Arnold Schönberg
Ich darf nicht dankend [I may not gratefully], op. 14/1
Text: Stefan George
1907

Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien

Stefan George’s Ich darf nicht dankend from the volume of poems Das Jahr der Seele [The year of the soul] inspired Schönberg in 1907 to write a song for voice and piano in which wintery nature acts as an echo chamber for the soul. In 1949 he wrote about the groundbreaking compositional period around 1907/08 in My Evolution: “Most critics of this new style failed to investigate how far the ancient ‘eternal’ laws of musical aesthetics were observed, spurned, or merely adjusted to changed circumstances. Such superficiality brought about accusations of anarchy and revolution, whereas on the contrary, this music was distinctly a product of evolution, and no more revolutionary than any other development in the history of music.”