“As if with lightning bolts”

Arnold Schoenberg’s song cycle Das Buch der hängenden Gärten op. 15 (1908–9) is enigmatic in both its text and its musical material. In this chapter, I analyze musical “topics,” or topoi—conventional signs that point toward cultural meanings—to illustrate both structural and expressive connections in the cycle. Specifically, I focus on the tempesta and the ombra, musical styles originating in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera; these topics not only guide the analysis of individual passages but also create linkages across the cycle as a whole. Throughout op. 15, Schoenberg preserves many of the traditional musical features of these two topics while also including consistent atonal elements; specifically, I will argue that repeated pitch motives, namely (014) trichords, become signifiers of the ombra in Schoenberg’s atonal music. As this chapter demonstrates, topical analysis can be fruitfully adapted to atonal contexts, helping to clarify our musical intuitions as both listeners and performers.