At first, Pierrot Lunaire sounded confusing, erratic, and eerie.  Schoenburg’s peice is also rhythmless, and it also combines that atonality. This creates completely dissonant, alien, and illogical sounds, and this conveys a deep and memorable dysphoric emotion. I think this music perfectly captures the anxiety and turmoil in reaction to the nationalism and militarism in the early 20th century, leading up to the First World War. In a stream of consciousness, the Pierrot Lunaire depicts small vignettes that show the decrepitude of modern life. Music, up to this point, has mostly had organized structure based on a pattern or the lyrics (such as recitative opera). An exception could be made for chants, which flows according to the words of the chant. Because Schoenburg was an expressionist, we can safely assume that the entire structure of his pieces are dictated by the emotions. He frees himself from conventional expectations of music and explores the most primal and chaotic emotions.

I loved the 4th poem about the chlorotic laundry maid. In comparison to the rest of the piece, it is relatively calm, and at times it is carried out in a whisper-like fashion. It seems pretty clear the lyrics evoke images of purity: the maiden, her silver paleness, the white sheets she has washed. However, the scene depicted has an obscene modern twist. (If we are to trust the resource page’s translation,) Cholera contaminates the entire scene. With the discovery of the microbe model of disease, clean and white no longer meant purity and safety. Therefore, the scene of the maiden is transformed into eerie and sickly. This twisted scene is what is depicted in the music.