Program #65, 9 August 2001: 20th-century theatre pieces series, part VIII: Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron.

This week we continued last month's exploration of the life and work of Schoenberg, focusing on his unfinished opera Moses und Aron. The opera began life as a short play written by Schoenberg in the late 1920s, crafted in response to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the German-speaking world as well as reflecting Schoenberg's fits-and-starts voyage back toward the Judaism of his roots (he had converted to Protestantism in 1898). Furthermore, Schoenberg perceived a need to articulate his new twelve-tone compositional principles through a large-scale project, and preferably a highly dramatic one -- among other reasons, so that he would not be open to the charge that his new method was fine for orchestral miniatures and short piano pieces, but really unsuited for full-length, complex musical achievements. By 1928 he had begun converting the play to an oratorio, and by 1930 had started work on the present version of Moses und Aron.

However, Schoenberg's ability to follow through to the end of this project was impaired. The primary problem was that his forced emigration from Europe to southern California in 1933 disturbed his process: not only because of the sheer displacement, but also because of his need to stave off poverty by working as a teacher, and his deep involvement in Jewish causes (he re-converted more or less during his emigration) throughout the '30s and '40s. However, he also cared very much about Moses und Aron, and wanted to get it just right -- which meant he fussed so much about finding the best way to solve certain musical and (especially) dramaturgical issues, that he never managed to finish it before his death on 13 July 1951. So, the version dating from 1933 -- wherein the first two of three acts, and a dialogue without music from the third, are completed -- is all that we have. Even so, it is a clear 20th-century musical masterwork, and a showcase (in the right hands) for the power of the twelve-tone compositional method.

The opera took up the last two hours of tonight's program, with a setup by other pieces from the latter part of Schoenberg's career during the first hour.