Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)

Born in Vienna, September 13, 1874; died in Los Angeles, USA, July 13, 1951

Verklärte Nacht, for string sextet, Op. 4 (1899)

Composed when Brahms had recently died and Dvořák was still alive, Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) embodies the spirit of the fin de siècle. This powerful masterpiece was written in just three weeks in September 1899. Its score weaves together several musical currents of the time. From Liszt and Strauss, Schoenberg adopts the symphonic poem—based on a literary source and structured as a single movement, applying the concept to chamber music for the first time. From Wagner, he draws a late Romantic harmonic language and the technique of thematic transformation. From Brahms, he takes the idea of composing a large-scale symphonic work for string sextet. While deeply rooted in tradition, Verklärte Nacht also opened new pathways for composers of the 20th century. It remains Schoenberg’s most popular work.

The title comes from a poem by Richard Dehmel, a prominent North German poet. At 25, Schoenberg saw something of the zeitgeist in Dehmel’s progressive and often provocative fusion of humane socialist ideals and erotic candor. Verklärte Nacht is program music, vividly illustrating Dehmel’s poem. Yet, as Schoenberg noted, it does not depict specific actions or events; rather, it evokes nature and expresses human emotions.

The poem’s five stanzas shape the work’s structure—[ABACA, a double sonata form: initially in D minor for the woman’s words, then transformed into D major for the man’s response]. The first stanza introduces the lovers walking through a cold, moonlit forest. In the second stanza, the woman confesses with remorse that she is carrying a child not his. Before meeting him, she had believed that motherhood would bring purpose to her life, if not true happiness. The music grows agitated and intense, forming the development section of the sextet’s symphonic structure. It surges to an impassioned climax before subsiding into transparent textures and long silences.

The third stanza, like the first, is brief. As the woman stands bathed in moonlight, she waits for the man’s response. A radiant D major chord signals his answer. His forgiveness and understanding are expressed through a broad, noble theme. He reassures her that their love will transform the child into their own. The transfiguration of the night is mirrored in the transformation of musical themes. The work ends as it began, with the imagery of nature, as the lovers embrace and walk on.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) (1883–5, rev. ?1891–6)

On New Year’s Eve 1884, Gustav Mahler and Joanna Richter sat together in silence. Joanna, a young singer at the Kassel Opera House where Mahler was assistant conductor, was his latest passion. “She is everything that is lovable in this world,” he wrote. “I would shed my last drop of blood for her.” But she did not return his feelings. “Her thoughts were far away, and as the bells rang, tears came to her eyes,” he recalled. “That unspeakable sorrow stood between us like an eternal barrier. I could do nothing but press her hand and leave.” 

Mahler, however, was to soon turn his grief—and perhaps some wounded pride­­­—into his first compositional masterpiece: a song cycle on unrequited love. That summer, he wrote love poems to Joanna, calling her a “wayfaring companion” (fahrenden Gesellen). More followed, some joyful, others despairing. In late December, he wrote more and set them to music almost immediately, making six in all, dedicated to Joanna.  Only four of these ‘Songs of a Wayfarer’ have survived. Joanna never heard them. “What can they tell her beyond what she already knows?” Mahler said.

The songs remained unpublished for years. Mahler wrote them for voice and piano but viewed the piano part as an orchestral reduction. He completed the orchestration in 1895. Both versions are effective, though the music suggests that orchestral colors were already in his mind. Mahler programmed the première of the orchestral version together with his First Symphony in Berlin in March 1896, revealing the inspiration behind two of the songs woven into the symphony.  Though written for a large orchestra, the cycle’s textures are restrained, anticipating the intimacy of the Wunderhorn and Rückert songs. Only at the third song’s despairing cry does Mahler unleash his full forces.

Mahler wrote his texts partly in folk style. The first song closely follows a setting from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), a collection of folk poetry that later inspired many of the songs whose melodies would appear throughout his early symphonies. Folk influences shape the cycle’s melodies, though its harmonic structure is sophisticated—in Mahler’s continuously evolving tonal pattern none of the songs begins and ends in the same key. “The songs are a sequence in which a wayfaring craftsman, who has had great sorrow, goes out into the world and wanders aimlessly,” Mahler explained. The wayfarer sets out after learning of his beloved’s wedding. He briefly escapes his sorrow in a bright summer morning but soon returns to introspection. His beloved’s blue eyes haunt him, and he turns his thoughts to death. Like Schubert’s wanderer in Winterreise, Mahler’s wayfarer finds solace beneath a linden tree. But unlike Schubert’s, his journey ends there. The music remains tragic, a funeral march clinging to the minor key, leaving only faint echoes of fleeting consolation in the major key. 

Ludwid van Beethoven (1770–1827)

Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92 (1811–12)

The orchestra is no larger than for his first two symphonies—no third horn as in the Eroica, no trombones as in the Fifth—but Beethoven’s Seventh contains as much spiritual joy, absolute power and assertion of vitality as any symphony written in the 19th century.  The sound is at times monumental, at times elemental, with braying horns at the end of the first movement, imperious drums, dismissive trumpets, agitated strings in the last. Rhythm is the driving force of the symphony. And it was Beethoven’s obsession with the dynamic properties of rhythm that led Wagner to call the Seventh ‘the apotheosis of the dance,’ an acknowledgment as much of the power and unity of the symphony as of its distance from the social diversion of dance music. 

Unity is consolidated with the working out of each movement’s distinctive rhythm. Both rhythm and power are evident throughout the quicker movements to the point that Beethoven’s power becomes absolute. Not all of this assertive, purposeful music made for comfortable listening at the time of composition (nor should it today); even the young Weber cried out against one particularly obsessive passage, saying that Beethoven was surely ready for the madhouse. “Power is the moral principle of those who excel others,” Beethoven said, to answer all criticism.  “And it also mine.” 

Napoleon claimed power as well, but by 1812—when Beethoven completed the Seventh—his empire was in decline. The symphony premièred in war-scarred Vienna on December 8, 1813, at a benefit concert for families of soldiers wounded weeks earlier in the Battle of Hanau. It offered hope and conviction to a city worn down by economic hardship and political turmoil.

For this occasion, Beethoven paired the Seventh with Wellington’s Victory, a crowd-pleasing battle symphony commemorating another defeat of Napoleon’s forces—and a profitable venture for the composer. Marches and music for mechanical instruments rounded out the program, with Beethoven himself conducting at the University of Vienna. Though his direction was erratic, the orchestra was packed with Vienna’s finest musicians. Violinist Schuppanzigh led the strings, while composers Hummel, Meyerbeer, and Moscheles played percussion in Wellington’s Victory, with Salieri assisting as a secondary conductor.

The audience responded with overwhelming enthusiasm, demanding an encore of the Allegretto—an unusual choice, as it is the most introspective and solemnof the four movements. Built on a steady rhythmic pulse, its shifting colors between minor and major keys unfold in ten varied settings of a single theme. Four days later, when the concert was repeated, Viennese listeners again pressed for an encore of the movement. The Seventh had made an immediate impact, reaching beyond the relatively narrow circle of aristocrats and connoisseurs who had primarily supported his music.  Beethoven’s name was now firmly established in the wider musical world.

— Program notes copyright © 2025 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca

Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra

This performance is sponsored by:

Generously supported by David Wollenberg and The Wollenberg Foundation.