Modern Masters
Jewish Composers Who Changed Classical Music
4 sessions at 6 p.m. ET
Nov. 4, 12, 18 and 25
All classes will be recorded and sent to registrants.
In 1905, at the premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s work “Pelleas und Melisande,” in Vienna, many in the audience ran for the door in the middle of the concert. They had simply never heard anything like Schoenberg’s intense, avant-garde piece.
The early work was only the start of what was to come for Schoenberg, who would have a controversial yet hugely influential career as the father of contemporary atonality — music that sounds, well, like it’s jumping in and out of tune.
Another significant arc in his life was the evolution of his Jewishness. In a career-minded move in 1898, a time of rampant antisemitism in his native Vienna, Schoenberg converted to Protestantism. But from the 1920s until his death in 1951, Jewish themes recurred in his work.
While every case was different, Schoenberg’s life and career proved to be a model of sorts: Many of the most influential classical music composers of the 20th century were Jewish; many were driven to innovate by their status as outsiders in their native cultures; and many were forced into abandoning their religion for years, before, in many cases, coming back to it, sometimes with greater fervor than before.
In this distinctive new class from Matthew Mugmon, a professor of music at the University of Arizona with specialized knowledge of 20th-century Jewish composers, you will dive deep into the Jewish and musical worlds of some of these icons, including (but not only) Gustav Mahler, the aforementioned Schoenberg, Ernest Bloch and Steve Reich.
No previous knowledge of any of these composers is necessary to enjoy this course — and even if you know their work well, we guarantee that you will learn new things about their lives, their inspirations and their Jewish stories.
There are no refunds for this course.
About Your Teacher
Matthew Mugmon is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Arizona and a leading scholars on Jewish composers. He has served as the New York Philharmonic’s Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence, and his research has appeared in the Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, the Journal of Musicological Research, and the essay collection “Rethinking Mahler.” His monograph “Aaron Copland and the American Legacy of Gustav Mahler” was published in 2019 by the University of Rochester Press.
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