Sara Teasdale 56 - പനിനീർപ്പൂവ് Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

Note I presume that the reference to ‘Pierrot singing' and ‘his lute' alludes to Pierrot Lunaire ('Pierrot in the Moonlight') , a melodrama of early twentieth century by Arnold Schoenberg. It is a setting of 21 selected poems from Albert Giraud's cycle of the same name as translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben. The work is written for reciter (voice-type unspecified in the score, but traditionally performed by a soprano) who delivers the poems in the sprechstimme style accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble. Schoenberg had previously used a combination of spoken text with instrumental accompaniment, called 'melodrama', in the summer-wind narrative of the Gurre-Lieder, which was a fashionable musical style popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Though the music is atonal, it does not employ Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, which he did not use until 1921. Pierrot Lunaire is among Schoenberg's most celebrated and frequently performed works. Its instrumentation - flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano with standard doublings and in this case with the addition of a vocalist - is an important ensemble even in 21st-century classical music and is referred to as a Pierrot ensemble. The piece was premiered at the Berlin Choralion-Saal on October 16,1912, with Albertine Zehme as the vocalist. A typical performance lasts about 35 to 40 minutes. The American premiere took place at the Klaw Theatre, on Broadway, New York, on 4 February 1923 as part of a series of concerts organised by the International Composers' Guild.