4 - Erwartung

Summary

Erwartung was not performed until fifteen years after its feverishly speedy composition. By its very nature, it has not become a regular feature of the operatic repertory, yet its importance is not merely that of an interesting object for musicological study. The dramatic force and lyrical eloquence of its music has been widely acknowledged – a compelling and not unsympathetic psychological study of derangement to be placed alongside more traditionally operatic precedents as Strauss’s Salome. Most published commentaries on it have dealt with compositional materials and techniques, and consideration of a range of such studies focuses on what can be reconstructed about the evolution of the text, as well as the various attempts to find consistency and coherence in the thirty-minute score. By and large, a consensus has evolved, especially through the use of post-tonal analytical techniques, which counterbalances the assumption that the score is a repetition-free ‘stream of consciousness’.