Alexander von Zemlinsky
Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid), Symphonic Fantasy
Alexander von Zemlinsky was born in Vienna in 1871 and died in Larchmont, New York in 1942. He composed this work in 1902-1903 and led the first performance in Vienna in 1905. The work is scored for 4 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 4 clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 3 bassoons, 6 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, and strings.
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For a composer whose name remains so obscure in the concert hall, the list of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s teachers, students, colleagues, friends, and relations reads like a who’s who of late-19th and early 20th century music. He studied composition with Johann Nepomuk Fuchs and Anton Bruckner at the Vienna Conservatory; Johannes Brahms helped promote Zemlinsky’s music to Simrock, his own publisher; he was brother-in-law to Arnold Schoenberg, who married Zemlinsky’s sister Mathilde, and he gave counterpoint lessons to Schoenberg, too; he had a brief romance with Alma Schindler, future wife of Gustav Mahler, who would later conduct the premier of Zemlinsky’s opera Es war einmal; he worked with Otto Klemperer, former Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Music Director, as a conductor at the Kroll Opera in Berlin; he taught, among others, Erich Korngold; his Lyrisch Symphony was quoted in Berg’s Lyric Suite of 1926; and his conducting was admired by such composers as Kurt Weill and Igor Stravinsky.

So, why is he so obscure today? The primary answer is that he did not take music in a new direction like his more famous brother-in-law or so many of his contemporaries. His earliest works were stolidly Romantic; his music eventually took on the extended chromaticism of Wagner, and by the end of his life it became leaner, edgier, and somewhat neoclassical in tone. But he never abandoned tonality and remained, in the eyes of musical elites, always a step or two behind the curve. He was also uncomfortable with self-promotion, saying “It is not enough to have elbows in this throng, you need to know how to use them.” After fleeing the Nazis in 1938 he died only four years later in Larchmont, New York, nearly forgotten.

But his name kept popping up in the music history of his time, and interest slowly revived. His score to The Mermaid was presumed lost—in fact, two movements had been taken to the United States while the third remained in Europe. In 1984 the two parts were reunited and performed; since then it has become one of his most popular works.

Zemlinsky’s “symphonic fantasy” is based on the story “The Little Mermaid,” written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1837. As with so many authentic fairy tales, it is considerably more lurid than the Disney version. The Little Mermaid is the youngest of the five daughters of the mer-king. When she reaches the age of fifteen she is allowed to visit the surface of the sea; when she does, she sees a ship carrying a handsome prince. She falls in love with him from afar and when a mighty storm tosses him overboard, she rescues him and brings him, unconscious, to the shore.

Upon her return her grandmother tells her that humans do not live as long as mer-folk, but they have a soul that lives forever; as a mermaid she will turn to sea foam and cease to exist when she dies. The Little Mermaid longs for the prince and a soul so much that she visits a mer-witch to be transformed into a human. In payment for the potion that gives her legs, the witch cuts out her tongue and tells the Little Mermaid that she will only obtain a soul if the prince loves and marries her; if the prince should marry another, the mermaid will die.

The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, only to discover that the prince is betrothed to another. She despairs, but before she can die she is visited by her sisters who have obtained a knife from the mer-witch; they tell her that if she kills the prince she can spare her own life and become a mermaid again. This she cannot bring herself to do and, when the prince marries, she throws herself into the sea to dissolve into sea foam. But she doesn’t cease to exist—instead she becomes one of the daughters of the air, rewarded for her striving with an immortal soul.

Zemlinsky left no detailed program for his musical version of the tale, but its three movements are so evocative that it is easy to follow the story nonetheless. The first movement opens with a depiction of the sea and music representing the Little Mermaid in the solo violin. Soon enough we hear the storm and the mermaid’s rescue of the prince.

The second movement opens with a depiction of a grand ball at the mer-king’s underwater palace, followed by the Little Mermaid’s visit to the mer-witch. In the middle section we hear noble music representing the soul, after which the ball music returns.

Zemlinsky’s music in the third movement seems less occupied with the story’s narrative than the emotional turmoil of the Little Mermaid. Earlier themes return in more melancholy raiment and several climaxes arrive and subside. Near the end we hear a return of the works opening water music, now accompanied by the music of the soul; after the largest climax, the Little Mermaid’s sorrow turns, gently, to acceptance and then rapture. As the work closes we hear her physical and spiritual being evanesce as she joins the daughters of the air.