Inspired by Richard Dehmel’s scandalous poem of the same name, Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is one of the masterpieces of the string sextet repertoire.
In Dehmel’s poem, two lovers walk in a moonlit forest. The woman confesses she is carrying the child of another man she did not love. Now that she has found her true love, she is full of remorse. But he tells her that their love will transfigure the child.
