1 - Prelude

Summary

As titles referring to compositional genres, Nocturne, Notturno and Nachtsmusik had a particular resonance for nineteenth-century composers sensitive to romantic traditions extending from Schubert and Schumann to reach an apogee in Wagner’s celebration of the ‘fabled realm of night’ in Tristan und Isolde. Though placed there in explicit opposition to the mundane reality of daylight, Wagner (notably in Siegfried) also made much of the glorious effects of the rising sun. The tension between darkness and light as reflecting radically different states of mind as well as different effects of nature, was also a favoured topic for late romantic poets and painters active in the Viennese culture in which Schoenberg came to maturity. Nevertheless, the aspect of romantic sensibility that offset nocturnal unease with a heightened sense of the sublime and the supernatural ensured that examples of Night Music could have a special ambivalence in keeping with their exploratory technical resources.