Introduction
The name of Franz Schreker, unfortunately, will not sound familiar to many of you. Schreker was a composer who, in his lifetime, went from being hailed as the future of German opera to being considered irrelevant.
He was influenced in his music by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss but eventually, he developed a very personal language that, while still remaining tonal, explored extreme chromaticism and even polytonality.
His fame peaked during the early years of the Weimar Republic when he was the most performed living composer in the German-speaking world after Richard Strauss. First-rate conductors like Otto Klemperer and Erich Kleiber were premiering his works. But a couple of mixed receptions of his operas along with the rising of antisemitism changed his fortunes. In a few years, he was completely marginalized and died of a stroke in 1934, 2 days shy of his 56th birthday.
Portrait of Franz Schreker by Heinrich Gottselig (1922)
Der Schatzgräber (The Treasure Hunter) was written between 1915 and 1918. Schreker wrote also the libretto of the opera. The premiere took place in 1920 in Frankfurt.
This was Schreker’s most successful opera with more than 350 performances in over fifty cities between 1920 and 1925.
Der Schatzgräber interlude
Should you need a score you can find one here.
The interlude opening the third act is a real symphonic fresco roughly 14 minutes long.
It’s the opening of the curtain, grabbing your attention right away with a powerful entrance of the woodwinds, violas, and cellos sustained by the horns and basses, and an energic timpani hit. The first violins enter on the second bar doubled by the second on the third. Everything is very dark, with everyone playing in the lowest register of their instrument
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See, you can hear right away that the language is tonal. There’s a melody you can easily identify on this page. But the chromaticism adds many different nuances and a sense of unsettlement, also helped by the syncopation.
The theme gets disrupted right away and its first cell used to bridge to a new section. When the violins come in on bar 385 we move from darkness to light.
It’s a moment: it is just another bridge to the real new section, starting at the 6/8. A delicate melody is exposed by a violin solo and answered by the English horn.
Like every great composer, Schreker uses some tricks: the figure beginning the theme presented in this section is anticipated in the second and third bars of the bridge (387-388).
Notice the counterpoint of the violas
The ideas are passed to other sections in a game of different colors. One of the things I enjoy the most are the little details in the orchestration, like the cymbals and harp on bars 99-100 or the bells and xylophone on 408-409.
This sweet atmosphere is interrupted by a trumpet call
Suddenly we are thrown into a crescendo that in a brief time climaxes on a triple fortissimo of the full orchestra
Technical tip
The push and pull game we saw in the intermezzo of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut is present in this piece as well, even though its character is obviously of a different kind and most of the instructions are outlined in the continuous accelerando, rallentando, and tempo changes.
Once again, the trick is to anticipate the orchestra and to hook with a stronger pulse in those places where you can actively control the tempo, like in between dotted or tied notes.
For a technical analysis, with a focus on tempo changes and rubato, take a look at this other video
But once again, the tension backs off and leaves room for another romantic moment, with the violin solo and woodwinds playing question and answer
The theme is passed to the violins with an accompaniment of 2 harps, and then transformed: all of a sudden the turmoil is back growing more and more dramatic. See how the theme is morphed at the Meno mosso. And look at those horns scales!
The climax arrives with a tam-tam, cymbals, and bass drum roll. But as that fades out we recognize the very first theme we heard at the opening of this intermezzo.
We enter a slippery slop section: the harmony moves from A minor to Bb minor, A minor to G minor. But it’s not that straightforward: look at the celesta part: you can clearly see the chords in the upper staff playing a chromatic game with the ones in the bottom staff.
Everything concurs to a climate of instability, amplified by the counterpoint of the violin solo to the main line, sung by an oboe
A forward-backward chromatic scale gives way to a poco a poco accelerando. Look at the kind of indication Schreker puts in the score: “In fortwährender Steigerung” meaning continuous intensification
The crescendo peaks on a triple fortissimo on the gentle theme we heard in the beginning played by the violin solo, but we are shortly taken to a new section where different musical ideas are reworked until the music falls back, again, to a quieter place.
Listening to the section around 530 one notices the lesson Schreker learned from Mahler in depicting this kind of pastoral atmosphere
At 540 we enter another bridging section: this one is different though, playing on harmonic instability and sudden changes of musical ideas
In a rather long exchange of themes, ideas, and different atmospheres we land once more on a huge crescendo exploding on the main themes and the music fades away once again on a now very familiar theme
The darkness of the beginning comes back in with a sforzato, but it is quickly dissipated, leaving room to a fairy tale mood colored by the harps and the celesta, until a timpani roll breaks the magic: the turmoil is back ending the piece in a powerful D minor.
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