Excerpts from "Verklärte Nacht" (Schoenberg) - Brass Band by Arnold Schoenberg Chamber Music - Digital Sheet Music

Composed in just three weeks in 1899, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is a string sextet in one movement by Arnold Schoenberg. Whilst known better for tone rows, his dodecaphonic music and the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg was a master of harmony (writing a number of books on the subject) and, in his early life, was inspired by the music of Brahms and Wagner. This is his best-known tonal work. Its description as a tone poem is not surprising given it takes its inspiration from Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name, as well as Schoenberg’s strong feelings towards his future wife, Mathilde Zemlinsky, sister of his teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky.The work is said to have five sections, one for each of the stanzas in the poem. The poem, from 1896, describes a man and woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night. The woman shares a secret with him, that she is pregnant but not with his child. The man reflects upon this before warmly accepting (and forgiving) the news.The work premiered on 18 March 1902 in the Vienna Musikverein by the Rosé Quartet. As was normal at the time, Schoenberg produced a string orchestra version that was premiered on 29 November 1916 in Prague, conducted by Zemlinsky, which was later revised in 1943 to better support the soloists, also adding more articulation/accents and tempo markings.Whilst the piece was controversial at the time, both musically and due to the poem’s “inappropriate” subject matter, Richard Dehmel himself was impressed, writing “I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your composition, but soon forgot to do so, I was so enthralled by the music.”This arrangement is for the UK-style brass band, with alternative parts for horns in F and bass-clef lower brass. The excerpts are taken from the 4th and 5th sections of the piece, cut together to form around 7 minutes of glorious music. A recording of the original composition can be found here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqODySSxYpc.