Schönberg, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) Op.4

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Schönberg, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) Op.4

文井 2016. 1. 28. 08:12

Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht

Berliner Philharmoniker / Herbert von Karajan, cond.

Arnold Schoenberg, Transfigured Night for String Sextet Op.4

NEC Contemporary Ensemble Concert / John Heiss, cond.
Audrey Wright and Alexi Kenney, violins
Wenting Kang and Alice Weber, violas
Emileigh Vandiver and Andrew Larson, celli

Jordan Hall in Boston, MA
Recorded on January 31, 2013

"Verklärte Nacht" takes as its subject a poem by Richard Dehmel that describes a man and a woman walking through a dark forest at night. She confesses a secret to him: She is pregnant with the child of another man. He reflects on this revelation in silence, and eventually comes to accept and forgive the woman. Schoenberg was inspired by his feelings for Mathilde von Zemlinsky, the daughter of his teacher Alexander von Zemlinsky and his future wife.

Richard Dehmel's Poem

Two people walk through a bare, cold grove;
The moon races along with them, they look into it.
The moon races over tall oaks,
No cloud obscures the light from the sky,
Into which the black points of the boughs reach,
A woman’s voice speaks:

I’m carrying a child, and not yours,
I walk in sin beside you.
I have committed a great offense against myself.
I no longer believed I could be happy
And yet I had a strong yearning
For something to fill my life, for the joys of motherhood
And for duty; so I committed an effrontery,
So, shuddering, I allowed my sex
To be embraced by a strange man,
And, on top of that, I blessed myself for it.
Now life has taken its revenge:
Now I have met you, oh you.

She walks with a clumsy gait,
She looks up; the moon is racing along.
Her dark gaze is drowned in light.
A man’s voice speaks:

May the child you conceived
Be no burden to your soul;
Just see how brightly the universe is gleaming!
There’s a glow around everything;
You are floating with me on a cold ocean,
But a special warmth flickers
From you into me, from me into you.
It will transfigure the strange man’s child.
You will bear the child for me, as if it were mine;
You have brought the glow into me,
You have made me like a child myself.

He grasps her around her ample hips.
Their breath kisses in the breeze.
Two people walk through the lofty, bright night.

Arnold Schönberg, Verklärte Nacht 1. Sehr langsam