Uploaded July 2011 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

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The importance of Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" in the musical world was signaled by an homage paid by the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles as recently as 1987: it commissioned the settings of the remaining twenty-nine poems that Schoenberg had neglected, using his original scoring (Sprechstimme optional), by sixteen American composers—Milton Babbitt, Leslie Bassett, Susan Morton Blaustein, Paul Cooper, Miriam Gideon, John Harbison, Donald Harris, Richard Hoffmann, Karl Kohn, William Kraft, Ursula Mamlok, Steve Mosco, Marc Neikrug, Mel Powell, Roger Reynolds, and Leonard Rosenman. The settings were given their premieres between 1988 and 1990 in four concerts sponsored by the Institute. (The director of the Institute, Leonard Stein, added a setting of his own to the final concert of the project.)

"I was asked by Leonard Stein, then Director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, to join a group of some sixteen other composers in the "Pierrot Project." We were asked to set the remaining 29 poems in the collection, Pierrot Lunaire: Rondels Bergamasques by the Belgian poet, Albert Giraud, first published in 1884, from which Schoenberg had selected the twenty-one poems in his own composition, Pierrot Lunaire, of 1912. Schoenberg had used the 1893 German translation of Otto Erich Hartleben. All participating composers in the project used the same. In addition we were confined to the original Pierrot instrumentation (flute-piccolo, clarinet-bass clarinet, violin-viola, cello, piano), and had the option to use sprechgesang, as in the original, if we were so inclined. I was not.
The three poems from the collection that I chose to set were Der Koch (The Chef), Nordpolfahrt (Artic Trip), and Selbstmord (Suicide), all three intended to be performed as a short cycle. They use the same harmonic and melodic material, and grow one from the other. But there is also a related textural progression, in the sense that the dramatic tension increases with each song. The first is whimsical with a touch of humor; the second announces despair, although not without a touch of whimsy; the third carries despair to its ultimate, tragic solution. The color, white, found in all three poems, binds the cycle together visually in a way suggesting the common harmonic and melodic material that binds them musically.
Pierrot Lieder was composed in the summer of 1988. One of the songs, Der Koch, was premiered on November 7, 1988 at the Los Angeles County Museum; the two others at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles on January 25, 1989. The first complete performance of the three took place on the American Music Festival of The Ohio State University, February 5, 1989, Lucy Shelton, soprano, accompanied by a faculty ensemble, Craig Kirchhoff conductor. This recording is taken from that concert performance.,"
-- Donald Harris

Un miroitant glaçon polaire,
De froide lumière aiguisé,
Arrête Pierrot épuisé
Qui sent couler bas sa galère. .

Il fixe d'un œil qui s'éclaire
Son sauveteur improvisé : :
Un miroitant glaçon polaire,
De froide lumière aiguisé.

Et le mime patibulaire
Croit voir un Pierrot déguisé,
Et d'un blanc geste éternisé
Interpelle dans la nuit claire
Un miroitant glaçon polaire. .

En sa robe de Lune blanche, Moon in his dress white
Pierrot rit son rire sanglant. Bloody Pierrot laughed his laugh.
Son geste ivre devient troublant : His action becomes drunk disturbing
Il cuve le vin du dimanche. This wine bowl Sunday.

Sur le sol traînaille sa manche ; Dawdling on the ground his sleeve;
Il plante un clou dans le mur blanc : He planted a nail into the white wall:
En sa robe de Lune blanche. Moon in his white robe.
Pierrot rit son rire sanglant. Bloody Pierrot laughed his laugh.

Il frétille comme une tanche,
Se passe au col un nœud coulant,
Repousse l'escabeau branlant,
Tire la langue, et se déhanche,
En sa robe de Lune blanche.