Sprechstimme

Arnold Schoenberg’s blue self-portrait created in 1910.

The soprano narrator of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire tells the story of the titular character using a technique known as Sprechstimme (“speaking voice”), which aims for a hybrid between speaking and singing.  In Sprechstimme, the singer adheres to fixed tempos and rhythms, but uses approximate pitches. More than 100 years after actress Albertine Zehme used Sprechstimme in the Pierrot lunaire Berlin premiere, it still sounds mysterious and perhaps even unsettling to the listener.

Schoenberg didn’t invent Sprechstimme, but his 1912 Pierrot composition stands as an iconic example, and the one credited for making it famous.  In 1897 German composer Engelbert Humperdinck used Sprechstimme in his first version of the melodrama

Composers Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton Webern (1883-1945)—two of Schoenberg’s most illustrious pupils—similarly adopted Sprechstimme in their works.  Schoenberg and his students are commonly grouped as the “Second Viennese School,” wherein composers abandoned traditional tonality and explored expressionism, pushing the boundaries of music towards new sounds that defied convention.

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Learn more about our upcoming Concert by Candlelight on Sunday, May 19 in the St. Louis Chapel.