Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew

1993. xx, 260pp. B&W illustrations and musical examples. Ex-library with just a couple of small stamps. The covers have been strengthened with a stiff clear plastic adhesive cover. "Arnold Schoenberg was preoccupied with Judaism and biblical themes all his life, and they are reflected in the spiritual and political motivations of such key works as the oratorio Die Jakobsleiter, the opera Moses und Aron, and the profoundly disturbing A Survivor from Warsaw. This book, based on essays written over some fifteen years, explores the far-reaching ramifications of Schoenberg's Jewish background and experience throughout a creative lifetime that witnessed both the portentous rise of a Jewish cultural elite in Central Europe and the destruction of one-third of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis. The author also analyzes details of Schoenberg's music and deals with specific aspects of his compositional approach in terms of a Jewish monophonic tradition which favored melodic-rhythmic forces over functional harmonic ones. Indeed, Alexander Ringer brings a wide array of musical, historical, philosophical, and theological factors to bear upon his sensitively drawn, novel portrait of Arnold Schoenberg as the quintessentially Jewish composer of the twentieth century. To this paperback edition, the author has added a brief chronicle of pertinent events.".…