Description
Asbjørn Schaathun: “Schoenberg Commentaries: On Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19” for Solo Piano
(2010/22)
THE PIANO, ME AND SCHOENBERG…
Stravinsky claimed that a new piece for him started with a sense of intervals in his hands—referring to the piano, which he always worked at when composing. This was in stark contrast to Schoenberg, who never worked at the piano.
Speaking of the feeling in one’s hands: Every time we play the piano music of the great masters, whether Stravinsky, Bach or Beethoven, we must remind ourselves that we are mimicking their playing—and by physically grasping the same intervals and chords they once did, we might come closer to their way of thinking and perhaps even feeling.
This was also the case when, through an initiative by Kenneth Karlsson, I was invited to make commentaries on three of Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19. (The remaining three were to be done by my highly skilled colleague, Rolf Wallin.)
The whole thing was staged such that we were gathered at Asker kulturskole one afternoon in 2010. With the composers placed in separate rooms and a practicing pianist in between, the pieces were to be written then and there. (This parallelled Schoenberg’s writing of five of his six pieces in op. 19 in a single day in 1911.) With a few retrospective revisions, we actually created all six commentaries to Schoenberg’s opus that afternoon, resulting in a collective opus we called Zwölf kleine Klavierstücke—Schoenberg’s six pieces interspersed with our commentaries.
In hindsight, it was perhaps not the best idea, considering that Schoenberg’s pieces are some of the most distinct and characteristic miniatures in the piano literature, each peculiar, different, and yet unified by brief but highly convincing musical building blocks.
However, I did learn something from this experience: when dealing with such distinctive and well-known pieces, I quickly realized that I had to sneak out the back door; by extracting musical threads and elements that were not necessarily in the foreground and building my commentaries around them, I found that there was perhaps a small chance of escaping the gravity, eloquence and wit of Schoenberg’s pieces.
In time, this process sparked a desire in me to try writing my own commentaries on the final three pieces as well, so that the whole could emerge as a complete and independent opus. After another initiative from the indispensable performer, it became a reality.
In any case, this is the only way I dare comment on music that is so close to me, written by one of the most original composers of the 20th century.
The pieces are dedicated to the pianist Kenneth Karlsson on his 70th birthday.
A.Sch. September 2024
This edition is supported by the Norwegian Society of Composers.
