1

THST 351

A “Deranged Nightclub”

Pierrot Lunaire and the Cabaret

Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenberg’s ever-influential piece for speaker and chamber

ensemble was composed at a decisive point in the composer’s career. Having renounced

tonality in 1909, Schoenberg describes being “intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having

freed music from the shackles of tonality,”1 and his music from that time reveals his

commitment to this radical intoxication. Erwartung, a monodrama for soprano and

orchestra, is one example of this and is often referred to as “athematic,” an “outpouring in

which all musical figures and occurrences [are] essentially unique.”2 For this reason,

Schoenberg’s atonal works are often characterized as starkly avant-garde, highly

individual and hermetically separated from the outside world. In many ways, Pierrot

Lunaire, written in 1912, also fits this description. The music is often hopelessly

complex, such as the dissonant polyphonic climax of Enthauptung, which fails “to reveal

a pitch grammar of any kind.”3

Yet, focusing on Schoenberg’s formalisms and complexities reveals only one

aspect of Pierrot Lunaire. While abandoning traditional musical frameworks,

Schoenberg’s work nonetheless communicates with other modernist artists of the time,

whose own work reflects in Pierrot Lunaire’s experimentation with new forms of

expression. In fact, the theatrical language, fragmented structure, and satirical tone

Schoenberg develops in Pierrot reflect many modernist facets as exhibited by the cabaret

culture of his time. As Harold Segel writes in the introduction to his book, Turn-of-the-

1
As quoted in Brynn-Julson, Inside Pierrot Lunaire, p. 30
2
Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, p. 97
3
Dunsby, Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, p. 57
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Century Cabaret, “as if in anticipation of the coming of the avant-garde, the cabaret

emerged as a focal point of experimentation and innovation,”4 a hot-bed where new ideas

and forms of expression where explored. Characterized by their cultivation of kleinkunst

(“small art”), cabaret genres included popular song, marionette shows, shadow shows,

and different forms of dramatic scenes and recitations.5 While Pierrot Lunaire was never

intended as a cabaret piece, Schoenberg’s work nonetheless reflects many of aspects of

this parallel movement. Moreover, Schoenberg’s collaboration and correspondence with

artists associated with cabaret, such as Kandinsky, Wedekind, and Kokoschka, as well as

Schoenberg’s own brief stint as a music director at Ernst von Wolzogen’s Überbrettl

means that Schoenberg was certainly familiar with the movement. By listening to Pierrot

Lunaire within the context of cabaret, we can begin to understand the work on new

levels, no longer the hermetic work of an eccentric composer. Instead, we begin to sense

the artistic influence of fin de siècle cabaret that took place beyond the confines of its

cafés and stages. Furthermore, we can investigate how Schoenberg’s musical practice

reflects the wider circle of artists, performers, and writers of his milieu: the network of

ideas into which Schoenberg was inevitably connected.

Instrumental to this discussion is the theatrical technique in the center of Pierrot

Lunaire: Sprechstimme. First employed in 1897 by Engelbert Humperdinck in the

melodrama Königskinder, Schoenberg first used the technique in his cantata Gurre-

lieder, composer between 1900 and 1903.6 While in these past instances Sprechstimme

was employed in a decidedly tonal context, for Pierrot Lunaire the effect of the technique

changed dramatically, by the “bizarre expansion of its range by the use of enormous

4
Segel, Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret, p. xvi
5
Ibid., p. xvii
6
Soder, Sprechstimme in Arnold Schoernberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, p. 2-3
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melodic skips and…extreme chromaticism.”7 Whether Schoenberg was influenced by

Humperdinck’s first use of the technique remains unknown. Schoenberg’s close friend

and collaborator Edward Steuermann insisted Schoenberg had never even heard of

Humperdinck’s opera, explaining, “Schoenberg lived, so to speak, in a completely

different world.”8

A world that Schoenberg did inhabit, if somewhat briefly, was that of the cabaret.

In 1901, Schoenberg wrote a collection of eight cabaret songs, as well as holding a

position as Kapellmeister for Wolzogen’s Überbrettl at the Buntes Theater.9 Within this

environment, Schoenberg would have heard performers who often took “liberties…to

emphasize meaningful words in the text–an impromptu text-painting.”10 Pierre Boulez

hypothesized that Schoenberg may have tried to translate this improvisational attitude in

Pierrot Lunaire, attempting to make Sprechstimme “an integral part of the music.”11

Thus, the Sprechstimme of Pierrot Lunaire may be read as a kind of stylized cabaret

recitation.

Also of note in the development of Sprechstimme is the commissioner of Pierrot

Lunaire, the actress and singer Albertine Zehme. She was especially interested in the

relationship between speech and sound, arranging concerts where she recited spoken texts

to musical accompaniment. In one such concert, Zehme included a short text titled “Why

I Must Speak These Songs,” where she wrote the following:

Life can no longer be played out with only beautiful sounds. The final, deepest
happiness, the final deepest sorrow, sounds in our breast as a noiseless, unheard
scream that threatens to burst forth or erupt like a stream of flaming lava over our
7
Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, “Cracking (Jokes) Under Stress”
8
as quoted in Soder, Sprechstimme in Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, p. 5
9
Brynn-Julson, Inside Pierrot Lunaire, p. 13
10
Ibid., p. 15
11
Boulez, Orientations, p. 332 (transl. Martin Cooper)
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lips. For the expression of these final things, it seems nearly cruel to me to allow
the singing voice the manual labor of performing realistically, from which it must
emerge scattered, frayed and broken.12
Brynn-Julson notes the many similarities between the artistic views of Zehme and

Schoenberg, each trying to look beyond traditional, “beautiful sounds,” in search of a

deeper meaning.13 Schoenberg expressed his own thoughts on the relationship between

sound and speech in his essay “Das Verhältnis zum Text” (The Relationship to Text),

where he explores the possibility of a “vocal music in which conventional expressivity

might be diminished if a deeper relationship between music and poetic tone was

established.”14 Schoenberg’s essay was published in 1912 in the art almanac Der blaue

Reiter, which was edited by Kandinsky, who would later be involved with Cabaret

Voltaire and the Dada movement.15 In his essay Schoenberg praised painters Kandinsky

and Kokoschka for “[improvising] in colors and form…to express themselves as only the

musician expressed himself until now.”16 Through “Das Verhältnis zum Text,”

Schoenberg expressed his affinity to his fellow modernists, all in pursuit of a new and

abstract form of expression, which in Zehme’s words, would inevitably “emerge [as]

scattered, frayed and broken.”

At the premiere performance, Zehme performed Pierrot Lunaire dressed as

Pierrot, “in front of a screen while Schoenberg and the instrumentalists were concealed

behind it.”17 While Schoenberg did not personally approve of this staging, the theatrical

imagery that Zehme brought to the piece reflects certain cabaret performances. For

12
as quoted in Brynn-Julson, Inside Pierrot Lunaire, p. 35
13
Ibid., p. 35
14
Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, p. 117
15
Segel, Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret, p. 364
16
Schoenberg, Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources (Ed. Daniel Albright)
17
Soder, Sprechstimme in Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, p. 14
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instance, Simms notes the similarity to Marya Delvard’s performances at the Fledermaus

cabaret, as described by Alfred Kerr:

Marya Delvard sings in the green light of child murder…[Her melody] a singsong
accompanied by some few instruments. The performer stands separately, in front
of a grey cloth.18
The disturbing and macabre effect of Delvard reflects back on Pierrot Lunaire. Just as

Delvard conjured thoughts of “sin, vampirically parasitical cruelty, and death,”19 in

Pierrot Lunaire, Albert Giraud’s (as translated by Otto Erich Hartleben) poetry is partly

“a series of lurid and erotic nightmares” where “death is the central image and the moon

its agent.”20 Macabre subjects in cabaret extend beyond Delvard, so Pierrot movements

such as “Galgenlied” (Gallows song) feel reminiscent of Aristide Bruant’s “A La

Roquette,” albeit intensified by the expressionistic fury of Schoenberg’s writing.

However, even the sound of the Schoenberg’s ensemble reflects the sounds and

sensibilities of cabaret. Scored for five players and eight instruments, Schoenberg created

an ensemble capable of astonishing color (successfully creating a new form of ensemble),

while also suggesting the sound of a cabaret orchestra in its shrill and off-kilter textures.

Taruskin describes the instrumentation as transforming “the whole sensation of Pierrot

Lunaire into one of a deranged nightclub,”21 which is probably what Boulez means when

he refers to Pierrot as “a kind of cabaret noir.”22

Stylistically, Schoenberg’s music often has the veneer of parody, suggesting

popular forms. For example, the piano part in “Valse de Chopin” frequently suggests

traditional waltz rhythms while the flute and clarinet constantly play against this simple

18
as quoted in Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, p. 135
19
Hans Carossa, as quoted in Segel, Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret, p. 151
20
Simms, The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, p. 125
21
Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, “Cracking (Jokes) Under Stress”
22
Boulez, Orientations, p. 332 (transl. Martin Cooper)
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rhythmic structure. In the final movement, “O alter Duft,” a similar effect occurs where

the slight suggestion of an E tonality,23 a long with gentle and regular rhythms evokes a

lullaby.

At other points, the music comments on the text, often in absurd ways. In

“Serenade,” Pierrot scrapes on his viola, but rather than have the viola play, Schoenberg

scores for the cello. Schoenberg “conceives of a monstrous viola,”24 highlighting the

absurdity of the poem, wherein Pierrot scrapes his bow on Cassander’s head. In

“Gemenheit,” Pierrot once again tortures Cassander, boring a hole in his head in order to

“[puff] on his genuine Turkish tobacco.”25 Dunsby describes the scene as both

“gruesome” and “delightfully playful,”26 which is paradoxically portrayed by the piccolo.

As Cassander “shrieks and cries blue murder,”27 the piccolo plays a shrill forte F# above

the staff, both painful and ridiculous at the same time. Daniel Albright portrays it as a

moment of self-aware irony:

But this is a minor, deformed, ironic analogue of immediate experience, the

screaming of Cassander depicted only by the tiny monotone of a piccolo note.
Schoenberg ridicules the notion of high expressionism here; it has sophisticated
into a puppet show, and no spots of blood can intrude sinisterly into the fairy tale
when all the characters are made of wood.28
Albright is not the only one who has noticed an element of self-parody in Pierrot

Lunaire. Boulez, discussing Giraud/Hartleben’s text says that

to say that the text is stupid and that its sentimentality, or ‘hysteria,’ is
intolerable…is to miss the real point of the piece. The flirting with bad taste, the

23
Dunsby, Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, p. 72
24
Ibid., p. 24
25
Albert Giraud, transl. Otto Hartleben, transl. by Andrew Porter, as quoted in Dunsby,
Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, p. 63
26
Dunsby, Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, p. 63
27
Giraud, trans. Hartleben, transl. Porter, quoted in Dunsby, Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, p. 63
28
Albright, Imagination and Representation, p. 22
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self-ironical sentimentality and the playing with mental anguish and hallucination
are all to be taken between inverted commas – ‘at the second degree.’29
Even Schoenberg himself was quite clear about his intentions. Before recording Pierrot

Lunaire for the first time in 1940, he wrote to the singer Erika Stiedry-Wagner: “We must

thoroughly freshen up the speaking part, too…I intend to catch perfectly that light,

ironical, satirical tone in which the piece was actually conceived.”30 Taruskin sees this

“self-mocking irony” in the contrapuntal fireworks of “Der Mondfleck.”31 “Der

Mondfleck” consists of a simultaneous fugue between piccolo and clarinet, canon

between violin and cello, and the outer voices of the piano, “which are in augmented

canon with piccolo and clarinet.”32 Halfway through the piece, when Pierrot discovers the

fleck of moonlight on his coat, the whole contraption reverses, the piccolo, clarinet,

violin and cello playing the previous music in retrograde. Taruskin points out the

absurdity of writing freely atonal canons, since there are no rules of counterpoint being

followed. Instead, it is all about “frenzied but pointless activity,” 33 reflecting Pierrot’s

actions in the poem, as well as mocking the stylized medieval “rondel” form that

Giraud/Hartleben uses. The satirical elements of Pierrot Lunaire further projects cabaret

sensibilities, employing elements of absurdity and satire. It recalls the early performances

of Schall und Rauch, where Max Reinhardt directed artistic parodies of theatrical genres

such as symbolism, realism, and vaudeville.34

Ultimately, we can begin to see how Pierrot Lunaire was shaped by sounds,

gestures, and sensibilities of cabaret. In Pierrot Lunaire, we hear the theatricality of

29
Boulez, Orientations, p. 335 (transl. Martin Cooper)
30
as quoted in Soder, Sprechstimme in Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, p. 17
31
Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, “Cracking (Jokes) Under Stress”
32
Dunsby, Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, p. 66
33
Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, “Cracking (Jokes) Under Stress”
34
Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret, p. 64-66
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cabaret singers stylized into Sprechstimme, and the raucous sound of a cabaret band in

Schoenberg’s ensemble. Pierrot Lunaire is a collection of small forms, satirical,

grotesque, playful, and silly, each movement its own ephemeral idea. It is violent and

expressionistic, impassioned, but also cool and self-aware. Despite the surreal sound

world Schoenberg conjures, the music he was writing was not sealed off from the world

around him. Instead, in Pierrot Lunaire we hear Modernism in its many forms, from the

abstract worlds of Kandinsky, to the kleinkunst of the cabaret.