Ready for a Rare, Ambitious ‘Gurrelieder’

A medieval love legend is, perhaps, the last thing music audiences are likely to associate with the man who created the 12-tone compositional system and became spiritual father to much of the dissonant music of the 20th Century.

But that is exactly what Arnold Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” is. The infrequently performed work will be given tonight and Friday by the Pacific Symphony and Pacific Chorale directed by Keith Clark at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The legend tells of the secret love of the 12th-Century Danish King Waldemar for the maiden Tove. Waldemar gives Tove his favorite castle, Gurre, but for reasons of state has to marry someone else. When the Queen finds out about Waldemar’s true love, she orders Tove’s murder. In bitterness and pain, Waldemar curses God and consequently is condemned to ride forever in a wild hunt with his ghostly retainers between the hours of midnight and dawn. But the work ends in a mood of reconciliation, with a testament to the healing power of nature and a chorus saluting the sunrise.

Schoenberg began composing the work in 1900 as a song--or lieder--cycle (hence “Gurre- lieder”), according to Leonard Stein, director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles. (Stein will give preconcert lectures at 7 p.m. at the center on both days.)

“His interest in the poem was perfectly natural and followed the development of ‘Verklarte Nacht’ (in 1899),” Stein said. “Nature and love and the consequences thereof appealed to him and others at the late 19th Century.”

Originally, Schoenberg intended to set only part of the legend, as told by the 19th-Century Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen. But his interest grew and his vision expanded to include musical interludes and orchestration.

“It’s still not clear when he really began orchestrating it,” Stein said. “You can see in the piano sketches indications for other instruments.”

At one point there is a laundry list of the forces that Schoenberg jotted down for the work: an orchestra of 142 players, three male choirs, a mixed-voice choir, five soloists--no less than 538 performers altogether.

“You couldn’t find a hall that could accommodate those numbers,” Stein said. “The concept was huge . It indicated Schoenberg’s thinking of embracing all humanity” in his composition.

Eventually, he scaled down the musical forces to a point where it could be mounted with normal-sized orchestral and choral groups, with some augmentation. Nevertheless, the work still calls for a greater number of musicians than, for instance, Mahler’s sprawling Eighth Symphony, the “Symphony of a Thousand.”

For these performances, the Pacific Symphony has expanded its size to 124 instrumentalists. The Pacific Chorale will be using its usual contingent of about 130 singers.

Will there be a problem fitting all these forces on the Segerstrom Hall stage? “We’ll find out,” conductor Keith Clark said. “I don’t know. It’s a huge group. . . .

“But what is very interesting to listen to--and probably very depressing if you’re paying the bills--is to note how rarely all of these forces are used at the same time. It’s as if Schoenberg assembled 124 people and then from that, created hundreds of little chamber orchestras that are constantly trading the material. It’s very intimate music for the most part,” Clark said.

Stylistically, Stein said, “It both sums up the 19th Century and points ahead to the 20th.”

Before finishing “Gurrelieder,” however, Schoenberg married and had to put aside the work in order to make a living. When he returned to it in 1910, his style had changed. Stein said you can see exactly where he picked up the pen again.

“The exact point is Waldemar’s summoning (of) his retainers, with 10 unison French horns,” he said. “Right after that, the orchestration thins out. It becomes a chamber orchestra by the time of the (Speaker’s) melodrama (the penultimate section), which is more typical of his later writing.”

The demands that Schoenberg wrote into the role of Waldemar require the power, lyricism and endurance of a Wagnerian tenor.

Originally, James McCracken was scheduled to sing Waldemar. But McCracken died on April 29 of complications following a stroke.

Because it is rarely performed--”Gurrelieder” was last presented in Southern California in 1977 by Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic--Clark said: “Looking for a (new) Waldemar was not like looking for an Alfredo” (in Verdi’s “La Traviata”).

However, American tenor George Gray agreed to cancel this month’s lead role in Verdi’s “Otello” with the Frankfurt Opera in order to appear in this “Gurrelieder.”

Gray had never sung Waldemar, though he was already scheduled to sing the role in Berlin, Vienna and Frankfurt with Claudio Abbado and the European Youth Orchestra in August, and in Paris next year with Pierre Boulez and the Opera de la Bastille.

“This is pushing me into it quicker than I had planned,” Gray said by phone last week. “But the sooner I can be put into the fire with this, the sooner I will be happy with it.”