The MTO article “The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting Pierrot lunaire: Sprechstimme Reconsidered” by Avior Byron claimed that “Schoenberg accepted very different performances . . . of the Sprechstimme notation by Erika Stiedry-Wagner in a period of not more than three days.” The present article discusses a surprising letter that Schoenberg wrote at the end of 1941, which seems (at first) to contradict Byron’s claim. We present this letter and suggest that Schoenberg’s conception of Sprechstimme in Pierrot lunaire presumably changed as a result of listening to recordings, an assumption which finally strengthens the argument presented in the aforementioned article.
A comparison of a recently-discovered broadcast of Pierrot lunaire with the famous 1940 commercial recording of the work, both with Arnold Schoenberg conducting performers of his circle (notably Rudolf Kolisch, Edward Steuermann and Erika Stiedry-Wagner), shows that the different contexts of the recording studio and the live broadcast, as well as other factors, had considerable influence on the performances. This article demonstrates how tempo, character and Sprechstimme contour were affected by these different contexts. Such factors caused many listeners to experience the broadcast as an excellent performance, one which was described as superior to the commercial recording. In increasing our awareness of the distinctions between live and studio recordings, a study such as this of historical performances contributes to our view of performance as a critical element in an understanding of Western art music. The article contains 18 sound examples from the original recordings, in mp3 files that may be streamed from the journal’s website: links are embedded in the full-text PDF file.
Newly discovered recordings of Schoenberg conducting Pierrot lunaire open a window into the workshop of Arnold Schoenberg (the conductor) and Erika Stiedry-Wagner (who performed the Sprechstimme). These recordings reveal that in a period of not more than three days, Schoenberg accepted relatively great freedom in the Sprechstimme pitch contour; as well as a contradictory tendency towards consistency and a certain systematic approach towards pitch, which does not always adhere to the score. Before examining the recordings it was not possible to know whether the relation between the performed Sprechstimme and the score was controlled, systematic, or simply a matter of chance. The recordings shed new light on what has been described by Boulez, Stadlen and others as the “Sprechstimme enigma:” namely, how Schoenberg expected the Sprechstimme to be performed. The history of Schoenberg’s writings on Sprechstimme demonstrates that his perception of it changed along with the development of his performance aesthetics in general. Based on evidence from the recordings as well as on recent performance studies theory, I will claim that the Sprechstimme enigma is greatly clarified when one understands that there are simultaneously two types of notation in Pierrot lunaire: one for the instruments that tends towards a reproduction of a sound object, and another for the Sprechstimme which involves a process of greater real-time interaction between performer and score. Although the Sprechstimme from the workshop of Schoenberg and Stiedry-Wagner may be regarded as an extreme case study, it magnifies in a way what also happens in performances of other types of music.
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