Music and Antisemitism

Analysis last week consisted of the first movement of Johannes Brahms' third Piano Trio (Op. 101). For inspiration I was directed to the famous essay by Arnold Schoenberg, 'Brahms the Progressive'. Though the essay itself was fascinating - and certainly helped with the task in hand - it was to another of Schoenberg's essays that I was drawn to: the 'Two Speeches on the Jewish Situation'. Dating from 1934 and 1935 respectively, they give a good idea of Schoenberg's approach to assimilation: namely that Jews should escape to America. What is most fascinating, however, is the section at the start of the later speech on the experience of being a young Jewish composer in 1890s/1900s Vienna. Schoenberg notes the very real impact that Richard Wagner's tract had on not only the reception but also the self-confidence of him and his contemporaries. This psychological barrier to success is far-less cited than the physical. Though Schoenberg and many other Jewish co...

Music and anti-Semitism converge at many points. In musicology, composition, criticism, theory, and performance, anti-Semitism has always been present, and most likely always will be. Most studies that combine the two concepts fall largely into three groups: the antisemitism of Richard Wagner, and whether this should affect the performance of his music; anti-Semitism against Felix Mendelssohn, and the pressures of assimilation; and music during the Holocaust. Whilst these topics are deeply interesting, and should not be excluded simply for their preeminence, they are clearly not the full picture. Anti-Semitism is pervasive in a society even if it is not acted out by anti-Semites. To me, at least, purely the fact of being Jewish in a non-Jewish world amounts to a crisis in self-confidence and a lack of complete trust in others. There does not need to be an authoritarian regime: being self-aware as a Jew - and being aware that at least one other person is aware - is enough. Musically spe...