Suite for Piano, op. 25 - Prelude

Schönberg probably meant the first version of the Prelude and the Intermezzo of the Suite for Piano, op. 25 from summer 1921 to say that he had “found something that will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years” (as his pupil Josef Rufer recorded; several other sources have also preserved his dictum) – and he was right, despite the irony that remark may contain – the “Method of composing with twelve tones related only to one another” was to leave its mark on the music of the 20th century in the most diverse ways. However, more crucially than any hegemonic implications, Schönberg must have been aware of the method’s significance for his own creative endeavors; apart from their quite different consequences, his works of the subsequent years indicate that he had found conventional forms for his transformed, post-tonal musical language. Thus the Suite for Piano, op. 25 harkens back to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach as well as, indirectly, Mozart and the music of the 19th century – placing the historical, obsolescent forms in a new context (as Schönberg himself had attempted in 1897 with his Gavotte and Musette for String Orchestra). The twelve-tone row on which the Suite is built (its retrograde begins with B-A-C-H [B flat, A, C, B natural], often used in the music of past centuries) is employed in only eight out of a possible 48 permutations (the original row, retrograde, inversion and retrograde inversion, as well as its tritone transposition) – a restriction which Schönberg compensated by flexibly manipulating the technique according to the character of each piece. The first draft of the Prelude is dated July 24–29, 1921; the piece gains its forward drive above all from the pitch repetitions entering in measure 3, along with the opening theme itself. There is only one brief breathing space in this short piece, the result of a repeated sighing motif in the middle.