Erwartung was not performed until fifteen years after its feverishly speedy composition. By its very nature, it has not become a regular feature of the operatic repertory, yet its importance is not merely that of an interesting object for musicological study. The dramatic force and lyrical eloquence of its music has been widely acknowledged – a compelling and not unsympathetic psychological study of derangement to be placed alongside more traditionally operatic precedents as Strauss’s Salome. Most published commentaries on it have dealt with compositional materials and techniques, and consideration of a range of such studies focuses on what can be reconstructed about the evolution of the text, as well as the various attempts to find consistency and coherence in the thirty-minute score. By and large, a consensus has evolved, especially through the use of post-tonal analytical techniques, which counterbalances the assumption that the score is a repetition-free ‘stream of consciousness’.

Chapter 4 approaches “Erwartung,” Op. 17, as a leitmotivic opera, in contrast to previous literature that emphasizes its “athematic” and “amotivic” qualities. The process within which the opera’s central motive transforms from <D, F, C#> (and its set-class 3-3) to <D, F, A, C#>, and finally into a quotation from Schoenberg’s Op. 6 song “Am Wegrand” portrays a two-step image of emergence – first of the dead body of the Woman’s lover, and then of the realization that he is dead, and she will live the rest of her life without him in “collective loneliness.” This process of motivic emergence is similar to the “cumulative settings” that J. Peter Burkholder proposed for the music of Charles Ives (but the elements that undergo this process in Schoenberg's music are much smaller). In addition, my analysis shows how families of set classes also serve leitmotivic functions: representing the lover’s body, the Woman’s fear, startling objects in the forest, and momentary feelings of reassurance. In this way, Erwartung can be understood as an inspiration for Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck.