I have the opportunity of singing in the choir for a performance of Gurrelieder, by Arnold Schoenberg. I don’t know anything about this work. I assume that it’s in German. Is there any Doper who has attended, or been involved in, a performance who can tell me what the work is like?
Wow. I’m jealous.
Firstly, it’s huge. 150-piece orchestra, large chorus and soloists. Somewhere around the 100-minutes mark. It’s one of the pieces that sits on the edge of the twentieth century - saturated with the limits of the aesthetics of Mahler, Wagner and Strauss, and making it clear there’s radical changes coming any time soon. Which is wonderfully exciting…and the music lives up to it 
Word of advice - get to know the piece well beforehand - I certainly wouldn’t want to sight-read it 
Thanks GorillaMan.
I picked up a copy of the *Gurrelieder * score this morning. Then I bought a CD and listened to the whole work. It’s fantastic! I see what you mean about its being huge. The choir’s involvement is relatively small, but I’m still definitely going to do it. We’ll be singing the choir I parts. The Tenor I part looks pretty difficult (lots of weird chromatic passages), as well as physically demanding (bars and bars of sustained A naturals, B flats and B naturals). It should be quite a challenge.
I have performed this (as a member of the choir)! In college, the concert choir I was in was one of…3 or four choirs in the state asked to perform this with the Minnesota Orchestra. Let’s see, how did it go down…
As I recall, we just totally ignored part 1 (no choral parts, or at least, none we were involved with). We focused specifically on the second part (Bauer, Waldermars Mannen, and Choir) . Listened to it SEVERAL times, and then just…went to town. Since it was in German, we spent a good chunk of one rehearsal going over the phonetics, then just did our normal practice routine, although we did do a lot of work on coming in with the recording. Just worked on it like we worked on everything (Luckily for us, the performance was in May, so we had finished our spring tour and could spend most of our time on this…It was quick, a couple weeks, and then performance).
The big shock was when we went to the full rehearsal a couple days before performance. We were used to performing as a ~60 member acapella choir, and here we were one of 4 choirs, an expanded orchestra,…Just like GorillaMan describes (after this, we were asked to perform other pieces with the Minn. Orchestra, and while exciting, nothing matched that first time, due to size if nothing else). The rehearsal moved VERY fast, but since all the choirs were quite well prepared (again, like GorillaMan says, knowing the piece was key, especially since we had all rehearsed it separately), the conductor seemed quite happy, mostly his work with us was to fine-tune us, and to quickly hammer into us his conducting style.
A great time, exciting, and the choir has done it a second time since then (Sadly, I had graduated by then, as had most of those involved. But our director had it down!).
**Lambo ** - we’re doing much the same thing as you did.
This performance of *Gurrelieder * will be in Melbourne. Our choir (Sydney-based) will be going to Melbourne to join two other local choirs. We’ll have five or six practices on our own and our musical director will well and truly have drilled the notes into us by the time we get to Melbourne. Then we’ll join with the other choirs for another week’s worth of rehearsals in the run up to the actual performance.
I agree that it’s always a bit of a shock when all the choirs get together with the orchestra. I had the same experience a couple of years ago when we went to London to join with a London-based and a Birmingham-based choir to sing *Mahler 8 * at the Proms concerts in the Albert Hall.
Wow, Cunctator- that’s so cool that you’re singing the Gurrelieder. Gorilla Man summed it up pretty well, so “what he said”! I’m even more impressed/envious that you performed in the choir of Mahler 8 in the Albert Hall! That’s one of the musical Himalayan summits! And what a glorious, exultant work to take there! That’s a huge space, I have had the opportunity to hear several great concerts (also part of the Proms series) in that hall. Mahler 8 certainly would fill that space nicely!
This is supposed to be a Gurrelieder thread, I know…
congratulations on your musical achievements and all the best for your performance of Schönberg!
-Shingolicious