Arnold Schönberg - Moses und Aron

"With sketches for an unfinished orchestral passacaglia in March 1920, Schoenberg began to work out the implications of the serial idea. A catch-as-catch-can life as teacher, lecturer, and conductor was relieved in 1925 by an appointment from the Prussian Academy of Arts to take over the composition masterclass formerly taught by Busoni, who had died the year before. The relative security of his new position allowed Schoenberg leisure to expand, hand-in-hand with composition, the grasp of serial procedures. In 1898 Schoenberg had become, like Mendelssohn, a convert to Lutheranism, though that did not shield him from virulent anti-Semitism, and through the 1920s he was preoccupied with his position as a Jew and an artist, eventually returning formally to Judaism in the summer of 1933. Already in 1917 he had begun the composition of Die Jakobsleiter, a large-scale oratorio in which a variety of religious and philosophical stances are brought before the archangel Gabriel. Tellingly, this work, like Moses und Aron, was to remain incomplete. Schoenberg's religious concerns became more topically focused in the drama Der biblische Weg, written over 1926-1927, whose protagonist, Max Aruns -- a composite whose dichotomy would be articulated in Moses und Aron -- was modeled on Zionist leader Theodor Herzl. A first draft libretto of Moses und Aron, conceived as an oratorio, followed in 1928, with the composition of the comic opera Von heute auf Morgen. Composition of the first two acts of Moses und Aron, as an opera, occupied Schoenberg from May 1930 to March 1932. Based upon a single row, serialism attains its grandest throw, given vivacity and dramatic impetus by the astonishing array of techniques -- Sprechgesang, Klangfarbenmelodie, contrapuntally rich choral writing -- fashioned over a lifetime to find their ultimate expressive purpose in Moses und Aron. Moses' uncompromising adherence to an omnipotent, inconceivable God, for instance, is conveyed by Sprechstimme, while Aron's attempts to win the people to it are couched in glib arioso - an audible representation of the artist's uneasy mixture of truth and illusion, intellectual probity and charisma. The impact of Moses und Aron, in the hands of a great conductor, is immediate, visceral, and compelling. Hitler's rise and Schoenberg's emigration to America in 1933 put the completion of Moses und Aron -- a third act dialogue in which Aron dies - forever out of reach. The torso received its premiere at the Zurich Stadttheater June 6, 1957, not quite six years after its composer's death." (Summary by Adrian Corleonis. From AllMusic. See here.)

Performers: Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Rundfunkchor Leipzig, Herbert Kegel, Werner Haseleu, Reiner Goldberg

1.1. Akt I, Szene I: 'Einziger, Ewiger, Allgegenwärtiger'

1.2. Akt I, Szene II: 'Du Sohn Meiner Väter'

1.3. Akt I, Szene III: 'Ich Hab' Ihn Gesehn'

1.4. Akt I, Szene IV: 'Bringt Ihr Erhörung'/'In Der Wüste Wird Euch Die Reinheit'

2.1. Zwischenspiel: 'Wo Ist Moses?'

2.2. Akt II, Szene I: 'Vierzig Tage!'

2.3. Akt II, Szene II: 'Wo Ist Moses?'/'Volk Israels!'

2.4. Akt II, Szene III: 'Dieses Bild Bezeugt'

2.5. Akt II, Szene IV: 'Moses Steigt Vom Berg Herab!'

2.6. Akt II, Szene V: 'Aron, Was Hast Du Getan?'/'Unvorstellbarer Gott!'

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