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Erwartung

{{Short description|German opera}}

{{Infobox opera

| name = {{Lang|de|Erwartung}}

| composer = Arnold Schoenberg

| image = Arnold Schönberg Richard Gerstl (cropped).jpg

| image_upright =

| caption = The composer portrayed in 1907

| type = monodrama

| translated_name = Expectation

| librettist = {{Interlanguage link multi|Marie Pappenheim|de}}

| language = German

| based_on =

| premiere_date = {{Start date|1924|06|06|df=y}}

| premiere_location = New German Theatre, Prague

}}

{{Lang|de|Erwartung}} (Expectation), Op. 17, is a one-act monodrama in four scenes by Arnold Schoenberg to a libretto by {{Interlanguage link multi|Marie Pappenheim|de}}. Composed in 1909, it was not premiered until 6 June 1924 in Prague conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky with Marie Gutheil-Schoder as the soprano. The opera takes the unusual form of a monologue for solo soprano accompanied by a large orchestra. In performance, it lasts for about half an hour. It is sometimes paired with Béla Bartók's opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911), as the two works were roughly contemporary and share similar psychological themes.{{Citation needed|date=October 2022}} Schoenberg described Erwartung, saying "the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour."{{cite book|last=Schoenberg|first=Arnold|title=Style and Idea|publisher=University of California Press|location=Los Angeles|year=1984|page=105|isbn=0-520-05294-3}}

Philip Friedheim has described {{Lang|de|Erwartung}} as Schoenberg's "only lengthy work in an athematic style", where no musical material returns once stated over the course of 426 measures. In his analysis of the structure, one indication of the complexity of the music is that the first scene of over 30 bars contains 9 meter changes and 16 tempo changes.{{cite journal | last=Friedheim | first=Philip | title=Rhythmic Structure in Schoenberg's Atonal Compositions |journal=Journal of the American Musicological Society| volume=16 | issue=1 | pages=59–72 | date=Spring 1966 | jstor=830871 | doi=10.1525/jams.1966.19.1.03a00040}} Herbert Buchanan has countered this description of the work as "athematic", and the general impression of it as "atonal", in his own analysis.{{cite journal | last=Buchanan | first=Herbert H. | title=A Key to Schoenberg's Erwartung (Op. 17) |journal=Journal of the American Musicological Society| volume=20 | issue=3 | pages=434–449 | date=Autumn 1967 | jstor=830319 | doi=10.1525/jams.1967.20.3.03a00040| url=http://jams.ucpress.edu/content/ucpjams/20/3/434.full.pdf }}

The musicologist Charles Rosen has said that {{Lang|de|Erwartung}}, along with Berg's Wozzeck and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, is among the "impregnable" "great monuments of modernism."{{cite news

| url = https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/apr/09/charles-rosen-pianist-chopin-life

| title = Charles Rosen: A life in music

| date = 9 April 2011

| author = Nicolas Wroe

| newspaper = The Guardian

| access-date = 20 May 2011}} According to Christopher Small, "Schoenberg's intuitive understanding of the integrative process of dreams is revealed especially in the marvellous closing pages, filled as they are with tenderness and longing. At the end we can almost see the sleeper awake as with a scurry of chromatic scales the music vanished from our hearing and the dream recedes from her waking mind."{{cite book|last=Small|first=Christopher|author-link=Christopher Small|year=1977|page=10|title=Schoenberg|publisher=Novello|isbn=9780853601050}}

Performance history

{{Lang|de|Erwartung}} had its British premiere on 9 January 1931, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.{{Cite web |url=http://www.bl.uk/eblj/1985articles/pdf/article3.pdf |title=Nicholas Chadwick, Alban Berg and the BBC |access-date=2013-01-31 |archive-date=2013-10-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131020033234/http://www.bl.uk/eblj/1985articles/pdf/article3.pdf |url-status=dead }}

It was the first live opera shown on Times Square in New York City in a production by Robin Rhode in November 2015 (2 performances).{{cite web|url=https://www.timessquarenyc.org/tsq-arts-projects/arnold-schonbergs-erwartung---a-performance-by-robin-rhode|access-date=4 February 2025|title=Arnold Schönberg's Erwartung – A Performance by Robin Rhode|publisher=Times Square Arts}}{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/arts/music/review-robin-rhode-takes-schoenbergs-erwartung-to-the-street-broadway-no-less.html|title=Robin Rhode Takes Schoenberg’s Erwartung to the Street (Broadway, No Less)|author=Zachary Woolfe|newspaper=The New York Times|date=8 November 2015}}

Roles

File:Arnold Schönberg Mizzi Pappenheim 1909.jpg

  • The Woman (soprano)

Synopsis

:Time: Night

:Place: A forest

A woman is in an apprehensive state as she searches for her lover. In the darkness, she comes across what she first thinks is a body, but then realises is a tree-trunk. She is frightened and becomes more anxious as she cannot find the man she is looking for. She then finds a dead body, and sees that it is her lover. She calls out for assistance, but there is no response. She tries to revive him, and addresses him as if he were still alive, angrily charging him with being unfaithful to her. She then asks herself what she is to do with her life, as her lover is now dead. Finally, she wanders off alone into the night.

Instrumentation

{{Lang|de|Erwartung}}'s score calls for an orchestra with the following instrumentation.

{{col-begin}}

{{col-3}}

;Woodwind

: 3 Flutes (3rd doubling on 2nd piccolo)

: Piccolo

: 4 Oboes (4th doubling on English horn)

: 4 Clarinets: 1 in D, 1 in B{{music|flat}}, 2 in A

: Bass clarinet in B{{music|flat}}

: 3 Bassoons

: Contrabassoon

;Brass

: 4 Horns in F

: 3 Trumpets in B{{music|flat}}

: 4 Trombones

: Tuba

{{col-3}}

;Percussion

: Timpani

: Xylophone

: Glockenspiel

: Cymbals

: Bass drum

: Side drum

: Triangle

: Tam-tam

: Rattle

{{col-3}}

;Keyboard

: Celesta

;Strings

: Harp

: Violins I & II

: Violas

: Cellos

: Double basses{{col-end}}

Recordings (abridged list)

References

{{reflist|30em}}

Further reading

  • {{cite thesis|last=Carpenter|first=Alexander | title=Erwartung and the Scene of Psychoanalysis: Interpreting Schoenberg's Monodrama as a Freudian Case Study | type=Ph.D. thesis | publisher=University of Toronto | year=2004 | isbn=0-612-91794-0 | url=https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/118584/1/nq91794_ocr.pdf|ref=none}}
  • {{cite journal |last=Wickes|first=Lewis | title=Schoenberg, Erwartung, and the Reception of Psychoanalysis in Musical Circles in Vienna until 1910/11 | journal=Studies in Music | volume=23 | year=1989 | pages=88–106|ref=none}}

External links

  • [http://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/joomla-license-3/rerwartungl-op-17-1909 Erwartung at the Arnold Schoenberg Centre]
  • {{IMSLP|work=Erwartung, Op.17 (Schoenberg, Arnold)|cname=Erwartung (Schoenberg)}}

{{Second Viennese School}}

{{Arnold Schoenberg}}

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Category:1909 operas

Category:1924 operas

Category:Atonal compositions by Arnold Schoenberg

Category:German-language operas

Category:Operas

Category:Monodrama

Category:One-act operas

Category:Operas by Arnold Schoenberg

Category:Expressionist music