Object #57

Arnold Schönberg
Requiem
1921/23
Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien

In November 1923 following the death of his wife Mathilde on October 18, Schönberg completed the second part of his poem for a Requiem which he began two years previously in connection with the death of his mother Pauline. In the first written copy the work is “Dedicated to all as they have sacrificed life”; he had originally planned to set the words to music, but the composition did not materialize. Structured in paratactic verses of free rhythm, the “Requiem” is similar to the oratorio text for “Die Jakobsleiter” [Jacob’s Ladder] in its reflections on transcendence, reincarnation and immortality of the soul. The author wants to understand and explain the causality in the “becoming” of the human soul with regard to the sense and purpose of humankind’s creation. Here too, the complex term “idea” present in Schönberg’s art and worldview is thematized in the presentation of the unsolvable tension between idea and word, this life/body and the afterlife/spirit: “You can never pass away, for you have become an idea.”