Greenberg writes, “Repeat listening will never make this music sound conventional because it will always sound only like itself” (302). While certainly true in one way or another, this statement nevertheless seems to have the problematic implication that Pierrot Lunaire cannot refer to anything beyond itself. In order to make a case for the music’s successful expression of content, emotional or otherwise, it would appear necessary to attempt to identify what it is does indeed sound like. And indeed, unless we are committed to the view that the ‘soul of modernity’ will distinguish itself by being nothing besides the soul of modernity, we won’t be surprised to find that we can, I think, make such identifications with relative ease.

For example, Schoenberg pointed out in the preface to Pierrot Lunaire’s score that Sprechstimme leads to a voice that, instead of singing individual notes for discrete periods of time, is continuous in its variation of pitch. Sprechstimme gives Schoenberg’s music interesting new rhythmic properties, perhaps through leading to more variable tone lengths. Moreover, switches between singing, speech and whispering are used to violate expectations to create a sense of creepiness. This definite affective result would seem to testify against the self-enclosed nature of the music.