Pierrot lunaire: Albert Giraud - Otto Erich Hartleben - Arnold Schoenberg: Une collection d'etudes musico-litteraires (review)

Abstract

lunaire: Albert Giraud - Otto Erich Hartleben - Arnold Schoenberg: Une collection d'etudes musicolitteraires. Edited by Mark Delaere and Jan Herman. (La republiques des lettres, 20.) Louvain; Dudley, MA: Editions Peeters, 2004. [204 p. ISBN 9042914556. $44.] Notes. Like many other musicologists, I have in past dismissed Albert Giraud as a minor Belgian poet who required only an obligatory mention before I discussed what seemed to be more substantive issues in lunaire. Belgians don't feel quite same way, as I first learned from reading press reviews of Brussels premiere of Schoenberg work: French retranslation of Otto Erich Hartelben's German translation of Giraud's French original disgusted some Belgian critics, who saw such translation as an abuse of their countryman's poetry. Translation is in fact a primary theme of this collection of essays, which also serves as an important corrective to our sometimes shallow notions of interdisciplinary research. Originating in an international literary and musicological congress on lunaire held at Katholieke Universtiteit Leuven-in Giraud's home town-this trilingual volume presents work of German, British, French, American, and Belgian scholars on topics ranging from Pierrot's theatrical and literary antecedents, to intertextual relationships among Giraud, Hartleben, and versions, to Pierrot's translation, transmission, and reception. Three essays in collection pay particular attention to Hartleben's 1893 translation of Giraud's 1884 collection, lunaire: Rondels begamasques (Jean-Michel Gouvard, Metrique comparee de l'octosyllabe francais et allemand. Du lunaire d'Albert Giraud a sa traduction par Otto Erich Hartleben; Lieven Tack, Transfert et traduction de lunaire: une description sociosemotique; Robert Vilain, Pierrot lunaire: Cyclic coherence in Giraud and Schoenberg). Each of these essays suggests that process of translation is more than a rendering of original in different words: rather, it is creation of a parallel work in a new context. While Gouvard details rich metrical palette Hartleben employed to accommodate German speech rhythms, Vilain shows that Giraud's cycle reflects his ambivalence about Parnassian (formalist)/Symbolist debate in French poetry, using Parnassian form but showing the Symbolists' concern for careful, suggestive use of language and power of imagination to penetrate beyond surface tension of here-and-now (p. 130). A significant difference in Hartleben's cycle is absence of poetic debate as a context, which shifts Hartleben's focus away from poetry and poet-a focus reinstated by selection and reorganization. Hartleben's translation, then, transforms Giraud's texts in several significant ways, preserving rondel form and order of individual poems, but changing sonic, syntactic, and semantic properties of poems individually and as a set. Tack investigates question of how Hartleben came by Giraud's texts, chronicles his interactions with Giraud, and details Hartleben's lengthy and painstaking process. Among three essays we find a rich history of whats, whys and hows of Giraud-Hartleben translation that goes considerably deeper than customary musicological narrative. From a music analytical perspective, most interesting discussion in volume revolves around relationship between text, musical setting, and idea of cyclic unity (Jonathan Dunsby, Schoenberg's keeping his Kopfmotif; Stephan Weytjens, Text as a Crutch in lunaire'?; Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg's lunaire: a Cycle?). In addition to their primary arguments, each of these essays touches on important issues in Schoenberg scholarship, including how literally we should interpret pronouncements about compositional process, and ambivalence toward texted music. …