
itself like a dissonance in a tonal work.,,85 For me, this is a remarkable claim, for it
points to the fact that in Erwartung, atonality has become normative to an extent, a claim
in sharp contrast to the analytical perspectives previously brought to bear on the
monodrama. While most analysts of the work look for tonal elements still at work in
Erwartung, Keathley reveals, in this brief statement, what I think is the musical truth of
the work. Schoenberg, she posits, offers the false security of tonality here as analogue to
Die Frau's discovery that the security of the garden is an illusion, that an active journey
of self-discovery along the path is essential for happiness and self-understanding. While
"self-discovery" as the principle conceit of the work is questionable, I believe that
Keathley is correct about the "false security" of tonality. Tonality in Erwartung is a
ghost, a seemingly unsustainable link to the past; however, it is also a psychological
dissonance, a kind of hysterical reminiscence that offers not security but rather signifies
the problem of remembering.
The significance of the analytical findings outlined here will be made clear in the
next chapter, which comprises my own interpretation of the monodrama.
CHAPTER FIVE
Erwartung and the Scene of Psychoanalysis
My own analysis of Erwartung is predicated upon several insights, including
Adorno's insistence that the monodrama is a Freudian case history and Falck's
implication that the act of analysis is occurring in the work. I am assuming that the
monodrama is a kind of case history in two respects: first, it borrows textual details from
actual case histories, in particular Freud's earliest accounts of the treatment of hysterical
women; second, it is a case history insofar as it dramatizes the scene of psychoanalysis.
What is in the libretto, what is heard in the music, and what is seen on stage constitutes
the drama of the psychoanalytic relationship of analyst and analysand through
representations of reminiscence and forgetting, desire, and transference. In describing
psychoanalysis as I see it in the monodrama, I will use Freudian ideas and terms where
possible and appropriate, and to a limited extent terms and concepts borrowed from the
theories of post-Freudian psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who considered his work a
"return to Freud."
Whereas Elizabeth Keathley has argued that Erwartung constitutes an ideological
rejection of psychoanalysis, suggesting instead that the monodrama describes the birth of
a new, progressive, feminist vision of womanhood at the turn ofthe century, I believe
that Erwartung is a work deeply invested with a Freudian vision, rife with potent sexual
symbols and closely in tune with contemporary conceptions of the unconscious as a
hidden realm of sexual and creative ferment (this is certainly true of Schoenberg, as his
198
199
contemporaneous letters to Busoni indicate). Keathley's interpretation is rigorously
argued and often convincing; however, I feel that it falls short by ignoring some of the
features of the monodrama that are obviously connected to Freud and the psychoanalytic
literature in circulation in Vienna as of 1909. In the end, I will argue that Erwartung is
not about nascent feminist becoming, so much as it becomes the site of Schoenberg's
own analysis: as Die Frau is psychoanalysed in the monodrama, so is Schoenberg for
whom Erwartung is one more work in a series of works based upon the themes of
alienation and destroyed love, themes with considerable resonance in Schoenberg's
personal life.
Erwartung owes much to its most important operatic predecessors, Elektra and
Tristan und Isolde. It is my contention that any psychoanalytic interpretation of
Schoenberg's monodrama has to take into account the textual and musical influence of
these two operas; moreover, I believe that what I identify as the psychoanalytic or proto-
psychoanalytic elements of these two operas serve as models for Erwartung's
psychology. I also examine several of Schoenberg's early songs as part of a chain of
evidence pointing to Erwartung as a site of reminiscence and of a specifically
Schoenbergian hysteria. The monodrama, a testament to Schoenberg's own beliefs about
music as a product of the unconscious and also to his own personal crises, thus represents
the synthesis and sublimation of a small handful of his early Lieder and the
psychoanalytic elements of Elektra and Tristan. In the end, Erwartung becomes a work
that can simultaneously serve, through its text and music, as a dramatization of the
processes of psychoanalysis and as an act of analysis itself. Through my interpretation of
200
the monodrama, I hope to tie together the many disparate elements of the work and its
milieu, as I have described them thus far, clarifying and perhaps creating anew the path
through Erwartung.
The Tristan Connection
While Richard Wagner's 1865 opera Tristan und Isolde and its complex, hyper-
romantic, non-resolving harmonies are often taken as the starting point for the gradual
dissolution of tonality, it also has a more specific significance to this investigation of
Erwartung. Although I have characterized Erwartung as having no immediate
predecessor or successor in Schoenberg's own oeuvre, I believe that interpreting
Erwartung from a psychoanalytic perspective requires an examination of Tristan, which I
will show is a model for the monodrama. As David Hamilton has noted, "[Tristan und
Isolde]-its words as well as its music-was the governing image of sexual passion in
the culture that brought forth Erwartung"; Erwartung's protagonist, moreover, shares
Isolde's situation, "but filtered through the distorting mirror of intense psychological
stress."l
It has become musicological truism in the twentieth century to situate Wagner as
an important precursor to Freud; in Wagner's music dramas, we see a pre-Freudian
rendering of the power of eros and the role of the unconscious in the shaping of human
experience. 2 Freud is even said to have had a certain Wagner-anxiety, in the form of a
I David Hamilton, "Schoenberg's First Opera," Opera Quarterly voL 6, no. 3 (Spring 1989): 52-53.
2 See especially Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: Sein Leben, Sein Werk, Sein lahrhundert
(Munich: Piper, 1980) and Peter Wapnewski, Tristan der Held Richard Wagners (Berlin: Severin and
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concern with precedence; that is, Freud worried that Wagner's music dramas contain
ideas about dreams, the unconscious and the psyche that prefigure Freud's own work. 3
Tristan und Isolde exemplifies the Freudian dimensions of Wagner's work. Mary Cicora
has described how Tristan, in Act ill, regresses into delirium: "he delves into his past and
his psyche in a way that anticipates Freud. The way that Wagner's characters not only
incessantly tell, but also obsessively dwell upon the same story over and over brings to
mind the importance of narration in the process of psychoanalysis.,,4 As a model for
Schoenberg's monodrama, as I claim, Tristan adds even greater significance to
Erwartung's place in Schoenberg'S pantheon of musical works addressing the theme of
destroyed love. Usually, Tristan is more closely associated with Schoenberg's string
sextet Verkliirte Nacht of 1899 than with Erwartung. A decidedly Wagnerian work,
Verkliirte Nacht inspired a famous criticism from the Wiener Tonklinstlerverein: "It
sounds as if someone had smeared the score of Tristan while it was still wet.,,5 Wilfrid
Mellers places Tristan in an historical sequence of musical works concerned with the
representation of the human psyche that includes Verkliirte Nacht but culminates in
Erwartung.
Siedler, 1981). Gregor-Dellin describes Wagner as anticipating Freud; Wapnewski sees Wagner and
Tristan, along with Schopenhauer, as important precursors of Freud.
3 Cora L. Diaz de Chumaceiro has hypothesized that Freud was troubled especially by Die Meistersinger
and its analogies to dream interpretation. While Freud is alleged to have been fond of the opera, he does
not mention it in his writings, save personal correspondence. Freud, who claimed to have been
"sympathetically moved by the 'morning dream interpretation melody' [in Die Meistersinger]" may have
found "Wagner's ideas ... too close to his material ... he refrained from citing this opera elsewhere." Diaz de
Chumaceiro, "Richard Wagner's Life and Music: What Freud Knew," in Stuart Feder, ed., Psychoanalytic
Explorations in Music, Second Series (Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press, Inc., 1993),
249-251.
4 Mary A. Cicora, Modern Myth and Wagnerian Deconstruction: Hermeneutic Approaches to Wagner's
Music (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000), 133.
5 As quoted in MacDonald, Schoenberg, 23.
202
The most common connection noted between Wagner's opera and Schoenberg's
monodrama is the Liebestod or love death. Both works share a final scene in which the
6
female protagonist laments over the death of her 10ver. Erwartung even quotes-albeit
fragmentarily-from Isolde's Liebestod. Where Isolde sings, in Act III, "mit Tristan treu
zu sterben [to die faithfully with Tristan]," Die Frau sings "Oh! nicht einmal die Gnade,
mit dir sterben zu dUrfen [Oh! Not even the grace to be allowed to die with you]." Diane
Penney notes that one of the changes Schoenberg made to Pappenheim's libretto text was
this very line, which originally read "to die nearby you"; Schoenberg's alteration makes
the line more Tristanesque. Die Frau's text, above, also echoes Isolde's subsequent line,
"Betrligt Isolde, betrUgt sie Tristan um dieses einzige, ewig kurze letzte Weltengltick?
[Will Tristan cheat Isolde of this single, eternally brief final worldly joy?]." In their
grief, both Isolde and Die Frau also curse their dead lovers, though certainly Die Frau's
anger is much more sustained and violent: Die Frau showers her lover with the epithets
"Blender [wretch]" and "LUgner [liar]," and remembering her discovery of his infidelity,
sings "Oh, ich fluchte dir [Oh, I cursed you]"; Isolde, with Tristan dead in her arms in
Act III, sings "Zu spat! Trotziger Mann! [Too late! Spiteful man!]." I find the final
monologue of Isolde and Die Frau also very similar, in that each holds her dead lover-
the corpses with their eyes open-and each speaks as though her beloved was still alive.
Isolde's entire final soliloquy is a paean to Tristan, who is described as sweetly smiling
and still breathing, with music emanating from within him. Die Frau, in Scene 4 of the
monodrama, sings of her lover looking at the house in the woods, as though he were still
6Alan Lessem supposes that "Schoenberg seized upon what had been implied in the text [of Erwartung] as
a stimulus towards developing more intensively what had been implied in music since Tristan und Isolde.
Lessem, Music and Text in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 68. Lessem cites Dika Newlin's claim for an
affinity between the final scene of Erwartung and Isolde's Liebestod. See Newlin, Bruckner. Mahler.
Schoenberg (New York: King's Crown Press, 1947),239.
203
alive; she asks him "Bleibst du am Tage bei mir? [Are you going to spend the day with
me?]"; she sings, too, of his kiss, "wie ein Flammenzeichen in meiner Nacht [like a
beacon in my night]," and announces that her lips "brennen und lecuchten .. dir entgegen
[bum and gleam ... towards you]," as though they were about to share a kiss. Of course,
Die Frau's text ends with her enigmatic statement "Oh, bist du da [Oh, are you there?],"
which could be interpreted as her discovery of her lover alive. Tristan's corpse,
moreover, produces music and light at the end of Isolde's soliloquy-"Immer lichter, wie
er leuchtet. .. Hare ich nur diese Weise, die so wundervoll und leise, wonne Klang .. aus
ihm tOnend? [How he glows ever brighter. .. Do I alone hear this melody, so wonderful
and gentle ... sounding from within him?]"-while the lover's eyes are the source of light
and colour, as Die Frau sings "Alles Licht kamja aus deinen Augen ... aIle Farben der
Welt brachen aus deinen Augen [All light came from your eyes ... all the colours of the
world shone from your eyes]." Light and darkness are also key metaphors in both works,
and are articulated by both women as part of the Liebestod: not long after the dying
Tristan has sung of the unforgiving Day, Isolde sings "DaB wonnig and hehr die Nacht
wir teilen [Let us share the blissful and sublime night]"; Die Frau remarks "del' Morgen
kommt [Morning comes]," then sings "Das Licht wird fUr aBe kommen .. aber ich allein in
meiner Nacht? Del' Morgen trennt uns [The light/the dawn will come for all others ... but
I alone in my darkness/my night? Morning separates us]." Like Tristan, Die Frau
laments the coming of the day and desires to remain in darkness. Finally, the small
textual detail that implicates Freud's "Dora" in Erwartung-Frau K.' s "adorable white
body" / "the woman with the white arms"-also evokes Tristan, albeit in a rather indirect
way. David Hamilton has described a possible connection between "the woman with the
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white arms" in Erwartung and Isolde: "the characterization of the "other woman" as "die
Frau mit den weiBen kmen" recalls an element of the Tristan legend, albeit not one used
by Wagner, the rival Iseult of the White Hands.,,7
While Schoenberg rejected the idea that there was any kind of Wagnerian
redemption to be found in Erwartung, it nonetheless seems to me that Tristan must be
taken into account when trying to make sense of the monodrama, especially given the
textual correspondences I have noted, above. 8 It is impossible for us to know to what
extent Marie Pappenheim was familiar with Tristan, but if Schoenberg's statement to
Eusoni regarding the monodrama-that Pappenheim wrote it as he had envisioned it9-
can be taken as at least partially true, then is it not possible that what Schoenberg, an avid
Wagnerite, had envisioned was an operatic work similar in theme and content to Tristan?
Or that Pappenheim, in response to Schoenberg's commission, which may have been
more specific than "Write whatever you want," as Pappenheim recalled it, may have
recognized some aspect of Tristan in Schoenberg's request? Or, perhaps more likely,
that Schoenberg recognized and responded, perhaps unconsciously, to otherwise
coincidental Wagnerian elements in Pappenheim's text. I am inclined, in the end, to
7 David Hamilton, "Schoenberg's First Opera," 54.
8 One might suggest, after Mellers, that Schoenberg had already written his Tristan with Verkliirte Nacht,
which shares with Wagner's opera the theme of transfiguration through love, along with its suspension-
laden harmonies.
9Schoenberg wrote to Busoni in the summer of 1909: "I have started on a composition for the theatre;
something quite new. The librettist (a lady), acting on my suggestions, has conceived and formulated
everything just as I envisaged it." Undated letter in Ferrucio Busoni: Selected Letters, 399. While I have
already discussed the issue of the monodrama's authorship, Schoenberg's statement to B usoni does not
impugn Pappenheim's claim to authorship, but suggests that Schoenberg may had particular ideas about
what elements he wanted in the libretto, and that Pappenheim may have been aware of his desires. See my
discussion of Elektra, below, concerning the same issue of what Schoenberg "envisaged" for the
monodrama.
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agree with those scholars who allow that the text of Erwartung may have been written
collaboratively, but that the definitive interpretation ofthe work is Schoenberg's. In
other words, if Schoenberg had Tristan in mind, even unconsciously, when he requested
the libretto from Pappenheim, while he collaborated with her on the text, and while he
worked on the music, the Wagnerian elements of the text would be emphasized in the
drama and would be key to the work's interpretation.
Tristan und Isolde is not only a textual model for Erwartung, but is also its
precursor in the sense that it is a psychological opera, a work in which the exterior drama
is minimized for the sake of the interior drama of the protagonists: "In Wagner's hands
this concentrated narrative becomes an intensely psychological drama. Action in any
traditional sense is severely limited ... For the most part the subject at hand is the two
principal characters, who seem to live in a world of feeling all their own."IO Gyorgy
Kroo also notes the absence of "external events" and remarks upon the importance of
"subjective time" in Tristan, which
means the expansion of a single moment, and it is effected through a labyrinth of

internal events and reflection, and through the constant reference to past. .. In this
way, the past encroaches upon the present, paralyzing whomsoever is held in the
grip of memory ... This entire psychological framework is animated by the music,
whose medium is the all-knowing orchestra. I I
For Tristan and Isolde, the external world is a world of illusion; "the 'real world' is the
interior universe of the soul, where day is transformed into a realm of dreams and night
10 Leon Plantinga, Romantic Music (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1984),286.
II Gyorgy Kro6, "Wagner-Tristan and Isolde" in Andras Batta and Sigrid Neef, ed. Opera (Cologne:
Konemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2000), 784. Schoenberg's orchestra in Erwartung is surely "all-
knowing" as well: it animates, comments, and observes.
206
becomes the repository of truth." 12 It is impossible not to reflect upon how these
characterizations of Tristan are so readily mapped onto Erwartung: in his assessment of
subjective time in Tristan, quoted above, Kr06 echoes Schoenberg's own words about
Erwartung, namely that its aim "is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs
during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half and
hour.,,13 Tristan's day/night dichotomy is, as I have already discussed, revisited in
Erwartung, and the idea of nighttime as a "repository of truth" evokes the Anna O. case,
if not Erwartung directly, where night is the time of the disturbed psyche. 14 These
parallels are hard to overlook, and represent an important clue to the psychological puzzle
of Erwartung.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of Tristan, in terms of the possibility of the
opera serving as a psychoanalytic model for Schoenberg, is the function of memory in
Wagner's opera. Tristan, like Die Frau, is haunted by memory. While parallels between
Wagner's Liebestod and Schoenberg's fourth scene can be drawn, what is more striking
to me is the fact that both Die Frau and Tristan relive their traumatic pasts as their
respective operas draw to a close. The past is evoked and underscored by the Shepherd's
tune in Act III of Tristan, a tune which accompanies Tristan's gradual recovery of his
memory and recollection of his past towards a final, cathartic revelation, namely that he
12 Kroo, "Wagner-Tristan and Isolde," 784.
13 Arnold Schoenberg, "New Music: My Music," in Style and Idea, 105.
14 While in the Anna O. case, the daytime was lucid and the night was a time of hallucination and hypnosis,
it was also the time when she would purge her hallucinations and frightening visions by describing them to
Breuer. One could argue that night, in both the Anna O. case and in Erwartung, is also the repository of
truth in the sense that what is begin articulated, ultimately, is the truth of the unconscious, via an analytic
dialogue. In each case, nighttime is when the scene of psychoanalysis takes place.
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himself had brewed the love potion that set the events of the opera in motion: in other
words, he understands that he is responsible for his own fate. Joseph Kerman imposes a
Freudian interpretation of the third act of Tristan, in which Tristan progresses through
two cycles of recollection. In the first cycle, Tristan's recollection is only general, and he
understands only the surface of his past feelings. In the second cycle, initiated by the
Shepherd's tune, Tristan "can penetrate into the events of his past and seek their
significance, not only those that we already know from the opera, but also events from
his childhood and even before, symbolized by the rich gloomy strain of the Shepherd.,,!5
Tristan's introspection-accompanied by "Die aite Weise sehnsuchtbang [the ancient
tune of yearning]"-leads him deeper and deeper into memory, and culminates in the
climax of the whole score: "Den furchtbaren Trank! .. .ich selbst, ich hab' ihn gebrau't!
[The terrible drink! I myself, I prepared it!]." In other words, though falling in love with
Isolde, Tristan is the architect of his own eternal "Sehnsucht [yearning]." The
Shepherd's tune, which has accompanied Tristan's delirium and recollection, eventually
signals Isolde's return and the Liebestod to follow.
The details of Tristan's delirium scene are important for several reasons. This
scene closely parallels the fourth scene of Erwartung, in that Die Frau invokes several
layers of memory as she mourns her lover. First, she recalls what I would characterize as
superficial memories, very recent memories of her lover, still alive and with her in the
woods:
Wie kannst du tod sein? .. Uberalllebtest du .. Eben noch in Wald ..

deine Stimme so nahe an meinem Ohr.. Immer, immer warst du
15 Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 166.
208
bei mir..dein Hauch auf meiner Wange .. deine Hand auf meinem
Haar..[ ... ] es ist nicht wahr? Dein Mund bog sich doch eben noch
unter meinen Kiissen .. Dein Blut tropft noch jetzt mit leisem Schlage ..
Dein Blut is noch lebendig ..
[How can you be dead? Your life was everywhere ... Just now, in the
forest. .. your voice right by my ear ... Always, always you were near
me ... your breath on my cheek ... your hand on my hair .. .isn't it true? ..
Your mouth just now yielded to my kisses ... Your blood still drips with
a gentle pulse ... Your blood is still alive ... ] 16
Die Frau's memory then goes further back in time, recalling how her lover had been so
busy in the last few months that he had been absent minded, had not been to see her for
days, and how, some time ago, he had whispered someone else's name in his sleep.
Here, Die Frau's recollection moves towards more traumatic memories. After Die Frau
laments not being able to die with her lover, her recollection digs deeper still, and she
recalls what might have been the beginning of the romance, one year ago: "Ich wuBt
nichts als dich .. dieses ganze Jahr seit du zum ersten Mal meine Hand nahmst [I knew
nothing but you ... this entire year since your first took my hand]." These reminiscences
are followed by daybreak, but with dawn Die Frau has lost sight of her lover; she is,
perhaps, lost in her reminiscences, forever consigned to Tristan's "Liebesnacht [night of
love]." As she sings of her solitude, she also sings of her longing, and her anticipation:
"Wieder ein ewiger Tage des Wartens [ ... ] Tausend Menschen ziehn voriiber..ich
erkenne dich nicht [ ... ] Wo bist du? [Another endless day of waiting ... A thousand
people pass by ...but I cannot recognize you ... Where are you?]." Here, Tristan's final
moments are recalled, as he waits, dying, for Isolde's ship to arrive and sings of his own
longing. It is interesting to note that the language that Kerman uses to describe the final
16 See my discussion, above, concerning Isolde's Liebestod, in which she describes Tristan as still
breathing.
209
act of Tristan could just as easily describe Erwartung. Kerman emphasizes Tristan's
anticipation, noting that it is part of the third act's dramatic "double cycle" of
"recollection-curse-relapse-anticipation.,,17 Could we not map this same structure
onto the final scene of Erwartung, in which memory brings embitterment, followed by a
resignation, culminating in renewed anticipation at the close of the work ("Oh bist du
da .. ")? 18 Moreover, in both operas, we can see Freud's zigzag path of meaning and
interpretation, towards the central, pathogenic nucleus. This path-"die
verschlungensten Wege [the most winding/twisted/convoluted path]" in Freud's
formulation, travels through a series of "concentric circles" of memories, from the
superficial at the outskirts to the deepest and disavowed memories surrounding the
nUcleus. 19 In Tristan, we see this Dantean, proto-Freudian downward spiral; in
Erwartung, we see a similar journey whose structure is borrowed from Tristan but now
strongly evokes its contemporary, Freud.
Richard Strauss' Elektra and the Scene of Psychoanalysis
"Strauss," writes Arnold Whittall, "even in his most radical phase, was no
Schoenberg ... Nor was Hofmannsthal's text of the fragmented, allusive kind that
Schoenberg set in Erwartung ... the archetypal Expressionist music drama. ,,20
Schoenberg, for his part, though he disavowed the influence of Richard Strauss on his
17 Kerman, Opera as Drama, 165.
18 See Falck, who suggests a similar mapping of the final scene.
19 Freud, "Psychotherapy of Hysteria," in Studies on Hysteria, 375. See below, regarding Elektra and
Freud's zigzag path.
20Arnold Whittall, "Dramatic Structure and Tonal Organization" in Richard Strauss: Elektra, Derrick
Puffett ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),56.
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music as of 1914-"whatever I may once have learned from him, I am thankful to say I
misunderstood,,21-may have been attracted, in 1909, by Elektra's strangeness, by its
complex "psychological polyphony,,,22 and may have experienced in the work's
psychological plot and musical realization a foreshadowing of the atonal monodrama he
would compose that same year. Despite the later antipathy between Strauss and
Schoenberg, and their differing musical aesthetics, it is my contention that the text and
music of Strauss' opera Elektra, as a dramatization of psychoanalysis, was another model
for Erwartung. While Elektra is perhaps more explicit in its psychoanalytic content, and
the presence of Freud more obvious, I believe that Erwartung shares with Elektra the
same concerns, namely the drama of the hysteric and the musico-dramatic representation
of the scene of analysis. I also concur with Jill Scott's analysis of Elektra as comprising
a psychoanalysis of not only Elektra and her mother, Klytiimnestra, but also of Strauss
himself, and I see the same process at work in Erwartung.
It is well known that Elektra's librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, owned a first
edition copy of Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria (and The Interpretation of
Dreams), and that Hofmannsthal even marked specific passages in the books.
Hofmannsthal originally borrowed a copy of the Studies from his friend, the dramatist
Hermann Bahr, likely sometime in 1903. It was Bahr who inspired Hofmannsthal's
interest in psychoanalysis, both through personal conversations on the subject and
through Bahr's book Dialog zum Tragischen [Dialogue on the Tragic], in which he writes
21 Arnold Schoenberg: Letters, 51.
22Richard Strauss, "Reminiscences of the First Performances of my Operas," in Recollections and

Reflections, edited by Willi Schuh, translated by L. J. Lawrence (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1953), 155.
Schoenberg was still actively seeking Strauss' support as of the summer of 1909.
211
of hysteria in Greek tragedy, discusses both Freud and Breuer, and uses explicitly
psychoanalytic terminology like "Katharsis" and "unterdrtickten Affekte" [catharsis and
suppressed affect].23 Bahr explicitly applies the main ideas of the Studies in his
Dialogue, noting that repression is the cause of hysteria and that abreaction is its cure. 24
Hofmannsthal, as Bahr's friend and confident, would very likely have discussed in detail
with Bahr the application of psychoanalytic ideas to the study of Greek tragedy, and these
discussions would have informed the genesis of Elektra. The relationship between
Hofmannsthal and Freudian texts is somewhat similar to the relationship between
Schoenberg, Marie Pappenheim and Freudian texts, namely that the extant evidence for
influence and borrowing is much the same as the evidence for Hofmannsthal's
borrowing: in each case, the evidence "draws a fairly tight circle without. .. affording
definitive information about the nature and extent ofthe borrowing.,,25
Herman Bahr is the figure who connects Freud to Hofmannsthal and ultimately
Strauss; it was Bahr who exposed Hofmannsthal to Freud and it was Bahr who was
writing about Freud's theory of hysteria and its treatment early in the century. To the
best of my knowledge, no one has suggested that Bahr may have done the same for
Schoenberg and perhaps Marie Pappenheim. Bahr-who was married to Anna von
Mildenburg, the soprano who sang Klytfunnestra in the Viennese production of Elektra
Lorna Martens, "The Theme of the Repressed Memory in Hofmannsthal's Elektra," The German
23
Quarterly 60:1 (Winter 1987): 38-39.
24 Martens, 'The Theme of the Repressed Memory": 39.
25Martens, "The Theme of the Repressed Memory": 40. In each case, much of the evidence comprises the
hysterical symptoms of the female characters. In the case of Hofmannsthal and Strauss, of course, there is
more documentary evidence to suggest that Hofmannsthal was actively reading Freudian texts during or as
a precursor to the writing of Elektra. In the case of Erwartung, there is no such direct evidence.
212
on March 24, 1909-is described by Stuckenschmidt as a good friend of Schoenberg's,
and one of the "influential Viennese intellectuals who believed in Schoenberg":
Bahr knew Schoenberg at that time [i.e. eady 1909] from his
Viennese performances and scandals. He helped him artistically
and as a person ... On 10 April 1909 he wrote to Schoenberg that
he would like to begin theoretical studies with him in the autumn ...
Nothing came of his planned studies with Schoenberg. But on
10 October Bahr wrote that an admirer who wanted to remain
unnamed had given him some money for the composer; he wanted
Schoenberg to come to him on Sunday at four o'clock. Two days
later he sent him 3000 kronen. 26
This gesture of friendship and respect by Bahr recalls Gustav Mahler's "anonymous"
purchase of several of Schoenberg's paintings when the younger composer desperately
needed money. I am surprised that so few scholars have commented on the connection
between Bahr and Schoenberg, especially since Schoenberg's and Bahr's friendship
seems to crystallize around the time of Strauss' Elektra, a work influenced and inspired
by Bahr's writings on psychoanalysis and tragedy and also a potential source of operatic
inspiration for Schoenberg. 27 Although Schoenberg's personal library does not contain a
copy of Bahr's Dialogue on the Tragic, it does contain two of Bahr's works: the Buch der
27Lewis Wickes, in his article "Schoenberg, Erwartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis in Musical
Circles in Vienna Until 1910/11," does mention Hermann Bahr in his assessment of the influence of
psychoanalysis on Erwartung. Wickes notes that Bahr was either a member of, or an "occasional visitor"
(95) to Freud's Wednesday Psychological Society as of 1902-03., but does not suggest that Bahr was a
direct link between Freud and Schoenberg (though he does say that Bahl' could have conceivably been part
of a discussion between Bach and Schoenberg concerning Elektra and psychoanalysis, if such a
conversation ever took place). Instead, he puts David Bach and his critical review of Elektra (following its
Viennese premier in March of 1909) at the forefront of his argument for Schoenberg's awareness of Freud
and Freudian ideas in Elektra. According to Wickes, Bach's article may have been the catalyst for
Schoenberg's changes to Pappenheim's libretto and perhaps also for his musical setting of the text,
"informed and sympathetic" to Freudian hysteria (100). Wickes does not suggest, as I do, that Bahr may
have been Schoenberg's source of information on Freud and Elektra. Regardless, Bach's review of Elektra
and his position in Schoenberg'S circle alone make it clear that Schoenberg would have known Elektra
well, and would have had a psychoanalytic perspective on the work. See Chapter 2 for my discussion of
Wickes' article.
213
Jugend of 1908, and the three-volume Theater: ein Wiener Roman, likely published in
1911. Bahr, I would argue is the psychoanalytic locus for both Schoenberg and Strauss.
Though Schoenberg's personal library does not contain anything by
Hofmannsthal, nor a copy of Strauss' Elektra, Schoenberg was an admirer of Strauss's
music at that time, and his library does contain other works by Strauss. 28 Hofmannsthal' s
play Elektra was first performed in Berlin in 1903; while Schoenberg had left Berlin by
the time the play was performed, he may have known of Hofmannsthal's work anyway,
as he (Schoenberg) had been active in Berlin's theatre community as musical director of
the Uberbrettl and as an orchestrator of operettas, beginning in 1901. Schoenberg left
Berlin in the summer of 1903, and Hofmannsthal's play was written sometime during that
summer and performed in Berlin for the first time at the end of October, 1903; however,
Schoenberg may have come to know of Elektra through the producer Max Reinhardt,
owner of the Kleines Theatre in Berlin where the play received its premiere. Reinhardt
also knew Hermann Bahr: Reinhardt and Hofmannsthal first met in Bahr's house in May
of 1903 to discuss Elektra. 29 While it is not clear when Schoenberg became acquainted
with Reinhardt, they did correspond several times, the first surviving letter dating from
1911 (the record of Schoenberg's early correspondence is incomplete), the last from
28 Christopher Wintle describes the importance of Strauss to the Second Viennese School early in the
twentieth century, noting that Egon Wellesz recalled arriving for a composition lesson with Schoenberg "to
find his teacher pouring over the score of Salome." Wintle insists that Elektra goes much farther than
Salome in its musical innovations (Schoenberg wondered how anything could surpass the latter), and
reminds us that Schoenberg used examples from Elektra in his Harmonielehre. Wintle also makes the
claim that Elektra' s musical innovations grew out of the psychological content of the libretto, a claim that
can obviously be made about Erwartung too (though Erwartung may represent the true realization of
something like "psychological form": see Chapter 2). Christopher Wintle, "Elektra and the 'Elektra
Complex'." 63.
29 Karen Forsyth, "Hofmannsthal's 'Elektra'; from Sophocles to Strauss," in Puffett, ed., Richard Strauss:
Elektra, 19.
214
1933. It is reasonable, I believe, to suggest that Schoenberg may have been familiar with
Hofmannsthal and his Elektra, prior to Strauss' version, as a result of their mutual friends
and shared milieu. We do not know what Marie Pappenheim knew of Elektra, but can
postulate, as I have done for Tristan, that if Schoenberg was familiar with Elektra, he
may have suggested ideas for the libretto of Erwartung to Pappenheim, ideas drawn from
Bahr, Hofmannsthal and Strauss. It is possible, too, that Schoenberg's knowledge of
Elektra, as with Tristan, may have been triggered by features ofPappenheim's text,
influencing his collaboration with the poet.
Elektra is a possible textual and musical model for Erwartung as a psychoanalytic
music drama for several reasons. 30 While both are one-act operas, Elektra has also been
described by as a monodrama: Michael Worbs considers Elektra a monodrama centred
around Elektra, whom Hofmannsthal modeled on Anna 0. 31 As I have described in detail
in Chapters 2 and 3, Erwartung has long been associated with the Anna O. case, which
was assumed to be the model for Pappenheim's "Frau." The protagonists in each opera
share not only a collection of hysterical symptoms, but also a similar trauma (i.e. the
death of a male loved one: Elektra's father, Die Frau's lover), recounted by each
"analysand" in a strikingly similar language. Die Frau, in her dialogue with her dead
30It is tempting to suggest, at the outset, that Elwartung is something of a truncated version of Elektra, if
one simply examines the obvious structures of the works: Elektra is a opera in two parts, each part
comprised of four distinct scenes (though not so marked: the scenic divisions are determined by the
introduction of new characters; Erwartung is, according to some theorists, essentially a work in two parts,
comprised of four scenes, perhaps a compressed Elektra? Note that the "fourth" scene of part one of
Elektra is the longest and most dramatic, containing the scene of psychoanalysis; the same is true of the
fourth scene of Erwartung.
31Michael Worbs, Nervenkunst (Frankfurt: Europasiche Verlagsanstalt, 1983),259-95. Quoted in Martens,

"The Theme of the Repressed Memory," 40.
215
lover (who is also her analyst: see below), comments on how his blood still flows with a
gentle pulse, then questions the look in his eyes as she notices that he is "looking"
towards the house in the forest, presumably the house of the "woman with the white
arms." She sings "Aber so seltsam ist dein Auge: Wohin schaust duL.Was das damals
nicht auch in deinem Blick? ... Du siehst wieder dort hin! [But what a strange look in your
eyes: what attracts you? ... Was there not something in your gaze? ... You still look over
there!]." This text and scenario is an echo of Elektra's first appearance in her opera, in
which she recounts her trauma, the death of her father, Agamemnon, at the hands of her
mother and uncle. Already, the parallels are obvious: both men died because of treachery
and their deaths are at the heart of a love triangle. Elektra's scene begins with an
announcement of her solitude-"Allein! Weh, ganz allein [Alone! Ah, all alone.]"-that
evokes Die Frau's lament of loneliness: "Was soIl ich allein hier tun? [What shall I do
here alone?]." Elektra then recalls: " ... dein Auge, das starre, offne, sah herein ins Haus
[your eyes, which were staring open, gazed back in the house]," an obvious parallel to
Die Frau's text, above. In each opera, a house is the locus of trauma (like the Freudian
pathogenic nucleus) and a locus of desire: in Elektra, it symbolizes the incestuous
relationship between her mother and uncle in which her mother's desire has killed her
father; in Erwartung, the house also stands for female desire, as a symbol of the female
genitals and as the place where the supposed fatal tryst between the white-armed woman
and Die Frau's lover took place. Elektra again asks to not be left alone-"lass mich
heute nicht allein [don't leave me alone today]"-and also says to her dead father: "Ich
will dich sehn [I want to see you]." This recalls Erwartung's final scene, in which Die
Frau exclaims "Wie deine Augen mir ausweichen! [How your eyes evade mine!]," which
216
reads like a request to be looked at and perhaps to be able to look at her lover (i.e. into his
eyes). Most interesting is the line in Elektra that follows Elektra's plea to her father to
not leave her alone. Elektra sings "Nur so wie gestern, wie ein Schatten, dort im
Mauerwinkel zeig dich deinem Kind! [As though it was only yesterday, like a shadow in
the dark corner of the wall, you come before your child!]"; in the third scene of
Erwartung, Die Frau recalls her lover's shadow on the white wall of the garden-"wie
dein Schatten auf die wei Ben Wande flint [how your shadow falls onthe white walls]"-
and Elektra's "yesterday," which we know is not really yesterday but some time further
in the past, is implicit in Die Frau's confused recollection of events a year, a month, or
three days past versus a mere moment ago.
Another connection between the two works that suggests a shared concern with
psychoanalysis is the fact that Elektra is a dramatic allegory of illness and cure, as is
Erwartung. As I discuss below, both Elektra and Klytamnestra are "sick"; that is, they
suffer from hysteria. Both women are haunted by memory, by Freudian "reminiscences."
Elektra recalls all too vividly her father's horrible murder; Klytamnestra, the architect of
the murder, is tortured by guilty dreams. The resolution of the drama heralds their cures,
through catharsis-as-death. In Erwartung, while no "cure" is effected as such, there is a
scenic and psychological progression in the text-along the "path" of analysis-from
darkness to light and from inside to outside, metaphors for the unveiling of the psyche?2
As both works contain symbolic representations of the psyche-Erwartung's path and
32Martens describes light/dark and inside/outside as "fundamental metaphors" for Freud and Breuer, and
also for Hofmannsthal. Martens, "The Theme of the Repressed Memory," 46. In Erwartung, the drama
seems to progress from night to morning (though this is not clear) and Die Frau, according to Elizabeth
Keathley progresses from a passive state of containment within the walled garden to a journey of self-
discovery outside of the garden. See Chapter 3.
217
Elektra's cellar (see below)-so too the characters in Elektra are not characters as such-
the idea of "characters" in drama is rejected by Bahr as out of date-but rather "symbolic
figures with more than one referent"; they are "metaphors" for theselr.J3 Erwartung's
Woman is likewise less character and more symbol, a metaphor for the human psyche in
distress.
Erwartung and Elektra are both centred upon representation of dreams: the plot of
Elektra revolves around dreams and their interpretation; Erwartung may be considered
the representation of a nightmare from start to finish. In Elektra, we witness an analytical
process, namely that of the psychoanalyst interpreting the dream of the hysteric.
Klytarnnestra recounts her dreams to Elektra and asks her if she has "kein Mittel
gegenTrtiume [no cure for dreaming]," then insists that there must be an end to the
dreaming, if only she could determine who was sending the dreams to her. This is an
example of the analyst/analysand relationship par excellence, in which the analyst is
assumed to have the correct interpretation of the analysand's dreams, which the
analysand believes to have come from without. It is my contention that the same
relationship is explored in Erwartung. While each work offers a different perspective on
the scene of psychoanalysis, we nonetheless witness, in each case, a dramatic
representation of the processes of psychoanalytic treatment.
In Elektra, the scene of psychoanalysis is Elektra's analysis of Klytamnestra' s
dreams. Klytamnestra identifies Elektra as the "analyst" when the two women first
33 Martens, "The Theme of the Repressed Memory," 42
218
encounter each other in the opera. Klytamnestra says of Elektra "Sie redet wie ein Artz
[She speaks like a doctor]" and then asks Elektra, as one might ask their psychoanalyst,
"Weisst du kein Mittel gegen Traume? [Do you know of no remedy for my dreaming?]."
After Elektra asks, with feigned innocence, "Tdiumst du, Mutter? [Dreaming, mother?],"
Klytamnestra-who appears wearing jewelry, foreshadowing Die Frau's first appearance
in Erwartung and also invoking "Dora," whose dreams concerned her mother's 'jewel
case"-immediately accuses Elektra of having the power to help her get rid of the dreams
that have been troubling her. Elektra becomes, in the post-Freudian lexicon, the "subject
supposed to know": Jacques Lacan identifies in the analysand the belief that the analyst
has the answers to the analysand's problems, that the analyst possesses certain
knowledge. 34 Klytl1mnestra makes this assertion in speaking with Elektra: "Wenn du nur
wall test, du k6nntest etwas sagen, was mir ntitzt. .. Denn du bist klug. In deinem Kopf ist
alles stark [If you but wished it, you could say what would help me ... For you are wise.
Inside your head is great strength]." Klytamnestra complains that she is haunted by
dreams in which she is eaten alive from within by maggots, in which her bones melt;
these dreams (dreams of fragmentation are common to the hysteric), 35 which seem
34 As Dylan Evans notes, the "subject supposed to know" is a "function which the analyst may come to
embody in the treatment," a function which facilitates the establishment of the transference. The analyst is
assumed to possess "secret" knowledge about the analysand, "to know the secret meanings of the
analysand's words." Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 197. It is clear, in
Elektra, that Klytamnestra makes this supposition about Elektra, whom she regards as possessing the
meaning of her dreams and the secret of "signification": Elektra understands the power of words and knows
the "name" of Klytamnestra' s cure, the name of the victim who must be sacrificed to end her dreams.
35According to Lacan, the infant's perception of the body as fragmented leads to the identification with the
mirror image (the "specular ego") which appears whole. This identification forms the ego; the ego is
always under threat of dissolution by virtue of being based on an imaginary identification. This threat
inheres in memories of division and fragmentation: "castration, emasculation, mutilation, dismemberment,
dislocation ... devouring, bursting open of the body." Lacan, "Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis," in Ecrits, 11.
In his essay "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the 1," Lacan suggests that the "fragmented
body," signifying the "aggressive disintegration of the individual. .. appears in the form of disjointed limbs,
or of those organs represented in exoscopy .. .in the lines of 'fragilization' that define the anatomy of
219
interminable, last only seconds, and so it seems to her that the morning takes forever to
arrive (not unlike the seemingly endless night of Erwartung, wherein the dawn at the end
of the work may only be a false dawn: night simply continues on). KlyHimnestra also
makes an assertion common to an analysand, namely that her dreams are sent to her by
someone else, that they come from elsewhere: "Diese Traume ... Wer sie immer schickt
[These dreams ... whosoever sendsthem]." Typically, the analysand accuses the analyst
of being the cause of dreams, because the process of analysis unveils the hidden content
of dreams, content that is often unacceptable to the analysand, and because it is
unconscious, it seems foreign. When Elektra begins to offer Klytamnestra the solution to
her dreaming, namely a sacrifice, the process of analysis has begun: Klytamnestra wants
to hear the answer to her problems, and asks that Elektra not speak in riddles, while
Elektra-as-analyst asks "Kannst du mich nicht erraten? [Can't you guess my meaning?]."
The answer to Klytamnestra's dreaming, of course, is her own death at the hands of her
son, Elektra's brother, Orestes. Her dreams will end, says Elektra, once she is dead.
Here, the analyst is effectively revealing to the analysand that, in order to be rid of
dreams, one must sacrifice one's self to the subterranean truth of the human subject: the
unconscious. This is clarified when Elektra describes how she will pursue Klytamnestra
to her death, in effect a metaphorical account of the process of psychoanalysis:
Hinab die Treppen durch GewOlbe hin,

GewOlbe und GewOlbe geht die Jagd-
Dnd ich! leh! leh, die ihn illr geschickt,
leh bin wie ein Hund an deiner Ferse,
Willst du in eine Hohle, spring' ich dich
von seitwarts an. So treiben wir dich fort,
bis eine Mauer alles sperrt und dort
phantasy, as exhibited in the schizoid and spasmodic symptoms of hysteria." Lacan, "The Mirror Stage,"
in Ecrits, 4-5.
220
im tiefsten Dunkel, doch ich seh' ihn wohl,

ein Schatten und doch Glieder und das Weisse
von einem Auge doch, da sitzt der Vater.
[Then down the stairway, through the cellar there,

through cellar after cellar goes the hunt-
and I, I, I who sent him to you,
I'll be like a hound snapping at your heels.
And were you to find a hole,
I'd spring out at you from the side.
And so we'll drive you on
until a wall shuts off the way, and there,
in deepest shadows, yes, I see him well,
a shadow, and yet limbs and the white of an eye
are visible, there sits my father.]
Elektra's text here says a great deal about the influence of Freudian thought on
Hofmannsthal and his Elektra. Her imagined pursuit of Klytamnestra is clearly an
allegory of the process of psychoanalysis. The many "cellars" are analogous to the
concentric circles of the human psyche: the further down one goes, the deeper into the
unconscious one goes. Elektra describes, moreover, a labyrinthine course through the
cellars of Klytamnestra's mind, the twisted, zigzag progression that Freud describes in his
Studies on Hysteria. In the "deepest shadows" is the source of Klytarnnestra's guilt, the
cause of her dreams and the pathogenic nucleus to which the underground labyrinth of
the psyche ultimately leads: Agamemnon.
Lorna Marten's describes the importance of memory in Elektra, noting that
Elektra herself is "memory incarnate.,,36 She represents the powerful psychic force of
memory, especially a pathogenic memory that is frozen in time. In Elektra's mind, time
has "contracted around two points: the moment of her father's murder, which she
36 Martens, "The Theme of the Repressed Memory," 43.
221
constantly recalls, and a future moment when the murder will be avenged, which she
persistently anticipates.'.37 Die Frau does the same thing in Erwartung, demonstrating
something like the split consciousness of the hysteric as she shifts between two mental
states: she laments her dead lover, then simultaneously recalls past happiness and
anticipates a future reunion. Like Die Frau, Elektra is the embodiment of a repressed
memory that cannot be abreacted; instead, it is left to fester. This is evidenced by
Elektra's inability to break with the past: her speech is consistently "non-cathartic," and
as she moves through the opera it is always her symptom that "speaks. ,,38 The idea that
Elektra functions as Klytamnestra's psychoanalyst in the opera is not new; what is new is
Martens' proposed expansion of this scenario. She claims that the relationship between
Elektra and Klytamnestra is not as simple as analyst-patient; instead, she suggests, they
are psychically intertwined as repressed memories for each other. Martens observes that,
"while Elektra embodies the memory Klytamnestra has repressed, Klytamnestra herself,
as the murderess of Agamemnon, quite literally personifies the memory of the trauma for
Elektra. ,,39 In Martens' account of the relationship between Elektra and Klytamnestra,
the former is a "caricature of the domineering psychoanalyst who tries to goad the
resisting patient into admitting what the analyst knows and the patient is reluctant to
speak OUt.,,40 Klytamnestra is desperate for a "cure," which she solicits from Elektra-as-
37Martens, "The Theme of the Repressed Memory," 43. As in Tristan, "anticipation" plays an important
role in Elektra.
39 Martens, 'The Theme of the Repressed Memory," 44.
222
analyst; the irony is, of course, that Elektra herself requires a cure, one that can only be
accomplished by KlyUimnestra's death.
Martens also notes one other important facet of Elektra that resonates with
Erwartung and with Tristan: the issue of the cyclic and the feminine. In Erwartung, Die
Frau's obsession with the past turns the monodrama into an endless cycle, as its
inconclusive ending indicates. Erwartung's cyclic motif is also evidenced through what I
call the drama of discovery: Die Frau "discovers" her dead lover over and over again, and
moves from present to past in a repeating, Tristanesque pattern of "recollection-curse-
relapse-anticipation." If Erwartung is indeed a psychoanalytic drama, one acted out by
an hysterical protagonist, then I would argue that the cyclical nature of the work is also a
reflection of not only feminine sexuality, but also the sexuality of the hysteric, in which
desire-itself an endless circuit of wanting what you do not have-plays a structuring
role. 41 In the monodrama, the satisfaction of desire is endlessly delayed, first through
anticipation, then by death, and then by the ambiguous ending, which suggests that the
drama of discovery (i.e. Die Frau's discovery of her lover) is continuous. Schoenberg's
music is, of course, a perfect analogue to unsatisfied desire: if Tristan's chromatic
harmonies, which remain unresolved until the end of the opera, represent yearning and
satisfaction delayed, then Erwartung's total chromaticism represents the impossibility of
desire ever being extinguished. Elektra, as Erwartung's precursor, is also a work in
which female sexuality is linked to both structure and symbolic content. Martens
41Psychoanalyst Bruce Fink describes desire as "having no object"; desire disappears once it "attains its
ostensible object." Hysteria is thus one of several neurotic "strategies" for keeping desire going. The
hysteric tries to keep desire unsatisfied: Freud's "wish for an unsatisfied wish." Fink, A Clinical
Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997),51.
223
identifies in Elektra a "cycle-circle motif': the circle is the circle of "being," Elektra's
perfect circle of revenge and catharsis; the cycle is the cycle of "becoming," connected to
Elektra's sister Chrysothemis, who does not want revenge as much as she wants to have
children and fulfill her destiny as a woman. 42
Three Early Songs, Verkliirte Nacht, and Erwartung
Three of Schoenberg's early songs, together with his string sextet, are also part of
a chain of evidence-or perhaps, the chain of signification-that is key to the
interpretation of the monodrama. These songs and the sextet foreshadow Erwartung, but
also are recalled in the work, either directly or by allusion. I will argue that they form
connections between the monodrama and Tristan and Elektra, and are essential to the
understanding of Erwartung as the scene of psychoanalysis and as the locus of
Schoenberg's own hysteria.
i) "Erwartung," Op.2, no. 1
The monodrama is not the first work by Schoenberg to bear the title "Erwartung":
Schoenberg composed a song of that name in 1899, as part of his Op.2 Lieder. The text
of the song "Erwartung" is by Richard Dehmel and comes from the poet's Weib und Welt
collection. In this poem, the "Erwartung" or anticipation is a "sexual anticipation," as
Walter Frisch notes; it is not about "unbridled fulfillment.,,43 Schoenberg was the only
composer of his era to set Dehmel's "Erwartung" to music and was perhaps initially
42 Martens, "The Theme of the Repressed," 49.
43 Walter Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),
93.
224
drawn to the poem because of its obsession with colour words, what Frisch calls its
"painterlyaspects.,,44 Schoenberg's setting of the text focuses on Dehmel's colour
words, underscoring them with "colour chords." These chords appear with the first
colour words in the poem-"meergriin [sea green]" and "roten [red],,-and become the
"harmonic configuration" that dominates the song. 45 While "Erwartung" has little to do
with Wagnerian Sehnsucht, nor does it employ the Tristanesque harmonies of which
Schoenberg was so fond as of 1899, the work does have a connection to Wagner, and also
to its eponymous successor.
The song shares a number of features with Schoenberg's sextet Verkliirte Nacht of
1899. Both works are based on texts concerned with lovers who meet by night:
"Erwartung" takes place "unter der toten Eiche [under the dead oak]," lit by "der Mond
[the moon]"; in the sextet, "Der Mond Hiuft tiber hohe Eichen [the moon runs over the tall
oaks]." Both works have narrative outer stanzas, which "inspired Schoenberg to create in
both works a broad recapitulatory closing section.,,46 The song was likely both a
precursor to and model for the sextet, a likelihood attested to by their shared textual
sentiments and structures; Frisch believes that the success of the Dehmel song, which
possesses a "symphonic" quality, may have given Schoenberg the confidence he needed
to compose the sextet, a decidedly more "ambitious" work. 47 Both the song and sextet, it
seems to me, prefigure the monodrama in a number of ways. They share with Erwartung
44 Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 93.
225
several important symbols and metaphors, including night and the moon, symbols also
shared with Elektra and Tristan. Verkliirte Nacht is one of Schoenberg's most
Wagnerian, most Tristan-like works, and if inspired by the song "Erwartung," as Frisch
suggests, it is possible that perhaps Frisch is wrong in denying the song its Wagnerian
associations. The song, moreover, if the impetus for the sextet, carries over its scenario
and sentiment while surrendering its key-Eb major-to D minor, Schoenberg's personal
key and also the putative key of Elektra (at least, of Agamemnon, the pathogenic nucleus
of Strauss' opera) and of Erwartung, if we accept that tonal elements may be present in
48
the work. "Erwartung" sets the stage for the monodrama, setting into action and
simultaneously articulating a chain of works that clarify, albeit in retrospect, Erwartung's
(and Schoenberg's) relationship with the past. The final stanza of "Erwartung" is oddly
prescient, when viewed in retrospect: it seems to foretell a similar (though unstaged)
scene in the monodrama. We can imagine that this is something like back-story: just as
Tristan and Elektra begin after a major event, so "Erwartung" may contain the originary
event that precipitates Erwartung and Die Frau's descent into madness. The final stanza
may foreshadow what will become the illicit love affair that is the cause of Die Frau's
hysteria:
Aus der roten Villa

Neben der toten Eiche
winkt ihm eine bleiche
Frauenhand.
48 In light of Schoenberg's theory of chromatic substitution, it is not a stretch to suggest that Eb could, in
effect, stand in for D. Bryan Simms notes the importance of D minor to Schoenberg: the key of D major or
minor "is so prominent in his early music as to suggest a personal motto ... allusions to the triad on D placed
at the beginning of an atonal work continue to suggest a personal signature." Simms, The Atonal Music of
Arnold Schoenberg, 33. Professor Simms has very insightfully pointed out to me that Eb, or "Es" in
German, might also constitute a personal signature, as an allusion to the first letter of Schoenberg's own
name. In this context, the "D versus Eb"reJationship suggests a number of intriguing interpretive
possibilities, a divided psyche among them.
226
[Out of the red villa

near the dead oak
the pale hand of a woman
beckons him.]
The male protagonist of Dehmel' s poem has just drawn a ring from his hand in order to
admire it in the moonlight. It is an opal ring, and he kisses it as it glimmers and sparkles.
A window opens, and from the red villa a woman's pale arm emerges to call him inside.
We can assume that the ring is a gift for her; his anticipation is indeed a sexual one, with
the ring representing the consummation of love. This scenario strikes me as a lucid
snapshot of Erwartung 's lover precipitous meeting with "die Frau mit den wei Ben
Armen," before the monodrama begins. It is, perhaps, her "pale hand" drawing him into
her house. Is this scene not repeated as a distorted, dreamy allusion in the monodrama?
Are the three opals in Dehmel's ring destined to become the three entwined lovers of
Erwartung, themselves characters in Schoenberg's personal drama?
In hindsight, the possibility that "Erwartung" contains the dramatic and
psychological seeds of its namesake seems possible, and I argue below that Schoenberg's
monodrama must be understood, perhaps above all else, as a work deeply invested with a
kind of unconscious hindsight. Like many of Schoenberg's early songs, "Erwartung"
was composed during Schoenberg's courtship with Mathilde. 49 The "sexual anticipation"
of the works of this period no doubt reflect the budding relationship between the
composer and his soon-to-be wife: can it be a coincidence that, ten years after the
49Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 81-82. Frisch agrees with Stuckenschmidt's claim that
Schoenberg's increased compositional activity around 1899 was related to his courtship with Mathilde.
Schoenberg did not begin to set poems from Dehmel's erotically-charged Wieb und Welt until this time.
Bryan Simms also notes the correspondence between Schoenberg's poetic choices and his personal life,
"including his courtship of Mathilde Zemlinsky." Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 20.
227
composition of "Erwartung,'" Schoenberg, still deeply wounded from his wife's affair
with Gerstl, composes a monodrama on the theme of an illicit love affair of the same
name? While Schoenberg did not write the text of the monodrama, I believe that he did
respond intuitively to Pappenheim's Erwartung by recollecting elements of his own song.
"Erwartung" is the beginning of a chain of remembrance, filtered through Wagner and
Strauss but ultimately culminating in a work of the most profound personal expression
and psychological complexity.
ii) "Am Wegrand," Op.6, no.6
"Am Wegrand" was composed in October of 1905. It is well known as the source
of the most famous musical quotation in Erwartung: in Chapter 4, I discussed the many
analytic approaches to the monodrama predicated on the notion of the song as the
monodrama's motivic wellspring. "Am We grand" is, of course, in the key of D minor,
Schoenberg's signature key. "Am We grand" is important to my study for a number of
reasons, but the first is the fact that there is not only a musical but also a textual quotation
from the song in the monodrama, which draws me to an obvious conclusion: that
Schoenberg regarded at least one of his early songs as a viable musical and poetic
resource, and so in my estimation it is therefore not unlikely that Schoenberg may have
turned to other songs as he composed Erwartung. I discuss "Am Wegrand" in greater
detail below, but I would like to make one point here: the claim that "Am Wegrand"
gives Erwartung tonal qualities, or even a tonal centre, is arguable, given the latter's
athematicism and intense chromaticism; I do believe, however, that "Am Wegrand," links
the monodrama to its namesake, the Dehmel song "Erwartung" of 1899, through tonal
228
associations. This possibility occurs to me because, although "Am Wegrand" is in the
key of D minor, its key is consistently under assault from both whole tone complexes and
from the pitch class Eb. 50 Eb major is, of course, the key signature of the song
"Erwartung," and also perhaps an autobiographical allusion (see footnote 48), Is it
possible that Schoenberg associated these songs, and in a sense synthesized them in
Erwartung as something like memory traces? Does the path in "Am Wegrand" become
both the path through Erwartung and the path back to "Erwartung"? Is "Am Wegrand,"
moreover, part of a chain of associations leading back to Tristan, since Wagnerian
"Sehnsucht" is found at measure 22 of the song: "Sehnsucht erflillt die Bezirke des
Lebens [Longing fills the confines of my life]." The word "Sehnsucht" is set with an
arpeggiated D minor chord with an added Eb: here, longing is represented musically by a
chord that connects it to "Erwartung," adroitly symbolizing longing-and anticipation-
by evoking the perfect fulfillment of the lovers in "Erwartung." Does Schoenberg's use
of the "Am We grand" quotation in Erwartung thus also look back to the song
"Erwartung"? Consider that in "Erwartung," Dehmel describes a lover wandering
through the world "Als war mein Aug' verhiillt [As though blindfolded],,; Schoenberg's
quotation from "Am Wegrand" describes a different kind of sightlessness, in which the
narrator cannot see the one he is longing for, as thousands of people pass by. Of course,
this connection between the poems is further clarified when the narrator of "Am
We grand" is blinded at the end of the poem: "Bis erblindet vom SonnenbrandelMein
ermtidetes Aug' sich schlieBt [Until, blinded by the burning sun/My tired eyes close]." I
would argue that the two songs, in Schoenberg's mind, are connected, perhaps
50 Frisch, The Early Music of Arnold Schoenberg, 218. Frisch notes that, as "upper half-step, Eb, plays a
large role in the song ... Once introduced, the Eb continues to permeate the D-minor tonality."
229
unconsciously: in quoting from "Am Wegrand," he delves even deeper into his past than
is immediately obvious. "Am Wegrand," as I discuss below, may even represent a kind
of Freudian distortion and displacement: "Am Wegrand" stands in the place of
"Erwartung," as part of an act of concealment or censorship, acting as substitute. The
longing expressed in "Am Wegrand" has little to do with the sexual anticipation of
Erwartung; instead, it is the connection between the monodrama and its namesake, whose
eroticism and sexual fulfillment playa role in Erwartung's psychopathology.
iii) "Traumleben," Op.6, no. I
Finally, I would like to propose, after Robert Falck, that the song "Traumleben
[Dream Life]" Op. 6, no.I, plays an important role in understanding and interpreting
Erwartung. Falck has suggested that "Traumleben" is the source for another textual and
musical quotation. In Chapter 2 I describe Falck's insight: he finds that the phrase
"bltithenweisser Arm [blossom-white arms]" from "Traumleben," and a concomitant
motivic cell, are used in the monodrama, in response to the monodrama's "Frau mit den
weiBen Arm." This is an exciting argument, and one that supports my thesis insofar as it
suggests that Schoenberg mined his own songs for musical material, and also that
Schoenberg may have made significant contributions to the libretto (i.e. that he may have
interpolated or suggested quotations or ideas from his own songs). It also suggests, I
believe, that Schoenberg's monodrama is as much about Schoenberg's memory as it is
about Die Frau's hysterical reminiscences.
230
"Traurnleben" does not merely contribute a small motivic cell and brief textual
association; like "Erwartung," it presages the scenario of the monodrama itself, along
with some smaller details. The "blossom-white" arms in the first stanza of Julius Hart's
poem "Traumleben" foreshadow the flower symbolism of Erwartung (the lover's death is
foretold by wilting flowers; Die Frau appears wearing a dress adorned with flowers) as
well as the mysterious white-armed woman, who is also hinted at the song "Erwartung."
Interestingly, in both "Traumleben" and the monodrama, .the appearance of a white-
armed woman is followed by a kiss. In the poem, kissing is suggested by the lines "Es
ruht auf meinem MundelEin Frlihling jung und warm [On my mouth rests a springtime
young and warm]"; in the monodrama, Die Frau, after invoking the white-armed woman,
accuses her lover of having kissed her, as she sings "die weiBen Arme .. wie du sie rot ktiBt
[the white arms ... how you redden them with your kiss]."Sl
The second stanza of Hart's poem begins, "Ich wandIe wie im Traum [I walk as in
a dream]," setting the stage for Erwartung's dream-like atmosphere and the journey of its
protagonist, as well as possibly invoking Freud for the first time. The stanza ends with
the lines "Du hast mit deiner Liebe/All'meine Welt erftillt [You have, with your
love/filled my entire world]." Here, it is difficult not to think, on the one hand, of "Am
Wegrand" ("Longing fills the confines of my life") and on the other hand of Erwartung
and Die Frau's paean to her dead lover: "In diesem Traum ohne Grenzen und
Farben .. denn mein Grenze war der Ort, an dem du warst..[In this dream without borders
and colours, since my border was the place wherever you were]"; "Ich wuBte nichts als
51 While I have not considered the influence of Strauss' Salome on Erwartung, there are obvious musical
and dramatic correspondences between the works. Most interestingly, both works share a very unusual
finale, in which a female protagonist sings to, and kisses, a dead lover.
231
dich [I knew nothing but you]." These sentiments, each describing a kind of plenitude,
strike me as very similar: you fill my world/my life is filled with longing/I knew nothing
but you. Die Frau's paean also evokes "Traumleben" when she sings of "this dream
without boundaries."
In the final stanza of "Traumleben," the poem's narrator states: "Die Welt scheint
ganz gestorben [The world seems completely dead]." We are thus reminded, again, of
Erwartung, whose fourth scene begins with Die Frau's description of the landscape: "Auf
der ganzen, langen StraBe nichts Lebendiges .. und kein Laut..Die welten blassen Felder
sind ohne Atem, wie estorben .. [Nothing alive on the whole long road ... and not a
sound ... Not a breath in the broad, pale fields, as though dead]." This is the most striking
similarity between the two texts, and one that cannot be ignored. The poem and
monodrama are describing a still dead world, though the dream world of "Traumleben" is
the solitary world of two lovers; Erwartung's world is the realm of love destroyed. As
Hart's poem ends, we witness two lovers in a garden: "Wir beide nur allein/Von
Nachttigalln urnklungenlIm bltihenden Rosenhain [Only we two alone/Surrounded by the
nightingales' songlIn the blooming rose garden]." The rose garden not only links the first
and last stanza of the poem, but also hints at Erwartung's garden, which is invoked many
times by Die Frau as she wanders through the woods. At the very beginning of the
monodrama, we are told that Die Frau appears "weiSe gekeidet; teilweise entbHitterte rote
Rosen am Kleid [dressed in white; partially-shed red roses on her dress]"; in measure 7
she has already sung "Oh, unser Garten [Oh, our garden]," thus linking the roses she
wears with the mysterious garden of her past. I would suggest that Die Frau's
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recollection of happier times in the garden with her lover (the obvious allusions to an
originary garden paradise aside) are recollections of Schoenberg's garden in
"Traumleben," recollections of a better past in which lovers enjoy a flower garden in
bloom, rather than an empty garden surrounded by darkness and decay. As if to confirm
this, the nightingale's song that surrounds the two lovers in "Traumleben" is transfigured
in the second scene of Erwartung, wherein the terrified Frau, who imagines creatures
pursuing her, hears the "Schrei eines Nachtvogels [cry of a night bird]." Schoenberg
makes a musical connection between the two birds, thereby emphasizing the relationship
between the two works: in "Traumleben," the word "Nachtigalln" is set with aD-natural
moving up a half-step to a D#, followed by a leap down a minor ninth to Cx
(enharmonically, D). This large leap is echoed in Erwartung in measure 77, as
Schoenberg depicts the night bird's cry with a trumpet Hauptstimme comprised of paired
thirds a minor ninth apart (G#B-AfC) immediately followed by the trombones playing an
augmented octave (Bb-B): the same intervallic leap, but moving upwards in the
monodrama. While I recognize that the leap of a minor ninth/augmented octave (as a
compound semitone) is a commonplace in Erwartung, I still find it striking that the song
and monodrama share the interval at such a poignant moment of textual confluence.
Erwartung as the Scene of Psychoanalysis
In Erwartung, as Adorno insists, Die Frau is psychoanalyzed, as though the
monodrama were a case history: she is not simply an hysteric, cast into the wilderness for
the audience's titillation (as though she were one of Charcot's hysterics), nor do we
simply accept her behavior as symptomatic and allow this to explain the drama; rather,
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Die Frau is being treated, in a sense, for her illness. "Der Weg," the path that Keathley
identifies as the central metaphor of the work, can be interpreted as the path to self-
discovery, to subjecthood; it can also be interpreted as a path through the unconscious,
the path of analysis, as they are one and the same. Indeed, the fact that Die Frau seems to
progress from the walled garden, through the wild forest, to the moonlit, open road at the
side of the wood at the end of the monodrama suggests to me a kind of analytical
progresses, in which Die Frau's unconscious trauma is, at least in part, brought to light.
At the outset of the monodrama, Die Frau is reluctant to consign herself to analysis: "Hier
hinein?.Man sieht den Weg nicht [In here? The path can't be seen]." After she
admonishes herself for failing to take the path, to seek her absent love object, she finally
relents. As scene 2 begins, she asks "1st das noch der Weg? [Is this still the path?]," as
the path is in darkness, according to the stage directions. Scene 3 features the path still in
darkness, but not mentioned in Die Frau's text. In the fourth scene, as Keathley has
noted, the path has become a road, sublimated in both its musical and literary treatment,
culminating in a literary reference to the path through the quotation of "Am Wegrand."
Here, in scene 4, the dark path has given way to a moonlit road, though there is still a
path ("Weg") leading to a house: "Dort mUndet auch ein Weg, der von einem Hause
herunterftihrt." The brightly-lit road also turns off into the darkness further along. Scene
4, I contend, constitutes the scene of analysis: what Keathley would identify as the
culmination of a woman's journey of self-discovery, I would describe as something of a
cathartic moment in the course of analysis. "Weg," moreover, has an historical claim as a
Freudian metaphor. As I have noted above, in the final essay in the Studies on Hysteria,
Freud writes that the psychoanalyst must follow "an irregular and most twisting path" to
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reach the "pathogenic nucleus."s2 In German, Freud's zigzag path is rendered as "die
verschlungesten Wege." The metaphors of the road and the path-StraBe and Weg-are
very important for Freud: the former describes the access route to the unconscious, the
latter the labyrinth of thoughts that connect to the pathogenic nucleus, making the
symptom over-determined.
The scene of psychoanalysis, as it occurs in Erwartung, comprises most of the
monodrama, but predominantly scene 4. In this, the longest scene, we are exposed to the
deepest emotional content of the work, musically marked by an operatic shift from
declamation to arioso. Where Elektra offers an explicit depiction of the therapeutic
scene, Erwartung is more subtle and abstract. Die Frau's text is commonly likened to the
discourse of the analysand, to free association. She seems to simply speak whatever
comes to mind, yielding a text that is not always coherent and logically connected. The
music is, in some respects, a perfect analogue to this kind of discourse: it is not explicitly
governed by concerns with motivic coherence; it does not employ obvious musico-
dramatic gestures like leitmotifs (although certain symbols, such as the moon, are
consistently treated with certain textures); and since it is atonal, harmonic rhythm is not
an issue. Thus, the monodrama's music is free to follow, reflect upon, or serve as
counterpoint to Die Frau's variegated and variform text. As described above, the
beginning of the monodrama marks Die Frau's consignment to analysis. In general, her
journey along the path is like the labyrinthine Freudian journey I have already discussed:
Die Frau travels deeper into the woods with each scene, struggling in the darkness
52 Freud, "Psychotherapy of Hysteria," in Studies on Hysteria, 374.
235
(especially in Scene 2), recalling Elektra's insistence that Klytamnestra's cure will be
effected only by a similar journey into darkness. Die Frau's journey nears its end when
she reaches the house in the woods, what I have already described as a bipartite Freudian
symbol of female sexuality and also the pathogenic nucleus (it is a symbol shared with
Elektra). After reaching the house and discovering the body of her lover, the conclusion
of Die Frau's analytic journey is symbolized by the apparent corning of the dawn:
daybreak is an obvious metaphor for the return to lucidity. Whether day actually comes
for Die Frau is unclear, as she continues to sing of her night or darkness at the end of the
libretto. Die Frau's journey, like Elektra's, is cyclical: where Elektra's circle closes when
revenge is finally enacted, Die Frau's journey continues on in an endless circle of failed
cure. This failed cure is an important similarity between Die Frau's "course of analysis"
and Anna O.'s: it is now well known that Anna O.'s treatment was a failure, and that the
foundations of Freudian psychoanalysis were laid upon this failure. Anna O. continued
to suffer for years after her analysis with Breuer, who recognized her continued suffering
but felt powerless to help her. Die Frau is perhaps much more like Anna O. in this regard
than she is like the Anna O. of the Studies on Hysteria: both women, consigned to
analysis, are not cured but rather continue to suffer from reminiscences. The ambiguous
ending of Erwartung, which just seems to "wink out" in an ethereal rush of chromatic
glissandi, also hints at the "Dora" case, whose ending was somewhat abrupt and
unexpected, the analysis concluding before it was complete, a "cure" not effected. Freud
himself, many years after "Anna 0." and "Dora," wondered whether analysis was
something that could ever end, or if every analysis was necessarily incomplete. 53 Do we
witness, then, in Erwartung, both the scene of analysis and its impossibility?
53 See Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable," Standard Edition XXIlI, 211.
236
The corpse of the lover is also related to Elektra and the pathogenic nucleus: the
dead lover is Die Frau's Agamemnon, but instead of being haunted by a need for
revenge, she is consumed by the conflicting emotions of guilt, anger, tenderness and hurt.
I have described the corpse as an avatar: he is an embodiment of the psychoanalyst,
perhaps of Freud himself. In the Canadian Opera Company's 1993 production of
Erwartung by Robert LaPage, an omnipresent figure, clearly a note-taking psychoanalyst,
is added to the cast as a mute character. La Page's reading of the opera partially accords
with my own: psychoanalysis is like a character in the work. While LaPage interpolates
an allegorical figure, I contend that the corpse serves the same function. The corpse is
the "listener" in the monodrama's dialogue; as a corpse, he represents the analyst-as-
dead, or as a blank screen upon which the analysand's feelings are projected. While the
idea of the psychoanalyst as a blank screen is a commonplace in psychoanalytic thought,
it is not a term that Freud himself used. I assume that the idea of the blank screen derives
from the analytic "NeutralWit [neutrality]" that Freud begins to hint at in the Studies on
Hysteria. This neutrality, "one of the defining characteristics of the attitude of the analyst
during the treatment," should manifest itself as abstinence from counseling and from an a
priori interpretation of the analysand's discourse, based on the analyst's theoretical
orientation. 54 Laplanche suggests that this idea of neutrality gradually comes into focus
as psychoanalysis turns, in its early years, away from suggestion towards a less invasive
practice. In the Studies on Hysteria, Freud writes of the necessity of being an
"elucidator" and of maintaining an attitude of "sympathy and respect" towards the
54 Jean Laplanche and Jean-Batiste Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald
Nicholson-Smith (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1973),271.
237
analysand; in his paper "On Beginning the Treatment" (1913), he clarifies the importance
of analytic neutrality, describing the need for the analyst to take the standpoint of
"sympathetic understanding" [rather than a "moralizing" stance] and noting that "nothing
need be done but give him [the analysand] time" [i.e. to establish the transference]; in
1919 he reiterates this idea in the paper "Lines of Advance in Psycho-analytic Therapy,"
where he describes the neutrality of the analyst as a refusal to "decide [the] fate" of the
patient or to "force our own ideals upon him, and with the pride of a Creator to form him
in our own image and to see that it is good."sS In Freud's paper "Remembering,
Repeating, and Working Through" Freud alludes to the fact that the analyst's neutrality is
a technique that had evolved over time: "there was evolved the consistent technique used
today, in which the analyst gives up the attempt to bring a particular moment or problem
into focus."s6 It is easy to see how the analytic neutrality implied in these statements
developed over time into theoretical and therapeutic orthodoxy. Many post-Freudian
commentators refer to the "blank screen" as the analytic ideal, but few note that is not
explicitly described as such by Freud. Indeed, in the works up to and contemporaneous
with Erwartung, this is something that can only be implied; it is not a theoretical
postulate. However, Jacques Lacan, one of the most important post-Freudians, strikingly
describes this latent Freudian analytic neutrality as "se corpsfiat": the analyst becomes
corpse-like. "The analyst intervenes concretely in the dialectic of analysis by pretending
that he is dead, by cadaverizing his position ... he makes death present."S7 Lac ani an
psychoanalyst Stuart Schneiderman insists that "the crux of the analytic situation is the
55 Freud, quoted in Lapiance, The Language of Psychoanalysis, 271.
S6 Freud, "Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through," Standard Edition, Xl/, 147.
57 Jacques Lacan, "The Freudian Thing," in Ecrils, 140. This is patently the case, I think, in Erwartung
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deathlike silence of the analyst. .. This silence allows the patient to enter into a dialogue
with the dead, with his past."S8 For Schneiderman, "the analyst's place is the place of the
dead, in the singular, the unnamed ... The analyst is in the place of the dead whether he
likes it or not."S9 In this way, the analyst both intervenes in the analysand's discourse-
as metaphor for the "death" of the thing, implicit in the use of words as signifiers of the
thing-and becomes a "blank screen" upon which the analysand projects her feelings: the
analyst can thus embody or stand in the place of the analysand's unconscious, as she acts
out her relationships with others in the analytic process. This leads us to Freud's concept
of "transference," first described in the Studies on Hysteria.
Freud describes transference as playing a large part in the cathartic process.
Transference is a "false connection" between analyst and analysand: the patient transfers
"on to the figure of the physician the distressing ideas which arise from the content of the
analysis.,,60 In the "Dora" case, the problem of transference led to the early termination
of the analysis: Freud admitted in the postscript to the case history that he failed to take
into account the effects of the transference in time, allowing Dora to take revenge on him
by terminating the analysis early (Freud believed that Dora transferred her feeling about
Herr K. on to him; thus, taking revenge on Freud was the same as taking revenge on Hen
Stuart Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan: The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
58
Harvard University Press, 1983),76. My emphasis.
59Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan, 78. Schneiderman notes that the idea of the analyst as "dead but not
knowing it" can be traced back to one of the dreams interpreted by Freud in the Interpretation of Dreams.
A young man dreams that his father has died but is still talking to him as though he were still alive; the
father does not know that he is dead. Freud interprets this dream in terms of Oedipal guilt: "the father had
died because of the dreamer's wish and did not know that his son had wished him dead." Jacques Lacan,
78. Is it possible that the situation in Erwartung is a similar one, in which hatred has brought about a death,
a death accompanied by unbearable guilt for the monodrama's protagonist?
60 Freud, "Psychotherapy of Hysteria," in Studies on Hysteria, 390.
239
K.). Freud admitted to not recognizing the early signs of this transference, allowing Dora
to act out her revenge fantasy rather than having it corne to light in the course of the
analysis. Lacan, in describing Dora and the transference, insists upon the "positive
nonaction" of the analyst (i.e. the analyst as a blank screen) and also notes that despite
this nonaction, psychoanalysis is a dialectic process, a process in which "the mere
presence of the psychoanalyst brings, before any intervention, the dimension of
dialogue.,,61 Freud's case history of "The Rat Man" exemplifies both the function of the
transference and the effects of the non-action of the analyst. In the Rat Man case-
"Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis"-the Rat Man is angry at his father, who is
at the heart of his problems. In analysis, the Rat Man turned his anger towards Freud,
abusing him with foul language and physically moving away from him during the
analytic sessions. The Rat Man was simultaneously angry at Freud and afraid that Freud
would eventually hit him: he had put Freud in the place of his father, and in the course of
analysis his fear of his father and his desire for revenge became manifest, though not
through Freud's direct intervention. By playing the role of the Rat Man's father, Freud
becomes that role or occupies that position, rather than remaining the figure of the
analyst: in this way, the analysand is able to witness the manifestations of his fantasy and
interpret them himself. In this case, as Freud represents the blank screen, so the lover's
corpse represents the analyst-as-corpse, an enigmatic figure whose lack of response
nonetheless presupposes and facilitates an analytic dialogue with Die Frau. Thus, the
corpse is Freud's avatar, his embodiment in the monodrama, he makes death present.
Freud is prefigured by the mushrooms of Scene 3 that rise up like eyes on stalks to gaze
61 Lacan, "Intervention on the Transference," translated by Jacqueline Rose in In Dora's Case, 93.
240
at Die Frau. The mushrooms also underscore the importance of the psychoanalytic
"gaze" in the monodrama. Freud describes the importance of "scopophilia" in the
psychoanalytic relationship: some of his patients reject lying on the couch to be
psychoanalysed, because they want to look at the analyst and in turn be looked at. 62 The
mushroom eyes of Erwartung make it clear that we are present at the scene of analysis:
we are perhaps voyeurs in a sense, like those present at Charcot's eroticized
demonstrations of the treatment of hysterics; may also be watching the analyst observe
the analysand.
As Die Frau expresses a variety of emotions, directed at the body, we can imagine
that this is a psychoanalytic session, in which accusations, pleas, insults and revelations
are thrown at the analyst, who is impassive and who refuses to indulge her "scopophilia."
It is tempting, moreover, to infer a transference relationship between Die Frau and the
corpse/analyst: Die Frau acts out, with her analyst, the drama of her failed relationship
and all of the concomitant feelings it has inspired: the corpse-as-analyst is "one of the
imagoes of the people by whom [s]he was accustomed to be treated with affection.,,63 As
the analysis continues, Die Frau gains more and more clarity, her reminiscences going
deeper and deeper. Where she begins at "just a moment ago," she ends at "a year ago,"
62Freud, "On Beginning the Treatment," Standard Edition XII, 134. What Lacan describes as the "gaze"
seems to originate from Jean-Paul Sartre's term to describe that which enables one subject to recognize the
subjecthood of another, by becoming an object being seen by the other: "Ie regard" or "the look," now
commonly rendered as "gaze." It is interesting to note that Sartre describes "the look" as being manifested
not only by eyes, but by implication, as "when there is a rustling of branches ... or the slight opening of a
shutter." Sartre, quoted in Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacan/an Psychoanalysis, 72. I am struck
by the coincidental echoes of Erwartung, where rustling branches ("von Ast zu Ast") are a part of Die
Frau's foi-est; the slightly opened shutter recalls the house in the monodrama's fourth scene, whose
windows are all closed with dark shutters ["mit dunklen Laden geschlossen"].
63 Freud, "On Beginning the Treatment," 139.
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effectively reliving her trauma, remembering what she had forgotten, namely the clues
that pointed to her lover's infidelity. Die Frau is going through Tristan's delirium,
working her way back to the cause of her desire, which is in fact embodied in the corpse
of her lover. She recognizes, as Tristan does, her own complicity in her fate: she gave
herself too completely, perhaps, to the lover, who became the borders of her world and
the source of light and colour in her life and the cause of her "Erwartung"; Tristan
recognizes that he too is the architect of his own endless longing.
If Erwartung, like Elektra and Tristan, is an opera about memory, then I would
argue that it is as much about Schoenberg's memory as it is his unnamed protagonist.
Paul Griffiths has writes that the monodrama is "the product of an introspective
psychoanalysis,,,64 and I would argue that Erwartung uses the techniques and structures
of its precursors to enact a kind of self-analysis. Schoenberg creates a musical
accompaniment for a dramatis persona who is, as Susan McClary notes, his "surrogate."
However, where McClary regards Die Frau as Schoenberg's surrogate for rebellion (i.e.
he uses the character of the hysteric, with all of the concomitant gender implications, to
enact his atonal rebellion against the hegemony of tonality), I regard her as Schoenberg's
surrogate for psychoanalysis. Die Frau's hysteria is Schoenberg's own, perhaps a
manifestation of unresolved feelings towards Mathilde's affair, about which he remained
angry and troubled for decades. Die Frau is perhaps also Schoenberg's own Isolde,
filtered through the lens of Elektra. It is the contention of this thesis that if Erwartung is
part of an evolutionary process for Schoenberg, a process in which he posits himself as
the inheritor and continuer of a musical tradition, it is also the product of Schoenberg's
64 Paul Griffiths, A Concise History of Avant Garde Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978),33.
242
unconscious employment of Tristan and Elektra: they are each rungs on the evolutionary
ladder, but also part of the signifying chain on which Erwartung's interpretation as a
psychoanalytic work is predicated. Erwartung's "truth" is that it is the centerpiece of a
collection of musico-dramatic works obsessed with the failure of love. Atonality is the
analogue of this failure and its concomitant emotional distress. This truth, I assert,
inheres in Erwartung' s modeling itself on earlier operas that also address this theme.
Schoenberg's exploration of destroyed love and its concomitant personal affect is
facilitated by the use of a surrogate, a composite analysand modeled perhaps by
Schoenberg's librettist on Freudian case histories; she is modeled by Schoenberg on
Elektra, Klytamnestra and Isolde
What ties Tristan und Isolde, Elektra and Erwartung together, in my view, are the
following: their shared cyclical structures, predicated on an understanding of the psyche
that presages Freud in Wagner's case, and is contemporary with Freud in the case of
Strauss and Schoenberg; the depictions of dream interpretation through the use of
recurring musical signifiers to symbolize the processes of memory and analysis; and,
surprisingly, key association. In the latter case, it is my belief that no analyst or
commentator has yet to remark upon a connection between Erwartung, Tristan and
Elektra through key. I contend that Schoenberg linked Tristan and Elektra in Erwartung
because their dramatic themes resonated with his own personal experience, with his
desire: Tristan is a tale of idealized love, a work from Schoenberg's musical past that
itself is concerned with the effects of the past upon the present; Elektra is a revenge
fantasy, much closer temporally to Schoenberg's own personal trauma and unconcerned
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with love (in fact, love is almost entirely absent from Strauss' opera). Schoenberg's
choice of these two operas as models is obvious, as their respective content may have
mirrored disparate feelings of longing for a happier past and suffering from memories of
a trauma from the very recent past. More importantly, Schoenberg's models, and by
association the dichotomous feelings that accompany them, are juxtaposed, harmonically
and perhaps unconsciously, in Erwartung's putative tonal conclusion. As the analyses of
Fanning, Lessem, and Penney have shown, there is a particular tonal dichotomy
presented at the end of the fourth scene of the opera: D and B are engaged in a struggle
for primacy. While Lessem chooses to interpret this as "symbolic ... of the struggle
between expectation and frustration," I think it also signifies the struggle I have described
above, namely Schoenberg's struggle with the past, as represented in two different
operatic models. The D-B struggle in Erwartung is a metaphor for the TristaniElektra
duality: D minor is the opening key of Elektra, the key of Elektra's memory motive
("Agamemnon"); B major is the key in which Tristan closes. This is either a remarkable
coincidence, or it constitutes striking proof of Schoenberg's unconscious juxtaposing of
the two operas and their concomitant affects in Erwartung.
I have already described, above, the correspondences between the structures of
the three music dramas under consideration: they share a cyclical structure, a structure
that alludes to the psychology of desire. It is, after all, eros that is operative in all three
works. In Tristan, it is obvious that desire, so named at the work's apotheosis-Isolde's
final words are "hochste Lust! [highest pleasure or joy, but also "desire"]"-directs both
the action and the music of the opera. Tristan reveals the ceaseless pull of longing during
244
his delirium-his "analysis," as I have suggested-as the key to understanding his fate;
the unresolved harmonies of the opera symbolize what Lacan identifies as the circuit of
desire. For Lacan, desire-after Freud's "Wunsch [wish]"-is that which is never
fulfilled: desire does not seek its extinction, but rather its continuance. Desire is always
the desire for something one does not have; it is also "the desire of the Other," meaning
that desire takes as its object both that which is desired by someone else, and desire for
recognition. 65 As Lacan's account of the "Dora" case shows, desire is central to hysteria,
as the hysteric seeks to sustain desire by avoiding becoming the object of desire. Thus
Dora avoids being the object of Herr K.' s desire by identifying with him and
appropriating his perceived desire for Frau K., the homosexual element of the case
history that Freud admits to having overlooked: "I failed to discover in time and to
inform the patient that her homosexual (gynaecophilic) love for Frau K. was the strongest
current in her mentallife.,,66 Dora's desire, a key to Erwartung's plot, is also an echo of
Wagner's desire-ridden music drama. In Elektra, desire is perhaps less obvious, but the
presence of the "Tristan chord" reminds us that desire is not entirely absent here. The
"Tristan chord," however, is used structurally rather than affectively by Strauss, such that
the sexual longing implied by the chord in its original context is lost, as Strauss uses it
instead to bind harmonic elements together. 67 If longing is lost, an hysterical sexuality is
65Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, 37-38. Evans summarizes Lacan's

theories of desire as articulated in Lacan's collected essays, Bcrits and in his weekly seminars. The desire
for that which is desired by someone else is the desire to be the object of another's desire, the crux of the
Oedipal complex. The desire for recognition is a concept Lacan borrowed from Alexandre Kojeve's
writings on Hegel. It seems clear to me that desire is also the crux of the relationship between Gerstl,
Schoenberg, and Mathilde: for Schoenberg, both Mathilde and Gerstl may have become more "desirable"
by virtue of being desired by another; for GersH, Mathilde may have been desirable by virtue of being his
father-figure's wife; Mathilde may have desired Gerst! as her husband's muse.
66 See Chapter 3.
67 Tethys Carpenter, "The Musical Language of 'Elektra'," in Richard Strauss: Elektra, 92.
245
not, evidenced by Elektra's lack of sexuality: she is unmarried, and the etymology of her
name may point to alektros, meaning "without a marriage bed.,,68 This recalls both Anna
O. and Dora; in the latter's case history, Freud notes that "Incapacity for meeting a real
erotic demand is one of the most essential features of a neurosis,,69 On the other hand,
Elektra displays overt sexuality in her scene with her sister Chrysothemis, who only
wants to a woman's destiny (i.e. marriage). Elektra tries to convince her sister to aid her
in murdering their mother and step-father; in doing so, she flatters Chrysothemis and
speaks to her in a sexually-charged language:
Ich spUre durch die KUhle deiner Haut

das warme Blut hindurch, mit meiner Wange
spUr ich den Flaum auf deinen jungen Armen.
Du bist voller Kraft, du bist schon,
du bist wie eine Frucht an der Reife Tag.
[1 feel through the coolness of your skin

the warm red blood pulsate, and with my cheek
1 feel the soft down of your youthful arms.
You are full of strength, you are beautiful,
You are just like fruit on its ripest day.]
Elektra not only describes her sister's body in a homoerotic and evocative way, but goes
on to promise her that she will even attend to her on her wedding night, assisting her with
the act of consummation, preparing her for the bridegroom to take her to the marriage
bed. This hints at the sexuality of the hysteric, as in the Dora case, wherein every
symptom was determined by Dora's repressed sexual desires.
68P. E. Easterling, "Electra's Story," n Richard Strauss: Elektra, 12. Easterling questions this etymology,
but notes that it was familiar, if unconvincing. The name Elektra has ancient associations with "no
experience of a marriage bed." (J 3)
246
As Erwartung's plot concerns itself with the expression of the desire of Die
Frau-her desire for her dead lover, and the expression of desire as such in the structure
of monodrama-so the work's music articulates the function of desire generally-
through its free atonal idiom and chromatic plenitude-and also the nature of
Schoenberg's desire: in Erwartung, the composer is as much a subject of psychoanalysis
as his heroine, and arguably as much an hysteric. The Freudian hysteric suffers from
reminiscences: the monodrama, as I have already suggested, is a work about memory, not
merely Die Frau's memory, but also Schoenberg's. As Die Frau recalls her own trauma,
namely the discovery of her lover's infidelity, so Schoenberg musically dramatizes his
own trauma and its pathogenic effects. This is accomplished through self-quotation, most
obviously through the use of motives from "Am Wegrand." By using motivic material
from the song, often esoterically concealed, Schoenberg parallels the gradual process of
remembering in Erwartung's text. It is as though Schoenberg relives his own past
through the experiences of Die Frau, whose text he sets with fragments from his own
musical past, inspired by operatic precursors that establish opera as the scene of analysis.
As the scene of psychoanalysis, Erwartung dramatizes remembering through music: "Am
Wegrand," the central signifier of the past in the monodrama, is only gradually unfurled,
its melody revealed only in the smallest of musical elements, then tentatively stated, then
finally realized in conjunction with the text that it accompanied in the song. Falck
suggests that self-quotation in the monodrama is "a musical analogue to the 'talking
cure' ," in which Schoenberg relives "bits of his own musical past in the trance under
which this work seems to have been composed.,,70 This paints half the picture, as
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Schoenberg's musical past is inseparable from his personal history, especially in the case
of the atonal works and the works preceding them.
The shattering effect of Mathilde's infidelity on the composer is clearly
documented in Schoenberg's draft of a will, his TestamentsentwurJ71 In this handwritten
document, probably written sometime during the summer of 1908, after Mathilde had left
him for Gerst!, Schoenberg reveals how his feelings about his artistic life are connected
with his feelings about his wife. The first half of the document is concerned with the
nature of talent and Schoenberg's desire to have left a greater legacy; the second half
addresses his wife's affair. The will is a schizophrenic document, not only because it
conflates these two seemingly unrelated issues, but also in that is reveals Schoenberg as a
man so deeply wounded by his wife's infidelity that he creates, in effect, an alternate
reality for himself, in which the affair did not really happen to him, but rather to someone
his wife took him to be. Schoenberg also insists that, just as he was not the man his wife
imagined him to be, so she was not his wife, as his wife was a faithful woman; therefore,
she could not be his wife. Presaging Erwartung, perhaps, Schoenberg insists that the
facts of his marriage and the subsequent affair are all part of a dream, but dreams are for
those with "kleinen Hiren [little brains]," those who would attribute logic to dreams
through interpretation: "Traum zu deuten." Only the prophetic have dreams, and not the
disciples, Schoenberg seems to suggest, as understanding the illogicality of the dream is
proper only to the prophet. The affair, however, can be neither dream not fact for
Schoenberg. Therefore, he concludes, the affair did not happen to him at all; instead, it
71Schoenberg, Testamentsentwurf, Arnold Schoenberg Centre Archive. The subsequent paraphrases and
quotations are all taken from this document and the English translation by Thomas Walker (1991). While
the date for the Testamentsentwuifis not definitive, its content suggests the events of the summer of 1908.
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happened to a figure conjured up by his wife: "Diese Sache ist also gar nicht rnir passiert,
sondern irgendeiner Spottgeburt aus der Phantasie eines Weibes [This affair therefore
didn't happen to me, but to some kind of ridiculous figure conjured up by the imagination
of a woman]." He concludes, in turn, that his wife may have been an invention of his
own: thus, the affair simply could not have happened to him, not only because he was not
Mathilde's husband (she knew him only as a creation of her imagination) but also
because she was never his wife, but rather merely an embodiment of everything ugly.
It is beyond dispute that the TestamentsentwUli documents a mind in crisis and a
profoundly sad and difficult time in Schoenberg's life: it testifies to the emotional trauma
caused by his wife's betrayal, a trauma essential to an understanding of the early atonal
works, and Erwartung especially. In the TestamentsentwUlf, as I see it, the splitting of
the self described by Schoenberg sets the stage for the subsequent relationship between
Schoenberg and his surrogate in Erwartung. 72 When Schoenberg insists that the affair
did not happen to him, but to "some kind of ridiculous figure conjured up by the
imagination of a woman," I am struck by how this resonates with Erwartung, as though it
presages Pappenheim's Frau, who would be a sympathetic figure for Schoenberg on the
one hand, one with whom he would identify, but on the other the "ridiculous figure"
betrayed by a deceitful mate, with whom he would also identify. The Testamentsentwurf
establishes Schoenberg's psychological surrogate before the fact: the affair happened to
someone else, "Mich nicht-aber irgend einen andern, der ihre Schopfung ... ihr gleich,
oder doch entsprechend war-aber mich nicht [not me, but some other person, who was
72 As I have suggested earlier in this chapter, this splitting of the self is perhaps prefigured in the early
songs, wherein Schoenberg's two musical signatures, D and "Es," struggle for dominance.
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her creation ... her equal or similar to her-but not me]." Schoenberg's other, the "other
person" of this originary trauma, is in my view his surrogate in Erwartung. Schoenberg's
remarks on dreams, moreover, bring to mind Erwartung as an ambivalent dream world:
as the affair was both real and a dream in the Testamentsentwuif, so Schoenberg later
describes the monodrama as both set in a real forest and as an anxiety dream. As an
"Angsttraum," the monodrama is prefigured not only by "Traumleben" and by Tristan
and KlyUimnestra, but also by Schoenberg himself: Erwartung is the illogical dream of
the prophet.
I have sought to construct a sensible and compelling web of interpretation around
Erwartung, connecting it to its manifold psychological models and to those works
implicated in the monodrama as a music-dramatic representation of the act of analysis.
As a conclusion to my psychoanalytic approach to the monodrama, I would like to offer
one final interpretive gambit predicated on the waltz as a psychological signifier. I
believe that the waltz as a psychological signifier appears in his music in clusters, around
moments of crisis and change. Erwartung, the locus of so many aspects of Schoenberg's
life and music, is part of one of these clusters. With the exception of some early waltz
settings, waltzes or waltz-like moments in Schoenberg's oeuvre begin to occur in
numbers with the appearance of the first atonal works. While there is an argument to be
made for Schoenberg using the waltz as simply a familiar structural device for his new
atonal idiom, I think that there is more to it than that. The waltz, as of the turn of the
century in Vienna, was already a potent signifier: it represented at once an idealized past
and a musical analogue of the gilded fa<;ades against which the Expressionists revolted.
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The waltz stood for sentimentality, but also was a metaphor for the concealment of decay
beneath banality. In other words, the fin de siecle waltz was a signifier of ambivalence
towards the past. The waltz is employed, not without irony, in Strauss' Elektra. Scott
describes how Elektra switches roles between analyst and patient in the opera; Strauss
himself, she claims, also switches roles, shifting between composer and analysand.
When Elektra first appears in the opera, she sings of vengeance against those who
murdered her father, of how their blood will flow, and of how Agamemnon's horses and
hounds will be dutifully sacrificed. The music for this passage, Scott notes, is decidedly
waltz-like, though in 6/4 time:
If one did not refer to the score, it would be possible to mistake this time
signature for the distinctive 3/4 rhythm of the waltz. However, this is not
waltz time but a distorted version thereof; therefore it is not suggestive of an
elegant ballroom and flowing gowns. It is the stuff of gruesome tragedy.73
Strauss' deviant waltz, Scott claims, creates a gap between the subject matter of the text
and the music, between the high drama of Elektra' s gory monologue and the ballroom
images conjured up by the waltz rhythm. Strauss, while not Viennese, understood the
waltz as a potent signifier of Viennese culture, of both its past glory and its present
disintegration. The waltz in Elektra is both parodic, in that it pokes fun at "the epidemic
of hysteria into which Hofmannsthal's heroine was born" and is a comment on "the social
upheaval of the time." 74 Scott notes a series of successive references to the waltz,
beginning with Elektra's confrontation with her mother. It recurs at the moment when
Klytamnestra is informed of Orestes' death, and again before Elektra' final dance. In the
73 Scott, "Elektra After Freud," 183.
74 Scott, "Elektra After Freud," 185-86.
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first instance, Klytamnestra's naivety is parodied by the ironic waltz; in the second
instance, Elektra is "victimized by the sweet waltz," as her mother celebrates Orestes'
death; in the final instance, the waltz precedes the most serious moment of the opera,
Elektra's death dance, but dares not impose itself ironically, as Strauss signals "the abrupt
end to the grace and charm of an era that haunted Europe just as Agamemnon haunted
Argos." 75 As the waltz in Elektra simultaneously signifies memory in the form of both
nostalgia and hateful recollection of suffering, so too does it say something about Strauss'
own relationship to the past. Elektra is an opera whose heroine has an "ambiguous
relationship to paternal imagery"; Strauss, argues Scott, had a similar "father complex";
If Agamemnon is the most obvious musical representation of a father

in the opera, the Strauss waltz is no less pervasive as a paternal
presence ... We have in this text [Le. the opera as a "text," not the libretto]
not one father but two or even three: Agamemnon, Johann Strauss and Franz
Strauss. While I am not suggesting that Strauss suffers from clinical neurosis
as such, I do mean to point out that Elektra is not alone in her conflicted
relationship to her male parent. And if Hofmannsthal' s Elektra is a 'dramatic
cure' for its librettist's 'aphasic crisis,' we might call the opera 'musical
therapy' for Strauss' unconscious conflicts with his musical father, his
biological father, and his cultural and historical fathers. If the composer is
indeed playing with Vienna's collective cultural 'crise de neufs,' it is
equally plausible that he is working out the uncertainties of his paternal
allegiances to Johann Strauss and Richard Wagner, as part of a larger
struggle between his respect for musical tradition and a yearning to exploit
new, chromatic and dissonant tonal structure. 76
The waltz, signifying for Strauss the ambivalence he felt regarding his father's distaste
for modern music versus his own love of Wagner and new, modern musical resources,
turns Elektra into a vehicle for "musical therapy," or as I prefer to see it, a kind of
psychoanalysis, in which memory and personal relationships are played out through
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music and text. Not only is the main character psychoanalyzed as her relationship to her
father (and by extension the past) is explored through the interpolation of waltz, a
musical signifier of an idealized past and also of a darker, disintegrating present, but so is
the composer, for whom his heroine is a vehicle for his own analysis.
It is easy to mark the comparisons between the Straussian self-analysis of Elektra
and Erwartung, and I would argue that both works even share the waltz as a key
psychological signifier. There is a precedent for Schoenberg's use of the waltz to mark
trauma and crisis: in the Op.lO string quartet, completed around the time of Mathilde's
affair, there is the Ach, du Zieber Augustin quote ("Alles is hin") which lilts decisively
like a waltz in 6/8 time. The fifth of the Five Orchestra Pieces, Op.16 is not only the
model for Erwartung, as I argue in Chapter 1, but is also "an orchestral waltz," according
to Simms, in which the instruments pass around the "obligatory recitative" like characters
"in a ballroom filled with swirling dancers." 77 This piece was composed in the weeks
prior to Erwartung' s genesis. It is interesting to note that Schoenberg composed this
"waltz" after having sent the first four of the orchestral pieces to Richard Strauss, in the
hopes that they would be performed. Strauss indicated, in his reply, that they were too
experimental to be performed in Berlin, and if Schoenberg would only hire his own
orchestra he would hear the problems in performance. 78 Is it merely a coincidence that
Schoenberg then composed an orchestral waltz, immediately following Strauss'
rejection? It is especially poignant, given Scott's analysis above: is it not plausible that
Schoenberg composed a waltz as a means of coping with Strauss' rejection, appropriating
77 Simms, "The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg," 81.
78 Simms, "The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg," 73.
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Strauss' musical signifier of ambivalent relations with a father figure? This is perhaps
too much of an interpretive stretch, but it does lead me to the waltz in Erwartung, a work
undeniably influenced by Strauss.
In Erwartung, the waltz is contained within the "Am Wegrand" quotation. As
Diane Penney has shown, some of the accompaniment of the song is comprised of what
she calls "waltz thirds" in the left hand of the piano part. These thirds, she asserts,
comprise much of the harmonic and motivic texture of the monodrama. The quoted
melody of the song, moreover, has something of a 6/8 waltz-like lilt to it, though it is not
a waltz (perhaps it is, at best, a Straussian distorted waltz). While the presence of the
waltz elements are so deeply integrated that they cannot really be heard as such, to me
they may comprise part of Schoenberg' self-analysis, along with the references to
Tristan, Elektra, and the early songs. If the waltz is integrated into the entire texture of
the work, as Penney suggests, then perhaps the entire monodrama is a working out of
Schoenberg's ambivalence, at the most superficial level, towards the Viennese culture
that had shunned him and, like Strauss, to his own musical forefathers~ at a deeper level,
it speaks to his engagement with Richard Strauss and Elektra; at the deepest level, it
represents his ambivalence towards his wife Mathilde, whose affair with Gerstl had so
deeply divided the composer's psyche. It is, above all else, a signifier of the past, and as
with all of the musical and textual quotations from earlier works, it signifies
Schoenberg's own hysteria, his suffering at the hands of memory. Schoenberg's musical
quotations and allusions appear here in the musical and textual fabric of Erwartung as
part of the act of analysis. Falck, writing about the "Am Wegrand" and "Traumleben"
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quotations in the monodrama, notes "Because both quotations are effectively hidden from
all but the Schoenberg specialist, they may reflect the deep psychology of the piece's
musical persona rather than function as references in the more conventional sense.
Unlike most quotations, these are evidently not meant to be recognized-except by the
'patient' and the 'analyst'-an extreme case of musical psychoanalysis.,,79 While Falck's
analysis concludes with the caveat that "two [musical] quotations do not establish the
memory episodes as fundamental to the work in the same way that they are fundamental
to the text or to the Freudian psychoanalytic method," he does indicate that this might be
the case if more quotations were found, and he has a "hunch" that there are more to be
found. Here, in this thesis, as I write my last few sentences, I discover that I have played
out, or tried to play out Falck's insightful hunch in my own approach to the work. I have
endeavored to reveal a chain of associations at work in Erwartung, culminating in
Schoenberg's depiction of the scene of psychoanalysis as part of an act of self-analysis. I
take what Falck calls Erwartung's "musical persona" to be Schoenberg himself, whose
psyche is deeply invested in the monodrama as (musical) memory. Freud is there too,
courtesy of not only Pappenheim, but also Richard Strauss and Schoenberg's own
understanding; it is Freud who governs the deployment of symbols, their resonance, and
the path of analysis that Die Frau and Schoenberg both follow. Psychoanalysis is not the
only key to Erwarfung, but I have found that Freud's "picklocks," applied cautiously,
have opened doors into the meaning of the monodrama that shed light on its inner
workings and reveal much about its composer, its historico-cultural milieu and the role
that the unconscious may play in the composition of music.
POSTLUDE
In this thesis, I have shown how Schoenberg's monodrama Erwartung has long
been regarded as either the scourge of analysis and so not analysed, has had its putative
motivic structure revealed without revealing the work's deeper meaning, or has had its
effects explained through an unquestioned and increasingly exhausted quasi-
psychoanalytic taxonomy. The goal of this thesis was to examine in greater depth the
psychoanalytic program attached to Erwartung, to answer the questions "How is this a
psychoanalytic work?" and "What can psychoanalysis, in turn, tell us about the
monodrama?" To that end, I have investigated in some detail the cultural milieu in which
Erwartung was conceived and composed, its place in Schoenberg's oeuvre, and its
autobiographical significance. My survey of the musicological literature that
presupposes connections between Erwartung and psychoanalysis shows, I believe, that
musicologists have not devoted much time to the original insights of Adorno on the work
as psychoanalysis, insights that I have tried to pursue in this thesis. The idea that the
monodrama itself constitutes a kind of psychoanalytic case history has been explored in
some depth in the third chapter of the thesis, where I describe the many textual
congruities between the libretto of Erwartung and a number of Freudian case studies. I
believe that my own interpretation of the monodrama-that it is modeled, consciously or
unconsciously, on a small handful of operas and Lieder concerned with the theme of
destroyed love or broken relationships, becoming in effect Schoenberg's psychoanalytic
surrogate-is a plausible one, and one that presupposes the scene of psychoanalysis as
255
256
both the originary textual and compositional model for the work, and that psychoanalysis
holds the key to interpreting Erwartung.
I have suggested here that Erwartung is not merely one link in the evolutionary
chain of modern music, but also, after Mellers, that it is one like in a chain of works
concerned with the musical expression of the psyche. Beginning with Wagner, we see an
increasing interest in musical settings of allegorical mental dramas, culminating in
Erwartung, a work which does not simply dramatize the process of psychoanalysis (i.e.
the treatment of neurosis by making the unconscious conscious) but also performs the act
of analysis through music and text. One could argue that this process continues in
Erwartung's companion piece, Die glUckliche Hand, wherein the trauma of the Gerstl
affair is acted out directly, using Schoenberg's own text; however, Die gliickliche Hand,
to me, is more like an opera, like a carefully crafted dramatic product, then the barely-
mediated musical abreaction that is Erwartung. If Erwartung is Schoenberg's surrogate
psychoanalysis, then in Die glUckliche Hand the originary trauma has been fully brought
to consciousness and can be symbolized, not censored, in art. It is the end of analysis. It
seems to me, though, that there is another work that serves as a coda to the monodrama-
as-psychoanalysis, a work not by Schoenberg, but by one of his much younger admirers:
Kurt Weill.
Weill, who began his career as an opera composer in Berlin, gained notoriety in
Europe for his eclectic Dreigrochenoper, and subsequently became famous in America
for his Broadway musicals, especially Knickerbocker Holiday, Down in the Valley and
257
Street Scene. A student of Busoni's in Berlin, Weill's early music is decidedly
Schoenbergian in character: modern, dissonant and expressive. Collaboration with
Bertholt Brecht in the 1920s and 30s led to Weill's adoption of a variety of new idioms in
his work, including jazz, and the composition of politicized music dramas like Aufstieg
und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. Weill moved to New York in the 1930s and composed a
number of successful and accessible musicals for Broadway. In 1940, Weill composed
one of his more successful works, the musical Lady in the Dark, to a text by Ira
Gershwin. It is my contention that this work is yet another link in the genealogical chain
of psychoanalytic music dramas I have examined in this thesis, perhaps the apotheosis of
the genre. In Lady in the Dark, Weill makes explicit that which is latent in works like
Erwartung and Elektra, namely the scene of psychoanalysis. While understanding the
context of these two latter works-their complex connections to Freudian
psychoanalysis-is key to their interpretation, Weill's musical is an overt dramatization
of an increasingly popularized version of psychoanalysis. Where Erwartung' s difficult
musical idiom, opaque text and poorly-documented genesis partially conceal the work's
true nature, Weill's musical is an unabashed staging of a psychoanalytic encounter
between analyst and analysand.
Lady in the Dark, I contend, can be regarded as a kind of re-composed version of
Erwartung: the musical idiom is different (extremely tonal). and the staging and
characters are superficially different, but the dramatic conceit is the same, as is the means
of representing psychoanalytic processes through music. The musical tells the story of a
young woman named Liza Elliot. Liza is having a mental crisis, due in part to her
258
concerns about an affair she is having with a married man. She visits a psychoanalyst for
help, and he promptly begins interpreting her dreams. She has four dream scenes in the
musical, each related to a childhood neurosis that is resolved as the work ends. The work
is divided into reality and dream sequences. The first dream occurs at the beginning of
the analysis, as Liza worries about her relationship with her married lover: she has the
escapist "Glamour Dream." The next scene takes place in Liza's office. Her married
lover comes to see her and tells her he is planning to divorce his wife: Liza then has a
"Wedding Dream," in which a movie star falls in love with her. The advertising manager
at the firm where Liza works then shows her a planned magazine layout with a circus
theme; Liza promptly has a "Circus Dream" before returning to her analyst. The circus
scene dissolves into a courtroom, as Liza is "charged" with not being able to make up her
mind about marrying her lover. As the courtroom scene reaches its climax, the jury
begins to hum the tune that has been plaguing Liza since the start of the musical, and she
is accused of being afraid of the music, just as she is afraid to make up her mind, to
"compete" as a woman. In Liza's final dream, the "Childhood Dream," she recalls the
complete tune and sings it, thereby resolving her neurosis. She is then able to make up
her mind and marry her true love, whose arrival is foreshadowed in the lyrics of her
forgotten song. She suffers, in other words, from hysterical reminiscences, albeit in the
context of a Broadway musical comedy. The underlying psychoanalytic conceit is clear:
she is effectually emotionally paralysed by something she remembers only fragmentarily;
she requires the intervention of a psychoanalyst, who interprets her dreams and helps to
make conscious their unconscious content. In this case, the unconscious content is
musical, a tune from the past; it is in this regard that I suggest a connection between
259
Weill's musical and Erwartung, a work I believe to be haunted by its own ghostly tunes
from the past.
I realize all too well the difficulty of drawing such a conclusion definitively. As
have argued in this thesis, one could make virtually anything of the melodic material in
Erwartung: it is motivically over-ripe, malleable and always open to a variety of
interpretations. What I have tried to show in my study is that, while the work is a multi-
layered and polyvalent text, at the same time an interpretive approach that takes into
account both the general psychology of its milieu together with the specific psychology
of its sole character, its creators, and its music draws a tight circle around an otherwise
amorphous music drama. Erwartung is, I conclude, a psychoanalytic music drama: it is
not only a product of its time and place (and so Freudian), but also one of a number of
musico-dramatic works in which an analytic relationship is played out; its textual drama
is invested with real trauma, an hysteria manifested in the music; and its music and text
offer to the interpreter the same over-determined enigma of the dream. Erwartung, above
all else, invites interpretation, and this thesis is just one of many attempts to bring to light
new aspects of this most beautiful, disturbing, and fascinating work.
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Carpenter, Alexander - Erwartung & The Scene of Psychoanalysis (PHD Diss, 2004)

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ERWARTUNG AND THE SCENE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS:

INTERPRETING SCHOENBERG'S MONODRAMA

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

© Alexander Carpenter 2004

Acquisitions and Acquisisitons et

395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington

Your file Votre reference

The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriete du

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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires

Erwartung and the Scene of Psychoanalysis:

Arnold Schoenberg's 1909 monodrama Erwartung is regarded as his first major

My good friend and fellow doctoral candidate Achilles Ziakris was my

CHAPTER ONE: SCHOENBERG, FREUD AND ATONALITY 8

Schoenberg's Vienna, Freud's Vienna 8

CHAPTER TWO: PSYCHOANALYTIC TAXONOMY AND ERWARTUNG 48

Adorno on Schoenberg's Psychoanalytic Music 48

CHAPTER THREE: ERWARTUNG AND FREUDIAN CASE HISTORIES 108

Buchanan's "Key" to Erwartung 155

Charles Rosen and Erwartung's Musical Texture 167

CHAPTER FIVE: ERWARTUNG AND THE SCENE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 198

The Tristan Connection 200

In August of 1909, Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg began working on

controversial compositions of the early twentieth century. Erwartung is a free atonal

composed by unconscious intuition. How do we approach such a work interpretively, a

a seemingly inchoate collection of phrases, exclamations and disconnected thoughts; it

does not immediately provide meaningful access to the work. Erwartung is a

problem of perspective: with no other characters to relate to, it is difficult to establish

forest, but is unclear whether it is real or hallucinated, as there is a profound sense of

unreality to this work (although its emotional kaleidoscope is almost claustrophobically

the dark woods? Do we dare follow her?

Experiencing Erwartung can leave one bemused and overwhelmed; listening to

are left with a decidedly non-traditional operatic ending: there is resolution, no

initially appears as a work of such complexity-and invested with so much subjectivity-

almost invariably perpetuate the same psychological-historical narrative; and textual

In this thesis, I propose a psychoanalytic interpretation of Erwartung. This kind

of interpretation seems obviously appropriate to me; it is perhaps the only interpretation

assembled by Sigmund Freud, a contemporary of Schoenberg and an important key, I

will argue, to Erwartung's secrets. It is my contention that Erwartung is a

psychoanalytic opera, a work in which Schoenberg had a deep psychological investment,

analytic scene: it is a case of musical psychoanalysis.

discussion of what I take to be a definitive moment in Schoenberg's life, his wife

Schoenberg's rejection of tonal composition in favour of free atonality: atonality is, I

believe, as much a barometer of the psyche as it is the result of evolutionary inevitability.

Chapter 2 is a survey of the musicological literature that characterizes Erwartung

understanding of the monodrama has been hindered by the evolution of a now-exhausted

relation to psychoanalysis. Beginning with Theodore Adorno's claim that the

In Chapter 3, I examine in detail the connections between Freudian case histories

Pappenheim, and Erwartung' s librettist, a connection used to explain textual

my assertion of the monodrama's Freudian roots through a critique of a recent attempt to

re-interpret the monodrama as an early feminist-and therefore anti-Freudian-text.

at textual congruencies along with larger structural parallels. My interpretation also

reappear in some form in Erwartung; this, I conclude, is key to a psychoanalytic

from reminiscences. Ultimately, I believe that Erwartung represents the scene of

her psychic collapse accompanied by fragments of melodies from Schoenberg's own

traumatic discovery of her lover's infidelity; in Schoenberg's case, the monodrama

My thesis concludes with what I regard as a "coda," a discussion of one of the

by Wagner but ultimately made possible by Schoenberg's explicit dramatic conflation of

cast in Schoenberg's nascent atonal idiom, a perfect analogue to Freudian psychoanalytic

theory and therapy, and a kind of therapy itself.

Schoenberg, Freud, and Atonality

Schoenberg's Vienna, Freud's Vienna