This is the third and final act of Ambigua. Act III is Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4 (1899), a string sextet in one movement. Inspired by a poem by Richard Demhel, Schoenberg composed it in three weeks, at the age of 25. It is a perfect showcase of his uncanny skills in classic harmony. Clearly rooted in D minor, it often ventures far from this home key, using extreme chromaticism, undermining both conventional harmony and metric boundaries, signalling the new era that Schoenberg pioneered a few years later: the 12-tone, serial music system.
Ambigua invites diversity, exploration, free spirit and an open ear. It embraces all music that is original in shape and content, as the human imprint in a universal vibe we still struggle to grasp, a breath of “luft von anderem planeten”