A missing photograph of Gustav Mahler with a dedication to Arnold Schoenberg has recently been found in the San Fernando Valley.  The photo was given to Schoenberg probably before Mahler’s departure to New York in 1907.  You can see it hanging on the wall above Schoenberg’s desk (to the left, below Schoenberg’s portrait of Mahler) in this photo from around 1912.  My aunt Nuria remembers seeing the photo when she was growing up, so it must have also hung in the Schoenberg study at least through the mid-1950s (when Nuria moved to Venice, Italy). When my grandmother Gertrud died in early 1967, after a brief illness, the study was locked up and made available only to scholars.  In the early 1970s, Sonja Lane began working on a catalogue which was then used by Charles Sachs as an inventory when the archives were donated to the University of Southern California. The photograph does not appear in that inventory, and there is no trace of it having been at USC.  Nuria noticed that the photo with Mahler’s dedication, and the companion photo of Mahler, were missing between 1987 and 1991 when she was working at the archives at USC on her document biography, Lebensgeschichte in Begengungen.  She found empty frames that she believed were the frames that had housed the photos, but could not locate the photos themselves.  She reported this to the archivist R. Wayne Shoaf.  After the archives were moved in 1997 to the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, Nuria again told the new archivist, Therese Muxeneder, that these photos were missing.

In late July 2012, a man named Cliff Fraser Jr., using the e-mail address cfpronto@aol.com, e-mailed this image of the missing photograph to the Schönberg Center in Vienna saying “Hello, my name is Cliff and recently acquired a document concerning Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg. I was hoping that you could help me understand its significance.”

He later wrote “my grandfather [Abraham (Abe) Fraser] was a music teacher and took composition classes in the 1950’s from Joseph Schmidt [sic], a former student of Schoenberg. [M]y Grandfather died in 1987 and I just found the picture berried [sic] in back of the boiler room of his house (I could hardly see through the frame; I almost threw it away). I’m guessing that Schoenberg willed it to Schmidt who willed it to my grandfather. Amazing…”

Of course, Schoenberg did not mention this photo in his will, which gave his entire estate to his widow Gertrud Schoenberg.  Josef Schmid (1890-1969) was a pupil of Alban Berg, not Schoenberg.  In 1940, Schoenberg wrote to Robert Emmett Stuart “There live in America also two pupils of Alban Berg: Dr. Wiesengrund-Adorno and Mr. Josef Schmid. If you are interested I will find their addresses. . . . Mr. Josef Schmied [sic] has been conductor in Prague, Berlin, and other places. He is a very good pianist, has studied theory with Berg. Whether he composes or not, is unknown to me.”

The Schönberg Center has an address card for Josef Schmid, with the notes: “Josef Schmid (born Germany, 1890 – died New York City, 1969) was a conductor, composer, and composition teacher. He was one of the first students of Alban Berg, with whom he studied before World War I. As a conductor Schmid had been an assistant to both Zemlinsky and Erich Kleiber. As a composer Schmid was associated with Berg and Webern but considered himself a musical “godson” of Schoenberg. After the War Schmid emigrated to New York City and established himself as a teacher of composition, basing his teaching on the writings of Schoenbergs.”

First row left to right: Arnold, Ronald and Nuria Schoenberg, Mitzi Weiss, Werner Klemperer, Adolph Weiss. Second row: Unidentified woman, Gertrud Schoenberg, unidentified woman, Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Schmid, Mrs. Joseph Achron. Taken in front of the Brentwood home.

Based on the autobiography of Schmid’s pupil Joe Maneri, Cliff claimed that Schmid came to the United States in 1936 with the assistance of Schoenberg. There is a group photo taken in front of the Schoenberg home in Los Angeles around 1940 that shows Schmid and his wife visiting the Schoenbergs.

The Archive of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna contains copies of a number of short letters and telegrams from Schmid to Schoenberg, such as this one from 1948 wishing happy birthday.  Schmid wrote two letters in September 1949 congratulating Schoenberg on his 75th birthday.  In one of them, Schmid mentions the upcoming publication in book form of Schoenberg’s essays, recalling also Schoenberg’s lecture on Mahler in Vienna.

However, despite the fact that Schoenberg kept carbon copies of his letters, the correspondence archive does not contain any letters from Schoenberg to Schmid, indicating that it was a one-sided relationship of pupil (of a pupil) to master. A gift of the treasured Mahler photo from Schoenberg to Schmid seems highly unlikely.

As this further evidence came to his attention, Cliff modified his theory to one even more unlikely, saying “It is far more likely that Schmid received the picture from Alban Berg.” However, there is no evidence of any gift of the photo from Schoenberg to Berg, despite the considerable documentation of their correspondence, including many letters referencing gifts.  A gift to Berg, who died in 1935, is also inconsistent with Nuria’s recollection of the photograph at the Schoenberg home in Brentwood.

According to Cliff, his grandfather Abe Fraser “studied composition with Schmid in New York starting in 1951.  In 1958 my Grandfather moved to LA and before his departure Schmid gave him the picture as a farewell gesture.” Based on information Cliff says he obtained from his grandmother, Abbey Fraser, who is apparently elderly and not well, Cliff stated that “this picture was a gift from my grandfather’s teacher.”  However, Cliff’s father Dr. Cliff Fraser, Sr. says that his father Abe had a large autograph collection from people he had met, but he does not recall ever seeing the Mahler photograph.

At this stage, it is unclear what is true and what is simply a guess by Cliff in order to establish a provenance for the Mahler photograph.  Cliff has behaved rather cagey throughout the whole process.  Initially, he would not even provide his last name.  He has refused to meet with us or speak to us on the phone.  He will not let us see the photograph or the frame (which is obviously different from the original frame), nor will he send us any further pictures of them.  At one point he referred us to his attorney “Paul” but did not provide a last name or any contact information and the attorney never contacted us.  He wrote that his family wanted to sell the photo, then wrote that his grandmother had decided to keep the photo, and then, less than 24 hours later, wrote to us offering to sell it for $350,000.  Cliff claimed to have a “notarized sworn declaration, under penalty of perjury” from his 94-year-old grandmother, supporting the claim that the photo was a gift to his grandfather, but then he refused to send us the declaration unless we agreed to purchase the photograph.

First page of the English version of Schoenberg’s essay on Mahler, which begins: “Instead of using my words, perhaps I should do best simply to say: I believe firmly and steadfastly that Gustav Mahler was one of the greatest men and artists”

In the view of the Schoenberg family, it appears likely that the photo was improperly taken at some point from the Schoenberg estate.  It seems inconceivable that Schoenberg himself would ever have parted with such a treasured memento from his friend and benefactor Mahler. There is no evidence yet of any gift or sale of the photo by Arnold or Gertrud Schoenberg, who meticulously maintained the Schoenberg archives for decades. The very few items that were sold or given as gifts have all been well-documented.  Given where the photo ended up, in Sherman Oaks, just a few miles away from the Schoenberg home in Brentwood, a more local trajectory seems likelier than the ones theorized by Cliff. Coincidentally, or not, there was an assistant university librarian at California State University, Los Angeles named Joseph Schmidt who worked on cataloguing the Schoenberg archives in 1973, before they were transferred to the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC.  But it should be noted that no other items were noticed missing during the transfer of the archives from the Schoenberg home to USC.  The photograph could very well have been taken prior to the transfer of the archives.  [NB.  The manuscript for the Op. 3 Songs had been microfilmed but is also now missing. Several drawings were taken from their frames and stolen during an exhibit at USC in the 1970s.]

Cliff has not disclosed what he intends to do next with the photograph. I will keep everyone posted on any further developments, and would welcome any information from the readers of this blog.

The former NY Times music critic Donal Henahan died this week.  And so it is time for me to publish the satire I wrote after a particularly egregious anti-Schoenberg article he penned in January 1991 (And So We Bid Farewell To Atonality), shortly before his retirement.  I’ll reprint Henahan’s original article below my satire.  At the bottom you can read a letter I wrote to Henahan on July 4, 1990.  He must have thought of his January 6, 1991 article as some sort of (lame) reply.  He won’t be missed, at least not by me.

January 19, 1991

Classical View/Randol Schoenberg

And So We Bid Farewell To A Donality

If we look back over 20th Century Music Criticism, which some of us are now in a position to do, one fact stands out: criticism of severely atonal compositions, once regarded as the bulwark of the past, is leaving remarkably few ripples.  The seemingly inevitable criticism of the break with tonal music, with its hierarchy of clichés, its modulations and gravitations from ignorance to stupidity, was not a long time coming, though it can be dated conveniently, however incorrectly, from Schoenberg’s invention of the 12-tone system in the early 20’s.

Criticism of atonality, however, was not simply one further step backwards in an evolutionary process.  In effect, atonality threw critics into convulsive fits of reactionary fervor, as if they had been thrown into their own bathtubs and had their heads held under, causing severe brain damage and filling their ears with water so they could no longer hear any music at all.  A few survived to work for large newspapers, teaching the old orthodoxy, presumably those for whom brain damage and deafness were no impediment.  Many others, as they sank from view, could at least find solace in the belief that by criticizing the abandonment of tonality they were taking part in a necessary antihistorical backlash.

Firm believers in that faith are no longer easy to find, even on the newspapers where criticism of atonality in its most rigorous form — post-Downes Conservatism — was once the only esthetically correct position.  Criticism of serialism is, of course, the god that failed, but even freer and less dogmatic forms of criticism have shown little ability to please demanding readers.  Incontinent Lambast predicted this development accurately 56 years ago in his eccentric but perceptive little book, “Music Hoya-to-ho!  A Study of Music Criticism in Decline.”  Lambast’s name became a byword for lambasting in less-advanced circles, but his main thesis bears up quite well in comparison with the stacks of more pretentious drivel that paint the 20th Century as the beginning of the end for all musical creativity.  Time and truth have proved to be on Lambast’s side.  One may find today an occasional reactionary critic willing to concede what the concertgoing public grasped decades ago: that while the abandonment of tonality was a perfectly logical step, criticism of it was ridiculously constricted in expressive potential.

Or, if you allow a word misunderstood by all critics of atonalism, in meaning.  No matter how you define meaning in music criticism, there is astonishingly little of it to be found in the great mass of criticism emanating from papers like the New York Times — except, note, where words or scenarios are used by the composer to give the music critics something nonmusical to write about which they might understand, as in Henahan’s favorable critiques of Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron” or Berg’s “Lulu.”  Purely instrumental works in systematically atonal idioms, like Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto, can leave the average unmusical critic of modern music untouched and shamefully eager for intermission.  The work’s technical ingenuity is of course completely incomprehensible to the unschooled critics, who wouldn’t know an audible subtlety of expression or dramatic power if it hit them in the face, no doubt because the dialectic energies inherent in the intelligent criticism of music are presumably unavailable to the typical critic of atonal music.  Most critics, of course, could discern beauties of logic or design, if only by reading the score, but, alas, critics of atonal music don’t know how.  Far from being able to approach the study of music, their ability to comprehend abstraction is usually limited to extracting square roots without a computer or reading subway timetables.

Critics of atonal music, it must now be apparent to all, have been unable to develop a system of musical rhetoric that would transcend the mundane pleasures to be had from the mere shuffling and arranging of derogatory words.  Some highly critical articles on pre-Serial music, like Stravinsky’s ”Sacre du Printemps,” can give an impression of at least heartfelt distress in the face of incomprehension.

“The music of Le Sacre du Printemps baffles verbal description.  To say that much of it is hideous as sound is a mild description.  There is certainly an impelling rhythm traceable.  Practically it has no relation to music at all as most of us understand the word.” (Musical Times, London, August 1, 1913)

Critics of some other landmark works in that interim genre, like Schoenberg’s own Five Pieces for Orchestra (Op. 16), evoked vague feelings of anxiety, dread or anger.

“If there is anything more utterly monstrous, more hideous and more artistically squalid than Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, it can only be some other composition by their creator or by one of his disciples.” (Felix Borowski, Chicago Record Herald, November 1, 1913)

The narrow range of their responses is generally excused as a reflection of the critics’ own stupidity, their pervasive unmusicality and anti-intellectualism.  But audiences composed of people who live in this same century have not bought their irrational bunk.  We have seen music criticism, they say in effect, and this is not it.

These readers, agree with them or not, have a point.  The critics’ frugality of expression compares poorly with the depths of meaning that Schoenberg, Berg or Webern could call up with the simplest of their skills.  Only Schubert can penetrate the dull-witted critics’ heart.  They cling to the moorings provided by innumerable tonal conventions, but without them they are completely lost.

It may be no accident that while criticism of serious instrumental music has been in retreat during our century, criticism of opera has flourished.  Opera differs fundamentally from instrumental music in that fat people in costumes explain everything.  The critic doesn’t have to pretend he understands music to write a story about it.  It is this crutch, as the musicologist Carrying Abottle has pointed out, that allowed the critics of Wagner to dispense with descriptions and analysis of music, which, as we’ve said before, they couldn’t understand.

“They began with the overture to the Flying Dutchman… I do not know  whether I possess a sixth sense which seems necessary to understand and appreciate this new music, but I confess that violent fist blows on my head would not have caused a more disagreeable sensation.” (P.-A. Fiorentino, Constitutionnel, Paris, January 30, 1860)

Perhaps as much as Wagner’s harmonic innovation, it was his remarkable extension of key relationships which left the critics so befuddled.   The composer of “Tristan und Isolde,” according to Ms. Abottle, “didn’t have to live long to see the music critics misread his work with their special blend of egotism and obtuseness.”

Schoenberg, as earlier works like “Gurrelieder” make plain, was the perfect post-Wagnerite. Perhaps it is the critics’ misreading of Schoenberg’s and Wagner’s music that we have to thank for the meaninglessness of so much 20th-century music criticism.

January 6, 1991

CLASSICAL VIEW

CLASSICAL VIEW; And So We Bid Farewell To Atonality

By Donal Henahan

If we look back over 20th-century music, which we are now in a position to do, one fact stands out: severely atonal composition, once regarded as the wave of the future, is leaving remarkably few ripples. The seemingly irrevocable break with tonal music, with its hierarchy of pitches, its modulations and gravitations from key to key, was a long time coming, though it can be dated conveniently from Schoenberg’s invention of the 12-tone system in the early 20’s. The codification of atonality, however, was not simply one more step in an evolutionary process. In effect, it threw composers into unknown waters and held their heads under. A few survived to build academic careers, teaching the new orthodoxy. Many others, as they sank from view, could at least find solace in the belief that by abandoning tonality they were taking part in a necessary historical development.

Firm believers in that faith are no longer easy to find, even on the campuses where atonality in its most rigorous form — post-Webern Serialism — was once the only esthetically correct position. Serialism is, of course, the god that failed, but even freer and less dogmatic forms of atonality have shown little ability to please demanding audiences. Constant Lambert predicted this development accurately 56 years ago in his eccentric but perceptive little book, “Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline.” Lambert’s name became a byword for philistinism in advanced circles, but his main thesis bears up quite well in comparison with the stacks of more pretentious volumes that paint the 20th century as a golden age of musical creativity. Time and truth have proved to be on Lambert’s side. One may find today an occasional avant-garde critic willing to concede what the concertgoing public grasped decades ago: that while the abandonment of tonality may have been a perfectly logical step, what took its place was ridiculously constricted in expressive potential.

Or, if you allow an easily misunderstood word, in meaning. No matter how you define meaning in music, there is astonishingly little of it to be found in the great mass of atonal works — except, note, where words or scenarios are used for support, as in Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron” or Berg’s “Lulu.” Purely instrumental works in systematically atonal idioms, like Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto, can leave a reasonably experienced listener to modern music untouched and shamefully eager for intermission. Their technical ingenuity does not seem to be matched by audible subtleties of expression or dramatic power, no doubt because the dialectic energies inherent in traditional key-centered systems are not available to the atonal composer. In many severely atonal works, of course, one may discern beauties of logic or design, if only by reading the score. But abstract satisfactions are also available in other activities, like extracting square roots without a computer or reading subway timetables.

Atonal theorists, it must now be apparent to all, have been unable to develop a system of musical rhetoric that would transcend the mundane pleasures to be had from the mere shuffling and arranging of pitches. Some highly dissonant pre-Serial music, like Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps” or Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin,” can give an impression of movement and meaning through sheer motor rhythm. Some landmark works in that interim genre, like Schoenberg’s own Five Pieces for Orchestra (Op. 16), may evoke vague feelings — anxiety, dread or anger. The narrow range is generally excused as a reflection of this century’s Weltschmerz, its pervasive mood of alienation and sadness. But audiences composed of people who live in this same century have not bought this rationale. We have heard music, they say in effect, and this is not it.

These listeners, agree with them or not, have a point. Atonality’s frugality of expression compares poorly with the depths of meaning that Bach could call upon with the simplest of tonal devices, like the shift from minor to major in the Chaconne. Schubert is able to penetrate the heart merely by shifting from E flat to D flat in the first movement of his posthumous Sonata in B flat or by inserting those startling silences in his “Unfinished” Symphony. The moorings provided by innumerable tonal conventions were implicitly understood and relied upon by audiences until quite recently: without them, no composer could hope to suggest the harmonic uncertainties and eventual exaltations that Beethoven achieves with a few trilled measures in the coda of Opus 109.

It may be no accident that while serious instrumental music has been in retreat during our century, opera has flourished. Opera differs fundamentally from instrumental music in that words and action in opera explain everything. The composer may convey what he means independent of purely musical — or better to say, tonal — devices. It was this freedom, as the musicologist Carolyn Abbate has pointed out, that allowed Wagner to dispense with the traditional practices of modulation, with their built-in gravitation toward drama and emotional expression. Perhaps as much as his harmonic heresies, it was Wagner’s libertarian approach to key relationships that later composers found most useful in undermining the old tonal regime. The composer of “Tristan und Isolde,” according to Ms. Abbate, “lived long enough to observe the new generation of symphonists, and with a mixture of egotism and astuteness saw them as imitators ‘misreading’ his work.”

Schoenberg, as earlier works like “Gurrelieder” make plain, was the perfect post-Wagnerite. Perhaps it is his misreading of Wagner’s freedoms that we have to thank for the meaninglessness of so much 20th-century music.

July 4, 1990

To the Music Editor of the New York Times:

Dear Mr. Henahan,

After seeing my grandfather, Arnold Schoenberg, maligned in the pages of your newspaper for the last six years, I have at last decided to initiate a correspondence by which I hope to correct some misinformation you and your staff have been propagating.

In his article on David Diamond, K. Robert Schwarz claims that “the artistic climate of the 1950’s reflected an obsession with the notion of the avant-garde, which searched for the new — whether in serialism, electronics or indeterminacy —  and scorned the past.”

You and your writers make a habit, when singing the praises of neo-conservative music, of arguing that there once was a time when “serial” music was so dominant that it was performed to the exclusion of modern tonal composers’ efforts.  Mostly this serialist hegemony is supposed to have occurred in the fifties.

While it may be true that after my grandfather’s death in 1951, interest in his music, and especially in the music of his pupil Anton Webern, increased in academic circles and among the best young composers in Europe and America, that interest sadly never made it over to the concert halls.  The reasons for this have more to do with conservative critics and reactionary conductors than public disapproval.

Schwarz says that the performances of new tonal music began to “dry up” because the “fickle arbiters of musical taste now deemed atonality and serialism to be the wave of the future.”  This argument has appeared many times in your paper.  Do you believe it is true?  Who were these “fickle arbiters”?  Certainly no university in America had more than a handful of professors committed to “atonal” music.  And then again, what power did these most devoted followers of Schoenberg’s music have?  Did Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt dictate the performances of the New York Philharmonic?

In any event, since I am young (23) and had no way of experiencing this period for myself, I would like some more information on this mythical period, where one could not only frequently hear serial music, but only hear serial music.  I have the following questions:

1)  During which years were there more performances of serial music than other modern music in New York City?  Of all the classical music performed in New York City, what percentage was new or “modern” — either tonal or atonal?

2)  During which years and for which composers were there more performances in New York City of the music of Arnold Schoenberg than there were of a) Copland, b) Bernstein, c) Barber, d) Thomson, e) Harris, f) Hanson, g) Diamond, h) Piston, i) Schuman, or any other tonal composer of significance?

3)  Same question as #2, except don’t count Verklärte Nacht.  Then count only 12-tone pieces.

4)  Who were the “serial” composers who were performed most often, and which of their 12-tone works received the most performances?  How were these composers and their works reviewed by the New York Times?

My questions all boil down to this:  Can you offer any evidence to support your oft-repeated claims of serialist dominance in the post-war period?  I am ready to be proven wrong, but I very much doubt that there ever was such a period.

Your paper’s position has been that Schoenberg’s music (serial, atonal, 12-tone, modern, ultra-modern, avant-garde, intellectual, brainy, thorny, difficult — whichever adjective you use to describe it) has been heard by the public and rejected.  Again Schwarz writes, “[i]f the battle [for serial music] is lost, it is partly because audiences consistently rejected most of the music that emerged from the postwar avant-garde. ‘The big overall concertgoing public was always turned off,’ says Mr. Diamond.  ‘That’s why even the greatest 12-tone works have never attracted an audience.’”

Until this fall, New York audiences will have not had a chance to “reject” Moses und Aron (at least in staged form).  Which pieces then have turned off the public?  Or is it perhaps the music critics of the New York Times who have done the rejecting, so that the audiences don’t have to?  Isn’t it odd that in other countries Schoenberg’s music has been publicly acclaimed?  In England last year, Schoenberg’s entire output was performed at the London Festival with much success.  Why not in New York?  When the Juilliard School tried to do a few Schoenberg works earlier this year, the New York Times mockingly reviewed it as an aberration.

If you take the time to research the questions I have asked you, you might find that Schoenberg’s music, and the music of his school, has never been given as much of a chance to be heard as the music of the many other anti-Schoenberg composers who have come and gone in this century.  It seems quite possible to me that such “forgotten” tonal works as Diamond’s 3rd Symphony may have had more performances in New York City in the last 45 years than Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto.

It is one thing to advocate the music you feel is worthwhile.  It is another thing altogether when in order to promote that music you rely on deprecating remarks against the music of Arnold Schoenberg.  Yet this is not a new phenomenon, and it is not limited to Schoenberg.  Since the end of World War II it has been the jingoistic nationalism of many American-born composers, supported by critics and conductors, which has pushed the music of their better trained, and in many ways more deserving, European-American colleagues off the concert stage.  So, for example, we have heard much more of the native-born Americans listed above than their emigré counterparts — Korngold, Toch, Mihlaud, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Tansman, Zemlinsky and Weill, to name just the tonal ones.  (I should also include on this list my maternal grandfather, Eric Zeisl, whose oblivion since his death in 1959 has been just as deep and just as undeserved as Mr. Diamond’s.)  I doubt whether even the older and more established neo-classical composers — Stravinsky, Bartok, or Hindemith — have ever been performed in New York City more than Copland, Bernstein or Barber since 1945.  And I have already questioned you about the Schoenberg school.

I hope you take these comments seriously (not serially?).  I think it would make a worthwhile assignment for one of your staff writers to go through your paper’s concert reviews from the past to find out what was actually played during the post-war period and how it was received.  I, for one, would be very glad to see the results published in your column.

My grandfather respected your paper and understood its persuasive power.  In 1948 he wrote to one of your predecessors, Olin Downes, in defense of Gustav Mahler.  I hope that I have shown the same courage and perception in my letter to you.

Most sincerely,

Randol Schoenberg

This summer, students at Greenwood Music Camp in Western Massachusetts performed the Overture from Schoenberg’s Suite, Op. 29.  A notoriously difficult work, they made it seem easy.  Congratulations to Tiffany Sun, Philip Yom, Christian Dioguardi, Daniel Kim, Maeve Feinberg, Russell O’Rourke, and Aaron Wolff.

The Galerie St. Etienne is offering a Schoenberg painting for sale, perhaps the first one to be put on the market in 100 years.  Jane Kallir, whose grandfather Otto Kallir founded the gallery, says the 1923 oil painting of Schoenberg’s first wife Mathilde (née Zemlinsky) on her deathbed is an “important work, and one of the few likely ever to come to market.”  The painting was obtained by the violinist Louis Krasner, the first performer of the violin concertos of both Schoenberg and Berg, from Schoenberg’s son Georg, who miraculously survived the war in Vienna.  Jane Kallir last exhibited Schoenberg’s paintings in 1985, at the time she published her monograph Arnold Schoenberg’s Vienna, the first study of Schoenberg’s paintings.  Schoenberg’s entire output can be viewed online at the website of the Arnold Schönberg Center.

Today would be David Raksin‘s 100th birthday. I just listened to almost all of a two-hour broadcast on KUSC 91.5 FM by John Burlingame. If he mentioned that Raksin studied with Schoenberg, I missed it. Funny, because Raksin himself loved to talk about his time as Schoenberg’s student. And especially the time he introduced the Schoenbergs to Charlie Chaplin. Raksin had worked with Chaplin, orchestrating his music for Modern Times. The Schoenbergs were big fans of Chaplin’s movies, so I am sure they were very happy when Raksin arranged the meeting that resulted in the photo above, with Raksin towering on the right. I’ve always loved how my grandfather’s feet are splayed out Chaplinesque, while Chaplin himself points straight ahead.  Raksin’s most famous work was the haunting theme for the Otto Preminger film Laura, one of the most recorded songs in the history of film.  Here’s Duke Ellington’s version.

This has been an amazing year for the Schoenberg Kol Nidre, a work that is hardly ever performed.  In March, Ricardo Muti (see photo below) and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Cantor Alberto Mizrachi gave the first performance by a major US orchestra.  Zubin Mehta followed with the first Salzburg Festival performance in July with Thomas Hampson and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.  Now Mehta et al will perform the work again in New York this October at Carnegie Hall.  The press release is below.

I like this work.  We play a recording of it every year on the evening of Yom Kippur.  A number of years ago, I discovered a letter my grandfather had written to Cantor David Putterman of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, suggesting that the piece could be reduced for string quartet or even organ.  So I asked my uncle to have Belmont Music Publishers commission Leonard Stein to make a reduction for organ.  Leonard had made the original piano score when he was my grandfather’s assistant in 1938.  We tried to get synagogues to sponsor the commission, but only Cantor Lester Siegel of Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama was brave enough to take part.

Here’s the IPO press release about the Carnegie Hall concert:

After the enthusiastic and heartfelt reception the Israel Philharmonic received at the 2012 Salzburg Festival in July (and at the urging of devoted friends and fans of the IPO), the Orchestra has opted to bring Arnold Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre and Israeli composer Noam Sheriff‘s Mechaye Hametim (Revival of the Dead)—two works performed in Salzburg—to New York City for the Carnegie Hall gala on October 25 along with Grammy Award-winning baritone Thomas Hampson and The Collegiate Chorale. The Salzburg performance of these works on July 24 prompted The New York Times to state, “Abetted by Mr. Hampson’s tour de force, in which he also served as narrator in the Schoenberg and spoke and sang in the Sheriff, the evening’s performances were everywhere excellent…The concert was greeted warmly, even clamorously…” The concert at Carnegie Hall also features Yuja Wang performing Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor. This performance marks the New York premiere of Sheriff’s Mechaye Hametim.

And here I am after coming in on the red-eye for the performance in Chicago with Ricardo Muti.  Might have to do the same for New York.

The blogosphere is abuzz with rumors that Mitt Romney is considering former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as his running mate.  Leaving her politics aside — and her chances of being picked do seem slim — Rice would probably be the most musically educated candidate since Richard Nixon.  She is an excellent pianist and her favorite composer is Brahms. As she explained in an interview with Denver University Today in 2010:

DU: I’d like to read you a quote from The New York Times. It’s from an interview with you. The quote is, “I love Brahms because Brahms is actually structured. And he’s passionate without being sentimental. I don’t like sentimental music, so I tend not to like Liszt, and I don’t actually much care for the Russian romantics Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, where it’s all on the sleeve. With Brahms it’s restrained, and there’s a sense of tension that never resolves.” Do you still feel that way?

Rice: Oh absolutely. Johannes Brahms is by far my favorite composer. It is in part because he was a great classicist, but he was also pushing music toward the 20th century. Brahms died in 1897, he was only 64 years old, and I often wonder what it would have been like if Brahms had lived to be part of the explosion of atonal music and the new music of Schoenberg and Webern that come only a couple of decades later, less than two decades later. So I’m a great fan of Brahms as a classicist, the true heir to Bach and Beethoven, but also because his music is spectacularly beautiful, but not sentimental. I don’t like music that wears its emotions on its sleeve, and you’ll never find that with Brahms.

I’ve been aware of Rice’s musical tastes since at least 1998, when she took part in a Time Magazine Person of the Century panel and suggested she would pick Arnold Schoenberg. But Time Magazine let Philip Glass pick Stravinsky as the musical entry on the list.

Sotheby’s will be auctioning off a copy of the Second String Quartet, Op. 10.  The signed manuscript is estimated at $150,000 to $184,000.

Signed Autograph Manuscript of Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet (op.10) This landmark work in Schoenberg’s oeuvre, and in 20th century music as a whole, broke with string quartet tradition by introducing a soprano voice to the last two movements. This manuscript is the cornerstone of Schoenberg’s development of atonality: In the fourth movement, Schoenberg for the first time dispenses with the use of key signatures. Schoenberg composed the work in 1908 during the troubled period marked by his wife Mathilde’s affair with their mutual friend, the artist Richard Gerstl. Schoenberg’s reconciliation with his wife led to Gerstl’s suicide, and Schoenberg soberly dedicated this quartet to his wife (Meiner Frau). Weakened by the trials of World War One war, Mathilde spent the last weeks of her life at Auersperg Sanatorium; the Seybert family invited Schoenberg and his closest relatives to stay with them so as to be close to her. After Mathilde’s death in October 1923, Schoenberg gave them this well-preserved copy of his second quartet in gratitude for their hospitality (est. €100,000-150,000/ $122,800-184,100).

Some of the above-mentioned “history” of the quartet has been debunked by Raymond Coffer on his site devoted to Richard Gerstl.

Secondly, the website provides compelling evidence of the extent to which Mathilde’s infidelity was represented in Schönberg’s works from the time. In particular, it examines in great detail the history of Schönberg’s composition of his Second String Quartet, in whose fourth movement, Entrueckung, the composer is generally considered to have crossed the line to atonality for the first time.

Schönberg completed the work during July and early August 1908 while staying in Preslgütl (right), a waterside farmhouse in the stunning lakeside resort of Gmunden that he had rented for his family’s summer vacation. Here, on the eastern banks of the Traunsee, he had been joined by his studenst and friends, including Gerstl. However, a couple of weeks after Schönberg had completed the composition, Gerstl and Mathilde were discovered in flagrante delicto, possibly in Gerstl’s own holiday farmhouse. Shocked by his wife’s betrayal, Schönberg summarily rejected her pleas, upon which the two lovers fled from Gmunden back to Vienna.

It is, perhaps, unsurprising that this juxtaposition of events should have prompted a raft of scholarly musicological conjecture that has somewhat questionably concluded that not only had Schönberg represented his emotions regarding the affair in his Second String Quartet, but that Mathilde’s infidelity had acted as the catalyst for his historic leap to atonality. Such speculation, however, is firmly refuted by the timeline established within this research, which strongly indicates that, rather than events in Gmunden having had an influence on Schönberg’s startling musical development in his Second String Quartet, there may have been other powerful factors that caused him to write atonally for the first time.

Postscript: Nuria points out that the Seybert family were the parents of the photographer Lisette Model, who was a friend of Trudi Schönberg. Lisette studied music with Schoenberg in 1920-21. She later wrote, “If ever in my life I had one teacher and one great influence, it was Schönberg,”

Bill Eddins, the music director fo the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, was pilloried on his own blog for his earlier post (It’s Schoenberg’s Fault!).  Undeterred, he posted a second blog (No One Expects the 12-Tone Inquisition!) now claiming that he was being attacked for challenging “orthodoxy” and attacking a “sacred cow” by suggesting that the music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern was responsible for a supposed lack of interest in classical music among the general public.

The new blog is almost as incoherent as the first (and does not deal with my prior blog on the topic).  In the end, Eddins backtracks a bit from his original posting, even claiming that his title was just a tongue-in-cheek attempt to be provocative.

Of course, no one can blame Shoenberg [sic] for the current crisis in classical music, anymore than one can blame Queen Elizabeth II for the fact that no British born man has won Wimbledon since 1936. . . . But that was never the point of my post, and it is very, very interesting that this was understood immediately in the social media world yet almost completely mistaken on the “serious” side.  The point was, and is, that there are way too many sacred cows in this business. Orthodoxy is very, very bad for religion, nationalism, and art.

Oh, sorry we misunderstood.

Eddins’ main problem is that he’s just not smart enough.  Sorry, that’s the real sacred cow.  It’s a truism that the smarter people are, the more they are able to appreciate new and difficult music (or new and difficult anything).  And people who aren’t that smart, generally don’t like smart people telling them that they aren’t smart.

Apparently it is ok for someone like Eddins to denigrate the entire output of a composer like Schoenberg, but it is not ok for someone to challenge Eddins’ opinion and point out the logical errors in his argument.  So, for example, Eddins takes issue with those who pointed out that his repetition of the myth that “In the width and breadth of this mighty land the universities and colleges during this era were the bastions of the Dodecaphonists” was simply not true, according to the recent statistical study by Joseph Straus (The Myth of Serial “Tyranny” in the 1950s and 1960s).  The comprehensive study can be ignored, apparently, because Eddins himself once witnessed a member of a faculty at the school he attended “deriding” a student for writing a melody.  “It was depressing in the extreme,” he writes.  No doubt.  No one likes being told by an authority that they aren’t talented or smart enough.  And the standard defense is to challenge the authority as “elitist,” as if that epithet can explain away the pupil’s deficiencies.

Here’s his new explanation of why Eddins thinks people don’t like classical music:

However, I can’t count how many times I have gotten into a conversation with someone who no longer attends classical music concerts because they were made to feel uncomfortable expressing a negative opinion about the music they were listening to.  Because they didn’t like what they heard, and they happened to not be “experts” on music, their feelings were denigrated.  Herein lies the worse aspect of orthodoxy – the inability to understand or give creedence to an opposing point of view without denigrating it with attacks or arguments of a condescendingly personal nature.

According to Eddins, music is a “very personal choice” that apparently has nothing to do with training, education and innate intelligence.  So, I suppose it is perfectly appropriate for someone who lacks all three qualities to denigrate a piece of music, or even a composer’s entire output. Not only appropriate, but the lay critic can then be offended if someone with more training, education and intelligence challenges his opinion.  Imagine if this were true in physics, and Mr. and Mrs. Average could say “I just don’t like relativity and that whole quantum physics thing.  Newtonian physics was better.  Down with the ‘sacred cow’ of new science. If only scientists would stop talking about the Higgs Boson, I would pay attention to science again.”  And if anyone dared to point out the problems with Mr. Average’s views, he would say

It doesn’t mean that the [science] we dislike is evil, but rather it is not for us. It also doesn’t mean that the [science] we like is good.  However, I can’t count how many times I have gotten into a conversation with someone who no longer attends [science lectures] because they were made to feel uncomfortable expressing a negative opinion about the [science] they were listening to.  Because they didn’t like what they heard, and they happened to not be “experts” on [science], their feelings were denigrated.  Herein lies the worse aspect of orthodoxy – the inability to understand or give creedence to an opposing point of view without denigrating it with attacks or arguments of a condescendingly personal nature.

Mr. Eddins, we all “understand” your point of view.  You have an inferiority complex. Sorry if that’s a personal argument.  Sort of like blaming your own inability to connect with audiences on my grandfather is personal.

The latest in a 100-year effort to scare people away from the music of Arnold Schoenberg is a blog by Bill Eddins, It’s Schoenberg’s Fault!

I did an interview with a reporter from Minnesota Public Radio yesterday exploring the difficulties being faced by the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.  After a thorough dissection of the mistakes that led up to this current mess with both orchestras, and much of the classical music industry thereto, I have come to one undeniable conclusion – it’s Schoenberg’s fault.

His theory is that ordinary people will not listen to ANY classical music, because orchestras sometimes program works by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Ok. That’s one theory. But I have another.

I suppose it is possible that Mr. and Mrs. Joe and Josephine Average (as Eddins calls them) discuss whether or not to go to a classical music concert, and Mr. Average says to his wife, “You know, honey, I’ve heard Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Chamber Orchestra and I just don’t like it.  So let’s not go to the concert tonight (whatever they are playing).  I just don’t want to listen to any classical music ever again.” But I think there is a more likely scenario.

Mr. and Mrs. Average are prejudiced.  They have probably never heard a note of music by Schoenberg, Berg or Webern and certainly could not tell the difference between their music and that of Stravinsky, Bartok or Ives, about which Eddins writes that “people are excited to hear it” and “jump to their feet.”

What sends the audience away is not the music, it’s the hype.  It is prejudice. Literally, people have been taught by Mr. Eddins and others to pre-judge the music before they even listen to a note of it. They see the name on the program, figure they won’t like the music because they’ve heard that it’s hard to like, and stay away. Eddins is a purveyor of hatred and prejudice.

I am not suggesting that every person will love every note of Schoenberg’s music. It is often not easy, especially on a first listening. But, as Eddins points out, audiences often love difficult music. They just have to know that it’s ok to like it. Honestly, is it Schoenberg’s fault that people like Eddins write articles and give interviews suggesting that if an orchestra programs Verklaerte Nacht, Pelleas und Melisande, Gurrelieder, Monn Cello Concerto, Theme and Variations or Suite for String Orchestra, or even the Brahms or Bach orchestrations, that “subscription renewals drop like a paralyzed falcon”?  Do Mr. and Mrs. Average really appreciate Stravinsky’s Le Sacre de Printemps and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra more than Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphonies One and Two?

Ah, Eddins might say, you are not mentioning the more difficult works like Five Pieces for Orchestra or the twelve-tone Variations for Orchestra, Violin Concerto or Piano Concerto.  But that’s the whole point.  Eddins doesn’t differentiate those works in his post either.  He writes, about all of it, “this music does not seem to speak to most people’s souls.”  Really?  All of it?

The real problem is that audiences have been prejudiced against ALL music by Schoenberg, as if they are required to like and appreciate every note.  It is an impossible standard, especially for the “average” music-lover who only wants a certain type of music (one that he is familiar with). Do Mr. and Mrs. Average need to avoid Petrouschka because they won’t like the Requiem Canticles?

Schoenberg goes in many other directions (as do Stravinsky, Bartok and Ives), and that puts some people off.  As Schoenberg explained in his brief note:

My music is supposedly not emotional.
Of course, it is not: “Oh, darling! You are so wonderful; I love you so much.”
There are also other kinds of love, for instance Alberich’s, Monostaten’s, Don Juan’s but also Petrarca’s (not expecting early reward).
There are also different kinds of emotion.
There is jealousy, hatred, enthusiasm.
There is love of ideals, of virtues, of one’s country, town or village and its inhabitants.
There is not only joy,
There is also sadness, mourning, pity and envy.
There is also anger;
There is contempt, pride, devotion, madness, fear, panic, courage, admiration.
Love of justice, of honesty, of good manners.
Love of good food and drinks and of the beauty of nature; of animals, flowers and exotic stones.
Love of a bird’s song and of competitive games.

No need for Schoenberg to apologize.  It really is not his fault. Eddins and his ilk, preaching prejudice to the uninformed, are what is hurting classical music.