Concerning "Sprechgesang"

Author(s): Ralph W. Wood

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 2 (Dec., 1946), pp. 3-6
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/943969 .
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CONCERNING " SPRECHGESANG"

Concerning

"Sprechgesang"
by

Ralph

W.

Wood

IN

PART III of Sch6nberg's Gurreliederthere is a section, Des SommerwindeswildeJagd,

that is described as a " melodrama " and that constitutes the only appearance in the work
of the character listed among the soloists as "The Speaker." The words of this
number are written under what would appear to be a normal vocal line (though perhaps
of rather unusually simple nature), except that crosses are used instead of note-heads:

There are no directions in the score as to how the part is to be rendered.

More than ten years after the composition, but barely one after the completion
of the scoring, of the GurreliederSch6nberg wrote his Op. 21, " Three-times seven poems
from Albert Giraud's Pierrot Lunaire (translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben)
-for a speaking-voice [" Sprechstimme "] piano, flute (also piccolo), clarinet (also bass
clarinet), violin (also viola) and 'cello-(Melodramas)."
Later still he said in a letter: " Here " (in the Gurrelieder)" the pitch notation is not
at all to be taken so seriously as in the Pierrot-Melodramas. In no way is a song-like
speech-melody to be created, but the rhythm has to be adhered to and the volume of
tone regulated with the accompaniment. In several places in which it is almost melodic
one could speak a little more musically. The pitches are more to be regarded as differences of level; that is to say, the respective passages (not the separate notes) are to

be spoken higher or lower."

In the score of Pierrot Lunaire one does find an explanatory foreword. Here it is:
" The melody given for the speaking voice in notes is (apart from a few specially
indicated exceptions) not meant to be sung. The reciter has the task of transforming it, with a thorough regard for the prescribed intervals, into a speechmelody. He accomplishes that by (I) keeping the rhythm absolutely strict,
as if he were singing; i.e. with no more freedom than he would allow himself
for a song melody; (ii) fully realizing the difference between singing-tone and
speaking-tone: the singing-tone holds fast to the pitch from beginning to end
of a note, whereas the speaking-tone does give it at first, but then at once departs
from it by either rising or falling. The performer must, however, watch carefully not to fall into a ' singing' way of speaking. That is not at all what is
meant. In no way, it is true, must a realistic-natural speech be striven for.
On the contrary, the difference between ordinary speech and a speech that
co-operates in a musical form is to be distinct. But it must never remind one
of singing.
"Further there is to be said regarding the performance: the performer never
has the task of bringing out the mood and character of the sense of the words,
but only of the music. So far as the composer considered tone-painting of
the events and feelings given in the text to be called for, it will be found in the

TEMPO

music. Where the performerdoes not find it, he must beware of adding something that the composer did not intend. For that would be not an addition but
a subtraction."
The vocal line to which the performeris thus tutored to addresshimself (as a matter

of fact, herself) is an extremely intricate one, full of the awkward intervals and of the

conflicts with the accompanimentthat are typical of all Sch6nberg's mature writing.
The notes are written in the usual way, but (except when actual singing is intended-see
the parenthesisat the beginning of the "Foreword ") with crosses through their stems.
The compass is:

(with, during one of the brief " sung " passages, a low E flat thrown in, for which
however an octave-higher alternativeis offered). Some notes are marked " toneless,"
and one group is to be "whispered tonelessly" and is notated without note-heads
(i.e. pitch indications)at all. There are such things as acciaccaturas(e.g. jumping up an
augmented fourth) and glissandos (e.g. dropping an augmented eleventh). A certain
five detached notes all have shakes marked over them. It is worth noting that the
composer uses the voice-part, for contrapuntalpurposes, just as if it were an authentic
melodic line (i.e. sometimes giving repetitions, imitations, etc., of it in various of the
instrumentalparts).
PierrotLunairehas been mentioned on the heels of the Gurrelieder,because of
Schonberg's comparison in the letter cited; but in fact Die glicklicheHand, which was
begun just after Erwartung,and thus well before PierrotLunaire(though the latter was
finished first, being written with characteristic speed, whereas Die glckliche Hand
was only composed by fits and starts over a long period), contains among its many
extraordinaryingredients a chorus whose lines, delivered through holes in a velvet
back-curtainjust large enough to frame their faces and in a memorable lighting and
colour-scheme,are largely spoken. All the notes in their parts, except those to be sung,
are notated as in PierrotLunaireand markedeither " whispered" or " spoken." Those
who have heard this very rarely-performedwork say that the effect of these passages
for the chorus is extremelybeautiful, above all the transitionsfrom speech to song.
That the appearanceof difficulty in the vocal line of PierrotLunaireis no layman's
illusion is proved by the referencesto it madeby some of its interpreters.Erica Wagnerwho toured widely performing the work, and likewise made a gramophone recording
of it, under the composer's baton-admits being brought to tears during the rehearsal
period. Gutheil-Schoder,who performedit in Copenhagen,speaks of having " sworn
at his too many, far too many, note-heads " and says that " his never-heard-ofintervals"
have given her a " nightmare." But they were, of course, devoted admirers of the
thing that had brought them so much travail and tribulation.
Both Marya Freund (with whose interpretationEnglish and French listeners are
more familiar) and Gutheil-Schoder made their justly vast reputations as singers.
Erica Wagner, though she had indeed studied music, is famous as an actress pure and
simple. This brings us to a crucial ambiguity of the whole " Sprechgesang" situation.
" Sprechgesang" is not a term employed by Sch6nberg himself; but it has been freely
used by many of his critics, apologists and biographers,almost as if it were synonymous
with his own " Sprechstimme." Percy Scholes, for one, has done well to point out
that, on the contrary, there is a differencebetween the two words almost amounting
to an antithesis; " Sprechgesang" means a ' parlando' manner of singing, and indeed
is translated in standard dictionaries as "recitative," whereas "Sprechstimme" in
itself simply means " speaking voice."

CONCERNING

"SPRECHGESANG"

Louis Fleury, the flautist, writing of his experiences as a performer in a number

of presentationsof PierrotLunaire,illustratesthe point clearly when he mentions that,
for instance,the London performancesof 1923 were "not exactlyas the author conceived
it... MaryaFreund, excellent singer that she is, cannot quite forget that she is a singer,
and sings consequently with a reciter'sinflexions, whereas Sch6nberg intended it to be
recited with musical inflexions . . . this most conscientious artist submitted her
interpretationto Schbnberg himself, and he was delighted and surprised, and greatly
admiredher art in this new version."* PierrotLunairewas, as a matterof fact, composed
upon the initial suggestion (as to both the vocal method and the text employed) of
an actress, Albertine Zehme, to whom it is dedicatedand who was its first interpreter.
Of the Freund performancesmentioned by Fleury a London critic wrote that she
"was wonderful . . . She used more of a singing tone than one expected. She
maintainedpitch in spite of every imaginable provocation ..."
In Erica Wagner's
rendering,which can be studied on the gramophone, there is certainlya very great deal
more " Sprech" than " Gesang." But there is also only a very loose observanceof the
pitch indications,which are once or twice even contradicted(e.g.in the phrase"prunkend
in des Blutes Scharlach,"in Die Kreute)-contradicted, that is to say, as to direction
of intervals, leave alone their exact dimensions (which seem hardly to enter even into
the province of discussion). All the same, both kinds of interpretationare, on their
own merits, quite effective.
When Hedli Anderson gave her interpretation,in England in 1942, under Erwin
Stein's baton, the latter-who is probably as familiarwith the work and its problems
as any man alive, apartfrom the composer himself-found that she achieved Sch6nberg's
intentions quite marvellously, more fully and exactly than ever had been done before.
Sch6nberg did not use the " Sprechstimme" again until, twenty odd years later,
he composed the setting for " reciter," strings and piano of Byron's Ode to Napoleon
Buonaparte. Here the vocal part is notated in the score on or around a single line (such
as is sometimes found in use for a percussion instrument), to which is given at the
beginning the normal bass-clef sign. "On or around" means that the note-heads lie
sometimes on the line and sometimes at varying distances above or below it. The
notes have accidentals sprinkled among them, just as if they were forming a melody
on a stave of which only the one line is actually visible. The effect in performanceis
a declamation similar to that in PierrotLunaire,for all that the vast intervals often
prescribedin the latter are absent here . . .
But meanwhile Sch6nberg's disciple, Alban Berg, had incorporated speaking-voice
effects on a considerablescale in his operas, Wozeeckand Lulu. He uses there ordinary
speech, ordinary speech harnessed into rhythm with the accompanying music, what
he describes as "rhythmic declamation" (notated just as the vocal line of Pierrot
Lunaireis, and for which he gives prefatory instructions that are a practicallyverbatim
re-issue of Schonberg's, though with one or two significant added refinements of
definition), "half singing " (sometimes called " half speaking," according to the context), and "parlando" singing. He employs for this elaborate range of values a
correspondingly elaborate range of notations. Apart from the inescapable dubieties
of the passages of declamation a la Pierrot Lunaire, i.e. the bordering-on-fictitious
characterof the wide-compassedand infinitelychromaticvocal line written out for such
passages, Berg's use of the non-singing voice is extremely effective.
There is not much doubt about why he had recourseto such devices. He obviously
had qualms, as it may well come to any sensitive artist to have, about one of the fundamentals of the operatic medium, the singingof dramaticdialogue, etc. Not the only,
but certainly the foremost, problem raised in that connection is the matter of tempo ;
and it is interesting to note the fairly realistic speed of delivery of the words even in
Berg's " Sprechstimme" passages(more so still, of course, in the absolutelyspoken ones).
His achievement is seen clearly if one compares the extraordinarilyfaithful mixture of
*Transl. A. H. Fox Strangways.

TEMPO

tenderness and sadness in the music to which Marie sings the snatches of her half
nonsense-wordslullaby with the equally extraordinary,heart-breakingpoignancy of her
" rhythmic declamation" of the quotations she reads out from her Bible (" Es war
einmalein armesKind und hatt' keinen Vater und keine Mutter,"and the rest of them),
and with her sung wailings of anguish that interruptthe latter.
It may be observed that Berg's vocal lines, of whatever category, are difficult, but
considerablyless so than those of Sch6nberg (and than those that Webern, too, gives
singers). He offers more aid, too, in the accompaniment. And he'll even be found
showing an enharmonic change on a note so as to help the vocalist to cope with an
interval.
... Finally we must come to BenjaminBritten'sTheRapeof Lucretia. Can anyone
who has once heardit ever forget the remarkableintensity createdby the Male Chorus's
spoken commentaryduring the minute or so before the commission of the actual rape ?
The printed notes to which his words are set are given exact rhythm and pitch values
(even including ? glissando indication at one point) but have crosses instead of heads.
So far from its being like a normal, sung melody, only five notes are used:

C)

*4

and clearlyno more than the rough idea of various levels of the voice is intended to be
conveyed by this pitch-notation. In performance (on the stage and as privately
recorded for gramophone) the intonation seems very loose, in relation to the printed
stave. There is a tendency to singsome of the highest notes; and, on the other hand,
most of the other notes are ratherwhisperedthan spoken. Apart, incidentally,from the
word "(spoken)" at the beginning of the section, the score contains no explanationof
how it is to be rendered. The accompaniment(a further strong contrast to the Sch6nberg-Berg specimens) is for indefinite-pitchedpercussion only - bass drum, tenor
drum, side drum, cymbal-nothing else. These two simple-looking pages constitute
something like a stroke of genius.