Schoeck's "Penthesilea"

Schoeck's "Penthesilea"Author(s): Peter PalmerSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 150, No. 1906 (Spring, 2009), pp. 19-32Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25597599 .

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i. This was an Austrian Radio recording of a Salzburg Festival

performance conducted

by Gerd Albrecht in the

Felsenreitschule on 17

August 1982, with Helga Dernesch and Theo Adam in the leading roles. The

recording was released on CD in 1994 (Orfeo C 364941 B).

2. See George Steiner: The death of tragedy (London,

1963), pp.216-28.

PETER PALMER

Schoeck's Penthesilea

While yet to be staged outside the German-speaking world,

Othmar Schoeck's music-drama Penthesilea was relayed by the

European Broadcasting Union from Salzburg in 1984.1 The work

had its premiere at the Dresden State Opera on 8 January 1927. Five years later it was revived in Zurich and favourably reviewed by such leading critics as Alfred Einstein and Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt. Schoeck's

friend and colleague Ernst Krenek referred to it as a timeless creation and

as Schoeck's finest work. Penthesilea made a lasting impression on the

composer's younger Swiss compatriot Rolf Liebermann. It is possible to

see late traces of a Schoeckian influence in the scoring of Liebermann's

Freispruch fiir Medea, first staged in 1995. In writing his Penthesilea drama, Heinrich von Kleist is said to have

been influenced by the frescoes that the Baroque artist Tiepolo executed in

Wurzburg. In turn, Kleist's drama has been a source of fascination for later

artists and composers. Oskar Kokoschka, Schoeck's exact contemporary,

produced a set of Penthesilea drawings. Before the Second World War

Leni Riefenstahl planned a film with herself as the Amazon queen. In 1982 Hans Neuenfels made the film Heinrich Penthesilia von Kleist, with music by Heiner Goebbels. More recently, Joel Agee 's new American translation of

Penthesilea has been memorably illustrated by Maurice Sendak. And 2001

saw the premiere in Vienna of Christian Ofenbauer's post-modernist opera

SênePenthesileaEin Traum.

Although published in 1808, Kleist's Penthesilea did not receive a public

performance of any kind until the 1870s. It was not until towards the close

of the 20th century that the play (drastically modified) was first staged in Britain. On that occasion the critic John Barber remarked in the Daily

Telegraph that the violence of the clash between male and female could only have been realised by a playwright tortured by the irreconcilable drives and

cravings of the individual soul.

The modernity of Heinrich von Kleist has been admirably summarised

by George Steiner. Kleist saw human affairs 'in the sharp but unsteady light of the extreme. [...] The action proceeds in fitful brightness, as if a torch

had suddenly been raised behind the characters and then put out.'2 In nearly all Kleist's dramas there are telling episodes of sleep or unconsciousness,

representing a transition from one level of reality to another. 'With Kleist

that characteristically modern insight into the plurality of individual

consciousness is given dramatic expression.' Hence Penthesilea goes well

THE MUSICAL TIMES Spring 2009 19



20 Schoeck 's Penthesilea

3. In my view this erotic

absolutism is also to be found in Schoeck's opera Venus

(1921, rev. 193 3) and - in an Apollonian form ? in

Benjamin Britten's opera Death in Venice.

4. See Five German

tragedies, translated with an

introduction by FJ Lamport

(Harmondsworth, 1969), pp.21-24 and p.27.

5. Grand guignol is a feature of the designs for the new

production of Schoeck's Penthesilea mounted at the Dresden State Opera in 2008

(see illustrations).

beyond the analogous Sdrka texts that occupied Fibich and the young Janacek at the end of the 19th century.

Steiner compares the form of Penthesilea to a murderous sword-dance.

When the warrior-queen sees Achilles, he writes, her desire transcends the

erotic. 'It is an obsession with the absolute such as we find in the narratives

of Poe and Balzac.'3 Similarly, FJ Lamport refers to 'an ideal love of such

terrible, incandescent beauty that it cannot but scorch and destroy creatures

of mere flesh and blood'.4 In a letter Kleist described the play as containing his innermost being, in all its dirt ('Schmutz') and its radiance ('Glanz'). Some commentators believe that 'Schmutz' was a slip of the pen for

'Schmerz' ('pain'); others maintain that it was precisely what Kleist meant.

Goethe saw seeds of decadence in Kleist's Penthesilea^ Steiner describes it as exalted grand guignol.5 With its near-cannibalistic climax, the

tragedy reflects a strain of hysteria which underlies the whole Romantic

era in literature, from the Gothic novel to Oscar Wilde's Salome. Richard

Strauss's version of Wilde's play, first staged in 1905, transferred this strain

to the opera house. Meanwhile the exploration of dream-states had been

musicalised by Debussy in his setting of Maeterlinck's Pelleas etMelisande.

Another work featuring the same thematic complex is Bartok's Duke

Bluebeard's castle (1911). Bluebeard also carries on from Pelleas ? and blazes a trail for Schoeck's Penthesilea ? in its use of a vocal style closely tailored to the rhythms and accents of the libretto. But Penthesilea differs from any of the above works by adapting a century-old text in blank verse.

Kleist gave a radically new complexion to the Ancient Greek story. The usual version has it that Achilles kills Penthesilea in battle and

then falls in love with her body. Drawing, perhaps, on 18th-century French retellings of the myth, Kleist turns this situation virtually on its

head. The outward 'plot' of Penthesilea hinges on a deception practised for

the sake of love. In the tenth year of the siege of Troy, a band of Amazon

women from Asia Minor appeared on the battlefield, attracted by reports of

the heroism of the Greek commanders. According to a Scythian custom, men had no place in the Amazon state. Before coupling with a man, an

Amazon had to conquer him in battle and lead him back to Themiscyra, her

capital. The future of the tribe was then assured at a sacred rose-festival in

the temple of Diana ? an episode featured in the 'Dream' section of Hugo Wolf's symphonic poem Penthesilea (1883). The partner was determined by the war-god, not by the individual Amazon.

Penthesilea, the Amazon queen, breaches this rule inasmuch as Achilles

has been commended to her by her dying mother. She seeks him out on the

battlefield. The two fall in love, but Penthesilea twice fails to conquer Achilles

in battle. Having unseated Penthesilea from her horse, Achilles does not



6. Werner Vogel: Othmar

Schoeck im Gesprach (Zurich,

1965), p.152. All quotations from the German have been translated by the present

writer.

kill the wounded queen. Instead he throws down his weapons. Penthesilea

is bravely rescued from the Greeks by her friend Prothoe. The princess resolves to stay with her when, bemused and despairing, she refuses to join the Amazon retreat. Before falling unconscious, Penthesilea has a vision in

which she sees Achilles lying at her feet in the guise of Helios, the sun-god. Her would-be lover vies with his colleague Diomedes for possession of her.

He admits to having lost interest in Troy and eventually convinces Prothoe

of his good intentions. On regaining consciousness, Penthesilea raises her

dagger against him. He and Prothoe assure her that Achilles is the queen's

prisoner; they omit to say that this is true only figuratively. She exults in the

anticipated fulfilment of her love, which she imagines to be in accordance

with the laws.

But as the sounds of battle grow nearer, Penthesilea is disabused of her

illusion. She rails furiously at the Amazons and tries to call back Achilles. In

turn the High Priestess of Diana formally strips Penthesilea of her crown

and banishes her from the Amazon realm. The tragedy now approaches its

climax. Achilles once more challenges Penthesilea. Her love abruptly turns

into hatred. She invokes the god Mars to help her avenge her perceived humiliation and unleashes her dogs and other beasts of war. Treating the

whole episode as a mere adventure (this is his fatal weakness), Achilles

advances to meet her unarmed. She shoots him with an arrow before tearing him from limb to limb. When, still in a trance, she rejoins her companions, Penthesilea at first believes herself transported to another world. Coming to

her senses, she kisses the maimed body of Achilles, surrenders her weapons to Prothoe and dies of a broken heart.

Nietzsche saw in Kleist's play a forerunner of the Wagnerian music

drama. The work has been described as Tristan without music. To

Schoeck's mind, however, Wagner's own

stage-works contained

more music than Kleist's drama warranted. It must also be questioned whether Schoeck's Penthesilea experiences a Tristanesque 'Liebestod'. The

queen's self-induced death arises from love, hate and consequent remorse, a

remorse that she hammers and sharpens on the 'eternal anvil of hope'. Schoeck was seldom given to publicly explaining his ideas and methods.

It is in private remarks made in December 1946 and February 1955 that he

offered a reason for setting Kleist's Penthesilea to music. On both occasions

Schoeck said that when performed in the theatre, the dramatic events were

too rapid. In the opera house this could be remedied. 'Music intensifies the

word, supporting it and enveloping it, and slows down the action.'6 By dint of his bizarre imagery and distorted syntax, Kleist will seem to today's reader to have been decades ahead of his time. From a technical standpoint, Schoeck's achievement was to bring out the drama's linguistic modernity,




22 Schoeck 's Penthesilea

j. 'Schoeck und Kleist', in

Walter Muschg: Pamphlet undBekenntnis (Olten, 1986),

p.94. This is a reprint of an

article published in Annalen

//(Zurich, 1928).

while also providing his own reading of its subject. Hence the very mixed

response to his setting from such literary scholars as Walter Muschg. On

the one hand, Muschg commented, Schoeck's Penthesilea represented an

extreme violation of Kleist's play; on the other, the work was in itself

dramatically excellent. It was a relief, Muschg thought, that after a century of misreadings the Amazon queen had been finally restored to her native

element: 'the realm of love and of music'.7

Kleist's close interest in music finds expression in his novella Die heilige Cacilie oder die Gewalt derMusik {St Cecilia or The power of music). There are

also two significant letters of 1800 and 1811 respectively. In the first Kleist

claimed to be capable of hearing imaginary concerti, fully orchestrated, in his inner ear. This had happened to him as a boy, surrounded by the

murmurs of the wind and the Rhine. In the second letter, he speaks of

temporarily giving up literature in favour of scientific studies but more

especially music. Music, Kleist believed, was the root of all the other arts.

Whereas Goethe had related the writing of poetry to a theory of colours, Kleist proposed a link with a theory of musical notes. Just under a century

later, the Symbolist commentator Franz Servaes sought to demonstrate that

Kleist's dramas Robert Guiskard and Penthesilea did indeed arise out of a

sense of musical movement.

Only gradually did Schoeck arrive at his final conception of

Penthesilea. In the early 1920s, knowing of the play's fascination for

Schoeck, his friend and first biographer Hans Corrodi began to draft a three-act opera libretto. No sooner had the composer set eyes on the first

act than he sketched his principal musical themes. Penthesilea is symbolised

by the key of F# major. In direct opposition to the Amazon sphere, the world

of Achilles is associated with the tonal centre C. This tritonal relationship was anticipated by Bartok in Duke Bluebeard's castle. There, admittedly, the

genders are reversed, Ftt being associated with Bartok's male protagonist and C with his Judith. But in both works, it is the 'Ftt major character' who

triggers the deadly outcome.

The resonances of Ftt major have given this key a special place in and

beyond Romantic music. An early example occurs in 'Absence', the fourth

song in Berlioz's song-cycle Les nuits d'ete (Gautier's text could easily be

put in the mouth of Penthesilea). Wagner's Tannhauser shows the erotic

side of Ftt major; the 'Presentation of the rose' in Richard Strauss's Der

Rosenkavalier the quasi-mystical aspect. With Hugo Wolf it stands, accord

ing to Eric Sams, for euphoria. As already indicated, however, it is the

key-relations and not just key characteristics which matter in Schoeck's

Penthesilea.

At the same time Schoeck's score dispenses with key-signatures.



Fig.i: Schoeck:

Penthesilea, opening PAntKAQiUfl (? Barenreiter-Verlag

reilineSliea.

Karl Votterle GmbH N*ck famTrnmngUL von Heinrich von Kleist

& Co. KG, Kassel (BA

3652a) and reproduced Othmar Schoeck

by kind permission) Mftwrfu <?Srr""'rt? A f fftffr r*_i-'^T fVr

S Kterlim BmUm

^(ftrnrMhr?tond)

> Hoi "

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*>DieZiff?*be4?itaimiBerimr?iiMBnc?flâMt^^ **) Dm Zeichen.b<tdmFr?aen?toiuD?bftdaat?t. nihwmi d? BJngwMi web?, TlbriCTwad?BBn. ond Ihib?wei?i *? tnnexa Haminioho geyn dm Mnad.

BA 3652 a ? 1984 by BSrenrdter-Verlag, Kand

8. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen: 'Das "Wesentliche des

Kleist'schen Dramas"? zur musikdramatischen

Konzeption von Othmar

Schoecks Operneinakter Penthesilea*, in Archivfilr

Musikwissenschaft 59/4 (2002), p.271.

9. Hans Corrodi: Othmar

Schoeck: Bild eines Schaffens (Frauenfeld, 1956)^.152.

The composition is not wilfully atonal so much as free-tonal, exploiting a range of rhythmic and harmonic devices with the symbolic function

of formulae or signals. As Derrick Puffett and others have suggested, Schoeck's techniques have more in common with modernism than with

Expressionism. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen has warned against setting too

much store by Schoeck's admiration for the Clytemnestra scene in Strauss's

Elektra. Citing Schoeck's reported description of his work-in-progress as

altogether homophonic, Hinrichsen sees this 'homophony' as the precise

opposite of Strauss's 'psychical polyphony'.8 Such a departure from the

Wagner-Strauss tradition is confirmed by another of Schoeck's recorded

comments: 'Kleist's verses provide the actual melody, and the music adds

only the harmony and rhythm.'9




24 Schoeck's Penthesilea

io. Werner Vogel: Othmar

Schoeck: Leben und Schaffen (Zurich, 1976), pp.i68f.

11. Speaking of his Kleist

opera Der Prini von Homburg

(1958, rev.1991), Hans

Werner Henze has referred to the stimulus of Kleist's

compressed language.

12. Corrodi: Othmar Schoeck,

p.155.

For all the probable influences, from Hugo Wolf and Alban Berg to Busoni

and Stravinsky, no other music-drama has quite the same tone and temper as Schoeck's Penthesilea. In a friend's account of the composer at work, the

essential word is 'komprimieren'.10 If there is one term that conveys the

individuality of Schoeck's creation, it is 'compressionism', used in both a

figurative and a literal sense.11 This concept has been applied to Strindberg's dramas ? and more than one commentator has called Schoeck's view of the

'sex war' Strindbergian.

Schoeck rejected Corrodi's proposed libretto in three acts. 'Not a comma

that isn't in Kleist!' he declared of his setting; but this hyperbolic statement

seems not a little misleading. Kleist's play is an extended one-acter divided

into scenes ('Auftritte') in the French manner. Schoeck omits the entire

exposition and begins with the entrance of the wounded and exhausted

Penthesilea at the close of Kleist's seventh scene. His cousin Leon Oswald

helped him select suitable passages. At a later stage, Schoeck's brother Paul

bridged gaps with further extracts from Kleist; he also revised the closing scene.

After the first production in Dresden, Schoeck expanded the composition

slightly by inserting its only duet, to be sung by the lovers ahead of their

contest. The words of this duet were assembled by the composer from

various lines in the play. Kleist's drama contains over 3,000 lines, Schoeck's

final text around 750. Several of Kleist's supporting characters disappear.

Verbally, the choruses of Greeks and Amazons are restricted to utterances

of 'Ho! Ho!', 'Ah! Ah', and such phrases as 'Ihr Gotter! Flieht!' and 'Rette

sich, wer retten kann!' ('Everyone for themselves!'). The Amazons' war

like ululations are achieved by vibrating their palms against their mouths.

Schoeck eventually called his composition Penthesilea, nach dem

Trauerspiel von Heinrich von Kleist, in einem Aufyug (the word 'nach' ? 'after' ? is a significant qualification). In Hans Corrodi's view the

work, although continuous, can be divided into four main sections.12 The

first section, portraying the capture of Penthesilea, corresponds to scenes

8-13 in the play. The second section, the tableau of love, is a condensed

version of Kleist's 14th and 15th scenes. The third section covers scenes

16-20. Here the Amazon victory is followed by Achilles's challenge to the

queen. Of Kleist's four last scenes, nos.21 and 22 are severely abridged,

though not at the expense of Achilles's memorable phrase: 'Dies wunderbare

Weib, / Halb Furie, halb Grazie' ('This wondrous woman, half fury, half

grace').

The composition proceeds swiftly to the killing of Achilles and the

epilogue. Whereas Kleist depicts the death entirely through reported

speech (Meroe), Schoeck restores to Achilles himself the lines: 'Penthesilea,



Fig.2: Markus Nieminen as Achilles and Iris Vermillion as Penthesilea in Dresden State Opera 's 2008 production of Schoeck's Penthesilea (photo: Matthias Creutziger)

meine Braut! was tust du? / 1st dies das Rosenfest, das du versprachst?'

('Penthesilea, my bride! what are you doing? /Is this the Rose Festival you

promised?', lines 2664-65) and to the queen: 'Ha! sein Geweih verrat den

Hirsch' ('Ha! the stag is betrayed by its antlers', line 2645). In a last adjustment Schoeck's Penthesilea ends not with the comments of

theAmazonpriestessesbutwiththequeen'sfinalmonologue. Here, Prothoe's

'Sie stirbt' ('She's dying') is inserted before Penthesilea's valedictory 'Nun

ists gut' ('Now all is well'). How the composition corresponds to Kleist's

drama can be indicated as follows:

Kleist Schoeck

(ed. H. Sembdner) (Barenreiter 3652a )

lines 1113-1537 Penthesilea is captured figures 1-55 lines 1538?2259 the love scene figures 56?131 lines 2260?2447 Amazons' victory; Achilles's challenge figures 132?168 lines 2551?2703 death of Achilles figures 169?195 lines 2704?3034 epilogue figures 196?223

The above line-numbers represent marker posts, not aggregates. As

already noted, those scenes that the composer used were deprived of

many of Kleist's lines (well over half, in fact). Conversely, Schoeck and

his librettist drew briefly on earlier scenes where it suited their purpose. One example is Penthesilea's exclamation when the victorious Amazons are

THE MUSICAL TIMES Spring 2009 2j




Butaeva ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Êfl^^^l Atanasov as Meroe ^^^^^^^B^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^^^^l as ^^^^^HR^^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^^^^^^H^^^^^^h Dresden ^J^^^^^l State Opera ^^^^^^HH^^Êf?r^H^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ld^^^^^^BL^^^^^H

about to seize Achilles: 'Dem ist ein Pfeil gescharft des Todes, / Der mir

sein Haupt beriihrt!' ('An arrow waits, sharpened with death, for any who

would touch his head!'). This, Corrodi points out, reciprocates Achilles's

protective stance towards the queen.

Another example occurs with Penthesilea's formal banishment from the

Amazon state. The Chief Priestess ends, in Schoeck's version, with the

ringing line: 'Verflucht das Herz, das sich nicht mass'gen kann!' ('Cursed be the heart that cannot hold itself in check!'). Curiously, Kleist gave the

line (720) to Penthesilea herself; literary scholars have questioned whether

'nicht' should not read 'noch'. At all events it effectively counters the

queen's 'Verflucht sei dieser schandliche Triumph mir!' ('Cursed be this

shameful triumph!') and rounds off the denunciation.

One of the most striking technical features of Schoeck's Penthesilea

has added to the difficulty of performing it. Unlike Debussy's Pelleas

and Bartok's Bluebeard (excepting its prologue), Schoeck's score

incorporates spoken passages. Usually these are punctuated by orchestral

chords, although sometimes they are given a more sustained orchestral

accompaniment. Moreover there is an intermediate stage between 'frei

gesprochen' and fully notated recitative. Here, by means of note-stems

without heads, the rhythms but not the pitches are notated. In Schoeck's

opening scene, the Amazon Meroe's narration fluctuates between these three

types of utterance. Conventional time-signatures appear only fleetingly;

usually Schoeck writes simply the number 1, 2 or 3. In passages of pure

speech, dynamic markings are followed by an arrow indicating fast or slow.



Dresden ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H State Opera ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H

13. A practice leading to

Schoenberg's 'Sprechgesang' and to a similar use of

the voice in Alban Berg's IVoneck.

Penthesilea first resorts to speech when, awaking from her sleep, she

glimpses Achilles ('Da steht der Fiirchterliche hinter mir!'). However, her

very first sung phrases carry the footnote: 'All the very low notes throughout Penthesilea's part to slip half into speech'. Her final phrase is spoken

? but

rhythmic. The basic element of verbal rhythm is the word, not the syllable. In underlining certain words in the text, Schoeck was following Richard

Strauss's practice in his melodrama Enoch Arden.

There is also an operatic model for Schoeck's handling of speech in

Penthesilea. His awareness of the works of Humperdinck went back to early

youth, and to a staging enfamille of the Brothers Grimm fairy-tale opera Die

sieben Geislein. With the first version (1897) of his Konigskinder Humperdinck

sought to bring 'reality' to the musical stage by uniting recitation and music.

His avowed aim was to apply Wagnerian precepts to melodrama, thereby

creating a sub-genre bearing some resemblance to recitation in the Ancient

Greek theatre. In the process he devised the term 'gebundenes Melodram',

meaning melodrama with the elevated tone of verse. Unlike Schoeck in the

spoken paragraphs of Penthesilea, Humperdinck ?

using notes with an x

replacing the note-head - indicated approximate pitches as well as rhythms and accents.13

Schoeck's lingering uncertainty about the audibility of certain spoken

passages is reflected at the point where the Amazons are returning to the

attack. He presents alternative notations for two priestesses, the notes

to be sung only if the speaking voice is unable to penetrate orchestral

dynamics of ff and fff Thus it is hardly surprising that one of the more

recent productions of Penthesilea used a double cast of speakers and singers.




28 Schoeck 7s Penthesilea

14. See Mario Venzago & Hartmut Becker: 'Zu unserer Einrichtung der

Partitur von Schoecks

Oper "Penthesilea"', in

the Lucerne International

Festival programme booklet

'Szenisches Konzert,

Sonntag, 15. August 1999',

pp.21?24. The modified

libretto is reprinted in the

booklet of the recording issued in 2005 on Musiques Suisses MGB 6233 (2 CDs).

15. Hinrichsen: 'Das " Wesentliche des

Kleist'schen Dramas"?',

pp.294-97.

The same technical consideration prompted a different approach when

Schoeck's work was given a semi-staged performance at the 1999 Lucerne

Festival. Here the dramaturg Hartmut Becker and the conductor Mario

Venzago restored to the cast one of the supporting characters that Schoeck

had cut. This part was filled by an actress who delivered some of the spoken lines Schoeck gave to other Amazons (as well as some Kleistian narration

not used by the composer).14 But Schoeck's central characters continued to

oscillate between speech and song. Like the various types of verbal utterance, the rhythms of Penthesilea

presented Schoeck with notational difficulties. And just as Kleist's iambic

verses were an unceasing challenge to the composer, the composed synco

pations repeatedly challenge the opera's performers.

The principal voice-types and the orchestral instruments in

Penthesilea are complementary, and both have uncommon features.

Schoeck had some justification for saying of the title part that it was

the most rewarding contralto part he knew. The allocation of Achilles's role

to a baritone has raised some eyebrows; unlike Mozart's Don Giovanni or

Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Schoeck's hero is victim rather than villain.

But the contralto-baritone pairing serves to reinforce the lovers' potential

compatibility, a state confirmed by their ecstatic duet. This feature, too, is

a matter for debate. Schoeck composed it only after the work's premiere in Dresden, sensing that the love scene lacked a central focus. The duet's

singularity within the musico-dramatic design might be seen as a stylistic break, or

alternatively as

having a

special expressive status. There is a

certain parallel in Penthesilea's exalted final monologue. That Schoeck radically altered the final bars of Penthesilea after Dresden

went seemingly unnoticed for many years. Only in the 21st century did

Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen point out the significance of the revision.15

Not only was the original final cadence longer; it ended on a dissonance,

ppp, instead of on a pure triad, with a bang. Subtlety, however, can be

counter-productive in drama. True, the revised ending is at odds with what

Hinrichsen calls a tonal organisation oriented to the 'semantics of chordal

and intervallic relations'. But even if this organisation was premeditated, can the composer be denied the right finally to explode it? And does not a

resolving chord that the orchestra positively hurls at the listener sound at

least as uncompromising as the acutest dissonance (see fig.5)? Before starting work on the full score, Schoeck had a sloping wooden

desk specially made for it, the size of an architect's drawing-board. Sheets

of paper with the pre-established instrumentation printed on them were

supplied by Breitkopf & Hartel. The piano-vocal score subsequently

published by Barenreiter often features more than the usual two-staff piano



16. Piano resonance in

Penthesilea, argues Robin

Holloway, 'influences

every aspect of the

voicing, spacing, and even

the harmony itself. See

his article 'Schoeck the

evolutionary', in Tempo 218 (October 2001),

pp.2?6, reprinted in Robin

Holloway: On music: essays and diversions 1963?200J

(London, 2005), pp. 173-79.

17. See Stefan Kunze:

'Schoecks "Penthesilea Stil" ? zur musikalischen

Dramaturgic der

Penthesilea', in Stefan Kunze & Hans Jiirg Liithi, edd.: Auseinandersefûng mit Othmar Schoeck: ein

Symposion (Zurich, 1987), pp.103-39.

18. Tony Kushner: The art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the

present (New York, 2003),

p.76.

system; the opera's instrumental complexity is reflected in the use of one or

more additional staves.

The orchestration of Schoeck's Kleist setting is unusual in many ways. The piano is heard in all Schoeck's stage works from Venus onwards; in

Penthesilea he exploits the sounds of two pianos.16 When, for instance, the

Amazons turn the tables on the Greeks, a shrill arpeggiated figure appears. This keyboard figure persists right through the scene, from Penthesilea's

'Verflucht sei dieser schandliche Triumph!' to Meroe's 'Sie ist wahnsinnig!'

('She is mad!'). Ten clarinets in various registers ? Kleist himself was an

accomplished clarinettist - contribute to the 'bronze' orchestral sound. The

remaining woodwinds are made up of three flutes, all doubling on piccolo, one oboe/cor anglais and a contra-bassoon. There are four each of French

horns, trumpets (not to mention three more off-stage) and trombones, plus bass tuba. A stierhorn rings out before Achilles's challenge to the queen. In addition to timpani, the percussion instruments include bass drum and

side drum, triangle, various cymbals, rattle, tam-tam and xylophone. Of

the string section, the lower-pitched instruments are strongly in evidence, violins being restricted to four solo instruments. The music which punctuates Achilles's loving pronunciation of the queen's name is coloured by tuned

glasses stroked with a bow.

Schoeck's Penthesilea is decidedly not symphonic. Stefan Kunze refers

to the compositional dimension as primarily musical stagecraft.17 But

the music is still substantial enough for the conductor Andreas Delfs

to have fashioned a 25-minute orchestral suite (1991) from the 80-minute

score. It is, writes Tony Kushner,18 notoriously difficult to find physical correlates for Kleist's polarities and ambiguities in staged productions

? yet

Schoeck created such correlates in his composition. One of the harmonic

'pillars' (Schoeck's term) on which Penthesilea rests is found in the

opening bars, before the rise of the curtain (see fig.i). The listener is then

immediately plunged into the antiphonal cries of the Greeks and Amazons.

Corrodi describes the war as the (often unseen) third principal character in

the drama. Essential elements of the whole work are stated in the martial

orchestral prelude. In Schoeck's Kleist adaptation, the nature of Achilles's

attraction for the queen emerges from her first espressivo passage. Is it my

fault, she asks, that I have to compete for his feelings on the battlefield?

All that I want, ye gods, is to draw him down to my breast! The subject of war finds its most extensive verbal statement in Penthesilea's prayer to Ares

before her final clash with Achilles. The sustained polychord which underlies

the killing is another example of Schoeck's invention. And all along, the

evocative 'Klanggriinde', the harmonic foundations of successive scenes, have the power to match Kleist's most outlandish verbal effects.

the musical times Spring 2009 29




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That Penthesilea is not only 'Furie' but also 'Grazie' is reflected in her

music's lyrical passages. Early in the action, her entranced invocation of

the sun-god seems to contain both sides of her personality. A key passage occurs early in the love scene, just before Penthesilea calls for the strewing of roses. A human being, she sings, can be a hero in sorrow, but it takes

happiness to make him a god. Here an expansive cantilena is spun. The

melancholy inherent in the cadencing suggests the queen's subconscious

awareness that her quest is doomed. Similarly, the duet for Penthesilea and

Achilles ? which draws on the melody of the cantilena ? is rightly described

by Corrodi as a descrescendo.



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Like Erwin und Elmire, Schoeck's first stage work, and his fairy-tale

adaptation Vom Fischer un syner Fru (1930), but in a very different context to either, Penthesilea features a moment of profound silence. The queen is

described as becoming taciturn at the end of Meroe's account of the killing of Achilles. The chorus of Amazons utter a pianissimo lament, the Chief Priestess quietly voices her horror, and a 'long pause' ensues. This leads to

the funereal opening chords of the epilogue ('Breit und feierlich' - 'Broad and solemn'). When Penthesilea, returning to her senses, asks why Achilles didn't defend himself, a solo cello anticipates the Chief Priestess's reply by

playing Achilles's love motif.




32 Schoeck 9s Penthesilea

Even though Penthesilea is the most word-orientated of Schoeck's

compositions, such eminently musical devices abound. When the queen tries to rationalise her deed through mere wordplay

? passing it off as a

confusion between 'Kiisse' (kisses) and 'Bisse' (bites) ? her part is for once

largely unaccompanied. But certainly the orchestra's unearthly modulating in the course of her dramatic departure from life leaves an abiding impression

beyond words.

The opposition of the sexes is a recurrent subject in Schoeck's works.

It was presented chiefly from a male viewpoint in his Venus of 1921, a

tragic opera loosely based on a novella by Prosper Merimee. Having taken the woman's part, as it were, in Penthesilea, Schoeck attempted a kind

of reconciliation a decade later in the brighter, softer, and more traditionally constructed Massimilla Doni (after Balzac). This opera also represents a

victory for reason after the consuming passion of Venus and the protracted

sleep of reason experienced in Penthesilea. Unreason does, however, make

a rude comeback in Schoeck's final stage composition Das Schlofi Durande

(1937?41), where two of the nominally Eichendorffian characters show

markedly Kleistian features. It was, all told, in Kleist's extraordinary lan

guage and vision that Schoeck found his most potent dramatic inspiration; and his Penthesilea will for ever remain an extraordinary meeting of words

and music.



Documents

Schoeck's "Penthesilea"