Variation/Variarions: What Schoenberg's Approach to Formenlehre Can Reveal about His Musical Language(s)

VARIATION/VARIATIONS: WHAT SCHOENBERG’S APPROACH TO FORMENLEHRE CAN REVEAL ABOUT HIS MUSICAL LANGUAGE(S) ANDREW MEAD RNOLD SCHOENBERG’S ADAPTATIONS OF traditional Formenlehre models have proven useful in understanding the language of his twelvetone compositions. His adaptations of the outlines of sonata and rondo forms in the Wind Quintet, op. 26, for example, can be very revealing as to his development of segmental and non-segmental relationships among members of his row class as a mechanism for articulating largescale structure.1 But such an approach is fruitful in examining Schoenberg’s use of other musical languages as well. In what follows I intend to use this approach to consider the language in a late and relatively ignored composition, the Variations on a Recitative for organ, op. 40. This work, written during the composer’s American period, has often been described as a return to tonality. Glenn Watkins (1965), in his pioneering article on this composition, quotes Stuckenschmidt as claiming that the work is in D minor, although a D minor that is so altered by chromaticism that it has lost its original nature. Schoenberg A 76 Perspectives of New Music himself wrote to Leibowitz that it “filled the space between my Chamber Symphony op. 9 and the ‘dissonant’ music.” And he goes on to say, “A great number of unutilized possibilities are to be found therein.” (Watkins 1965, 124) Both of these quotations suggest the problematics of trying to fit the work’s language to the strictures of traditional tonality, no matter how enriched by chromaticism. What I hope to suggest in the following is that it is possible to infer from the music a set of voice-leading principles at work that suggest an alternative approach to composing in the total chromatic in contrast to that developed by the composer in his more familiar twelve-tone compositions. I hope also to suggest that certain principles of creating musical structure found in Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music can be fruitfully applied to thinking about op. 40. There are a number of reasons that this work remains in comparative obscurity, but I strongly believe that this is not due to its musical merit. I agree with Watkins in his assessment that the Variations on a Recitative is no pale companion to the Variations for Orchestra, op. 31, but that it displays a richness and breadth of conception that allows it to stand on its own as one of Schoenberg’s major musical statements. It is some twenty minutes in length, and is his most extensive solo work. It is a major composition in the organ repertoire, arguably on a par with Max Reger’s finest organ work, Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme, op. 73. But therein lies the problem: the organ repertoire is only tangentially familiar to most non-specialist listeners, and Schoenberg’s own relationship to the instrument was not an easy one. Watkins covers this at some length, so I will not repeat it here, but it is worth noting that Schoenberg saw fit to orchestrate a selection of Bach’s organ works, apparently in an effort to make them more clearly understandable to his contemporaries. This is not the place to rehearse the history of organ building and performance conventions that would have led Schoenberg to this stance, but it helps explain why his own notation for the piece requires extensive interpretation to make it even playable. Marilyn Mason (1965) has described her experiences in working with Schoenberg in preparing her performance, and while the published score edited by Carl Weinrich is useful for interpreting the work on a large instrument, it is only one perspective on a piece that I believe can be played successfully on more circumscribed instruments as well. Some have suggested that Schoenberg intended to orchestrate the work, but while others have completed such projects, I personally find the music most satisfying in its original medium. Variation/Variations 77 Before proceeding, it will be useful to distinguish between Schoenberg ’s concept of developing variation and his ideas about writing formal sets of variations. Developing variation describes Schoenberg’s attitude about constantly reshaping the presentation of ideas or motives in the flow...