As the title suggests, Verklärte Nacht is the story of a miraculous transformation. The piece is based on a poem by German poet Richard Dehmel that tells an emotional story about a couple walking in the woods on a cold winter night.
In Dehmel’s poem the woman is pregnant with the child of a man she never loved. She loves the man she walks with tonight, but, overwhelmed by guilt, she despairs that she will never know happiness with him now.
“Look at this brilliant, moonlit world,” responds her companion. “It is like a cold ocean, but there is a flame within each of us that warms the other and which will transfigure the child and make it mine also.”
They kiss and then walk on through the radiant night around them.
The composer who composed the music is Vienna – born Arnold Schoenberg, who ultimately created the so-called 12-tone music system.
Here is the music for Verklarte Nacht:
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