Arnold Schönberg's famous monodrama from 1912, Pierrot lunaire, op. 21, offers a personal and compelling perspective on Pierrot's allegorical relationship with the artists of turn-of-the-century Europe. Likewise, in his fusion of music and poetry, Schönberg provides what may be the most powerfully illustrative example of the fascination exerted by the character of Pierrot on artists of the time. Schönberg's libretto is based on Otto Hartleben's German translation of the Pierrot lunaire by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud. . In its original form, the work consists of fifty rondelle (an old-fashioned poetic form structurally dependent on structural repetition) that describe various scenes and events from the play. The poems vary widely in content, some depicting country idylls, others monstrous hallucinations or images of grotesque violence. Hartleben's translation, by all accounts a significant improvement over the original, applies expressionistic imagery and techniques to Giraud's poems, intensifying the already latent sensation of frenetic autobiographical narrative. Albertine Zehme, who commissioned the monodrama and was the narrator at its first performance, had been performing twenty-two poems by Pierrot of Hartleben in her three-part arrangement: the first part dealing with relatively happy poems, the second with a dark series of "dark and erotic nightmares" and the third with images of death. Schönberg, in creating his Pierrot lunaire, "... retained some elements of Zehme's narrative progression from lightness, to darkness, to death, but transformed them into a personalized narrative of the artist's plight in society." In choosing his twenty-one poems, the composer carefully omitted those that had to do with daylight (except, significantly, the fifth... half of the sheet... the inspiration and dictates of his past, was secretly Schönberg Commenting on the new musical prospects he saw before him? A composer always keenly aware of his place in the history of musical development, Schoenberg recognized that “Nacht” provided him with the foundation for inheriting the mantle of German evolutionary composition. In all likelihood, didn't it? Although this speculation is amusing, and perhaps even enlightening, it amounts to little more than a pseudo-musicological performance. It is clear that Schönberg saw Pierrot as a metaphorical surrogate for the artists Zemlinsky The fact that the more autobiographical interpretation of the song cycle created by Schönberg can even be accepted is a powerful testimony to the strength of the Pierrot character and the influence he exerted on artists at the turn of the century..