This chapter will function as an extension to the Introduction; rather than a study of Gurrelieder in its own right, the chapter functions as prelude to what follows. Schoenberg famously said that Gurrelieder was the key to his entire evolution. It is in that spirit that we approach the work.

Even a passing acquaintance will reveal that Schoenberg's Gurrelieder is a work of enormous energy and imagination, a composition of majestic power and scope. Its realization was an incredible act of will by a composer only twenty-six and twenty-seven years old during its original conception and composition, an accomplishment made even more extraordinary in that the work was laid aside for a decade, a time during which its composer had undergone perhaps the most radical sea change in the history of music. In the course of Schoenberg's life's work, there were other major compositions that were put aside in the hope of being completed later.