3 - Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, Op. 15, Nos. 7 and 11

Summary

Chapter 3 turns its attention to the “Book of the Hanging Gardens” songs, Op. 15 – some of Schoenberg’s earliest atonal pieces. As settings of texts by Stefan George, these songs illustrate the large framework I call “basic image.” A basic image distills a visual shape of some sort from the poem’s first few lines of text, then uses it to control various aspects of the song’s pitch and rhythm. In Op. 15, No. 7, “Angst und Hoffen,” the basic image is of a lover turning his face alternately upward toward hope and downward toward fear (that his beloved would be lost to him), while his body first constricts, then expands to emit longer and longer sighs. In Op. 15, No. 11, “Als wir hinter dem beblümten Tore,” the guiding image is that of a memory (of a past tryst with the beloved) in the lover’s mind that disappears, but is at least partially recovered after some striving. This second image has points in common with the other kind of framework, the “musical idea.”