Schönberg: Pierrot Lunaire, string quartets

My music listening is still in a dark Schoenbergian phase, getting into this unsettling stuff has been a major revelation. Currently I'm listening to my new CD of "Pierrot Lunaire", the adaptation of 21 poems by Belgian symbolist poet Albert Giraud.




Here's a better translation than the subtitled one in the clip:

"Night"
by Albert Giraud

Sinister giant black butterflies
Eclipse the blazing disk of sun.
Like a sealed-up book of wizard's spells
Sleeps the horizon--secret silent.

From dank forgotten depths of Lethe
A scent floats up, to murder memory.
Sinister giant black butterflies
Eclipse the blazing disk of sun.

And from heaven downward dropping
To the earth in leaden circles,
Invisible, the monstrous swarm
Descends upon the hearts of men,
Sinister giant black butterflies.


The String quartets are also fantastic. Sounds like Bernard Hermann's Hitchcock scores, except a lot weirder.