new man is like. Certainly, he is the
hardest musical nut to crack of his generation, and the shell is very
bitter in the mouth.

Early in December, 1912, the fourth performance of a curious
composition by Schoenberg was given at the Choralionsaal in the
Bellevuestrasse, Berlin. The work is entitled Lieder des Pierrot
Lunaire, the text of which is a fairly good translation of a poem
cycle by Albert Guiraud. This translation was made by the late Otto
Erich Hartleben, himself a poet and dramatist. I have not read the
original French verse, but the idea seems to be faithfully represented
in the German version. This moon-stricken Pierrot chants--rather
declaims--his woes and occasional joys to the music of the Viennese
composer, whose score requires a reciter (female), a piano, flute
(also piccolo), clarinet (also bass clarinet), violin (also viola),
and violoncello. The piece is described as a melodrama. I listened to
it on a Sunday morning, and I confess that Sunday at noon is not a
time propitious to the mood musical. It was also the first time I had
heard a note of Schoenberg's. In vain I had tried to get some of his
scores; not even the six little piano pieces could I secure. Instead,
my inquiries were met with dubious or pitying smiles--your music clerk
is a terrible critic betimes, and his mind oft takes upon it the
colour of his customer's orders. So there I was, to be pitched
overboard into a new sea, to sink or float, and all the while wishing
myself miles away.

A lady of pleasing appearance, attired in a mollified Pierrot
costume, stood before some Japanese screens and began to intone--to
cantillate, would be a better expression. She told of a monstrous
moon-drunken world, then she described Columbine, a dandy, a pale
washer-woman--"Eine blasse Waescherin waescht zur Nachtzeit bleiche
Tuecher"--and always with a refrain, for Guiraud employs the device
to excess. A valse of Chopin followed, in verse, of course (poor
suffering Frederic!), and part one--there are seven poems, each in
three sections--ended with one entitled Madonna, and another, the Sick
Moon. The musicians were concealed behind the screens (dear old Mark
Twain would have said, to escape the outraged audience), but we heard
them only too clearly!

It is the decomposition of the art, I thought, as I held myself in my
seat. Of course, I meant decomposition of tones, as the slang of the
ateliers goes.

What did I hear? At first, the sound of del