Brooklin Daily Eagle, New York, Sunday, April 20, 1930.

The New York Premiere of a Schoenberg Opera at the Metropolitan This Week

A Schoenberg Opera

by Edward Cushing

Concerning the Enigmatic 'Hand of Fate' Which Will Have Its First New York Performances

During the Current Week

At the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday evening of this week works for the theater by

two of the most distinguished of contemporary composers will have their first legitimate

productions upon a New York stage and before a New York audience. We refer, of course, to

the performances of Arnold Schoenberg's "Glueckliche Hand" (The Lucky Hand, or The

Hand of Fate) and Igor Stravinsky's "Sacre du Printemps" (The Rites of Spring), which have

been prepared for us by the enterprising and spendthrift League of Composers, with

the collaboration of Mr. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It is doubtful that

the season to be thus brilliantly terminated has been productive of an experience more

interesting than this promises to be, and our debt to the league and to Mr. Stokowski, entailed

by the similar production last season of Monteverdi's "II Combattimemto di Tancredi e

Clorinde" and Stravinsky's "Les Noces," Is doubled by this philanthropy. "Die Glueckliche

Hand" has never been heard in New York, and "Le Sacre du Printemps" has been performed

here only in concert form, never as a ballet, and for this neglect of works which the apologists

of Schoenberg and Stravinsky salute as masterpieces the league will endeavor to make

amends. "Die Glueckliche Hand" will be presented in a production designed by Robert

Edmond Jones, staged by Reuben Memoulian, sung and mimed by Ivan Ivantsoff, Olin

Howland, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and a small chorus; while for "Le Sacre du

Printemps" Nikolas Roerich has prepared the setting and costumes, and Leonid Massine

composed the choreography which he and Miss Martha Graham and a corps de ballet will

perform.

From one point of view at least "Die Glueckliche Hand" is the more important of these

impending productions. We are familiar with the "Sacre" and its history; we have heard it

many times, though we have seen it never, and its choreographic visualization cannot be

expected greatly to enhance our understanding or appreciation of music no longer problematic

or controversial. The Schoenberg opera is another story. It had never been heard in this

country prior to its recent premiere in Philadelphia (it has, indeed, infrequently been heard

abroad), and the performance on Tuesday evening at the Metropolitan Opera House will be

the first in New York. Yet it is less the unfamiliarlty than it is the unique character of this

work that leads us to anticipate it—not, let it be confessed, with pleasure, but with palpitant

curiosity. The vocal score of "Die Glueckliche Hand" is before us as we write and we wonder,

studying its strange texture, what, in the past, abroad and in Philadelphia, its audiences have

made of it, what they will make of it at the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday and

Wednesday evenings of this week?

Not, we think, a great deal. Dramatically, musically, "Die Glueckliche Hand" is an enigmatic

work. Paul Stefan has told us that in this opera "action is stripped of all realism," that here we

move in "the sphere of poetry, of symbols, of visions." Commentators agree that the "poem

symbolizes the pursuit of happiness, that its-protagonist is Man, and its drama that of Man's

defeat by destiny. In the League of Composers interesting quarterly, Modern Music, Herr

Stefan thus described the action of the piece: "The scene repeals a Man, astride whose back

sits a mythological Beast that will not release him. The chorus chants its sympathy for this

victim, who longs for earthly happiness, though heavenly joy is his destiny.

A Woman, who embodies earthly happiness, deserts the Man for a Stranger, who seems to

represent the power of money, as Man does the power of spirits. For the second time

abandoned by the Woman, the Man rises to his full height, and knows, at last, that in

controlling his own destiny he possesses the Woman—not in the body, but in the spirit, and so

forever. There follows a great battle for a golden treasure within a cave. Once more the Man

conquers; but because he dreams of pursuing a new vision of (he Woman, he falls finally into

the power of the Beast of the first scene. And the chorus mourns: 'Must you suffer again what

you have so often suffered? Can you make no sacrifice? Can you not be content?'"

Which, to be sure, is not very lucid. But considering the character of the poem, of which he

has prepared this synopsis, a certain lack of clarity must be forgiven Herr Stefan. We

sympathize profoundly with his bewilderment, his hesitation in the attempt to define the

symbolism of character in "Die Glueckliche Hand." A British critic, the author of the article

on Schoenberg that appears in the new edition of Grove, found the task no easier: "The

subject [of the poem] might be described as the pursuit of happiness," cautiously wrote Edwin

Evans, adding, after briefly describing the tableau disclosed by the rise of the curtian, "The

subsequent episodes arc concerned with spurious form of happiness." On the whole, we

conclude, Herr Stefan and Mr. Evans did very well in extracting even so much as a doubt of

its meaning from a text over which we have puzzled in a vain attempt, to improve on their

digests of its purport. Schoenberg has not made the task of the analyst simpler by weighting

his score with elaborate stage directions, describing not only the action of the drama, but

providing the most, precise and detailed instructions for the lighting effects to be employed

during its performance. These stage directions, this scenario of light effects are conceived in

the symbolical spirit of the poem, are intended, obviously, to parallel and interpret in visual

terms the metaphysics of the text. But they confuse rather than assist our efforts to achieve

a better understanding of Schoenberg's intentions. It is indeed mystifying conception, this 15-

minute opera written for a baritone (the Man), a small chorus, three mimes (the roles of the

Beast, the Woman and the Stranger have neither words nor music allotted to them) and a huge

orchestral apparatus, and we turn in vain to the text for a clue to its ultimate significance.

Shall we find it, then, in the music? Alas, not as easily as we might hope, for the music of

"Die Glueckliche Hand" is, in one sense, as baffling as the text. The problems encountered in

the study of the Schoenbergian technique may, after all, be solved if patience and tolerance

are brought to bear upon the task, but with this much accomplished, we are really little further

along on the road to an understanding of this music. We have learned, may be a new musical

grammar, a new musical vocabulary, whose characteristic idioms and arrangements we are

thus enabled to recognize and even imitate. But we are as ignorant of their significance

as a parrot is of the meaning of the phrases that it hears and repeats. Does this music "express"

something? Obviously it must—at least, that must be its intention. It is theater music; it must

express the action and the emotion of the drama which it accompanies. Yet to a greater extent

even than that drama its content escapes our comprehension. We listen to it as to a strange

language, a language stranger than any spoken in remote corners of the world, and our

imagination fails lamentably to grasp the meaning of what we hear.

Shall we conclude the whole thing to be an ingenious, impudent hoax? That would be rash,

though the temptation has assailed us more than once in connection with the music of the

mature Schoenberg, the Schoenberg of the 20th Century. But this strange, disturbing genius

cannot lightly be dismissed. We know too well that he is, and has always been, in deadly

earnest; we know too well that he is no mere sensationalist, tongue-in-cheek. The musical

idiom in which "Die Glueckliche Hand" is a comparatively early but important experiment,

was neither hastily nor arbitrarily created: it was, rather, slowly and thoughtfully evolved

from the Wagnerian idiom of Schoenberg's "Verklaerte Nacht" and the Gurre-Lieder —how

slowly, how thoughtfully we must realize when we have consulted the Harmonie-Lehre, the

treatise on harmonic theory that Schoenberg has written and published. But one may be

sincere in intention and err in effect. In Schoenberg's case, we may respect the intellectual

brilliance and integrity of the theorist, and regret the error into which he has fallen.

For it is along hazardous and ultimately blind paths that he has led himself and his disciples,

along a way lonely, difficult and leading nowhere. Not in science, however, profound,

however impeccable, will be found the solutions to the problems of art. Yet Schoenberg has

attempted there to find them, and his attempt, though fruitless, deserves attention,

understanding and respect.

The composition of "Die Glueckliche Hand" was begun In 1909, ten years after "Verklaerte

Nacht," and contemporaneously with the Drei Klavierstueck of Op. 11 and the Fuenf

Orchesterstueck of Op. 16. It was the second of two works for the theater upon which

Schoenberg engaged at the time. The first, "Ewartung" a monodrama for soprano and

orchestra, was completed in 16 days; "Die Glueckliche Hand" remained unfinished for four

years. "Erwartung" was first, performed at the Prague International Festival of 1924; "Die

Glueckliche Hand" was given at Vienna during the same year. Later Breslau heard it, and it

was included among the modern operas comprising the repertory of the Duisburg Festival

held last summer. The first performance in America was conducted by Mr. Stokowsky at

Philadelphia on the 11th day of the current month. Together with "Erwartung" the piano and

orchestral pieces of Op. 11 and 16. "Die Glueckliche Hand" is regarded as one of a group of

works in which Schoenberg definitely broke with tradition and precedent and espoused the

principles tentatively advanced in his earlier chamber music and songs. By many it considered

to be the outstanding production of his "second period" though it is certainly the one with

which we have had the least opportunity to become familiar.