Henry T. Finck, ace music critic for the New York Evening Post, had this to say about a 1923 performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire:
"Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most learned of Austrian professors, a musician of profound attainments. Unfortunately for his happiness, he also tried to be a creative artist. He wrote, among other things, a sextet Verklärte Nacht, which contained some rather pretty things, buried in bombast and gasbags. As that did not make him famous with the masses, he tried to achieve notoriety by being 'real naughty,' defying musical grammar, placing a thumb against his nose with fingers spread out, and putting out his tongue. A specimen of this sort of tomfoolery was Schoenberg's melodrama Pierrot lunaire, an unutterably silly thing … emitting strange noises which seldom have anything to do with music."
Henry Krehbiel, another commentarial New York kahuna, attended the same performance and concluded:
"Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire is so new that enjoyment of it by persons who believe that music is an expression of beauty in art will have to wait until all such persons are dead or chaos be come again … It was a wearisome and futile experiment which some of the hearers were brave enough to smile at."
Nor was the august Richard Aldrich of the august New York Times any more impressed:
"The impression upon the unattached music lover is simply null, or more or less wearisomely repugnant."
Although nowadays performances aren't likely to elicit quite such outpourings of vitriol, a certain wariness is found even amongst Schoenberg's most staunch defenders. Charles Wuorinen, no stranger to audience alienation, described listening to it as befriending a porcupine. Even George Perle, Mr. Academic Modernism Himself, described Pierrot as "not a work that one ever gets used to."
None of that makes Pierrot a bad piece, and in fact it sports a faded and decadent ambiance that some might find attractive. It's just the thing when you're feeling fatalistic about it all, seeking detente with your inner madman or just in the mood for screaming Munchian heads and twisted monochrome Caligaris. But I'm on the whole a cheerful soul, so more than a morsel of Pierrot's wormwood and gall makes me sick to my tummy. Amongst the intelligentsia that no doubt brands me as a boob. Maybe I am a boob. In my defense, I submit that I'm not wholly ignorant of the work. Heck, I have taught Der Monfleck to my UC Berkeley class every year like clockwork since 1989. I always inform them that Schoenberg indulged in some in-jokes, such as the pointlessly complex counterpoint that accompanies Pierrot's pointless attempts to wipe the moonlight off his tuxedo.
Some of my students make game attempts at chuckling, but they're obviously not the slightest bit impressed or amused. Then again, neither am I. Unlike Bartók's loudly intemperate roasting of the Shostakovitch 7th Symphony in his 1943 Concerto for Orchestra, Schoenberg's quip is Augenmusik (eye music) and unlikely to be noticed unless some egghead points it out. Once a year I guess I'm the egghead. But boorishness comes in many flavors, including the cerebral. Oh, they're both pointless activities, are they? How very amusing, how droll, how witty. Wasn't that Arnold a funny bunny?
Pierrot as witty or fun or whatnot simply doesn't butter any parsnips for me. Nor am I, at this time in my life, about to clamber on the politically-correct bandwagon and claim admiration for it, just because as a conservatory professor and mentor to young composers I am expected to claim admiration for it. On the chance that I might be merely uncovering yet another manifestation of my inner redneck, recently I took another sustained stab at Pierrot. Hence this article. I'll allow that I approached the project with all the happy anticipation of hosing out the garbage cans in the garage.
I listened to Pierrot lunaire in a recording simply dripping with Schoenbergian street cred: Pierre Boulez conducting the Ensemble Intercontemporain with Christine Schäfer handling the talky-singy stuff. I listened quite a few times, sometimes following along with score/libretto and other times just letting it waft around the house. It was like eating broccoli, but I did it.
Unlike Mr. Aldrich quoted above, I don't consider the piece repugnant. Unlike Mr. Finck, I don't find it unutterably silly. But I do have a reaction.
Gawdalmighty, it's boring.