Arnold Schoenberg - Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899)

Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer, music theorist, and painter. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. With the rise of the Nazi Party, Schoenberg's works were labelled degenerate music, because they were modernist, atonal and what even Paul Hindemith called "sonic orgies" and "decadent intellectual efforts" (Petropoulos 2014, 94–95). He emigrated to the United States of America in 1934.

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Verklärte Nacht in D minor, Op. 4 (1899) for String Sextet

Wiener Streichsextett:
Erich Hoebarth, Peter Matzka (violin); Thomas Riebl, Siegfried Fuerhlinger (viola); Rodolf Leopold, Susanne Ehn (cello)

Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4, is a string sextet in one movement composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1899. Composed in just three weeks, it is considered his earliest important work. It was inspired by Richard Dehmel's poem of the same name, combined with the influence of Schoenberg's strong feelings upon meeting the sister of his teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Mathilde Zemlinsky [Wikidata] (1877–1923), whom he married in 1901. The movement can be divided into five distinct sections which refer to the five stanzas of Dehmel's poem; however, there are no unified criteria regarding movement separation.

The work was premiered on 18 March 1902 in the Vienna Musikverein by the Rosé Quartet with Arnold Rosé and Albert Bachrich (violins), Anton Ruzitska (viola), and Friedrich Buxbaum (cello), extended by Franz Jelinek (second Viola) and Franz Schmidt (second cello).

The British premiere of the sextet was on 23 of January 1914 at the Bechstein Hall in the presence of the composer. It was played by the London String Quartet: Albert Sammons, Thomas Petre, Harry Waldo Warner and Warwick Evans, who were joined by James Lockyer on viola and Cedric Sharpe on cello.

The string orchestra version had its premiere in the English city of Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1924, conducted by Schoenberg's champion and former student Edward Clark.

Verklärte Nacht was controversial at its 1902 premiere. This was due to the highly advanced harmonic idiom, although Schoenberg did receive praise for his inventiveness. The work employs a richly chromatic language and often ventures far from the home key, though the work is clearly rooted in D minor. A particular point of controversy was the use of a single 'nonexistent' (that is, uncategorized and therefore unpermitted) inverted ninth chord, which resulted in its rejection by the Vienna Music Society. Schoenberg remarked "and thus (the work) cannot be performed since one cannot perform that which does not exist".

Some unfavorable reaction was also due to the use of Dehmel's poem as inspiration, questioning the viability of setting its themes to music, or being concerned about the situation of the woman in the story.[18] The poem's content was considered improper for its failure to criticize (and possibly even its glorification of) premarital sex, and Schoenberg's lush harmonic treatment of the material further brought the work towards indecency in the minds of the Viennese.

Richard Dehmel himself was favorably impressed by Schoenberg's treatment of the poem, writing, "I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your composition, but soon forgot to do so, I was so enthralled by the music."