Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - George Perle, Page 3

ANALYSIS: Arnold Schoenberg, Op. 11, No. 1, mm. 1-11  

[For a manuscript score, courtesy of the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, click here; for a sound clip, click here.]

PERLE 

(PLAY: mm. 1-11)

 I am comparing the last 3 bars of the example to the first 3 bars.   In terms of rhythm and texture, bars 9-11 and 1-3 are identical. That's just in terms of rhythm and texture.   Except for the last note of the phrase, the intervals of the melodic line maintain the same direction but not the same dimensions.   But apart from these similarities and differences we immediately recognize (our ear tells us) that at its restatement in bars 9-11 the theme acquires a special harmonic character, a quality that we recognize as deriving from already existing relations – in this case, the whole-tone scale.   Bars 9 to 1 unfold segments of the two whole-tone partitions of the twelve-tone scale.  

Let's listen to it.

(PLAY: mm. 1-8 )

Now we go back to the first three bars.  

(PLAY mm. 9-11 )

Bars 9-11 unfold segments of the two whole-tone partitions of the twelve-tone scale, which we can identify in terms of the pitch class numbers (with the note C represented as number 0) as the “even” and “odd” partitions.   (I hope you don't mind my using numbers for notes. Some people get upset when they see that.   But I want to show you that we have two whole-tone scales, one represented by the even numbers, the other represented by the odd numbers.   Numbers are just as good as notes.)  

BORISKIN

This is the Institute for Advanced Study.   They don't need to be convinced about the value of numbers here. (laughter)

PERLE

I want you hear something when the last three bars enters – something that sets it apart from the first 3 bars. The first three bars are, in a certain sense – and this is not a criticism – they are incoherent compared to the last three bars. Let's hear it again.   But there is nothing wrong with being incoherent, if you have something to say in relationship to that.

This was one of the first atonal pieces I saw.   I was already involved with the Lyric Suite, but all of this – the nonserial music of Schoenberg – was a mystery to me.   I remember playing this for myself at the piano and being dumbfounded when my ear told me in the last three bars, that something special was happening here which was very much like what happens in tonal music.   You even have a suspension.   The note I have in parenthesis, B-flat, brings us to the one note that's omitted in the first six notes. (You have the numbers directly below on the same page: 6-2-0.)   Then we have this chord, and then we have the G-sharp, so you have that note twice.  

It seems to me anybody will hear that.   (I shouldn't word things in that way because in case it happens that you don't hear it, you will feel awfully bad.)  

But let's say I heard it and it spoke to me, and it said that this music makes some kind of sense, in the same way that normal tonal music makes some kind of sense. The B-flat brings in the missing note.   These collections of notes don't have to completely present.   You can have just 5 of your 6 notes.   You can even have just 3 of your 6 notes of the whole-tone scale and they represent the whole-tone scale.   They don't all have to be there.   Let's listen to it again.   You get my point, I hope.

(PLAY: mm. 1-3 )

That's asking you a question.  

(PLAY: mm. 4-8 )

Now you have your answer to the first 3 bars.

(PLAY: mm. 9-11 )

That note is just dissonant.

(PLAY: A-natural on m. 11, beat 1)

Now it resolves.  

(PLAY: upwards resolution to B-flat)

That's they way I hear it.