Arnold Schönberg
Phantasy for Violin with
Piano Accompaniment op. 47 (1949)
Biography:
Program Notes:
Completed in 1949, Phantasy for Violin with Piano Accompaniment represents one of Schoenberg’s last compositions, and was premiered by its dedicatee at a concert in celebration of the composer’s 75 birthday. In its published version, the work pays homage to this British-born Canadian violinist via the inscription: “In memory of Adolph Koldofsky [1905 – 1951].”
In terms of design Phantasy comprises numerous succinct sections (some dozen in total, depending upon the enumeration criterion), which sponsors a sense of continual shifting in terms of mood and character. As a result, Phantasy is melodically inventive, contrapuntally rich, and perhaps most critically, it is intensely expressive. The juxtaposition of extremes is a constant feature throughout the composition, whether in the domain of tessitura, dynamics, mode of attack, or any combination of these and a host of other identifiable parameters. In the introductory section alone—lasting all of approximately 30 seconds—there is a noticeable division into two segments nearly equal in length, and internal to each is a rhythmic force that in the earlier half underscores the individuality of violin and piano lines, while in the latter finds the two instruments “communicating” with one another in a rapidly complex and integrated exchange of gestures.
With respect to pitch, Phantasy is squarely representative of Schoenberg’s mature approach to 12-tone compositional technique. Without meaning to delve too deeply into “theory speak,” it is worth noting certain of the premises behind the approach. By valorizing the distinctive intervallic content of each individual work over a priori submission to the gravitational pull exerted by a single note in tonal compositions, Schoenberg’s aim was to “emancipate dissonance,” at least in any conventional sense of what dissonance might mean. The pitch palette from which Schoenberg fashioned his 12-tone compositions featured a specific ordering of the total chromatic often called a tone row. Various permutations of the tone row (based upon transposition, inversion followed by transposition, and retrograding either or both of these operands) will serve as one among several of a work’s markers. The particular intervallic attributes of the tone row in Phantasy makes it possible for the total chromatic to emerge in another way: specifically, through the coupling of distinctly permuted and distinctly segmented row forms.
All of this speaks to the imaginative space that is plainly on display in Phantasy. What is more, the work is beautifully organized, for the episodic nature of the unfolding surface is held together on deeper structural levels. Toward such an end Schoenberg has incorporated the principal of “developing variation”—a term he initially coined in reference to the music of Brahms, where, loosely stated, all aspects of a work are meant to develop out of other aspects, and yet retain their own integrity. Thus, similarities exist in the manner in which violin and piano interact among divergent sections of the work. These aural correlates point toward an even richer design than any casual hearing is apt to reveal, wherein each of the later episodes has a correlate earlier in the piece. What on first blush may seem to be an additive design proves to be more apparent than real: under the rubric of developing variation, outer portions are strongly tied together, as are the inner “Scherzandos”—each of which flanks a related “Poco tranquillo” episode.
None of this, however, detracts from the dense and ornate texture of Phantasy, pitting the elegant against the brash, the doleful against the lively, and the mannered against the virtuosic.
Program Notes by Gregory Marion
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
The University of Saskatchewan
