ABSTRACT
The use of historical categories tends to obscure what is new and unique. But if it may be permitted for just a moment, Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung can be seen in two ways: on the one hand, as a recitativo accompagnato expanded for the length of an entire musical drama, in other words as musical declamation supported by expressive or descriptive orchestral motifs. On the other hand as the work of a composer whose musical thinking was influenced first and foremost by the tradition of chamber music. Orchestral polyphony as Schoenberg understood it does not cancel out the expressiveness of the monodrama but on the contrary supports and even generates it. The attempt to define more precisely the relation between expression and orchestral polyphony in Schoenberg's Erwartung, and to find some concrete analytical basis for the dialectical formula of how the different elements are conveyed through one another.
