Facets of Pierrot

Arnold Schönberg: Pierrot lunaire op. 21
Max Kowalski: Zwölf Gedichte aus Pierrot lunaire op. 4 (arr. Johannes Schöllhorn)
Otto Vrieslander: from Pierrot lunaire
Joseph Marx: Pierrot Dandy
Eduard Künneke: Pierrot-Lieder op. 48

In 1884, the Belgian poet Albert Giraud published his collection “Pierrot lunaire,” which portrayed the character’s melancholic nature through Symbolist poetry. In his free adaptation, Otto Erich Hartleben emphasised the poems’ grotesque elements, thereby creating an early precursor to German Expressionism that particularly appealed to composers. With Schönberg’s masterpiece at its centre, students from the Kunstuniversität Graz invite you on a journey through musical settings of Pierrot from the early 20th century.