Lot 93: Arnold Schoenberg's own copy of Giraud's "Pierrot Lunaire," with his ownership signature and in a slipcase likely designed and constructed by him

Arnold Schoenberg’s Copy of Giraud’s “Pierrot Lunaire” ********** SCHOENBERG, ARNOLD. (1874-1951). Austrian composer and creator of the revolutionary twelve-tone school of composition, which abandoned fixed tonality. Signed book. (“Arnold Schonberg”). 50pp. Small 4to. N.p., January 11, 1912. Schoenberg’s personal copy (or Handexemplar) of the first German trade edition of Otto Erich Hartleben’s German translation of Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire (Berlin: Der Verlag Deutscher Phantasten, 1893), signed by Schoenberg on the front free endpaper and contained in a slipcase likely designed and constructed by him. ********** In 1912, Schoenberg composed the innovative Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, a cycle of 21 poems arranged for speaker and chamber ensemble in which Schoenberg made systematic use of “Sprechgesang,” or “a type of vocal enunciation between speech and song... The preface of Pierrot is Schoenberg’s most explicit statement on Sprechgesang... the performer is also instructed that Sprechgesang should neither resemble natural speech nor recall true singing,” (The New Grove Dictionary). This seminal work was based on Hartleben’s translation of Albert Giraud’s Pierrot lunaire: rondels bergamasques. The poems, featuring the comic pantomime and Commedia dell’Arte figure Pierrot, became a favorite subject of the Symbolists and Decadents around the turn of the 19th century, but Schoenberg’s composition is the most famous and one of the composer’s most significant works. ********** Despite his influence as a 20th-century composer, teacher (Alban Berg and Anton von Webern were just two of his many students), and cultural icon (see the character of Leverkuehn in Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus), Schoenberg indulged himself in other, simpler diversions. In January 1915, he wrote to conductor and brother-in-law Alexander Zemlinksy, “I occupy myself with hobbies: carpentry, wallpapering, book-binding, putting things in order. I’ve produced many useful things and in that way I kill some time productively,” (A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life, Auner). Our volume is contained within a handmade clamshell slipcase bound with paper in a red, white and black “harlequin” pattern (a most appropriate design for a Pierrot subject!) with a vellum spine bearing a gold stamped title and crescent moon and stars referring, again, to Pierrot Lunaire, or “Moonstruck Pierrot.” ********** Our first German trade edition followed a small run of 60 copies signed by Hartleben published in 1892. With the original browned wrappers, the front cover of which is partially separated along the spine, and some paper loss at the edges. The box is slightly warped, but in overall good condition. A remarkable association copy: think Beethoven’s copy of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy!”