| Schoenberg
(1874-1951): ‘Transfigured Night’ for String Sextet (1899)
Love and nature are the protagonists of
this highly emotional work, based on the poem Verklärte Nacht by Richard
Dehmel (published in 1896). This is an early work, with tonality
as its focal point, and was greatly influenced by Wagner especially in
the use of leitmotifs and intense chromaticism. In the poem a man
and a woman walk in a wood, in a cloudless night, with the moon moving
above the oak trees; she confesses to her lover that she is already pregnant
by another man; he replies that through their love the child will be born
as his own, and the two lovers embrace in the clear night.
The story is however of secondary importance,
as the composer is not concerned with action but with the depiction of
nature and the expression of human feelings, and uses the story as points
of reference (the sextet, in one extended movement, is divided in five
sections like the poem). This is how the composer Egon Wellesz describes
the ending of the work: "With the purest, subtlest touch the music paints
the picture of the grove in the clear night. A shimmering melody
reflects the happiness that the two people have found, then dies away,
and the music is brought to an end with high harmonics."
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