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Jewish musical identity in exile: Arnold Schoenberg's works and fragments on Jewish themes, 1937-1951

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Jewish musical identity in exile: Arnold Schoenberg's works and fragments on Jewish themes, 1937-1951

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Content JEWISH MUSICAL IDENTITY IN EXILE: ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’S WORKS AND FRAGMENTS ON JEWISH THEMES, 1937-1951 by Joshua M. Grayson A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (HISTORICAL MUSICOLOGY) August 2017 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the innumerable individuals who assisted me more than they can ever realize in completing this dissertation, a truly Herculean task. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor Dr. Bruce Brown for his innumerable hours in revising my drafts and for his many helpful hints and suggestions. I would also like to thank Dr. Leah Morrison for her assistance as well, and for her support and guidance through this process. I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Joanna Demers for all of her assistance, for taking the time to join my committee, and for assisting me in reconstituting it when it proved necessary. I also wish to express my gratitude to her on a more personal level, for pushing me to become the best scholar and musicologist I can be. I would like to thank Dr. Bryan Simms for his nearly constant advocacy on my behalf beginning from my very first day as a student at the University of Southern California. Since I entered graduate school, he has been a constant source of guidance, inspiration, and wisdom. He has truly never stopped believing in me. I also wish to thank him for all of his work in his role as dissertation advisor prior to his retirement. I am also extremely grateful to Dr. Nick Strimple for his kindness and support, and for personally introducing me to the Schoenberg family. Additionally, I wish to thank the graduate students of the musicology dissertation writing seminar for the hours they spent assisting me with my drafts. I am truly humbled by their efforts, and by their many helpful comments and suggestions. I feel incredibly blessed to have many wonderful friends, teachers, and family members who have all helped in more ways than they can ever know. I am especially grateful to my father, Dr. David Grayson, for his moral support, for lending me an ear on the more than occasional late night phone call, for his incredible personal qualities, and for his devotion to my Jewish education. I am also highly appreciative of my stepmother, Dr. Arlene Swern, for her kind support and empathetic attitude. I am grateful to my mother, Ellen Grayson, for her astounding commitment to my musical education. I would like to thank all of my music professors—especially Dr. Ruth Rendleman, Dr. Bruce Brubaker, Dr. Andrew 3 Thomas, Prof. Joseph Smith (z”l), Prof. Edmund Battersby (z”l), and Prof. Norman Krieger for all of their incredible wisdom and mentorship. Last but certainly not least, I wish to thank Ms. Olegna Fuschi. Not a day goes by when I do not feel thankful for her for taking me on as her student, for helping me to become the musician and scholar I have developed into, and for her enormous inspiration. Moreover, it was Ms. Fuschi who first introduced me to the music of Schoenberg, insisting that I study his Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke Op. 19. I am extremely grateful to the Schoenberg family for their moral support for and interest in my project. I wish to thank them for allowing me to use documents from the Schoenberg center to conduct my research and to reproduce portions of copyrighted scores for my musical examples. I especially wish to express my gratitude to Mr. E. Randol Schoenberg for his personal kindness. I am beyond grateful to my grandparents Sol (z’l) and Thelma Borodkin. Although they are technically my step-grandparents, they never treated me any differently than had I been their biological grandson. Since their daughter married my father, they have always loved and cared for me. I am also more grateful than words can ever express to my grandparents Rolf and Mira Grayson. Their incredible example—going underground in Berlin to help other Jews escape, dodging bombs together in London during the Blitz, coming to America and building a family—not to mention their unbelievable warmth and kindness, have taught me what it means to be human. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that an accompaniment to everything I have achieved in my life has been a desire to make them proud. I am incredibly lucky to have such warm relatives as my aunt and uncle Marge and Ron Osborn and my cousins and in-laws Loren, April, Alan, and Kerry Osborn. When I moved three thousand miles away from home to begin this portion of my academic journey, they graciously opened their homes to me, telling me to come by whenever I felt like getting away from things. It has been incredibly gratifying to be able to just pick up the phone and call, visit for Shabbat dinner or musical events, and to have them in my life. 4 Last but closer to most than least, I would like to thank my uncle, Dr. Arno Allan Penzias. I am unbelievably grateful to him for the time he has taken out of his enormously busy life to help me. His suggestions and comments have been enormously helpful. While doctoral candidates often receive assistance from family members, it is safe to say that few have the opportunity to benefit from the wisdom and experience of a Nobel laureate. I also owe him a debt of gratitude for his personal inspiration to me throughout my life. His devotion to scientific truth, personal curiosity, and the betterment of humanity have been more inspiring to me than words can express. Finally, I wish to thank the University of Southern California, the Thornton School of Music, and the United States Department of Education, all of whom made this dissertation possible. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 1 - The Evolution of Nationalism, Identity, and Political Engagement in Schoenberg’s Style and Idea and Other Political Writings ................................................................................................................ 23 Early Musings: 1909-1912 ....................................................................................................................... 26 German Pride in the Aftermath of World War I: 1919-33 ...................................................................... 28 Rebirth of a Jewish Identity: 1921-1933 ................................................................................................. 37 The Émigré Experience: 1934-1939 ........................................................................................................ 48 Judaism in a Universal Context: 1947-1951 ............................................................................................ 57 The Myth of the Apolitical Schoenberg .................................................................................................. 62 Chapter 2 - Composing Liturgy: Kol Nidre and the Case for Jewish Pride .................................................. 66 Against Musical Anti-Semitism ............................................................................................................... 70 Stereotyping and Lamenting in Music .................................................................................................... 73 Not All Vows Are Null and Void .............................................................................................................. 76 Kol Nidre and Musical Pride .................................................................................................................... 79 Musical Nationalism ................................................................................................................................ 87 Chapter 3 - A Survivor from Warsaw: Jewish Advocacy, Imagined Communities, and Long-distance Nationalism ................................................................................................................................................. 95 Art for Political Purposes ........................................................................................................................ 97 The Narration of Horror .......................................................................................................................... 98 Horror in Music ..................................................................................................................................... 102 Musical Pride ......................................................................................................................................... 111 The Musically Imagined Community ..................................................................................................... 116 Chapter 4 - Ethnicity in Music: “Israel Exists Again” and Dreimal Tausend Jahre .................................... 120 “Israel Exists Again” .............................................................................................................................. 120 Name ................................................................................................................................................. 125 Myth of Common Descent and Common History ............................................................................. 126 Distinctive Shared Culture and Territorial Association ..................................................................... 128 Territoriality ...................................................................................................................................... 130 Composing Musical Solidarity ........................................................................................................... 131 Three Times a Thousand Years ............................................................................................................. 138 6 Primary Rows and Row Relations ..................................................................................................... 140 Exposition: Measures 1 to 4 .............................................................................................................. 143 Section 2: Measures 5 to 12 .............................................................................................................. 144 Section 3: Measures 13 to 25............................................................................................................ 145 Twelve-Tone Solidarity ...................................................................................................................... 146 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................... 151 Broader Considerations ........................................................................................................................ 155 Connections to Contemporary Culture and Society ............................................................................. 158 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 164 Primary sources..................................................................................................................................... 164 Letters ............................................................................................................................................... 164 Collected Writings ............................................................................................................................. 164 Individual Writings ............................................................................................................................ 165 Compositions .................................................................................................................................... 165 Secondary Sources ................................................................................................................................ 165 Analyses and commentaries ............................................................................................................. 165 Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Multiculturalism.................................................................................... 168 Introduction In a 1931 essay on his music, Arnold Schoenberg remarked that “nobody has yet appreciated that my music, produced on German soil, without foreign influences, is a living example of an art able most effectively to oppose Latin and Slav hopes of hegemony and derived through and through from the traditions of German music.” 1 Just three years later, in 1934, this same composer would pen a letter to Anton Webern exclaiming, “I have finally cut myself off for good…from all that tied me to the Occident…. I am determined…to do nothing in future but work towards the Jewish national cause.” 2 In this short period of time, Schoenberg had experienced a dramatic change of heart, shifting his political allegiance from an overtly German identity to an entirely Jewish one. Having been forced to leave Germany in 1933 by Hitler’s meteoric ascent, Schoenberg became even more keenly aware of his Jewish heritage and religion. Statements such as these demonstrate the importance of a sense of belonging and affiliation— a concern that would occupy a great deal of the composer’s time and attention. Jewish identity—religious, ethnic, and political—was hardly new to Schoenberg in 1933. As Michael Mäckelmann and Alexander Ringer have both noted, Schoenberg had been occupied with themes of Jewish identity from 1921 onward. He composed some of his best-known and most-analyzed works on Jewish themes—particularly Moses und Aron—during the period preceding his 1933 exile from Germany. The works composed after the composer’s 1933 exile from Germany, which have received less scholarly attention, take on a distinct character and serve to demonstrate several key aspects of Jewish ethnic identity in America. 3 Kol Nidre (1937), A Survivor from Warsaw (1947), Dreimal Tausend Jahre 1 Arnold Schoenberg, “National Music (2)” (1931), repr. in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 173. 2 Arnold Schoenberg to Anton Webern, Paris, 4 August 1933. Quoted in David Isadore Lieberman, “Schoenberg Rewrites His Will: A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46,” in Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Charlotte M. Cross and Russell A. Berman (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 210. 3 I am using the term “ethnic” to denote a group of people who share a common culture, history, and geographic territory of origin, and “national” to denote a similar group of people who possess—or aspire to possess—a state, 8 (1949), and the incomplete “Israel Exists Again” (1949) together represent Schoenberg’s evolving political and ethnic attitudes towards his Jewish identity. This identity represents itself in several manifestations: as liturgical awareness, as group identification, and as political ideal. Although he had converted to Protestantism in 1898, Schoenberg became more acutely aware of his Jewish heritage in response to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Austria and Germany during the 1920s. In his acclaimed 1974 biography of Schoenberg, Hans Stuckenschmidt describes the 1921 incident in which the vacationing composer felt compelled to leave the resort town of Mattsee upon its official proclamation that Jews were not welcome. 4 Two years later, upon hearing rumors that his friend Wassily Kandinsky had expressed anti-Semitic attitudes, Schoenberg passionately wrote to the artist, warning him of the dangers of anti-Semitism and extolling the strength of Jews: They [anti-Semites] will not be able to exterminate those much tougher elements thanks to whose endurance Jewry has maintained itself unaided against the whole of mankind for 20 centuries. For these are evidently so constituted that they can accomplish the task that their god has imposed on them: to survive in exile, uncorrupted and unbroken, until the hour of salvation comes! 5 After acknowledging his own Jewish identity and his personal victimization at the hands of anti-Semites, Schoenberg expressed admiration for these “much tougher elements,” unassimilated Jews who carried on the distinctive lifestyle, practice, and faith of the Jewish people. At this time, Schoenberg expressed allegiance to the Jewish people artistically with his overtly political play Der biblische Weg (1926), Schoenberg’s only non-musical work. This literary work deals with the creation of an interim Jewish and who use military, diplomatic, or cultural actions in order to forward a political agenda. For more details, see the discussion in Chapters 3 and 4. 4 Hans Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg: His Life, World, and Work, trans. Humphrey Searle (London: John Calder, Ltd., 1977), 274. 5 Schoenberg to Kandinsky, 1923, quoted and translated in Reinhold Brinkmann, “Schoenberg the Contemporary: A View from Behind,” Ch. 14 of Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the Transformations of Twentieth Century Culture, ed. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 209. 9 state in the fictitious country Ammongäa as a solution to the problems of anti-Semitism and Jewish exile. 6 In spite of the militancy of Der biblische Weg, conceived in response to violence against Jews in Eastern Europe and anti-Jewish sentiments in Austria, Schoenberg, like many assimilated German-Jews in Western and Central Europe in the early twentieth century, did not yet experience his Jewish and German identities as fundamentally opposed to one another. Like many in German-speaking Austria at the time, Schoenberg self-identified as a German, a trans-national cultural and linguistic grouping that was not yet completely at odds with religious faith or ethnic heritage. He had spent most of his life in Austria and had proudly served for Austria in World War I. Although he had never completely fit in with Viennese society, much of that was due to a society that had largely failed to appreciate his musical achievements. Additionally, despite his strong ties to Austria, he had lived for a considerable time in Berlin (1901-1903, 1911-1912, 1926-1933) and composed some of his most important music there. In the decade following the end of the First World War, several of Schoenberg’s writings expressed a growing nationalistic support for Germany, Austria, and the shared culture that linked the two. In 1919, for instance, he wrote that “the most important task of the music section is to ensure the German nation's superiority in the field of music, a superiority which has its roots in the people's talents.” 7 In a 1921 letter to Alma Mahler, Schoenberg stated that The German Aryans who persecuted me in Mattsee will have this new thing… to thank for the fact that even they will still be respected abroad for 100 years, because they belong to the very state that has just secured for itself hegemony in the field of music! 8 Schoenberg expressed similar sentiments in the 1928 essay “Ich und die Hegemonie der Musik”: 6 Amongäa was modeled after Uganda, proposed by the British in 1903 as a new Jewish homeland and turned down by the World Zionist Congress two years later. For a full discussion of this work, see Moshe Lazar, “Arnold Schoenberg and His Doubles: A Psychodramatic Journey to His Roots,” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, 17, no. 1 (1994): 9-150, and Alexander Ringer, “Idea and Realization: The Path of the Bible,” Ch. 3 of Arnold Schoenberg: Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 56-66. 7 Arnold Schoenberg, “Music” (1919), from Guide-Lines for a Ministry of Art, ed. Adolf Loos, repr. in Style and Idea), 369-70. 8 Quoted in How, “Schoenberg’s Prelude,” 19. 10 If people in Germany had a trace of understanding, they would see that the attack against me represents neither more nor less than the intention to defeat German hegemony in music... Because through me alone—having set in place something independent that no nation till now could surpass—the hegemony of German music has been secured for at least this generation. But I am a Jew! Of course, what should I otherwise be if I want to give something that people are not ready to take? 9 Some scholars, such as Deborah How, have taken these statements’ pro-Jewish stance to suggest that Schoenberg’s German nationalism in the 1920s may have been weaker than mainstream scholarship has assumed. 10 However, while they do reflect a certain sense of irony, his Jewish identity in no way lessened his German one at this time. On the contrary, at that time Schoenberg felt strongly committed to all of his identities, viewing them as complementary. Nowhere does Schoenberg actually state or suggest that his Jewishness made him any less German; indeed, by singling out racialist elements as “German Aryans,” Schoenberg is making it clear that in spite of their claims, they are but a subset of Germany, and not a particularly representative one. The irony for Schoenberg had been that in spite of his ardent patriotism, he had still been deemed non-German. His Jewish origins put him at odds with this portion of the German-speaking population but in no way with all of it. The ultimate victory of the National Socialists in 1933, however, made such a position untenable. In the wake of Hitler’s rise to power and Schoenberg’s forced emigration, the composer consciously abandoned his German national identity and fully embraced his Jewishness, as evidenced by the 1934 letter to Webern. From his new place of residence in Paris, and later the United States, Schoenberg at least partially made good on his promise to aid the Jewish cause worldwide. He penned numerous political pamphlets dedicated to Judaism, proposed his own personal intervention with the German government on behalf of the Jewish community, and called for the creation of a United Jewish Party in his 1938 “Four-Point Program for Jewry.” 11 9 Ibid., 21. Translation by Deborah How. 10 Ibid. 11 Arnold Schoenberg, “A Four-Point Program for Jewry,” repr. as Appendix C in Alexander Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 230-44. 11 As this social activism ultimately proved fruitless, he turned instead to composition. The choral works Schoenberg composed in the United States from 1937 until his death in 1951 served both as vehicles with which to express his personal Jewish identity and as a continuation, in musical form, of his political advocacy. Schoenberg’s principal Jewish-inspired works during this period are Kol Nidre, A Survivor from Warsaw, and Op. 50. He also produced a substantial amount of music for “Israel Exists Again,” an abandoned work he never completed, as well as very brief drafts for “Holem Tsa’adi” (an aborted setting of a Jewish folk song) and a so-called “Jewish Symphony” (intended to be four- movement programmatic work on themes of anti-Semitism and Jewish national resurgence). Although his interest in Judaism had been rekindled as early as 1921, the works and fragments Schoenberg composed during the American period represent a unique phase of Schoenberg’s involvement with Jewish life. Taken together, they document a complex, highly personalized and idiosyncratic engagement with Judaism from foreign shores, an engagement that encompasses liturgical, national, and political aspects. Of Schoenberg’s major Jewish-inspired works, A Survivor from Warsaw has received the most scholarly attention. The standard formal analysis remains Christian Schmidt’s “Schönbergs Kantate ‘Ein Überlebender aus Warschau.‘“ 12 In his analysis, Schmidt traces the use of motives and the emergence of the twelve-tone row in the second half of the piece, thereby deducing a binary structure, with the first section reflecting Schoenberg’s earlier “free atonal” period and the second—the setting of the Shema prayer—representing his strict serial period. Schmidt claims that while expression dominates in the first part of the piece, the second part is dominated by construction. While offering a useful formal analysis, this reading focuses on formal procedure over emotional expression in Schoenberg’s prayer setting. Following Schmidt, Beat Föllmi offers an analysis of the work’s musical features, identifying what she 12 Christian Martin Schmidt, “Schönbergs Kantate ‘Ein Überlebender aus Warschau,‘“ Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 33 (1976): 174-88. 12 labels the work’s “fanfare,” “trill,” “memory,” “pain,” and “fear” motives. 13 Föllmi also analyzes Schoenberg’s setting of his text, and poses the question of whether the musical depiction of the Shema prayer is diegetic or non-diegetic (i.e., whether or not it is heard by the characters in the narrative). More recently, Joe Argentino has offered a somewhat different theoretical analysis of A Survivor from Warsaw. 14 In his analysis, Argentino deduces a ternary formal scheme, maintaining Schmidt’s final part but dividing his first section into two subsections. Argentino also traces Schoenberg’s use of the trichord [048], and suggests its metaphoric significance as referring to the divine. While they offer a great deal of insight into Schoenberg’s compositional techniques, most of the forenamed scholars chose not to focus on the work’s surface qualities. As Schoenberg himself emphatically stated, detailed serial analyses (which he derisively labeled “note-counting”) may explain the music’s inner workings, but they understate important considerations for its sense, meaning, and idea. 15 Any full study of the music must take into account its deep psychological undertones. Amy Wlodarski does just this, offering an innovative, combinative approach to the analysis of A Survivor from Warsaw. 16 In place of a traditional analysis of motives, serial procedures, or harmonic structures, Wlodarski examines the role of memory in Schoenberg’s composition. In her analysis, she traces Schoenberg’s use of repetition within formal structures, drawing parallels between the intrusion of motives through musical space and the involuntary recollection of traumatic experiences characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Her study yields indispensable insights into the psychological impact of this work. 13 Beat Föllmi, ‘“I cannot remember ev’rything”: eine narratologische Analyse von Arnold Schönbergs Kantate “A Survivor from Warsaw” op.46,’ Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 55 (1998): 28–56. 14 Joe R Argentino, “Tripartite Structures in Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw,” Music Theory Online 19, vol. 1 (2013), <http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.1/mto.13.19.1.argentino.html>, accessed November 10, 2015. 15 Schoenberg, “Schoenberg’s Tone Rows,” in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 214. 16 Amy Lynn Wlodarski, “’An Idea Can Never Perish’: Memory, the Musical Idea, and Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw (1947),” The Journal of Musicology 24, no. 4 (2007): 581-608. 13 Many commentators on A Survivor—particularly early critics—have raised the question of whether it is even feasible to represent the Holocaust artistically. This theme has occupied a central place in the understanding of the work since its premiere. Kurt List takes it up in his review of its first performance. 17 Comparing the work’s expressive power to the emotionally numbed testimony of actual Holocaust survivors, many of whom may be too traumatized to deal with their emotions, List argues that A Survivor from Warsaw reflects Schoenberg’s “inability, which is everybody’s, to cope with the gigantic problem of mass extermination,” an inability that “forces him to concern himself even more intensely with the problems of his art.” 18 However stirring its emotional portrayal may be, List sees the work as “an escape from the reality of life.” The composer René Leibowitz, Schoenberg’s copyist for the work, also took up the issue of Holocaust representation, viewing this work as an example of the infeasibility of art in the shadow of barbarity. 19 More recent scholars have also taken up the issue of art and Holocaust representation. In his analysis of A Survivor from Warsaw, David Schiller argues that the narrative of “catastrophe and redemption,” the lens through which scholars and critics have frequently viewed the work, is a social construction that is designed to be comfortable and prevents, or at least shields, us from having to look at the true face of horror. 20 In a similar vein, Barbara Barry has taken up the theme of Holocaust representation in A Survivor from Warsaw. 21 Drawing heavily on the theories of Theodore Adorno, Barry argues that “A Survivor’s originality is not in the use of a Holocaust theme, per se, but that its 17 Kurt List, “Schoenberg’s New Cantata,” Commentary 6, no. 5 (1948): 468-72. 18 Ibid., 472. 19 René Leibowitz, “Arnold Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw or the Possibility of ‘Committed’ Art,” Horizon 20, no. 116 (1949): 122-31. 20 David Schiller, Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 115-25. 21 Barbara Barry, “Chronicles and Witnesses: ‘A Survivor from Warsaw’ Through Adorno's Broken Mirror.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 41, no.2 (2010): 241-63. 14 ‘Grundgestalt’, located at the center of the work, has to be both arrived at and ‘uncovered’, as the revelation of identity through ‘the old prayer they had neglected for so many years.’” 22 Implicit in such concerns is the idea that a work of art will inevitably create aesthetic pleasure. If this is indeed the case, then such pleasure derived from suffering would be immoral. However, there is nothing pleasurable about A Survivor from Warsaw’s depiction of human pain. In fact, nothing could be farther from its composer’s intentions. Instead, Schoenberg intended the composition to be a visceral experience, allowing audiences to experience some sense of it for themselves. In fact, he explained his explicitly political motivations for writing the work to Kurt List. 23 Other scholars have taken up the issue of A Survivor’s authenticity and Schoenberg’s personal connection to his subject matter. The most critical of these scholars is Camille Crittenden. 24 Examining the circumstances behind work’s composition, Crittenden contends that as a commissioned work, it does not necessarily reflect Schoenberg’s personal feelings. Rather than being a sincere expression of anguish, she implies that the work was more about Schoenberg’s need to accept monetary commissions. Arguing that Schoenberg’s Judaism had been less important to him than other scholars have made it out, Crittenden downplays Schoenberg’s political engagements, activities, and documented support for the Jewish people. Michael Strasser and David Lieberman write from the opposite perspective. Taking Schoenberg’s essays and other writings as his starting point, Lieberman argues that Survivor from Warsaw represents a drastic reversal in the composer’s sense of personal identity. 25 According to this view, during the 1920s 22 Ibid., 262. 23 Arnold Schoenberg to Kurt List, 1 November 1948, quoted in “A Survivor from Warsaw for Narrator, Men’s Chorus and Orchestra op. 46,” Arnold Schönberg Center, <http://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/de/joomla- license-sp-1943310035/a-survivor-from-warsaw-op-46-1947>, accessed June 15, 2015.. 24 Camille Crittenden, “Texts and Contexts: A Survivor from Warsaw, op. 46,” In Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Charlotte Cross and Russell Berman (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 231-58. 25 Lieberman,“Schoenberg Rewrites His Will“, 193-229. 15 Schoenberg had fully identified with Germany and composed music for patriotic ends. However, by the time he composed Survivor, the tragedy of the Holocaust caused him to fully renounce his sense of German identity and to replace it with an entirely Jewish one. Yet focusing on Schoenberg’s published essays understates the importance of works like Moses und Aron and especially Der biblische Weg, as well as his private correspondences. In fact, as Chapter 1 of this dissertation will show, Schoenberg’s identity was more complex than that. During the 1920s, the same decade in which he experienced German patriotism at its most ardent, he also increasingly felt a sense of pride in and identification with his Jewish origins. Similarly, as I will argue, Schoenberg’s sense of Jewish identity was not a constant one, but shifted dramatically. Schoenberg’s other Jewish-themed works have received far less scholarly attention than A Survivor from Warsaw. Although conceived as a monumental work, “Israel Exists Again” has been relatively neglected by scholars due to its incompleteness. Julian Johnson has offered a brief analysis of the fragment’s existing music, focusing on its serial procedures. 26 After comparing Schoenberg’s use of harmonic pedal points and other devices, he suggests that the composer’s use of paired row forms represents the pairing of the Jewish Diaspora and its ancient homeland. His detailed analysis offers much insight, but like other scholars, Johnson focuses his attention away from surface features. Michael Mäckelmann suggests that the work had originally been intended for inclusion with Op. 50, and that Schoenberg failed to complete it because he replaced it with Op. 50B—which he dedicated to the state of Israel. 27 Arguing that its music is similar in style to the two completed works of Op. 50, Mäckelmann does not fully appreciate the work’s stylistic uniqueness in Schoenberg’s output or its many differences from Op. 50. 26 Julian M. Johnson, “Israel Exists Again”, trans. (into German) Helene Gruber. In Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. 2, ed. Gerold Gruber (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2002), 288-299. 27 Michael Mäckelmann, “‘Israel exists again‘: Anmerkungen zu Arnold Schönbergs Entwurf einer Israel-Hymne,” Die Musikforschung 39, no. 1 (1986): 18-29. 16 Dreimal tausend Jahre has also received scant scholarly attention, perhaps due to its brief length. Barbara Boisits has offered a brief serial and textual analysis of the work. 28 In her analysis, Boisits explicates Schoenberg’s alterations of Dagobert Runes’s original text, and examines triadic references in Schoenberg’s row forms. She also points out the work’s tonal implications and instances of word painting, suggesting that the work is musically more similar to Op. 49 than to the other works of Op. 50. In her analysis, she focuses her attention on the work’s musical features rather than its political implications. Naomi André offers another brief analysis of Dreimal Tausend Jahre. 29 Unlike Boisits, André does focus on the work’s political connotations. After providing a brief background on the role of Judaism in the composer’s life, she analyzes Schoenberg’s poetic text. To her, close comparison of Schoenberg’s version to the original text by Runes reveals that Schoenberg subtly altered the text in order to heighten its emotional expressiveness. André ends her discussion with a twelve-tone analysis of the piece, arguing that it “metaphorically expresses the themes of renewal and resurgence; sentiments Schoenberg strongly felt for the newly created Israel.” 30 Yet none of these analysts choose to focus on the triadic implications of the work’s vertical sonorities. Chapter 4 of this dissertation examines Schoenberg’s use of sonority and word painting in this work as expressions of Jewish solidarity. Three major scholarly works deal with Schoenberg’s engagement with Judaism from a wider perspective. Of these, the most comprehensive is Michael Mäckelmann’s Arnold Schönberg und das Judentum. 31 After providing background context for Zionism and anti-Semitism, Mäckelmann 28 Barbara Boisits, Dreimal tausend Jahre, op. 50A, in Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. 2, ed. Gerold Gruber (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2002), 181-83. 29 Naomi André, “Returning to a Homeland: Religion and Political Context in Schoenberg’s Dreimal tausend Jahre,” Ch. 10 of Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Charlotte M. Cross and Russel A. Berman (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 259-88. 30 Ibid., 288. 31 Michael Mäckelmann, Arnold Schönberg und das Judentum: Der Komponist und sein religiöses, nationales und politisches Selbstverständnis nach 1921 (Hamburg: Karl Dieter Wagner, 1984). 17 demonstrates the critical importance of Schoenberg’s Judaism and Jewish identity for his musical output. Drawing heavily on Schoenberg’s many unpublished letters, manuscripts, and documents, Mäckelmann argues that Schoenberg was deeply engaged with Judaism beginning with the 1921 Mattsee incident. Mäckelmann offers a brief analysis of the twelve-tone structure of Op. 50A, a textual analysis of the Modern Psalms, and discussions of Kol Nidre and A Survivor from Warsaw. His study provides a tremendously insightful view of Schoenberg’s involvement in Jewish affairs. Alexander Ringer’s important study has shed significant light on Schoenberg’s political, nationalist involvement with Judaism. 32 Ringer offers background information on turn-of-the-century Viennese Jewish culture, and traces Schoenberg’s spiritual beliefs through works beginning with Der biblische Weg. He also details Schoenberg’s engagement with prominent Zionist figures and chronicles Schoenberg’s pro-Jewish political writings. Ringer’s study provides valuable information about Schoenberg’s Jewish involvement. However, he chooses to focus on Schoenberg’s written documents rather than his music. In her study on Jewish identity in music in the twentieth century, Klára Móricz traces Schoenberg’s Jewish identity from the early 1920s until his death in 1951. 33 Building on the work of Mäckelmann and Ringer, she views Schoenberg’s compositions in relation to his experiences of anti- Semitism and his political involvements during the 1930s. Móricz demonstrates that A Survivor from Warsaw uses of gestures of fear, pain, and anxiety derived from the expressionistic phase of his career, comparing the piece with Erwartung. Finally, she analyzes musical segments of Op. 50 and expounds on Schoenberg’s texts to the never-completed “Modern Psalms,” documenting the composer’s desires to offer the works as a tribute to the newly founded state of Israel. 32 Alexander Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 33 Klára Móricz, Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 18 Móricz’s principal theme is that Schoenberg’s political agenda and politically inspired musical works function as a dystopia—a frightening picture of military confrontation and enforced unity of thought having much in common with the very regime he had fled from: Like most utopias, Schoenberg’s was thus also a dystopia. The unlimited control of the party was frightening enough, but the state was also a completely militarized unit in which young people were encouraged to act aggressively. “Strike first,” Schoenberg advised them, “there are always reasons for attack.” In the spirit of what he called “new Realpolitik,” Schoenberg advocated total militarization and bloody battles that would ultimately earn his people the right to their own their [sic] country. 34 Although some of Schoenberg’s most radical writings from the period did advocate violence and enforced unity of belief, Móricz downplays the composer’s later attitudes. Significantly, Móricz disregards the gradual softening of his attitudes from 1934 to 1938, and his profound shift after 1948. As this dissertation will show, after his withdrawal from composition and focus on politics Schoenberg’s return to composition represents a positive, creative force. Schoenberg’s compositions from 1937 to 1951 document how music can be used to influence the thoughts, feelings, and political opinions of others—even by a composer such as Schoenberg, who often stressed the absolute nature of music. Sabine Feisst’s study is the seminal work on Schoenberg’s American period. 35 In her study, she refutes several popular and scholarly notions about Schoenberg’s American career. Primarily, Feisst rebukes the notion that Schoenberg’s time in America was a nadir of his career after its high point in Europe. She dispels the common myths that he was underappreciated and underpaid, that he lived a hermitic existence in artistic isolation, and that he remained a “homeless and languageless” outsider in America, in the words of his biographer Hans Stuckenschmidt. 36 More than anything, Feisst argues against the Eurocentric assumption that America lacked the musical infrastructure to benefit from Schoenberg’s presence. Feisst also documents the complex interaction of some of Schoenberg’s multiple 34 Ibid., 220. 35 Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 36 Stuckenschmidt, Arnold Schoenberg. 19 identities: German, Jewish, American. She traces these identities as expressed through his musical works, political activities, and personal life. Feisst cites intriguing critical theories of identity and ethnicity to back her work up. In my dissertation, I focus primarily on Schoenberg’s Jewish identity. Moreover, I focus on two specific sub-identities: the ethnic and national components of Schoenberg’s Jewish identity, drawing on and engaging with sociological theory. Moreover, I examine Schoenberg’s use of music—conscious or otherwise—as both a political tool and a vehicle for the expression of ethnic identity. To the existing scholarship on this body of work, I add an understanding of the connection between the works’ stylistic features and their social and political contexts. As has been mentioned, these compositions served as musical extensions of Schoenberg’s political activism. In some of them, Schoenberg used audible musical features for specific political ends. In others, Schoenberg used his music as a personal expression of his Jewish identity. Schoenberg’s musical engagement with Jewish nationalism sheds important light on influential sociological theories of nationalism. In their analyses, many sociologists, such as Anthony Smith, Eric Hobsbawm, Tom Nairn, and Benedict Anderson, ascribe great importance to the arts in the propagation of ethnic and national identity. 37 While many writers discuss the role of intellectual elites, most of these relegate their discussion to the effects of literature, poetry, and the visual arts on the emergence of national consciousness. In their analyses, these authors neglect to consider the profound effect concert music can have on national consciousness. A musical work reflects its composer’s creative intent; few composers or listeners would doubt music’s ability to convey emotion. At the same time, until the closing decades of the twentieth century the experience of music was largely a communal one. 37 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994); Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso, 2005); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). 20 Particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the primary mode of conveyance of orchestral or choral musical works was the public concert. Unlike the experience of literature or poetry, audience members took in musical forms, structures, and ideas while surrounded by peers and compatriots listening to precisely the same music at exactly the same time. Choral genres in particular, combining semantic textual content with the emotional possibilities of music, represent a powerful mode of affecting group solidarity. The impact of concert music on the propagation and development of national identity has been largely unexamined in the standard sociological works on nationalism. In this dissertation, I discuss how, after landing on American shores as a refugee from Hitler, Schoenberg used the medium of choral music as a means of propagating a sense of solidarity among the Jewish people. Moreover, by the end of his life, Schoenberg’s attitudes shifted from a nationalist to an ethnic conception. In Chapter 1 (“The Evolution of Nationalism, Identity, and Political Engagement”), I trace developments in Schoenberg’s identity as he progressed from an Austro-German identity before 1921, through a conflicted phase of dual identities, to his largely complete embracing of his Jewish heritage after 1933. While also drawing on biographical information and private correspondence, I focus primarily on his published essays, the majority of which were compiled into the 1950 collection Style and Idea and its 1975 expanded edition. Schoenberg’s personal and artistic stances on his Jewish identity varied considerably. After his political engagements during the early parts of the 1930s proved fruitless, he turned to composition. In Chapter 2 of my study I focus on Kol Nidre, a setting of one of the central religious rituals for the Jewish Day of Atonement. While it is usually considered to be a liturgical work, I argue that Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre it in fact represents, in musical form, the composer’s political efforts at fighting anti-Semitism. I propose that the work’s overlooked political implications are at least as significant as its liturgical functions, and that Schoenberg used it to further his efforts at Jewish nation-building. 21 A decade later, Schoenberg renewed his commitment to Jewish identity. Chapter 3 examines A Survivor from Warsaw, focusing on its reflection of active, national conceptions of this Jewish identity. Coming on the heels of the Holocaust, the piece, through its hyperrealistic text and violent musical gestures, viscerally conveys the horrors of persecution of Jews and the pride in spiritual resistance. By creating this kind of musical work, Schoenberg used music as a means of gaining international sympathy for the plight of the Jewish people – an activity reflected in his political writings. Moreover, Schoenberg’s profoundly emotional text, subject matter, and music helped provide fellow Jews with what Benedict Anderson has termed an “imagined community.” 38 After 1948, Schoenberg’s stance became less nationalistic, focusing on an ethnic conception of Jewish identity while celebrating the birth of the state of Israel. Accordingly, Chapter 4 focuses on the final version of the incomplete fragment “Israel Exists Again” and the completed work Dreimal Tausend Jahre . Both of these works express the composer’s ethnic solidarity with the Jewish people. Schoenberg’s choice of Dagobert Runes’s text for Dreimal Tausend Jahre and his own text for “Israel Exists Again” reflect several key characteristics of ethnicity as conceptualized by Anthony Smith. In particular, they reflect Smith’s categories of “myths of common ancestry,” “shared historical memories,” common culture, and link with a homeland. 39 At the same time, Schoenberg’s unusually smooth, melodic musical treatments of these texts reflect his emotional reaction to the rebirth of the state of Israel – an emotional reaction that Smith terms “sense of solidarity” – which can also be seen in the composer’s writings. Concurrently, Schoenberg’s frequent suggestions to the author Friedrich Torberg, with whom he had initially planned to collaborate on the work, represent a vacillation between a celebration of ethnic solidarity and a nationalistic response to Israel’s enemies. 38 Anderson, Imagined Communities. 39 Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations. For a full discussion of Smith’s criteria for ethnicity, see Chapter 2, pp. 47-68. 22 As he was a member of the immigrant European Jewish community in the 1940s, Schoenberg’s case is particularly instructive. Unlike many other ethnic groups, Jews had lived almost exclusively in exile for many centuries, keenly aware of cultural, religious, and historical links to their ancient homeland yet for the most part residing outside of it for two millennia. In spiritual but not physical possession of their territory, Jews instead resided as a minority population within larger societies. Unlike the Slavic-speaking populations of Eastern Europe who would develop ethnic and national sentiments in their native lands, Jews in many parts of Western Europe had become highly assimilated. With the large scale granting of civic rights to Jewish communities during the Age of Enlightenment, Jews in Western Europe found themselves increasingly integrated into the civic nations in which they resided—and came to view themselves as predominantly French, German, or Austrian. The large-scale granting of civic rights and hopes for integration, tolerance, and acceptance made the anti-Semitic incidents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—and particularly the official, government-sanctioned, and ultimately genocidal brutality of the 1930s and 1940s—all the more shocking. The sudden, dramatic reversal of their situation had severe repercussions upon Jewish ethnic identity in Western Europe. While the Jewish case is particularly extreme, it nevertheless sheds significant light on issues critical to contemporary society. As in Western Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth, many societies today are becoming increasingly multiethnic and polycultural. Much scholarly and political debate has centered on the nature and importance of cultural diversity—a diversity partially fueled by the winds of ethnic persecution and violence. The late choral music of Arnold Schoenberg is an expression of this ethnic identity. Studying this music and its composer’s personal and political attitudes not only helps us to understand an important example of musical modernism in the 1940s, but can also provide valuable insight into vital issues shaping today’s societies. 23 Chapter 1 The Evolution of Nationalism, Identity, and Political Engagement in Schoenberg’s Style and Idea and Other Political Writings Like many artists, composers, and authors, Arnold Schoenberg wrote prolifically about his artistic output. Additionally, Schoenberg documented his views on extra-musical topics, detailing a wide variety of social and political topics. Schoenberg began writing essays fairly early in his career, first publishing in 1909. At the time he began writing, the thirty-five year old composer had only recently begun his first forays into atonality. At this point, he was on the defensive against critics who had panned his works and accused him of writing cacophony. Pioneering a new musical language and facing harsh criticism, the early Schoenberg came across as angry and defensive—for example, suggesting that critics should “deposit their personalities at the compost-heap.” 1 The tumultuous experiences of the First World War and its aftermath suddenly and inevitably thrust artists and composers into politics in a way they had not been during earlier times. Schoenberg proved to be no exception. Feeling the gravity of the situation and loyalty to his nation, he served in the Austrian army in 1917, as did his students Webern and Berg. During the tumultuous economic and social upheavals following the war his essay writing proliferated. Moreover, he began to craft essays of an entirely different nature, focusing on issues of national prestige. Schoenberg continued to write on a wide variety of topics, both musical and political, throughout his life. He published actively during the interwar period, alternating between musical concerns (including several thinly veiled criticisms of what would later be termed Neoclassicism) and the world of external affairs. The dramatic events of the rise of Nazism, his forced withdrawal from Europe, 1 Arnold Schoenberg, “A Legal Question” (1909). Repr. in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 186. 24 World War II, the Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel all had enormous repercussions on his thoughts and world view. The collective body of Schoenberg’s essays affords a valuable perspective on the evolution of his perspectives on a tremendous diversity of subjects. In 1950, a year before his death, his former student Dika Newlin collected and published fifteen of his writings as Style and Idea, this title taken from the title of one of his most important musical essays. Schoenberg himself had started compiling his writings in late fall of 1945 in preparation for a lecture series he was invited to give at the University of Chicago in May 1946. 2 For this lecture series, he expanded and translated earlier versions of four essays: “Composition with Twelve Tones,” “New and Outmoded Music, Style and Idea,” and “Eartraining through Composition.” As part of the publication of the 1950 edition of Style and Idea, Schoenberg also included a revised version of “Brahms the Progressive.” In addition, he wrote several new essays including “Heart and Brain,” “Criteria for the Evolution of Music,” “On revient toujours,” and “This is My Fault.” A quarter-century after this publication, in 1974, Schoenberg’s teaching assistant Leonard Stein published a large number of the composer’s writings in English in a vastly expanded edition of Style and Idea. Comprising 104 essays on a wide variety of topics, this publication reveals the growth and development of the composer’s personal beliefs. Joseph Auner’s 2003 A Schoenberg Reader also provides an important English collection of Schoenberg’s writings. Several important German editions of Schoenberg’s writings have appeared, including Ivan Vojtĕch’s 1976 Stil und Gedanke: Aufsätze zur Musik and Anna Morazzoni’s 2007 Stile herrschen, Gedanken siegen. Many of Schoenberg’s essays on Jewish topics have been reprinted in more recent scholarly works, such as Mäckelmann’s Arnold Schönberg und das Judentum and Ringer’s Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew. 2 Arnold Schönberg, Stil und Gedanke: Aufsätze zur Musik, Ivan Vojtĕch, ed. (Frankfurt am Mein: Fischer Verlag, 1976), 480-81. 25 One of the key strains running through the course of Schoenberg’s writings is nationalism and national identity. Although his earliest published writings reveal little interest in nationalism and a preoccupation with decidedly non-nationalist issues such as social class and religious faith, his writings after the First World War display distinct elements of nationalism. Moreover, while in the 1920s he experienced a dual sense of identity, combining a Jewish identification with strong feelings of German patriotism, the rise of the Nazi party and the ever-increasing tide of anti-Semitism drove him to completely reject German nationalistic pride in favor of a pro-Jewish nationalism. The events of the Second World War and the creation of the state of Israel led him to a more universal outlook while maintaining his Jewish identity. Consequently, a large number of his writings provide key insights into his views on social and political topics. Schoenberg’s musical writings also supply indirect evidence of his world views and assumptions through their use of imagery or analogies. Schoenberg’s writings fit into a number of categories. The majority of his earlier writings are professional in nature, dealing with performances, music critics, journals, and other matters in a composer’s day-to-day livelihood. Other theoretical essays detail, explain, and defend his controversial musical practices. A third group of essays is comprised of defensive attacks against composers or schools of composition, particularly Neoclassicism. Later in his career, Schoenberg wrote essays and books for didactic purposes. After moving to the United States and finding a good deal of his students lacking the musical backgrounds of their European counterparts, Schoenberg wrote publications intended as background information he felt would be helpful for his pupils. Schoenberg also wrote a large number of essays on extra-musical topics detailing his political views and reflecting his life experience. A significant proportion of Schoenberg’s writings, especially the ones after 1918, deal with issues of nationalism, German patriotism, Judaism, and conflicting identities. 3 Finally, Schoenberg left a profusion of 3 Recent scholarship has explored these issues. Carl Dahlhaus has viewed German music during the nineteenth century in light of the phenomenon of nationalism in “Nationalism in Music,” in Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 26 unpublished notes and drafts. Having carefully compiled them himself, Schoenberg presumably intended them for future musicians and scholars to better understand his work. However, some of these unpublished manuscripts were often harsh personal attacks on those whom Schoenberg felt were his adversaries. Early Musings: 1909-1912 The earliest of Schoenberg’s extant writings, from 1909, are relatively devoid of politics. During this time, the composer was busy establishing his reputation and securing performances of his music, while venturing with his new compositions into atonality. Schoenberg’s political awareness was largely focused during this period on intelligence, taste, and social class. These essays, on the surface, deal with affairs strictly business: an angry, defensive Schoenberg protecting his reputation launched into tirades against critics who dismissed his music out of hand. Particularly noteworthy, however, is the elitist manner in which he carried out some of these defenses. One especially striking example of Schoenberg’s elitism in his earliest writings is his defense of his second string quartet, whose 1908 premiere received scathing reviews. Chief among his detractors was Hans Liebestöckl, who wrote in a review in the Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt that in order to attend the performance it was necessary “to deposit one’s whole personality in the cloakroom.” 4 Responding to 1980), 79–102. Philip Bohlman and Benjamin Curtis have both explored the role of nationalism in Western art music during the nineteenth century; see Philip Bohlman, The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History (New York: Routledge, 2004), and Benjamin Curtis, Music Makes the Nation: Nationalist Composers and Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008). For an exhaustive history of nationalism in music, see Richard Taruskin, "Nationalism," Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed August 22, 2013, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/50846>. Cecilia Porter and David Dennis have each focused on the role of music in the construction of the German national identity during the nineteenth century; see David Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), and Cecelia Hopkins Porter, The Rhine as Musical Metaphor: Cultural Identity in German Romantic Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996). Klára Móricz and David Schiller have each analyzed the ramifications of Jewish identity on Jewish composers, in David Schiller, Bloch, Schoenberg & Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), and Klára Móricz, Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 4 Leon Botstein, “Music and the Critique of Culture: Arnold Schoenberg, Heinrich Schenker, and the Emergence of Modernism in Fin de Siècle Vienna,” Chapter 1 of Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the 27 Liebestöckl, Schoenberg returned the personal attack. After insulting the critic’s lack of intelligence, Schoenberg quipped, “The depositing of whole personalities is most strictly forbidden here. The compost-heaps and asparagus beds are next door.’” 5 Schoenberg had submitted his response to his friend, journalist Karl Kraus, for publication in Kraus’s journal die Fackel. However, he refused to publish it, warning the composer that his journal was no place to launch personal attacks against critics by name. Although he would be open to publishing genuine rebuttals against poor criticism, he could not support an ad hominem rebuke to a specific individual. As polemical as Schoenberg’s essays appear, they unwittingly display elements of his world view. In particular, in these early writings, Schoenberg demonstrated his cultural and political elitism. Running throughout is the theme that not all people are equally qualified to judge artistic products. Although on the surface Schoenberg singles out these critics for meddling in affairs about which they know nothing, the implication is that the judgment and subjective experience of entire sections of the population are irrelevant and invalid. In a representative example, Schoenberg declares that artistic truth “is indeed released by the work of art, but only if one has available receiving apparatus tuned in the same way as the transmitting apparatus.” 6 Only those who are sufficiently intelligent and educated are entitled to evaluate music. Not everyone, in Schoenberg’s view, is able to appreciate—or even validly experience—works of art. By 1911, Schoenberg appears to have ceased his rampage against critics, instead concerning himself with strictly musical matters. However, his political orientation still came through at some points. In an essay devoted to musical issues, Schoenberg explains that "Just as at some point a Transformations of Twentieth-Century Culture, Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey, ed. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 5. 5 “A Legal Question” (1909), SAI 189. 6 “About Music Criticism” (1909), SAI 195. 28 nobleman's pedigree raises him above a plebeian, so here it makes some difference whether an ornament has as its author the explosion of a steam-kettle or the arranging hand of an interior decorator." 7 Although hardly his main point, it seems he cannot help but bring his socio-political leanings into the classroom. The notion that noblemen are superior to commoners--that some people are innately superior to others--is so common-sense to Schoenberg in 1911 that he references it in a parenthetical aside and feels no need to defend or explain it to his readers. German Pride in the Aftermath of World War I: 1919-33 During the outbreak of the First World War, Schoenberg, like many of his contemporaries, felt an upwelling of loyalty to his country. Although he had already reached the age of forty and suffered from asthma, the thought of performing military duty remained in Schoenberg’s mind, and he remained firmly committed to the Austrian national cause. 8 In December 1915, he began serving actively in the army, offering himself as a one-year volunteer with the Fourth Imperial Infantry Regiment. 9 Although poor health forced him to petition for a discharge in 1916, he was called up for lighter military duties in September 1917. As Schoenberg biographer Willi Reich put it, Schoenberg performed all of his duties “very conscientiously and with remorseless consistency.” 10 The aftermath of World War I posed formidable changes to Schoenberg's personal circumstances. The defeat of Austria and Germany and the draconian terms imposed by the Allies in the Treaty of Versailles had widespread economic, political, and social ramifications. The Austrian empire collapsed into a group of successor states, and both the war and the crippling economic reparations made for bleak living conditions. In April 1918 Schoenberg was forced to leave Vienna, moving to 7 “Problems in Teaching Art” (1911), SAI 367. 8 Hans Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work, trans. Humphrey Searle (London: John Calder, 1977), 191. 9 Willi Reich, Schoenberg: A Critical Biography, trans. Leo Black (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), 93. 10 Ibid., 95. 29 Mödling because he found it impossible to obtain food in the Austrian capital city. 11 Like many Austrians and Germans, Schoenberg experienced a surge in nationalism following his country’s defeat. At the same time, he became increasingly aware of his Jewish identity, turning to Jewish literary themes in his monumental opera Moses und Aron and conceding its importance to him in private correspondences. Schoenberg’s combination of Jewish religious-cultural identification with powerful civic-national pride was quite typical for his time and place, and was a salient feature of German-Jewish communities throughout Germany and Austria during the 1920s. 12 Concurrently with a transformation in musical style that ultimately led to his development of the twelve-tone system, Schoenberg’s emphasis, subject matter, writing style, and personal views as expressed in his writings also shifted dramatically. Among other changes, his writings became infused with a new political, national awareness. During the interwar years, he made a variety of statements, both public and private, in support of Austria, Germany, and German culture. The first of these statements came in a 1919 article, less than a year after his nation’s military defeat at the hands of the Allies. The essay had been prompted by his friend, architect Adolf Loos, who sought to create new roles for theater, literature, and other arts in light of his society’s changed circumstances. Schoenberg’s contribution to this volume, labelled simply “Music,” was a proposal for a set of guidelines on the teaching of music. The essay articulates his vision for a process of musical nation-building. He describes in great detail his vision to restore Austria and Germany’s musical life to positions befitting illustrious nations. To Schoenberg, musical culture would become a synonym for national greatness. Bringing musical culture to a higher position was an inherently patriotic act--an important theme that would recur in later periods of the composer’s career. 11 Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 245. 12 This feature of German-Jewish life is noted especially in Donald Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, 2 nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001). See discussion later in this chapter, pp. 44-49. 30 Schoenberg opens his guidelines by proclaiming, "The most important task of the music section is to ensure the German nation's superiority in the field of music, a superiority which has its roots in the people's talents." 13 Such a patent display of patriotism was unprecedented in the composer’s output up to this point. After Schoenberg’s elitist leanings and polemical fights with critics during the previous years, his highly patriotic language and his concern for the wider public is all the more striking. After the nationalistic opening, he begins his essay by arguing for a reform of music education, describing a three-tiered system of music schools. 14 More importance is given to concert life. Schoenberg claims that musical activities had become petty, with performers driven by marketplace competition and audiences more interested in prizes than art. The music comes first; all other concerns are secondary or nonexistent. Schoenberg’s main point is that allowing spectators to interfere in artistic affairs had sullied the cultural life of Austria and Germany. By restoring artists to their rightful place, as educators and leaders of society, Schoenberg aimed to use music to promote Germany and Austria. Schoenberg extended this line of reasoning to the field of music publishing, writing that “the real artist not only suffers from misunderstanding, has not only to watch the worldly victory of all that is not art, but he must also pay for the cost of propagating the kind of bad art by which he is driven out.” 15 In this, one can hear echoes of his earlier elitism. However, rather than dismissing the non-specialist public out of hand, Schoenberg now allows for a symbiotic relationship. Through their combined efforts at self-publication, “real artists” would create a space where artistic products would be able to be produced and distributed. By allowing these “real” works to come to light, they would be contributing to Germany and Austria’s true cultural greatness. This would in fact benefit the people, who he now views as the very foundation of that cultural greatness. 13 “Music” (1919), from “Guide-Lines for a Ministry of Art,” ed. Adolf Loos. SAI 369-70. 14 Ibid., 370. 15 Ibid., 371. 31 Uncharacteristic of his earlier stance (and some of his later positions), Schoenberg reveals himself to have concerns for the broad public and for lower socio-economic classes. At the end of the first section of his text, he stresses that “It must be possible for all, even the poorest, to attend” music schools. “To this end school fees will be graded in as many classes as are needed to match social circumstances as closely as possible. The decision as to which fees are payable will then be based on tax assessment, and, as with the latter, special circumstances… can be borne in mind.” 16 Schoenberg is concerned not merely with wealthy or aristocratic children, but with everyone. Since “the people” are the very foundation of Germany’s greatness, they must be allowed the opportunity to develop their talents. To conclude his essay, he expands this beyond the field of music, arguing, “There is no need for the children of the rich to attend elementary school free of charge, nor, at secondary schools or University, for them to pay the same as the less-affluent and the poor.” 17 At this point in his life, in clear response to the changed circumstances of his country’s defeat in the First World War, Schoenberg had embraced more egalitarians visions of education, society, and culture, and articulated this vision in nationalistic terms. Several years later, Schoenberg republished the article in the 1924 collection Von Neuer Musik. In the republication, he acknowledged his sudden change in his attitude, explaining how extreme postwar conditions affected him. In a preliminary remark to this publication, he explained: I wrote this little essay immediately after the war had been lost, when the possession of five rational senses was threatened right and left by Bolshevism; when the whole world looked only to suicide for help, and only to its fantasy for a new, better reality, building bomb-proof castles in the air, intended to protect the brain from the assaults of hunger; when it could cost a man his head to refrain from saying the things that would satisfy the parties! 18 16 Ibid., 370. 17 Ibid., 373. 18 Ibid., 369. 32 Facing a world that had been turned completely upside down, Schoenberg responded by seeking order, stability, and nation-building. Two years after the initial publication of “Guidelines” and shortly after discovering his method of twelve-tone composition, he excitedly explained his discovery to his student Joseph Rufer. As Rufer later recalled, Schoenberg stated that one of the primary significations of this new compositional approach was that it would “assure the dominance of German music for the next century.” 19 This comment, frequently cited and discussed in the scholarly literature, remains one of Schoenberg’s most well-known nationalistic utterances. Whether Rufer recalled Schoenberg’s remark accurately has been a contentious issue. 20 Regardless of Schoenberg’s exact wording, his patriotic support for Austrian and German culture was unmistakable. In subsequent years, Schoenberg further developed and expanded his premise of societal greatness reflected its music. In “Folk-Music and Art-Music,” an unpublished essay from the middle of the decade, Schoenberg acknowledged that “art can figure in the battle of the nations as one way to achieve a place in the sun.” 21 Rather than through military or economic hegemony over others, nations insured their greatness through cultural spheres. By influencing others in far corners of the world, writers, visual artists, and musicians brought credit and grandeur to their nations. Yet Schoenberg here specifically refers to nationalist composers who aimed to inspire nationalistic sentiments through the incorporation of folk music. Such a construction was antithetical to Schoenberg’s conception of art. Indeed, Schoenberg notes that music “can only acquire the feeling of folk-art if everyone can grasp it, 19 Joseph Rufer, “Hommage à Schoenberg” (summer 1921 or 1922), quoted in Klára Móricz, Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), 206. 20 See, for instance, E. Randol Schoenberg, “The Most Famous Thing He Never Said,” Arnold Schönberg und sein Gott - Arnold Schönberg and His God. Bericht zum Symposium - Report of the Symposium 26.-29. Juni 2002, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 5 (2003), 27-30. 21 "Folk-Music and Art-Music" (c. 1926), SAI 168. Leonard Stein discusses the approximate date of the essay in the Sources and Notes section, p. 519. 33 i.e., if it is either conceived or expressed so that everyone can understand it; whereas one essential feature of high ideas is that they can scarcely be grasped unless the mind is trained to some extent." 22 To Schoenberg, using folk music this way could never produce true art. It can hardly be a coincidence that to a large degree, the composers who wrote this type of music had come from ethnically non- German regions that had recently been liberated from Austria following World War I. Contrasting himself with them, Schoenberg saw in his own music an important role in the maintenance and evolution of a more sophisticated, artistic musical culture befitting Austria and Germany. He would return to this idea twenty years later, stating it even more clearly in “Folkloristic Symphonies.” 23 The idea of cultural greatness through advanced, “high” art comes out very bluntly in the article “Italian National Music.” Although the unpublished manuscript is dated 1927, it appears to be commenting on a 1929 article by Alfredo Casella. In fact, until the late 1920s Schoenberg had maintained friendly relations with Italian composers. While vacationing in Italy in 1924, Schoenberg had been extended an invitation to visit Casella in Milan; Schoenberg thanked him for his tribute to Puccini in the journal Anbruch. 24 Schoenberg had been genuinely upset at Puccini’s death, and had programmed works of Casella and Malipiero in his Society for Private Musical Performances. 25 In 1929, Casella published a highly inflammatory essay in the journal Anbruch entitled “Scarlattiana: Alfredo Casella über sein neues Stück.” 26 The article was prefaced with a disclaimer warning that it was being included in the journal for the sake of discussion and that its author’s controversial views did not represent those of the editors. In the essay, Casella relates his views that although Italian music had come to be dominated by opera in the nineteenth century, its real glory had been in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century instrumental forms. According to Casella, the 22 Ibid., 169. 23 “Folkloristic Symphonies” (1947), 161-66. 24 Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 303. 25 Ibid. 26 Alfredo Casella, “Scarlattiana: Alfredo Casella über sein neues Stück,” Anbruch 1 (1929): 26-28. 34 contemporary rediscovery of these older Italian forms, genres, and composers went hand in hand with the rebirth of Italy as a great nation, no doubt an allusion to the leadership of Mussolini. Casella went on to argue that atonal music aimed to destroy traditional forms and constructions, and that the human condition in the present day demanded an optimistic combination of high art with light music. 27 In “Italian National Music,” Schoenberg describes in most unflattering terms the new Italian national music which “satisfies the requirements of a snobdom of uncomplicatedness, which in no way differs from the snobdom that preceded it; or rather, solely in that here, too, shallowness is to be disguised—but this time by making a display of it… No wonder they appeal to one another. But no wonder, either that such purely national art appeals to the snobs of all the other nations, too.” 28 He goes on to contrast simplistic Italian music with sophisticated German music: Italian national music aims, indeed, to be no more than music for the comfortable citizens of all nations, to do no more than entertain all those who can think of something more entertaining (and merely begrudge others that less entertaining thing, true art). It seeks nothing more, and it is made to measure. It retains what was essential in German music: the ideas are formulated and then worked over according to the principle of development that was introduced into the art of music by the Germans. Nor is the poverty of its ideas and development anything new; the only new thing is for a nation to lay claim to these methods, this artlessness and poverty of ideas, as something peculiar to itself. 29 Schoenberg has absolutely nothing positive to say about Italian music: it is superficial, trivial, and derivative. True German music, in contrast, offers the world something more. Only German music, as developed by German masters of the past and brought to full fruition by Schoenberg and his circle, could bring true art to the world. Only the great German masters were innovative and had brought depth and substance into music. In his patriotic zeal, Schoenberg’s prideful sentiments at times veered towards a chauvinistic attitude. At an Italian performance of Pierrot Lunaire, a local music teacher apparently expressed a lack 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 35 of understanding of the work’s atonal harmonic language. In “My Public,” written in 1930, Schoenberg decried, “He it was, too, who proved unable at the end to bridle his truly Mediterranean temperament— who could not refrain from exclaiming: ‘If there had been just one single honest triad in the whole piece!’ 30 By 1930, Schoenberg attributed this individual’s poor understanding of the significance of his music not only to a lack of intelligence, nor solely to a shortage of musical training or a deficiency of artistic sensitivity, but also to his race and national origin. Schoenberg dismissed Italians as by nature seeking entertaining, comfortable, familiar music rather than challenging, profound art. By the last years of the Weimar Republic, Schoenberg had come to see not only his own music but much of musical history in explicitly nationalistic terms. He outlined this nationalist view of musical history in the unpublished document “National Music (1).” Drawing parallels between the 1930s and the 1730s, he claimed that the Neoclassicists’ call for simplification in contemporary musical style was inherently anti-German. Drawing by analogy, Schoenberg compared contemporary polemical attacks on his own music with the situation two centuries before. During the 1730s, a revolution against heaviness and complexity in music had taken hold, pitting the contrapuntal music of Johann Sebastian Bach against the homophonic galant music of Pergolesi and others. Similarly, the 1930s saw critics and musicians arguing against excessive dissonance and polyphony in music. Schoenberg put this historical debate in nationalistic terms, pitting German against non-German in the battle for complexity in music. He notes that “even the turning point toward the homophonic music of the classical composers, the revolutionary movement against the art of the contrapuntal masters, began under the leadership of Latin composers—Italians and Frenchmen.” 31 To Schoenberg, the polemical battles over musical style had become a political battle over national destiny. After a 30 “My Public” (1930), 97. Emphasis added. 31 “National Music (1)” (1931), 170. 36 temporary period in which non-German musical elements took hold, Germany reclaimed its historical destiny as musical leader in world affairs: Wagner’s music was not only the best and most significant of its age—it not only surpassed Berlioz, Auber, Meyerbeer, Bizet, Rossini, Bellini and others—but it was also the music of 1870 Germany, who conquered the world of her friends and enemies through all her achievements, not without arousing their envy and resistance. 32 In Schoenberg’s list of composers whose music Wagner’s surpassed, only a single German or Austrian name appears—Meyerbeer, who spent the entirety of his career in Paris and wrote French operas. Not simply a great composer, Wagner came to symbolize Germany’s triumph over other nations. Interestingly, Schoenberg does not mention Wagner’s own political views on German nationalism or the mythological Germanic subjects of his operas (or his blatant anti-Semitism inherent in essays like the infamous “Das Judenthum in der Musik”). Wagner’s music is superior not because of any political or personal views of its composer, but because its musical substance represents true German greatness. It represents how “the rise of the rise of a people seems to explain not only its predominance, but also the battle against it.” However, Schoenberg notes that Wagner began crafting this music (presumably referring to the Ring cycle) more than a decade before “the rise of the people.” 33 To Schoenberg, the true genius of Wagner’s music had expressed itself in the 1850s, long before the political unification of the German nation under Bismarck. German music had not suddenly taken on its characteristic profundity in 1870; its superiority could be traced back long before this date. Schoenberg argues that Wagner’s innovations of the 1850s had been an inevitable outgrowth of a German musical superiority reaching back far into history. According to this view, the ascendency of Wagner’s music represented the final thrust of the German people’s century and a half long struggle to free itself from foreign domination. 32 Ibid., 172. 33 Ibid. 37 Schoenberg then came to define his own position in this history of the rebirth of German musical greatness. In “National Music (2)”, also unpublished during the composer’s lifetime, he began by defending his own Germanness, noting that “nobody has yet appreciated that my music, produced on German soil, without foreign influences, is a living example of an art able most effectively to oppose Latin and Slav hopes of hegemony and derived through and through from the traditions of German music.” 34 In support of this statement, Schoenberg lists his primary musical inspirations: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner. In addition to these, Schoenberg also names Schubert, Mahler, Strauss, and Reger. Not a single non-German name appears in this list. In his own music, Schoenberg sought to create “truly new music which, being based on tradition, is destined to become tradition.” 35 Thoroughly based on the German musical past, Schoenberg’s dense, atonal compositions would ensure the survival and continuation of German musical supremacy —supremacy whose very essence for more than two hundred years had been depth, profundity, complexity, difficulty, and innovation. During this period, Schoenberg maintained some continuity with his previous political attitudes. In particular, his lifelong devotion to the ideals of high art only heightened. However, for the first time in his career he now applied these ideals to cultural, national aims. In place of his elitist preoccupation with social class, he now directed his labors toward the aims of national greatness and regeneration. Yet this new national outlook would soon be shared with, and would later be redirected entirely toward, his Jewish identity. Rebirth of a Jewish Identity: 1921-1933 During the early to mid-1920s, just when he was beginning to articulate and develop his most ardent feelings of German patriotism, Schoenberg was simultaneously coming to terms with his Jewish identity. 34 “National Music (2)” (1931), 173. 35 Ibid., 174. 38 This was most likely brought on by his exposure to anti-Semitism in Austria. 36 Although Jews had been among the most patriotic segments of the German and Austrian population during the 1920s, they were at the same time viewed with suspicion by some non-Jews. Schoenberg had a personal encounter with this hostility. During the summer of 1921, he spent his holiday in the resort town of Mattsee in the Austrian Alps. While vacationing there, a public notice proclaimed that the presence of Jews in the town would not be tolerated. Schoenberg received an anonymous postcard in the mail informing him that among the Jews inhabiting the town was “unfortunately” a famous composer of music, and that this composer was no more welcome there than any other Jews. Although Schoenberg had converted to Protestantism in 1898—out of personal conviction rather than social or political expedience--he nevertheless felt deeply insulted. The incident touched a nerve, and provided stimulus for connections to his Jewish origins. For the next decade, he would wrestle with at-times conflicting identities: intellectual, artistic elite, German, Austrian, and Jew. Schoenberg himself acknowledged that his Judaism had played an important role in his self- identification as soon as the early 1920s. In a 1933 letter to Berg, he retrospectively explained: As you have doubtless realised, my return to the Jewish religion took place long ago and is indeed demonstrated in some of my published work ('Thou shalt not... Thou shalt' [Op. 27 No. 2, for mixed chorus] and in 'Moses and Aaron,' of which you have known since 1928, but which dates from at least five years earlier; but especially in my drama “Der biblische Weg” which was also conceived in 1922 or '23 at the latest, though finished only in '26-'27. 37 Schoenberg makes it clear in this letter that he had considered himself Jewish from the early years of the 1920s, and that his return to his faith affected his musical career. The earliest and most prominent documented instance of Schoenberg’s newfound Jewish identification came in 1923, in two frequently-cited letters to his friend, Russian-born artist Wassily 36 Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 274ff. 37 Arnold Schoenberg to Berg, 16 October 1933. Repr. In Arnold Schoenberg Letters, Leonard Stein, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), 184. 39 Kandinsky. Prompted by reports that Kandinsky harbored anti-Semitic attitudes, Schoenberg proudly and defiantly declared himself among the Jewish people: For I have at last learnt the lesson that has been forced upon me during this year, and I shall not ever 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 I am a Jew. I am content that it should be so! 38 Schoenberg’s anger at anti-Semitic elements within German society is clear; he bitterly notes that many people would not consider him German in spite of his patriotic fervor. Schoenberg chides Kandinsky for his anti-Jewish prejudices, noting that “even a Kandinsky sees only evil in the actions of Jews and in their evil actions only the Jewishness, and at this point I give up the hope of reaching any understanding. It was a dream. We are two kinds of people. Definitively!” 39 While Kandinsky had made an exception of his anti-Semitism for Schoenberg, Schoenberg still felt deeply hurt: Today I no longer wish to be an exception; I have no objection at all to being lumped together with all the rest. For I have seen that on the other side (which is otherwise no model so far as I'm concerned, far from it) everything is also just one lump. I have seen that someone with whom I thought myself on a level preferred to seek the community of the lump. 40 While Kandinsky may have felt positively about Schoenberg, Schoenberg maintains that it is impossible to hold anti-Semitic attitudes while making individual exceptions. If the rumors were true, Kandinsky had proven himself no different from any of the base element of society harboring anti-Semitic views. By virtue of his anti-Semitism, Kandinsky had cast aside his enlightened status as an artist. Schoenberg’s subsequent letter is even stronger. The six-page letter is emotional, earnest, and disarrayed. Schoenberg was so impassioned by the issue of Judaism and anti-Semitism that he felt compelled to write until he “must make an end, for my eyes are aching from all this typing.” 41 Near the 38 Arnold Schoenberg to Kandinsky, 20 April 1923, Arnold Schoenberg Letters, 88. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Arnold Schoenberg to Kandinsky, 4 May 1923, Arnold Schoenberg Letters, 93. 40 end of the letter, Schoenberg makes his pride in the Jewish people explicit. In one of his most frequently cited passages, he exclaims: But what is antisemitism to lead to if not to acts of violence? Is it so difficult to imagine that? You are perhaps satisfied with depriving Jews of their civil rights. Then certainly Einstein, Mahler, I and many others, will have been got rid of. But one thing is certain: they will not be able to exterminate those much tougher elements thanks to whose endurance Jewry has maintained itself unaided against the whole of mankind for 20 centuries. For these are evidently so constituted that they can accomplish the task that their God has imposed on them: To survive in exile, uncorrupted and unbroken, until the hour of salvation comes! 42 Schoenberg’s offense at Kandinsky’s anti-Semitism is apparent, as is his pride and admiration for the “much tougher elements” of Judaism. Tragically, the passage ultimately would prove to be all too prophetic. Schoenberg’s personal pride also came through in his letter when he rebuked his friend: “And you join in that sort of thing and ‘reject me as a Jew.’ Did I ever offer myself to you? Do you think that someone like myself lets himself be rejected! Do you think that a man who knows his own value grants anyone the right to criticise even his most trivial qualities?” 43 As in his previous letter, Schoenberg makes it clear that he does not derive comfort or consolation from being excepted from Kandinsky’s negative view of Jews. Whether or not some people are willing to make exceptions for their personal friends is immaterial. Most anti-Semites, especially those prone to violence, would never make such an exception, and would not particularly care if Kandinsky had. Schoenberg could not “tell each of them that I'm the one that Kandinsky and some others make an exception of, although of course that man Hitler is not of their opinion.” 44 Excluding individual Jews from being targeted would be ineffective, and would not protect those whom anti- Semites would wish to except. Moreover, the failure to address generalized anti-Semitism is immoral. Schoenberg asks his former friend, ”How can a Kandinsky... refrain from combating a view of the world 42 Ibid., 92-93 43 Ibid., 90. 44 Ibid. 41 whose aim is St. Bartholomew's nights in the darkness of which no one will be able to read the little placard saying that I'm exempt!” Because I have not yet said that for instance when I walk along the street and each person looks at me to see whether I'm a Jew or a Christian, I can't very well tell each of them that I'm the one that Kandinsky and some others make an exception of, although of course that man Hitler is not of their opinion. And then even this benevolent view of me wouldn't be much use to me, even if I were, like blind beggars, to write it on a piece of cardboard and hang it round my neck for everyone to read… The anti-Semitic mindset is dangerous to all, and it affords no exceptions. It is also highly irrational and based on double standards. Schoenberg asks why Aryan Germans are judged by the great German writers and philosophers, while anti-Semites take their opinions only from the lowest levels of Jewish circles. Self-congratulatory anti-Semites take pleasure in equating themselves with Goethe and Schopenhauer, yet they never would think to equate Jews with Mahler or other Jewish artists. They also selectively harbor attitudes of guilt by association. Instead of seeing a Jew of low personal character as a “regrettable individual case,” anti-Semites hold that such a person is representative of all Jews. Jews are held responsible for any actions of their fellow Jews, while the same is not true for Aryan Germans. 45 Closing the letter several days later, Schoenberg concludes by again calling attention to the irrationality of anti-Semitism, noting, “I forgot that it is not a matter of right and wrong, of truth and untruth, of understanding and blindness, but of power; and in such matters everyone seems to be blind, in hatred as blind as in love… I forgot, it's no use arguing because of course I won't be listened to; because there is no will to understand, but only one not to hear what the other says.” Anti-Semitism is not based on logic. Schoenberg concluded that arguing with Kandinsky was pointless because anti- Semitism was an emotional disturbance that cannot be reasoned with. Schoenberg’s letters to 45 Ibid. 42 Kandinsky reveal a deep and profound sense of pride at his Jewish identity, as well as a vision of the dangers of anti-Semitism. Schoenberg’s identification with Jews was to be long-lasting and formative for his artistic output. Two of his most important works from this period were on Jewish topics. Moses und Aron, which although incomplete would become the composer’s best known opera, deals with the most important prophetic figure to the Jewish religion. Der biblische Weg, a drama without music, specifically refers to Jewish nationalism. Set in the fictional location of Amongäa, it offers a critical stance on Zionist leader Theodore Herzl for backing down from his previous acceptance of Uganda, which had been offered in 1903 by the British Empire to become a Jewish homeland. In calling for a future “when no Jew will have to wonder any longer about the respect or disrespect of those of different races,” Schoenberg’s prose articulates a militant call for self-determination. 46 These works brashly convey a fierce loyalty to the Jewish people. By 1932, more than a decade after the composer’s initial encounter with anti-Semitism and the last year of his residence in Germany, Schoenberg’s commitment to his Jewish identity had only strengthened. Almost simultaneous to writing his “National Music” essays defending the Germanness of his music, he also wrote a letter to Berg extolling his Jewish identity. Writing in September 1932, he proclaimed, “Of course I know perfectly well where I belong. I've had it hammered into me so loudly and so long that only by being deaf to begin with could I have failed to understand it. Today I'm proud to call myself a Jew; but I know the difficulties of really being one.” 47 Schoenberg’s commitment to Judaism had been deep throughout the 1920s. Like many who lived in Austria and Germany at the time, he felt loyal both to his Jewish heritage and to his German culture. This dual loyalty is a common feature of many minority groups in similar societies. As Anthony 46 Extract from der biblische Weg, trans. and repr. in Ringer, Schoenberg: Composer as Jew, 228. 47 Arnold Schoenberg to Alban Berg, 23 Sept. 1932, in Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 167. 43 Smith writes, in historical societies dominated by one ethnic group, minority populations were often eventually granted citizenship. When this occurred, it was often done with the implicit understanding that they assimilate into the common cultural and ethnic framework. Yet while happy to receive citizenship, members of ethnic minority communities around the world often simultaneously retained their internal allegiances. Referring to “the sundering of citizenship from solidarity,” Smith explains how ethnic minorities came to possess a dual “myth-symbol complex.” On the one hand, they adopted the public mythologies of their host nations. On the other hand, they simultaneously retained their own set of symbols. 48 Schoenberg’s dilemma fits in with patterns common to ethnic minorities and diaspora communities throughout the modern world. Schoenberg’s intense devotion to Austria and Germany combined with his strong sense of Jewish self-identification during the period prior to 1933 represent exactly this duality between “official symbolism and all-embracing mythology” on the one hand and “semi-private and cultural” allegiances on the other. Schoenberg’s cultural-political stance was in many ways representative of Jewish communities in Austria and Germany at the time. In both countries, the Jewish community was divided into several groups. 49 On the conservative end of the spectrum, Orthodox Jews struggled to maintain more or less 48 Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986), 150-51. Smith also discusses this phenomenon in “Ethnie and Nations in the Modern World,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies Vol 14, No. 2 (127-42). A variety of other scholarly works have analyzed more specific instances of ethnic dual or multiple identification, including Milovan Đilas, “Communists and Yugoslavia,” Survey 28 (1984), 25-30, George Schöpflin, “Nationality in the Fabric of Yugoslav Politics,” Survey 25 (1980), 1-19, and G.E. Smith, “Ethnic Nationalism in the Soviet Union,” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy Vol. 3 No. 1 (1985), 39-74. Mona Harrington offers a thorough analysis of émigré identities in twentieth century America in Mona Harrington, “Loyalties: Dual and Divided,” in The Politics of Ethnicity: Dimensions of Ethnicity, Michael Walzer, ed. (Cambridge, MA: The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1980). For analysis of a related issue in the American Jewish community, see Steven Cohen, American Modernity and Jewish Identity (New York: Tavistock, 1983). More recent authors have focused on what Benedict Anderson terms “long-distance nationalism,” see Benedict Anderson, Long Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics (Amsterdam: Center for Asian Studies, 1992) and Nina Schiller, “Long-Distance Nationalism,” Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World (New York: Springer Science+Business Media, 2005), 560-80. See also Ulf Hedetoft, ed., The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 49 For a survey of Weimar-era Jewish demographics, see Donald Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, 2 nd Ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001). For a historical overview and discussion of Jewish self-identities in pre-Holocaust Germany, see Sidney Bolkovsky, The Distorted Image: German Jewish Perceptions of Germans and 44 traditional lifestyles in a time of profound change. Many Orthodox rabbis urged their congregants to follow religious traditions, laws, and customs more strictly, and to limit contact with non-Jews. For those committed to Orthodoxy, the granting of civic rights and the increasing integration of Jews into the German community represented a threat to the continuation of Jewish identity. At the same time, other Jews found themselves allied with emerging Zionist doctrines. Unlike Orthodox Jews, Zionists were committed to secular, political conceptions of Judaism. Moreover, some formulations of Zionism held that Jews had no place in European society but should instead seek their own state in the biblical land of Zion. Indeed, up to the early decades of the twentieth century Zionism was a minority position among the German-Jewish community. Instead, by the late nineteenth century the majority of German Jews were devoted to liberal modernism. Opposed to both Zionism and Orthodoxy, most Jews were committed to principles of assimilation. Maintaining the essence of their cultural heritage, mainstream liberal Judaism was committed to the Enlightenment values that for a century had increasingly granted Jews rights and improved their living conditions. These three broad groupings of Jews in prewar Germany were joined by a fourth presence: Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. Referred to as “East Jews,” these Yiddish-speaking Jews were separated from their coreligionists by language and customs. Deeply impoverished and generally unassimilated, they faced attitudes among other Jews ranging from grudging acceptance to outright scorn. While Zionists tended to focus on Eastern Jews in their efforts towards the Jewish resettlement of Palestine, liberal Jews often felt few ties of affinity for them. While they may have shared the same religion with Jews from eastern regions, liberal German Jews felt they had little else in common with them, and in many cases felt far more closely connected with non-Jewish Germans than with non-German Jews. Germany, 1918-1935 (New York: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1975). See also Nils Roemer, ed., German Jewry: Between Hope and Despair (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013), and Jehuda Reinharz, Fatherland or Promised Land: The Dilemma of the German Jew, 1893-1914 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1975). 45 Precisely what Judaism meant and how it related to civic life varied widely among these groups. Orthodox Jews tended to define Judaism as a religion and a way of life. Conversely, the central principle of Zionism was that Jews formed a nation. Zionists claimed that as a people inherently distinct from Germans, Jews deserved to receive full sovereignty. While many mainstream Jews may have ardently wished for Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, more extreme Zionists frequently stressed the fundamental distinction between Jews and Germans. The bulk of German Jewry firmly believed in the assimilation of Jewry into the German nation. The nineteenth century had seen civic rights being granted to Jews throughout Western Europe. Following the example of Napoleonic France, the 1848-1849 Frankfurt Assembly, whose vice-president was Jewish, made many statements of equality and religious non-discrimination. A year later, Prussia’s 1850 constitution did not make any legal distinction between Jews and Christians. Although anti- Semitism had still been prevalent and had been on the rise during the 1870s and again in the 1890s, many German Jews felt a strong civic loyalty to Germany. Beyond civic assimilation, they were strongly committed to cultural assimilation. This strain of Judaism’s political involvements centered on the Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens (Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith). Founded in 1893, the Centralverein’s primary political goals were to combat anti-Semitism and to promote equality between Jewish and Christian Germans. 50 The Centralverein worked towards these ends by issuing legal challenges to anti-Semitic parties, sending Jewish representatives to offer rebuttal at anti-Semitic events, and actively supporting anti-racist political parties. The association also sought to discredit anti- Semites by promoting Jewish self-discipline, avoiding actions and behavior that could bolster anti- Semitic arguments, and putting patriotic German sentiments on display. For example, the Centralverein urged its members to avoid “the exaggerated display of clothing, jewelry, and similar luxury items… 50 Niewyk, Jews in Weimar Germany, 87. 46 during this time of widespread want,” and asked synagogues to display the names of their members killed during World War I on the outside of their buildings rather than inside. 51 While the term “assimilation” has come to connote the dissolution of a minority into the mainstream culture at the cost of its cultural distinctiveness, to many at the time it meant the merging of two cultures to the mutual benefit of both. Jews would benefit from their ability to participate in German society as equal partners, and Jewish culture would be improved as a result of secular education and improving quality of life. Simultaneously, German culture would also better itself through the contributions of Jewish professionals, artists, writers, and musicians. Assimilated Jews lived a Germanic lifestyle rather than a traditional Jewish one, yet still identified as Jews. Novelist Jakob Wassermann expressed typical German Jewish sentiments when he expressed, “I am a German, and I am a Jew, one as intensely and as completely as the other, inextricably bound together.” 52 Also typical was the attitude of the Jewish president of the Berlin branch of Dresden Bank, who repeatedly stressed that the pre-Holocaust Jewish community had been “sehr gute Deutschen.” 53 Similarly, German Jewish sociologist Franz Oppenheimer expressed great pride that he had “been fortunate to have been born and educated in the land of Kant and Goethe, to have their culture, their art, their language and their knowledge as my own. My Germanism is as sacred to me as my Jewish forefathers… I combine in me the German and Jewish national feeling.” 54 As Eugen Fuchs put it at a meeting of the Centralverein: It would be insincere to deny that as a Jew I possess a special peculiarity, that my Jewish origin and Jewish home bestowed on me not only a religious but also a special spiritual, maybe also physical, stamp… but in the national sense this kind of tribal stamp does not 51 Ibid, 93. 52 Jakob Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (Berlin, 1921), 126. Quoted in Niewyk, Jews in Weimar Germany, 100. 53 Interview with the former director of the Dresden Bank of Berlin, November 1966. Quoted and cited in Bolkovsky, The Distorted Image, 4. While Bolkovsky does not name the individual, he may have been referring to Wilhelm Kleemann, Jewish president of Dresdner Bank in Berlin for several years before the Nazi takeover, identified in Werner Loval, We Were Europeans: A Personal History of a Turbulent Century (Lynbrook, NY: Gefen Books, 5770/2010), 133. 54 Franz Oppenheimer, Erlebtes, Ersterbtes, Erreichtes. Errinnerungen (Berlin: Welt-Verlag, 1931), 214. Quoted in Bolkovsky, Distorted Image, 9. 47 separate me any more from the German Christian… than the tribal stamp separates the Frisian peasant from the Rhenish industrial worker or from the proletarian of Berlin. 55 Despite their differences, these and many other testimonies share a profound commitment to and pride in both Germany and Jewish heritage. As far as religion, while Orthodox communities still existed, by the late nineteenth century they formed a distinct minority. Most Jewish communities had come to see Judaism as a culture and heritage more than a religion. Comparatively few went to synagogue, and observance was quite lax. Even on major religious holidays, synagogues saw attendance drastically reduced in the opening decades of the twentieth century. 56 Although culturally similar in many ways to its neighbor, the Jewish situation in Austria was also distinct from that of Germany in many ways. 57 Living in a large, multicultural empire, Austrian Jews had come to see themselves as an ethnic group to a greater degree than had their German counterparts. Rather than emphasizing their distinctiveness from Germans or lobbying for the creation of Jewish rule in Palestine, many Austrians allied with the Zionist movement sought representation and federation rights for Jews to an equal degree granted to other “official” minorities. 58 Jews in Austrian society tended to have a robust tripartite identity. Strongly loyal to the Hapsburg monarchy, Jews held fast to their Austrian nationality. At the same time, Austrian Jews were largely German speaking, and largely saw themselves as culturally German. Predominantly educated in German, they cultivated German literary interests and viewed Germanness strictly as a cultural group, of which they were an important part. Finally, Austrian Jews maintained an ethnic allegiance to other Jews. 55 Eugen Fuchs, Um Deutschtum und Judentum. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze (1894-1919) (Frankfurt am Main, 1919), 252-53. Quoted in Avraham Barkai, ”Between Deutschtum and Judentum: Idelogical Controversies inside the Centralverein, Chapter 5 of In Search of Jewish Communities: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria, 1918- 1933, Michael Brenner and Derek Penslar, ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 78. 56 Niewyk, Jews in Weimar Germany, 102. 57 For an overview of Jewish identity in Austria, see Marsha Rozenblit, “Jewish Ethnicity in a New Nation-State: The Crisis of Identity in the Austrian Republic,” Chapter 8 of In Search of Jewish Community. 58 While Rozenblit and others call them Zionists, they were not strictly Zionists, as the term “Zionist” specifically refers to Jewish self-determination in Israel, historically known as the land of Zion. 48 The aftermath of the First World War posed unique challenges to the Austro-Jewish community. Because of their status as an ethnic minority within a larger cultural group, Jewish Austrians were overwhelmingly supportive of the Hapsburg monarchy. Even as other groups on the empire’s periphery sought sovereignty and self-determination, many Jews felt that the Hapsburg’s official multiculturalism at least partially shielded them from the rampant anti-Semitism of extreme nationalists. Once the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up into ethnic successor states, Jews felt less secure. Like other Austrian successor states, the Austrian Republic came to see itself in ethnic terms. While Austrian Jews had felt comfortable in the German cultural sphere, they had never seen themselves as ethnically German. Since the new Austria (originally called “German Austria”) defined itself as German not only culturally but ethnically, many Jews questioned how they would relate to non- Jews in the new Austrian Republic. At the same time, large numbers of Austrian Jews found renewed commitment to their traditional three loyalties: their new Austrian nation, their German heritage, and their Jewish culture. Schoenberg never truly fit into conservative Viennese society. His music had never been fully accepted there, and many of his career successes came not there but in Berlin. Despite this, and in spite of his 1898 conversion to Protestantism, Schoenberg clearly fit into the Austrian model of Jewish identity. His firm support of the Hapsburg monarchy during the First World War, his private hopes for its later reconstruction, his glorification of German culture, his unorthodox religious beliefs and lax observances, and his growing interest in his Jewish heritage all squarely place him in line with the Austrian Jewish community, and with other ethnic minorities around the world. The Émigré Experience: 1934-1939 The period immediately following Hitler’s rise to power proved to be one of the most significant in the composer’s life. In 1926, Schoenberg had accepted a position as professor at the Prussian Academy of 49 Arts, replacing Ferruccio Busoni. The rise of Hitler in 1933 placed Schoenberg’s position into question. At a meeting of the school’s senate on March 1, 1933, academy president Max von Schillings declared that the “Jewish influence” on the arts must be eradicated. Schoenberg, present at the meeting, stormed out of the room and offered his resignation two weeks later. 59 Although his resignation had been accepted and he had been given a pension through September 1935, he was summarily dismissed effective immediately on May 23, 1933. 60 Able to foresee the imminent danger to European Jewry, Schoenberg fled Germany for Paris. These events led him to an at times blatantly militant Jewish advocacy. While in Paris, he formally reconverted from Protestantism back to Judaism and advocated for the creation of a united Jewish party. During the same period, he expressed the naïve desire to use his position as cultural authority as a means to negotiate with the Nazis for the repatriation of the Jewish population into other countries, especially Palestine. 61 After several months in Paris, Schoenberg secured a position at Malkin Conservatory in Boston, arriving in the United States in November 1933. Schoenberg spent the remainder of his life in America, settling in Los Angeles in 1935. At the very moment when his feelings of German nationalism had been at their most ardent, concentrated, and explicit, Schoenberg ironically discovered that being Jewish and being German had become mutually exclusive. According to the official Nazi government ideology, only Aryans were “true” Germans. In spite of the civic pride that he had felt and demonstrated in his essays, his deep commitment to Austro-German culture, and his conscientious military service during World War I, the new regime considered him a foreign element to German society. Along with all Jews, he had been labeled an existential threat to Germany. Though he had been exposed to anti-Semitism in the past, never before had he experienced official government-sponsored anti-Semitism at such a high level. For 59 Ibid., 366. 60 Ibid., 367. 61 For a detailed discussion of Schoenberg’s political activities during this period, see Alexander Ringer, “Unity and Strength: The Politics of Jewish Survival,” Ch. 7 of Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 50 the first time, Schoenberg came to feel that his religious and ethnic background directly contradicted and negated his Germanness. Schoenberg began to engage in pro-Jewish activities in earnest almost as soon as he arrived in France, immediately after “reconverting” back to Judaism. Writing to Webern in August 1933, he declared, “It is my intention to take an active part in” pro-Jewish affairs. Schoenberg went on, noting that he considered it “more important than my art, and I am determined—if I am suited to such activities—to do nothing in the future but work for the Jewish national cause.” 62 Clearly, Schoenberg took his situation and the plight of world Jewry quite seriously. True to his word, he began an intensive letter-writing campaign, reaching out to prominent Jewish leaders and attempting to create a United Jewish Party. Negating his German identity, he wrote that We are Asians and nothing of real substance connects us with the West. We have our destiny and no other temptation can honour us… our essence is not occidental; that is merely an exterior appearance. We must return to our origins, to the source of our strength, there where our toughness has its roots and where we will recover our old fighting spirit. 63 Beyond its clear denunciation of European heritage in favor of an entirely Jewish one, this statement is notable for its advocacy for a militant solution to Judaism’s problems. Schoenberg revealed that his allegiance to the Jewish people had reached new heights. Soon after arriving in America, he wrote to Stephen Wise, a prominent rabbi and one of the chief delegates to the Zionist Congress, telling the Jewish leader, “I only insist on the quiet honour to be permitted to sacrifice my life for the existence of the Jewish people.” 64 In the chaos of his personal exodus from Hitler’s Germany and the trauma facing Jews who had been unable to leave, Schoenberg reached the pinnacle of commitment to his people. 62 Schoenberg to Webern, 4 August 1933, quoted and trans. In Naomi André, “Returning to a Homeland,” Ch. 10 of Political and Religious Ideas, 266. 63 Schoenberg to Jakob Klatzkin, 13 June 1933, quoted in Ringer, Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 129. 64 Schoenberg to Stephen Wise, 12 May 1934, quoted in Ringer, Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 154. 51 Almost immediately, Schoenberg sought to create a Jewish political party. His initial conceptualization was draconian in nature. Due to the unprecedented danger posed by the Nazi party, he argued, if Jewish individuals did not personally agree with certain political beliefs they would need to be coerced into adopting them for the sake of group unity. He lamented that in spite of the danger, Jews were unable to mount an appropriate response due to their internal disarray. National unity, necessary to protect the Jewish people, was possible only through conversion and, if necessary, coercion of the masses. The following year, Schoenberg clarified his intentions for a “Jewish Unified Party” intended to combat the threat of Nazi anti-Semitism. Schoenberg’s would-be caucus would stand for the whole of Jewry; differences of opinion would not be tolerated. Indeed, Schoenberg’s Jewish United Party would “have to fight to the point of extermination all those parties which… are opposed to its goals.” 65 Moreover, Party members would have specific obligations. Chief among these requirements would be to follow unquestioningly the dictates of their leaders. Members would also be required to refrain from any activities “which, in the opinion of the Party leadership, goes against the objectives of the Party and which, in particular, might foment disunity.” They would be ordered to give their utmost effort “to work for the interests of the Party,” and were specifically required to “immediately report to the [Party] authorities any attempt at treason.” 66 In the early 1930s Schoenberg felt no compunction about forcing others to adopt his own opinions—or at least, he felt it was justified by the existential threat posed to Judaism. In the early years of the Nazi takeover of Germany, Schoenberg’s fears led him to advocate a militant, dictatorial regime that shared much with the regime he had recently fled. Schoenberg’s political views on Judaism came to fruition in his “Four-Point Program for Jewry.” Having begun drafting it in 1933, he arrived at a finalized version of his text after a period of five years. Insightful and analytic, Schoenberg’s program reveals the depths of its author’s commitment to Judaism. 65 Arnold Schoenberg, “Jewish United Party Program” (1934), quoted in Móricz, Jewish Identities, 201. 66 Ibid. 52 He opens with an impassioned plea, imploring, “Is there room in the world for almost 7,000,000 people? Are they condemned to doom? Will they become extinct? Famished? Butchered?” 67 Schoenberg will do anything to prevent this from happening: his pamphlet draws pride in his Jewish identification. He gives high praise for the Jewish people: …there is no conceivable reason why people should hate us. We know we are not as our enemies describe us. On the contrary, if it were for our qualities we should be liked and admired. We are generous, good-natured, faithful, honest at least in the same degree as other people. In our minds is anchored the obligation to help the poor, which has been an especial part of our religious law for five thousand years. But we possess one quality which seems remarkable if not unique—whilst other peoples have been converted, it has been impossible to convert Israel. It is our devotion to an idea, to an ideal, and it springs from our deep devotion to our inherited faith… What Jews have achieved for the advantage of peoples among which they lived asks for thankful recognition. Called to establish trade in different countries they invariably succeeded in making those countries wealthy and sometimes world- dominating. They brought science, medicine, culture, music and literature to barbarian countries; and let us not forget that the Bible in its legal and moral viewpoints is the backbone of the civilization of almost half the people of the world. 68 Far from being a danger to the world as anti-Semites would believe, Jews have a long list of virtues and accomplishments. They have thousands of years of cultural heritage, and have no reason to feel ashamed or belittled. Another of Schoenberg’s central notions about the Jewish nation is that it is primarily based on belief. While other peoples have disappeared through war, assimilation, or natural processes, the Jewish people have survived “because we are chosen to survive, to endure through the centuries, to refute the laws of nature.” 69 Schoenberg argues that the Jewish people had been allowed to do so through divine intervention, and only because of their belief in ethical monotheism. Unlike other groups who are held together for biological reasons, Jews maintain their distinctiveness because of their faith. Indeed, the Jewish religion compels them to maintain their status as a nation, since its central idea is having been 67 Schoenberg, “A Four-Point Program for Jewry,” (1938), published in Ringer, Schoenberg: Composer as Jew, 230. 68 Ibid., 232. 69 Ibid. 53 chosen as a people by God to fulfill His purpose. While Schoenberg would modify this stance in later years, his emphasis on the interconnectedness between Jewish faith and Jewish peoplehood, made explicit here for the first time, would remain with him for the rest of his life. For this reason, Schoenberg argues that anti-Semitism is both natural and inevitable. Because Jewish self-preservation was and had always been based on the belief in its own chosenness to carry out a divine plan, some people would always perceive Jews as arrogant. According to Schoenberg, this perceived arrogance was the root cause of avarice among anti-Semites. As long as Jews remained committed to their cosmic purpose, some non-Jews would always feel envious. Trying to counter their envy “is not only stupid, immoral, cowardly, undignified, but it is—and this makes it decisive—a waste, a fatal waste of energy. It gives rise to deceptive hopes and directs vital powers in false directions.” 70 Instead of fighting anti-Semitism, Jews must do all in their power to establish a Jewish state—whether in Israel or elsewhere—and bolster enough physical strength to be able to safely ignore hatred and bigotry. Even though he never lived in Palestine and did not work directly for the creation of a Jewish state there, Schoenberg remained fully committed to Jewish nationalism. Indeed, he believed that the creation of such a state—in the ancient Jewish homeland—would be the ultimate salvation of the Jewish people. He argued that To every Jew the idea of Palestine is self-evident, without any question, a matter of fact, which needs no special mention and is not dependent on voting. Every Jew feels, knows and can never forget that Palestine is ours and that we have been deprived of it by mere force; that we will never consent to the claim of another nation upon our promised land. 71 To Schoenberg as to so many other Jews, Israel represented the land promised by God to the Jewish people in perpetuity; its reestablishment would be the only true, permanent Jewish salvation. However, he believed that this dream was unattainable in the short term; like the American-Jewish led boycott of 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., 235. 54 Nazi German goods, sticking to hopes of an independent Jewish Palestine would be ineffective and dangerous. For a variety of reasons, not least of all economic and geopolitical ones, the rebirth of the Jewish nation in its historic homeland would be unfeasible in the 1930s. Clinging to such a notion rather than exploring other options would only ensure the deaths of millions of European Jews unable to escape. Instead, Schoenberg sought other solutions. He reveals that one of the key factors in his decision to come to the United States rather than Palestine had been his belief that he could do more good there, by winning the support of influential individuals from American shores. As he put it, Schoenberg’s America “was and is in many respects the promised land”. 72 Schoenberg hoped to use his position in America to secure sponsorship for Jewish refugees, and to convince others to do the same. He also still hoped and advocated for the creation of a Jewish state; whether such a territory lay in Palestine or were temporarily located elsewhere was immaterial to the immediate physical safety and survival of the Jewish people. By the completion of his draft in 1938, Schoenberg had toned down some of the most extreme declarations in his earlier writings and letters. Though he still advocated for a unity party, the tone was no longer as belligerent or dictatorial. Although still acceding the potential necessity of coercion, by the final draft of his Four-point Program Schoenberg believed that the necessary unity could be achieved by “numerous leaders, carefully selected, manifoldly tested, chosen not only for their intelligence (super- intelligence would endanger unanimity), but for their character, steadiness, faithfulness, directness, courage and devotion.” 73 This group of carefully chosen party leaders would inspire and convince others of the correctness of the party line. Because of Jews’ innate optimism, Schoenberg argued, it would be 72 Ibid., 231. 73 Ibid., 232. 55 relatively easy to convince a large number of them to join a Unity Party whose primary task would be to acquire a territory for safe Jewish migration. Schoenberg continued his efforts towards Zionism and Jewish nationalism up to the very start of the war. Writing to his student Leo Kestenberg, who had migrated to Mandatory Palestine, Schoenberg expressed his delight at the prospect of his music being introduced to the Jewish community there. He also expressed interest in helping Jews escape from Germany: In conclusion I should like to ask you if there is any chance of saving valuable Jewish lives by getting people to Palestine with your help... Here in America it has become almost impossible, at the moment, to get an affidavit. In many cases it's simply a matter of giving Jews who have been ordered to leave Germany or Italy the chance to stay in a neutral country while waiting for a visa. Is that possible in Palestine? I should like to know more about this. 74 Even as late as June 1939, Schoenberg still hoped to rescue German Jews, looking at Palestine as the most viable option. Schoenberg’s devotion to his fellow Jews during the 1930s came in a variety of forms: proud statements in praise of Judaism’s positive attributes, attempts at the creation of a political party, and willingness to help in the so-called “Aliya Bet” immigration of Jews into Palestine against British government orders. It is important to note that like many immigrants, Schoenberg’s commitment to his people was combined with positive perceptions of his new home. Just as he had experienced a dual loyalty to both Germany and to the Jewish cause during the 1920s, he experienced similar divided feelings in his new home during the late 1930s. This attitude is quite common in immigrant and diaspora communities. Although he had chosen America for practical reasons and his relationship with it would come be ambiguous (particularly so due to his frustrations at the general lack of appreciation for his music) Schoenberg at times expressed high praise for the United States. One of the most striking examples of this came soon on the heels of his arrival. Genuinely grateful to have found a safe haven, he noted in a 74 Schoenberg to Kestenberg, 16 June 1939, in Schoenberg Letters, 209. 56 speech that “I, on the contrary, came from one country into another, where neither dust nor better food is rationed and where I am allowed to go on my feet, where my head can be erect, where kindness and cheerfulness is dominating, and where to live is a joy and to be an expatriate of another country is the grace of God. I was driven into paradise!” 75 Schoenberg felt gratefulness and admiration for the United States, something that came across quite clearly in this speech. Such sentiments are all the more remarkable considering that they came at the conclusion to a lecture devoted to the plight of his fellow Jews in Germany. A more puzzling aspect of this same speech is his seeming disregard for politics. Although he noted that he had been expected to speak about the plight of the Jewish situation, he declared that he wished “to abstain from politics,” and that “the state of Jewry cannot be bettered by such nightmare- tales or by fighting against Germany.” 76 While he may have wished to avoid political discussions because he felt it may have been inappropriate for the venue, Schoenberg may have had other reasons for doing so. In his first public speech in the United States, Schoenberg places far greater emphasis on the greatness of America than on the fight against Germany. Echoes of his praise of Germany and Austro- German culture from the previous decade are clearly audible. Schoenberg may also have been continuing to follow instincts developed and honed over a decade of experience in increasingly anti- Semitic Weimar-era Austria and Germany. Reflecting his only recent arrival in America, Schoenberg’s public avoidance of the politics of the Jewish situation—a subject that was clearly of great personal importance to him—may well have represented an habitual response to the perceived threat of anti- Semitism, a threat he had increasingly grown accustomed to in Europe. By deflecting attention away from sensitive Jewish issues and overtly praising America, he may have been hoping to avoid being viewed with distrust as a foreigner and as a Jew. 75 “Two Speeches on the Jewish Situation” (1934), SAI 502. 76 Ibid. 57 Facing displacement, Schoenberg found himself living in a distinctive environment with a widely differing cultural environment to the one he had known in Europe. As Sabine Feisst has argued, he began almost immediately to adapt to his new home, taking on aspects of a distinctive American identity alongside his German and Jewish ones. 77 His statements on American greatness and his public silence on the issue of Jewish politics can be seen both as a way of adapting and as a reflection of his rapidly emerging identity as American immigrant. Whatever his rationale, the contrast between his public speeches and his private correspondence and political tracts demonstrates a dissonance between civic and personal. In his discussion of ethnicity, Smith argues that such dissonance, typical among resident minority communities in societies dominated by single ethnicities, is also commonly seen in newly immigrant groups. In Schoenberg’s case as for countless other American Jews, devotion to the Jewish cause did not come at the expense of appreciation of American society. Like most immigrants, Schoenberg realized that it was possible to combine allegiance to his adopted home country with loyalty to the Jewish cause. Judaism in a Universal Context: 1947-1951 By the late 1940s, Schoenberg’s conceptualization of Jewish nationalism had evolved dramatically. In place of the militant, confrontational approach he had advocated in the 1930s pitting Jews against their enemies, by the post-war period Schoenberg had come to see the struggle for his people’s cause within a broader context. Heavily reflecting the lessons learned from Nazi Germany as well as his experiences in the United States, Schoenberg’s postwar stance was far more universal in its conception. By the early postwar years, Schoenberg had come to realize that commitment to his own ethnic group, a cause to which he would remain deeply involved with for the remainder of his life, need not exclude concern for 77 Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), esp.ch. 3. 58 other groups. Indeed, the Jewish cause was all the more justified because it stemmed not from exceptionalism but from universal principles applicable to all. To be sure, Schoenberg remained fully committed to the Jewish cause. By all accounts, he was ecstatic at the creation of the Jewish national homeland in 1948. In the last year of his life, he would write that “...I have already declared that for more than four decades my dearest wish has been to see the establishment of a separate, independent state of Israel. And indeed more than that: to become a citizen of that State and to reside there.” 78 As early as 1939, he had been delighted at the prospect of his music being introduced to Jewish settlers there, suggesting that his former student Leo Kestenberg should gradually introduce his pre-serial music there. 79 By 1951, Schoenberg was offered the honorary position of president of the Israel Academy of Music in Jerusalem. Although poor health prevented the acceptance of an actual teaching position, Schoenberg felt greatly honored and expressed his desire to teach at the Israeli academy. The role of Israeli music took on critical importance, both to Jews and to the world at large: For just as God chose Israel to be the people whose task it is to maintain the pure, true, Mosaic monotheism despite all persecution, despite all affliction, so too it is the task of Israeli musicians to set the world an example of the old kind that can make our souls function again as they must if mankind is to evolve any higher. 80 Schoenberg has retained important aspects of his notions of musical nationalism, with greatness reflected in its musical culture. Concurrently, his views of Israeli musical culture also reflect his understanding of the Jewish nation’s unique religious-historical mission. In spite of his continued belief in the uniqueness of the Jewish people, during the last years of his life he combined Jewish advocacy with a broader, more universal outlook. Newly written for inclusion into the 1950 Style and Idea, Schoenberg’s 1947 essay “Human Rights” negotiates the concept 78 Schoenberg to Frank Pelleg, 26 April 1951, in Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 286. 79 Schoenberg to Leo Kestenberg, 16 June 1939, in Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 209. 80 Schoenberg to Frank Pelleg, Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 286. 59 of universal liberties and provides a window into his political views that had drastically changed by this time. At times cheerfully optimistic, it is also probing, questioning, and problematizing. One of Schoenberg’s primary themes is the applicability of these rights to all people, particularly to people who are victimized by those who “consider it their human right to dispute, even to overpower, the human rights of their fellows.” 81 Embracing some of the fundamental notions of liberal democracy, Schoenberg asserts that all people have rights, and that no one should be permitted to impose his or her will on any other person or group for any reason. He acknowledges that in practice this may be difficult, as any open and democratic system would be riddled with “mutual opposition of those interests which are entitled to protection.” 82 Following lines of Western democratic thought, Schoenberg allows for a “messy” democracy with competing interests in which everyone would be required to make sacrifices so that the rights of all may be protected. Reflecting the Nazi persecution of Jews, Schoenberg’s primary concern is the protection of minorities. Trumping all other concerns, this theme runs throughout his essay. The process of pure democracy must be modified, because its unmodified application would threaten minorities. In an election, the slimmest of majorities would be able to cast its will over large minorities. Unless certain protections are legally in place and enforced, minority groups could be voted out of their rights. 83 One can hear echoes of 1933, when Hitler had been elected legally and democratically before trampling the rights of Jews and political dissenters. In a pure democracy, more populous factions would be able to impose their will over less populous ones. Such situations must be prevented through constitutional means by guaranteeing rights that cannot be infringed on, even by majority votes. Although Schoenberg speaks in generalized terms and does not name specific minority groups in the United States or in any other country, his essay nevertheless reflects genuine concern for minority rights in a universal context. 81 “Human Rights” (1947), 506. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 60 One of the key rights to which Schoenberg frequently refers is that of free speech. Having been dismissed from his teaching position in Berlin and the subject of vicious racially based attacks on his “degenerate” music, Schoenberg must have felt his creative output unjustifiably silenced. Book burnings had been common in Germany throughout the Nazi years, and among the first to be placed in concentration camps had been political dissenters. Schoenberg notes that in the dictatorial regime he had fled, “troublesome expressions of all-too-free thinking are eradicated together with their originators. Their books are burned, their authors hanged, full-dressed generals without trial; they have no special rights, and feelings of shame are ignored because right is what benefits the German, and only remotely related to human right.” 84 In a truly just society, all individuals must be free to express their thoughts and opinions. This is a particularly important turning point for Schoenberg, who a decade earlier had justified the need for enforced unity of opinion in the world Jewish party he had hoped to create. 85 Perhaps the most dramatic change in Schoenberg’s thinking is demonstrated by his shift in attitude towards religion. Although his personal religious thinking had been a unique idiosyncratic synthesis of a variety of different strains and had remained entirely unorthodox, the importance of religion and spirituality had nevertheless been central to Schoenberg. By the late 1940s, Schoenberg delineated some of the problems of organized religion. Specifically, he realized that religions inherently challenge the issue of human rights because they are for the most part “exclusive and antagonistic-- even militant, challenging, quarrelsome.” 86 He notes the difficulty of reconciling one person’s right to hold a particular belief with the right of another person to hold the opposite view—particularly if those beliefs are mutually exclusive, and if each holds that the other position must be “corrected.” “Is it the 84 Ibid., 85 “A Four-Point Program for Jewry” (1938), in Ringer, Schoenberg: Composer as Jew. 86 ”Human Rights.”, 510. 61 duty of man to believe in the truth? Is the right to believe what is false worthy of protection?” 87 Who is to decide which belief is the truth and which is false? Proselytizing religions are problematic to the degree that they encroach on others’ rights to freedom of belief. The conception that some of the most central components of religion are antithetical to universal human rights marks a profound shift for Schoenberg, who a decade previously had formulated his entire notion of Jewish peoplehood on religious notions of chosenness. Drawing from his own Judeo- Christian tradition, he remarked that “Surely, the Ten Commandments represent one of the first déclarations des droits humaines set forth in word and script. They assure the right to live and to have possessions; they protect marriage, vows, and work, but deny from the very beginning freedom of faith, because there is only ONE God.” 88 The very first commandment is a statement of faith, requiring individuals to maintain a specific standard of belief. Any personal rights the individual may be granted are in direct opposition to the right to freedom of belief. In requiring strict adherence to a particular belief, organized religion restricts the rights of its adherents. While religion is clearly still important to g, it has become a personal matter. A person’s religious convictions are his or her concern alone, provided only that he or she does not attempt to rob others of the same freedom. This stands in remarkable contrast to his earlier views that predicated Jewish national survival on its collective religious belief. The universal applicability of his dictate on human rights is also evident through his examples, which include Hinduism and other religions. Although Schoenberg realizes that the subject is highly complex, convoluted, and contradictory, he still ends on an optimistic note: These are real problems, and one could easily become pessimistic about them. Nevertheless, one must never give up the longing for the universal sanctity of human rights. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 62 In our soul there lies the power of longing with creative intensity. 89 In spite of all the inherent conflicts and paradoxes, in the end he held onto hope that human rights could be universally applied. For the first time, Schoenberg explicitly recognized that the Jewish people’s rights to existence and self-determination were grounded not in Jewish exceptionalism but in universal principles applicable to all. The Myth of the Apolitical Schoenberg It is possible to argue that Schoenberg’s music is entirely apolitical, and that whatever extra-musical concerns Schoenberg may have had belonged to him privately as an individual, in no way shaping his musical output. Often cited are several statements seemingly foreswearing politics. In 1928 Schoenberg declared, I have nothing to do with politics—in whose utterances, at even their most nonsensical, human, artistic or any other similar feelings still have no influence—and I would rather be allowed to keep my irrelevant private opinions to myself… By what chord would one diagnose the Marxist confession in a piece of music, and by what colour the Fascist one in a picture? … But that a work of art should exert any such influence is neither to be hoped nor to be wished. 90 Although this statement seems to renounce any involvement in politics, what Schoenberg intended was not a lack of interest in political matters; his manifold public statements in support of Germany and private utterances in passionate defense of Judaism belie any disinterest. In fact, by taking this essay its proper context it becomes apparent that rather than foreswearing all political influences in his music, Schoenberg was in fact chastising fascist elements in Weimar society that condemned “cultural Bolshevism” and racial “impurity” in art. 89 Ibid., 512. 90 “Does the World Lack a Peace-Hymn?” (1928), 500. 63 The actual meaning of Schoenberg’s disavowal of “politics” is also clarified through further examination of his second letter to Kandinsky. In his 1923 letter denouncing anti-Semitism, Schoenberg specifically rebutted anti-Semitic theories placing Jews at the heart of a worldwide Bolshevist conspiracy. Schoenberg aimed to debunk these theories when he declared, What have I to do with Communism? I'm not one and never was one! What have I to do with the Elders of Zion? All that means to me is the title of a fairy-tale out of a Thousand and One Nights, but not one that refers to anything remotely as worthy of belief. Are all Jews Communists? You know as well as I do that that isn't so. I'm not one because I know there aren't enough of the things everyone wants to be shared out all round, but scarcely for a tenth. 91 In a later portion of his letter, Schoenberg asks, “But what is antisemitism to lead to if not to acts of violence?” In addition to his obvious pride in Judaism and his dire predictions about German anti- Semitism, Schoenberg is also making another, equally important point. The often-quoted statement comes immediately after a paragraph describing Bolshevism: Trotsky and Lenin spilt rivers of blood (which, by the way, no revolution in the history of the world could ever avoid doing!), in order to turn a theory—false, it goes without saying (but which, like those of the philanthropists who brought about previous revolutions, was well meant)--into reality. It is a thing to be cursed and a thing that shall be punished, for he who sets his hand to such things must not make mistakes! But will people be better and happier if now, with the same fanaticism and just such streams of blood, other, though antagonistic, theories, which are nevertheless no more right (for they are of course all false, and only our belief endows them, from one instance to the next, with the shimmer of truth that suffices to delude us), are turned into reality? But what is anti-Semitism to lead to if not to acts of violence?... 92 In predicting the violence that fanatical anti-Semitism would engender, Schoenberg was also stating that Nazism was no different than the Bolshevism it claimed to abhor. When he claimed five years later in his 1928 essay that he had nothing to do with “politics,” he likely intended it to mean that he shared equal disdain for the two most widely discussed and debated political ideologies during the late Weimar Republic period—Nazism and Communism. 91 Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 91. 92 Ibid., 92-93 64 In the late 1940s, Schoenberg again addressed the questions of politics in his music. In his 1947 essay “Is It Fair?” he argued against critics who “pretend” that either the inherent equality of notes in twelve-tone rows represented democracy or the strict adherence to basic sets reflected totalitarianism. “Whether this concept [serialism] is an advantage or a handicap to the composer or to the listener,” he noted, “certainly it has nothing in common with ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,’ neither with the Bolshevik, fascist, nor any other totalitarian brand.” 93 In the last full year of his life, Schoenberg declared that he, “as only a naturalized citizen, had no right to participate in the politics of the natives. In other words, I had to stand by and to be still. This, I have always considered to be the rule of my life.” 94 Though he admitted having firmly supported the monarchy prior to World War I and having subsequently wished for its restoration, he had been “only a quiet believer,” and claimed, “I was much too busy with my own development as a composer, and, I am sure, I could never have acquired the technical and aesthetic power I developed had I spent any space of time to politics. I never made speeches, nor propaganda, nor did I try to convert people.” 95 Puzzlingly, Schoenberg made no mention of the numerous pre-war speeches he had given on the Jewish situation, his political engagement and writings, or his post-war essay on human rights. These statements cannot be divorced from the political contexts in which they were made. Schoenberg wrote them at a time of increasing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In an increasingly hostile political atmosphere, many artists and intellectuals found their careers threatened. Several German exiles felt compelled to leave America and return to Europe over their involvement with Communism, including Schoenberg’s personal acquaintance Thomas Mann, who would ultimately flee the United States for Switzerland in 1952. Following the rapid onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, Schoenberg may have become defensive in light of the political situation in 93 “Is It Fair?” (1947), 249. 94 “My Attitude towards Politics” (1950), 505-6. 95 Ibid. 65 America at the time. It can hardly be a coincidence that Schoenberg felt it necessary to end an important essay with the truthful statement, “I was never a communist.” 96 **** As the inventor of twelve-tone composition, it is striking that Schoenberg ended up writing religious choral music. It is possibly even stranger that a composer devoted to the ultimate in absolute music, and who vocally expressed vehement opposition to incorporating elements of folk music into art music compositions, should come to use music as a vehicle for expressing ethnic identity. Yet this is precisely what ended up happening. As will be seen in the following chapters, Schoenberg used twelve- tone and serial-influenced choral music to articulate his shifting political, national, and ethnic allegiances to the Jewish people. Through the use of dodecaphony as well its interaction with surface parameters, Schoenberg made audible his pride, longing, and identification. 96 “My Attitude towards Politics,” 506. 66 Chapter 2 Composing Liturgy: Kol Nidre and the Case for Jewish Pride In 1937, Schoenberg was approached by Jacob Sonderling, the German-born rabbi of the Fairfax Temple in Los Angeles, for a commission to compose a musical setting of the Kol Nidre, one of the central Jewish rituals for Yom Kippur. Having studied art, philosophy, history, and aesthetics at the Universities of Vienna and Breslau, Sonderling had long maintained an interest in the connections between Judaism and modernity. 1 Sonderling provided his own version of the Kol Nidre text, which Schoenberg then heavily modified. 2 Instead of monetary compensation, Schoenberg requested that Sonderling supply affidavits of support in an attempt to help other Jews escape from Germany. 3 Although Schoenberg and Sonderling intended the work for actual liturgical use, it received its premiere at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel, just off of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Its performance outside of Sonderling’s synagogue was ostensibly due to logistical concerns about the size of the sanctuary in Fairfax Temple being unable to accommodate the musicians and congregation. 4 While Schoenberg hoped that the work would be used in both religious and concert settings, it has not been generally accepted for use by Reform synagogues. For instance, Lazare Saminsky, the music director at the time of the largest Reform synagogue in New York, found the work “troublesome” and “too far from the standard version of even the Reform synagogue” for his approval. 5 Although the work did not meet with the official religious approval that Schoenberg sought, his setting, especially with his alterations, does much to dispel anti-Semitic notions. At the same time, the work’s musical style, language, and particularly Schoenberg’s adaptation of the traditional melodic 1 Steven Cahn, “Kol Nidre Op. 39,“ 50, in Arnold Schonberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. 2, ed. Gerold Gruber (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2002), 49-66. 2 Throughout this chapter, I use the convention that Kol Nidre in Roman type refers to the religious ritual or its melody, while Kol Nidre in italic type will refer to Schoenberg’s composition. 3 Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 100. 4 Ibid., 102. 5 Ibid, 103. 67 components, do much to fight negative stereotypes of Jewish music and foster a sense of pride among American Jews. Thus while on the surface it appears to be a religious work, Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre has political connotations that are at least as significant as its liturgical ones. Given that according to private accounts he was not particularly devout or observant in his Judaism yet during the previous decade had maintained an intense Jewish political engagement, these political connotations take on an added significance. As this chapter will show, by fighting anti-Semitism and promoting Jewish pride, in this work Schoenberg began using music as a means of expressing and propagating his Jewish nationalism. In all of Jewish liturgy, few passages approach the emotional, transcendent power of Kol Nidre. Traditionally sung by the cantor at the opening of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, it marks the beginning of the Day of Atonement. Reminding Jews around the world of transgression, mortality, and the need for repentance to their Creator, the fast day is the most solemn occasion of the Jewish yearly cycle. Written in Aramaic with some admixture of Hebrew, the Kol Nidre is a solemn legal declaration that it is permissible to pray with those who have sinned. It also declares that individuals are no longer responsible for vows they made to God which they were unable to fulfill. The traditional melody to which the Kol Nidre is chanted in Ashkenazic congregations is well known to Jews worldwide. Its haunting expression of pathos, humility, and tragedy makes it perhaps the most famous of all Jewish liturgical melodies. It is fitting that Schoenberg’s only completed work intended for actual liturgical use was a setting of this ritual. Throughout its history, the content of the Kol Nidre prayer has inspired anti-Semitic attitudes. Central to the controversy is its seeming declaration that all vows, oaths, and promises that will be made in the coming year are null and void. 6 Anti-Semites through the ages have used the Kol Nidre to accuse Jews of condoning duplicity and deceitful business practices. A common accusation was that because of this ritual, Jews’ words and promises could not be trusted. In fact, for generations rabbis have 6 Alternative versions of the Kol Nidrei text speak of those made in the previous year rather than the coming year. 68 repeatedly explained to their congregants and to non-Jews that the prayer refers only to vows individuals will make to God, not to other individuals. Moreover, the central focus of all five Yom Kippur prayer services is communal confession and praying for forgiveness. Some Jewish authorities have theorized that the vows to be absolved were originally understood to be those that had been taken under duress during times when Jews had been forced to convert to other religions. According to this view, the Kol Nidre enabled such individuals to maintain their status as Jews. However, In response to anti-Semitism, some American Reform congregations excised it from their services in 1894; other congregations kept the melody but set it to different words. A relatively small number of analyses of Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre have been published. Of these, two focus largely on Schoenberg’s use of traditional Jewish sources. Sam Weiss’s brief study details Schoenberg’s use of musical motives derived from differing versions of the traditional Kol Nidre melody. 7 Comparing Schoenberg’s score to notations of early versions of the Kol Nidre chant, Weiss traces Schoenberg’s use of musical motives from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany and Poland. He concludes that Schoenberg created a dense web of texture by weaving differing versions of the chant together into accompaniment figures. In a similar vein, Charles Heller traces the development of Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre. 8 After noting the composer’s use of six musical sources of the Kol Nidre chant, Heller devotes his study to an explication of the religious origins of the Kol Nidre ritual. The most detailed formal and harmonic analyses of Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre are those of Steven Cahn. 9 After providing background information on the nature and purpose of the Kol Nidre ritual and the Yom Kippur observance, Cahn gives a brief biographical sketch of Rabbi Sonderling. He proposes a 7 Sam Weiss, “The Cantus Firmus of Arnold Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre,” Journal of Synagogue Music 9, no. 2 (1979): 3- 9. 8 Charles Heller, “The Traditional Jewish Sources of Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre Op. 39,” Journal of Synagogue Music 24, no. 1 (1995): 39-47. 9 Cahn, “Kol Nidre Op. 39,“; Steven Cahn, “Kol Nidre in America,“ Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 4 (2002): 203-18. 69 threefold division of Schoenberg’s work: prelude (the kabbalistic legend), introduction (invocation of divine authority, the only section of the work with Hebrew text), and the Kol Nidre proper. Cahn also offers an examination of some of the piece’s musical symbolism, motivic construction, and harmonic procedures, leaving open the question of whether the work is tonal or atonal. 10 In “Kol Nidrei in America,” Cahn proposes that Schoenberg used a nested ternary formal structure of three-within-three-within-three. He divides the entire work into prelude, introduction, and Kol Nidre proper, which itself is divided into three repetitions, each of which contains three subsections. Cahn also analyzes Schoenberg’s combination of triadic harmonies with techniques derived from serialism. 11 Dieter Zahn’s insightful analysis highlights Schoenberg’s use of musical word painting, as well as his simultaneous reliance on a triadic framework despite his avoidance of traditional chord progressions. 12 Also significant is Hartmunt Krones’s analysis, which uses Kol Nidre to juxtapose Schoenberg’s modern harmonic procedures with his understanding of sixteenth-century modal counterpoint. 13 Several scholars have examined the political connotations of Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre; chief among these are Michael Mäckelmann and Hartmut Lück. 14 Mäckelmann and Lück both view Schoenberg’s work in light of the rising anti-Semitism facing the Jewish community in Germany. Lück argues that the work represents combined efforts at community building for Sonderling’s congregation, composed predominantly of refugees from Germany. Conversely, Mäckelmann views the work more directly in context of the rising tide of Nazi persecutions of Jews. In her recent study of the composer’s 10 Cahn, “Kol NidreI,” 60-66. 11 Cahn, “Kol Nidre in America,” 210-18. 12 Dieter Zahn, "Arnold Schönbergs Kol nidre op. 39: Eine Analyse,“ Musik und Kirche 57, no.2 (1987): 57-69. 13 Hartmunt Krones, “Schönberg und die alte Modalität,” Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 4 (2002): 136-58. 14 Michael Mäckelmann, “Ein Gebet für Israel, als die Synagogen brannten: Über Schönbergs Kol nidre, zum Gedenken an den Pogrom der Kristallnacht 1938,“ Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 149, no.11 (1988): 3-8; Hartmut Lück, “Arnold Schönbergs Kol Nidre: Ein Werk des antifaschistischen Widerstandes?“ Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 48, no. 3-4: 138-46. 70 American period, Sabine Feisst argues that Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre reflects his engagement with both his Jewish and German identities. 15 Building on these works, I argue that the work simultaneously fights anti-Semitism and fosters Jewish pride. Against Musical Anti-Semitism Before arriving in the United States, Schoenberg had faced instances of anti-Semitism directed at his music. Many of the harshest criticisms of him and his music had been tinged with racial elements. Some critics saw Schoenberg’s atonal music as anarchist, and equated what they perceived as its decadence with an attack by Jews on German culture. When he was appointed to teach at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in 1925, Alfred Heuss wrote of the danger that Schoenberg, as a Jew, posed to German musical culture. 16 Such attitudes display striking parallels with Wagner’s anti-Semitic essay “Das Judenthum in der Musik”; by the time of Schoenberg’s appointment in Berlin, Jewish musicians had long been attacked on such grounds. 17 Schoenberg discussed Wagner in several of his important essays and speeches, including in some of the earliest speeches he gave in the United States. On March 29, 1935, Schoenberg was invited to give a speech at a reception of Mailamm. Also known as the American Palestine Music Association, Mailamm was a New York-based organization of Jewish musicians and scholars devoted to promoting the music of Jewish composers. 18 In his speech, he discussed the problem of Wagnerian anti-Semitism: When we young Austrian-Jewish artists grew up, our self-esteem suffered very much from the pressure of certain circumstances. It was the time when Richard Wagner's work started its victorious career, and the success of his music and poems was followed by an infiltration of his Weltanschauung, of his philosophy. You were no true Wagnerian if you did not believe in his philosophy, in the ideas of Erlösung durch Liebe, salvation by 15 Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World, 100-103. 16 Alfred Heuss, “Arnold Schönberg—Prussian Teacher of Composition,” repr. and trans. In Alexander Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 224-26. 17 For an overview of musical anti-Semitism, see Ruth HaCohen, The Music Libel against the Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 18 David Schiller, Bloch, Schoenberg, Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 77-79. 71 love; you were not a true Wagnerian if you did not believe in Deutschtum, in Teutonism; and you could not be a true Wagnerian without being a follower of his anti-Semitic essay, Das Judentum in der Musik, 'Judaism in Music.' 19 However, Schoenberg mitigates the extremes of Wagner’s views, claiming that Wagner had merely “asked Jews to become true humans, which included the promise of having the same rights on German mental culture, the promise of being considered like true citizens.” According to Schoenberg’s reading, Wagner wished that Jews could be assimilated into German culture. It was only his later followers, in Schoenberg’s view, who claimed that there were inherent “racial differences” between Germans and Jews. 20 In spite of Schoenberg’s insistence on Wagner’s relative mildness, it is difficult to square Schoenberg’s perceptions of Wagner with the earlier composer’s own words. Wagner’s essay “Das Judenthum in der Musik” spoke of an “instinctual revulsion” that any “rational” German feels on encountering a Jewish person. Even more problematically, Wagner ascribed this to the Jews’ “very nature.” 21 To Wagner, Jewish influence was a pernicious threat to Germany. Jews were “constitutionally” incapable of feeling or expressing true emotions, not because of the current social circumstances they found themselves in but because of their fundamental nature. 22 By singling out Meyerbeer, an assimilated Jew, and Mendelssohn, who had been baptized as a child, Wagner was hardly giving Jewry a chance to come “out of the ghetto.” Although Wagner had been a complicated figure, expressed highly contradictory statements, and maintained close Jewish friends, his very thesis—at least in his most infamous essay—was that such assimilation was impossible. To Schoenberg, the problem lay not in Wagner’s ideas. Glossing over important themes in Wagner’s essay, Schoenberg viewed it as a somewhat irrelevant side-note in the composer’s career. 19 “Two Speeches on the Jewish Situation” (1935), SAI 502-3. 20 Ibid. 21 Richard Wagner, “Judaism in Music,” Richard Wagner Prose Works, vol. 3, trans. William Ashton Ellis. (publ. 1894), 79-100. 22 Ibid. 72 Only a single infamous, exaggerated, and misappropriated publication marred the brilliant career of Schoenberg’s Wagner, whose anti-Semitism had hardly possessed the vitriol as had been generally believed. While his calls for the assimilation of Jews had certainly been met with justified resistance from some elements of the Jewish community as a threat to their traditional way of life, Schoenberg’s Wagner at least appeared to have been well-meaning. He wished only that Jews would outgrow their perceived insularity and join in the greatness of German culture. It was solely in his followers that the true problems lay. Only die-hard fanatics insisted on a racial anti-Semitism, on a Judaism that was “incurable” even through assimilation and conversion. Only for these later “camp followers” who twisted and distorted his philosophies into ones of implacable hostility, and not for Schoenberg’s Wagner, was the precept of “once a Jew, always a Jew” valid. Schoenberg’s need to sanitize Wagner’s attitudes may have come from a variety of factors—his status as fellow artist, Schoenberg’s own unfailing respect for the German musical tradition, or a modernist tendency to glorify revolutionary artistic achievements. Schoenberg may have also been concerned that fighting against Wagner, one of the most prominent cultural figures of the nineteenth century, could make the Jews seem insular. At the same time, Schoenberg perhaps felt that by refraining from criticizing Wagner, Jews could be on the “correct” side of artistic debates between progressive and reactionary art. However, Schoenberg was likely driven to such a stance by his often-stated purpose not to fight against anti-Semitism but rather for Jewish pride. As he had put it in documents in support of his proposed Jewish Unity Party, “Nothing against anybody! Everything for the Jews!” 23 One of his central theses in his Four-Point Program was that the fight against anti-Semitism must be replaced with a program in support of Jewish pride. In the same Mailamm lecture he gave on Wagner and the Jewish 23 Schoenberg, “Jewish United Party Program” (1934), quoted in Peter Gradenwitz, “The Religious Works and Thought of Arnold Schoenberg,” 150. 73 situation, Schoenberg spoke about the importance of restoring Jewish self-esteem in the arts. He lamented the situation in which Jews, deprived of their racial self-confidence, doubted a Jew's creative capacity more than the Aryans did... They preferred to believe in Aryans and even in mediocre ones, so that, unfortunately, this lack of self-confidence led often to disdain of Jewish doings. 'He is only a Jew' (only!!), 'he cannot be of any importance.' And they turned toward non- Jewish celebrities. 24 Far more important to Schoenberg than the problem of anti-Semitism was the perceived lack of Jewish self-confidence. Several years later, he reiterated this position. Writing to the editors of a Jewish yearbook in London, Schoenberg selected four of his works for possible inclusion in the book. Reflecting disappointment that his music was not better appreciated by his fellow Jews, he noted that “According to my experience, Jews look at me rather from a racial standpoint than from an artistic. They accordingly give me a lower rating than they give to their Aryan idols… It is one of my greatest triumphs that I could create something that forces even Jews to look with a slight admiration upon another Jew.” 25 Although it is unclear exactly to which four works he was referring, Schoenberg nonetheless reveals that he had devoted considerable time and effort to using his music to help build Jewish solidarity. In spite of his somewhat bitter feelings and frustration, Schoenberg sought to use his position to provide Jews music in which they could feel pride. His setting of Kol Nidre in 1937 served this political purpose in addition to its strictly liturgical functions. Stereotyping and Lamenting in Music For much of recent history, Jewish music has been viewed by some in negative or stereotyped ways. One of the earliest descriptions of synagogue music in the modern era is that of Thomas Coryat, an English traveler. Writing in 1608, Coryat provided a largely negative account of synagogue music he encountered in Venice, describing it as 24 Schoenberg, “Two Speeches,” 504. 25 Schoenberg to the Editor of the Jewish Year Book, 28 March 1946, Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 238. 74 …an exceeding loud yaling, undecent roaring, and as it were a beastly bellowing of it forth. And that after such a confused and hudling manner, that I thinke the hearers can very hardly understand him: sometimes he cries out alone, and sometimes againe some others serving as it were his Clerkes hard without his seate, and within, do roare with him, but so that his voice (which he straineth so high as if he sung for a wager) drowneth all the rest. 26 In “Judaism in Music,” Richard Wagner laid out a claim for the dangerous influence of Judaism on the musical culture of Germany, and also contains another negative stereotype of synagogue music: Who has not had occasion to convince himself of the travesty of a divine service of song, presented in a real Folk-synagogue? Who has not been seized with a feeling of the greatest revulsion, of horror mingled with the absurd, at hearing that sense-and-sound- confounding gurgle, yodel and cackle, which no intentional caricature can make more repugnant than as offered here in full, in naïve seriousness? 27 Wagner’s scorn is by no means limited to traditional Jewish music. Describing the modernized music of Reform congregations, he claims that In latter days, indeed, the spirit of reform has shown its stir within this singing, too, by an attempted restoration of the older purity: but, of its very nature, what here has happened on the part of the higher, the reflective Jewish intellect, is just a fruitless effort from Above, which can never strike Below to such a point that the cultured Jew— who precisely for his art-needs seeks the genuine fount of Life amid the Folk— may be greeted by the mirror of his intellectual efforts in that fount itself. 28 For Wagner, Jewish music, no matter how assimilated, could never escape its folk origins and forever lay outside of the domain of true Art. There could be no hope for would-be Jewish composers. Other observations were more benign, though stereotyped. Moved by the Kol Nidre melody’s great expressive power, Lev Tolstoy noted that it “echoes the story of the great martyrdom of a grief- stricken nation.” 29 Similarly, Max Bruch, a Lutheran, also pointed out the melody’s sorrowful pathos. His famous setting of the Kol Nidre captured its eloquence and power. For the second theme, Bruch chose 26 Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities (London: Stansby, 1611), quoted in Joshua Jacobson, “Defending Salamone Rossi: The Transformation and Justification of Jewish Music in Renaissance Italy,” <http://ism.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Defending%20Salamone%20Rossi.pdf>, accessed November 21, 2014. 27 Wagner, “Judaism in Music,” 90-91. 28 Ibid. 29 Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future: The Ecology of Hope and the Restoration of Family, Community, and Faith (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 162. 75 the song “O Weep for Those That Wept on Babel's Stream.” Bruch’s choice of this melancholic lament for the destruction of Jerusalem amplifies the mournful quality of the Kol Nidre melody. While sympathetic, Tolstoy and Bruch both reflect a stereotyped lachrymose view of Jewish music and culture. At times, Jews themselves have historically shared in and contributed to this lachrymose aesthetic. Although there had been a tradition of semi-polyphony and choral singing in some particularly wealthy congregations throughout Western Europe, the vast majority of Jewish synagogue music had been monophonic. 30 When he opposed early seventeenth-century works by Salamone Rossi composed in the musical style of the Italian Renaissance, Rabbi Moses Coimbran of Ferrara issued a proclamation against polyphonic Jewish hymns. Denouncing polyphony and other “modern” musical innovations in the synagogue, Coimbran decreed that polyphonic music was unlawful under Jewish customs and traditions, because “rejoicing is prohibited, and song is prohibited, and praises according to the aforementioned science of song [the art of polyphony] are prohibited ever since the Temple was destroyed.” 31 Due to the destruction of the Temple more than one and a half thousand years earlier, any semblance of celebration was prohibited to Jews. While other rabbis found religious justification for polyphony and several of the most affluent Jewish communities even had cantatas commissioned for them, the majority of Jewish liturgical music remained traditional monophonic chant, filled with symbolic mourning over the destruction of Jewish religious and national sovereignty. 32 30 For a summary of Jewish polyphonic singing in the Middle Ages and its gradual evolution to choral forms, see Emanuel Rubin and John Baron, Music in Jewish History and Culture (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2006), 139-40. 31 Don Harrán, Three Early Modern Hebrew Scholars on the Mysteries of Song (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2015), 132. 32 For a summary of religious works commissioned by Jewish communities, including efforts by the Viennese Jewish community to receive a cantata by Beethoven, see Rubin and Baron, Music in Jewish History, 159-60. 76 Not All Vows Are Null and Void From the start, Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre reflected a firm commitment to the Jewish cause; his text does much to address anti-Semitic tropes. Writing in English, Schoenberg altered and amended the traditional prayer texts. Schoenberg’s contributions deliberately emphasized that the Kol Nidre does not condone dishonesty. Although he had written previously about the futility of trying to fight against anti-Semitism, the text of his Kol Nidre appears to do exactly that. In addition to addressing anti-Semites themselves, Schoenberg also used his text to restore a sense of pride among his fellow Jews. Schoenberg himself mentioned his responsibility for many of the text’s alterations. In a letter to Paul Dessau, he noted that the text had been amended “at my request” 33 ; four years later he told Kurt List that the text had been changed “according to my concepts.” 34 However, these alterations were one of the factors that prevented the work from being approved for actual liturgical use. The piece is in two main sections: an introduction (itself divided into two parts) for speaker— representing the rabbi, written in Sprächstimme-notation—and the Kol Nidre proper for chorus. The work’s textual introduction, presented by the speaker in the piece’s first main section, places the Kol Nidre in context. The introduction, originally written by Sonderling and edited by Schoenberg, identifies a Kabbalistic legend, which relates that when God initially created the world, He created a light and smashed it into small pieces. According to the legend, these tiny sparks are hidden throughout the world, but are only visible to some. Schoenberg’s text declares that “The self-glorious, who walks arrogantly upright, will never perceive one, but the meek and modest, eyes downcast, he sees it.” 35 Only 33 Schoenberg to Paul Dessau, 22 November 1941, <http://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/joomla-license-sp- 1943310036/kol-nidre-op-39-1938>, accessed June 14, 2015. 34 Schoenberg to Kurt List, September 1945 (?), <http://www.schoenberg.at/letters/search_show_letter.php?ID_Number=4185>; Schoenberg accidentally dated his letter “September 0, 1845.” 35 Schoenberg, Kol Nidre, mm. 40-44. 77 those who embrace humility can appreciate the Divine truth. Within the first few measures of spoken dialogue is a direct repudiation of anti-Semitic notions of “haughty,” “arrogant” Jews. 36 In the second section of the textual introduction, Schoenberg addresses the anti-Semitic trope of Jewish dishonesty. He does this by expanding and qualifying the traditional opening to the Yom Kippur evening prayer service, immediately preceding the Kol Nidre prayer. While the traditional version decrees that it is legally permissible to pray with sinners, in Schoenberg’s version the language is broadened. Rather than generic sinners, Schoenberg proclaims that this holds for “every transgressor, be it that he was unfaithful to Our People because of fear, or misled by false doctrines of any kind.” Schoenberg included notions of fear and “false doctrines” as references to the idea that the origins of Kol Nidre had been in fifteenth-century Spain, where many Jews had been forced to convert to Christianity. According to this view, the vows that Kol Nidre annulled were not ordinary vows but ones professing allegiance to other religions. In a 1941 letter to Paul Dessau, as well as in the undated manuscript and other sources, Schoenberg repeatedly emphasized this point. In his letter to Dessau, he wrote that From the very first moment I was convinced (as later proved correct, when I read that the Kol Nidre originated in Spain) that it merely meant that all who had either voluntarily or under pressure made believe to accept the Christian faith (and who were therefore to be excluded from the Jewish community) might, on this Day of Atonement, be reconciled with their God, and that all oaths (vows) were to be cancelled. 37 36 Numerous nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New Testament commentaries refer to Jews in this way. For example, one popular commentary describes how Paul, while speaking to Jews in Rome, “addresses these haughty Jews by the name they so persistently, even in exile and humiliation, arrogated to themselves, the people…”; Epistles of Paul (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1880), 572-73. Another nineteenth-century commentary noted that John the Baptist demanded of “haughty Jews” how their strict adherence to tradition prepared for repentance and salvation; Hilkiah Bedford Hall, John Baptist; Being a Course of Advent Lectures (London: Bell & Daldy, 1863), 49. In the twentieth century, one commentator asks, “Now my reader, what explanation can possibly account for such benign statutes? ― statutes which were repeatedly flouted by Israel! Who was it that originated and inculcated such unselfish tenderness? Who taught the haughty Jews to return good for evil?” Arthur W. Pink, “The Doctrine of Revelation,” Studies in the Scripture 27, no. 1 (January 1948): 16. 37 Schoenberg, Letter to Paul Dessau, 22 November 1941, Arnold Schoenberg Center, <http://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/joomla-license-sp-1943310036/kol-nidre-op-39-1938>, accessed June 8, 2015. 78 The purpose of Kol Nidre, as Schoenberg repeatedly explained it, was not to encourage false vows, but to permit forced converts to return to their community and faith. To Schoenberg, having himself previously been a Protestant convert, the notion must have been particularly significant. The main text of Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre emphasizes these themes. After the original “All vows, and oaths, and promises,” Schoenberg added the line “wherewith we pledged ourselves counter to our inherited faith in God.” This added text clarifies the meaning, making it explicit that the Kol Nidre refers only to professions of religious faith, especially non-Jewish ones uttered under coercion. It emphatically does not condone breaking one’s word or deliberately engaging in dishonest behavior. Schoenberg follows this thread throughout his treatment of the prayer. In place of the traditional repudiation of all vows “that will be taken from this Yom Kippur until the Yom Kippur to come,” Schoenberg declares that “we shall strive from this day of atonement till the next to avoid such and similar obligations.” While the wording of the original prayer might provide some room for ambiguous interpretation, Schoenberg’s version is quite clear. In a similar vein, in the repetition of the prayer Schoenberg’s version has “Whatever binds us to falsehood may be absolved, released, annulled, made void and of no power.” This alteration again reflects the theme that the prayer only refers to religious vows, not secular ones. Near the end, Schoenberg substitutes “all such vows” in place of “all vows,” further underscoring this point. The work closes with the words “We repent.” The theme of repentance is the most important subject of the entire Yom Kippur holiday and appears throughout all five prayer services for the day. Anti-Semites have historically overlooked this theme entirely, focusing only on the Kol Nidre. By placing the theme of repentance at such a prominent position inside his Kol Nidre, Schoenberg acted to repudiate anti-Semitic arguments. 79 Kol Nidre and Musical Pride Schoenberg’s setting of Kol Nidre draws from and comments on earlier traditional settings of the melody. While the precise origins of the traditional Ashkenazic Kol Nidre melody are lost to history, several versions have been noted. The earliest extant documented version of the Kol Nidre melody dates to 1765. 38 Published in a collection of Jewish liturgical melodies, it was notated by Ahron Beer, a cantor in Berlin. 39 Other versions date to the nineteenth century, including those of Samuel Naumbourg (1840, published 1874) and Louis Lewandowski (1871), the latter a popular composer and arranger of synagogue music. 40 Lewandowski’s version was the most influential, becoming the basis of Kol Nidre melodies in use in many Jewish congregations throughout Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 41 These versions and others differ considerably from one another in detail, ornamentation, and structure, yet all share the same basic set of melodic cells. In his setting of the Kol Nidre, Schoenberg drew on these traditional Ashkenazic melodies. He followed the source melody quite closely, utilizing many of its melodic cells (Figure 2.1). Like the traditional chants, Schoenberg’s version can be divided into distinct sections separated by cadential formulae—Schoenberg’s in two, the source versions in three. For the first section, Schoenberg’s version uses motives 1 and 3 from the chant’s opening section (labeled A1 and A3 in the chart). In his second section, Schoenberg uses the opening motives of the source melody’s second and third sections (labeled B1 and C1), followed by a closing gesture (C2). Between these, Schoenberg intersperses variation, development, and original material. Schoenberg follows the same pattern in the choral repetition of the Kol Nidre (measures 94 to 130). However, in the repetition, Schoenberg omits the C2 motive. In preparing the work, Schoenberg compared different versions of the music. In his notes, he listed six sources: Weintraub, Kornitzer, Keller, Schorr, Rinder, and Mark. He describes Weintraub as 38 Avraham Zvi Idelsohn, “The Kol Nidre Tune,” Hebrew Union College Annual 8-9 (1931-32): 493-509. 39 Ibid., 498. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 80 “gut” and “traditionell.” He seems particularly enthusiastic about the version by Kornitzer, also labeling it as “gut,” while he finds that the Keller has good use of the traditional forms but poor harmonization. He notes that Schorr’s is a more traditional version, and was far less enthusiastic about the version by Mark, labeling it as “schlecht.” In his musical sketches, Schoenberg lists four of these sources, labeling them Kornitzer (1), Schorr (2), Rörinder (3), and Keller (4). On the beginning page of his sketch, he lists ten melodic cells of the Kol Nidre chant, labeling them (a) through (j). For each melodic cell, he Figure 2.1 ：Schoenberg, Kol Nidre, mm. 58-93, musical motives. 81 compares how it appears in the sources, noting similarities and differences in the distinct source versions. Figure 2.2: Schoenberg's notes for Kol Nidre, p. 3. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 82 Although Schoenberg was committed to twelve-tone atonality, his close adherence to these Figure 2.3: Early sketch for Kol Nidre, p. 1. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 83 traditional sources precluded the use of strict dodecaphony. Simply put, the traditional melodic cells comprising the Kol Nidre chant are incompatible with a fully twelve-tone treatment; had Schoenberg `written this as a dodecaphonic piece, they would have been rendered unrecognizable. Instead, he wrote the piece ostensibly in G minor. While Schoenberg followed his models quite closely, he altered a key feature. One of the most prominent features of the Kol Nidre melody is its appoggiaturas in the opening phrase. Although the melody appears in many widely varying versions, nearly all feature prominent appoggiaturas in the opening phrase. Traditionally associated with expressions of sorrow in Western musical tradition, the abundance of appoggiaturas in the traditional Kol Nidre chant imparts it with the mournful quality noticed by Jews and outside observers alike. In Schoenberg’s version, however, this feature is notably absent (Example 2.1a-d). Schoenberg’s version emphasizes downbeats for a squarer, more resolute affect, with far fewer of the mournful “sighing” gestures. This musical treatment is part of a deliberate effort to create a musical setting of the Kol Nidre with Jewish pride replacing stereotypically lament. 84 Schoenberg’s setting features thick orchestration, many instrumental doublings, and a rich texture throughout. Brass instruments play a prominent role, especially at the enormous climax from Figure 2.3 (cont'd). 85 measures 159 to 169. Large sections are scored tutti, and the work prominently features instrumental chorales to complement the vocal parts. All of these features suggest a sense of pride, far removed from the mournful qualities of both the original versions and other composers’ settings. In an undated manuscript, Schoenberg described his composition, noting that the traditional Kol Nidre “suffers from monotony and sentimentality” which was heightened “by the cheap embellishments and ornamentations added by the singers (chasans [cantors]???)” Schoenberg also noticed what he perceived as the source melodies’ lack of formal direction. In contrast to these qualities, Schoenberg theorizes that the music in its original form and to its original hearers had “expressed dignity, seriousness, solemnity and awe.” 42 Schoenberg sought to improve upon the musical repertory available to Jewish congregations, and created a modernized version of the Kol Nidre that expressed the positive, prideful experience of his Jewish identity. Seeking both concert and liturgical use for the work, he used music to inspire his fellow Jews to feel pride in their religious and national heritage. 42 Schoenberg, “To Kol Nidrey” (sic), Schönberg Center, <http://www.schoenberg.at/writings/edit_view/transcription_view.php?id=1296&word_list=kol%20nidre>, accessed June 2, 2015. 86 Example 2.1a: 1765 Kol Nidre, incipit. Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, “The Kol Nidre Tune,” Hebrew Union College Annual, vols. 8 and 9 (1931 and 1932), pp. 493-509. Example 2.1b: 1840 Kol Nidre, incipit. Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, “The Kol Nidre Tune,” Hebrew Union College Annual, vols. 8 and 9 (1931 and 1932), pp. 493-509. Example 2.1c: 1871 Kol Nidre, incipit. Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, “The Kol Nidre Tune,” Hebrew Union College Annual, vols. 8 and 9 (1931 and 1932), pp. 493-509. Example 2.1d: Schoenberg Kol Nidre, mm. 58-63, flutes 1-2. 87 Musical Nationalism The musical procedures Schoenberg employs in Kol Nidre—particularly its structural complexity—reflect a sense of nationalist pride in the composer’s Jewish heritage. A decade earlier, during the 1920s, Schoenberg’s primary conceptions of patriotism had been musical in nature. In his essays from this time, he had made it clear that the greatness of nations was directly related to the greatness of their musical cultures. Schoenberg may well have intended his radio talks, published essays, lectures, and especially his compositions as a kind of cultural nation-building. Schoenberg had used a variety of means to promote German musical culture as status symbols for Austria and Germany. He would continue to do so after he left Europe, although he no longer directed his efforts towards those two nations. Instead, he sought to use his music to foster a sense of pride among Jews in the late 1930s. After his arrival in the United States, Schoenberg used public media to explain his notions of the musical tradition and his own place within it—continuing and intensifying similar work he had done in Europe. In general, his musical essays from this period are simplified, expository, and less polemic, and the style of some of his musical compositions from this period changed in similar ways. For the first time, the composer who had devoted himself so whole-heartedly towards the cause of evolution in music—who had viewed his “pantonality” and his “method of composition with the twelve tones related only to one another” as the inevitable outgrowth of centuries of German musical tradition—began to write triadic music with key signatures. As he had previously pointed out, in 1926, modern tonal composers have a very important role—to prepare audiences for musical progress. Schoenberg continued along this line in 1934. Speaking of his Suite for String Orchestra, he explained that … the fight against this awful conservatism has to start here. This piece will become a veritable teaching example of the progress that can be made within tonality, if one is really a musician and knows one's craft: a real preparation, in matters not only of harmony but of melody, counterpoint and technique. A stout blow I am sure, in the fight against the cowardly and unproductive. 43 43 Schoenberg, “Circular to My Friends on My Sixtieth Birthday” (1934), SAI 29. 88 Schoenberg made it clear that he wished to use tonal music—pieces that contain the essence of his musical ideas, albeit in a more accessible style—to improve musical conditions, help to overcome “awful conservatism,” and allow broader audiences understand progressive music. Ultimately, he sought to use music to produce social change, building a society that could be capable of understanding the most advanced atonal music. Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre—a work on Jewish liturgical matters and intended for Jewish audiences—is a fitting musical tribute to Jewish culture. Although not a serial work, it uses a number of his progressive, serial-like procedures. Specifically, Schoenberg’s treatment of highly interrelated motives represents his view of a sophisticated musical culture befitting of the Jewish people. Schoenberg employs four principal motives (Example 2.2a-d). The primary motive (015), what I have here termed the “Kol Nidre” motive, is taken directly from the beginning phrase of the Kol Nidre chant. A second motive, which I have labeled the “harmonic” motive, is a pair of descending second-inversion triads with an added half step. A third motive, which I term the “light” motive, is a series of minor seconds. The final motive, which I call the “chromatic” motive, is a highly chromatic melodic fragment, initially presented as a fully chromatic quasi-serial melody. In composing Kol Nidre, Schoenberg used three important quasi-serial procedures. First, he frequently employed inversions. The inversion of the Kol Nidre motive plays a prominent role throughout the work. In an especially conspicuous example, in measures 38 to 41 the harmonic motive in the cellos alternates with its own inversion in the clarinets (Example 2.3). Schoenberg’s second important procedure in this work is the principle of interrelatedness of motives: all four primary motives of the work are organically related to one another. For example, the chromatic motive contains two instances of the Kol Nidre motive—one each in prime and inverted form (Example 2.4). After the opening statement of the motive, it is extended through the insertion of Kol Nidre motives and their inversions until reaching all twelve tones of the aggregate (Example 2.5). Moreover, the harmonic 89 motive is derived from an extension of the bass line of Schoenberg’s initial harmonization of the Kol Nidre motive (Example 2.6). Finally, the chromatic motive extension is an outgrowth of the Kol Nidre motive, filling in the perfect fourth with additional half steps. The most significant of Schoenberg’s quasi-serial compositional techniques is the saturation of melody and harmony with motivic material. As in his atonal and serial compositions, Schoenberg uses Example 2.2b: “Harmonic” motive. Example 1.2a: “Kol Nidre” motive. Example 2.2c: "Light" motive. Example 2.2d: Chromatic motive. 90 the primary motivic ideas in Kol Nidre to permeate the texture at all levels. While vertical sonorities are predominantly triadic, Schoenberg builds complex textures out of the motives. Throughout the work, background figures are derived from the work’s primary melodic ideas. Several examples of this idea are noteworthy, such as in measures 27 to 29 (Example 2.7), where the harmonic motive appears in its primary melodic form as the principal melody in the bass clarinet (marked “Hauptstimme”). The Hauptstimme is complemented by the Kol Nidre motive, transformed into an accompaniment figure, in the flutes and bassoons. Another more prominent example occurs at the opening of the Kol Nidre proper, while the speaker recites the formula accompanied by a full statement of the melody in the woodwinds. At the same time, the string section accompanies the Kol Nidre melody with a figure directly derived from the chromatic motive. Example 2.3: Arnold Schoenberg, Kol Nidre, mm. 38-41, clarinet and cello. (Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers). Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. Example 2.4: chromatic motive with embedded Kol Nidre motives. 91 Another intriguing example of motivic connection in Schoenberg’s composition is his treatment of the second part of the initial phrase. In the original Kol Nidre melody, after the primary motive and its retrograde (G–F-sharp–D–F-sharp–G), the melody rises by a perfect fifth to a half cadence (G–B-flat–G– D). Although the precise orderings of melodic cells varies significantly in the sources, this gesture is present in nearly all early notated versions of the melody. Schoenberg chose to omit the rising-fifth figure, instead substituting a gesture derived from the melody’s second phrase. Schoenberg consciously decided to replace a rising fifth, more distantly related to the primary motive, with a scalar melody outlining a rising fourth (Examples 2.8a-c). Schoenberg’s insertion is more closely related to the initial Kol Nidre motive; moreover, he repeats this gesture and intensifies its rhythm. By substituting the original form with this gesture and through its intensified repetition, Schoenberg deliberately highlights and augments the melody’s internal motivic consistency. Schoenberg was deliberately calling attention Example 2.5: chromatic motive extension, mm. 15-20, violins. Arnold Schoenberg, Kol Nidre, Op. 39. (Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers). Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 92 to what he considered to be one of the most important elements of artistic genius. **** In his writings from the 1920s and 1930s, Schoenberg had equated musical greatness with national glory—both implicitly and explicitly. An important theme permeating many of his essays from the period is the theme of advanced compositional technique representing the cultural refinement and intrinsic intelligence of a society that could produce such works. Though he had explicitly linked serial techniques with the country from which he had fled and that threatened the lives of his relatives and friends, he continued to use them. While many other composers under similar circumstances changed Example 2.6: Arnold Schoenberg, Kol Nidre, Op. 39, mm. 1-3, strings (Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers). Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 93 their musical styles and techniques in dramatic ways during times of profound personal and political change (including Copland, Stravinsky, Křenek, and others), Schoenberg never did. As a proud Jew, he used what he considered his most sophisticated musical techniques to highlight and augment Jewish cultural preeminence. Their use in a work specifically for Jewish audiences demonstrates a desire to contribute to Jewish greatness. Schoenberg drew attention to Jewish musical pride by emphasizing the original source melody’s motivic interconnection, and presented his case in a hybrid tonal-serial work that its audience would be more likely to understand and appreciate. An apt answer to anti-Semitic tropes and stereotypes about Jewish music, Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre stands as a fitting tribute to Jewish pride at a time when the Jewish people faced profound threat. Example 2.7: Arnold Schoenberg, Kol Nidre, Op. 39, Mm. 27-29, woodwinds and low strings (Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers). Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 94 Example 2.8a 1840 Kol Nidre initial phrase. Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, “The Kol Nidre Tune,” Hebrew Union College Annual, vols. 8 and 9 (1931 and 1932), pp. 493-509. Example 2.8b: 1877 Kol Nidre initial phrases. Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, “The Kol Nidre Tune,” Hebrew Union College Annual, vols. 8 and 9 (1931 and 1932), pp. 493-509. Example 2.8c: Schoenberg, Kol Nidre, mm. 58-67, oboe 95 Chapter 3 A Survivor from Warsaw: Jewish Advocacy, Imagined Communities, and Long-distance Nationalism Ten years after his collaboration with Rabbi Sonderling, Schoenberg composed A Survivor from Warsaw Op. 46 in 1947 with the intention of using music as a visceral experience—as this chapter will demonstrate. Unlike in the case of Kol Nidre, the majority of A Survivor from Warsaw’s intended audience was not Jewish. As a work of political art, Survivor reflects Schoenberg’s desire to influence this non-Jewish audience. In it, Schoenberg used music as a means of portraying the horrors that the Jewish people had experienced during the Holocaust, along with their bravery in the face of oblivion. By viscerally conveying moral courage in the face of suffering, Schoenberg sought to portray Jews as heroes and to help gain international sympathy for the plight of the Jewish people. Through A Survivor from Warsaw, Schoenberg aimed to accomplish in music what he had promised to Webern yet failed to achieve through politics: “a long tour of America, which could perhaps turn into a world tour, to persuade people to help the Jews of Germany” 1 —a community uprooted and devastated by persecution. At the same time, as this chapter will show, Survivor helped to build pride and foster a sense of national identity among Jewish listeners, allowing for the construction of what Benedict Anderson terms an “imagined community” of group solidarity. 2 The work represents a continuation of the composer’s nationalist conception of Jewish identity. The inspiration for A Survivor from Warsaw originally came from Corinne Chochem. A Russian- born dancer based in New York who had long maintained an interest in Jewish music and art, Chochem had worked with Vox Records to produce two anthologies of Jewish music, including one in 1947 with 1 Schoenberg to Webern, 4 August 1933, quoted in Alexander Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 116. 2 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 96 contributions by Darius Milhaud, Hanns Eisler, Ernst Toch, and Leonard Bernstein. 3 At the urging of Toch, Chochem suggested in 1947 that Schoenberg write a composition. Her original idea was for an arrangement of Sog Nit Kejnmol, As Du Gejsst Dem Leztn Weg, a resistance song from the Vilna Ghetto composed by the Lithuanian Jewish poet Hirsh Glick. 4 According to a letter from Schoenberg to her, she had also provided him with the work’s central image of a group of condemned Jews beginning to sing before being killed. 5 Schoenberg accepted the commission but asked for a $1000 fee, well above Chochem’s budget for her Vox anthology. Although she was forced for financial reasons to withdraw her commission, Schoenberg nevertheless continued to work on the piece. Later in 1947, it was re- commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and thus was intimately connected to the Boston Symphony Orchestra; however, its premiere was in New Mexico, performed by the Albuquerque Civic Orchestra, led by Kurt Frederick. 6 Although the Koussevitzky commission fell through for unknown reasons, the Austrian-born Frederick, a member of the Kolisch Quartet, had long maintained an interest in modern music and had performed Schoenberg’s music in Europe. After settling in New Mexico, Frederick continued to champion Schoenberg’s music, and decided to program the newly composed work in a concert for which he originally intended to use Pierrot Lunaire. 7 Instead of a monetary payment, Schoenberg accepted fully copied part scores from Frederick. 8 The work was so strongly promoted by the local community that fourteen singers from the Estancia Community Chorus repeatedly traveled sixty miles to rehearse and perform the work with the orchestra in Albuquerque. 9 3 Therese Muxender, “A Survivor from Warsaw Op. 46,“ in Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. II, ed. Gerold Gruber (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2002), 132-33. 4 Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 105. 5 Schoenberg to Chochem, 20 April 1947, quoted in Ibid. 6 Michael Strasser,“’A Survivor from Warsaw’ as Personal Parable,” Music and Letters 76, no. 1(1995): 55. 7 Feisst, Schoenberg’s New world, 108. 8 Ibid., 162. 9 Ibid., 108. 97 Although this was a commissioned work, Schoenberg had a strong personal connection to his subject matter. Shortly before the outbreak of war, Schoenberg’s daughter Gertrud and son-in-law Felix Greissle fled Europe and settled in America. After their safe arrival in the United States, through the help of Schoenberg and others, 10 both related to him the daily incidents of humiliation and violence they had suffered in Vienna. 11 Moreover, Schoenberg’s son Georg was still in Europe. Schoenberg had asked his cousin Hans Nachod to give an affidavit and money to Georg before Nachod left Europe, but Georg was unable to make the rendezvous and Nachod was unable to locate him before himself fleeing. 12 Moreover, Schoenberg’s niece and her husband were shot to death by the Sturmabteilung in 1945 while attempting to flee with a group of refugees. 13 Art for Political Purposes Schoenberg had discussed the prospects of art as propaganda long before composing Survivor from Warsaw. 14 In 1925, he wrote to Albert Einstein, confiding that he was interested in “militant ways of forcing a solution of the Jewish question.” 15 At the time, his primary interest had been political, and he had not yet developed an interest in using music for this purpose. He categorically rejected “the discovery of a Jewish music” as a personal interest. 16 His attitude against using Jewish folk music 10 Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World, 66. 11 Camille Crittenden, “Texts and Contexts of A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46,” in Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Charlotte M. Cross and Russell A. Berman (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 234-38. 12 Ibid., 252, n. 22. See also Arnold Greissle-Schönberg, “Arnold Schönberg’s European Family,” <http://schoenbergseuropeanfamily.org/AS3_Pages/AS3_BookCont1b.html>. 13 Ibid., 238. 14 Schoenberg retrospectively cited in a 1934 letter to Stephen Wise, quoted in Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 153-54. 15 Ibid.. 16 Ibid. 98 reflected his scorn for “nationalistic” composers who integrated folk music into their concert works. However, even Schoenberg noted the “publicity-value” that promoting Jewish folk music could have. 17 During the 1920s, Schoenberg drafted the political drama Der biblische Weg, a nonmusical work intended to promote Jewish national pride and independence. In 1934 he contacted Rabbi Stephen Wise, describing his theories of political art: After this [writing to Einstein] and many another failure, I came up with the idea of writing a propaganda piece with the intent of restoring Jewish self-confidence to a level commensurate with that of this “stiff-necked” people in historical times when it consisted of fighters who prized national and religious independence over their own lives. I made several attempts to get one of the two pieces… “The Path of the Bible” (that is the path to freedom) published or performed, but I gave up when I began to feel that the selflessness of my intention was deliberately being misconstrued. 18 Schoenberg made his intensions clear: to use art as a political tool. This interest was not confined to nonmusical art; along with Der biblische Weg he also cited the opera Moses und Aron as a work aimed at promoting Jewish national self-assurance. 19 During the 1920s, Schoenberg developed his ideas of using music as propaganda, ideas that found their full fruition in 1947 with his composition of A Survivor from Warsaw. The Narration of Horror Schoenberg’s text for A Survivor from Warsaw is unique among texts for his vocal output. Written in three languages (English, German, and Hebrew), it viscerally conveys to audiences the horrors of the Holocaust. Specifically crafted to capture emotion and elicit sympathy, A Survivor from Warsaw is not about the massive scale of six million victims; instead, it is about the experiences of a single individual. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 154. 19 Ibid. 99 Moreover, the protagonist is not given a name. By virtue of his anonymity, he represents all of the victims—an Everyman to whom audience members can more easily relate. 20 The first section of text takes the form of a survivor’s testimony. It leaps back and forth through time, reflecting the manner of speech common to survivors of traumatic events. The speaker’s role is to narrate events to the audience. As he recollects what has happened to him, he is forced to relive the events, thrust back into the horrific experiences. As his shifting verb tenses make clear, his testimony is confused and fragmented, filled with broken, nightmarish imagery. The speaker begins in the present, explaining what happened: “I cannot remember ev’rything,” he begins in measure 12. When explaining the anxiety he felt for his family’s safety, he relates: “You had been separated from your children,” still in the present, recalling the past. Phrases such as “Then I heard,” “The next thing I knew,” “The day began as usual,” and “There I lay” all serve to highlight the testimonial quality of the text. The speaker’s use of tenses is unstable, shifting from present to past. Immediately after explaining his feelings of anxiety for his family, he is immediately interrupted as he begins to relive his experiences for the first time. After explaining “You don’t know what happened to them—how could you sleep?” he suddenly shifts to “Get out! The sergeant will be furious!” Suddenly he is no longer recollecting his experiences—in the past tense—but experiencing them again in the present tense. This idea is highlighted in the music: after a brief pause, the horns and trumpets interrupt with the so-called “fanfare” motive (Example 3.1). Hearing the trumpet call in his mind suddenly brings him out of the present moment and back into his past, forcing him out of the narrative and into the experiential. The fanfare motive, here making its first appearance since the speaker began his narration, interrupts his testimony, causing him to proclaim, “The trumpets again!” in measure 33. 20 Although the narrator is not specified by gender and is not notated in a pitch-precise way, Schoenberg notates the part in bass clef, and the narrator refers to a wife (possibly his own). For this reason, the remainder of the chapter will refer to the speaker using male pronouns. 100 After this stressful episode, the fanfare motive disappears in measure 35 as the speaker returns to the present time. As he remembers where he is, the fact that time has passed, and that he is now recollecting his experiences, he briefly returns to using the past tense. However, he immediately shifts back into using the present tense again: “They came out… They fear the sergeant. They hurry as much as they can!” (emphasis added). Once again, the narrator relives his experiences in vivid detail in the present tense: “Much too much noise; much too much commotion- and not fast enough! The Feldwebel shouts.” The narrator also shifts wildly back and forth in his memory of different times in the past. Immediately after beginning his narration, he begins with the end of his story, the singing of the Shema Yisrael, the Jewish declaration of faith. In the next measure, he speaks about living in the sewers of Warsaw, before he has even been taken captive. His next breath finds him captured and in a concentration camp, taking roll call. The narrator’s shifts through time and space depict the full range of his traumatic experiences. Schoenberg’s text serves to emphasize the subjective nature of the experience of trauma. At various points in his testimony, the narrator interjects phrases concerning memory and consciousness. “I Example 3.1: Arnold Schoenberg, A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46, mm. 32-33 (Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers, 1977). Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 101 cannot remember ev’rything,” he tells us in his opening statement in measure 12. Phrases such as “I remember only…” (measure 15) and “I have no recollection” (measure 22) further emphasize memory. Additionally, we observe the process of memory in action. When he began his narration, he informs us that he remembered “only the grandiose moment when they all started to sing…” After several moments, his memories return to him as he begins to recall how “the day began as usual.” After recalling the roll call, he recalls being hit and awakening. Moreover, “I must have been unconscious most of the time” in measure 13 and “I must have been unconscious” in measure 54 highlight the subjective experience of consciousness. Another emphasis of the text is physical and emotional pain. The narration is imbued with phrases such as “It was painful” (measure 44), “moaning and groaning” (measure 45) and “I had been hit very hard” (measure 46). Other phrases in measures 50 and 60 also emphasize pain. At various points, the narration is specifically crafted to elicit feelings of inclusion. Recalling the roll call in the barracks, the narrator shifts to the second person. Eliciting an emotional response, he makes his experience more concrete to his audience by including them in it: “Whether you slept or whether worries kept you awake the whole night… How could you sleep?” The precise wording of his recollection that “You had been separated from your children, from your wife, from your parents; you don’t know what happened to them” forces those listening to his testimony to imagine themselves having lost their own children, spouses, and parents. Moreover, the phrase “Hit everybody: young or old, quiet or nervous, guilty or innocent” implores the listener to include himself or herself in the universal description of the victims. 102 Horror in Music A Survivor from Warsaw is a semi-serial work, employing principles of both dodecaphonic and free atonal composition. It has a primary tone row, although this is not strictly adhered to and not even presented in its complete form until the second section of the piece. Salient musical features of its first hexachord include two minor seconds, a perfect fifth, and an augmented triad. The second hexachord contains a minor third, a major third, and a minor triad. The row form also contains a number of properties typical for Schoenberg’s serial works, as Therese Muxeneder points out. 21 Like many of his tone rows from his American period, it exhibits hexachordal combinatoriality at the P5 transposition level. Moreover, tones 3, 4, and 5 of the first hexachord are invariant at the T4 and T8 transposition levels. Schoenberg utilizes both of these properties throughout the work. In preparing the work, Schoenberg created a tone-row table (Figure 3.1). Although he begins this row table with the version beginning on B flat, in another sketch he clearly labels the version beginning on F sharp as the prime form and the transposition beginning on B flat as P 4 (he labels this as B+3, for transposition at the major third). In his table, Schoenberg notates each prime form with its hexachordal combinatorial variant. As a number of scholars have pointed out, Schoenberg makes extensive use of musical depiction in the work’s first half. Both Beat Föllmi and Schmidt identify predominant motives based on their emotional connotations. Schmidt identifies fanfare and trembling motives, particularly in the first half of the work. 22 In a similar vein, Föllmi also identifies pain, memory, and fear motives. 23 21 Therese Muxeneder, “A Survivor from Warsaw for Narrator, Men’s Chorus and Orchestra Op. 46,” <http://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/joomla-license-sp-1943310036/a-survivor-from-warsaw-op-46-1947>, accessed June 22, 2015. 22 Schmidt, “Schönbergs Kantata,” 180-82. 23 Föllmi, “I Cannot Remember Ev’rything,” 35-40. Example 3.2: Tone row, A Survivor from Warsaw. 103 Some of Schoenberg’s simpler examples of word painting involve physicality. For instance, in measure 21, the word “underground” is accompanied by a descending figure in the cellos. Similarly, the words “they came out” in measures 34 to 35 are accompanied by musical gestures reminiscent of footsteps. Later in the work, the prisoners’ counting “faster and faster” in measures 72 to 80 is accompanied by increasing motion in the woodwinds and strings parts. Beyond depictions of physical suffering, Schoenberg uses both music and silence to highlight emotional states. Before the text even begins, the music highlights the contrast between power and fear. In what Schiller describes as the work’s “framework of meaning,” 24 the piece begins with the fanfare motive, a figure used later in the work to signal the sergeant’s presence. Immediately after the fortissimo statement of this motive in measure 1, the violas and clarinets respond with the trembling motive, suggesting fear. This contrast appears at other points in the piece as well, for instance in measure 34 to accompany “the sergeant will be furious!” Early in his testimony, in measures 16 to 17, when the narrator recalls “the grandiose moment when they started to sing,” the music gets louder and thicker. In measure 53, the texture suddenly thins to a single held note in the second trombone, reflecting the speaker’s lapse into unconsciousness. Similarly, the sparse texture and pianissimo dynamics in measures 57 to 60 reflect the “fear and pain” the narrator describes. 24 Schiller, Assimilating Jewish Music, 104. 104 Throughout the first part of the work, Schoenberg uses tremolo patterns and repeated-note figures to depict fear. When the narrator describes the prisoners’ anxiety over the fate of loved ones and asks “how could you sleep?” in measure 30, he is accompanied by these figures in the oboe, bassoon, and violas. A similar figure accompanies the sergeant’s shouting and physical violence in measures 41 to 44. In addition to fear, Schoenberg uses music to depict pain. In measures 38 to 40, “much too much noise; much too much commotion” are accompanied by a frenzy of activity in the percussion instruments. This rhythmic activity suggests footsteps; more than that, they suggest hobbling, uneven footsteps reflecting an inability to walk due to physical suffering. In measures 44 to 46 Schoenberg accompanies “It was painful to hear them groaning and moaning” with “sighing” descending minor seconds in the oboes, clarinets, and violins. When the prisoners are beaten and the narrator falls unconscious, the woodwinds play a descending figure in measure 51, followed by a silence—prolonged Figure 3.1: Schoenberg's row table for A Survivor from Warsaw. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 105 by a fermata—in measure 53. The narrator’s semiconscious state is accompanied by music that alternates between silence and rhythmically inactive music in a pianissimo dynamic in measures 57 to 59. The deeply emotional musical style of the first half of A Survivor from reflects fear, violence, and brutality. Schoenberg builds on and exaggerates particularly dissonant features of the tone row in order to heighten the music’s emotional impact. Initially, Schoenberg presents the first hexachord of two combinatorial row forms: P 0 and I 5. However, the row forms are not strictly maintained. Instead, the harmonic implications of the row are more or less freely developed. Schoenberg places particular emphasis on the minor seconds in tones 1-2 and 5-6, treating these in a manner similar to that of his free atonal music. Major sevenths and minor ninths are used throughout the first part of the narration, and their expressions frequently “outgrow” their parent row. While the row only contains two instances of this interval class, Schoenberg frequently strings together three or more, particularly at key moments during the speaker’s testimony to emphasize horror and pain. While Schoenberg had long embraced the emancipation of dissonance, the contrast in musical style between the work’s two sections is striking. Moreover, he seems to go out of his way to use dissonant intervals to highlight textual expressions of pain and suffering, suggesting a use of dissonance for expressive ends. Throughout the first half of the work, Schoenberg emphasizes minor seconds, major sevenths, and minor ninths. The major seventh plays a particularly prominent role in the harmony, setting the stage by appearing as the first four vertical sonorities of the work: the E–D sharp in the first and second violins (measure 1), the D–C sharp in the bass (measure 1), the G–F sharp in the violas (measure 2), and the E–D sharp in the clarinet (measure 3). These figures are emphasized by tremolo figures, forte to fortissimo dynamics, and extreme ranges (Example 3.3). In measure 32, just as he 106 recollects hearing the trumpet call in the concentration camp, the entire string section violently echoes its major seventh. The figure is echoed again two measures later in the brass section. Finally, major sevenths are used along with minor seconds in measure 52 and 54, as the narrator describes being beaten and falling unconscious (Example 3.4). Minor seconds and minor ninths play an even more prominent role than major sevenths. The fanfare motive, one of the principal recurring musical ideas of the work, incorporates both (Example 3.5). The instrumental introduction concludes, in measure 11, with a figure emphasizing minor seconds (Example 3.6). Measures 27 to 28, during which the speaker recalls the anxiety of nights in the concentration camp, is accompanied by minor-second and minor-ninth figures in the violins (Example 3.7). Measures 43 to 46, describing the prisoners “moaning and groaning” while being hit, are accompanied by five minor-ninth figures (Example 3.8). The profusion of dissonances provides a Example 3.3: Mm. 1-3, woodwinds and strings, Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 107 psychologically jarring, painful experience for the listener. Indeed, Theodore Adorno spoke to the power of Schoenberg’s dissonant, atonal music to produce powerful emotional responses in listeners: Whereas in new music the surface alienates a public that is cut off from the production, its most distinctive phenomena arise from just those social and anthropological conditions that are those of its listeners. The dissonances that frighten them speak of their own situation; for this reason only are those dissonances intolerable to them. 25 25 Theodore Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 11-12. Example 3.4: Mm. 52-54, woodwinds, harp, and speaker. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. Example 3.5: fanfare motive Example 3.6: Mm. 11, violins. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 108 According to Adorno’s essay—republished in expanded form in 1949—in spite of many listeners’ claims that they could not understand Schoenberg’s dissonant, atonal music, they were in fact responding to its inherent expressive intent of fear, alienation, and violence. Other musical attributes add to the work’s harsh, grating quality in its first half. The music is dominated by short, choppy figures. Throughout the first half of the work, rhythms are jerky and uneven, with downbeats frequently deemphasized. Brief flourishes of rhythmic activity are frequently interrupted by pauses and silences. The few melodic lines that appear are quite short, rarely longer than one to two measures. The texture is predominated by pairings or groupings of instruments that operate largely independently from one another in rhythm and articulation, although mirroring or echoing each other from time to time. Moreover, Schoenberg frequently employs forte and fortissimo dynamics, interspersed with sudden shifts to piano or pianissimo. Measures 7 to 8 are typical of this: the cellos and basses play accented figures beginning in pianissimo, which suddenly erupt into fortissimo, equally suddenly shift back to pianissimo, and finally erupt again in fortissimo (Example 3.9). Finally, Schoenberg makes frequent use of string tremolos and flutter-tonguing in the wind instrument. When paired with Example 3.7: Mm. 27-28, violins. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 109 Example 3.8: Mm. 43-46. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 110 Example 3.8 (cont'd) 111 his text, these devices function as word painting, providing the audience with auditory manifestations of the physical and emotional sensations of fear, anxiety, and pain. Musical Pride The second section of the work (measures 80 to 99) is in an entirely different style from the first. At this point in the narration, the group of Jews condemned to the gas chambers suddenly bursts into singing the Shema, the Jewish declaration of faith. No longer paralyzed by fear or pain, in their last moments of life they defiantly proclaim their identity as Jews. Praying together before their extermination, they retain their humanity in the face of barbarism. Schoenberg depicts the prisoners’ transformation in musical terms. In place of gestures of horror and pain, the vocal line is filled with expressions of pride and defiance. In contrast to the paucity of melodic gestures in the first section, the second features a long, continuous line in the chorus. Moreover, this melody is in a distinctive style (Example 3.10). Rhythmically, it bears little resemblance to Example 3.9: Mm. 7-8, cello and bass. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. Example 3.10: Mm. 7-8, cello and bass. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 112 the awkward, ungainly rhythms of the first part. Instead of deemphasized downbeats and interspersed silences, the second section features simpler, straighter rhythms. The choir part includes long, sustained notes, often falling on downbeats. Moreover, Schoenberg emphasizes strong downbeats by using anacrusis figures. Even more significantly, the chorus’s melodic lines are highly consonant. Although it is a fully chromatic twelve-tone row, the melody prominently features perfect and imperfect consonances—fifths, sixths, and thirds. In its second measure it includes a falling fifth, from B to E, and a rising sixth, from E to C. It also includes a major third from C to A flat, expressed three times. Whereas the vertical sonorities in the first section of the work had emphasized minor seconds, the choral singing in the second section is far more consonant. At the beginning of the new section, the row is presented in complete form for the first time. Numerous authors comment on the conceptual differences between the two sections. To both Schmidt and Strasser, this difference represents the evolution of Schoenberg’s compositional career. For Schmidt, the first part of the work represents the composer’s free atonal period, while the second suggests the serialist phase of his output. Thus the second section to him represents a formalist outlook in contrast to the first section’s expressivity; this contrast is viewed as reflecting personal and societal conflict in the composer’s reconversion to Judaism. 26 By focusing on the formalist construction, Schmidt chooses not focus on the political context of the choir singing in unison. Similarly, Strasser views the full presentation of the tone row in conjunction with the setting of the Jewish declaration of faith as symbolic of Schoenberg’s spiritual view of creativity and serialism. 27 However, he also chooses not to elaborate on the row’s consonant qualities. 26 Schmidt, “Schönbergs Kantata,” 184-88. 27 Strasser, “Survivor from Warsaw as Personal Parable,” 62. 113 While the row is self-contained and its construction was presumably a precompositional choice, Charles Heller suggests that it reflects traditional Jewish melodies for the Shema Yisrael. 28 Specifically, he compares Schoenberg’s setting of the Shema with those of German cantor Abraham Baer and French cantor Samuel Naumbourg. Although Schoenberg’s version is fairly removed from these and they cannot be seen as direct models, the musical setting of the Shema in A Survivor in Warsaw retains many of the basic contours of its melody in traditional Jewish services. In contrast to the fragmentation in the piece’s first section, Schoenberg sets the row largely in complete statements in the second part. Schoenberg’s row is treated to four complete statements: P 4 (measures 80 to 86), I 9 (measures 86-89), P 8 (measures 90 to 92), and RI 1 (measures 92 to 95). The chorus ends with an extended statement of the first hexachord of I 0 (measures 95 to 97). The row forms are linked particularly smoothly. In measure 86, the E flat functions as a pivot, simultaneously the final tone of P 4 and the first tone of I 9. Similarly, measure 92 connects P 8 with RI 1; both of these row forms begin on D. At measure 95, F sharp, the first tone of I 0, is also the penultimate tone of the preceding row, RI 1. Measure 89 and the beginning of measure 90 are an anomaly. Set to the words “û-və-hol mə’o- de-ho” (“and with all your might”), this passage has only five tones and does not fit into any tone row form. It most closely resembles the first four tones of R 5, but with an extra D that does not fit in. Winifred Gruhn suggests that this measure may be a direct quotation of a traditional melodic fragment associated with the Shema. 29 In contrast, Heller argues that if Schoenberg wanted to use an authentic quotation, he would not have placed it in a seemingly ad hoc manner in the middle of the section. 30 In Schoenberg’s original sketch, this segment was accidentally omitted (Figure 3.2). Schoenberg could 28 Charles Heller, “Traditional Jewish Material in Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46,” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 3, no.1 (1979): 69-74. 29 Winifred Gruhn, “Zitat und Reihe in Schönbergs 'Ein Überlebender aus Warschau‘,“ Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie 5, no. 1 (1974): 32. 30 Heller, “Traditional Jewish Material,” 72. 114 certainly have fit the seven omitted syllables into a complete hexachord derived from the primary row, yet he chose not to. It is certainly possible that after he discovered the missing section of text, he decided to insert a musical quotation instead of a row fragment. In addition to utilizing row elisions, Schoenberg chose the particular row forms he did to highlight the role of the augmented triad constituted by tones 3, 4, and 5. This augmented triad is invariant in three out of the five row forms presented. A number of commenters have identified this triad as a “God” motive, including Schiller, Föllmi, and Schmidt. 31 One of Schoenberg’s early sketches for the work reveals that he was particularly interested in this figure. Immediately after the men’s chorus proclaims “Shema Jisroel,” Schoenberg worked out a lengthy harmonic sequence of alternating row forms (Figure 3.3). The process begins with P 8 (labeled B-6), followed by its inversion a perfect fifth down (labeled I). These two row forms share hexachordal combinatoriality, and contain augmented triads one half step apart. Schoenberg follows this with P 9 (labeled B+6), a row form that shares the same augmented triad as the previous row form. Schoenberg follows this procedure four successive times, and sketches a highly similar procedure for twelve iterations. Although he crossed out the last six iterations and ultimately chose not to use this particular harmonization at all in the finished work, he was clearly enchanted with the ramifications of the augmented triad suggested by his tone row. 31 Schiller, Assimilating Jewish Music, 104; Föllmi, “I Cannot Remember Ev’rything,” 38; Schmidt, “Schönbergs Kanata,” 182. Figure 3.2: Schoenberg, A Survivor from Warsaw, mm. 85-91, sketch. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 115 Throughout the second part of the work, the chorus is musically distinct from much of the orchestra. Although the trombone doubles the chorus (which sings in unison), the rest of the orchestra is entirely separate and has different musical characteristics. When the chorus first comes in with its many melodic consonances, the orchestra is still quite dissonant, with a profusion of minor seconds in many instruments, and does not present a complete statement of any row form. Unlike the chorus, the orchestra maintains the halting, unstable rhythmic quality from the opening. Moreover, the rhythms of the two forces seem to deliberately ignore one another, performing entirely independent figures. Furthermore, musical depictions of fear and pain—tremolo motives and sighing figures—are largely absent. This musical treatment of the Shema suggests pride—a particularly moral sort of pride in spiritually overcoming one’s own destruction. By ignoring the cruelty of their situation, represented by the orchestra, the condemned Jews seem to proclaim that they may be killed but they will never lose their humanity. Figure 3.3: Harmonic sketch. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 116 The work’s ending is particularly problematic, and scholars have disagreed over its interpretation. Feisst views it as a positive expression of optimism in the face of hostility. 32 To Schiller, the ending can be seen as simultaneously catastrophic and redemptive. 33 In spite of its depiction of the Jews’ moral defiance of their persecutors, the work appears to have a tragic conclusion. After four complete tone rows, Schoenberg chooses to end on an incomplete row statement. Along with the final row statement, the text of the Shema is cut off, suggesting the violent extinguishing of the chorus’s voices. This is followed by both trembling motives in the woodwinds and sighing figures in the violins, emphasized by the fortissimo dynamic. Moreover, the horns play the first three notes of the fanfare motive. Like the cut-off text and the unfinished row presentation, the incomplete statement of a previously indivisible motive seems to suggest the snuffing out of conscious perception of the external world at the moment of death. 34 The Musically Imagined Community While most audience members at the premiere of A Survivor from Warsaw were non-Jews, to Jewish audiences the work must have had a distinctive impact. Schoenberg himself acknowledged that a significant portion of his intended audience had been Jews. In a letter to Kurt List, he explained: Now, what the text of the Survivor means to me: it means at first a warning to all Jews, never to forget what has been done to us, never to forget that even people who did not do it themselves, agreed with them and many of them found it necessary to treat us this way. We should never forget this... 35 The piece’s powerful depiction of the central prayer of the Jewish faith, set in Hebrew, allows Jewish audience members to connect with the drama aurally unfolding on stage. Through its searing depiction 32 Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World, 105. 33 Schiller, Assimilating Jewish Music, 94. 34 Schoenberg’s use of music to depict the moment of death bears a striking resemblance to the final measures of the fourth movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. 35 Schoenberg to Kurt List, 1 November 1948, <http://www.schoenberg.at/letters/search_show_letter.php?ID_Number=4802>, accessed June 20, 2015. 117 of the violence that had been inflicted on the Jewish people as well as its heroic depiction of spiritual resistance, A Survivor from Warsaw provides for Jews what the social theorist Benedict Anderson has termed an “imagined community.” In his study of nationalism of the same name, Anderson takes a unique perspective on the development of nationhood. Rather than defining nations as geographically delineated political entities, he instead views them as “imagined communities” brought about by what he terms “print-capitalism.” To him, the nation itself is created in the minds of its citizens, who “will never know most of their fellow- members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” 36 In his view, this is made possible largely through journalism and literature. In his analysis, one of the indirect results—and unintended consequences—of the growing, widespread use of printed material beginning in the eighteenth century was to help cement nations. This was done by bridging mental gaps between distant locations. The fact that disparate individuals living in far-flung regions of a territory would read the same set of books and newspapers was the key factor that allowed them to conceptualize each other in ways they previously could not. People residing in different cities who had never met one another were able to feel that they have a connection to one another because print-capitalism provided “a world of plurals: shops, offices, carriages, kampongs, and gas lamps.” 37 The visual imagery in novels allows readers to imagine that the characters inhabit the same world as they do. By providing imaginary visual landscapes, novels make distant locations appear real. In Anderson’s view, these imagined links are precisely what allow people to form national bonds, as opposed to local ones with family, friends, and acquaintances. Nations, he argues, exist because their citizens imagine them into existence; this could not exist without print capitalism. 36 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991), 6. 37 Ibid., 32. 118 Even more significant in the propagation of national identity, Anderson notes, is the newspaper. Among their many functions, newspapers provide a regularly recurring connection to other individuals. On a daily basis, individual citizens read news stories that inform them of developments in far-off regions of their nations. Anderson notes that reading the same newspapers as their fellow citizens allows individuals to feel a connection with others they will never meet and have never seen. Moreover, unlike the fictitious worlds of novels, newspapers at least claim to represent objective truth, forging even stronger imaginary links with distant places and people. Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw serves similar functions through music. Its physical setting—at once specific (“the sewers of Warsaw”) and general (an unnamed concentration camp)— allows listeners to construct a wide-ranging community they can be a part of. Moreover, the work’s use of the Shema—a prayer known intimately by nearly all Jews—allows Jewish audiences to powerfully identify with the events depicted. In dramatizing fictionalized events that existed in his imagination, Schoenberg constructed a nationalist work that allowed its Jewish audience to imagine a Jewish community—and thus, create one. Written from American shores, Schoenberg’s attitude and conceptual aim for A Survivor from Warsaw constitute a prime example of long-distance nationalism, a worldwide social phenomenon closely related to the concept of diaspora. Throughout human history and particularly during the twentieth century, a great number of people have lived in countries other than where they were born. While people have migrated for a variety of reasons, they frequently brought some aspects of their original cultures with them. Many migrants retained some aspects of their original identities in their new homelands. Moreover, their descendants often retained remnants of these identities. In such diasporic communities with particularly strong links to the ancestral homeland, a unique form of nationalism may arise. Termed “long-distance nationalism,” it has been defined as “a set of identity claims and practices that connect people living in various geographical locations to a specific 119 territory that they see as their ancestral home.” 38 Unlike traditional nationalism, long-distance nationalism is not bound within geographic borders. In this form of nationalism, the nation is no longer constrained within a set geographic region. 39 Instead, it becomes an all-encompassing global phenomenon, no longer resembling the nation-state but rather taking up characteristics of a mass social movement. Like traditional nationalism, long-distance nationalism spurs its adherents to some kind of action, as noted by both Schiller and Anderson. 40 In many cases, it aims to change adherents’ belief systems, stressing either biological or cultural links between displaced communities and their homelands. While Anderson notes that such trans-national networks of identity can lead to such negative consequences as political or even financial support for warfare and violence, 41 it can also be a catalyst to productive activities such as artistic and musical expression. By presenting the plight of European Jews to American audiences, A Survivor from Warsaw is a prototypical example of such long- distance nationalism. 38 Nina Glick Schiller, “Long-Distance Nationalism,” Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures around the World (New York: Springer Science-Business Media, Inc., 2005), 570-80. 39 Ibid., 571. 40 Ibid., and Benedict Anderson, Long-Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics (Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies, 1992). 41 Anderson, Long-Distance Nationalism, 11-12. 120 Chapter 4 Ethnicity in Music: “Israel Exists Again” and Dreimal Tausend Jahre In the last years of his life, Schoenberg shifted in his conception of Jewish identity from an overtly nationalistic stance to an ethnic one. As this chapter will show, with the Jewish homeland established in 1948 his concerns no longer needed to lay in convincing others to take action. As a result of the creation of the state of Israel, and with Jewish sovereignty now recognized by the United Nations and defended by an army, Schoenberg’s music no longer expressed the overt nationalism of A Survivor from Warsaw. However, the composer still felt an intense connection to the Jewish people and to their new state. As the following sections demonstrate, some of Schoenberg’s last composed works were choral pieces that reflected ethnic identification rather than a nationalist impulse. “Israel Exists Again” By the spring of 1949, when Schoenberg began his first musical drafts of Dreimal Tausend Jahre and “Israel Exists Again,” the state of Israel had been established for nearly a year. Moreover, it had proved itself in battle, defeating a coalition of five surrounding armies of powerful and hostile nations. For the first time in decades, the Jewish people were relatively safe from genocidal threats such as that embodied by Nazi Germany. With the establishment of the apparatus of state, Jews gained the ability to self-govern and could secure their own self-defense. As has been seen in Chapter 1, Schoenberg had advocated a militaristic solution to the Jewish question since the 1920s, arguing that the only way Jews could ever hope to acquire their own homeland would be through force of arms. Although Israel’s geopolitical situation was still a vulnerable one and the country faced powerful military threats, it had established itself according to precisely the 121 military formulation he had prescribed twenty years earlier in Der biblische Weg. Having witnessed the successful creation of a secure and permanent homeland for the Jewish people exactly per his formula, Schoenberg shifted from an overtly nationalistic stance to one of ethnic solidarity. Concurrently, the Jewish-themed works Schoenberg created during the last years of his life reflected an ethnic conception, before he turned to more spiritual, universalist concerns in Opp. 50B and C. Schoenberg himself demonstrated his deep feelings of personal connection to the newly established state of Israel. In the last year of his life, Schoenberg was offered a position as president of the Israel Academy of Music. On receiving this honor, Schoenberg wrote to Frank Pelleg, the director of the Academy, to offer his thanks, noting that “...I have already declared that for more than four decades my dearest wish has been to see the establishment of a separate, independent state of Israel. And indeed more than that: to become a citizen of that State and to reside there.” 1 Although he never seriously considered moving to Israel and remained in Los Angeles for a variety of reasons, not least of which his poor health, Schoenberg demonstrated deep commitment and loyalty to Israel and the Jewish people. As early as January 1949, less than a year after the establishment of the state of Israel, Schoenberg expressed his desire to create a musical tribute. In a letter to the author Friedrich Torberg, Schoenberg spoke of his wish to compose “some kind of musical greeting” for “the new State, Israel.” 2 In the letter he tells Torberg, his friend and fellow Viennese-Jewish exile, that he had been contemplating this project for some time. Unable to produce a text himself, he asks Torberg for suggestions and to possibly contribute a text, even though his recent works had been exclusively set to his own texts. 1 Schoenberg to Frank Pelleg, 26 April 1951, Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 286. 2 Schoenberg to Friedrich Torberg, 31 January 1949, <http://www.schoenberg.at/letters/search_show_letter.php?ID_Number=4886>, accessed June 30, 2015. Translation original. 122 Schoenberg began sketching musical material that would ultimately become the fragment “Israel Exists Again” in March of 1949. It is unclear whether he had any immediate plans for the work’s performance or what specifically prompted him to compose it; however, it was probably not composed for a commission. Schoenberg worked on this project for several months, working out musical materials and creating two distinct texts. Although he had desired to collaborate with Torberg, he ultimately used his own text. 3 Multiple versions of the text exist for this work. Schoenberg wrote the first version but never sent it to Torberg. He drafted a second version shortly thereafter, which he sent to Torberg in April 1949 along with suggestions for how he wanted him to revise it. After not hearing back, he revised his original version and sent that to Torberg in June. Schoenberg received Torberg’s version soon after, yet decided not to use it. 4 Comparison of Schoenberg’s own textual versions, the suggestions he made to Torberg, and the ultimate shape the work took on before being abandoned demonstrate the composer’s inner vacillations between nationalist and ethnic conceptions of Jewish identity. Schoenberg’s first text was quite similar to its final version, which will be discussed later. His second draft, begun only a few days later, is a blunt and nationalistic tirade against Israel’s enemies: Ihr, die uns verachtet, Hab Acht: Wir [erringen?] die Nacht, die uns Rache verschafft! Vergebung! Wäre es so verwunderlich, wenn es suns nach Rache verlangte? Zwei tausend Jahre haben wir mit euch gelebt und haben euch kennen gelernt. Wir kennen alle eure Schwächen. Wir wissen welches Unrecht You, who hate us, Watch out: We [win] the night that brings us revenge! Forgiveness! Would it be so surprising If we required revenge? For two thousand years we lived with you and have gotten to know you. We know all your weaknesses. We know what injustice 3 The genesis of “Israel Exists Again” is discussed in Michael Mäckelmann, “‘Israel exists again‘: Anmerkungen zu Arnold Schönbergs Entwurf einer Israel-Hymne,” Die Musikforschung 39, no.1 (1986): 18-29. See also Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (2010), 109, and Klára Móricz, Jewish Identies: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008). 4 Móricz, Jewish Identities, 306-10. 123 euch Wert ist; wir wissen wie wenig ihr wahren Wert erkennt. Wir haben euch Kultur gebracht, wenn ihr wolltet, dass wir euren Handel organisieren. Wir haben euch Sitte, Recht und Gesetz gegeben, durch unsere zehn Gebote, Wir haben euch gezeigt, dass wir In alle euren Kirchen und Wissenschaft euch ebenbürtig sind. Trotzdem habt ihr uns verachtet und habt uns ge- mieden und ausgeschlossen, wo ihr euch ohne behelfen konnten: Wäre es versonderlich, wenn wir Vergeltung wünschen? Es ist unser Rang eines alten Volkes, das uns bestimmt auf Rache zu verzichten, Vergeltung aber zu üben, wie es diesem Rang geziemt: Indem wir fortfahren euch zu beschenken: Ihr die ihr Gott, Sitte, Recht und Gesetz durch Gottes zehn Geboten von uns empfangen lassen werden zu den Gnaden, die damals Gott der Menschenheit zugedacht hat. 5 you value; we know how little you acknowledge real value. We brought you culture when you wanted us to organize your trade. We gave you customs, justice and law, through our ten commandments, We showed you that in all of your churches and science we are equal to you. Nevertheless you hated, avoided, and excluded us, where you could do without our help; Would it be surprising if we Wanted retribution? It is our status as an old people that determines us to renounce revenge, instead to retaliate as is appropriate to this status: While we continue to be generous to you: You, who received your God, customs, justice and law from us through God’s ten commandments, you will be received into the grace that God provided for humanity long ago. Originally written in German, it begins with a stern warning. Schoenberg’s anger is tangible throughout. He continues, commenting that a desire for vengeance would be justifiable and perhaps desirable. In spite of this, he concludes by pledging magnanimity and generosity to the world, even though he implies that such generosity of spirit may be unjustified. Schoenberg chooses to forgo vengeance because of Jews’ “status as an old people.” His dualistic division of the world into eternally irreconcilable camps—a 5 Repr. and trans. in Móricz, Jewish Identities, 308-309. 124 righteous “we” who have been unjustly oppressed by a hostile “you”—reflects a nationalistic approach to the problems facing Judaism in the shadow of the Holocaust. After sending Torberg this text, Schoenberg sent several suggestions to his friend, asking him to revise the text in specific ways. At Schoenberg’s explicit request, Torberg included specific references to Israel’s historical enemies. In his revisions to Schoenberg’s text, he included the lines: Whosoever tried to destroy us, Haman of Persia, or the Pharaoh of Egypt, Titus of Rome, or the Führer of Germany, Has only succeeded in destroying himself. 6 Torberg’s lines demonstrate pride in Judaism’s survival, intensifying the themes in Schoenberg’s second draft. The references to these specific individuals display a historical awareness, dovetailing with the “lachrymose” view of Jewish history, yet celebrating Jewish victory. Moreover, by placing Hitler into this historical context, Torberg—at Schoenberg’s insistence—magnified the sense of Jewish pride in having overcome attempts at extermination, both historic and recent. Instead of using this draft or any of Torberg’s revisions, Schoenberg ultimately decided to set a slightly revised version of his original draft. Rather than a blatantly antagonistic nationalism in the ashes of destruction, this version is optimistic and celebratory. Instead of this “us”- and “you”-duality, this text version celebrates the uniqueness of Jewish history and culture —and it does so in both religious and ethnic terms: Israel exists again! It has always existed though invisibly. And since the beginning of time, since the creation of the world we have always seen the Lord, and have never ceased to see Him. Adam saw Him. Noah saw Him. 6 Ibid., 395, n. 22. 125 Abraham saw Him. Jacob saw Him. But Moses saw He was our God and we His elected people: elected to testify that there is only one eternal God. Israel has returned and will see the Lord again. 7 Noted scholar of ethnicity and nationalism Anthony Smith defines several key features of ethnicity: name, myth of common descent, shared history, distinctive shared culture, association with a specific territory, and a sense of solidarity. 8 Schoenberg’s final version of the text for “Israel Exists Again” exhibits most of these features. Name The final version of Schoenberg’s text—as well as the title of the work—begins with an emphatic proclamation of the group’s name, Israel. Moreover, Schoenberg uses the ancient, biblical group name “Israel” to refer to both the people and their territory, rather than the post-biblical names “Judaism” or “Jews”; the founders of the modern state of Israel had made a similar choice. The name in Schoenberg’s text thus refers to both to the Jewish people and to the recently created nation-state. 9 In his study of the ethnic roots of nations, Anthony Smith defines ethnicity as “the idea of a number of people… who share some cultural or biological characteristics and who live and act in concert.” 10 According to his study, the first characteristic of an ethnic group is a collective name. Most fundamentally, a collective name provides recognition: it sets the group apart as one particular entity 7 Schoenbergs Werke, 138. 8 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986). 9 The name “Israel” functions simultaneously as both toponym and ethnonym. In biblical sources, the Jewish people are frequently referred to as “Children of Israel.” 10 Anthony Smith, Introduction, Ethnicity, ed. Smith and John Hutchinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4. 126 distinct from others. Even more significantly for Smith’s argument, as a linguistic element a name reflects mass conceptions of the group as a singular unit. By using such terms as “the Arabs,” “the English,” or “the Hopi,” speakers reify these abstract concepts. Named groups are considered to be concrete, bounded entities, both by members of the groups and by outsiders. Moreover, beyond simply providing recognition and demarking boundaries, Smith argues that names also serve the beginning of cultural demarcation as well. When a speaker invokes a group’s collective name, “the name summons up images of the distinctive traits and characteristics of a community in the minds and imaginations of its participants and outsiders—as well as posterity—though these images may differ widely.” 11 To speakers both within and outside of the group, the root of cultural identity begins with a name. Myth of Common Descent and Common History In “Israel Exists Again,” Schoenberg speaks to the myth of common descent in his text. Schoenberg devotes significant space to Biblical genealogy by referring to Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob. Moreover, Schoenberg’s text stresses this historical view of Judaism, and is filled with references to notions of time: “since the beginning of time,” “has always existed,” “have always seen,” “never ceased.” These phrases stress the passage of time, Israel’s continued presence, Jews’ shared history, and their common experience of this time continuum. One of the more significant of Smith’s criteria for an ethnic group is a myth of common descent. While genealogy certainly plays an important role in ethnic identity, what is far more crucial is the perception of common origins. While some individuals may indeed share a common biological descent, if they are unaware of this origin or if they place little importance on it, it will not shape their views of themselves as a group. It is important to note that Smith is using the term “myth” in the sociological sense without placing any value judgment on it; whether or not it has a basis in reality (which it may 11 Ibid., 24. 127 very well have) is far less significant than the degree to which it is believed by the population in question. Smith proposes that such origin mythologies are not usually driven by historical impartiality and do not aspire to the direct retelling of events, but rather are created as a way of explaining observed social conditions. Instead of only relating history, the myths serve important social functions: A myth of descent attempts to provide an answer to questions of similarity and belonging: why are we all alike? Why are we one community? Because we came from the same place, at a definite period of time and are descended from the self-same ancestor, we necessarily belong together and share the same feelings and tastes… 12 While these myths may or may not have a factual basis, they necessarily take on emotional characteristics and are designed to enhance group cohesion. With enough time, they are usually compiled into a group’s formal literature, sometimes anonymously but usually with the direct assistance of scholars, poets, or religious figures. The collective myths are developed and amalgamated into what Smith terms the group’s “mythomoteur,” a set of beliefs about the group’s birth, historical development, and future ambitions. 13 Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Smith demonstrates that such myths often share a plethora of features, even across widely divergent groups in many parts of the world. Such myths almost always include certain elements, chiefly “spatial and temporal origins,” explanations of where and when the group originated. Secondly, they usually incorporate migrations, tracing the group as it left its place of origin and arrived at either its current location or some other area. Thirdly, origin myths tend to stress ancestry, tracing the history of a community through linear descent (hence the many genealogical passages in the Bible). Finally, such stories often incorporate a “golden age,” frequently followed by decline of some sort (often exile) and a rebirth (both physical and spiritual). Such stories are hardly 12 Ibid., 24. 13 Ibid. 128 objective, but they are not intended to be. They provide emotional narratives and educational inspiration, and serve as vehicles for group cohesion. In addition to mythological history, much of an ethnic identity comes from shared common historical experience. More significant, however, is a common interpretation of that experience. While a group may go through the same persecutions, revivals, or other significant events, these will provide little social cohesion if they are experienced and understood differently, especially in later generations. In many ethnic groups, intellectuals serve to provide centralized interpretations of group history. Like origination mythologies, the historical narratives woven out of group experiences often share similar characteristics and elements. First and foremost, they emphasize narrative elements, telling the group’s history as a grand story. Such a story must have a strong emotional appeal in order to foster emotional bonds and group cohesion. Moreover, it must educate succeeding generations. Its protagonists must not be merely actors but true heroes, embodying the most significant of the group’s core values. What these values actually are necessarily varies highly from one ethnicity to the next, but whether they include strength, bravery, intelligence, humility, or piety, they are almost universally emphasized in the group’s historical narrative. The telling and retelling of such stories is an important force in the propagation of such common values, another important element in the development of group identity. Schoenberg takes on many of these qualities in his text for “Israel Exists Again.” By citing Jewish mythological genealogy, religious heroes, and common experience of history, Schoenberg engaged with tropes common to many ethnicities throughout the world. Distinctive Shared Culture and Territorial Association One of the most fundamental characteristics of an ethnic group is a unique group culture. In addition to language, many traits can come to define culture, including religion, customs, institutions, laws, folklore, 129 architecture, dress, food, music, arts, skin color, and physique. 14 These traits comprise what Smith terms the ethnicity’s “form,” and touch every aspect of the daily lives of members of the group. Moreover, they serve to separate the group from other groups. Because many of these traits are so pervasive, it is natural for individuals to feel an affinity for those whose lives are similar in these fundamental ways, and to sense that they are distinct from others who are different. The more unique and distinctive a group’s culture is, the stronger will be its sense of ethnic cohesion. This can be through the possession of a language isolate, the maintenance of a non-universal religion limited only to that group, or a unique way of life. It can also be through a unique combination of several traits, none of which are unique on their own but which intersect uniquely. One of the most important factors in the construction of a group culture is shared religious belief and religious practices. This was especially so in the case of Judaism. Schoenberg’s text for “Israel Exists Again” refers to the Jewish religion, the most fundamental aspect of Jews’ shared group culture. Indeed, Schoenberg’s identification of Jewish peoplehood with the belief in “one eternal God” fits well with Judaism’s religious self-definition as an ethnic group. Throughout its history, Judaism has traditionally stressed the connections between nationhood and religion. According to traditional Jewish understanding, the Jews’ survival as a people and their ancient claim to the Land of Israel were inextricably tied to their adherence to their God and the laws of their Torah. As Jewish scholar Eliezer Ben-Rafael explains, since the beginning of their history, Jewish peoplehood had been self-justified through inherent religious obligations to follow God’s commandments. 15 Jews have often defined themselves as a people chiefly due to their perceived special relationship with the divine creator. A people by right of this religious belief, traditional Jews historically felt obligated to separate themselves from their non-Jewish neighbors in order to carry out what they 14 Ibid. 15 Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Jewish Identities: Fifty Intellectuals Answer Ben Gurion (Boston: Brill, 2002), 9-10. 130 believed to be the divine plan. More than for many other groups, Jews formed their ethnic identity around their religion, a link reflected in the text of “Israel Exists Again.” At the end of his life, Schoenberg noted the links between traditional notions of Jewish spirituality and Jewish peoplehood. In his letter to Frank Pelleg accepting the honorary presidency of the Israel Academy of Music, he noted that “For just as God chose Israel to be the people whose task it is to maintain the pure, true, Mosaic monotheism despite all persecution, despite all affliction, so too it is the task of Israeli musicians to set the world an example of the old kind that can make our souls function again as they must if mankind is to evolve any higher.” The establishment of the state of Israel thus reflected a profound dichotomy. On the one hand, it represented realization of the national aspirations of a certain ethnic group. On the other hand, it represented a significant achievement for humanity as a whole—in a modern sense, as the realization of universal principles of self-determination for all peoples, as well as in the traditional Jewish sense of fulfilling God’s divine plan for the world. For Schoenberg, music was inextricably linked with Judaism’s perceived moral and spiritual obligations. Celebrating the creation of a Jewish state founded on such a spiritual vision, Schoenberg has left behind violent, militaristic nationalism and has returned to the foundational mythomoteur of the Jewish ethnic identity. The inherent tension between the spiritual foundations for his belief in Jewish peoplehood and the universal ideals of human rights he applied to all in his essay “Human Rights” remained a contradiction for him, yet one that helps explain the shift from nationalism to ethnicity inherent to “Israel Exists Again” and Dreimal Tausend Jahre. Territoriality In addition to group culture, ethnic groups are strongly bound by their connections to particular territories. More than merely places of residence, the territories are endowed with highly symbolic and emotional ties. Moreover, the ethnic group need not currently occupy the territory with which it 131 associates itself; the connections may be historic, ancient ones, but they deeply and profoundly affect group identity in the present. Although the actual forms may vary widely across cultures, Smith demonstrates that such territorial associations maintain three specific characteristics. First, homelands are what he terms “sacred centers.” They are centers of pilgrimage or religion, with holy sites, shrines, or temples which the population regularly visits or used to visit. Secondly, the ethnic group forms a “commemorative association” with the land—it becomes a part of the group’s lore, mythology, or collective dreams. This association can persist in displaced groups for centuries or even millennia. Finally, the territorial association is granted external recognition, although such recognition is usually reserved for groups still in actual possession of their territory. By reflecting the profound connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, “Israel Exists Again” speaks to those qualities. As will be seen later in this chapter, Schoenberg also expressed a deep commitment to the land of Israel, as both a sacred center and as a commemorative association, in Dreimal Tausend Jahre. Composing Musical Solidarity Schoenberg’s music for “Israel Exists Again” reflects Smith’s final and most important criterion in his definition of ethnicity: a sense of affinity to others in the group. Members of an ethnic group often feel a sense of connection to other in-group individuals, maintaining commonalities with and loyalty to them beyond merely viewing themselves as residents of a particular village or city. The sense of connection to others across geographic and social boundaries is perhaps the single most significant basis of ethnicity. Michael Mäckelmann suggests that “Israel Exists Again” represents a turn away from the religion and utopianism of Moses und Aron and Der biblische Weg towards a Jewish Realpolitik. 16 He is partially correct in that the work represents a genuine shift from the composer’s earlier attitudes and is less 16 Mäckelmann, “Israel Exists Again,“ 21. 132 idealistically motivated. However, rather than Realpolitik, Schoenberg’s text and particularly his musical style in “Israel Exists Again” reflect the composer’s sense of ethnic solidarity with the Jewish people. Julian Johnson provides a detailed serial analysis of the fragment’s surviving music. He postulates that the existing music comprises an exposition, and demonstrates that it is based primarily hexachords rather than complete row forms. He shows that the work also uses hexachordal combinatoriality at the I 5 level, and that undated sketches of material that did not make it into the fair copy used T 6, the only instance of another row form besides I 5. 17 The music Schoenberg composed for “Israel Exists Again” covers the first three lines of its eighteen-line text, plus an orchestral introduction. Bold and celebratory, it is, as Mäckelmann notes, a fitting national hymn to the state of Israel, in spite of its atonal harmonic language. Moreover, it is a particularly fitting tribute according to Schoenberg’s conception—not a popular anthem but a work of art music, yet one that nevertheless expresses national pride. Its musical style, unlike nearly all of Schoenberg’s music from the period, is outgoing, jubilant, and proud. Filled with forte and fortissimo dynamics throughout, it reflects feelings of personal gratification in and solidarity with the Jewish people. Like the majority of Schoenberg’s late serial compositions, “Israel Exists Again” utilizes two combinatorial row forms: P 0 and I 5 (Figure 4.1). As with his other late serial works, Schoenberg states the primary row form only weakly. In the orchestral introduction, the primary row form never appears. Instead, the first half of the introduction (measures 1 to 19) features the combinatorial first hexachords of I 5 and P 0. Similarly, the introduction’s second half (measures 20 to 33) feature the two row forms’ second hexachords. The complete statement of both hexachords does not occur until the chorus’s 17 Julian Johnson, “Israel Exists Again,” Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. 2, ed. G. Gruber (Laaber:Laaber Verlag, 2002), 288-299. 133 entrance, beginning in measure 34. Schoenberg also used this procedure in Dreimal Tausend Jahre; its significance there will be discussed in the following section. The proud, jubilant atmosphere is established from the very beginning in the opening figure. Schoenberg uses tonal implications of the row to create a C-minor–C-major progression (Example 4.1). In his analysis, Mäckelmann argues that the existing music for the work comprises a tonal field with a tonic center on C, yet as this tonal center tries to assert itself, its chromatic elements prevent it from being fully established. 18 However, this view downplays the importance of Schoenberg’s tonally influenced harmonic processes. For example, the pitch C is used as a harmonic pedal point in the cello and contrabass for the first twelve measures of the piece (a full 30% of the entire introduction). A similar harmonic gesture appears with the introduction of the chorus in measures 34 to 37 (Example 4.2). Even 18 Ibid., 27. Figure 4.1: “Israel Exists Again”: P0 and I5 rows. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 134 more remarkably, in measures 34 to 35, the F and the D in the tenor line combine with the B in the double bass and the A in the violas, implying a B half-diminished seventh chord, which resolves to a C- major triad in measure 37. Such a cadential figure—previously anathema to Schoenbergian dodecaphony—is even more remarkable because it appears at a moment approximating combinatoriality: the tenor and cello parts are taken directly from the primary row’s second hexachord, while the remaining parts are taken from four of the six tones of the row’s first hexachord. Schoenberg is able to derive a figure approaching a V-I cadence, the very paradigm of tonal music, from a twelve- tone procedure designed to produce the chromatic aggregate. Although the work remains unfinished, it is easy to imagine that it could have ended with a similar gesture. Example 4.1: Israel Exists Again, mm. 1-3, horn, piano, cello, bass. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 135 The expression of pride can be seen in the musical style throughout the work’s existing music. The principal melody (marked throughout as “Hauptstimme,” as in all of Schoenberg’s works from this period) is in a declamatory style, with many repeated notes and wide leaps (Example 4.3). Moreover, it contains many leaps of perfect fifths and triadic outlines. While the melody is highly angular in contour, it shares numerous musical characteristics with many national anthems—wide vocal range, a preponderance of leaps, regular rhythms, and dotted figures emphasizing downbeats, such as in The Internationale, Hymn of Russia, and The Marseillaise. In addition to its stylistic elements, this melody is Example 4.2: Israel Exists Again, mm. 34-37, chorus and strings. Hexachord 1 (red) in chorus, violin 1, cello; Hexachord 2 (blue) in violin 2, viola, contrabass. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 136 also unique in that it is hybrid statement. Rather than a complete melodic statement of any tone row, it is comprised of the first hexachords of the P 0 and I 5 forms. Schoenberg highlights the anthem-like qualities of the work through his use of rhythm. The music of “Israel Exists Again” features an extremely regular meter—something highly irregular for Schoenberg. Although he characteristically employed irregular meter and carefully avoided downbeats in his other music, here he uncharacteristically emphasizes the latter. The piece begins with a double- dotted figure reminiscent of a French overture, and the primary melody features both dotted and regular half-note rhythms. Again, similar characteristics can be found in many modern national anthems, such as the dotted rhythms in the opening measures of the Russian and French national anthems. The work is largely homorhythmic, also an unusual feature in Schoenberg’s music. It features prominent horn and brass fanfares, which further heighten the celebratory atmosphere, and many instrumental doublings, particularly in the second half of the introduction with the B-flat and E-flat clarinets doubling each other along with both first and second violins from measures 22 until 31. Moreover, the prominent role of the timpani is suggestive of the percussion common to military-band arrangements of national anthems. Schoenberg writes for the piano in a percussive way to further heighten the work’s military- band inspiration; its Stravinskian quasi-ostinato figures add rhythmic energy and excitement (Example 4.4). Example 4.3: Israel Exists Again, mm. 1-11, horn. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 137 Schoenberg gives his text an especially bold setting. Following a dramatic reduction in texture, the text’s entrance is proclaimed by unaccompanied tenors. Moreover, Schoenberg’s text setting is particularly noteworthy. A composer who had frequently written about his dislike of repetition, Schoenberg in this instance repeats each line of text three times, and repeats important words and phrases within a line. All of these musical features combine to create a bold statement of celebration and pride in the triumph of Israel and a sense of solidarity with the Jewish people. For an unknown reason, Schoenberg never completed this fragment. Mäckelmann suggests that Schoenberg turned his attention to Op. 50, and that he naturally shifted his efforts in light of his move from nationalism to spirituality. 19 The composer’s ill health was certainly another factor; had he lived past 1951 he may very well have completed it. However, the fragment fits into Schoenberg’s overall pattern of incomplete moderate- to large-scale religious works. 20 Schoenberg had experienced difficulty completing large oratorios as early as die Jakobsleiter in 1917. Throughout the remainder of his career, Schoenberg had periodically worked on both die Jakobsleiter and Moses und Aron, repeatedly 19 Mäckelmann, ““‘Israel Exists Again‘“: 23. 20 Julian Johnson suggests that had Schoenberg completed it, the work may have totaled nearly 200 measures and had a duration of approximately ten minutes. Julian Johnson, “Israel Exists Again,” in Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. 2, ed. Gerold Gruber (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2002), 288-89. Example 4.4: Israel Exists Again, Mm. 3-11, piano. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 138 expressing his hopes that he would ultimately complete them yet never succeeding. Similarly, the Moderne Psalmen, which Schoenberg began composing in 1950, also remained unfinished at the time of his death. It is also likely that Schoenberg’s growing interest in universal human rights pulled him further away from a composition that still justified the state of Israel’s establishment through religious particularism. Three Times a Thousand Years Shortly after beginning his initial draft of “Israel Exists Again,” Schoenberg began working on the short choral piece Dreimal tausend Jahre. It is unclear under what circumstances Schoenberg began composing the work. What is clear, however, is that he initially published it in the Swedish magazine Prisma in the autumn of 1949 for a special edition celebrating the composer’s seventy-fifth birthday. 21 Whether he composed it expressly for this publication or submitted it after having already completed it is unknown. In either case, his choice to send this work to Prisma was highly significant. His decision to send a work on Jewish historical, cultural, and political themes to a publication intended as a personal tribute to him reinforces the notion that his Judaism was a central part of his identity. Whether he composed or selected this work for such an occasion, it is the work he chose to represent himself with. The work received its premiere in Sweden on October 29, 1949, performed by the Lilla Chamber Chorus. 22 When composing it in 1949, Schoenberg initially counted Dreimal Tausend Jahre as Op. 49B, thinking to publish it alongside his three German folk songs, Op. 49. He soon abandoned this plan and gave the piece its own opus number, realizing that it had little in common with his settings of German 21 Naomi André, “Returning to a Homeland,” Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Charlotte Cross and Russell Berman (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 260. 22 Ibid. André lists the performance location as the town of Fylklingen, Sweden. However, as there is no town in Sweden with this name, it is probable that the performance was organized by Fylkingen, a new and experimental music group and performance venue based in Stockholm, <http://www.fylkingen.se/>. According to Norstedts Comprehensive Swedish-English Dictionary, the word means “battle line.” 139 folk songs from two decades before. Setting it aside as a separate opus number, Schoenberg aimed to include at least two other works with this one—a Hebrew setting of Psalm 130 (Op. 50B) and a setting of originally composed “new” psalms (Op. 50C), which remained incomplete. 23 For this work, Schoenberg chose to set the poem Gottes Wiederkehr by Dagobert Runes. As with “Israel Exists Again,” the text of Dreimal tausend Jahre specifically relates to ethnic features of Judaism. In particular, the work addresses both the spiritual foundations of Jewish ethnicity (although to a lesser degree than “Israel Exists Again”) and the Jews’ connection to a particular territory. Reflections of Israel’s territory occur throughout Schoenberg’s setting. In the first stanza, the text refers to the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, at once a profound center of spirituality and a physical location (as well as a “center of pilgrimage,” to use the language of Smith). Much of the text is devoted to other locations within or aspects of Israel’s physical territory: waves of the Jordan River (“Jordanwellen”), gardens and lands (“Gärten und Gelände”), new river banks (“neues Uferland”), and mountains (“von den Bergen”). In addition to territoriality, the text also speaks to a personal connection, representing a sense of solidarity. At two points, the narrator includes himself, through the pronouns “ich” and “mir”: in line 2—“seit ich dich gesehn” (“since I saw you”) and line 9—“Und mir ists als rauschten” (“And to me it is like rustling”). Moreover, the apostrophic personification of the land of Israel offers an intense lyrical depiction of the narrator’s sense of longing. Finally, the poem’s form speaks to Judaism’s connection between territoriality and spirituality. Beginning with a religious reference to the Temple, the text continues by rhapsodizing on the land of Israel before ending with a religious reference to God’s return. The ABA form of the text emphasizes the interconnectedness of the spirituality of the Jewish religion with the physical land of Israel. Schoenberg made a number of alterations to Runes’s text in order to emphasize its connection to spirituality. In line 9, he changed “mir ists als” (“to me, it is as”) to become “man hört es” (“one hears 23 Mäckelmann, ”'Israel Exists Again,'” 18-29. 140 it”). This alters the entire third stanza’s meaning, shifting the portrayal of God’s return from subjective perception to objective, indisputable fact. In the same line, Schoenberg also changes “rauschen” (“rustling/murmuring”) to “klingen” (“sounding”) for a stronger, more declamatory impact. Similarly, Schoenberg replaces the word “flüsternd” (“whispering”) with “künden” (“proclaim”) for added emphasis. 24 Although Schoenberg had altered these lines to strengthen the poem’s religious connotations, he amended the title “Gottes Wiederkehr” (God’s Return). Rather than using this title, taken from the text’s closing line, Schoenberg changed his title to Dreimal Tausend Jahre (Three thousand years). To anyone familiar with Jewish history, Schoenberg’s new title encompasses the sweeping history of Israel’s historic lineage and ancient kings, as well as the intervening of two and a half millennia of invasion, expulsion, and exile. By elevating the poem’s reference to the passage of time, increasing its prominence from a single line to the title of the entire work, Schoenberg emphasized Judaism’s common history, a key feature in the maintenance of ethnic identity. Primary Rows and Row Relations Although Schoenberg had returned to tonality in some of his later works (including Ode to Napoleon, the Piano Concerto Op. 42, and the Variations on a Recitative for Organ Op. 40,) and had experimented with looser versions of his twelve-tone technique in works such as A Survivor from Warsaw, the last two completed works of Schoenberg’s life are strictly twelve-tone. However, they use unique serial 24 Móricz, Jewish Identities, 304. 141 techniques that are distinct from those of his earlier compositions. Dreimal Tausend Jahre, Op. 50A, is particularly sophisticated, and its complexity makes it a fitting gift to the newly created state of Israel. As Naomi André has shown, Schoenberg used palindromic forms and musical symmetry to symbolize the Jewish people’s return to the land of Israel. 25 According to Thomas Couvillon, prior to the publication of Schoenberg’s sketches scholars had defined the work’s primary row in a variety of ways: Claudio Spies, Clytus Gottwald, and Robert Specht all produced analyses with distinct “primary” row forms. 26 As this analysis will demonstrate, the two row forms are in fact so interconnected that it is impossible to determine the exact form of the row from the music itself without consulting Schoenberg’s original sketches. Schoenberg uses combinatoriality so heavily that P 0 and I 5 row forms effectively merge with one another. Rather than either P 0 or I 5, most prominent melodic statements are in fact combinations of the two, with one hexachord from each. The complete amalgamation of the two row forms is suggestive of the deep connection between the Jewish people, heritage, and religion on 25 André, “Returning to a Homeland,”279. 26 Thomas Michael Couvillon, “Text and Structure in Schoenberg’s Op. 50, and an Original Composition, Symphony #1,” PhD Dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2002,44-46. Figure 4.2: Schoenberg's tone row, sketch. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. Example 4.6: Tone row forms in Op. 50A 142 the one hand and the land of Israel on the other—a theme inherent to the work’s text and one in which Schoenberg had been deeply invested for several years prior to the piece’s composition. 27 Building on the work’s important textual theme, Schoenberg’s musical procedures embody what Smith would later describe as notions of territoriality and ethnic solidarity. In his sketches, Schoenberg states what he considers to be the primary row form, along with its I 5 form (Figure 4.2). As with many of Schoenberg’s tone rows, it is hexachordally combinatorial with its I 5 form. However, unlike in more typical works of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone output, the prime row form is never explicitly stated in this piece in complete form. Instead, the row forms function as more or less independent sets of hexachords. Rather than being presented as complete tone rows, hexachords from both P 0 and I 5 are often combined to form two distinct, yet related, hybrid row forms (Example 4.6). It is these two hybrid forms, labeled A and B, that receive the majority of Schoenberg’s compositional attention. Within each tone row, the second hexachord is a transposed inversion of the first. Due to their combinatorial construction, the tone rows’ corresponding hexachords are identical in content, but 27 Schoenberg used musical figures to represent abstract ideas earlier in his career. In the 1946 essay “Heart and Brain in Music,” Schoenberg explains that he used the simultaneous prime and inverted form of a Leitmotiv to represent the poetic idea behind Verklärte Nacht. SAI 56. Example 4.7: Hexachordal relations in op.50A Example 4.8: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, Mm. 1-4. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 143 reordered. In particular, their reordering shifts only the positions of two notes, leaving the rest in place (the A and the F; see Example 4.7). Moreover, each trichord differs from the corresponding trichord in in the other row by a single half step: F sharp is replaced by F in the first trichord, F by F sharp in the second, D flat by D in the third, and D by D flat in the fourth. Because these hexachords and their relations play such a prominent role in this work, they will be labeled as I and II, and their row forms as subscripts. Thus, the first row will be labeled I A-II A, while the second will be I B-II B. Exposition: Measures 1 to 4 As with many of Schoenberg’s other serial compositions, the opening, here the first four measures, form an exposition. Several important relationships are created in this section. To begin with, the P, I, R, and RI forms of hexachords are all used immediately. Three out of the four voices are palindromic, thus incorporating the R forms: in the soprano, alto, and tenor voices, measure two is a note-for-note retrograde of measure one (although with differing rhythms). In the first two measures, the sopranos sing I A (followed by its retrograde) while the basses sing II B (not retrograded, and with the sixth tone Example 4.9: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, mm. 5-7. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 144 inserted near the beginning). At the same time, the altos sing five out of the six notes of II B while the tenors sing five out of the six notes of I A. In the next two measures, voice exchange occurs. While the A row form is maintained in the soprano, the other parts are involved in a voice-exchange scheme. The alto voice in measures 3 to 4 (hexachord I) is an exact transposed inversion of the bass voice in measures 1 to 2 (hexachord II), forming a complete statement of row B. Similarly, the tenor in measures 3 to 4 is a transposed inversion of the alto in measures 1 to 2 (with the corresponding tone missing). This creates a complete statement of row A (soprano-soprano), a complete statement of row B (bass-alto), and two incomplete statements of row B (alto-tenor and tenor-bass). Moreover, because hexachord II is a TI form of hexachord I, all four of the basic set operations are present: P 7(I A) (measure 1, soprano), R b(I A) (measure 2, soprano), TI 0(I A) (measure 3, soprano), and RI 8(I A) (measure 4, soprano). Section 2: Measures 5 to 12 Following the exposition, the text’s second stanza delineates the piece’s second section. In this segment, Schoenberg’s treatment of the row forms is slightly freer. However, hexachord statements are always complete, with neither missing nor repeated tones. The hexachords are manifested both melodically and as harmonic fields, distributed among two or three of the voices. The section begins with R(I B) in the Example 4.10: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, mm. 8-11. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 145 alto, tenors, and basses, coupled with R(II B) in the soprano (Example 4.9). A similar harmonic treatment of the hexachords can be seen in measures 8 to 11, with the hexachords being distributed among three voices (Example 4.10). Although the order is not always exactly preserved (some notes are switched— for instance, the A and the F sharp in measure 7), it is always possible to trace particular hexachord forms. The section ends with two row forms distributed among two voices each (Example 4.11). Section 3: Measures 13 to 25 At measure 13, a new section begins, corresponding to the text’s third stanza and manifested by the change in tempo and texture. This section follows similar principles to the previous one, beginning with a combination of harmonic and melodic manifestations of the basic row forms. The musical materials undergo a process of development in measures 18 to 20 (Example 4.12). In this passage, the soprano and bass sing the first four notes each of I A and II A, respectively. In measure 19, the alto and tenor alternate between the last two notes of these hexachords. Through this passage, Schoenberg highlights the fact that the last two notes in both hexachords form a tritone. The piece concludes with a combination of single- and dual-voice statements of the hexachords, forming a concise summary of the entire work (Example 4.13). The tenors sing hexachord I A (in retrograde) followed by hexachord I B, the Example 4.11: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, mm. 10-11. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 146 soprano and bass combine in the first two measures to hexachord form II A (in retrograde), and a partial statement of hexachord II B is provided by the basses in the closing two measures, rounding out all four hexachords featured in the piece. Twelve-Tone Solidarity Although almost every note in the piece can be explained through this type of analysis, a serial analysis of row chords and hexachords is insufficient to form a complete understanding of the work. As Schoenberg himself admitted, the ultimate meaning of his music lay not only in the serial arrangement of tones but in the fundamental idea behind it. In a 1936 explanatory essay, he admonished his students Example 4.12: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, mm. 18-20. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. Example 4.13: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, Mm. 22-25. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 147 to “use the row and compose as [they] had done it previously.” 28 Schoenberg’s use of tone rows was always intended to be part of the musical meaning, rather than its entirety. While constructed rationally and methodically, the piece emotionally depicts relief and deliverance through its construction, surface features, and textual expression. On an individual level, it expresses religious spirituality and mysticism. At the same time, the music’s sheer beauty and serenity equally reflect relief, echoing its text in rejoicing over the creation of the state of Israel as the answer to the Jews’ suffering during the Holocaust. The piece’s feelings of nostalgia and haunting beauty perfectly match the text’s celebration of the land of Israel, and express Schoenberg’s sense of ethnic solidarity with the Jewish people. In her discussion of the piece, Móricz notices—and most listeners would agree—that it “lacks the aggressive effect of the sharp dissonances that are so typical of Schoenberg’s music.” 29 While Couvillon feels that it expresses mourning and anguish, 30 Schoenberg creates a warm, radiant mood through careful attention to surface details. As Naomi André notes, Schoenberg’s original inclusion of the piece as Op. 49B alongside his Op. 49 German folk song settings strongly suggests that he conceived of Dreimal Tausend Jahre as having a folk-like character. 31 Throughout the piece, melodic lines are 28 “Schoenberg’s Tone Rows” (1936), SAI 213. 29 Móricz, Jewish Identities, 304. 30 Couvillon, “Text and Structure,” 23. 31 André, “Returning to a Homeland,” 260. Example 4.14: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, M. 1, triadic figures. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 148 especially smooth. There is a preponderance of stepwise motion, and wide leaps are avoided, especially in the soprano. Moreover, where leaps occur, they are usually filled in by stepwise motion in the opposite direction, as in the music of Palestrina, providing symmetry and grace. With very few exceptions, the vocal ranges are narrow and quite comfortable. As in his other choral works, Schoenberg uses a great deal of word painting for expressive effect in this piece. The most obvious case of this is in measure 13, to the words “Und man hört es klingen leise von den Bergen her” (“And one hears it ringing quietly from the distant mountains”). These words are given short, staccato rhythms to repeated notes in pianississimo dynamics, sonically representing a loud sound echoing from a great distance. Similarly, the words “Und ihr Jordanwellen” (“and your waves of the Jordan River”) in measure 5 are sung in staggered entrances, suggesting the sound of lapping waves. Finally, at the end of the work the words “Gottes Wiederkehr” (“God’s return”) are repeated five times, aurally representing the concept of return. As in “Israel Exists Again”, Schoenberg’s use of rhythm in this work is quite distinctive. The rhythmic pattern is quite even, with a smooth, speech-like flow of eighth notes throughout. Aside from the single instance of slightly thickened texture at measure 13, a text-painting device to illustrate “man hört es klingen” (one hears it ringing), the texture remains remarkably consistent throughout—quite distinct from Schoenberg’s earlier music, which tended to feature extreme contrast at the musical surface. A large part of the piece’s emotional affect is due to its harmonic language. Although it is serial, completely atonal, and fully chromatically saturated, it nevertheless is permeated by tonal and triadic elements. Many triads, seventh-chords, and ninth-chords, which Schoenberg had largely avoided in his Example 4.15: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, M. 2, bass. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. 149 earlier serial music, appear in this work. The opening measure will serve as an example (Example 4.14). The piece begins with on a lush G-minor ninth chord, before quickly moving to an equally rich minor- seventh chord. On beat four, three out of the four voices sing a D-flat-major triad. Although a certain number of vertical triads is unavoidable in chromatically saturated music, Schoenberg goes out of his way to emphasize consonant, triadicx sonorities here. This stands in stark contrast to Schoenberg’s earlier practices: in 1923 he had written that “In twelve-tone composition consonances (major and minor triads) and also the simpler dissonances (diminished triads and seventh chords)—in fact almost everything that used to make up the ebb and flow of harmony—are, as far as possible, avoided.” 32 The fact that Schoenberg uses them here must have been a deliberate compositional choice. In addition to triadic or quasi-triadic harmonic structures, melody lines also show hints of tonality. The last three notes of the second hexachord of tone row B (D-flat–E-flat–A-flat) are used in measure 2 to bear a striking resemblance to a 4-5-1 bass line (Example 4.15). Similarly, in the final 32 Schoenberg, “Twelve-Tone Composition (1923), SAI 207. Example 4.16: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, Mm. 24-25, soprano and bass. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Los Angeles. Example 4.17: Dreimal Tausend Jahre, Primary hexachords. 150 measure the basses sing a figure that resembles b7-2-1 in C natural minor. Simultaneously, the sopranos sing an E-minor triad (Example 4.16). These two figures presumably are deliberate references to tonality, as they are the only exceptions to Schoenberg’s strict adherence to hexachord forms in this piece. The bass figure, while included in hexachord II B, is highlighted by the exclusion of the rest of the hexachord. At the same time, while each note of the soprano line is present in both hexachords I A and I B, the figure does not itself appear in either. Instead, these specific tones appear to be chosen for their reference to tonality. Couvillon notes that one of the hexachord reorderings Schoenberg had abandoned contained the sequence E-flat–B-flat–D-flat–A-flat, a reference to circle-of-fifths motion. 33 Moreover, he shows that the tone row forms contain strong tonal references: for example, tones 1-4 of the prime form (G–A–F-sharp–E) relate to G major. 34 More even than this, all four of the hexachords Schoenberg uses strongly imply tonal centers. Five out of the six notes of hexachords I a and I B imply either G major or E minor; similarly, five out of the six notes of hexachord II A and II B imply A-flat major. Moreover, the first trichord of hexachord II B implies C natural minor, while its second trichord strongly implies A-flat major. The combination of smooth, continuous texture, the avoidance of large leaps, the use of simple rhythms, and the abundance of quasi-tonal harmonic features give this piece its hauntingly beautiful, spiritually expressive qualities. Through these features as well as its formal construction from two distinct yet interrelated, inseparable forms of the row, Dreimal tausend Jahre reflects Schoenberg’s profound solidarity with the Jewish people. 33 Couvillon, “Text and Structure,” 18. 34 Ibid., 34. 151 Conclusions Toward the end of his career, Arnold Schoenberg expressed political sentiment through the medium of choral music. In Kol Nidre, A Survivor from Warsaw, Dreimal Tausend Jahre, and the fragment “Israel Exists Again,” he used his music to embody his personal connection to the Jewish people. In particular, Schoenberg’s late choral music displays a shift from overt political nationalism to a more moderate stance that viewed his allegiance to Judaism in ethnic terms. Schoenberg’s intensely nationalist connection to the Jewish people reflects the overpowering impact of the Holocaust on Jewish identity. His vacillations during the final years of his life may represent inner turmoil, while his moderating stance away from nationalism may be seen as the beginnings of healing from the trauma of the Shoah. Schoenberg’s embrace of the medium of choral music toward the end of his career is telling. Before 1933 he had composed choral works only sporadically—principally Friede auf Erden (1907) along with several smaller-scale works written during the 1920s. While he had long maintained an interest in texted music, prior to his emigration to the United States the locus of his vocal composition had been the Lied or cycle of Lieder for solo voice. As with any vocal music, choral music is texted, allowing the composer to address extra-musical ideas by selecting, adapting, or composing his own texts. Along with the shift in medium from solo to ensemble, Schoenberg’s texts concurrently changed in style, meaning, and theme. In place of earlier texts emphasizing themes of alienation, psychological probing, or streams of consciousness, Schoenberg’s later texts emphasize social cohesion, common cultures, and shared histories. Choral music—communal singing in harmony—offered him the perfect medium to represent, both sonically and visually, such themes. In 1937, Schoenberg used a commission for a setting of Kol Nidre for political purposes as a platform to combat anti-Semitism. In his idiosyncratic adaptation of the traditional Jewish text, he self- consciously repudiated the long-persistent myth that the ritual permits dishonest behavior. In addition to revising the text, Schoenberg also reworked the familiar melody, eliminating its characteristic 152 “sighing” figures (see the discussion in Chapter 2). In place of stereotypical sentimentality and lament, Schoenberg treats it in a manner reflecting solemnity, dignity, and pride. Moreover, although not a twelve-tone piece, the work incorporates techniques derived from serialism. As in a serial work, important musical motifs permeate the entire work, along with their transpositions, inversions, and retrogrades. Through his profoundly logical compositional technique, Schoenberg sought to create a musical masterwork, in the tradition of the canonical masterworks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, worthy of the Jewish people. A decade later, Schoenberg composed A Survivor from Warsaw. Through its searing dissonances, both musical and textual, the composer offered an impassioned plea to the world community to help Jews in the wake of the Holocaust (see the discussion in Chapter 3). Using marked emphasis of dissonant intervals and harmonies, Schoenberg deliberately returned to his earlier expressionist style, which he now utilized for political ends. For all Schoenberg’s insistence on the unimportance of musical style, the work’s surface features serve this critical function. The piece viscerally depicts the unimaginable violence and brutality Jews had faced only a few years before. At the same time, the work’s climax offered inspiration and pride. The chorus’s unfragmented presentation of the row and its striking melodic consonances—which notably seem to rise above the dissonant orchestra—evoke a sense of humanity and pride despite suffering. For Jewish audiences, Schoenberg aimed to use such a work to support what Benedict Anderson terms an “imagined community” that connected Jews worldwide and formed the basis of national identity. Begun after the establishment of the state of Israel, the various drafts for “Israel Exists Again,” which Schoenberg never completed, vacillate between strident nationalism and more temperate ethnicity (see the discussion in Chapter 4). In some of his abandoned drafts for texts, the composer lashed out at the Jewish people’s enemies and an uncaring world. In spite of the tone of some of these early drafts, and despite its nationalist-sounding name, the text Schoenberg ultimately chose is more 153 conciliatory and celebratory in character. Although twelve-tone, the music is relatively simple, with semi-triadic harmonies and regular rhythms—all qualities reminiscent of patriotic anthems. Schoenberg’s final draft reflects pride and identification, with an emphasis on common history, heroes, and mythology—factors Anthony Smith has identified as critical to ethnic awareness. Composed around the time Schoenberg abandoned “Israel Exists Again,” Dreimal Tausend Jahre reflects a still more moderate form of ethnicity. Although the piece is fully twelve-tone, Schoenberg treats dissonances smoothly and gently in the work, unique in the composer’s serial output. Through words and tones, the piece expresses both beauty and longing, and emphasizes territoriality and shared history. Schoenberg initially planned to publish the work as Op. 49B, included in the same opus alongside three choral settings of German folk songs. In fact, he had worked on these German folk song settings in the late 1920s. 35 Combining Bach-like imitative counterpoint with a homophonic texture and modality-inflected tonality, they also represent a sense of nostalgia. 36 Taken together with his pro- Jewish works, they perhaps reveal a composer struggling with multiple competing and contradictory impulses: Jewish nationalism, ethnic identification, religious mysticism, universality, and nostalgia for his lost youth. Yet although the two works do exhibit some similarities—their relatively simple musical styles, their folk-like settings, and their sense of reminiscence—they are quite distinct. In particular, it is telling that in his final years of composition, Schoenberg used German folk-song settings as a vehicle to express nostalgia for tonality while reserving dodecaphony—what he considered to be his most advanced compositional achievement—for a Jewish-oriented work. Moreover, possibly regretting the 35 For details, see Lukas Haselböck, “Drei Volkslieder Op. 49,“ in Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, vol. 2, ed. Gerold Gruber (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2002): 172-80. 36 In his essay “On Revient Toujours,” he remarked that “a longing to return to the older style was always vigorous in me; and from time to time I had to yield to that urge. This is how and why I sometimes write tonal music.” 154 choice to include a work on Jewish themes alongside one of Germanic extraction, he separated the two works out, publishing Dreimal Tausend Jahre on its own as Op. 50 in the Swedish journal Prisma. After Dreimal Tausend Jahre, Schoenberg shifted further away from nationalism and towards religion. Realizing that he had more to say on the subject of Jewish identity, he began work on two additional pieces, which he eventually included with Dreimal Tausend Jahre as his Opp. 50B and C. His last two works—one completed, one not—are both strictly religious in nature. Op. 50B, De Profundis, is a twelve-tone setting of Psalm 130. In spite of its Latin title, its text is in Hebrew. The linguistic contrast between the work’s body and title, as well as Schoenberg’s choice to set a liturgical text important to two religions, reflects an awareness of the shared heritage between Christians and Jews and speaks to the composer’s heightened interest in universality. In Op. 50C, Moderne Psalmen, Schoenberg engaged more personally with his religious traditions. Picking up where the Old Testament leaves off, Schoenberg crafted fifteen original texts. Terming them “Psalms, prayers and other conversations with and about God,” he felt they would be more fitting to the modern era than the biblical psalms. Schoenberg set most of the texts to music, but the work was left incomplete on his death. 37 Drawing on his own idiosyncratic understanding of his religious tradition, he synthesized Jewish and Christian doctrines, once again reflecting his growing concern for universality. Schoenberg’s movement from nationalism to ethnicism can be viewed in the context of his important essay on universal human rights, written during this period. As a result of many factors, including his many years in the United States, the creation of an independent Jewish state, the birth of the United Nations, and lessons learned from the fight against fascism, Schoenberg came to view Jewish sovereignty and spirituality within a universal framework of human rights, rather than as a consequence of Jewish uniqueness or chosenness. The relaxation of his previously ardent nationalistic music came at 37 Thomas Michael Couvillon, “Text and Structure in Schoenberg’s Op. 50, And an Original Composition, Symphony #1” (PhD Dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2002), 69. 155 a time when his political attitudes were undergoing a similar transition. As discussed in Chapter 1, in 1947 Schoenberg wrote an important essay, “Human Rights.” This watershed publication came at a highly significant juncture, at the same time he was working through issues of nationalism, Zionism, and collective trauma and survival. By focusing on human rights in the general sense, and particularly through his overt assertion that such rights are for everyone, Schoenberg for the first time began to view the Jewish struggle in terms of universality rather than Jewish exceptionalism. His shift from overt nationalism to ethnic awareness, and his further repositioning towards a more all-inclusive religious sentiment in Opp. 50B and C came concurrently to—and can be partially explained by—this change in political views. Broader Considerations Schoenberg’s progression is particularly notable because of its distinctiveness from theoretical constructions of nationalism. According to much scholarship, particularly the work of Anthony Smith and Benedict Anderson, ethnic identification precedes the creation of nationalism. Simply put, nationalism historically has drawn its roots out of pre-existing ethnic awareness. In previous eras, nationalist leaders have forged their nations out of earlier cultures, traditions, and mythologies. Yet during the period examined, Schoenberg evolved in the opposite direction. Never formally studying Jewish history or culture beyond the most rudimentary stages, Schoenberg left the Jewish community in 1898 and displayed remarkably little interest in his Jewish heritage during early adulthood. During the 1910s and 1920s he was a committed Austro-German patriot. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, once he rediscovered the importance of his Judaism and the futility of trying to ignore it, he suddenly became an ardent Jewish nationalist. Yet in the works analyzed in the current study, he moved from overtly nationalistic political advocacy in Kol Nidre and especially Survivor from Warsaw to a more nuanced 156 expression of ethnic identity in Dreimal Tausend Jahre and “Israel Exists Again.” Schoenberg offers a case of how at least on an individual level, nationalism can precede ethnicity. In addition to theoretical concerns on the nature of nationalism, Schoenberg’s late choral music sheds light on important social issues in contemporary society, offering an important counterpoint to the recent debate over immigration in the United States. In recent decades, some have argued that today’s immigrants generally are uninterested in assimilating into mainstream American culture. Many view this situation in contrast to the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, which they see as a “golden age” of the American melting pot. Some academics, such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Alvin Schmidt, argue against what they perceive as increased separatist identities of modern minority groups in the United States. 38 In his four-fold schema, Donald Roy has termed viewpoints such a s these “separatist nationalism,” and placed both of them in opposition to more moderate scholarship. 39 Outside of scholarship, many voices in the popular immigration debate echo this sentiment. 40 Schoenberg’s musical engagement with long- distance nationalism during the 1930s and 1940s provides a useful counterexample to arguments such as these. While many individuals and some scholars nostalgically reminisce about the wide-scale Americanization of immigrants during the pre- and post-war era, Schoenberg was a prominent cultural figure who came to America at this time yet still experienced ties along ethnic lines. Like many European artistic refugees who migrated to America to escape the Nazis, Schoenberg socialized primarily with other European immigrants and maintained many non-American cultural affiliations. To be sure, a single individual case does not make or prove a trend. However, as a composer of international renown, 38 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991); Alvin Schmidt, The Menace of Multiculturalism: Trojan Horse in America (Westport, CT: Praegar Publishers, 1997). 39 Donald Roy, The Reuniting of America: Eleven Multicultural Dialogues, “A Multicultural Organizing Scheme,” 1- 22. 40 Countless editorials and opinion pieces have been written expressing these sentiments. As an example, see Mike Gonzalez, “America Used to Know How to Assimilate Immigrants,” January 12, 2016, <http://thefederalist.com/2016/01/12/america-used-to-know-how-to-assimilate-immigrants/>, accessed March 25, 2016. For another, see M. Erdman, “Some Immigrants Don’t Want to Assimilate but Destroy Us,” December 18, 2015, <http://www.livingstondaily.com/opinion/>, accessed March 20, 2016. 157 Schoenberg left an indelible impact on culture, and had a far wider audience than did typical individuals (in spite of the fact that his music remained relatively unperformed and that he often complained of feeling underappreciated). Perhaps this time was not as “golden” for the melting-pot ideal as is often assumed. Similarly, some of the same voices in the cultural debate offer criticism of recent immigrants for resisting forces of Americanization. Pointing to their continued use of native languages and adherence to divergent culture, these commentators argue that today’s immigrants are unwilling or unable to assimilate. Like many refugees just prior to the Second World War, Schoenberg could have been seen along similar lines. He spoke a foreign language, never fully mastered English, and experienced strong ties to another people and nation. Yet Schoenberg’s cultural engagement follows a rough yet clear trajectory from nationalism to ethnicity to pure religion. In moving from overtly nationalistic works to nostalgic ones, and particularly in light of his essay on human rights, Schoenberg moved from particularism to universalism. 41 Thus, even those who never fully assimilate may well undergo profound changes in their cultural and political identities. The seeming dichotomy between assimilation and multiculturalism—between “melting pot” and “salad bowl”—may not be a nuanced enough picture to encompass the wide range in attitudes and their progression through time. Still more broadly, during the 1930s and 1940s Schoenberg was responding as a creative artist to some of the same forces that many individuals have faced in recent years and that are continuing to shape global society. Like many people today, Schoenberg felt profound interest in personal heritage. Furthermore, he experienced this from within American society as a displaced person. His responses, captured in musical form, can help guide our understanding of the feelings, motivations, and dilemmas that are shaping the contemporary world. Schoenberg’s late choral music will only take on increasing 41 Arnold Schoenberg, “Human Rights” (1947), SAI 506. 158 significance as heritage, traditions, and multiculturalism, diversity, and displacement grow more prevalent in society. Connections to Contemporary Culture and Society Although Schoenberg’s final works are more than six decades old, they raise issues that firmly resonate in contemporary society. The preoccupation with national identification, ethnic heritage, and trans- national solidarity demonstrated in Schoenberg’s choral works during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s are highly relevant to global society in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. It is important to look at Schoenberg’s music in this way because in many parts of the world, people are still dealing with these concerns. In the decades since Schoenberg’s death, ethnic diversity has increased dramatically in the United States and around the world. In 1965, the United States passed the Immigration and Naturalization Act, officially ending immigration quotas by nation of origin. 42 In addition to favoring highly educated skilled specialists, the Act also drastically increased quotas for refugee populations fleeing political instability and persecution. Violence, uncertainty, and systemic unemployment in parts of Latin America drew many to the United States. A new legal framework, increased globalization, technological improvements, and a variety of other factors have resulted in a dramatic upsurge in 42 “An Act to Ammend the Imigration and Nationality Act, and for Other Purposes,” Public Law 89-236, October 3, 1965, <http://library.uwb.edu/static/USimmigration/79%20stat%20911.pdf>, accessed February 9, 2016. 159 cultural diversity. 43 Moreover, this trend is predicted to increase in the coming decades. 44 As noted demographer William Frey eloquently put it, “Going forward, suburbs will continue to become a microcosm of a more diverse America, as new generations of suburbanites grow up in communities that bear scant resemblance to suburbia's long-standing white middle-class image.” 45 America is far from alone in its increasing diversity. In fact, growing diversity is a global phenomenon. 46 Many nations of Western Europe have seen a new wave of immigration since the early 1990s, from both European Union nations as well as from the developing world, as migrants come to Europe seeking work, economic opportunities, family reunification, or to escape political instability. 47 As 43 Since 1980, the United States Census Bureau has tabulated the number of Americans reporting particular national and/or ethnic origins. According to census analyses, the highest growth rates in reported ancestries between 1990 and 2000 occurred in individuals reporting African-American, Hispanic, and Asian ancestries. In particular, the number of people reporting Latin-American, African, or Asian ancestry all more than quadrupleaded, while many other groups more than doubled. At the same time, the three largest ancestries in 1990 all decreased in size by more than 20% by 2000. In place of large groups of relatively few ancestral origins, America is increasingly becoming a home to a diverse population. For a brief overview, see Angela Brittingham and G. Patricia de la Cruz, “Ancestry: 2000, Census 2000 Brief” (US Census Bureau, 2004), 3, <http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2004/dec/c2kbr-35.pdf>, accessed February 4, 2016. 44 In 2011, minority births outnumbered majority ones. By one estimate, there were over 45 million foreign-born people in the United States in 2013. It has been predicted that by 2044 more than half of all Americans will belong to a minority group. Sandra L. Colby and Jennifer M. Ortman, “Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060, Population Estimates and Projections,” Current Population Reports, 1 (US Census Bureau, 2015), <https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf>. At the same time, people of diverse backgrounds are increasingly interacting with one another as the “new minorities” are beginning to migrate to geographic areas previously dominated by whites and African-Americans. See Christopher Inkpen, “Seven Facts about World Migration,” (Pew Research Center, 2014), <http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/02/7-facts-about-world-migration>, accessed February 6, 2016. See also William Frey, Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). 45 Frey, Diversity Explosion, 1. 46 A decade ago, as many as 191 million people worldwide were residing outside of their country of birth or citizenship. “Towards a Fair Deal for Migrant Workers in the Global Economy,” Report VI, International Labour Conference, 92nd Session, Geneva, June 2004, p. 7. Cited in “Freedom of Association in Practice: Lessons Learned,” Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, (International Labour Conference, 2008), 56 47 “A Guide to European Diversity,” Salto-Youth Resource Centres, <https://www.salto-youth.net/downloads/4-17- 973/SALTO%20booklet_new.pdf?>, 6. In fact, the UK has one of the world’s most diverse immigrant communities. Immigrant communities in the UK received a diversity index of 97, compared to the US’s 91. Spain, a country that has long been dominated by ethnic homogeneity, saw a nearly eight-fold increase in its foreign born population from 1990 to 2013. For more details, see Inkpen, “Seven Facts about World Migration.” The index given is the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, defined by 𝐻 = ∑ 𝑆 𝑖 2 𝑁 𝑖 = 1 , where N is the total number of groups and Si is the ratio of the population of the i th group to the total immigrant population. 160 of the current writing (2016), tens of thousands of migrants are fleeing persecution and violence from Middle Eastern countries, raising popular and political debates on the nature of diversity in many European nations. Not only is diversity on the rise in many societies, but many individuals are experiencing renewed interest in their heritage identities and those of their family origins. In societies that combine a high degree of immigration with a predominating mainstream culture, personal identification in the past tended to shift through generations. First-generation immigrants often viewed themselves as members of their home country who happened to (or have chosen to) reside abroad. Concurrently, second- generation immigrants tended to construct bifurcated identities, identifying clearly both with the countries of their births and those of their family origins, while third-generation immigrants often identified primarily or exclusively with their countries of birth. 48 In the decades since Schoenberg’s death, this traditional pattern has begun to change: rather than feeling less connection, many third- generation immigrants are experiencing more connection to the nations of their families’ origins. 49 In the words of the authors of an important study on Italian immigration in Canada, “the sense of history frequently stretched much further back, to include the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, and the scope of art and culture produced over the centuries. Italian identity, for these individuals, meant a personal 48 For a brief overview, see Richard Rodriguez, ”The Overwhelming Appeal of English,” in Exploring Language, ed. George Goshgarian (New York: Pearson, 2006), 591-94. 49 As only one example, this phenomenon has been shown in a study of third-generation Italian immigrants in Vancouver. When asked to identify themselves, respondents aged 19-29 were far more likely to select “Italian” or “Italian-Canadian,” while respondents above the age of 40 were significantly likelier to choose “Canadian.” Since all study participants were the grandchildren of immigrants, this result suggests that a significant change in cultural attitudes is taking place. Of those who identified with Italy, even those who identified solely as “Italian,” this identity was often seen as complementary to, rather than in opposition with, being Canadian, yet these survey respondents valued their connections to Italy. Such connections were demonstrated through language, visits to Italy, food, traditions, and cultural values. Survey participants emphatically acknowledged the importance of preserving their Italian heritage: 76.9% of respondents claimed that preserving Italian identity was “very important” and 88.4% agreed that it was either “very important” or “somewhat important.” Moreover, they frequently cited sweeping views of shared Italian history. Eva Sajoo, “Being Ethnic: 3rd Generation Italian Identity in Vancouver,” Institute for Diaspora Research & Engagement, <http://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/diaspora- institute/reports/Being-Ethnic-2015-03-01.pdf>, accessed February 10, 2016. 161 link to a very long civilizational narrative, with its high and low points.” 50 Individuals in many parts of the world are experiencing a resurgence in connection to shared history, common culture, and links to territories far from their current residences—themes Schoenberg explored in his late choral music. Sociologists generally agree that individuals in the United States are becoming increasingly aware of their ethnic identities and heritages. In recent decades, the topic of multiculturalism has taken on considerable importance in the national debate. Since the 1960s, politicians, policy makers, scholars, and ordinary citizens have increasingly discussed the complex relationship between minority identity and a unified national culture. As the veteran theorist of the sociology of ethnicity Peter Rose has summarized, America is increasingly becoming “a structurally pluralistic country, a nation of ethnic blocs whose members are joined by the labels they inherited; by the ties of kinship, social organization, and economic interest; and by the prides and prejudices of others.” 51 In the past several decades, American multiculturalism has become evident through affirmative action, as well as in the rise in ethnic-studies departments in universities. Concurrently, these developments have fostered ethnic awareness and pride in the United States. While scholars have proposed a variety of explanations for the phenomenon, regardless of the exact formal schema it is clear that multiculturalism is simultaneously a contentious subject of debate and a sociological reality in contemporary American society. Multiculturalism is becoming increasingly important in other Western societies as well. In the early 1970s, Canada became the first officially multicultural nation. 52 Individuals in Canada are 50 Ibid., 17. 51 Peter Rose, They and We: Racial and Ethnic Relations in the United States and Beyond, 7 th Ed. (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014), 94. See also Chapter 9. 52 According to the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1971, “the Constitution of Canada recognizes the importance of preserving and enhancing the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” Moreover, the Act’s preamble specifies that the official status of English and French “neither abrogates nor derogates from any rights or privileges acquired or enjoyed with respect to any other language.” Provisions of the Act go on to “recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism reflects the cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society and acknowledges the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage,” to “recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism is a fundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity and that it provides an invaluable resource in the shaping of Canada’s future,” and “to promote policies, programs and practices that enhance the understanding of and respect for the diversity of the 162 encouraged by their government to deepen, or at least maintain, their ethnic, trans-national affiliations. Multiculturalism has also been officially embraced beyond Canada: an official multiculturalism has also been embraced as government policy in Australia since the 1970s. Moreover, the United Nations has acted repeatedly in favor of multiculturalism. 53 In 2017, current events are bringing these issues into increased focus. In Europe, Middle Eastern refugees fleeing violence, political instability, and terrorism are sparking one of the greatest humanitarian crises since the Second World War. As migrants flee from tumultuous regions, they bring their identities and heritages with them to their new homes. Diversity and multiculturalism in Europe will presumably be on the forefront of both headlines and official policy discussions for the foreseeable future. Political instability in Ferguson, Missouri, leading to the Black Lives Matter movement, discontent on college campuses, and divisive rhetoric issuing from the clamorous 2016 presidential election and the new administration have brought these issues into renewed focus. Moreover, it is likely that climate change will foster an upsurge in the movement of people across national boundaries as the century progresses. The surprising results of the 2016 British “Brexit” referendum and American election will only serve to heighten discourse and debate surrounding these issues. Schoenberg’s late choral music can offer a useful paradigm, helping listeners, musicians, and scholars better understand issues of critical importance that are shaping many nations around the world. As many people increasingly face issues similar to the ones he did, Schoenberg’s music can also members of Canadian society.” An official Canadian government summary of the Act declares that “Multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can keep their identities, can take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging. Acceptance gives Canadians a feeling of security and self-confidence, making them more open to, and accepting of, diverse cultures.” Canadian Multiculturalism Act, <http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C- 18.7.pdf>, accessed February 2, 2016, p. 1. See also Government of Canada, “Canadian Multiculturalism: An Inclusive Citizenship,” <http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/citizenship.asp>, accessed February 6, 2016. 53 As an important example, Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966 states that “In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language.” International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, <http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx>, accessed February 10, 2016. 163 offer a predictive model for how culture may adapt. As society becomes more diverse and people both struggle with and embrace multiculturalism, it seems likely that music, art, literature, and cinema may develop along similar lines and come to include similar themes. Moreover, as in Schoenberg’s case, music may help provide both artists and listeners with additional means for processing national trauma and regeneration. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, the world is changing in fundamental ways. As societies around the world embrace diversity (albeit unevenly and with some backlash), people are becoming more aware of their cultural heritage. Many of the political issues that Schoenberg dealt with through his late choral music are becoming even more relevant today. As with several other composers at the time (Bartók, Hindemith, and Krenek are three notable examples), Schoenberg’s embrace of national and ethnic identity implies a distinct role for Western art music. Far from being understood in isolation as a historical artifact or an icon of modernist purity, Schoenberg’s choral music, written near the midpoint of the previous century, can help serve as a guide post for understanding complex issues facing our world today. 164 Bibliography Primary sources Letters Schoenberg, Arnold to Alban Berg, 16 October 1933. Reprinted in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, edited by Leonard Stein, 184. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. ------ to Alban Berg, 23 Sept. 1932, in Stein, Schoenberg Letters, 167. ------ to Anton Weber, Paris, 4 August 1933. Quoted in David Isadore Lieberman, “Schoenberg Rewrites His Will: A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46,” in Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, edited by Charlotte M. Cross and Russell A. Berman, 210. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000. ------ to Corinne Chochem, 20 April 1947, quoted in Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years, 105. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ------ to Frank Pelleg, 26 April 1951, in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, edited by Leonard Stein, 286. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. ------ to Friedrich Torberg, 31 January 1949, <http://www.schoenberg.at/letters/search_show_letter.php?ID_Number=4886>, accessed June 30, 2015. ------ to Jakob Klatzkin, 13 June 1933, reprinted in Alexander Ringer, Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 129. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ------ to Kurt List, 1 November 1948, <http://www.schoenberg.at/letters/search_show_letter.php?ID_Number=4802>, accessed June 20, 2015. ------ to Leo Kestenberg, 16 June 1939, Reprinted in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, edited by Leonard Stein, 209. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. ------ to Paul Dessau, 22 November 1941, <http://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/joomla-license-sp- 1943310036/kol-nidre-op-39-1938>, accessed June 14, 2015. ------ to Stephen Wise, 12 May 1934, reprinted in Alexander Ringer, Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 154. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ------ to the Editor of the Jewish Year Book, 28 March 1946, Reprinted in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, edited by Leonard Stein, 238. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. ------ to Vassily Kandinsky, 20 April 1923, Reprinted in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, edited by Leonard Stein, 88. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. ------ to Vassily Kandinsky, 4 May 1923, Reprinted in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, edited by Leonard Stein, 93. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. Collected Writings Schönberg, Arnold. Stil und Gedanke: Aufsätze zur Musik, edited by Ivan Vojtĕch. Frankfurt am Mein: Fischer Verlag, 1976. ------. Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg. edited by Leonard Stein, translated by Leo Black. Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers, 1975. (Referred to as SAI) ------. Letters, edited by Erwin Stein. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. 165 Individual Writings Schoenberg, Arnold. “A Four-Point Program for Jewry,” reprinted as Appendix C in Alexander Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 230-44. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. ------. “A Legal Question” (1909). SAI 185-89. ------. “About Music Criticism” (1909), SAI 191-97. ------. “Circular to My Friends on My Sixtieth Birthday” (1934), SAI 25-29. ------. “Does the World Lack a Peace-Hymn?” (1928), SAI 500-501. ------. “Folk-Music and Art-Music" (c. 1926), SAI 167-69. ------. “How One Becomes Lonely” (1937), SAI 30-53. ------. “Human Rights” (1947), SAI 506-12. ------. “Is It Fair?” (1947), SAI 249-50. ------. “Jewish United Party Program” (1934), reprinted in Klára Móricz, Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-century Music, 201. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. ------. “Music” (1919), from Guide-Lines for a Ministry of Art, edited by Adolf Loos, SAI 369-72. ------. “My Attitude towards Politics” (1950), SAI 505-6. ------. “My Public” (1930), SAI 96-99. ------. “National Music (1)” (1931), SAI 169-72. ------. “National Music (2)” (1931), SAI 172-74. ------. “On Revient Toujours” (1948), SAI 108-9. ------. “Problems in Teaching Art” (1911), SAI 365-69. ------. “Schoenberg’s Tone Rows” (1936), SAI 213. ------. “To Kol Nidrey” (sic), Schönberg Center, <http://www.schoenberg.at/writings/edit_view/transcription_view.php?id=1296&word_list=kol %20nidre>, accessed June 2, 2015. ------. “Two Speeches on the Jewish Situation” (1934), SAI 501-5. Compositions Schoenberg, Arnold. A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46. Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers, 1977. ------. Der biblische Weg, translated by and repr. in Ringer, Schoenberg: Composer as Jew, ------. Dreimal Tausend Jahre, Op. 50A. Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers, 1949. ------. “Israel Exists Again.” In Arnold Schönberg, Sämtliche Werke, Abteilung V: Chorwerke, Reihe A, Vol. 19, Chorwerke II, edited by Josef Rufer and Christian Martin Schmidt (Mainz: 1975), 177-83. ------. Kol Nidre, Op. 39. Los Angeles: Belmont Music Publishers, 1938. Secondary Sources Analyses and commentaries André, Naomi. “Returning to a Homeland: Religion and Political Context in Schoenberg’s Dreimal tausend Jahre,” Chap. 10 in Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 259- 88. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000. Argentino, Joe R. “Tripartite Structures in Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw.” Music Theory Online 19, no.1 (2013), <http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.1/mto.13.19.1.argentino.html>, accessed October 20, 2014. Barry, Barbara. “Chronicles and Witnessess: ‘A Survivor from Warsaw’ Through Adorno's Broken Mirror.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 41, no.2 (2010): 241-63. 166 Bohlman, Philip. The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History. New York: Routledge, 2004. Boisits, Barbara. Dreimal tausend Jahre, Op. 50A. In Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. 2, edited by Gerold Gruber, 181-183. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2002. Botstein, Leon. “Music and the Critique of Culture: Arnold Schoenberg, Heinrich Schenker, and the Emergence of Modernism in Fin de Siècle Vienna,” Chap. 1 in Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the Transformations of Twentieth-Century Culture, edited by Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey, 3-22. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Cahn, Steven. “Kol Nidre in America,“ Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 4 (2002): 203-18. ------. “Kol Nidre Op. 39,“ translated by Tom Schneller, in Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Band II, edited by Gerold Gruber, 49-66. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2002. Casella, Alfredo. “Scarlattiana: Alfredo Casella über sein neues Stück,” Anbruch 1 (1929): 26-28. Coryat, Thomas. Coryat’s Crudities. London: Stansby, 1611. Quoted in Joshua Jacobson, “Defending Salamone Rossi: The Transformation and Justification of Jewish Music in Renaissance Italy,” <http://ism.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Defending%20Salamone%20Rossi.pdf>, accessed November 21, 2014. Couvillon, Thomas Michael. “Text and Structure in Schoenberg’s Op. 50, and an Original Composition, Symphony #1.” PhD Dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2002. 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How, Deborah. “Schoenberg’s Prelude.” PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 2009. Idelsohn, Avraham Zvi. “The Kol Nidre Tune,” Hebrew Union College Annual 8-9 (1931-32): 493-509. 167 Jacobson, Joshua. “Defending Salamone Rossi: The Transformation and Justification of Jewish Music in Renaissance Italy,” <http://ism.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Defending%20Salamone%20Rossi.pdf>, accessed November 21, 2014. Johnson, Julian. “Israel Exists Again,” translated by Helene Gruber. In Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Vol. 2, edited by G. Gruber, 288-299. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2002. Krones, Hartmunt.“Schönberg und die alte Modalität,” Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 4 (2002), 136-58. Leibowitz, René. “Arnold Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw or the Possibility of ‘Commited’ Art,” Horizon 20, no. 116 (1949): 122-31. 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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Arnold Schoenberg's choral works composed after his 1933 exile from Germany demonstrate key aspects of Jewish identity the composer experienced while residing in America. Kol Nidre (1937), A Survivor from Warsaw (1947), Dreimal Tausend Jahre (1949), and the incomplete “Israel Exists Again” (1949) together represent Schoenberg’s evolving political and ethnic attitudes towards his Jewish identity during those years. This identity was represented in several manifestations: as liturgical awareness, as group identification, and as political ideal. Schoenberg's Jewish identification evolved significantly during his time in America. Beginning with a stance embodying ardent nationalist advocacy, following closely on the heels of intense political writings expressing ardent aspirations, Schoenberg softened considerably in later years. By the time he wrote his final compositions, he had moved from a nationalist to an ethnic conception of Judaism. His final works demonstrate a shift in his conception of Jewish sovereignty from one based on Jewish exceptionalism to one derived from universal principles of human rights.

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Creator Grayson, Joshua M. (author)

Core Title Jewish musical identity in exile: Arnold Schoenberg's works and fragments on Jewish themes, 1937-1951

School Thornton School of Music

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Music (Historical Musicology)

Publication Date 06/30/2017

Defense Date 04/20/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Arnold Schoenberg,Ethnicity,Holocaust (artistic and musical responses),Jewish identity,nationalism,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Brown, Bruce (committee chair), Demers, Joanna (committee member), Morrison, Leah (committee member)

Creator Email artiste1212@yahoo.com,jgrayson@usc.edu

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA