Original signed and annotated typed carbon copy manuscript of what was "perhaps...the last program note Schoenberg wrote" (Daniel Jenkins, "Schoenberg's Program Notes and Musical Analyis" p. 17), which appeared in Tout Ensemble, the student newspaper of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, in advance of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s performance of this work in February, 1951.
3 pp. typed manuscript, first and final pages with the composer's 116 N. Rockingham Ave, Los Angeles address, dated January 12, 1951 at the conclusion and inscribed in ink by the composer "Copyright 1951 by Arnold Schoenberg" beneath his typed name. With five corrections in blue ink, apparently in the hand of Schoenberg's secretary and editor, Richard Hoffmann, from whom are also included four typed letters signed, 8vo, dated December 5, 1950, January 12, 1950[1] and January 13 (2), 1950[1]. Manuscript measures 8 x 10.5 inches (20.5 x 26.5 cm), two hole punches to left margins, stapled at upper left corner, a few light stains, overall very fine. A line with barely visible text appears along the upper edge, being the title from source manuscript from which this carbon copy was made.
The Systematic Index of the Writings of Arnold Schönberg 5.1.1.13 records the first publication of Notes on the Gurrelieder in Tout Ensemble 5, No. 4 (January 30, 1951), identifying an autograph first draft manuscript without title as T32.02 as well as a typed manuscript titled "For the Cincinnati performance of the Gurre Lieder," both 3pp and dated January 12, 1951 as well as a carbon copy identified as T54.12, which is presumed to be our example.
Provenance: From the collection of the composer Richard Hundley (1931 - 2018), who at the age of 19 and before leaving his hometown of Cincinnati, OH for the Manhattan Music School, wrote to Schoenberg asking if he might contribute a program note for his student newspaper; thence to composer Christopher Berg (1949 - 2026).
Gurrelieder is a large cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schoenberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen. Schoenberg began composing the work in 1900 as a song cycle for soprano, tenor and piano, using a lush, late-romantic style. He worked on this version sporadically until around 1903, then abandoned it and returned in 1910. Whereas Parts One and Two are clearly Wagnerian in conception and execution, Part Three features the pared-down orchestral textures and kaleidoscopic shifts between small groups of instruments favored by Mahler in his later symphonies. Schoenberg also introduced the first use of Sprechgesang (or Sprechstimme), a technique he would explore more fully in Pierrot Lunaire of 1912.
First performed in Vienna on February 23, 1913, with Franz Schreker conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Choir and the Wiener Konzertvereinsorches.
"In March 1900 Schoenberg began setting Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Gurre-Lieder as a song cycle for voice and piano, for entry in a competition... However, Schoenberg soon saw wider possibilities in the text... He therefore decided to connect the songs he had already composed (those in the first two parts of the finished work) with symphonic interludes and set the whole poem as a vast cantata employing several soloists and a huge chorus and orchestra. The work depicts the love of King Waldemar and Tove under the Tristanesque imminence of death, Waldemar’s blasphemous defiance of God after Tove’s death, the nightly ride at the head of a ghostly retinue to which the king’s restless spirit is subsequently condemned, and its dismissal by the summer wind at the approach of day. Schoenberg encompassed all this in a series of tableaux of extraordinary magnificence." O. W. Neighbour in Grove Music Online.
The Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885) wrote his Gurresange in 1871. The German translation is by Robert Franz Arnold (1872-1938).
Born in 1925, Richard Hoffmann (1925 - 2021) was already a prodigious violinist in his native Vienna by the time the spread of Nazism forced his family to relocate from Austria to New Zealand when he was 10. He completed an undergraduate degree at the University of New Zealand, then arrived in Los Angeles in 1947 to study composition with his cousin, the great serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg. From 1948 to 1951, Hoffmann served as Schoenberg’s secretary and editor, while continuing his postgraduate studies in musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 1951—the year of Schoenberg’s death—Hoffmann began lecturing in music theory at UCLA. Three years later, he became an assistant professor of composition and music theory at Oberlin, where he remained for the duration of his career.
Original signed and annotated typed carbon copy manuscript of what was "perhaps...the last program note Schoenberg wrote" (Daniel Jenkins, "Schoenberg's Program Notes and Musical Analyis" p. 17), which appeared in Tout Ensemble, the student newspaper of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, in advance of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s performance of this work in February, 1951.
3 pp. typed manuscript, first and final pages with the composer's 116 N. Rockingham Ave, Los Angeles address, dated January 12, 1951 at the conclusion and inscribed in ink by the composer "Copyright 1951 by Arnold Schoenberg" beneath his typed name. With five corrections in blue ink, apparently in the hand of Schoenberg's secretary and editor, Richard Hoffmann, from whom are also included four typed letters signed, 8vo, dated December 5, 1950, January 12, 1950[1] and January 13 (2), 1950[1]. Manuscript measures 8 x 10.5 inches (20.5 x 26.5 cm), two hole punches to left margins, stapled at upper left corner, a few light stains, overall very fine. A line with barely visible text appears along the upper edge, being the title from source manuscript from which this carbon copy was made.
The Systematic Index of the Writings of Arnold Schönberg 5.1.1.13 records the first publication of Notes on the Gurrelieder in Tout Ensemble 5, No. 4 (January 30, 1951), identifying an autograph first draft manuscript without title as T32.02 as well as a typed manuscript titled "For the Cincinnati performance of the Gurre Lieder," both 3pp and dated January 12, 1951 as well as a carbon copy identified as T54.12, which is presumed to be our example.
Provenance: From the collection of the composer Richard Hundley (1931 - 2018), who at the age of 19 and before leaving his hometown of Cincinnati, OH for the Manhattan Music School, wrote to Schoenberg asking if he might contribute a program note for his student newspaper; thence to composer Christopher Berg (1949 - 2026).
Gurrelieder is a large cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schoenberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen. Schoenberg began composing the work in 1900 as a song cycle for soprano, tenor and piano, using a lush, late-romantic style. He worked on this version sporadically until around 1903, then abandoned it and returned in 1910. Whereas Parts One and Two are clearly Wagnerian in conception and execution, Part Three features the pared-down orchestral textures and kaleidoscopic shifts between small groups of instruments favored by Mahler in his later symphonies. Schoenberg also introduced the first use of Sprechgesang (or Sprechstimme), a technique he would explore more fully in Pierrot Lunaire of 1912.
First performed in Vienna on February 23, 1913, with Franz Schreker conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Choir and the Wiener Konzertvereinsorches.
"In March 1900 Schoenberg began setting Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Gurre-Lieder as a song cycle for voice and piano, for entry in a competition... However, Schoenberg soon saw wider possibilities in the text... He therefore decided to connect the songs he had already composed (those in the first two parts of the finished work) with symphonic interludes and set the whole poem as a vast cantata employing several soloists and a huge chorus and orchestra. The work depicts the love of King Waldemar and Tove under the Tristanesque imminence of death, Waldemar’s blasphemous defiance of God after Tove’s death, the nightly ride at the head of a ghostly retinue to which the king’s restless spirit is subsequently condemned, and its dismissal by the summer wind at the approach of day. Schoenberg encompassed all this in a series of tableaux of extraordinary magnificence." O. W. Neighbour in Grove Music Online.
The Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885) wrote his Gurresange in 1871. The German translation is by Robert Franz Arnold (1872-1938).
Born in 1925, Richard Hoffmann (1925 - 2021) was already a prodigious violinist in his native Vienna by the time the spread of Nazism forced his family to relocate from Austria to New Zealand when he was 10. He completed an undergraduate degree at the University of New Zealand, then arrived in Los Angeles in 1947 to study composition with his cousin, the great serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg. From 1948 to 1951, Hoffmann served as Schoenberg’s secretary and editor, while continuing his postgraduate studies in musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 1951—the year of Schoenberg’s death—Hoffmann began lecturing in music theory at UCLA. Three years later, he became an assistant professor of composition and music theory at Oberlin, where he remained for the duration of his career.