Arnold Schoenberg.

On 9 December 1911, Arnold Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden für gemischten Chor a cappella (Opus 11) was premiered at Vienna’s Großer Musikvereins-Saal under the baton of Franz Schrecker. The text is drawn from a Christmas poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. In an essay for the Schoenberg Web site, Therese Muxeneder writes, “The first verse of Meyer’s poem begins with the tidings of peace from the Christmas story; the second and third verses essay the history of the world after the birth of Christ as a time of war, in which, however, the belief in justice and the hope for peace continue to be upheld: a peace which in future generations becomes reality (fourth verse). Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s concept of peace unites the perspectives Real and Ideal against a thoroughly secular backdrop, which in Schönberg’s setting (formally divided into ten sections) more clearly approximates the Religious. … In a letter to the conductor Hermann Scherchen on 23 June 1923, Schönberg wrote about this last work he composed in a tonal style, that it ‘is an illusion for mixed choir, an illusion, as I know today, having believed, in 1906 (?), when I composed it, that this pure harmony among human beings was conceivable.’”

The version posted below is performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain. It is available at amazon.com.