Sunday Morning Matters - Robert Craft's Schoenberg Recording

I spent part of this morning listening to Robert Craft's Naxos recording of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Herzgewächse, Four Orchestral Songs, and Chamber Symphony No. 1. This disc is an excellent, budget-priced, introduction to Schoenberg's sweet music. I don't know why the disc's tracts are arranged in a-chronological order - it doesn't matter though, since one may program his or her CD device in a chronologically apt way (one of the two non-sound-quality ways CDs best vinyl recordings, otherwise vinyl reproduces the music best). The three and one-half minute Herzgewächse written for coloratura soprano, celesta, harmonium and harp is a very exciting work of which I was unfamiliar until the Craft recording. The vocal works on the Craft disc are treated in Bryan R. Simms' The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg 1908 - 1923 in Chapter 6 under the heading "New Uses of the voice . . .". Simms discusses Schoenberg's views about a poem and its proper musical setting and his views about surface and deep meaning in a musical context; how a poem and the music should reflect each other at a deep level [page 117]. Both Craft and Simms are worthy of one's Sunday music listening and study.