Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Moses und Aron and Jacobsleiter are the best known Jewish-inspired music by Arnold Schoenberg. We should not forget to mention A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46.

However there is also a much lesser known work: Kol nidre for Chorus and Orchestra, op. 39 (1938). That famous prayer-chant of Kol nidre is surely a source of inspiration for many Jewish and non-Jewish composers.

Moses und Aron (Moses and Aaron) is a two-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with a third act unfinished. The German libretto was by the composer after the Book of Exodus.

The opera has its roots in Schoenberg's earlier play, Der Biblische Weg (The Biblical Way, 1926-27), which represents a response in dramatic form to the growing anti-Jewish movements in the German-speaking world after 1848 and a deeply personal expression of his own ``Jewish identity'' crisis.

This began with a face-to-face encounter with anti-Semitic agitation at Mattsee, near Salzburg, during the summer of 1921, when he was forced to leave the resort because he was a Jew, although he actually converted to Protestantism in 1898.

It was a traumatic experience to which Schoenberg would frequently refer, and of which a first mention appears in a letter addressed to Kandinsky (April 1923):

I have at last learnt the lesson that has been forced upon me this year, and I shall never forget it. It is that I am not a German, not a European, indeed perhaps scarcely even a human being (at least, the Europeans prefer the worst of their race to me), but that I am a Jew^4.8.

Schoenberg's statement echoed that of Mahler, a convert to Catholicism, some years earlier:

I am thrice homeless: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among the Germans, and as a Jew throughout the entire world. I am an intruder everywhere, welcome nowhere.

Figure: Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

19#19

It is generally accepted that this event prepared for his return to Judaism in 1933 for the rest of his work and life.

This is considered one of his works he held very close to his heart. The biblical aspects and facing the Jewish ``problems'' in the modern world is the subject of an excellent article by Aaron Tugendhaft available at http://humanities.uchicago.edu/journals/jsjournal/tugendhaft.html and reproduced in extenso at Appendice , page:

Schoenberg always intended to finish the work, and the two acts were not performed until after his death. There was a concert performance in Hamburg on 12 March 1954 with Hans Herbert Fiedler as Moses and Helmut Krebs as Aron, conducted by Hans Rosbaud. The first staging was in Zurich at the Stadttheater on 6 June 1957, again with Hans Herbert Fiedler as Moses and conducted by Hans Rosbaud, but with Helmut Melchert as Aron.

Georg Solti conducted the first performance at the Royal Opera House, London on 28 June 1965. The singers were Forbes Robinson (Moses) and Richard Lewis (Aron). The American premiere was produced by Sarah Caldwell's company in Boston Back Bay on 30 November 1966 with Donald Gramm and Richard Lewis, conducted by Osbourne McConathy. (The Metropolitan Opera did not stage it until 1999.)

In 1973, the work was also made into a film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet (although not released in the US until 1975).

The oratorio Die Jakobsleiter (Jacob's Ladder) marks his transition from a contextual or free atonality to the twelve-tone technique anticipated in the oratorio's use of hexachords^4.9. Though ultimately unfinished by Schoenberg the piece was prepared for performance by Schoenberg student Winfried Zillig at the request of Gertrude Schoenberg.

The piece is also notable for its use of developing variation. Developing variation is a formal technique in which the concepts of development and variation are united in that variations are produced through the development of existing material.

Though the term was coined by Schoenberg, he felt it was one of the most important compositional principles since around 1750^4.10:

Music of the homophonic-melodic style of composition, that is, music with a main theme, accompanied by and based on harmony, produces its material by, as I call it, developing variation. This means that variation of the features of a basic unit produces all the thematic formulations which provide for fluency, contrasts, variety, logic and unity, on the one hand, and character, mood, expression, and every needed differentiation, on the other hand-thus elaborating the idea of the piece.

Similarly, as in the case of Die Jakobsleiter, here also all main themes had to be transformations of the first phrase. Already here the basic motif was not only productive in furnishing new motif-forms through developing variations, but also in producing more remote formulations based on the unifying effect of one common factor: the repetition of tonal and intervallic relationship.

Haimo applies the concept to vertical (pitch) as well as horizontal (rhythm and permutation) transformations in twelve-tone music on the premise of ``the unity of musical space'' after suggesting that Schoenberg reconciled serial organization and developing variation in the twelve tone technique.

A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46 is a work for narrator, men's chorus^4.11, and orchestra written in 1947.

The initial inspiration for the work was a suggestion from the Russian emigrée dancer Corinne Chochem for a work to pay tribute to the Jewish victims of the German Third Reich. While the collaboration between Chochem and Schönberg did not come to fruition, Schönberg continued to developed the idea for such a work independently. He then received a letter from the Koussevitzsky Music Foundation for a commission for an orchestral work. Schönberg then decided to fulfill this commission with this tribute work. He wrote the work from 11 August 1947 to 23 August 1947^4.12.

Kurt Frederick, conductor of the Albuquerque Civic Symphony Orchestra, had heard about this new work, and wrote to Schönberg to ask for permission to give the premiere. Schönberg agreed, and stipulated that in lieu of a performance fee, he asked that the New Mexico musicians prepare a full set of orchestral and choral parts and send those to him.

The work lasts a little more than 6 minutes. Richard S. Hill published a contemporary analysis of Schoenberg's use of twelve-tone rows in this composition^4.13.

Jacques-Louis Monod prepared a definitive edition of the score, which was published in 1979^4.14. Beat A. Föllmi has published a detailed analysis of the narrative of A Survivor from Warsaw^4.15.

This is the story of a survivor from the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, from his time in a concentration camp. The narrator does not remember how he ended up living in the Warsaw sewers. One day, in the camp, the Nazi authorities held a roll call of a group of Jews. The group tried to assemble, but there was confusion, and the guards beat the old and ailing Jews who could not line up quickly enough. Those Jews left on the ground were presumed to be dead, and the guards asked for another count, to see how many would be deported to the death camps. The guards ask for a faster and faster head count, and the work culminates as the Jews begin to sing the prayer Shema Yisroel^4.16 . The creed ends with Deuteronomy 6,7 ``and when thou liest down, and when thou riseth up.''