Yesterday was the hundredth anniversary of the tragically early death of Giacomo Puccini. The Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, in honor of the superficially surprising sympathies that existed between Schoenberg and Puccini, marked the occasion with a memorial concert combining Puccini melodies as arranged by Till Alexander Körber with Pierrot Lunaire. I'm reminded of a story that Alma Mahler-Werfel told in her unpublished later diaries. She described meeting Puccini at the intermission of a 1920 performance of Gurrelieder in Vienna, with Schoenberg conducting. Puccini was, alas, disappointed. Mahler-Werfel wrote: "He said he had wanted to hear something radical, but he's hearing Wagnerian music, it doesn't interest him. He had come to be convinced, but this doesn't require anything new of him, one already knows it. Unfortunately, he left before the second part, which surely would have made a greater impression on him." Puccini found more satisfaction when he heard Pierrot Lunaire at the ISCM in Florence, on April 1, 1924. He followed along in a score that Schoenberg had provided for him and chatted at length with the composer afterward. The news of Puccini's death eight months later came to Schoenberg as a great shock, as it did to all.
