The Book of the Hanging Gardens (German: ), Op. 15, is a fifteen-part song cycle composed by Arnold Schoenberg between 1908 and 1909, setting poems of Stefan George. George's poems, also under the same title, track the failed love affair of two adolescent youths in a garden, ending with the woman's departure and the disintegration of the garden. The song cycle is set for solo voice and piano. The Book of the Hanging Gardens breaks away from conventional musical order through its usage of atonality.
The piece was premiered by Austrian singer Martha Winternitz-Dorda and pianist Etta Werndorf on January 14, 1910, in Vienna.
Background The Book of the Hanging Gardens served as the start to the atonal period in Schoenberg's music. Atonal compositions, referred to as "pantonal" by Schoenberg, typically contain features such as a lack of central tonality, pervading harmonic dissonance rather than consonance, and a general absence of traditional melodic progressions. This period of atonality became commonly associated with the expressionist movement, despite the fact that Schoenberg rarely referred to the term "expressionism" in his writings. Whether or not he wanted to be associated with the movement, Schoenberg expresses an unambiguous positivity with his discovery of this new style in a program note for the 1910 first performance of The Book of the Hanging Gardens:
Schoenberg's libretto transcends the tragic love poems of George and becomes a deeper reflection of Schoenberg's mood during this period when viewing his personal life. The poems tell of a love affair gone awry without explicitly stating the cause of its demise. In 1908, Schoenberg's wife Mathilde left him and their two children for Richard Gerstl, a painter with whom Schoenberg was a close friend and for whom Mathilde often modeled. She returned to the family from her flight with Gerstl eventually, but not before Schoenberg discovered the poems of George and began drawing inspiration from them.
Content Hanging Gardens closely relates music and text, with harmony, texture, tempo, and declamation conveying mood and textual meaning. Though time seems to pass as in a narrative, there is an overall sense of languid stasis. Intervallic cells can be heard as symbolizing hoped-for love and unfulfilled longing, and the opening three-against-four rhythm recurs throughout.
Although the 15 poems do not necessarily describe a story or follow a linear development, the general subjects can be grouped as follows: a description of the paradise (poems 1 and 2), the paths that the lover takes to reach his beloved (poems 3–5), his passions (poems 6–9), the peak of the time together (poems 10–13), premonition (poem 14), and finally, love dies away and Eden is no more (poem 15).
{| class="wikitable" ! !First line of each poem (Original German) !Approximate English translation
|1 |Unterm Schutz von dichten Blättergründen |Under the shade of thick leaves
|2 |Hain in diesen Paradiesen |Groves in this paradise
|3 |Als Neuling trat ich ein in dein Gehege |As a novice, I entered your enclosure
|4 |Da meine Lippen reglos sind und brennen |Because my lips are motionless and burning
|5 |Saget mir auf welchem Pfade |Tell me on which paths
|6 |Jedem Werke bin ich fürder tot |To everything else I am henceforth dead
|7 |Angst und Hoffen wechselnd sich beklemmen |Fear and hope alternately oppress me
|8 |Wenn ich heut nicht deinen Leib berühre |If I today do not touch your body
|9 |Streng ist uns das Glück und spröde |Stern is our happiness, and delicate
|10 |Das schöne Beet betracht ich mir im Harren |I looked at the beautiful flowerbed while waiting
|11 |Als wir hinter dem beblümten Tore |As we behind the flowered gates
|12 |Wenn sich bei heilger Ruh in tiefen Matten |When in holy rest in deep meadows
|13 |Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide |You lean against a white willow
|14 |Sprich nicht mehr von dem Laub |Say no more of the foliage
|15 |Wir bevölkerten die abend-düstern Lauben |We occupied the night-gloomy arcades
Reception Upon its premiere in 1910, The Book of the Hanging Gardens was not critically acclaimed or accepted in mainstream culture. Its harmonies were disdained. Although Hanging Gardens and other Schoenberg works had been played in Paris since 1910, there was little French coverage of Schoenberg's music, and reviews elsewhere were usually scathing: in 1913, James Huneker called Schoenberg a "musical anarchist who upset all of Europe" in The New York Times.
By the 1920s, Hanging Gardens and atonal music in general found more acceptance in France, where musical progressives viewed Schoenberg as an important, legitimate composer of expressive music.
Later, Carl Schorske interpreted the disintegration of George's garden as symbolizing the breakdown of traditional order, a cultural shift paralleled in Schoenberg's own departure from musical tradition.
See also
References
Sources
(cloth); (pbk).
Reprinted 1981, New York: Da Capo Press.
Further reading
Dick, Marcel (1990). "An Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's The Book of Hanging Gardens, op. 15". In Studies in the Schoenbergian Movement in Vienna and the United States: Essays in Honor of Marcel Dick, edited by Anne Trenkamp and John G. Suess, 235–239. Lewiston, New York: Mellen Press. Domek, Richard C. (Fall 1979). "Some Aspects of Organization in Schoenberg's Book of the Hanging Gardens, opus 15". College Music Symposium 19, no. 2: 111–128. Dümling, Albrecht (1981). Die fremden Klänge der hängenden Gärten. Die offentliche Einsamkeit der Neuen Musik am Beispiel von A. Schoenberg und Stefan George. Munich: Kindler. Dümling, Albrecht (1995). "Öffentliche Einsamkeit: Atonalität und Krise der Subjektivität in Schönbergs op. 15". In Stil oder Gedanke? Zur Schönberg-Rezeption in Amerika und Europa, edited by Stefan Litwin and Klaus Velten. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag. Dümling, Albrecht (1997): "Public Loneliness: Atonality and the Crisis of Subjectivity in Schönberg's Opus 15". In: Schönberg and Kandinsky. An Historic Encounter, edited by Konrad Boehmer, 101-138. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Schäfer, Thomas (1994). "Wortmusik/Tonmusik: Ein Beitrag zur Wagner-Rezeption von Arnold Schönberg und Stefan George". Die Musikforschung 47, no. 3:252–273. Smith, Glenn Edward (1973). Schoenberg's 'Book of the Hanging Gardens': An Analysis. DMA diss. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1973.
External links
in Stefan George: . Complete works, vol. 3, Berlin 1930