Re: Classic Israeli Folk Music & Dance in NYC-Update

[elkahn <elkahn...>]

I just wanted to let all interested parties know that I was fortunate
enough to attend MOSES UND ARON at the MET this past Saturday.

Schoenberg wrote the libretto himself from ca. 1928-1930 in Berlin and set
it from ca. 1930-1932. The text is brilliantly set; don't ask me how he
does it; I'm clueless about how to write serial music.

But the orchestration and orchestral ideas were fascinating and the vocal
music surely conveyed what the text (thankfully, in sub-titles) was trying
to say.

I mention that it was written in Berlin at this time because I couldn't
stop from thinking everytime the backsliding, golden calf-worshipping
Hebrew chorus sang or danced, that Schoenberg was trying to warn certain 
German Jewish people to re-examine the inherent dangers in their 
materialistic existence. The two act text is mainly an adaptation of 
Exodus, up to the breaking of the tablets.

The ending felt a bit of a dramatic letdown and unfulfilling to me, and I
really believe it's a shame Act 3 wasn't completed. Schoenberg applied for
a grant in 1945 to take time off from his teaching at UCLA but the
Guggenheim Foundation -- in its infinite wisdom -- turned him down.

All in all,  a powerful JEWISH work that sets a Jewish text about Jewish
people -- something we should all be proud of and learn from.

A strange impulse made me want to sit our own Monica Lewinsky and her
parents down to several mandatory viewings. After which she could write on
the blackboard, "I will not show my thong strap to lecherous, middle-aged
men."

Now, whom have I offended this time?

Eliott Kahn

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