“Die Jakobsleiter, twelve-tone music, and Schönberg`s Gods

“Die Jakobsleiter, twelve-tone music, and Schönberg`s Gods

“Die Jakobsleiter, twelve-tone music, and Schönberg’s Gods”
(Vienna June 26-30 2002, Schönberg und sein Gott.)
Tito M. Tonietti
University of Pisa – Italy
Abstract.
In his (unfinished) oratorio, Die Jakobsleiter, Schönberg expressed a
religious conception of his, including it (for the first time) as a structural
element of the composition. He chose Der Auserwählte (the Chosen One)
to sing a twelve-tone row. It is strange that he never again referred to this
row among the “first steps” of his method. We may wonder why. This fact
has also passed unobserved among musicologists, even among those who
have tried to offer a complete list of all the rows.
In the history of Schönberg’s twelve-tone composition method, Die
Jakobsleiter should, for this and other reasons, assume a greater importance
than is normally attributed to it. At this point, the method also acquired
a religious significance, as a means for the expression of the divinity. But
which divinity was this to be?
Was it at that time the God of the Christian/Lutheran church which
Schönberg had officially joined? No, rather a mystical personal variant.
Was he to present the same God in Die biblische Weg or Moses und Aron?
Or was this gradually to become, during the 20’s, the God of the Hebrew
Bible? No, but again rather a mystical variant of his own.
Instead of forcing him into one or the other religious group, we prefer
to insist on the most important of the characteristics that were common
to these different Gods: God had no image, He could not be represented
directly, He was too abstract to become personally manifest, He needed a
prophet. Who could venture to assume this dangerous role?
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The performance is to be held on
12 December 1912 (there is something to interpret here, 12.XII.12).
22 June 1912, Alban Berg to Arnold Schönberg
1. The twelve-tone row of Die Jakobsleiter.
In bars 361-363, Die Jakobsleiter (Schönberg 1915-1923) contains the
following row:
Csharp,Dsharp,B,F,E,D,C,Bflat ,Gsharp,A,Fsharp,G
(2,4,12,6,5,3,1,11,9,10,7,8)
Example 1.
Schönberg wrote this to have it sung by Der Auserwählte [The Chosen
One]. Thus we are at the centre of the Oratorio, with the most significant
character. In the stages of mystical elevation towards God, the level of the
Chosen One is the intermediate one between earth and heaven, between
guilty humanity and the divine judge.
The fourth level could serve as a guide, since it still possessed “Abbild
... Glanz [image and splendour]”, but already started to be similar to those
that were much higher, “wie dem Grundton der ferne Oberton [like the
harmonics to the fundamental tone]”. This was thus the prophet who interpreted the signs of heaven, who gave them substance so that they could
fall under the eyes and ears of common mortals. Many tried to struggle
against their doubts, asking for answers, but few, very few, seemed to be
able to give them: this was the reason why the angel Gabriel, an affectionate father, asked the “Chosen One” to draw closer to them. This is the
beginning of one of the few pages on which Schönberg wrote a date: “2
September 1917” (on sheet 78, which contained bars 352-367, in the great
book of rough drafts, Sk 15-22). May he have gone on with his composition
on that date after an interruption? Or did he not rather want, perhaps, to
leave a temporal indication of the key moment of the work? Our prophetmusician left us as many as five drafts of the bars from 337 to 356, as if he
was trying to find something difficult and important.
Even the circumstances of its composition, therefore, indicate the importance of this passage. Schönberg wrote this down both on pages 44 and
78 of the large book of rough drafts and on the final pages of a smaller
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book (Sk 17). It is interesting that in the first version, the eighth note of
the row was a B natural, and not flat. But this must have been a pure
oversight, because the missing flat required to create the complete row was
re-inserted in the other cases. This error and its correction clearly revealed
Schönberg’s intention during the composition of the episode. What is somewhat surprising is that subsequently, this first row, placed at the central
point of Die Jakobsleiter, was never to be explicitly mentioned again by
the composer, or even noted by any of the large number of commentators.
(Maegaard 1972 and 1976)
In the episode of “The Chosen One”, our composer included the central
elements of his poetics, which he was to develop further in Moses und Aron.
He did not want to draw close to the human race, but he was forced to
become a part of it all the same, even if he knew that his “Wort dann
unverstanden bleibt [word would not be understood]”. Being at the same
time their lord and servant, was his task to represent them and encourage
them, to celebrate them and to castigate them? The character was largely
free from the agitation of the others, and calmly expressed himself in long
legato phrases -“cantabile” was what the composer indicated - ending up
by becoming similar, not only in the baritone voice, to Gabriel.
He tried “dem Stoff zu entfliehen [to flee from matter]” aided by his
feeling of nausea, but his hunger dragged him down. Thus he found himself
overwhelmed by all the same vices and virtues as humanity. He despised the
inheritances acquired; he stole and pilfered in order to “Ein Neues gewiß,
ein Höh’res vielleicht vorzubilden [create something undoubtedly new, perhaps higher]”. Now the baritone slowly arrived even higher, as far as G3,
while the violins and the clarinets soared up fleetingly towards the sky. Our
Schönberg was thus tormented here, like “The Chosen One”, by a naturalistic reflection, which by now was forced and insufficient in its imitative
symbologies, and which decomposed/split up into the pure relationships of
new harmonic forms.
Humanity appeared to be the theme, and he was the variation; but
something else pushed him “Hinüber [beyond this]”. Accompanied by a
shrill trill of woodwind: “Mein Wort laß ich hier, müht euch damit! Mein
Form nehm ich mit, sie steh euch indes voran ... [I leave my word here, work
on it! I take my form away, with me, and yet it is before you]”. Now the song
pushed up beyond the tessitura as high as Aflat in the fp of the brass which
were starting a crescendo. The form, which Schönberg, the Chosen One,
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was creating, was to remain there, outside space and time,“bis sie wieder
mit neuen Worten wieder den alten zu neuem Mißverständnis in eurer Mitte
erscheint [until it appeared again with new words, still not understood, as
with the old ones]”, amid humanity. The ff chromatic chords played by the
whole orchestra on the word “incomprehension” (bar 416) fell to a p and
continued their diminuendo, arriving at a ppp. With the usual rallentando
to half the tempo (one crochet = 50), Gabriel sang: “Hier hast du Auge und
Ohr [Here you have an eye and an ear]”. The prophet’s difficult, unhappy
task had been sketched out. Without any interruption, the angel addresses
the other sinners, pointing out how far behind they were with respect to him,
the solitary forerunner. They were therefore to be satisfied with meditating
on the word, remaining at a distance from the form, because both of these
things would confuse them. Yet this was not to seem a little thing to them,
seeing that the prophet, who was similar to the Most High, revealed himself
even in the smallest things. Later on, they would deservedly discover the
form, mingling themselves in it, when they felt repulsion for the form closest
to them. The chosen artist was to continue creating until he felt impure,
creating from inside himself.
The following level, “Der Mönk [The Monk]”, shows the recognition
of the original sin that still stained the Chosen One, that of pride. After
expounding his artistics poetics by means of the “Chosen One”, our musician now echoed the moral doubts of his historical existence, leaving the
score deliberately without any constant, certain course. Immediately afterwards, Gabriel “leicht erstaunt, aber freundlich [slightly amazed, yet in a
friendly manner]” commented: “Wie du doch schwankst und unsicher bist
[How shaky and uncertain you are!]” All this did not happen to the monk
so that he would again be excited by pleasure and pain, which were by now
only concepts for him. He put himself to the test by himself. He himself
[his guilt complex], and not the Lord, wanted a sacrifice. He had already
made the greatest one: “du warst reicher, eh’ du vollkommener wurdest.
[you were richer before you became more perfect]”.
But the monk was forced all the same to continue to undergo experiences; he was to sin again, and by repenting he would purify himself. As
the tempo gradually became slower and slower, ppp, he solemnly confirmed
that the ability to recognise seemingly innocent actions as sins had made
him more mature. As the muted trumpets echoed pp, Gabriel ordered:
“Geh; verkünde und leide; sei Prophet und Märtyrer. [Go, proclaim, suffer,
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be a prophet and a martyr]”.
Schönberg ’s investiture seemed to be complete, but as for Seraphyte
(Balzac’s character who was the initial model for the Oratorio), the ambiguity between earth and heaven could be solved only by reaching the disturbing next level. Strange details reinforce the impression that Schönberg
was inclined to identify himself with the levels of Jacob’s Ladder. It was
for this reason that he was so interested in Balzac’s Seraphyte that he retranslated into German certain passages from a French edition that he possessed (Balzac 1910). However, when he dealt with the physical appearance
of Wilfred, he seemed to go beyond mere translation. He reorganised it two
or three times, and underlined the point where Balzac described Wilfred’s
limited height. The French text read “ses cheveux étaient noirs, épais et
fins [his hair was black, thick and fine]”. But our composer was upset by
the German rendering of the description of the hair: “schwarz, weich und
üppig [black, soft and luxuriant]” and without any hesitation crossed out
the “üppig [luxuriant]” substituting it with a pleonastic “fein [fine]”. We
are forced to suspect that his motivation was not exactly faithfulness to
Balzac’s text.
In 1918, visiting Villa Mandl in Döbling, he wrote on the Visitors’
Book: “I should not approach for I ...” and three bars from Jacob’s Ladder.
(Stuckenschmidt 1977, 257) These words and notes exactly are those sung
by The Chosen One in the bars 360-363 of the Oratorio, quoted at the
beginning with the twelve-tone row. Therefore, Schönberg considered them
as they were his own signature and his motto.
The sixth level introduced on to the scene “der Sterbende [the dying
one]”, interpreted by “an acute female voice in the low register”. “The
dying one” sang/spoke, like the preceding levels, above all of his own disappointment. He had anxiously waited for the “Augenblick [moment]” of
abandoning life in order to receive “Aufklärung [illumination]” at last. But
he had only had the impression of having already faced it before. He had
already been pushed down through the centuries, passing through a thousand lives and suffering a thousand deaths. Slowing down pppppp [thus
in the rough draft] to 4/4, the sufferings were now rendered sublime, they
were freed and at last they lifted him up. “Und er fliegt. Ich fliege...
[And he flies. I fly...]”. The first violin began to hover higher and higher
amid trills of piccolos, accompanied by the harp and the celesta: “Weiter!
Weiter! Zum Ziel. [Onward! Onward! Towards the goal]” where he arrived
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“halb schmerzlich, halb freudig erstaunt [astounded, half sorrowful and half
happy]”.
Beside the re-elaborations in his large book of rough drafts (Sk 15-22),
our composer also added the dates “2 January 1918” and “8 January 1918”.
He had composed one of the most analogical-onomatopoeic, and at the same
time symbolic deaths in all the history of European music. The episode
was concluded by two “markedly whispering” orchestral bars, picturesquely
blackened by arpeggios, glissandos and scales on the xylophone, celesta,
piano, harps and strings, beneath the first trumpet playing, in a judging
tone, Csharp, D, E, F, G, Aflat (2,3,5,6,8,9). These were the six notes that
Schönberg had used to start his composition of the music in the rough draft
book, and later to open Die Leiter in the obstinate initial passage. In view
of their symbolic significance and their continual recurrence in the first part
of the Oratorio, we have called them, the scale of the earth.
On February 5 1926, Schönberg was to cut out an article from the
evening edition of the Berliner Tageblatt, with the following comment: “Ich
habe das aufgehoben, weil es ja ganz genau der Tod aus der Jakobsleiter
ist [I have kept it because it is exactly the same as the death in Jacob’s
Ladder]”. The article was as follows: “The last vision of Adolphe Willette,
as our correspondent from Paris informs us, is narrated differently today
by certain newspapers compared with yesterday. Willette, who had slept
for a few hours, woke up early at four o’clock and looked around the room.
His face assumed an expression of perfect peace. He said, lightly: ‘I am
on my way. I am flying in the clouds. Higher and higher! Now I am over
the Alps!’ With a rapid movement, the patient sat up and got out of bed,
pushing aside the arms that wanted to offer him support, and went over to
the window, which was still dark. ‘I am rising higher and higher’, he said
with an expression of great happiness. ‘Now I am going straight up, higher
and higher, without stopping, as quick as an arrow - to heaven’. Then he
fell down on the floor in silence. He was dead”. (Schönberg 1992, 196) Thus
the scene of Die Leiter had an (unexpected?) realistic interpretation.
On the seventh level of the scale, “Die Seele [The Soul]”, freed from
its heavy fleshliness, flew away towards heaven. Having lost the inertia of
matter and its resistance due to the friction of the atmosphere, the tempo
accelerated considerably (a minim = about 70). Now outside the historical
reality, and starting to be a part of the pure harmony, the soul at last
sang a song without words, in a shrill soprano voice. The harmonic totality
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was obtained thanks to “shrill female voices”. These voices, which were
regularly doubled up by three clarinets, were to be sufficiently numerous
for the rhythm of the breathing not to be heard; seeing that they described
the metamorphosis taking place from the heavenly point of view, which
ignored the sensible elements, to focus attention on the necessary moral
qualities, such as courage and strength. From below, on the contrary, the
chorus (sopranos and basses) underlined the signs of change in the great
final transformation, such as the appearance of the rainbow on their clothes:
this is a classic Biblical sign of the re-establishment of a connection between
earth and heaven after the storm.
From above “Tilge die Sinne... Tilge den Verstand. [cancel the senses,
cancel the intellect]”, from below “Erdenjammer [an earthly groan]”. On
the choral panchromatism, the soul laid notes that grew longer and longer,
more and more acute, arriving as high as the F above the line. “Löse dich
auf [Dissolve yourself!]” Then down to the long C, B, Csharp. Finally,
the archangel Gabriel sealed the great transformation: “Wenn du nicht
mehr klagst, bist du nah. Dann ist dein Ich gelöscht [When you no longer
complain, you are close. Then your Ego is dissolved]”.
Less sublime, but more peremptory than in the mystical ecstasy of a
similar departure, Schönberg was reduced to silence by a recall to military
service. “Enrolled in the army!! 19.9.1917”, he wrote on page 96 of his
large book of rough drafts, next to bars 597-601. Later he wrote “30/XI.
1917”, perhaps the date when he intended to go on with the composition,
but he hardly made any progress. Finally, on the following page, he wrote
“discharged from service again 7/12.1917”. He had been reduced, albeit
only for three months, to the level of a number among the many whose
desperate task was to shore up the collapse of the Austro-German empires.
If his ego was not to be wholly overwhelmed by this, it had to start to
detach himself from it, and thus he gradually modifed the nuances of his
position, arriving at the mutation which has remained impressed for our
ears in its transformation into musical language.
Nuvole in silenzio (Tonietti 200?) presents other reasons which lead us
to think that Die Leiter was much closer to serial music than writers have
commonly believed so far. As it was interrupted at the “Großes symphonisches Zwischenspiel [Great Symphonic Interlude]”, little can be said about
the music that Schönberg would have composed for the part dedicated to
the souls after their ascent to heaven.
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In his letter to Kandinsky dated July 20, 1922, Schönberg still manifested his intention of finishing the music of Die Leiter. “When one’s ...
in those 8 years found oneself constantly faced with new obstacles against
which all thinking, all power of invention, all energy, all ideas, proved helpless, so bedeutet das für einen, der alles nur für Idee gehalten hat, den
Zusammenbruch, so fern er nicht auf einen anderen höheren Glauben immer mehr sich gestützt hat. Was ich meine, würde Ihnen am besten meine
Dichtung Jakobsleiter (ein Oratorium) sagen: ich meine - wenn auch
ohne alle organisatorischen Fesseln - die Religion. [for a man for whom
ideas have been everything it means nothing less than the total collapse of
things, unless he has come to find support in ever increasing measure, in
belief in something higher, beyond. You would, I think, see what I mean
best from my libretto Jacob’s Ladder (an oratorio): what I mean is - even
though without any organizational fetters - religion.] This was my one and
only support during those years -here let this be said for the first time.” ...
“It may interest you to know I am at present working on Jacob’s Ladder.
I began it several years ago, but had to break off work (at one of the
most rapt passages) in order to join the army. Seither konnte ich nicht
wieder die Stimmung zur Fortsetzung finden [Since then I’ve never got back
into the mood to go on with it]. It seems, however, that it is meant to
go ahead this year. It will be a big work: choir, solo voices, orchestra.
Apart from that I plan to write a smaller theoretical book, Lehre vom
musikalischen Zusammenhang [Theory of Musical Unity], which has also
been in my mind for several years and which is always being postponed
- probably because it hasn’t yet matured. For the rest: chamber music,
etc. Further, I am thinking about a Theory of Composition, for which I’ve
been making preliminary studies for years now.”(Schönberg 1992, 196-197;
Schönberg Kandinsky 1984, 74-75)
Our composer sincerely revealed to his ex-companion of artistic achievements how deeply the war had influenced his convictions. Jacob’s Ladder
reflected the religious faith which was the only thing that had sustained
him during those difficult years. He openly cursed, in no uncertain terms,
the atonalists who troubled him and damaged him, taking him as an example, because they confused him with the politicised artistic movements.
On September 19, 1917, he had interrupted the composition of Die Leiter
because he had been called up, at the moment of maximum mystical ecstasy when the soul rose to heaven. For years he had lacked the Stimmung
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(N.B. the inclination!), not the time, or the means to go on, and now, in
July 1922, he spoke and wrote, for the first time, about having resumed
his composition. In contacting him again, Kandinsky seemed to force him
to reconsider the war and his projects of that period. The letter, a longer
letter, more open and more significant than many others, spoke about the
past - the Harmonielehre, the Lehre vom musikalischen Zusammenhang,
Die Jakobsleiter, a theory of composition - that past which had largely
remained blocked, and unfinished. Was Schönberg’s future to be continuously filled with those remote projects that the painter helped to recall?
The discovery that he had confessed the previous summer, and had used
in the “Präludium” of Suite für Klavier (op. 25) remained hidden (like the
row in Die Leiter) and minimised in an insignificant “chamber music, etc.”.
Why did our artist-prophet not express himself with the same passion and
conviction about the Fünf Klavierstücke (op. 23) or Serenade (op. 24)?
Maybe at that time he did not yet consider them to be compositions of
equal importance to the others that he mentioned to Kandinsky. The future of those musical works was still misty in 1922, even for a prophet of
the calibre of Schönberg. Perhaps his will, his ideas, and his faith were not
sufficient for him to succeed in creating them.
What he had written to Berg July 20, and the emphasis given to Die
Leiter with Kandinsky, made it practically certain that Schönberg would
compose the “Großes symphonische Zwischenspiel” in that July of 1922 at
Traunkirchen. He wrote about a hundred bars, arriving at bar 700: the
last ones that remained for Die Leiter. Their harmonic structure was the
scale of the earth (2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9). In his book of rough drafts, entitled
“Mit Gott [With God]”, which he started in 1922 (Sk22-23), he prepared
the bars to insert into the piece. From page 3 to page 14, he constructed
several counterpoints based on the scale of the earth, in which it was also
presented backwards and transposed to other levels. (Christensen 1979, II
177-180)
While he studied the melodic course to be assigned to the first violoncello for bars 615 ff., he always started from the theme of the earth Aflat ,
G, D, Csharp (9, 8, 3, 2), and then he marked next to it Eflat , Fsharp , A,
Bflat , B, C (4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 1), which were exactly the six complementary
notes that were missing to arrive at a row of twelve. (Es. 2)
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Example 2.
Thus he enlarged the scale of the earth, gradually adding the missing
notes, until he succeeded in including all of them, but with some repetitions.
He appeared to be searching for the passage towards the row, but he did
not seem to succeed wholly, just as the ascent to heaven which was the
meaning of the intermezzo must have been difficult and dangerous.
He insistently continued his study of the mirror forms of the theme:
backwards, inverted, the inverted form backwards, and various transpositions. He scribbled down the bars from 672 to 676, and from 680 to 684.
He dedicated page 12 to the table containing six transpositions of a row
extracted from the melody for the violin in bars 32-36. He attempted to
create a melody with all twelve notes, calculating its inverted and backward
forms, but he did not use it in Die Leiter. Was the musical idea at the basis
of Die Leiter about to give birth, in the Interlude, to a serial page, in the
strict sense of the term? He must undoubtedly have thought about it, but
on the score there were still only suggestions for games of combinations
and specular imitations, but no real row. Could it be that in spite of the
“Präludium” for piano of the previous summer, and the discovery made, he
had not yet reflected seriously on the composition with twelve notes as the
general structure to be given to musical pieces? Could it be that even if
he already had in his mind some of his serial laws, he did not feel that it
was suitable for the Interlude? As Kandinsky had reminded him, did Die
Leiter seem to be only the work of another past age, marked by convictions
which had collapsed with the defeat? Would it become difficult to insert
into the oratorio the future style that he was creating? But he had assigned
a row in the oratorio to the Chosen One. The kind of serial project that
Schönberg was cultivating for Jacob’s Ladder was to emerge from his letter
to his rival, Joseph Hauer.
However, in the Interlude, old and new ideas were side by side, entering
into contact and conflict. In the space contained in the book of rough drafts
he had just started (Sk22-23), old and new ideas were materially next to
each other: on page 3 Schönberg was working on Die Leiter, while on page 2
he copied the first line of Petrarch’s “Sonett”, to use it for his Serenade, “O,
könnt ich je der Rache” [Oh could I of revenge], and immediately afterwards
he resumed the scale of the earth. On page 14 he wrote bars 681-689 with
the vocalisations of ‘The Soul’, again on the scale of the earth; from pages
15 to 18, instead, he outlined bars for the Serenade. It would seem to
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be legitimate to imagine that what could be heard, still confusedly, in the
Interlude became more visible to his eye in the written page and might
already have existed in a clear form in our composer’s head. In a word,
while in the Interlude, Schönberg had, with difficulty, reached the watershed
between the valley of atonality and that of seriality, in the “Sonett” for
the Serenade, like a second Moses, he cleft the rock from which the water
flowed down towards the new destination. In the desert that had become
inhospitable and silent behind him, the old source seemed to have dried up,
while the one he had just discovered began to babble, crystal clear, and
grow in its passage over the stones.
In 1922, Hauer published an article entitled “Sphärenmusik”. (Hauer
1922) Schönberg made copious comments on it, point by point, in the copy
of Melos in his library. After constructing a kind of Pythagorean or Keplerian analogy between the musical notes and the planets, which is recalled
in the title, our composer from Austria expounded his conception of tropen
and the twelve-tone system.
Next to Hauer’s affirmation that “Innerhalb 12 Tönen darf sich
keiner wiederholen, auch keiner ausgelassen werden - das ist ja selbstverständlich. Gleiche Töne müssen so weit wie möglich von einander entfernt
werden. Das macht man so, indem man sie in zwei Gruppen zu je sechs
Tönen trennt. [underlined by Schönberg. Within a statement of the twelve
tones, no note may be repeated and none omitted - this is self-evident.
Like tones must be separated from one another as far as possible: this
is done by dividing them into two groups, each of six tones]” Schönberg
left a long comment. Points 6 and 7 are of interest for us here. “6)
‘indem man sie in 2 Gruppen trennt’: (auch das habe ich schon vor Hauer
in der Jakobsleiter getan und zw. angeregt durch Skrjabin Verfahren das im
Blauen Reiter geschildert war). [By dividing them into two groups. (I have
done this too, before Hauer, in Jacob’s Ladder. Granted, I was inspired by
Scriabin’s procedure as described in Der blaue Reiter)]
7) Die Idee der Tropen ist nicht übel, wenn auch durchaus willkürlich. Es
ist gewiss nicht unpraktisch so vorzugehen und derartige Hexachorde hat
man ja zu ähnlichen Zwecken schon angewendet. Der Hauptvorteil ist, dass
der geringste Abstand gleicher Töne in einer Stimme 6 ist. Das ist nicht
viel und nicht sehr kosmisch, sondern bloss menschlich, aber in diesem Sinn
kann man es gelten lassen. Mein Versuch aber ist besser und musikalischer.
[The idea of tropes is not bad, even if entirely arbitrary. It is certainly not
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impractical to proceed in this way, and such hexachords have already been
used for similar purposes. The main advantage is that the smallest distance
within a line between the same note is six. This is not much and not very
cosmic, instead purely human. In this sense it can’t be faulted. But my
experiments are better and more musical.]” (Schönberg 1922a; Simms 1987,
124, 132; Tonietti 200?, ch. 38)
The conflict with Hauer was bringing to the light aspects of Schönberg’s
character that had so far remained hidden, or ambiguous. The article could
not be ignored because it touched the most important and delicate points
of his ideal construction. Those twelve notes of the Nomos op. 19, which at
the time did not seem to form the piece as an organic whole, now became a
real method of composition. Furthermore, they were offered to the public
in one of the leading publications for modern music: in this way, a true
dodecaphonic law was developed by means of the tropen.
On July 25, 1922, at Traunkirchen, Schönberg decided to transform all
his comments into a long letter directly to Hauer.
“From your article ‘Music of the Spheres’ in Melos, as well as from
a few of your other publications that are known to me, I gather that you
have developed a theory whose putative laws I sought to clarify first in
1910 in my Harmony book, and whose further development over the 12
years since that time I have substantially pursued. .... Unfortunately, I am
not so far advanced that I can make the fruits of my inquiries public. On
the contrary, it will still be some time before I can write my ‘Lehre vom
musikalischen Zusammenhang’ in which the fundamentals of ‘Composition
with Twelve Tones’ will be expounded. Where my inquiry has led me and
where it stands at the present habe ich vor mehreren Monaten in einigen
Vorträgen meinen Schülern mitgeteilt. [I communicated to my students in
a few lectures given several months ago.] Even if the results of more than
10 years of thinking and investigating in theoretischer Hinsicht vielleicht
kärglich genannt werden dürfen, so sind sie es doch nicht in praktischer, da
es mir gelingt, die Logik, die bisher die musikalischen Kunstwerke geregelt
hat darzustellen und auf die Komposition mit 12 Tönen anzuwenden. [may
have led to a perhaps paltry outcome in theoretical terms, it has not been so
in practice, since I have succeeded in applying to twelve-tone composition
the logic which formerly ruled in music]. I am highly interested that you,
in different ways from me, mehr darum bemühen die kosmischen Zusammenhänge einer neuen Kunst zu finden; es ist dies eine Gedankenrichtung,
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der ich (wie die Astrologen befürchten, was mir bis jetzt unbewusst geblieben
ist) mit meinen Sympathien zuneige. [are concerned more with the cosmic
relations of a new art. This is a direction in thought towards which I (as the
astrologers fear, which was unknown to me until now) am sympathetically
inclined.]”
But then he added: “Not sent, because the result would no doubt be
some offensive reply from Mr. Hauer. Or, at best, nothing would come
of it, certainly nothing reasonable.” (Schönberg 1922a; Simms 1987, 122,
131; Tonietti 200?, ch. 38) Schönberg had interpreted the criticism of the
‘genius’ composer and his folly, contained in Hauer’s article, as directed at
himself. However, he did not consider Hauer to be a real rival, who wanted
to remove him from his destined role (of a prophet?), but on the contrary,
as the expression of another religion, based on common men in the place of
chosen ones. On this level, then, no kind of dialogue even exist.
Schönberg was afraid of being overtaken along the road leading beyond
free atonality, at least as a musician. Here, Hauer offered some rules to
prevent centres of attraction among the notes from re-forming, as a result
of a lack of rigour or by chance. Consequently, Schönberg had to make
haste to propose his own rules. He expected, at least, quite reasonably,
that the results he had already achieved would be recognised. A rivalry
had by now sprung up between them, which could no longer be minimised
or avoided, but which was to influence the evolution of their attitudes and
their works. For the moment, it compelled our composer to leave aside
his enigmas. Consequently, he revealed himself more clearly to us common
mortals; or at least, to those mortals interested more in understanding his
originality within that great epoch, than in fanning the flames of a struggle
between unequal beings, like the eagle and the whale.
Schönberg contemplated a polyphonic structure (and not monodic, like
Hauer) in which the row would not be monotonously always the same. The
specular forms allowed him to multiply the original row, obtaining new,
different forms which, however, remained closely connected to it by a law.
The sixth point of his comment seemed to betray the most jealously kept
secret. The six notes chosen for the ‘scale of the earth’, used in Jacob’s
Ladder, were only the first group, which he planned to complete with a
second group, as if it were a question of forming a scale of twelve notes by
means of two tropen. In passing from the first part, with the ‘scale of the
earth’, to the second part beyond the clouds, would our prophetic musician
13
have used the six missing notes? Undoubtedly, ‘the Chosen One’, with his
twelve notes of the row, reflected heaven as well, but did Schönberg really
intend to write the music for him choosing a characteristic scale, as he had
done with the earth? Perhaps a permutation of 1, (2, 3), 4, (5, 6), 7, (8, 9),
10, 11, 12: C, Dsharp, Fsharp, A, Asharp, B ? In his comment on Hauer’s
“Sphärenmusik”, the suspicion that the dualism between earth and heaven
was symbolised in the musical dualism of the scales chosen for the two parts,
while the unity of the cosmos appeared in the totality of the twelve notes,
now found indirect confirmation. For Schönberg, Hauer’s attempt, defined
as “nicht übel”, was “bloss menschlich” and “nicht sehr kosmisch” compared
with his own, which was “besser und musikalischer”. The hypothesis, albeit
highly probable, would seem to be impossible to prove, as there is no musical
score on which it can be verified. However, we have seen that also the
extant drafts of the second part sometimes contain twelve notes, and once
even the very six notes that are missing in the scale of the earth. They
were thus heading in that direction. In this way, just as it is possible to get
an idea of a whole vase by following a hypothetical symmetry based on a
fragment, also Die Leiter revealed glimpses, albeit with interruptions, of the
general musical project. If it had been completed, Die Jakobsleiter would
have been the first twelve-note composition. (Of course the interpretation
crucially depends on the definition one gives of a serial composition; vide
also Sichardt 1990, 47 and Haimo 1990, 90-91.)
Schönberg confirmed this with his comment on the low margin of
“Atonale Musik” by Hauer (November 1923, Die Musik). “Dieses ‘Gesetz’
welches aber kein Naturgesetz ist, habe ich lange vor Hauer gefunden und
zum erstenmal in meiner ‘Symphonie’ (Jakobsleiter) verwendet. [This ‘law’,
which however is not a law of nature, have I found long before Hauer and
the first time I used it in my ‘Symphony’ (Jakobsleiter).]” (Tonietti 200?,
ch. 50; also confront Simms 1987, 126.)
By identifying the scale of the earth as one of Hauer’s tropes, Schönberg
was claiming priority in the use of the hexachord. But it must have seemed
insufficient for him to go back to 1917, and consequently, in order to gain a
few more years, he arrived at Der blaue Reiter, dated 1912, that is to say,
ten years earlier. The rivalry also led him to admit -an extremely rare casethe influence of Skrjabin, whose Prometheus had been presented there by
L. Sabaneev.
Thus Schönberg must have taken his idea of choosing six notes, as the
14
scale for the earthly part of Die Leiter, from the article about Prometheus.
However, we should remember that the hexachord used by our composer,
Csharp, D, E, F, G, Aflat sounded very different in its notes and in the intervals; anyway, permuting them, he changed the succession of the notes and
therefore their intervals. What else interesting could he find in Skrjabin’s
Prome- theus? Treating art as a mystical process would undoubtedly have
aroused Schönberg’s enthusiasm, the Russian’s religious ecstasies had not
been obtained by exalting to the maximum the seductions of the senses,
in a work of total (post-Wagnerian) art. As Sabaneev wrote, “His highly
original harmony contains in itself the most multiform nuances, starting
from mystical terror, and ending up with a radiant ecstasy and a caressing erotism”. Thus Skrjabin still remained on the earth, and our prophet
at most would have left him a place on the first level of Die Leiter. The
Russian, whose religiosity is different from that of Schönberg, had above all
added to hearing another sense, the sight of colours, in his representation
of the mystical idea.
In the letter which he did not send to his rival, Schönberg seemed to
reveal his faith in the music of the spheres. And he did this at the end, in
late July 1922, when he still had in his mind the Interlude of Jacob’s Ladder,
and he was already thinking of Petrarca’s “Sonett” for the Serenade. In his
Lehre vom musikalischen Zusammenhang he was to have expressed the ideas
which he had been working on for twelve years, that is to say, ever since the
period of Harmonielehre. This was to have rendered public the principles for
‘twelve-tone composition’, but it was still a thing of the future. He admitted
that their efforts shared a common goal, and in order to convince Hauer that
he, too, had made considerable progress in this direction, he called some
witnesses. “I communicated to my students in a few lectures given several
months ago.” Unfortunately, it is not exactly clear when, to whom, and in
what form our maestro did so. Was he perhaps referring to the year before,
when he had communicated to Rufer or to Stein the discovery destined to
guarantee the primacy of German music? Here, however, he seemed to be
talking about meetings that were much less secret. (Tonietti 200?, ch. 34)
And yet in May 1951, our composer was to recall, referring to his pupil,
Webern: “I, ..., immediately and exhaustively explained to him each of my
new ideas (with the exception of the method of composition with twelve
tones - that I long kept secret, because as I said to Erwin Stein, Webern
immediately uses everything I do, plan or say, ...).” (Maegaard 1972, 96;
15
Schönberg 1950 (1984), 484)
In any case, poor Schönberg, who might have kept his discovery a
secret so long in order to avoid the rivalry with Webern, who, after all,
was an ex-pupil of his, must now have thought that it had been a waste
of time to do so. And furthermore, for this same reason he risked being
preceded by a stranger like Hauer. Whatever idea he had had of a row so
far, his resentment was now leading him to produce and to demonstrate
something else, something clearer and more precise, not only theoretical,
but also practical. He saw the row as the result of “logic” applied to the
musical work of art. And this was the reason why he was more appreciative
of Hauer’s efforts to find “the cosmic relations of a new art”, that is to
say, to arrive at the music of the spheres. He inclined towards it with all
his feelings, even if, as the astrologers explained, it remained unconscious
for him. We find here, in a written, direct form, which could not be more
explicit, the twelve-tone composition indicated as an expression both of
‘logic’ and of ‘cosmic relations’. It thus appeared to be surprising how
naturally our prophetic musician united, without too many explanations (at
least for Hauer) elements of a scientific character with others of a mystical
and astrological nature.
There are two important texts to examine in this sense. The first is
Berg’s letter to Schönberg dated December 27, 1920 (Berg-Schönberg 1987),
which quoted Johannes Kepler’s Die Zusammenklänge der Welten (edition
of 1918; Tonietti 200?, ch. 30). The second is Schönberg ’s letter to Albert Einstein, dated January 1, 1925, in which our composer presented, as
Leibniz had done, (his own) music as “auf wissenschaftlichen und okkulten
Erkenntnissen beruhenden Hirn-Kunst [cerebral art, based on scientific and
occult knowledge]”. (E. R. Schönberg 1987, 153; Tonietti 1997, 2) This aspect of Schönberg’s poetics is particularly underlined in Nuvole in silenzio
(Tonietti 200?, ch. 30, 32, 38, 58). However, we will resist the temptation here to take a direction (professionally congenial to us) which would
be more appropriate for a conference on the subject “Schönberg und sein
Wissenschaft”.
Darkness is the blackness of the Torah
and light is the whiteness of the Torah.
Zohar
16
2. Schönberg’s Gods.
We have placed the most significant impulse in Schönberg’s progress
towards twelve-tone composition in Die Jakobsleiter. This impulse, then,
was influenced in various ways by that historical context. The degree to
which our composer was influenced by the Great War has been discussed
in detail in Nuvole in silenzio (Tonietti 200?, Part I) and we will leave it
aside here.
Let us start to examine here, instead, which divinity Schönberg’s music
intended to represent, because there is no doubt that this was the basic
intention of our composer, as we have already seen in his letter to Kandinsky.
Both during his lifetime, however, and in his writings and his compositions, Schönberg has confronted us with a multiplicity of different Gods.
We know very well that the two main religious communities to which he
officially belonged were Lutheran Christianity and Judaism. We will be
able to take into consideration a hypothetical period of Catholicism only
in the presence of a register of a Catholic church in Vienna containing his
name. (Letter from Schönberg to Gradenwitz dated July 20, 1934; Tonietti
200?, ch. 64) However, we will conclude that the qualities of Schönberg’s
Gods cannot be reconciled with the image of God that is dear to the Roman
Catholic church.
Schönberg became a Lutheran by choice, even if he came from a family
of Jewish traditions. At that time, he preferred to feel that he was a member
of another culture. Like many others, including Gustav Mahler or Karl
Kraus, just to quote a couple of his friends, he would have preferred the
pathway of assimilation. But it is already typical that he had avoided
following in the footsteps of the other two, and integrating into the Catholic
culture of Vienna, and instead he had chosen the Lutheran Christianity of
Berlin. On the contrary, he entered the synagogue in Paris, in the year
1933, as a reaction against the anti-Semitic movements and as a protest
against the new Nazi party that had come to power to Germany.
When the manifestos inviting him to leave the country came out in
1921, during the summer holidays on the Mattsee, his reaction was quite
different: silence. At least, this was what transpired from Berg’s letter to
his wife, Helene, dated June 28, 1921: “..... ....... [Nobody must know
about the ‘anti-Jewish’ demonstrations]”. (Berg 1965, ???) Schönberg did
not say anything about this in his letter to Willem Mengelberg, dated July
6. (Schönberg Mengelberg 1982) But the news leaked out all the same
17
in Vienna. The notorious newspaper, Neue Freie Presse, which was the
constant target of Karl Kraus’s criticism, published the news, thus making
every attempt to keep the secret useless: an article was published in the
issue of June 30, 1921, under the title, “Der Taufschein des Komponisten”.
Berg related the whole story to his Helene that same day. It appeared
from this that it was the Town Council that directly required Schönberg to
prove “daß er kein Jude sei [that he was not a Jew]”, exhibiting documents.
Otherwise, he would have to leave the place immediately. (Schönberg 1992,
192; Tonietti 200?, ch. 31)
In the letter of July 8, 1921 to Emil Hertzka, Schönberg wrote. “Ich
dürfte Mattsee in der nächsten Zeit verlassen. Die Gründe dafür werden
Sie ja schon durch die ekelhafte Pressenotiz erfahren haben. ...: meine
Privatangelegenheiten gehen die Öffentlichkeit nichts an, erraten haben,
ohne dass ich es ihnen sagen muss. ... Wahrscheinlich hat irgend ein Sommerfrischling das auf dem Gewissen, dass ich jetzt unschuldig durch alle
Zeitungen des In- und Auslandes geschleift werde, wo ich es so gut verstehe derlei hinzunehmen ohne einen Ton laut werden zu lassen. [I could
leave Mattsee in the next time. You should already have known its reasons
through the filthy news ...: my private affairs do not concern the public,
they guessed it without having, I, to tell them anything. ... Likely, during
Summerholidays, somebody bears on his conscience that now I, innocent,
am thrown into every domestic or foreign newspaper; while I understand it
so well that I accept such a thing without letting a single tone escape.]”
In the end, in his famous letters to Kandinsky of 1923, Schönberg discovered that he could not be what he wanted: “It is dass ich ... kein
Deutscher ... bin [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) sondern dass ich Jude bin [but I am a Jew]”. (April
19, 1923; Schönberg 1992, 204; Schönberg Kandinsky 1984, 76) Is this not
the tone of a person who would have preferred to be considered an authentic German composer? And he expected the worst: “Wozu aber soll
der Antisemitismus führen wenn nicht zu Gewalttaten? [But what is antiSemitism to lead to if not to acts of violence?]”. (4 May 1923; Schönberg
1992, 205; Schönberg Kandinsky 1984, 81) When, in 1914-1915, in KriegsWolken Tagebuch 1914, he had examined the clouds in the sky to prophesy
the victory of Germany in the Great War, he had been mistaken. Now, unfortunately, he was to prove only too right. In traditions, including that of
18
the Bible, prophets are more successful in announcing disasters. (Schönberg
1914; Tonietti 200?, ch. 1, 43)
During his Lutheran period, however, Schönberg had not been an
orthodox. The most important text that prepared Die Jakobsleiter was
Balzac’s Seraphyte. Here the French novelist had created a story to explain the religion of Emanuel Swedenborg. (Balzac 1910; Tonietti 200?,
ch. 8) In his library, Schönberg had a copy of Swedenborg’s Theologische
Schriften. (Swedenborg 1904; Tonietti 200?, ch. 10) Even more interesting were Morgenröte im Aufgang and the other books left by the German
mystic of the early 17th century, Jakob Boehme. He read the Lutheran
Bible, breaking down the words into letters in order to discover their secret meaning (Boehme 1912; Tonietti 200?, ch. 16) It might have been
here that Schönberg got the idea of making the chorus of the Sanftergebenen [Submissive ones] of Jacob’s Ladder to sing only the letter “m”. The
same procedure was to reappear in Moses und Aron with the chorus of the
“Dornbusch [Burning Bush]”. Thus Schönberg was mainly interested in
discovering some of the hidden meanings in the Bible. In this way, he tried
to go beyond the literal interpretations linked with the historical events,
in order to understand the abstract allegories. In the same way, he had
arrived also at the text of Die Leiter.
His readings of August Strindberg went in the same direction. He was
not only interested in the Strindberg of Inferno and Legenden, that is to
say, in the Strindberg who contemplated the struggle between Jacob and
the angel, painted by Eugène Delacroix in the church of Saint-Sulpice in
Paris. Above all, it was in Ein Blaubuch, Ein Blaubuch mit ... and Ein
drittes Blaubuch that he read:
“Phonetic laws, in particular those of the Kabala, often recall the laws
of harmony. The note surely has a numerical value = gematry. The accords
of the seventh are anagrams. The so-called retrogade canon, the inversion
of the letters, is certainly equal in all to the schema of counterpoint.
a b c d e f g h
h g f e d c b a
retrograde
1
8
2
7
3
6
4
5
19
5
4
6
3
7
2
8
1
counterpoint
In the 18th century a machine existed, called the melograph, which elaborated a musical theme, turning it into a fugue. This must have been like
those machines by which one invents and solves ciphers, or like the machines
which calculate logarithms.” (Strindberg 1908, 596-597; Tonietti 200?, ch.
14; Tonietti 1997, 9)
The Swedish writer, who narrates that he had met the angel in Paris,
brings us back to the Swedish mystic who had written of having spoken to
the angel in London.
Because interested in such characters, we cannot consider our composer to be just a lukewarm follower (or even worse, an opportunist) of
the Lutheran Christian faith. The Gospel had, however, penetrated into
his culture to such an extent that as a consequence of a loan, Webern was
once compared to the “Klein Zaches [little Zaccheus]”, the tax-collector who
was forced to climb up a sycamore tree in order to see Christ. (Luke 19;
Schönberg 1923a; Schönberg 1992, 203) Even more significant was the page
where he had felt obliged, by those who considered him to be a precursor
only, to compare himself to John the Baptist.
“Ich bin offenbar Johannes der Täufer (wahrscheinlich weil ich einen
auf einer Silberschüssel denkbaren Kopf habe) und sie kochen mit dem
Wasser, mit dem ich taufe; einstweilen taufen auch sie, obwohl Täuflinge
fehlen. [I am clearly John the Baptist (probably because I have a head that
can easily be imagined on a silver charger) and they cook using the water
with which I baptise; for the moment they baptise as well, although the
baptismal candidates are lacking.]” (Schönberg 1923b; Tonietti 200?, ch.
44) Again in the last of the Moderne Psalmen op. 50c, the ninth, we find
the figure of Christ taken into consideration. “Jesus was undoubtedly the
most pure, innocent, selfless and idealistic person that has ever appeared
on this earth.” (Schönberg 1956; Tonietti 200?, ch. 64)
Lastly, these religious attitudes were not separated from the musical
universe of our composer, but were an intense part of it, as we have seen.
Consequently, the rules for composition, as in the above-mentioned page
of Strindberg, became “Vexier Regeln”. (Schönberg 1923c) In June 1923,
Schönberg must have read the article by Heinrich Schenker dedicated to
Bach, which appeared in the relative issue of Die Musik. (Schenker 1923)
The analysis of the musicologist from Vienna, who was a pupil of Bruckner,
aroused his criticism, which he wrote here and there on the text. He also
20
felt the need to write a couple of pages on the subject. The one dated June
7 reads as follows:
“Gerade den Fehler den er anderen vorwerfen könnte, macht er nun hier
selbst: er sieht den Stil der Klassiker an als eine “Errungenschaft” über die
man nicht mehr hinaus kann. Als Errungenschaft, als einen technischen
Höhepunkt, als das letzte! Darum meint er, dass die alten Niederländer
nicht mehr unter Komponieren verstanden haben, als sich durch die Fuxischen Regeln sagen lässt; nämlich nicht mehr, als dabei offen zutage tritt.
ABER DIESEN REGELN SIND V E X I E R R E G E L N !!!
Sie geben in der Form von Stimmführungsvorschriften scheinbar eine
Aesthetik. In Wirklichkeit aber sind das diejenigen Verbote, durch welche
ausgeschlossen wird, wessen man sich enthalten will, wenn man eine gedanklich richtig durchdachte Komposition zustandebringen will. Wie die gedankliche Durcharbeitung auszusehen hat, wird nicht verraten: entweder war
es den E i n g e w e i h t e n selbstverständlich, oder
A l l e n G e h e i m n i s solange sie nicht (wie ich) durch Enträtselung
der Regeln dieses Geheimnis für ihre Person gelüftet hatten.
So hat man es vielleicht mit allen Geheimlehren gehalten.
[Now he [Schenker] himself makes the same mistake here that he could
accuse the others of making: he conceives of the style of the classics as
a ‘conquest’ from which it is impossible to depart. As a conquest, as the
climax of technique, as the last one! Thus he means that the ancient Flemish
masters knew no more about composing than transpired from the rules of
[Johann] Fux; in other words, no more than what is openly apparent.
BUT THESE RULES ARE VEXIER REGELN!!!
[encoded, magical, rules, based on an enigma]
They clearly give an aesthetic principle, in the form of prescriptions for the
behaviour of the parties. But in reality they create the prohibition by which
it is possible to exclude whatever one wishes to avoid, when one desires to
compose an intellectual [abstract] work, rightly elaborated in every detail.
How the intellectual elaboration should appear is not unveiled: either it was
evident for the iniziated or it was a secret for everybody, until they (like me)
deciphered the rules and discovered this secret for themselves. In this way,
perhaps, it has been maintained, together with all the occult doctrines]”.
Thus the ancient mirror forms of the Flemish polyphonists, which our
prophetic composer was using in his serial works of these years, appeared to
him as Vexier-Regeln, secret rules for the initiated to decipher. His faith in
21
an occult doctrine closely connected with music came to the light in these
pages. What was only confusedly visible in Die Jakobsleiter and in the
relative mystical texts, now acquired a sharper outline and a precise form.
In his letter to Albert Einstein, Schönberg was to be even more explicit.
(Schönberg 1987; Tonietti 1997; Tonietti 200?, ch. 45, 58) The task assigned
to the composer (by whom?) thus became that of expressing a similar
divinity hidden among the letters of words, decomposed and permuted, by
means of a similar procedure of abstract combinations extended to musical
notes. The six notes that recur in Die Jakobsleiter, the ones that we called
the scale of the earth, make up a scale, and not a theme, because they are
permuted, and do not maintain the same intervals. They do not have to be
fixed in our memories as a possible melody.
When he changed his official religion to Hebraism, during the dramatic
years of exile in the United States, Schönberg’s correspondents became the
rabbis and exiles like himself. And yet he still succeeded in maintaining
some of the aspects of his preceding mysticism that were most dear to him.
His integration into the new community was not to prove easy. There were
two main points of contrast with its official representatives. Schönberg
believed that the solutions they proposed for the dramatic problems of
that historic moment were wrong or inadequate, both in the negative sense
as regards Germany, and in the positive sense as regards the future state
of Israel. He was to go so far as to propose himself as the founder of a
new movement, sacrificing his own life like Der Mönk in Jacob’s Ladder.
(Tonietti 200?, ch. 58)
The second reason for contrast regarded Jewish music, which some
people would have expected of him. But Schönberg wrote to Albert Einstein
in the above-mentioned letter: “Zur Sache selbst habe ich zu sagen, dass es
meines Wissens eine jüdische Musik -Kunstmusik- derzeit nicht giebt, wenn
auch, wie ich glaube, alle abendländische Musik auf Juden weist und ihre
Entwicklung, ja vielleicht ihre Grundprinzipien dem jüdischen Wesen und
Geist verdankt. [To the matter itself, I must say that to my knowledge
there is no Jewish music - art music - at this time, though, as I believe, all
western music points to Jews and even perhaps owes the development of its
basic principles to the Jewish essence and spirit.]” (E. R. Schönberg 1987;
Tonietti 1997, 1; Tonietti 200?, ch. 58)
Unlike Gustav Mahler, Bela Bartók or Igor Strawinsky, our composer
did not seek his inspiration in ethnic or popular music of any kind, which he
22
considered to be confined to the earth. Some of his writings, such as the Drei
Satiren op. 28, or “Volksmusik und Kunstmusik” or others suggest this idea.
(Schönberg 1922b; Schönberg 1923d; Schönberg 1926a; Schönberg 1926b;
Schönberg 1934) For him, Kunstmusik had become that of Bach, Beethoven,
or Wagner. His music transcended, like his God (whether Lutheran or
Jewish), the world of feelings, and the world of matter.
The half page dated April 16, 1923, entitled “Verwandtschaft [Affinity]”
is significant in this respect. (Schönberg 1923e)
“Während ich mir von einem Grammophon eine Carusoplatte vorsingen lasse, klingt plötzlich ein unerklärlicher Schall mitten hinein in die
schönen Töne. Wir finden bald die Ursache: ein Kutscher, der sich mit
seinen Pferden auf solche Art zu verständigen weiß, ist der Urheber dieser
Laute.
Was hätte Caruso in den Volkszählungsbogen unter Rasse unter Berücksichtigung dieses akustischen Umstandes angegeben, wenn man ihm
gesagt hätte, der Urheber dieser Laute gehöre nicht nur derselben Gattung Lebewesen an, wie er, sondern sei auch weiß, etc. Was aber hätte
er geschrieben, wenn man ihm gesagt hätte, die germanisch arische Rasse
schreie ebenso und nur die semitische verstehe es, solche Äußerungen zu
unterlassen. Wagner, Schopenhauer, Bismarck und andere hätten natürlich
sofort ihre Gemeinschaft mit dem fürchterlichen Schreier anerkannt und
konstatiert, daß sie mit dem Semiten weniger gemein haben.
Ich will’s ihnen gerne glauben.
[As I play a record of Caruso on my gramophone, I suddenly hear
an incomprehensible noise amid the beautiful notes. The cause is soon
discovered: a coachman, who communicates with his horse in the way, is
the author of this cry. Bearing in mind these acoustic circumstances, what
would Caruso have declared in the column ‘race’ in the census form, if someone had told him that the author of this cry not only belongs to the same
species of human beings as him, but is also white, etc. But what would he
have written if he had been told that the Germanic Aryan race shouts in the
same way, and that only the Semitic race abstains from such expressions?
Wagner, Schopenhauer, Bismarck and others, of course, would immediately
have recognised their common interests with that terrible screamer, and
would have confirmed that they have little in common with Semites. I am
quite prepared to grant this to them]”.
Schönberg found Caruso similar to the coachman, who spoke to his
23
horse in the same way as the Italian sang. Now he was also comparing
the “Germanic Aryans” to them, with their similar shouting. Thus, even
the most famous “Aryans”, who thought they were totally separated from
the “Semites”, would find themselves in the same company. In 1923, the
Semites had become those who, while not expressing themselves in this way,
seemed to him to be furthest from the horses, those who most transcended
nature.
He wanted to compose transcendent music to express his transcendent
God. Consequently he had tried to find a method to purify the musical
discourse from every naturalistic residue. Schönberg did not believe that
he could achieve his aim simply by means of Jewish music (whether ethnic
or Biblical cantillation), just as in the pages of the Bible (whether Hebrew
or Lutheran) the surface level reveals only the historical events of a people.
On the contrary, God is hidden. How can He be unveiled?
During his period that we will define as Lutheran, Schönberg had found
several hints in the pages of Boehme, Swedenborg, Balzac, Strindberg; now
where could he seek them? But it is not so easy to find the answer. Probably, the aspect of Jewish tradition that may appear most mystical and
esoteric to us is the Cabala. Unfortunately, this time Schönberg has hidden
it from us really well, as he hid the row in the case of Der Auserwählte. The
term is used very few times explicitly. We have found an allusion to the
Cabala in Harmonielehre. There had already been a reference to “cabalistic
mathematics” in his letter to Ferruccio Busoni dated 24 August 1909. It
was again mentioned, perhaps for the last time, at the beginning of Kol
Nidre op. 39. This was composed in 1938, at the request of the rabbi of
Los Angeles, Jacob Sanderling, and the text opened with the words: “The
Cabala tells a legend”. (Schönberg 1939)
The most singular allusion to the Cabala, however, is not that of Kol
Nidre, but it takes us back to the classification into levels followed by our
artist in Die Jakobsleiter. Among his papers, he left enigmatic drawings of
cubes, on the faces of which he wrote: “Atheisten, Sozialisten, Indifferenten,
Zionisten ... [atheists, socialists, indifferent, Zionists] ...” or he drew rows
ordered in ascending scales, above the heading “Gliederung des Judentums
[Structure of Jewry]” He thought he could classify the Jews by means of
these cubes, ordering them in accordance with their origin - West, East,
Far East - , in accordance with their political positions - nationalists, internationalists (indifferent), orthodox, socialists (communists), conservatives
24
(fascists). (Schönberg 1992, 352; Tonietti 200?, ch. 58) But why did he
use the cube? It contains the six directions: “Ob rechts, ob links, vorwärts
oder rückwärts, bergauf oder bergab [Right or left, forward or backward,
uphill or downhill]” which he used at the beginning of Jacob’s Ladder. He
used six notes for the scale of the earth ... The circle of our story is thus
closing, like the soul of the cosmos for Kepler.
In the drawing, however, the term Cabala is not present. If this is an
allusion, it must necessarily fit in with our interpretation. On the contrary,
in the above-mentioned letter to Einstein, the reference to it is direct and
in the form that by now we must expect: “Die Kunst der Niederländer einerseits erinnert in vielem an das was man von Talmud und Kabbala weiss
und anderseits haben wir in der zum Teil von Juden durchtsetzten Zigeunermusik das Gegenstück ... [The art of the Netherlands on the one hand,
is reminiscent in many ways of that which one knows from the Talmud and
Cabala, and, on the other hand, in Gypsy music, which has been partially
influenced by Jews, one has the opposite ...]”. (E. R. Schönberg 1987, 153,
155; Tonietti 1997, 1-2; Tonietti 200?, ch. 58) But the opposite of what?
The opposite of Kunstmusik, the “scientific and occult” kind already quoted
to Einstein. On account of this ambiguity, Schönberg did not want to be
mixed with Jewish musicians. And the same letter shows that he refused
the classification of the critic Leichtentritt “die meinen Rang innerhalb der
jüdischen Musiker geringer ansetzt, als unter allen Musikern [which places
my level among Jewish musicians lower than all other musicians].”
He did not feel now that he was understood by the Jewish community,
as at the beginning he had not been understood by the Viennese, while his
beloved Germans of Berlin could no longer express their appreciation for
him. It was the tragedy of his life: Nemo propheta in patria.
In the different periods and places of his life and his works, Schönberg
had different divinities. The God represented by the angel Gabriel in Jakobsleiter seems to be the same one who gave strength to the angel Michael in
Der deutsche Michel, who sided with Germany during the Great War, the
same one who is above the clouds in Kriegs-Wolken Tagebuch 1914: the
mystical variant of a Lutheran Christian God. (Tonietti 200?, ch. 1, 2, 3,
5, 7, 9). The attitudes assumed by Schönberg during this conflict cannot
leave any doubts that our composer was dedicated heart and soul to the
cause of the central empires, and that he used every means in order to win,
including religion and music. (Tonietti 200? part I). The God who guides
25
the characters in Die biblische Weg, on the contrary, is similar to the one
subsequently represented by the Dornbusch in Moses und Aron, the support in the desert of his exile in the United States: the mystical variant of
a Jewish God. (Tonietti 200?, ch. 58)
Considering the wars fought and the blood shed in their name, these
gods would appear to be difficult to reconcile. Pastors, rabbis and relative statesmen would have a lot to say about this. But Schönberg was an
artist, the most significant, if not the greatest composer of the twentieth
century, and we may more modestly wonder if these two gods maintained
common qualities in his writings and in his works. This task seems to be
easier, and the solution is: an “unsichtbarer unvorstellbarer” God (Moses
und Aron, bars 9-10), who is abstract, and cannot be represented in images,
or expressed wholly in words, a hidden, enigmatic god, difficult to symbolise even in music. How could historical, carnal people understand a god
outside time and space, except by trying to escape from time and space?
Schönberg’s music struggled with this angel.
3. Without any adjectives.
We have felt the need to tell this story in our own words because we
were not satisfied with what has commonly been written about Arnold
Schönberg.
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno completely ignored his evident religious
belief. The few critics, such as Karl Wörner or Roman Vlad, who did not
want to cancel all his works with a religious inspiration, underestimated
their constructive function, however, in the evolution of his musical thought.
Almost all historians of music placed Die Jakobsleiter, as far as they considered it, in his atonal period. Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt’s Schönberg,
though extremely useful and admirable in his faithfulness to the historical Schönberg, remains a biography. In my opinion, the patient work of
Jean Marie Christensen is still too timid, and unfortunately has not been
published. Ethan Haimo and Martina Sichardt overlooked the historical
context. Anyway, everybody missed the row of Der Auserwählte at the
center of Jacob’s Ladder. Und so weiter .... Peter Gradenwitz and Alexander Ringer saw almost exclusively the Jewish aspects, to which they tend
to reduce his basic musical choices.
But listening to his music, studying scores like Die Jakobsleiter, and
reading almost all his writings and letters between 1912 and 1925, I have
26
come face to face with a living historical Schönberg different from the one
found in modern-day books. The many aspects of his complex life and
artistic personality have too often been drastically simplified and isolated
from their context. There has been a tendency to prefer only one, the
most in line with the thesis that the writer wished to demonstrate. More
often than not, Schönberg has unfortunately not been understood for what
he was, but he has been used as an instrument for one controversy or
another, for one purpose or another. We have thus been presented, in
turn, with a progressive, revolutionary composer, or a conservative one,
or even both together, a communist composer or a capitalist, a German
composer or a Jew, a composer of music, or a theoretician of music and
of teaching, an amateur without any ability or a professional, a genial but
mad composer or a cunning opportunist, stupidly inspired or cerebrally
intelligent, a sentimental romantic or a cold rationalist, und so weiter ...
(Tonietti 200?, part III)
For me Schönberg is Schönberg; he is unique, unitarian and changeable
according to the circumstances: a musician, without any adjectives.
I would like to thank Nuria SchönbergNono for giving me free access
to the documents, and allowing me to make copies of them. I also thank
all the staff of the archives, both those in Los Angeles and those in Vienna,
for helping me in my research. I thank Dr. Ronald Packham for his help
in the English styling of the manuscript.
References.
- LA: the text was at the Arnold Schönberg Institute in Los Angeles.
Since 1998 it has been at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.
- W: text at the Library of Congress in Washington.
- M: transcription at the Arnold Schönberg Gesellschaft in Mödling.
- S a X: letter of Schönberg to X.
- X a S: letter of X to Schönberg.
- Schönberg, “...”, [place]; x: unpublished text by Schönberg, unless otherwise indicated, the number x refers to the catalogue compiled by Schönberg
in 1932.
27
(Primary literature.)
1904
- Emanuel Swedenborg, Theologische Schriften, Jena, Diederichs. LA.
“Swedenborgs Weltanschauung; Biographisches; Die Lehre der neuen Kirche, des neuen Jerusalem der Offenbarung; Der Verkehr auf natürlichem
oder geistigem Wege oder auch durch vorherbestimmte Harmonie, welcher
zwischen Leib und Seele angenommen wird; Vom weissen Pferd in der Offenbarung; Über das Wort und seinen geistigen oder inneren Sinn; Über das
letzte Gericht und die Zerstörung Babylons”.
1908-1930
- August Strindberg, Strindberg Werke (Deutsche Gesamtausgabe), München, Müller & Sohn. LA. [in particular]:
Entwicklung einer Seele; [La storia di un’anima, tr. Astrid Ahnfelt,
1988 Firenze, Sansoni].
Inferno, Legenden. Entzweit. Einsam; [Inferno. Leggende. Giacobbe
lotta, ed. Luciano Codignola, 1972 Milano, Adelphi].
Nach Damaskus. Totentanz. Ein Traumspiel. Gespenster Sonate;
[Teatro, ed. Giacomo Oreglia, 1951 Torino, Società Editrice Torinese].
Die große Landstraße; [La grande strada maestra, tr. Enrico Groppali,
1990 S. Miniato, Istituto del Dramma Popolare].
Der bewußte Wille in der Weltgeschichte, 1916. [The volumes possessed
by Schönberg are indicated here].
Ein Blaubuch, vol. I, 1908; Ein Blaubuch, vol. II mit dem Buch der
Liebe, 1908; Ein drittes Blaubuch, 1921.
1910
- Honoré de Balzac, Philosophische Erzahlungen, Leipzig, Inselverlag. LA.
Seraphita. [This includes a sheet of paper on p. 89 containing the translation that Schönberg made of the passage about the physical appearance
of Wilfried. La Comédie Humaine. Ètudes Philosophiques II, vol. X, 1950
Paris, Gallimard. Schönberg also possessed a French edition]: Seraphita, [?]
Paris, Flammarion. LA.
1911
- Arnold Schönberg, Harmonielehre, Wien, Universal Edition. LA. [With
the autograph modifications for the edition of 1921.] [Manuale di armonia,
ed. Luigi Rognoni, 1963 Milano, Il Saggiatore.]
1912
28
- Jakob Boehme, Morgenröte im Aufgang; Von den drei Prinzipien; Vom
dreifachen Leben, München und Leipzig. LA. [Jacob Boehme Sämtliche
Schriften, ed. W. Penckert, vol. I Aurora, oder Morgenröte im Aufgang,
1986 Stuttgart, Frommann-holzboog; L’Aurore Naissante, tr. Louis Claude
de Saint-Martin, 1927 Milano, Libreria Lombarda].
29
1914-1915
- Arnold Schönberg, Der deutsche Michel. LA. [1980 Pacific Palisades,
Belmont].
- Arnold Schönberg, Kriegs-Wolken Tagebuch 1914, [Berlin Südende]; K
1-17. LA. [1986, 52-77].
1915-1923
- Arnold Schönberg, Die Jakobsleiter. LA. [Three outlines for the poetic
text, a manuscript and a typescript of the poetic text, five notebooks of
musical rough drafts (D14Sk17, Sk15-22, Sk17, Sk17-18, Sk 22-23), a Particell; transcriptions, translations and comparisons in 1979 Jean Christensen,
vol. II, appendices]. Die Jakobsleiter Oratorium (Fragment) für Soli, Chöre
und Orchester, Winfried Zillig & Rudolf Stephan Her., 1980 Wien, Universal Edition. [La scala di Giacobbe, ed. Luigi Rognoni, in 1967 Arnold
Schönberg, 46-67].
1922
- Josef Matthias Hauer, “Sphärenmusik”, Melos, III/3, 132-133. LA.
-a 25.7, Traunkirchen, S to Josef Hauer, [Wien]. [Not sent, together with
extensive comments about “Sphärenmusik”]. LA. [1987 Simms, 131].
-b 21.11, Schönberg, “Vorschlaege, Negerrythmen, Zigeune-und Naturvolker-Rythmen und der Vogelgesang”. [Retyped 30.12.1922]. LA. [Engl. tr.,
1950 Style ..., L. Stein (ed.), 298].
1923
-d 10.4, Schönberg, “Nachtigall”; 9. LA. [in Tonietti 1998.]
-e 16.4, Schönberg, “Verwandtschaft”; LA.
-b 29.5, Schönberg, “Vorläufer”, Mödling; 33. LA.
-a 29.5, Schönberg, “Klein Zaches”, Mödling; 13. LA. [1992, 203].
- Juni, Heinrich Schenker, “Joh. Seb. Bach: Wohltemperiertes Klavier,
Band I Präludium c-moll”, Die Musik, XV/9, 641-651.
- 6.6, Schönberg, “Schenker”, Mödling; 36. LA.
-c 7.6, Schönberg, “Schenker”, Mödling; 37. LA.
1926
-a Arnold Schönberg, Drei Satiren op. 28, Wien, Universal Edition.
-b Schönberg, “Volksmusik und Kunstmusik”; 315. LA. [Engl. tr., 1950
Style ..., L. Stein (ed.), 167-169].
- 5.2, “Die letzte Vision Adolphe Willettes”, Berliner Tageblatt. [1992, 196].
30
1926-1927
- Arnold Schönberg, Der biblische Weg. LA. Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Institute, 1994 XVII/1-2. [Ital. tr., 1967, 77-150].
1930-1932
- Arnold Schönberg, Moses und Aron, Mainz 1958, Schott’s Söhne.
1934
- 20.7, Chautauqua N.Y., S to Peter Gradenwitz, Berlin-Pankow. W.
- Schönberg, “Why No Great American Music”, LA. [1950 Style ..., L. Stein
(ed.), 176-181].
1939
- Arnold Schönberg, Kol Nidre op. 39, New York, Bomart Music Publication. [Ital. tr., 1975 Manzoni, 261-263].
1950
- Arnold Schönberg, Style and Idea, New York, Philosophical Library.
[Repr. 1984 Leonard Stein ed. with unpublished material, Berkeley, University of California Press]. [Ital. tr., Stile e idea, ed. Luigi Pestalozza,
1960 Milano, Rusconi and Paolazzi].
1956
- Arnold Schönberg, Moderne Psalmen [in Schönberg 1967.]
1965
- Alban Berg, Briefe an seine Frau, Bernard Grun ed., ......... [Ital. tr.,
Lettere alla moglie, 1976 Milano, Feltrinelli.]
1967
- Arnold Schönberg, Testi poetici e drammatici, ed. Luigi Rognoni, Milano,
Feltrinelli. [Repr. 1995].
1969
- Arnold Schönberg, Briefe, ed. Erwin Stein, [Ital. tr. Mario Rubino,
Firenze, La Nuova Italia.]
1975
- Giacomo Manzoni, Arnold Schönberg. L’uomo. L’opera. I testi musicati,
Milano Feltrinelli.
1982
- “The Schoenberg-Mengelber Correspondence”, in Schoenberg in the Netherlands, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Institute, VI/2, 181-237.
1984
- Arnold Schönberg, Wassily Kandinsky, Jelena Hall-Koch ed., London,
Faber & Faber. [Ital. tr., 1988].
31
1986
- “Schönberg Tagebücher 1912, 1914, 1923”, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Institute, IX/1.
1987
- The Berg - Schönberg Correspondence, Juliane Brand, Christopher Hailey
& Donald Harris eds., New York, W.W. Norton.
1992
- Arnold Schönberg 1974-1951. Lebensgeschichte in Begegnungen, Nuria
Nono-Schönberg Her., Klagenfurt, Ritter Verlag.
1997
- Tito M. Tonietti, “Albert Einstein and Arnold Schönberg Correspondence”, Naturwissenschaften Technik und Medizin, 5, 1-22.
1999
- Arnold Schönberg, Leggere il cielo - Diari 1912, 1914, 1923, Anna Maria
Morazzoni ed., Milano, il Saggiatore.
(Secondary Literature.)
1955
- Roman Vlad, Modernità e tradizione nella musica contemporanea, Torino,
Einaudi.
1957
- Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, “Schönbergs religiöse Werke”, Schweizerische
Musikzeitung, 97, 256-258.
1958
- Roman Vlad, Storia della dodecafonia, Milano, Suvini Zerboni.
1960
- Peter Gradenwitz, “The religious Works of Arnold Schönberg”, The Music
Review, 21, n. 1, 19-29.
1960-1961
- Winfred Zillig, “Bericht über Arnold Schönbergs Jakobsleiter”, Neue Musik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 29-40.
1963
- Karl H. Wörner, Schönberg’s Moses and Aaron, London, Faber & Faber.
32
1965
- Karl H. Wörner, “Schönbergs Oratorium Die Jakobsleiter”, Schweizerische
Musikzeitung, 105, 250-257 and 333-340.
1972
- Jan Maegaard, Studien zur Entwicklung des Dodekaphonen Satzes bei
Arnold Schönberg, Copenhagen, Wilhelm Hansen Musik - Forlag.
1976
- Jan Maegaard, “Schönbergs Zwölftonreihen”, Die Musikforschung,
XXIX/4, 385-425.
- Rudolf Stephan, “Zur Entstehung der Zwölftonmusik”, in Musik und Zahl.
Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Grenzbereich zwischen Musik und Mathematik, hg. von Günter Schnitzler, Bonn, p. 159-170.
1977
- Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, Schönberg - His Life, World and Work, tr.
H. Searle, London, J. Calder.
1978
- Peter Gradenwitz, “Religiöse Motive in Schönbergs Musik”, Bericht über
den 1-Kongreß der Internationalen Schönberg Gesellschaft (1974 Wien),
Her. Rudolf Stephan, Wien, Verlag E. Lafite, 75-81.
1979
- Jean Marie Christensen, Arnold Schönberg’s Oratorio Die Jakobsleiter,
Los Angeles, Ph. D. Thesis, University of California.
1980
- Arnold Schönberg, Her. Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, Sonderband Musik - Konzept, München, edition text + kritik.
1984
- Tito Tonietti, “scienza del ’900: dall’immagine alla rappresentazione digitale”, rocca, no 3/4, 75-79.
- Tito Tonietti, “Sette catastrofi per sette note”, Lectures, no 15, Bari,
Edizioni dal Sud, 63-77.
1986
- Rudolf Stephan, “Ein frühes Dokument zur Entstehung der Zwölftonkomposition”, in Festschrift Arno Forchert zum 60 Geburtstag, Kassel, p. 296302.
1987
- E. Randol Schönberg, “Arnold Schönberg and Albert Einstein: Their Relationship and Views on Zionism”, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Institute,
33
10, 134-187.
- Bryan R. Simms, “Who First Composed Twelve-Tone Music, Schönberg
or Hauer?”, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Institute, 10, 109-133.
1990
- Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg’s Serial Odyssey, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
- Alexander R. Ringer, Arnold Schönberg. The Composer as Jew, Oxford,
Clarendon Press.
- Martina Sichardt, Die Entstehung der Zwölftonmethode Arnold Schönbergs, Mainz, Schott.
1991
- Tito M. Tonietti, “Sopra Berlino”, Sonus, 3, no 1, 54-64.
1992
- Tito M. Tonietti, “Nuvole, valzer. (Arnold Schönberg svelato)”, Tra simbolismo e avanguardie, ed. Caterina Graziadei et al., Roma, Editori Riuniti,
371-391.
1998
- Tito M. Tonietti, “L’usignolo di Montebello ed il signor Notanuova”, in
Matematica e cultura, ed. Michele Emmer, Milano, Springer Verlag, 45-66.
1999
- Schönberg, cur. Gianmario Borio, Bologna, Il mulino.
200?
- Tito M. Tonietti, Nuvole in silenzio. Arnold Schönberg svelato, unpublished. [Parts and fragments of this were included in Tonietti 1984, 1991,
1992, 1997, 1998.]
34