Arnold Schoenberg
Rousseau, Melody, and ModeFriday, May 17, 2013 by Ben Elton | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Though best remembered today for his political philosophy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also a careful student of music. But his conclusions are undermined by the liturgical music of Ashkenazi Jews.
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Warning Notes Daniel Johnson, Standpoint. Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg could not have anticipated the future for Vienna's Jews, but a piece entitled "Premonition" reflects growing anti-Semitism 30 years before the Holocaust.
The Godless Delusion Neilson MacKay, New Criterion. By "making a 'god out of man,'" artists like Schoenberg, Goethe, and Matisse thought that "in the wake of religious disbelief, art could give us meaning again."
The Fall of the House of Wittgenstein Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe. A Beethoven sculpture, a "gift of Paul Wittgenstein," has just arrived at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. It reminds us of a brilliant family of Secession-era Vienna—and its fall.