Verklärte Nacht, composed in 1899, is one of Schoenberg’s earliest masterpieces, written in a language that owes much to both Wagner and Brahms, two of the predecessors he most admired. In this ravishingly beautiful sxtet (which Schoenberg later arranged for string orchestra), he uses Wagnerian leitmotifs, and he was clearly influenced by the sound world of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. But when it comes the work’s formal construction, Brahms is the dominant influence. Themes are developed by variation, by combining with other themes, and by fragmenting or dissolving them. This is a process that Schoenberg himself admired so much in the music of Brahms – a techinque he called ‘developing variation’. So while the use of leitmotifs suggests a Wagnerian kind of musical narrative – aptly so for a work that tells a story without words – we hear Brahms in the approach to development, tonality and form that Schoenberg uses to create a single movement lasting half an hour.

The work is programmatic, taking its title from a poem by the Symbolist writer Richard Dehmel (1863–1920), a kind of German Aubrey Beardsley. When Dehmel’s collection Weib und Welt (which includes the poem Verklärte Nacht ) was published, it caused a scandal, and Dehmel was tried for obscenity and blasphemy. Though he was acquitted, the court demanded that all copies of the book should be burned.

In Dehmel’s Verklärte Nacht, a man and a woman pass through a moonlit landscape. She confesses to carrying a child that is not his; bathed in light, he tells her that she must have the child, and bear it as their own. At the end of the poem, ‘He clasps her round her strong hips. Their kisses mingle in the night air.’ This erotic text was not only Schoenberg’s inspiration, but also guided the structure of the work which is thus a kind of tone poem for string sextet. The first performance took place on 18 March 1902 in the Vienna Musikverein when it was played by the Rosé Quartet with Franz Jelinek and Franz Schmidt – the latter a cellist as well as a distinguished composer.

Nigel Simeone, 2014