Object #55
Hegemony in the sphere of music

Arnold Schönberg to Alma Mahler
26 July 1921

Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna 
 
With his “method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another,” its pioneer secured a historically rich place in German musical tradition, to the evolution of which he felt artistically bound. Aware of this requisite, he wrote a letter of acknowledgement to Alma Mahler in which he ideologically elevated the new method, and also positioned his achievement in relation to his expulsion from Mattsee: “My dear, honored friend, just a quick sign of life and to thank you for your endearing letter. Quickly: since, after paying a tribute of money (a lot of money) to my fellow Mattsee people – eternally zeitgeist-ill, and what is more, lost worktime (3 weeks!), I have begun to work again. Something completely new! The German Aryans who persecuted me in Mattsee will be thankful for this new one (especially this one), in that they will even be esteemed abroad for 100 years, because they belong to the state which has now secured hegemony in the sphere of music.”

With his formulation of hegemony or primacy in the sphere of music (Schönberg could well have seen the securing of which with the twelve-tone method as the personal consignment of a German genius), he took up a zeitgeist trend of fighting for primacy of all nations on all territories. Some 1921 newspapers produced an eloquent testimony for the fight to secure hegemony in the political, military, technical, economic, cultural and athletic areas – even fashion and craftsmanship were targets of the omnipresent hegemonic aspirations. The struggle for hegemony or primacy also included racial issues; on 23 May 1921, an editor of Pester Lloyd defined “laying the hegemony of the Christian race without bargaining on a secure foundation for all eternity” as a solidary racial duty.

Cf. Therese Muxeneder: Arnold Schönbergs Konfrontationen mit Antisemitismus (III), in: Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 16/2019. Edited by Eike Feß and Therese Muxeneder. Wien 2019, p. 165–254