Alexander von Zemlinsky “Irmelin Rose und andere Gesänge” op. 7

Version für Singstimme und Orchester,
(arr. Alexander Kirsch)

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https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/f/f4/IMSLP538242-PMLP119730-Zemlinsky_op._7.pdf
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The orchestration of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s song cycle op. 7 “Irmelin Rose und andere Gesänge”

Alexander von Zemlinsky was as great an orchestrator as he was a conductor of contemporary repertoire of opera, symphonies and orchestral music – as well as operetta. Hence his knowledge of the human voice, and the dramatic effects which a good singer is capable of producing, were second to none. His reputation as a composer, on the other hand, was by far less established as one would think nowadays, and despite the success which some of his masterpieces managed to achieve during his lifetime, much else – including many of his operas – was either forgotten, or never performed until much later.

Out of this, the most copious as well as the most acknowledged output of his earlier years in Vienna belonged to the genus Lied, with several song cycles obtaining their own opus numbers. Amongst those, op.7 “Irmelin Rose und andere Gesänge” clearly stands out, not least due to its dedication to Alma Schindler. The five songs of this cycle (with lyrics of some of the most fashionable German-language poets of the time) touch a wide range of feelings - from sheer horror and emotional outbreaks to tales of courtly love and blissful remoteness - and, although not thematically linked in any way, point straight towards the dramatic genius of one of the early 20th century’s most talented opera composers.

Zemlinsky’s compositions, however, rarely involve the piano (apart from the song cycles there are only a few early piano pieces), and even his chamber music favours strings and wind instruments, despite him being an accomplished concert pianist and a sought after Lied accompanist during all his career. It is therefore little surprising that his treatment of the piano part in the Gesänge op. 7 is of an almost ‘orchestral’ nature and differs entirely of that of his early mentors and other great masters of the art form, namely Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss, whose piano writings – albeit of a late romantic texture and sonority – remain always pianistically adapted to the instrument.
When I first prepared the piano part of Zemlinsky’s op. 7 (in a 1994 studio recording for the monthly students’ programme at the Saarländischer Rundfunk in Germany), I could not help but to feel the wide range of orchestral colours this accompaniment evoked. Consequently, I started to set the first song of the cycle (“Da waren zwei Kinder”) for large orchestra, as part of my orchestration class at the Hochschule für Musik in Saarbrücken, Germany, much to the approval of my teacher, Prof. Theo Brandmüller.

The project was, however, forgotten, when only in 2018 I picked it up again and completed the settings of the four remaining songs. Although originally written in 1898-99, there are many elements of the music which – even if still hidden somewhat beneath the surface - already anticipate the later composer of truly expressionistic music, as masterly shown in the Maeterlinck Songs op. 13 and the Lyric Symphony. Whilst at no time trying to achieve, let alone to copy, Zemlinsky’s own orchestration of the op. 13 songs, it had been clear from the outset that a large orchestral force, not unlike that of the Lyric Symphony, was required. This, of course, cannot be without difficulties for the ability to hear the singer at times of an orchestral tutti, and just like with many of the characters in the operas of Wagner, Strauss and Zemlinsky himself, the performance of the orchestral version of the op. 7 cycle should ideally be given to a dramatic voice. Besides, the composer had already implied this conundrum through the dramatic settings (considering also the often “heavy” piano accompaniment) of his songs.

Another set of difficulties arose from the published voice & piano score itself: despite the continuous dramatic development in each of the songs there is some significant sparsity of the markings within the piano part, particularly in the phrasing, slurs, dynamics and the use of the pedal. As Antony Beaumont points out, Zemlinsky would in his scores “expend meticulous care on structural and motivic coherence”, yet he was, on the other hand, always in a hurry and often unable to thoroughly correct his fair copies or the printer’s proofs, leading to “inaccuracies, ambiguities and inconsistencies”. As an orchestrator one has therefore to decide whether – apart from the obvious misprints – one sticks to Zemlinsky’s mostly indicative markings, leaving the task of “putting the flesh on the bones” to the conductor, or to create a more subjective interpretation of the songs through adding, albeit cautiously, further markings and dynamics to the orchestral score.
In my realisation, both is the case: the 1994 orchestration of the first song includes such additional markings, whereas the later scores from 2018 pay merit more or less to the composer’s economy. However, there is one significant exception: whilst a pianist only has a left and a right hand, limiting the number of notes he can play at any one time, the orchestral score regularly comprises at least 20 staves or more – and since we have already established above that the song cycle op. 7 reveals elements of the later Alexander Zemlinsky as an expressionistic composer, it had been thought beneficial for the purpose of this project – to create an orchestral interpretation of the song cycle rather than conducting a scholarly task of merely allocating notes to instruments – to add some polyphonic counterpoint, fin-de-siecle figurations and other embellishments to the texture, just as Zemlinsky has done himself in his orchestration of the Maeterlinck Songs op. 13.

After all, what makes the task of orchestrating the microcosms of each Lied (No. 6 counts merely 13 bars) more challenging indeed than that of completing the score of an opera or a large symphonic piece, is the necessity to change the mood and the intensity of the text’s emotions within just a bar or two – I have herewith attempted to accomplish, as plausibly as possible, what Zemlinsky had already brought to perfection in the masterful orchestration of his Maeterlinck Songs op. 13 - just when his friends Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern were developing their own musical style, and with it the method of composing with all twelve notes –, to create an expansion of the chamber musical voice & piano Lied into the universe of a rich orchestral sound performed within a large concert hall.

Alexander Kirsch
Blackpool, August 2018.

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Besetzung:
3 grosse Flöten
Kleine Flöte
2 Oboen
Englisch Horn
3 Klarinetten in A/B (3. auch Klarinette in Es)
Bassklarinette in A/B
3 Fagotte
Kontrafagott
4 Hörner in F
3 Trompeten in C
3 Posaunen
Basstuba
Pauken
Schlagzeug (Triangel, Tambourin, Becken, Glockenspiel, Xylophon, Grosse Trommel, Tam Tam)
Celesta
2 Harfen
Streicher