Returning to a Homeland

Scholars have paid little attention to Arnold Schoenberg’s op. 50a “Dreimal tausend Jahre” [“Three Times a Thousand Years”], except to mention briefly that it is one of his last finished compositions. ¹ This is perhaps because of the work’s relatively small scale: a four-voice (SATB) a cappella choral piece that is only twenty-five measures long. But the miniature is also an example of Schoenberg’s latest artistic creed: it is based on a poem with a religious subject and it employs the technique of composing with twelve tones in a specific way.