In recognition of one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, Arnold Schoenberg—who passed away on July 13, 1951—we are choosing this week to focus on an unusual, biblically-inspired work on which he collaborated after immigrating to the United States to avoid Nazi-persecution. Schoenberg was living in Los Angeles in 1944 when he was approached by Hollywood composer-arranger Nathaniel Shilkret to contribute music to Genesis Suite, a work featuring spoken narration with stories from the first book of the Bible set against a musical background of full orchestra and chorus. Ultimately seven composers, six of them recent émigrés from Europe, would take part in this unique collaborative work which premiered in Los Angeles in 1945. After the first performance, the scores and parts of five of the movements were destroyed when the basement of Shilkret's home was flooded. More than 50 years later, the Milken Archive was able to reconstruct these missing movements from the composers' notes and manuscripts, resulting in a splendid new recording narrated by Hollywood and Broadway stars.

Arnold Schoenberg

Following are excerpts from the Genesis Suite program notes by the Archive's Artistic Director Neil Levin that shed light on Schoenberg's Jewish beliefs:

Little is known about Arnold Schoenberg’s (1874–1951) upbringing or childhood Jewish experiences. What might seem to be major milestones in his life -- his conversion to Protestant Christianity in 1898 and, especially, his return to Judaism -- are in fact only events in a continual internal struggle and spiritual quest. His conversion to Christianity was not -- as the distinguished music scholar Alexander Ringer observes in his well-known study, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew“ -- under secularizing or assimilationist influences. Rather because, being virtually untutored in Jewish values, he looked for other vessels to quench his spiritual thirst.”

By 1923, Schoenberg was already committed to Jewish national concerns, and his drama, Der Biblische Weg (The Way to the Bible; 1923–27) advocated a temporary national home for the Jewish people prior to eventual permanent settlement in Palestine. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Schoenberg was summarily dismissed from his post at the Prussian Academy of Arts, where he had been teaching since 1926. He was denounced because he was a Jew and a leading exponent of “degenerate” art. A fervent Zionist, he drafted a bold “Four-Point Program for Jewry,” propounding that “a united Jewish party must be created … Ways must be prepared to obtain a place to erect an independent Jewish state.” In 1934, he immigrated to the United States and settled eventually in Los Angeles, where he taught for a year at the USC and, from 1936 on, at UCLA. He became an American citizen in 1941.

GENESIS SUITE (Click on the play button to hear a sample clip):

Title	Composer
I. Prelude	Arnold Schoenberg
II. Creation	Nathaniel Shilkret
III. Adam and Eve	Alexandre Tansman
IV. Cain and Abel	Darius Milhaud
V. The Flood	Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
VI. The Covenant	Ernst Toch
VII. Babel	Igor Stravinsky

MORE FROM THE MILKEN ARCHIVE:

A light-hearted musical approach to Jewish weddings and marriage

Fourth of July: Jewish music that celebrates freedom, immigration

Painter Ralph Gilbert interprets the Milken Archive

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