Part 1: Poems 1 - 7
Pierrot Lunaire
Melodrama for Recitation and Chamber Orchestra, Op. 21
Conducted by Arthur Winograd
Speaker: Alice Howland
Piano: Edward Steuermann
Flute and Piccolo: Lois Schaefer
Clarinet: Donald Lituchy
Bass Clarinet: David Kalina
Violin and Viola: Robert Koff
Cello: Seymour Barab
MGM Records
A High Fidelity Recording E3202
From the back cover: Schoenberg' melodrama Pierrot Lunaire was completed in Berlin in 1912 and can be said to have been composed during that period of his development in which tonality, due to the every-increasing use of chromatic alteration, had ceased to function, but had not yet been replaced by the twelve-tone system. Organization has been achieved by the tying together of musical elements in an atonal composition through the repetition of linear motives.
Some of the pieces have been realized in strict counterpoint: No. 8 (Nacht) is a passacaglia: No 17 (Parodie) contains a double canon; and No. 18 (Mondfleck) is a three-part fugato accompanied by a double retrograde canon (the fugato in the piano extending for the length of the piece while the canon between the piccolo and clarinet turns about at the half-way point and appears backwards, last note to first).
In terms of expressive power, one is made conscious of the fact that each of the twenty-one pieces, adhering to highly specific programmatic illusions, has emerged with its own clearly etched profile, and has been made to function as a seemingly inevitable part of the congruent whole.
The three times seven poems of Albert Giraud, upon which the work is based, were translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben.
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