SCHOENBERG, Arnold 1874-1951

Gurre-Lieder [Piano-vocal score]

von Jens Peter Jacobsen (Deutsch von Robert Franz Arnold) für Soli, Chor und Orchester. Klavierauszug von Alban Berg

Wien–Leipzig: Universal-Edition [PN U.E. 3696], [1913], ©1912.

Small folio. Modern quarter mid-tan calf with marbled boards, titling to spine gilt. 238 pp.
Title within decorative Jugendstil border printed in sepia.

Handstamp to foot of title dated 1914.

A very good copy attractively bound.

First Edition, second issue. Rufer (E), p. 79. GA B 16/1, pp. 266-7.
The score was first issued in February 1913, with a second print run in May later that year. It would not be printed again until 1920.

Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder was first performed in Vienna at the Großer Musikvereins-Saal, 23 February 23 1913, with Franz Schreker conducting.

The Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885) wrote his Gurresange in 1871, and a German translation was made by Robert Franz Arnold (1872-1938). Schoenberg first set these poems, which depict the love of King Waldemar and Tove, as a song cycle for voice and piano in 1900. He then began setting the entire cycle in a choral-orchestral work of Mahlerian proportions, composed and orchestrated over a decade. Scored for vast vocal and instrumental forces, it required custom 48-stave paper to fit all the parts. The Gurre-Lieder represents a culmination of the aesthetics of the Romantic period–musical language had already begun to shift into the kaleidoscope of 20th-century styles. Schoenberg, of course, was a dominant force in this shift, a fact he clearly recognized:

"When he finished the orchestration in 1910/1911, he considered the piece a document of a style of composition and an intellectual attitude which already seemed alien to him–although that did not detract from the work’s importance: 'It is the key to my entire development. It shows sides of me which I do not reveal later on, or, from a different approach. It explains how everything had to happen as it did later on, and that is enormously important for my work – that one can follow the man and his development from that point on.'" Agnes Grond © Arnold Schönberg Center.

Item #24589

Price: $750.00  other currencies