Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg was an Austrian, and later American, composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. With the rise of the Nazi Party, Schoenberg's works were labeled degenerate music, because they were modernist and atonal. He emigrated to the United States in 1933.
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.
Jonny spielt auf is a German-language opera with words and music by Austrian composer Ernst Krenek about a jazz violinist. The work typified the cultural freedom of the 'golden era' of the Weimar Republic.
Karl V. is an opera, described as a Bühnenwerk mit Musik by Ernst Krenek, his opus 73. The German libretto is by the composer.
Orpheus und Eurydike is an opera by Ernst Krenek. The German text is based on a play by Oskar Kokoschka. Kokoschka began writing his play during his convalescence and it premiered in 1921, one year before Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus appeared. In 1923 he let it be known that he was looking for a composer to write incidental music. Kokoschka's expressionist, psychological treatment of the Orpheus myth, marked by his passion for Alma Mahler, appealed to Krenek so he approached Kokoschka.
Franz Schubert's Piano Sonata in C major D. 840, nicknamed Reliquie upon its first publication in 1861 in the mistaken belief that it had been Schubert's last work, was written in April 1825, whilst the composer was also working on the A minor sonata, D. 845 in tandem. Schubert abandoned the C major sonata, and only the first two movements were fully completed, with the trio section of the third movement also written in full. The minuet section of the third movement is incomplete and contains unusual harmonic changes, which suggests it was there Schubert had become disillusioned and abandoned the movement and later the sonata. The final fourth movement is also incomplete, ending abruptly after 272 bars.
Schwergewicht, oder Die Ehre der Nation is a burleske Operette with text and music by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 55 and the third of his 1928 one-acters. This satirical skit was provoked by the German ambassador's comment that sports heroes – and not artists – were the true ambassadors of nations, and the title character Ochsenschwanz ("oxtail") is a reference to the boxer Max Schmeling.
Der Diktator is a tragic opera in one act with words and music by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 49 and the first of three one-acters which premiered on 6 May 1928 in Wiesbaden as part of the Festspiele Wiesbaden. The score is inscribed with the date of completion, 28 August 1926.
Leben des Orest is a grand opera in five acts with words and music both by Ernst Krenek. It is his Op. 60 and the first of his own libretti with an antique setting. The score is inscribed with the dates of composition: 8 August 1928 – 13 May 1929, and includes indications of recommended cuts made for the first production. It premiered at the Neues Theater in Leipzig on 19 January 1930, and opened at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin in early March of the same year.
Tarquin is a chamber opera by Ernst Krenek to an English libretto by Emmet Lavery. Written in 1940, it is Krenek's only unpublished opera, though a premiere in German translation took place in 1950 in Cologne.
What Price Confidence? is a chamber opera in nine scenes with music and libretto by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 111. This "little drawing room comedy" is set in London at the turn of the 20th century, and features a protagonist not unlike Max in Jonny spielt auf, as the author points out in a preface; it owes something to Melville as well, as do his next two operas.
Cefalo e Procri is a chamber opera in three scenes and a prologue by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 77, begun in 1933 and finished on 3 August 1934. The Italian libretto by Rinaldo Küfferle was commissioned by Universal Edition for the third Venice Festival. The half-hour work was revived at the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice in October 2017 as part of a short double-bill with a setting of the 'Lamento di Procri' by Silvia Colasanti, conducted by Tito Ceccherini.
Zeitoper was a short-lived genre of opera associated with Weimar Germany. It is not known when or by whom the term was coined, but by 1928 Kurt Weill was able to complain that it was more a slogan than a description. Like opera buffa it used contemporary settings and characters, comic or at least satiric plots and aimed at musical accessibility. Two distinguishing characteristics are a tendency to incorporate modern technology and frequent allusions to popular music, especially jazz. This last, more than any social satire, earned the suspicion of the political right and ensured that it would not survive into the Nazi era.
In music, the 'northern lights' chord is an eleven-note chord from Ernst Krenek's Cantata for Wartime (1943), that represents the Northern Lights. Krenek's student, Robert Erickson, cites the chord as an example of a texture arranged so as to, "closely approach the single-object status of fused-ensemble timbres, for example, the beautiful 'northern lights'...chord, in a very interesting distribution of pitches, produces a fused sound supported by a suspended cymbal roll". "The 'northern lights' sounds, so icy and impersonal and menacing, are a brilliant orchestral invention."
Gladys Mercedes Nordenstrom was an American composer.
Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae, usually referred to simply as Threni, is a musical setting by Igor Stravinsky of verses from the Book of Lamentations in the Latin of the Vulgate, for solo singers, chorus and orchestra. It is important among Stravinsky's compositions as his first and longest completely dodecaphonic work, but is not often performed. It has been described as "austere" but also as a "culminating point" in his career as an artist, "important both spiritually and stylistically" and "the most ambitious and structurally the most complex" of all his religious compositions, and even "among Stravinsky's greatest works".
Das geheime Königreich is an opera in one act with words and music by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 50 and the second of three one-acters which premiered on 6 May 1928 at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden as part of the Mai-Festwoche Wiesbaden. It is subtitled Märchenoper in 1 Akt and has been called a satirical fairy-tale opera.
