Greenberg arguments that Pierrot Lunaire sounds the way it does for expressive reasons, so that understanding the poetry will explain the sounds of the music. In effect, this piece is replete with word painting. For example, at 14:25, when the vocalist sings about a “murdering memory”, she begins to gasp and is accompanied by an accelerated rhythm from the string instruments, before she much more loudly sings about “gloomy, black, gigantic butterflies” which have killed the sunshine. Meanwhile, the atonality and dissonance in this piece complicate the audience’s expectation and understanding.

The text by Greenberg also states that this piece is the soul of modernity and that it will always sound like that. This commentary was interesting to me, particularly as it elaborates on similar discussions we have had in class – what constitutes “modernity” and how can composers in a musical genre create/follow up after such a piece? The text states that music must be relevant to its time, so then possibly the criterion for judging a piece as perpetually modern must be made within this contextual framework.