How I came to Compose the Ode to Napoleon [Opus 41], 1942The League of Composers had asked me (1942)

How I came to Compose the Ode to Napoleon [Opus 41], 1942The League of Composers had asked me (1942) to write a piece of chamber music for their concert season. It should employ only a limited number of instruments. I had at once the idea that this piece must not ignore the agitation aroused in mankind against the crimes that provoked this war. I remembered Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, supporting repeal of the jus prime noctis, Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, Goethe’s Egmont, Beethoven’s Eroica and Wellington’s Victory, and I knew it was the moral duty of intelligentsia to take a stand against tyranny.But this was only my secondary motive. I had long speculated about the more profound meaning of the Nazi philosophy. There was one element that puzzled me extremely: the resemblence of the valueless individual being’s life in respect to the totality of the community or its representative: the Queen or the Führer. I could not see why a whole generation of bees or of Germans should live only in order to produce another generation of the same sort, which on their part should also fulfill the same task: to keep the race alive. I even surmised that bees (or ants) instinctively believe their destiny was to be successors of mankind, when this had destroyed itself in the same manner in which our predecessors, the Giants, Magicians, Lindworms [Dragons], Dinosaurs and others had destroyed themselves and their world, so that first men knew only a few isolated specimens. Their and the ants’ capacity of forming states and living according to laws – senseless and primitive, as they might look to us – this capacity, unique among animals, had an attractive similarity to our own life; and in our imagination we could muse a story, seeing them growing to dominating power, size and shape and creating a world of their own resembling very little the original beehive.Without such a goal the life of the bees, with the killing of the drones and the thousands of offspring of the Queen seemed futile. Similarly all the sacrifices of the German Herrenvolk [Master Race] would not make sense, without a goal of world domination – in which the single individual could vest much interest.Before I started to write this text, I consulted Maeterlinck’s Life of the Bees. I hoped to find there motives supporting my attitude. But the contrary happened: Maeterlinck’s poetic philosophy gilds everything which was not gold itself. And so wonderful are his explanations that one might decline refuting them, even if one knew they were mere poetry. I had to abandon this plan. I had to find another subject fitting my purpose.- Arnold SchönbergContrary to what some believe, Arnold Schönberg (or Shoenberg) didn’t write his famous Ode to Napoleon piece to pay homage to Napoleon Bonaparte. He did so to serve an altogether different purpose. The Ode to Napoleon required a reciter (narrator), a string quartet, and piano. It was composed during the Second World War as a protest against tyranny. Lord Byron’s poem castigating Napoleon served the composer in expressing his own feelings concerning latter-day tyrants. The impetus for this composition was twofold: 8 December 1941, the day after Pearl Harbour was bombed, Schöenberg heard President Roosevelt’s famous “day of infamy” radio address; and in January 1942 Schönberg received a commission from the League of Composers for a short chamber work. The League celebrated its 20th anniversary by commissioning several 10- to 20-minute works. Schönberg accepted the commission and composed the work between 12 March and 12 June 1942. However, it seems that Schönberg was not satisfied that his work would receive an adequate performance at the League of Composers’ concert, and he declined to send them the piece. He and his students searched for suitable performers and venues, but the “Ode” was not premiered publicly until 23 November 1944. Schönberg exercised great care in choosing the text; he wanted to compose something on a text by Lord Byron, for the poet’s support of Greece’s struggle for independence mirrored Schönberg’s allegiances to the Europe struggling against the tyranny of Hitler.He eventually combined the “Marseillaise” and the motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at the moment when the speaker declaims, “the earthquake voice of victory.” Expressions of sarcasm and scorn are depicted throughout the work by means of numerous characteristic motifs based mostly on a single chord structure (in ascending order: A, C, F, G-sharp, C-sharp, E; forming the twelve-tone set with its transposition a step higher). Thus many consonant chords are heard in the course of the piece culminating in the final tonal cadence to E-flat.The Ode is divided into four parts (five, three, four, and seven stanzas respectively) separated by instrumental interludes and prefaced by an introduction which contains the leading motifs. The first part, following the entrance of the Reciter, consists primarily of two themes – the “Napoleon” motifs – denouncing the tyrant. The second main part, following an instrumental interlude, treats three historical characters whose fate is contrasted with Napoleon’s. After a second interlude, which uses elements of the Introduction, the third part is presented, interrupted by frequent recitative passages. The final section follows a brief interlude and develops nearly all the main aspects of the poem, culminating in the reference to Washington (depicted by a four-note up-down-up motif: D, E-flat, G, B-flat) as the heroic counterpart of the tyrant. This final passage gradually settles down to a definite tonality (E-flat), which has been hinted at throughout the composition and which is made possible by the unfolding of the logical consequences of the 12-tone set itself.Schönberg himself heard the Ode played live in its original form only at a rehearsal preceding the concert in honor of his 75th birthday (13 September 1949) in Los Angeles. Of his decision to compose the piece, Schönberg wrote: “I knew it was the moral duty of intelligentsia to take a stand against tyranny.” -- source link

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