- Person
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Lived
- 1874–1951
- Field
- Composition
- From
- Austrian-American
The story
The roots of Moses und Aron lie in a humiliation. In the summer of 1921 Arnold Schoenberg was forced to leave the Austrian resort of Mattsee because he was a Jew, even though he had converted to Protestantism years before. Two years later he wrote to the painter Wassily Kandinsky that he had learned the lesson forced upon him: that he was not a German or a European, but a Jew. He responded first with a play, Der biblische Weg (The Biblical Way), whose hero was partly modelled on Theodor Herzl, and then with an oratorio that became an opera.
Schoenberg wrote both the German libretto and the music, based on episodes from the Book of Exodus, and composed the first two acts between 1930 and 1932. Moses grasps the idea of one invisible, unimaginable God but cannot find words to share it, while his eloquent brother Aron can reach the people only through images, culminating in the golden calf. To embody the contrast, Moses is a speaking role and Aron a lyrical tenor.
The whole opera is built from a single twelve-tone row. It turns a central Jewish idea, the prohibition on making images of God, into a drama about the limits of art and language. The Milken Archive says it occupies a central position in Schoenberg's work, and it is widely regarded as his masterpiece.
He planned a third act and wrote its libretto, but never set it to music, and the opera usually ends with Moses lamenting that he lacks the word. Schoenberg always meant to finish it, so it was not staged in his lifetime. The Dance around the Golden Calf was performed at Darmstadt on 2 July 1951, eleven days before he died; a concert performance followed in Hamburg in 1954, and the first staging took place in Zurich on 6 June 1957.
Since then the opera has reached the world's great houses: Covent Garden under Georg Solti in 1965, Boston in 1966 and the Metropolitan Opera in 1999. It was filmed by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet in 1973, and it remains one of the most debated operas of the century.
Why it matters
Moses und Aron brought deep questions of Jewish thought onto the world's opera stages, where it is still performed and debated.
About Arnold Schoenberg
Viennese composer who broke with traditional harmony, invented the twelve-tone method, and returned to Judaism in defiance of the Nazis, writing Moses und Aron and A Survivor from Warsaw.
More about Arnold Schoenberg
- Schoenberg's harmony textbook is still studiedArnold Schoenberg wrote his Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony) in 1910, a teaching book that musicians still study more than a century later.
- Arnold Schoenberg created the twelve-tone methodIn 1923 Arnold Schoenberg announced his method of composing with twelve tones, a new way of organising music that shaped composition for half a century.
- Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire created a lasting ensembleSchoenberg's 1912 Pierrot lunaire, 21 poems for a half-sung reciter and five players, created the 'Pierrot ensemble' that composers still write for today.
- Schoenberg's society gave 353 performances of new musicIn 1918 Arnold Schoenberg founded Vienna's Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave 353 carefully rehearsed performances of new music for its members.
- In America Schoenberg taught John Cage and Lou HarrisonAfter fleeing Nazi Germany, Arnold Schoenberg taught in Los Angeles, becoming a UCLA professor in 1936; his students included John Cage and Lou Harrison.
- Schoenberg taught Alban Berg and Anton WebernArnold Schoenberg's Vienna pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern became major composers in their own right, forming with him the Second Viennese School.
- Schoenberg's Transfigured Night became a beloved classicArnold Schoenberg's string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), written in 1899 when he was 25, remains one of the most performed works of its era.
- Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw honoured the murderedArnold Schoenberg's 1947 A Survivor from Warsaw, for narrator, men's chorus and orchestra, ends with prisoners singing the Shema as they face death.
Sources
- Arnold Schoenberg Milken Archive of Jewish Music
- Arnold Schoenberg Wikipedia
- Moses und Aron Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.