A portrait of Arnold Schoenberg C. 1905 by Richard Gerstl. Wikimedia Commons.
SCHOENBERG IN VIENNA Born September 13, 1874, in Vienna, Austria, the capital of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire, Arnold Schoenberg remains one of the most influential 20th-century composers. Schoenberg grew up in a predominately Jewish district of Vienna with his father, a shoe shopkeeper, and mother, a piano teacher. His father passed away when he was 16, so Arnold worked as a bank clerk through his teens to help with household expenses for his mother and brother. Schoenberg left the Jewish faith he had grown up in and converted to Protestantism in his early 20s, partly because he identified more deeply with Western culture and music, and partly due to the rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.
A portrait of Mathilde, Arnold Schoenberg’s first wife. Wikimedia Commons. Date unknown by Richard Gerstl.
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A primarily self-taught musician, he began composing for strings at the age of 9. In his 20s, Schoenberg was already earning money orchestrating operettas, and it was only then he began formal music lessons with the established Austrian composer, Alexander Zemlinsky. Soon, Alexander became Schoenberg’s brother-in-law as he married his teacher’s sister, Mathilde in 1901. They had two children together before Schoenberg discovered an affair between his wife and painter, Richard Gerstl. They remained married even while Mathilde left to live with Gerstl for several months. This infidelity marked a change in Schoenberg’s compositions even after Mathilde returned and they remained married until her death in 1923. Schoenberg remarried less than a year after Mathilde’s death to Gertrud Kolisch, and together they had three children. Amidst this, Schoenberg and his family moved to Berlin in 1911, where they lived until 1915, when he was called into the Austrian Army during World War I. War left little time to finish compositions, yet it also influenced Schoenberg considerably—giving him time and inspiration to develop his new twelve-tone method—a completely different way of thinking of music theory and composition practice. In 1933, Arnold Schoenberg was at the height of his career, composing and teaching at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, when Adolf Hitler came to power. Though Schoenberg had converted to Christianity decades earlier, in Nazi ideology he was a Jew by birth, and moreover a composer of “degenerate” music. Hitler began to restrict Jewish public and private life in the country including banning Jews from all university positions. While vacationing in France, it became clear that returning to Germany would be dangerous. The Schoenbergs first tried to emigrate to Great Britain, but were denied access. Schoenberg converted back to Judaism in a Paris synagogue, pledging loyalty to the Jewish National cause, and moved to Boston with his family. The family lived in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, taught at the now-closed Malkin Conservatory, and often conducted for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was soon disillusioned by
