ABSTRACT
According to Hans Stuckenschmidt, one of Schoenberg’s pupils and his biographer, “the infinite is the underlying theme of [Schoenberg’s] musical thinking, of his texts and of his religious imagery,” 1 and Schoenberg himself said that “there could be no art… not inspired by ethics, and there could be no human ethics not inspired by the spirit of Judaism.” 2 Schoenberg’s largest twelve-tone masterwork, the opera Moses und Aron, offers a good opportunity to explore the impact of his religious beliefs and their political correlations on his work, especially since it was conceived and composed in the years 1923-33, a time during which Schoenberg experienced persecution for his Jewish heritage at first hand. Moreover, the religious ideas expounded in the opera provide a window into Schoenberg’s specifically Mosaic view of his purpose as a Jew and an artist.
