Ingolf Dahl's Performances of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21 in Los Angeles in the 1940S and 1950S
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University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2016 Translating the Texts of Vocal Music: Ingolf Dahl's Performances of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21 in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s Woelfel, Isabell Maria Woelfel, I. M. (2016). Translating the Texts of Vocal Music: Ingolf Dahl's Performances of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21 in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28516 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/3057 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Translating the Texts of Vocal Music: Ingolf Dahl's Performances of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21 in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s by Isabell Maria Woelfel A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN GERMAN CALGARY, ALBERTA June, 2016 © Isabell Maria Woelfel, 2016 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the English translation of the text of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire Op. 21 (1912) as prepared by Ingolf Dahl. In 1944, Peter Yates, founder and first organizer of the Los Angeles “Evenings on the Roof” concert series, asked the German émigré composer/conductor Ingolf Dahl to write and conduct a translation of Pierrot—a version that Schoenberg not only appreciated, but also recommended for Pierrot performances after 1949. Dahl, as performing agent of Pierrot, utilized notions of literary and musical art when creating his translation. Schoenberg’s approval of the English translation indicates that he perceived a need to adapt his work to new audiences, cultures and times. The sources of this dissertation are taken from the Ingolf Dahl papers, Collection no. 1001, University Archives, Special Collections, USC Libraries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. As well, I will present material received from the Arnold Schönberg Centre (Vienna). Sources include correspondence between Schoenberg and Dahl on the latter's translation, texts that outline Dahl's notion of performance and other texts pertaining to the performances of the American Pierrot in California. The Los Angeles performances of Pierrot provide an excellent opportunity to relate the ideas of contemporary translation theory to a musical piece. My thesis will discuss Dahl’s text as an example of how translation can mediate between different linguistic and cultural contexts and times. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to express my gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Florentine Strzelczyk and Dr. Friedemann Sallis, for their valuable guidance throughout the preparation and development of this dissertation. In addition, I wish to thank the other members of my committee: Dr. Stefan Hoeppner for his constructive criticism and continued encouragement, Dr. Ozouf Amedegnato for helpful commentary on my questions, and Dr. Nicholas Zekulin, who freely gave me so much of his time and generously shared his vast literary background and expertise in music with me. I owe special thanks to Claude Zachary, curator of the Ingolf Dahl Papers, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, who aided me in my search for materials at the USC Archives, and Therese Muxeneder from the Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna, who frequently answered my questions. I want to thank Dr. Caterina Buse whose French and Italian language skills were of great assistance to me. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Frederick Lesemann for meeting with me in Los Angeles and providing me with first- hand accounts of Dahl's performances and his personality. I heartily thank Lawrence Schoenberg, Ronald Schoenberg and Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg for their support and contributions. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Marianne and Rudolf Nattermann, and to Annilou, Nella, Miriam, Joshua, and Philipp. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................iii Table of Contents................................................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION..........................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: Music as Language: Concepts of Listening................................................................................................11 1.1. Music as Rhetoric.......................................................................................................15 1.2. Empfindsamkeit...........................................................................................................19 1.3. The Nineteenth Century: Music as Language.............................................................22 1.3.1. Excursus: Tonality, Langue and Parole..............................................................27 1.3.2. The Poetic Forces of Music.................................................................................31 1.4. The Early Twentieth Century: Music–Art–Modernity................................................36 CHAPTER TWO: Interpretation–Translation–Independence................................................42 2.1. Interpreting.............................................................................................................45 2.2. Translating..............................................................................................................49 2.3. Hans-Georg Gadamer's Concept of the Hermeneutic distance..............................57 2.4. Roland Barthes: Listening as Hermeneutic Act.....................................................59 CHAPTER THREE: Pierrot.............................................................................................................................67 3.1. Pedrolino, Harlequin, Pierrot.................................................................................68 3.2. The Texts: Albert Giraud – Otto Erich Hartleben..................................................74 3.3. Schoenberg's Artistic Environment: Influences of Art and Literature on Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21.......................................81 3.4. A New Poetic Interpretation: Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21..........................................87 v CHAPTER FOUR: New Music in Los Angeles and its Ambassadors: Arnold Schoenberg, Peter Yates, Ingolf Dahl..........................................100 4.1. Schoenberg in Los Angeles..................................................................................103 4.2. Peter Yates's Evenings on the Roof Concert Series..............................................113 4.3. Ingolf Dahl...........................................................................................................118 CHAPTER FIVE: An American Pierrot?................................................................................127 5.1. Cecil Gray's translation, London (England) 1942................................................127 5.2. A Pierrot Translation for the “Roof”....................................................................129 5.3. Analysis of the translation....................................................................................138 5.4. Correspondence Schoenberg – Dahl....................................................................144 5.5. Musical Alterations .............................................................................................148 CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................154 Bibliography...................................................................................................................159 Appendix A: Chronology leading up to Dahl's Pierrot Lunaire Performances.....................................174 Appendix B: Archival Sources – selection...........................................................................................176 a) Dahl, personal copy Pierrot Lunaire score (excerpt)..............................................176 b) Translation, commented, 1949 (excerpt)................................................................177 c) Personal Note, Dahl, n.d., (excerpt)........................................................................178 d) Personal Note, Dahl, n.d., my transcription (excerpt)............................................179 e) Musical Alterations, in or after 1958 (excerpt).......................................................180 f) Ingolf Dahl – Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21, translation................................................181 1 INTRODUCTION Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire Opus 21 for reciter (Soprano voice, using the vocal technique of Sprechstimme), piano, flute/piccolo flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola and cello consists of a musical setting of twenty-one selected poems, taken from Otto Erich Hartleben's free German translation of Albert Giraud's French poems Pierrot Lunaire: Rondels bergamasques (1884).1