Schoenberg: Music, God, and Catastrophe in Fin-de-siècle Vienna

http://thebrooklyninstitute.com/bisr_...

In this class we will examine the remarkable cultural ferment of fin-de-siècle Vienna through the lens of one of its principal protagonists, the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Among the questions we will address are: is there a morality of art? How do the apocalyptic yearnings of Viennese Expressionism reflect, and anticipate, the turbulent politics of the early twentieth century? What is "prophetic modernism?" In trying to answer these questions, we will examine Schoenberg's relation to other leading Viennese figures, including Ludwig Wittgenstein and the satirist Karl Kraus, and read interpretations of his music by such writers as Theodor Adorno and Thomas Mann. We will use Schoenberg's own path -- from a youthful immersion in German Idealism, through his reconversion to Judaism, culminating in the messianic visions of Moses und Aron and A Survivor from Warsaw -- to explore the broader ways in which the Jewish experience in Vienna shaped the history of modernism in philosophy and the arts. And we will try to understand why, a century after their creation, the artistic monuments of turn-of-the-century Vienna still have a unique power to compel and disturb.

http://thebrooklyninstitute.com/bisr_...