Frieden auf Erden

Schoenberg composed his unaccompanied choral work Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth) in 1907. This was when his musical idiom was heading towards the new and undiscovered harmonic world of atonality, but had not yet quite got there. Much of the writing in Friede auf Erden is highly chromatic, and rehearsals for a planned first performance in Vienna in 1908 were abandoned due to the music’s difficulty. Schoenberg was persuaded to add an accompaniment of woodwind, horns and strings, and this version was successfully premiered in 1911. The music sets words by the Swiss poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, contrasting the optimistic serenity of the Christian Nativity with the relentless warring of humankind ever since, and aspiring nonetheless to a forthcoming and hoped-for “Peace on Earth”. Schoenberg was an experienced choral conductor, and his expertise shows in the music’s masterful power and intensity, ranging from the boldest chromatic adventures to the passionately affirmative final bars in D major—a conventionally tonal ending, but only just.