One of the answers found by Schönberg’s circle to the question about how musical processes could be shaped without a tonal context was in the extreme streamlining of the form. With Schönberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces op. 19 of 1911, the concentration on the essential is legendary. Behind its fleeting gestures lie hidden depths, shown especially through its supposed reference in the last piece to Gustav Mahler’s funeral on 21 May 1911. With his carefully considered fingerings, Emanuel Ax invites all pianists to engage with these miniatures anew. The Henle Urtext edition publishes this modern classic in a new, generously laid out music setting.
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Preface
Together with the two piano cycles op. 11 and op. 25, the Sechs kleine Klavierstücke op. 19 from 1911 represent fundamental steps in Arnold Schönberg’s (1874 – 1951) development. Opus 19 stands for the extreme reduction of form, the condensed miniature – a creative concept that was to be of central importance for Schönberg’s pupil Anton Webern, for example. Often … more
Critical Commentary
About the authors
Norbert Müllemann (Editor)
Dr. Norbert Müllemann, born in 1976 in Cologne, studied musicology, German philology and philosophy at the University of Cologne whilst at the same time studying the piano at the Music Conservatory in Cologne.
In 2004 he began working at G. Henle Publishers as an intern. In 2005 he became a junior editor, whilst at the same time starting his doctorate at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He completed it in 2008 with a thesis entitled “Handschriften Frédéric Chopins bis 1830. Studien zur Authentizität, Datierung und Werkgenese”. Since 2008 Müllemann has been an editor at the publishing house, becoming editor-in-chief in 2017. He has edited numerous Urtext editions for the publisher with a particular focus on the works of Frédéric Chopin.