DIKA NEWLIN

:en miles Vien?a, and taught in the central part of Vienna af-
service was very poor from Modling-too little coal
pply-so, m order to be in Vienna by two in the afternoon th
after an extremely early and equally'
unc . y t e time they reached the Vienna station he and Web
would so enfeebled by hunger that they would h;ve to go into
and for themselves, at a cost higher than that of
e . ram-tic et, a thm cake made of-ground-up beetles! To such
straits they_ were reduced; and in spite of their weakness they had to
hours a day. "And these things will be
. he said, his eyes almost filling with tears as he
e. !dis war IS sad-so sad-" There was really nothing any
us cou . say _to him-we know, all of us, what he must be oin
thro:gh, With his and his wife's relatives and friends in such d!ng g
:reknow.hThe we could do was to tactfully switch
]ec ac tot e Verezn as soon as we could He'd b I d
up to th t . h h . are y warme
" agam w en t e bell rang and he had to take his leave
But I will tell you more next time'" he cried b k h
good-bye at the door. . ac at us as e waved
American Composers Alliance, New York
Selected Publications by Dika Newlin
Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg New York- King' C p
in pr w W N ' s rown ress, 1947, new ed
Z I ep.v . . orton, 1977. German translation bv C. Nemeth and H.
e zer, Jenna: Bergland-Verlag, 1954.
Leibowitz Rene Schoenb d H' h
New York Ph'! h'erg an ts Sc ool. (translated by Dika Newlin),
Press, 1970 1949; reprinted, New York: Da Capo
Schoenberg Arnold St z dId ( d'
N I' ) N Y e ea. e 1ted and partially translated by Dika
ew ' ew York: Phliosophical Library, 1950. (All but 2 of the
in enlarged edition by Leonard Stein, London:
Works of Amdd Schoenberg: A Catalogue of His Composi-
U(trSanbslatFed by Dika Newlin), London:
" ' m Y ree Press, N.Y.)
The S/choenberg-Nachod Collection: A Preliminary Report" Musrcal Q
ter y, January 1968. ' uar-
136
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SCHOENBERG'S PREMONITION,
OP. 22, NO. 4, IN RETROSPECT
JONATHAN M. DUNSBY
R
ILKE'S image of a lonely, prophetic being in the grip of an intense
struggle, before the world "below" has even sensed the unrest,
must have struck a deep resonance in Schoenberg as he set the poem
Vorgefuhl, between the 19th and 28th of July, 1916. Op. 22 was the
only work Schoenberg published in the decade separating Pierrot
Lunaire (1912) and the Fiinf Klavierstiicke, Op. 23 (1923); thus it
stands between the culmination of his pre-war period and the first
published experiments with twelve-tone composition. The image
was an appropriate one for the future of Schoenberg's music, though
at the time he was still not fully aware of the course this would take
and of the turmoil it would bring him over the next three decades.
The spiritual message of Rilke's poem was a realistic vision of the
future. The religious preoccupations of the four poems Schoenberg
chose for Op. 22
1
fit into a growing sense of self-awareness and iden-
tity which, as Alexander Ringer observes, spanned at least the
period from 1912 to Schoenberg's reconversion to Judaism in 1933.
2
Perhaps, then, his spiritual concerns and his observations of the war
around him fused into the worst premonition of all-a sense that a
precedent was being set in Europe for the kind of carnage which
would soon be directed against the Jewish people.
Schoenberg's choice of text provokes many possible explanations,
but the music remains enigmatic. "Elusive, motivically dense and
tightly threaded, rhythmically free and floating, subtler and more
1
Summarized by Malcolm MacDonald in Schoenberg (Dent, London, 1976, The
Master Musician; Series), p. 180.
'"Arnold Schoenberg and the Prophetic Image in Music" (Journal of the Arnold
Schoenberg Institute, Vol. I, No. I, October 1976), p. 28.
137
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JONATHAN M. DUNSBY
iridescent in colour than almost any other Schoenberg score"3 in
terms of style, it is equally elusive for analysis. Here we propose to
examine the music looking backward rather than ahead, using the
same tools which give an authentic picture of Schoenberg's spiritual
and emotional life-the composer's own materials and discourse.
The manuscript of Op. 22 in the possession of the Arnold Schoen-
berg Institute is a fair copy. Vorgefuhl is virtually identical with the
published score except for the layout of the study-score notation.
This layout was changed for publication from a later manuscript
copy, owned by Universal Edition, Vienna.
4
It seems that no sketches
of the song survive.
The Los Angeles manuscript is written in two inks, black and pur-
ple. The vocal line and mm. 1-9 (second beat) and 24-27 of the or-
chestra are written in black, and appear to have preceded work in
purple on the orchestral accompaniment between mm. 9 (third beat)
and 23. Schoenberg's corrections and additions provide two more
phases of evidence. The portions in black are annotated in purple,
and the purple in turn has black annotation. Thus there were prob-
ably three periods of work in the sequence black/purple/black.5 It
can at least be assumed that the vocal line was written before most
of the accompaniment, which matches the origin of Op. 22, No. 1,
where Schoenberg wrote and revised the vocal line before working
on the orchestral score. The evidence of the manuscript therefore
indicates that Schoenberg's first concern was to invent a melody for
the verse. The initial orchestral ideas were perhaps equally part of
the first conception, but more than half of the accompaniment mea-
sures were a later working out.
3
MacDonald, Joe. cit.
4
The first fifteen measures of Universal's copy of Op. 22, No. 4 are published in
facsimile in Arnold Schonberg Gedenkausstellung, 1974 (Universal, Vienna, 1974, ed.
Ernst Hilmar), p. 146 (Catalogue number: 271). Joseph Rufer, in The Works of Arnold
Schoenberg (Faber, London, 1962, trans. Dika Newlin), p. 41, savs that Universal's
copy is in the handwriting, with the exceptiOn of 'Seraphita',"
whereas Umversal clatms m the catalogue (op. cit.) that it is a Schoenberg holograph
(see p. 262). Another confusion in the history of the manuscripts is that the Los An-
geles copy has engraver's annotation in pencil, though clearly it was not used for
publication. A description of the manuscripts can be found in Studien zur Enllvicklung
des dodekaphonen Satzes bei Arnold Schonberg by Jan Maegaard (Hansen, Copenhagen,
1972), VoL I, pp. 86--89. It seems that Rufer was mistaken. Most important here,
however, ts the fact that the Los Angeles version of Vorgefuhl was the first.
5
Thts is con!"irmed by an instrumentation sheet attached to Schoenberg's
manuscnpt. The score ttself shows that purple ink followed black at one stage: the
attached sheet shows that black followed purple.
138


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SCHOENBERG'S PREMONITION, OP. 22
The song covers only twenty-seven measures, in which the text is
set almost without melisma, with only short rests between clauses
or lines. The orchestral accompaniment provides a complex effect
for this brief conception. It is compressed both vertically, in its pas-
sages of counterpoint in four or five differentiated parts, and hori-
zontally, in its rapid flow of contrasting material and texture. This
complexity is the function of an idea of sound which Schoenberg
describes in his analysis of Op. 22. Speaking of Vorgefuhl, he com-
ments that:
My orchestration is preponderantly soloistic and, despite the fre
quently high number of parts, it is mostly transparent
It is worth noting that even where Schoenberg's account seems most
informal (he does not analyse the last song, but gives illustrations of
its characteristic sound) it is still penetrating. The notion of trans-
parency, as well as his other general points about the audibility of
everything that is written, about using the medium appropriately,
and about extending the possibilities of colorfulness (in this case to
the low registers), can be taken as a prospectus for examining his
orchestration. Here, as is often the case with Schoenberg, the appa-
rently casual remarks represent a comprehensive basic picture,
which has some historical point. The features Schoenberg identifies
make it clear that the unconscious, expressionistic necessity which
often appears to govern such music, producing, for example, an un-
usual relationship between the scope of the form and the instrumen-
tation (for which Berg's Altenberglieder, 1912, were a precedent), was
nevertheless subject to quantifiable intentions. The goal of "color-
fulness" explains why the four songs demand a large orches-
tra (though for each song this resource is used selectively), and
"transparency," "audibility" and sensitivity in the accompani-
ment are qualities which yield distinct technical constraints for the
orchestration.
Naturally the independent vocal line is a simpler conception, and
one which is relevant in understanding the construction of the song,
or so the manuscript evidence suggests. Schoenberg observes that
'"Analysis of the four orchestral songs Op. 22" (Perspectives on Schoenberg and
Stravinsky, Norton, New York, 1972, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone: Re-
printed from PNM, Vol. 3, No.2, Spring-Summer 1965; translated and annotated by
Claudio Spies), pp. 43-44.
139
JONATHAN M. DUNSBY
"these songs do not dispense with logic-but I cannot prove it."7 He
does, however, attempt to prove that there is logic in Brahms's
songs, through melodic analysis. This example of what he values as
progress in musical language
8
presumably has significance for his
?wn music, _a significance which may be reversed-what is progress
m Brahms IS a test of the continuity between Brahms's language
and pre-twelve-tone construction when it appears in Schoenberg.
orchestral introduction of Vorgefuhl is a four-measure phrase;
but Its two-measure melodic motives make an irregular synthesis.
The violin motive is extended over a contracted cello motive, and
the entry of the first two-measure vocal phrase is elided with the or-
in. m. 4. This kind of tension, between the relative propor-
tiOns-which here are simple ones where the ideas have one- and
two-measure backgrounds-and relative positioning, is typical in
Brahms.
9
The first verse of the text opposes an ich-who senses the coming
winds-with the peaceful world below:
Ich bin wie eine Fahne von Fernen umgeben.
Ich ahne die Winde, die k6mmen, und muss sie Ieben,
wiihrend die Dinge U.nten sich noch nicht nihren
Die Tiiren schliessen noch sanft und in den Kaminen ist Stille
die Fenster zittern noch nicht, und der Staub ist noch schwer. ;o
The first three lines, all pentameters, are set in two measures each
beginning either with an anacrusis to the second beat (mm. 4 and 6)
or on the second beat (m. 8). In the second and third lines the
phrases extend onto the following first beat (mm. 8 and 10). These
are examples of the type of irregularity Schoenberg dis-
cusses m Brahms. In "Brahms the Progressive" he argues that ir-
regularity is most advanced when it transcends the demands of
''"Analysis,'" op. cit., p. 39.
'In '"Brahms the Progressive" (Style and Idea Faber, London, 1975, ed. Leonard
Stein). '
my discussion of '"Brahms the Progressive'" in '"Analytical Studies of Brahms"
(D1ss., Umvers1ty of Leeds, 1976).
. '
0
The poem is from Das Buch der Bilder by Rainer Maria Rilke. Mv literal transla-
tions:
140
I am like a flag surrounded by distance.
I sense the winds which come and must endure them
while the things below do not yet move: '
The doors still close softly and in the hearths is peace;
the wmdows do not yet shake, and the dust is still heavy.
(
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SCHOENBERG'S PREMONITION, OP. 22
dramatic necessity.
11
There are grammatical reasons in the text for
connecting lines 2 and 3 in opposition to line 1. Nevertheless there is
a purely musical development against the background of regular
phrasing and varied repetition (see Ex. 1, "x"), especially as the final
extension ("riihren", mm. 9-10) tends to oppose the textual articula-
tion at the colon.
The next four clauses of the text (lines 4 and 5) are set with the
same kinds of rhythmic figure, but in new extensions which affect
the musical meter itself. The background to this might be seen as
four !-measure ideas in l (Ex. 1, "y"). The first extension (m. 10) is
perhaps illustrative-of the rhyme "riihrenffuren" (Ex. 1, "z"), but
other solutions would have been feasible (Ex. 2).
Example 1
r ... u)
y (,.,. 11.)
Example 2
(n.e .. stn..tior> cf. ax.1)
9
11
Op. cit., pp. 417-18.
141
JONATHAN M. DUNSBY
In his unpublished notes about the musical idea and its representa-
tion,12 Schoenberg records that in general he prefers accentual vari-
ety to irregular meter because it gives a better representation of
" h th . b I " 13 d
r Y m1c su t ety, an uses an example which also appeared in
"Brahms the Progressive," from Mozart's Piano Quartet in G minor,
K. 478.
14
The metrical irregularity here is best explained in terms of
the kind of illustrative necessity which Schoenberg considers to
have been one of the first impetuses to "musical prose," in the clas-
sical period.'' As Ex. 1 "y" shows, the rather agitated rhythmic fig-
ures of the opening lines need modification for a setting of lines 4
and 5; and the symmetry of the j + l + l + j pattern (mm. 10-13)
allows the metrical extensions to complement the sense of Rilke's
colon (m. 10), which marks off the following two-line cameo describ-
ing "Dinge unten."
The second verse of the poem contrasts in sense and construction
with the first:
Da ich die S tiirme sch6n und bin erregt wie das Meer.
Und breite mich aus und falle in mich hinein
fund werfe _mich ab und bin ganz allCin
Un dem grossen Sturm
1

For an outpouring of the ich, convulsing alone in the storm, five
clauses are linked by the conjunction "und" and a period separates
the second and third. The meter of the text makes the symmetrical
pattern-hexameter/pentameter/hexameter, if the last two lines are
together. Schoenberg's proportioning is also symmetrical,
with a 4 + 2 + 4 pattern of measures (again counting mm. 21-24 as
setting one line). But the metrical irregularity of these measures
"::ner musikalische Gedanke und die Logik, Technik und Kunst seiner Darstell-
ung (The musical idea and the logic, technique and art of its presentation), in the
possesswn of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute.
13
Schoenberg records a similar idea, where rhythmic subtletv as a function of
phrase length and shape in relation to is to be disti;.,_guished from the
simple effects of syncopatiOn, as a footnote to the beginning of the third movement of
the Wmd Quintet, Op. 26.
14
0p. cit., Ex. 51.
"Ibid., p. 411.
16
Now I already know the storms and am agitated like the sea.
And spread myself out and wrap into mvself
and throw myself down and am quite alone
in the great storm.
142


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SCHOENBERG'S PREMONITION, OP. 22
shows his freedom here from the scansion of the text:
(upbeat) 1 3 + 2 + 2 + 3
1
3 + 3
1
3 + 4 + 3 + 4
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Schoenberg notes that Brahms liked to reproduce the accentual
pattern of a text in the musical construction, through the number of
measures or beats. If he has followed Brahms's procedure here it is
most apparent in the five measures, corresponding to a pentameter,
from the opening to the end of the first line, and in the three times
two-measure construction of mm. 4-10, which corresponds to the
similar scansion of lines 1-3. In the rest of the song, the "ir-
regularities are more than the meter of the poem demands,"17 at the
same time as being always proportionally related to that meter. The
proportional relationships might be seen as forming a progression in
terms of their level of operation-from conventional phrasing in
regular meter, to the juxtaposition of irregular numbers of beats in a
symmetrical arrangement of measures, to the sophisticated rela-
tionship between numbers of down-beats (of which Schoenberg was
aware, as the Gedanke manuscript indicates) in irregular measures.
I
N his analysis of Op. 22, Schoenberg notes that the musical pro-
cesses are not readily analysed, for one reason because " ... com-
positions for texts are inclined to allow the poem to determine, at
least outwardly, their form" and here this tendency "appears con-
spicuously": thus it is "not feasible ... to present an analysis in the
older sense by citing the main theme, subsidiary theme, development
sections, repetitions, etc .... "
18
On the other hand, in his famous es-
say "The Relationship to the Text," written some twenty years before
the Op. 22 analysis, Schoenberg said that "the outward correspon-
dence between music and text, as exhibited in declamation, tempo
and dynamics, has but little to do with the inward correspondence
. .. "
19
These points of view can be illustrated in Vorgefuhl, and be
shown to reinforce each other. The idea that the text can determine
the form is exposed by a striking relationship between the first in-
strumental idea and the last phrase of the vocal line (assuming that
""Brahms the Progressive," op. cit., p. 419.
18
"Analysis," op. cit., p. 27. My emphasis.
"Style and Idea, op. cit., p. 145. This essay first appeared, in German, in the al-
manac De,- Blaue Reiter, in 1912.
143
JONATHAN M. DUNSBY
"outward" correspondence can be extended to include simple, for-
mative relationships as well as declamation, tempo and dynamics):
Example 3
a)
Stur-.n
Printed examples reproduced by kind pennission of the copyright own-
ers, Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles.
At the same time as reflecting the notion of "premonition" (the
threatening opening turns out to be the storm itself), this recurrence
provides a formal musical device, a prominent, transformed return
of the first "theme" near the end. But the first idea also returns
through "inward" correspondences: for example, the opening
pitch-complex seems to generate the first phrase of the vocal line:
144
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SCHOENBERG'S PREMONITION, OP. 22
Example 4
15] F" .
The fact of this kind of recurrence in a song about "premonition"
can almost be taken for granted. But it would be hard to explain the
nature of the procedure in terms of a simple, or "outward" corres-
pondence to the meaning of the text.
20
Both examples indicate that Vorgefuhl is partly structured by a
more or less traditional musical logic. The traditional kind offormal
pointing of the song is even more clear from Ex. 3b. The sustained
notes in Ex. 3a are strongly related in this textural context; the same
sustained G appears in m. 18-another climactic point-and at the
2oBy the same token it may seem no surprise that shortly after the point where
Schoenberg resumed work on the orchestral part, the vocal/orchestral complex from
mm. 3-5 (which was already notated) was still in his mind. There seems to be no
special indication in the text for this connection:
(,.,.3)
If
145
JONATHAN M. DUNSBY
only place in the course of the song where the orchestra moves
briefly into the foreground, at the articulation between the two
verses.2
1
Similar connective features determine the chromatic orga-
nization. For example, the opening pitch-complex (Ex. Sa) dominates
the first dynamic climax (Ex. Sb) as well as the atmospheric mid-
point of the song (Ex. Sc), and the final climax is sustained over the
orchestral postlude to resonate in the last measure (Ex. 6):
Example 5
a)
c)
I
Langsatpe (ca.M)
P\. PI'
"' '' '"' '*
b)
wt .13)
__&_ amSteg ..

if
amSteg_J



..
"A traditional parallel, in a different medium and formal context, can be_ found in
the first movement of Brahms's Piano Quartet inC minor, Op. 60, where a dtstmcttve
gesture marks the beginning, middle and end of the movement. See "Analytical
Studies of Brahms," op. cit., pp.
146
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Example 6
The vocal line, as we have seen, has a proportional logic, as well as
connective characteristics which were shown in Ex. 1. In addition,
its relationship to the accompaniment shows one consistent kind of
continuity: the articulations in the vocal line are bridged by orches-
tral phrases (excepting perhaps the join in m. 12-the textual axis
of the symmetrical "cameo" described above). This complementary
phrasing seems to determine at one level how the accompaniment
was generated.
An attempt to record a motivic development throughout the song
would be unusually subjective, because for the various formative
ideas there is " ... such a wealth of relationships to all other compo-
nent elements, that the smallest reciprocal change of position will
bring forth as many new shapes as might elsewhere be found in the
richest development sections."
22
At least one restriction, however,
can be adduced from Schoenberg's thinking. In "Brahms the Pro-
gressive" he gives an example of musical prose from Mozart, which
he praises for the compression and variety of invention, and signifi-
cantly "even if one ignores ... the imitations .... "
23
This exposes
what is in any case clear from Schoenberg's theory, that imitation is
a sure sign of musical logic. At several points in Vorgefuhl the or-
chestral texture is extended by imitation. There is always pitch and
""Analysis," op. cit., p. 35.
23
0p. cit., p. 415.
147
JONATHAN M. DUNSBY
rhythmic variation between the parts, but the contrapuntal com-
plexes stand out against the general texture-even if imitation of
this kind is only a special category of motivic manipulation (mm.
1-2, Vlns. and CA./Cl.; mm. 7-8, Fl., Vln. and VIa.; m. 10, Pic., 1Cl.
and C.A.; mm. 16-17, VIc. and Hr.; mm. 17-18, Fl./Cl. and VIc. [m.
18]; mm. 20-21, Voice and IF!.).
Though a perspective rather than an analysis has been presented
here, these considerations are suggestive. It seems hard to justify
dealing with Schoenberg's music without taking account of his own
thinking, since his composition and theory are so embedded in each
other.
24
Robert Falck urges that we "examine the so-called 'atonal'
works on their own terms,"
25
but it should be equally instructive to
do so on the composer's terms, as far as they are known. Thus in
Falck's analysis of the first two lines of Alle, welche dich suchen, Op.
22, No. 2, it seems wilful that the pitch analysis and Schoenberg's
motivic explanation are not reconciled.
26
Schoenberg's account is a
forceful representation of the text, in particular because his No.
40a!b is a paradigm for the "method of variation, which presumably
also plays a part in [his] later works" where he found himself "on a
path that was altogether right. .. . "
27
Similarly, for example, Falck's
idea that " 'suchen' is related to 'versuchen' through the common
tone f, but seems otherwise to be entirely unrelated to either 'finden'
or 'binden' ... "
28
can only be true if Schoenberg's terms of analysis
are deliberately suppressed. That is, it would be necessary to deny
that some primary musical unity (an "idea" or a "phrase") articu-
lates a series of pitches, setting up a hierarchy of prominence which
constitutes musical meaning:
24
For an interpretation of how this is so, see "The Theoretical Writings of Arnold
Schoenberg" by Alexander Goehr (PNM, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring-Summer 1975, pp.
3-16).
""Schoenberg's (and Rilke's) 'Aile, welche dich suchen' "(PNM, Vol. 12, Nos. I and
2, Fall-Winter 1973/Spring-Summer 1974), p. 98. It would be interesting to know more
of Falck's reasons for analysing the vocal line on its own, in the light of this proscrip-
tion. In an analysis based on the equivalence of pitch and the permutation of pitch-sets
there must be a rationale for ignoring the contextual interference between vertical
(orchestral plus vocal) and horizontal (vocal) relationships.
26
Cf. ibid., pp. 89-91 and "Analysis," op. cit., p. 36.
""Analysis," op. cit., p. 42.
"Falck, op. cit., p. 90. My emphasis.
148
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SCHOENBERG'S PREMONITION, OP. 22
Example 7
This is not to say that Schoenberg's discourse should be given first
place in principle, but it is of a particular type which qualifies it for
close examination, an examination which should perhaps try to get
behind the constraints of time and training which his theory dis-
plays. Its preoccupation with the gesture of musical language gives
a double reward. First, it throws a historical glance through the
music: that a composer who delighted in Brahms's late songs, and
called them "progressive," could write Vorgefuhl a few decades later
appears then to be a flow of tradition. Second, it begins to provide a
picture of the music which can aid, in part, the kind of performance
Schoenberg intended. The student of Schoenberg's theory cannot
help but be impressed in general by a superficial contrast between
his discourse and his development as a composer. In the early 20's,
at his most radical stage of compositional vision, Schoenberg was
beginning to work in detail on a theory of musical continuity, not,
for example, by examining the combinatorial property of pitch-class
sets (which would not have been historically premature: Hauer was
occupied with the taxonomy of all-chromatic ordering), but by ask-
ing the questions-what constitutes a musical idea of any kind and
how does one idea of any kind join with another? Perhaps his last
Rilke song was a premonition that, for all the "coming storms," the
musical concepts in which he believed would survive.
Harkness Fellow, Los Angeles
149