Pierrot lunaire - Arnold Schönberg

Pierrot lunaire
French adaptation by Guillaume Bourgogne

When he wrote the cycle that was to change the musical course of the twentieth century, Arnold Schönberg wanted the 21 melodramas based on Albert Giraud's famous collection of poems to be 'spoken and sung' in the language of the country in which they were set, in keeping with the fledgling Berlin cabaret tradition... In doing so, he may not have appreciated the problems that the exercise would pose. The fate of Albert Giraud's verses is inextricably linked to Otto Erich Hartleben's free translation of them. It was in this version that they were most frequently set to music. Stripped of their rhymes and original metre, they are in fact another poetic work. When Darius Milhaud presented Schönberg with a French version recited by Marya Freund in 1922, the composer was disappointed and went so far as to say that he did not recognise his own work!

The French adaptation was written by Jacques Benoist-Méchin. When you read Benoist-Méchin's version today, it's quite hard to imagine the extent to which the prosody of the music composed by Schönberg could have been respected, so different are the metrics and accentuation from the German model. In view of this, a new translation was needed. The aim was to be as faithful to Schönberg's prosody as to the meaning of the Hartleben version, and to give the French text the expressiveness and rhythm of the emphasis that was the order of the day in the cabarets and theatres of 1900.

Guillaume Bourgogne

Reviews on... -> Musique classique & Co - ResMusica - Froggy's delight

1-21 Pierrot lunaire op. 21
Pour voix parlée, piano, flûte (et piccolo), clarinette (et clarinette basse), violon (et alto) et violoncelle
Version française de Guillaume Bourgogne d’après la traduction allemande de Otto Erich Hartleben.

22-42 Pierrot lunaire op. 21
Partie instrumentale

    Jessica Martin Maresco - voice

    Ensemble Op.Cit
    Sabine Tavenard - flute and piccolo
    Christian Laborie - clarinet and bass clarinet
    Claudine Simon - piano
    Albane Genat - violin and viola
    Nicolas Cerveau - cello

    Guillaume Bourgogne - direction