Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire Revisited: Acceptance of Vocal Expression

In 1912 Arnold Schoenberg composed a piece with an extraordinary vocal part: "Three Times Seven Poems" from Albert Giraud's "Pierrot lunaire" op. 21, for speaking voice (Sprechstimme) and chamber orchestra.¹ The musicological literature about Schoenberg's work is extensive, as well as the discussion about his understanding of the vocal parts in his musical works. The notation and the description of Sprechstimme imply speaking at a fixed pitch. This phenomenon was titled "speech-song,"² or in German "Sprechgesang,"³ resembling an intermediate state between speaking and singing.

Within the phenomenon of Sprechstimme lie several problems related to the actual performance and the aesthetic reception by an audience, and this is a topic ripe for empirical investigation from the perspective of musicology and linguistics. Because Pierrot was written during Schoenberg's atonal phase, the music itself might not be easy to understand for an uninformed listener: "And so I [Schoenberg] will also not raise further objections against the performance of my Pierrot, although I consider it very questionable in front of such an uneducated audience."⁴ By including Sprechstimme, Schoenberg created another obstacle, due to the fact that listeners are more likely to expect a singing voice in combination with music, owing to the genre of melodrama having not been sustained throughout music history. The obstacle is not only on the perceiver's side, but also on the performer's side. The Sprechstimme "enigma"⁵ is a highly discussed topic in the literature. It all started with Schoenberg's preface to Pierrot and continued through a number of quotes from letters he exchanged over the years with friends and colleagues.

The preface includes instructions on how to perform Sprechstimme. The most important fact was that the melody "should definitely not be sung," but had to be "transformed into a speech melody." Furthermore, "the difference between a sung pitch [Gesangston] and a spoken pitch [Sprechton] should be clear: a sung pitch is held and does not change, whereas a spoken pitch is intoned, then left by rising or falling in pitch."⁶ Schoenberg also distinguished his notated Sprechstimme from normal speaking: "The difference between normal speaking and speaking as part of a musical structure should be clear."⁷ It is also of note that he instructed that the rhythm be precise.

Gliding Pitch and Melodic Accuracy

It is compelling that the German linguist, Eduard Sievers, in 1912 (the same year, Pierrot was composed) described the difference between music and speech:

Music works mainly with fixed tones of steady pitch, speech moves mainly in gliding tones that rise and fall from one pitch to the other within one and the same syllable. Speech in particular is not bound to discrete pitches and intervals of musical melodies: it knows approximate tone levels only⁸

The combination of fixed pitch and gliding tones, therefore, yields the combination of fundamentally distinct elements of both domains, music, and speech. The desire to achieve melodic accuracy, together with the impression of speaking, was later discussed by other performers and Schoenberg himself. About ten years after the publication of Pierrot, Schoenberg wrote to a close colleague: "The pitches in Pierrot depend on the range of the voice. They are to be considered 'good' but not to be 'strictly adhered to.' … Of course, the speaking level is not enough. A woman must just learn to speak in her 'head voice'."⁹ In light of the pitch range in Pierrot, which is at two and a half octaves, ranging from E-flat 3 to G-sharp 5, certain strategies evolved to handle a certain level of melodic accuracy and the impression of the speaking mode. Writing about an article on treatment of the speaking voice in Pierrot, Schoenberg praised the article's author, Erwin Stein, saying that it was "an excellent article, full of clarity, intelligence and understanding."¹⁰ Stein had written the following observations:

Though shown in absolute pitch notation, the intervals are only meant to be relative. The initial note is so short that it is of no harmonic consequence. The reciter is therefore free not only to transpose his part according...