Uploaded January 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Psappha Ensemble
Richard Suart, Speaker
Benedict Holland and Sophie Rosa, violins
Susie Meszaros, viola
Jennifer Langridge, cello
Learn more at psappha.com
The Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, along with the later A Survivor from Warsaw, is one of Schoenberg's most personal works. Written in America in 1942 at the invitation of the League of Composers it is a bitter and savage reflection on events in Europe.
Schoenberg had resigned his position at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin in March 1933, a few weeks after the Reichstag Fire and shortly before the passing of the Act which, although Hindenburg was still President, enabled the Nazis to take control of Germany. On May 17 a telegram from the violinist Rudolf Kolisch recommended 'a change of air' and, thus warned, Schoenberg left Germany for Paris and then for the USA.
While in Paris he formally returned to the Jewish faith (one of the signatories to the document showing his re-entry to the faith was Marc Chagall) and was deeply involved in Jewish affairs for the rest of his life.
In his own programme note entitled 'How I came to Compose the Ode to Napoleon' Schoenberg said that having received the invitation to compose the piece 'I had at once the idea that this piece must not ignore the agitation aroused in mankind against the crimes that provoked this war--- I knew that it was the moral duty of intelligentsia to take a stand against tyranny'.
Byron's bitter reflection on Napoleon, written following Napoleon's abdication of 1814 - with its warning that 'Some new Napoleon might arise to shame the world again' and its reference to the Austria that Schoenberg would never visit again - 'And she, proud Austria's mournful flower, The still imperial bride, How bears her breast the torturing hour? ' - must have struck a deep and deeply personal chord with the composer.
Although a twelve-note work the Ode to Napoleon is unusual in both its handling of the twelve -note system and its attempt to reconcile the twelve -note system with some aspects of tonality. Equally unusual is the handling of the vocal line since the work is scored for string quartet, piano and a reciter rather than a singer. Unlike the 'sprechstimme' of Pierrot Lunaire, in which the score has precisely notated pitches for the voice and the singer is required to sing the note and then - in Schoenberg's own words -'immediately abandon it by falling or rising ', and also unlike the rhythmic declamation of the voice in Walton's Façade, the reciter's part of the Ode to Napoleon is notated with a precise rhythm but with the notes written on, and above or below, a single line but with sharps, flats and naturals to indicate contour and approximate pitch.
© Douglas Jarman
About the composer: Arnold Schoenberg
Responsible for two of the early twentieth century’s great musical revolutions, atonality and serialism, Schoenberg was a thorough-going conservative who regarded his work as a logical extension of the Austro-German tradition from Bach to Mahler. He was born in Vienna into a modest Jewish family and was largely self-taught. Perhaps that helped make him an extraordinary teacher – of Alban Berg and Anton Webern among others. In 1933 the new Nazi authorities forced him to leave his teaching post in Berlin, and he settled in Los Angeles, where his pupils included John Cage. He loved chamber music, and a large part of his output comprises works for small groupings, including four string quartets, though he also wrote symphonic pieces and one of the great operas, Moses und Aron.
Psappha Ensemble
Richard Suart, Speaker
Benedict Holland and Sophie Rosa, violins
Susie Meszaros, viola
Jennifer Langridge, cello
Learn more at psappha.com
The Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, along with the later A Survivor from Warsaw, is one of Schoenberg's most personal works. Written in America in 1942 at the invitation of the League of Composers it is a bitter and savage reflection on events in Europe.
Schoenberg had resigned his position at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin in March 1933, a few weeks after the Reichstag Fire and shortly before the passing of the Act which, although Hindenburg was still President, enabled the Nazis to take control of Germany. On May 17 a telegram from the violinist Rudolf Kolisch recommended 'a change of air' and, thus warned, Schoenberg left Germany for Paris and then for the USA.
While in Paris he formally returned to the Jewish faith (one of the signatories to the document showing his re-entry to the faith was Marc Chagall) and was deeply involved in Jewish affairs for the rest of his life.
In his own programme note entitled 'How I came to Compose the Ode to Napoleon' Schoenberg said that having received the invitation to compose the piece 'I had at once the idea that this piece must not ignore the agitation aroused in mankind against the crimes that provoked this war--- I knew that it was the moral duty of intelligentsia to take a stand against tyranny'.
Byron's bitter reflection on Napoleon, written following Napoleon's abdication of 1814 - with its warning that 'Some new Napoleon might arise to shame the world again' and its reference to the Austria that Schoenberg would never visit again - 'And she, proud Austria's mournful flower, The still imperial bride, How bears her breast the torturing hour? ' - must have struck a deep and deeply personal chord with the composer.
Although a twelve-note work the Ode to Napoleon is unusual in both its handling of the twelve -note system and its attempt to reconcile the twelve -note system with some aspects of tonality. Equally unusual is the handling of the vocal line since the work is scored for string quartet, piano and a reciter rather than a singer. Unlike the 'sprechstimme' of Pierrot Lunaire, in which the score has precisely notated pitches for the voice and the singer is required to sing the note and then - in Schoenberg's own words -'immediately abandon it by falling or rising ', and also unlike the rhythmic declamation of the voice in Walton's Façade, the reciter's part of the Ode to Napoleon is notated with a precise rhythm but with the notes written on, and above or below, a single line but with sharps, flats and naturals to indicate contour and approximate pitch.
© Douglas Jarman
About the composer: Arnold Schoenberg
Responsible for two of the early twentieth century’s great musical revolutions, atonality and serialism, Schoenberg was a thorough-going conservative who regarded his work as a logical extension of the Austro-German tradition from Bach to Mahler. He was born in Vienna into a modest Jewish family and was largely self-taught. Perhaps that helped make him an extraordinary teacher – of Alban Berg and Anton Webern among others. In 1933 the new Nazi authorities forced him to leave his teaching post in Berlin, and he settled in Los Angeles, where his pupils included John Cage. He loved chamber music, and a large part of his output comprises works for small groupings, including four string quartets, though he also wrote symphonic pieces and one of the great operas, Moses und Aron.
