Text: Stefan George [Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide]
September 27, 1908
Universal Edition, Wien
With his selection of only fifteen poems, Schönberg was apparently resisting the more consistent narrative thread of George’s larger cycle. Moreover, the composer’s affinity for brevity is evident here, as more than half of the fifteen songs take less than two minutes in performance. Thus, in The Book of the Hanging Gardens, each one of these self-contained songs may be heard as its own distilled thought or mood, even a fleeting moment, and exemplifies one of Schönberg’s hallmark traits as a composer – his distinctive sensibility for aphoristic expression.