DSE
Verklärte Nacht-Processed
Studio 10
Brooklyn, NY
Verklarte Nachte
performance flyer
Edition: 100
Offset litho
The third in a trilogy of electronically processed Schoenberg compositions. This performance sampled Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklarte Nachte” from 1899. Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4, is a string sextet in one movement; a composition inspired by Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name along with Schoenberg’s strong feelings upon meeting his future wife Mathilde von Zemlinsky. Dehmel’s poem describes a man and a woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night, wherein she reveals to her new lover that she bears the child of another man. The stages of the poem are mirrored throughout the composition, beginning with the sadness of the woman’s confession, a neutral interlude wherein he reflects upon the confession, and a finale, in which he forgives her and accepts the child as his own.