Arnold Schönberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian compose… Read Full Bio ↴Arnold Schönberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. After his move to the United States in 1934, he altered the spelling of his surname from Schönberg to Schoenberg.

Schönberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has been one of the most influential of 20th-century musical thought. Many European and American composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, Schönberg's works were labelled as degenerate music.

Schönberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality (although Schönberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schönberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.

Schönberg was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, and later John Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner, and other prominent musicians.

Many of Schönberg's practices, including the formalization of compositional method, and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics were crucial to many significant 20th-century musicologists and critics, including Theodor W. Adorno, Charles Rosen and Carl Dahlhaus, as well as the pianists Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Eduard Steuermann and Glenn Gould.

Waldemar "Nun dämpft die Dämmerung jeden Ton"
Arnold Schönberg Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Nun dämpft die Dämm'rung jeden Ton
Von Meer und Land,
Die fliegenden Wolken lagerten sich
Wohlig am Himmelsrand.
Lautloser Friede schloss dem Forst
Die luftigen Pforten zu,
Und des Meeres klare Wogen
Wiegten sich selber zur Ruh.

Im Westen wirft die Sonne
Von sich die Purpurtracht
Und träumt im Flutenbette
Des nächsten Tages Pracht.
Nun regt sich nicht das kleinste Laub
In des Waldes prangendem Haus,
Nun tönt auch nicht der leiseste Klang.
Ruh' aus, mein Sinn, ruh' aus!
Und jede Macht ist versunken
In der eignen Träume Schoß,

Und es treibt mich zu mir selbst zurück,
Stillfriedlich, sorgenlos.

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of Arnold Schönberg's song "Waldemar: Nun dämpft die Dämmerung jeden Ton" speak of the tranquility that descends upon land and sea at dusk. With the sun setting in the west, the clouds in the sky form a comfortable bed, giving way to a noiseless peace that envelops the forest. The trees stand still, not a leaf rustling, as the clear waves of the sea rock themselves to and fro. The colors of the sky, now a beautiful shade of purple, signal the end of the day, and the anticipation of the dawn of a new day, as the sun dreams about the beauty of the next sunrise in the sea.

The tranquility surrounding the twilight hour seems to have a profound impact on the singer, and he finds himself at peace, almost in a state of meditation. He reflects on the powers that lie within himself, and despite the stillness that surrounds him, he feels a sense of movement within, a movement towards his inner self, which ultimately leaves him in a state of calm and free from worries.

Line by Line Meaning

Nun dämpft die Dämm'rung jeden Ton
Now the twilight muffles every sound

Von Meer und Land,
From sea and land,

Die fliegenden Wolken lagerten sich
The flying clouds settled

Wohlig am Himmelsrand.
Comfortably at the edge of the sky.

Lautloser Friede schloss dem Forst
Silent peace closed the forest

Die luftigen Pforten zu,
The airy gates.

Und des Meeres klare Wogen
And the clear waves of the sea

Wiegten sich selber zur Ruh.
Rocked themselves to sleep.

Im Westen wirft die Sonne
In the west, the sun casts

Von sich die Purpurtracht
Her purple mantle.

Und träumt im Flutenbette
And dreams in the bed of the waves