Schoenberg composed his “Verklaerte Nacht” (transfigured night) in between September and December 1899.
In a letter written by Schoenberg to the poet Richard Dehmel, he said: “For your poems have had a decisive influence on my development as a composer. They were what first made me try to find a new tone in the lyrical mood. Or rather, I found it even without looking, simply by reflecting in music what your poems stirred up in me.”
What these poems stirred up in Schoenberg was the desire to innovate new forms expressive of an organic unity not yet realized in his work.
The over-all form of the poem Verklärte Nacht is obvious enough in its ABACA structure, wherein A functions as a refrain in which a narrator describes two people walking. The B section consists of a woman informing a man that she is pregnant (by another man), while C recounts the man’s response. The symmetry is classical in design and, as with all classical structures, contains the duality of conflict and resolution.
However, the conflict inherent in this text is not so much resolved but, as the title suggests, it is transfigured. The poem does this by raising the two protagonists to a higher level of humanity, indeed to a greater unity based upon sympathy and compassionate understanding.
Here is the orchestral version of Verklarte Nacht by Schoenberg:
