1. Unfortunately, I could not use the title "Schoenberg from Behind," because Heinz-Klaus Metzger had the idea first; see his "Arnold Schönberg von hinten," in Musik-Konzepte: Sonderband Arnold Schönberg, ed. Heinz Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehm (Munich: text + kritik, 1980), 29-34. The reader is reminded that this text was conceived for aural presentation; only footnotes have been added. I am grateful to Juliane Brand and Michael Ochs for their help in correcting my English. [BACK]

2. Bruno Bettelheim, Freud's Vienna and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 3-17, esp. 3 and 14-15. [BACK]

3. I confess my inability to translate this paragraph satisfactorily: "the internal way, also called meeting one's self, the making of the inner word, without which every glance outside remains void, and no magnet, no power to attract the inner word from outside, to help it break through from the error of the world." Ernst Bloch, Geist der Utopie (second version 1923; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1964), 13. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are by the author. [BACK]

4. See Brinkmann, "Schönberg und das expressionistische Ausdruckskonzept," in Bericht über den I. Kongress der Internationalen Schönberg-Gesellschaft, ed. Rudolf Stephan (Vienna: Verlag Elisabeth Lafite, 1978), 13-19. [BACK]

5. Arnold Schoenberg, "Aphorism" (emphasis added by the author). The original German text appeared first in Die Musik 9/21 (1909/1910), 159-163, esp. 159; also published in Reich, Schönberg: Schöpferische Konfessionen, 12. See also the translations in Malcolm McDonald, Schoenberg (London: J.M. Dent, 1976), 58. [BACK]

6. See Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler: Eine musikalische Physiognomik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1960), 12-14. See also Adorno, "Arnold Schönberg," 147-172, esp. 153: "What he [Schoenberg] designated as the `subcutaneous' . . . breaks through the surface, becomes visible and manifests itself independently of all stereotyped forms. The inward dimension moves outward." [BACK]

7. See Paul Bekker, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1921), esp. 62. A terminological study would certainly go back to the nineteenth century, to prenaturalist literary critics such as Georg Brandes (1842-1927), for example, who elaborated on the notion of "the modern breakthrough." [BACK]

8. "alle Schranken einer vergangenen Ästhetik durchbrochen zu haben. " From Schoenberg's program notes to the first performance of the George-Lieder, 14 January 1910, in Vienna; published in Reich, Schönberg: Schöpferische Konfessionen, 28; English transla ion in Reich, Schoenberg: A Critical Biography, 49. [BACK]

9. Darius Milhaud, "To Arnold Schoenberg on His Seventieth Birthday," Musical Quarterly 30/4 (1944), 379-384, esp. 381. [BACK]

10. For a reproduction of that photograph, see Walter Rubsamen, "Schoenberg in America," Musical Quarterly 37/4 (1951), 469-489, esp. 481. [BACK]

11. For reproductions of the self-portrait (catalog no. 4) and Red Gaze (catalog no. 246), see Ellen Kravitz and Lawrence Schoenberg, "Catalog of Arnold Schoenberg's Paintings, Drawings and Sketches," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 2/3 (June 1978), 185-231, esp. 190 and 230; see also Thomas Zaunschirm, ed., Arnold Schönberg: Das bildnerische Werk (Klagenfurt: Ritter Verlag, 1991). [BACK]

12. The relationship of Schoenberg's "eyes" to similar expressive gazes in portraits and particularly self-portraits by Richard Gerstl, whose work predates Schoenberg's paintings, is striking. According to his student and friend Victor Hammer, Gerstl "placed great importance on the `expression' of the eyes"; see Hammer, "Memories of Richard Gerstl," in the exhibition catalog Richard Gerstl. Oskar Kokoschka, ed. Jane Kallir (New York: Galerie St. Etienne, 1992), 28. [BACK]

13. For reproductions of Munch's Scream, see Nicolay Stang, Edvard Munch (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1977), 61 (woodcut) and color plate no. 1 (painting). [BACK]

14. Metaphorically speaking, Schoenberg's death mask, taken by Anna Mahler, seems to display this very powerfully, especially in the photo published on page 468 in Rubsamen, "Schoenberg in America." [BACK]

15. Translation adapted from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures in Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 2:1,133. For the discussion that follows, see also Brinkmann, "The Lyric as Paradigm: Poetry and the Foundation of Arnold Schönberg's New Music," in German Literature and Music 1890-1989: An Aesthetic Fusion, ed. Claus Reschke and Howard Pollack (Munich: Fink, 1992), 95-129. [BACK]

16. For a more detailed discussion of these strategies, see Brinkmann, "The Lyric as Paradigm." [BACK]

17. For a reproduction of Self-Portrait from Behind, see Kravitz and Schoenberg, "Arnold Schoenberg's Paintings," no. 7, 191. [BACK]

18. For a reproduction of the pencil sketch, see Kravitz and Schoenberg, "Arnold Schoenberg's Paintings," no. 6, 190. [BACK]

19. Schoenberg to Kolisch, 27 July 1932, Schoenberg Letters, no. 143, 164-165, esp. 165. [BACK]

20. Ob rechts, ob links, vorwärts oder rückwärts, bergauf oder bergab — man hat weiterzugehen, ohne zu fragen, was vor oder hinter einem liegt." [BACK]

21. Rudolf Stephan, "Aussermusikalischer Inhalt; Musikalischer Gehalt: Gedanken zur Musik der Jahrhundertwende," in Vom musikalischen Denken: Gesammelte Vorträge, ed. Rainer Damm and Andreas Traub (Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne, 1985), 309-320, esp. 316. [BACK]

22. "das Wahre, Wirkliche, wo das bloss Tatsächliche verschwindet." Bloch, Geist der Utopie, 3. This passage is already included in the first version (1918) of Geist der Utopie. [BACK]

23. See the color plates in Helmut Börsch-Supan, Caspar David Friedrich (New York: George Braziller, 1974), 3:109; and the catalog The Romantic Vision of Caspar David Friedrich: Paintings and Drawings from the U.S.S.R., ed. Sabine Rewald (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), 75. Jens Christian Jensen summarizes the common interpretation of Friedrich's works in his Caspar David Friedrich: Life and Work (Woodbury, New York, and London: Barron's, 1981). [BACK]

24. Jensen, Caspar David Friedrich, 175-176. [BACK]

25. Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 220. [BACK]

26. For reproductions of The Lonely Woman and The Lonely Ones, see the color plates in Ulrich Weisner's catalog Edvard Munch. Liebe. Angst. Tod. Zeichnungen und Graphiken aus dem Munch-Museum Oslo (Bielefeld: Kunsthalle, 1980), 143, 144. [BACK]

27. See, for example, Ernst Bloch, Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1964), 178. [BACK]

28. "Der neue Klang ist ein unwillkürlich gefundenes Symbol, das den neuen Menschen ankündigt, der sich da ausspricht." Schoenberg, Harmonielehre (1911), 447. [BACK]

29. The three drawings, selected from a great number of similar ones, are reprinted in H.C. Robbins Landon, Beethoven: Sein Leben und seine Welt in zeitgenössischen Bildern und Texten (Vienna and Zurich: Universal Edition, 1970), 144-147. The first is a watercolor drawing by Joseph Weidner, dating from the 1820s; the second is a drawing by Johann Peter Theodor Lysing, first published in 1833 in the journal Cäcilia; the third is a sketch by Joseph Daniel Böhm for a picture to be engraved on a small silver plate. Böhm had met Beethoven in 1819 or 1820. [BACK]

30. These pictures were cultivated in fin de siècle Vienna by Otto Böhler (1847-1911); his silhouettes, often with an ironic twist, were very popular, and Schoenberg must have known them from Viennese newspapers. For a reproduction of the Brahms picture, see Christiane Jacobsen, Johannes Brahms: Leben und Werk (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1983), 157. [BACK]

31. For a reproduction of the Brahms photograph, from the Fellinger collection, see Marie Fellinger, Brahms-Bilder, enlarged 2d ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1912), 7. For the Mahler photographs, see Kurt Blaukopf, Mahler: A Documentary Study (New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976), nos. 222 and 223; for a photograph of Mahler walking in the countryside, see no. 306. [BACK]

32. See the picture in Robert Dangers, Wilhelm Busch — der Künstler (Berlin: Rembrandt Verlag, 1937), 33; and the back cover of Walter Abendroth, Arthur Schopenhauer in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967). Busch's satirical work includes a variety of figures from behind. Iconologically most of them do not belong to the "Romantic" line from Friedrich to Munch and Schoenberg. Busch's figures seem to distance themselves from the viewer; they either slink away as scapegoats or victims, or pointedly turn their backs and leave the viewer behind. Identification with these figure seems neither intended nor possible. [BACK]

33. Schoenberg had volumes of Schopenhauer's works in his library, and his two editions of Parerga und Paralipomena are heavily annotated. [BACK]

34. In editing this text for publication I came across Alessandra Comini's richly illustrated book The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (New York: Rizzoli, 1987). Obviously, she was the first to connect Schoenberg's painting to the Beethoven and Schopenhauer drawings. However, her commentary — "Arnold Schoenberg would pay jocose homage to Beethoven" (43) — is inadequate. [BACK]

35. Translated by Anne Shreffler. For the German text, see Brinkmann, "Was uns die Quellen erzählen," in Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Danuser et al. (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1988), 679-693, esp. 691-692. [BACK]

36. From the last paragraphs of Schumann's famous review of the Symphonie fantastique. Translation from Hector Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, ed. Edward Cone, Norton Critical Scores (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971), 220-248, esp. 248. [BACK]

37. Schoenberg to Kandinsky, adapted from the translation in Schoenberg Letters, no. 42, 70-71. [BACK]

38. Schoenberg and his family, on vacation in Mattsee, Austria, were forced to leave because they were Jews. [BACK]

39. Schoenberg to Kandinsky, Schoenberg Letters, no. 64, 89-93, esp. 92-93. [BACK]

40. Seit dem Skandal bei Furtwängler habe ich alle Lust verloren, dort [in Berlin] zu leben. Fast hat Berlin für mich keinen andern Wert gehabt, als dass man dort sehr viele Leute nicht sehen muss und aber eben Wozzeck ungestört aufführen kann. Der letztere Vorzug hat sich auf mich selbst nicht übertragen lassen, denn mit mir ist es ein Hakenkreuz: ich bin ein schuftiger, unverständlicher Jude.
Mahler-Werfel Collection, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania. [BACK]

41. "It is a cross with you" (in other words, "You sure are a burden") and "Everyone must bear his cross." [BACK]

42. I must acknowledge two important studies here, which contributed background to this discussion — namely, the late Michael Mäckelmann's dissertation Arnold Schönberg und das Judentum (Hamburg: Verlag Karl Dieter Wagner, 1984) and Alexander L. Ringer's Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). [BACK]

43. See Christian M. Schmidt, "Schönbergs Kantate `Ein Überlebender aus Warschau' op. 46," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 33/4 (1976), 174-188, 261-277. [BACK]

44. English translation in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 257-258. It is irrelevant for my purpose whether Benjamin's view does justice to Klee's intentions, as it is irrelevant whether Benjamin's allegorical interpretation of the drawing itself is adequate. A reproduction of the Klee picture is published in Zur Aktualität Walter Benjamins, ed. Siegfried Unseld (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972), 85. The drawing was owned by Benjamin and is now in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It was included in the 1991 Berlin exhibit Jüdische Lebenswelten as no. 20:6/61. [BACK]

45. Benjamin's allegorical understanding of the Klee painting could be viewed as an actualization of Friedrich Schlegel's "Philosophical Fragment" no. 667: "Der Historiker ist ein rückwärts gekehrter Prophet" (The historian is a prophet turned backward); see Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Fragmente (Studienausgabe), ed. E. Behler and H. Eichner (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning, 1988), 5:28. [BACK]

46. He [the Angel] announces the future, from where he came, but his face is turned to the past. . . . [P]aradise is both the origin and the primeval past for man and, at the same time, a utopian image of the future of salvation — in actually a more cyclical than dialectical understanding of history.
Gershom Scholem, "Walter Benjamin und sein Engel,"
in Zur Aktualität, 87-138, esp. 131.

The "actually" ( eigentlich ) reveals Scholem's problem. [BACK]

47. See Walter Benjamin's paralipomena to his "Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen," in Gesammelte Schriften 1/3, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), 1,236 and 1,249-1,250. See also Rolf Tiedemann, "Historischer Materialismus oder politischer Messianismus?" in Materialien zu Benjamins Thesen "Über den Begriff der Geschichte," ed. Peter Bulthaup (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975), 77-121. If one ignores Tiedemann's assuming the role of warden of the grail, this essay gives the most competent interpretation of the theses. The summary (110), in particular, provides a balanced account of their assumed position between historical materialism and messianic theology. A slightly different and generally speaking more `optimistic' interpretation, emphasizing ''the redemptive urge behind Benjamin's view of the past" (David Stern), is given by Richard Wolin. See his study Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, 2d ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994); and David Stern's review essay "The Man with Qualities," New Republic, 10 April 1995, 31-38. [BACK]

48. Peter Szondi, "Hoffnung im Vergangenen: Über Walter Benjamin," in Satz und Gegensatz (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1964), 79-92, esp. 92. English translation in Szondi, On Textual Understanding and Other Essays, trans. Harvey Mendelsohn (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 155-156. [BACK]

49. To quote Szondi again ("Hoffnung im Vergangenen," 91; On Textual Understanding, 155): "A knowledge of ruin obstructed Benjamin's view into the future and allowed him to see future events only in those instances where they had already moved into the past. This ruin is not only Benjamin's it is the ruin of his age." [BACK]

50. On the notion of melancholy in Benjamin's thought, see Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn (New York: Noonday Press, 1980), 103-134. [BACK]