Schoenberg and Faith: The Revolution of Unity in Music

He is often called the “father of modern music”.

The composer who broke the laws of harmony, dismantled the tonal center, and changed the course of Western music forever.

But behind Arnold Schoenberg’s musical revolution stood something far deeper than technique.

Schoenberg was not merely searching for new sounds.
He was searching for unity.
He was searching for infinity.

In his writings, he speaks of God, prayer, the eternal soul, union with the Creator, and music as the revelation of a reality beyond time and space. In his works we encounter Shema Yisrael, Kol Nidrei, Moses, Jacob’s Ladder, and even mystical ideas that seem to echo the world of Kabbalah.

The very man who declared war on the old musical order returned openly to his people and to his Judaism.

Was the twelve-tone method merely a musical revolution?

Or was it also a daring attempt to touch the infinite unity beyond every boundary and hierarchy?

And could Chassidic thought reveal not only the depth of Schoenberg’s revolution — but also its inner crisis?

The Jew Who Changed the Language of Music

Arnold Schoenberg stands among the most influential and revolutionary figures in the history of Western music. He is known above all as the founder of the twelve-tone method — the dodecaphonic system that sought to reorganize the entire musical space after the collapse of the old tonal center.

To many, he is the father of modern music: the man who transformed not only harmony, but the very language through which music thinks.

Schoenberg was born on Rosh Hashanah — September 13, 1874 — in Leopoldstadt, Vienna’s second district and the Jewish heart of the city, once nicknamed by Viennese residents the “Island of Matzos.” His father’s name was Samuel Schoenberg.

In 1898, at the age of twenty-four, Schoenberg converted, in part out of a desire to enter more fully into the world of European culture. During those years he was closely connected with Gustav Mahler, another Jewish-born composer who had converted.¹

He later became one of the central figures of European musical life. In January 1925, he was invited to Berlin to serve as professor of composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts, one of Europe’s most prestigious cultural institutions.

Then the rise of Nazism overturned everything.

In March 1933, after the president of the Academy declared that an end must be put to “Jewish influence,” Schoenberg left the Academy. A few months later he moved to Paris, and there, on July 24, 1933, he openly returned to Judaism.

Soon afterward, he left Europe for the United States.

Despite the upheavals, his international standing only continued to grow. In 1946, he was elected honorary president of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Today, the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna serves as the world center for the preservation of his legacy.

But behind the figure of the great musical revolutionary lay a much deeper story: the story of a Jew whose identity and faith were never extinguished, and who continued to search for the unity beyond the notes.

Return to Judaism and Faith

In the summer of 1923, Schoenberg experienced a profound rupture. Upon arriving at a resort town, he encountered an antisemitic demand: all Jews were required to leave; those who remained had to prove that they were Christians.

The event forced upon him a renewed recognition of his Jewish identity. He later wrote:

“At last I have been awakened, and I will never again forget what I was forced to understand: that I am not a German, not a European, perhaps not even a human being — but a Jew.”²

Ten years later, on July 24, 1933, in the wake of Nazi persecution, Schoenberg formally and publicly returned to Judaism. This was not merely a private gesture. It was a spiritual and public declaration. In a letter dated August 4, 1933, he described it as:

“a complete break with everything that had connected me to Western civilization.”³

From that point onward, his writings reveal a sharp and unmistakable Jewish consciousness. For Schoenberg, Jewish existence was not merely national or cultural. It was rooted, above all, in faith:

“The Jewish people are a people by virtue of their religion. They can rise again, and continue to exist, only as the people of religion... We must dedicate ourselves anew to faith. It prepares us for life and gives meaning to existence.”

In a lecture on the condition of the Jewish people, delivered in Brooklyn on December 1, 1933, he said:

“The essence of Judaism is religion and faith in being the chosen people. This is what makes us Jews. This is what unites us. And the eternal unity of the Jews cannot be achieved without faith.”⁴

It is striking that this turning point occurred during the very months in which the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the Rebbetzin also left Berlin for Paris in the wake of rising antisemitism. Schoenberg moved from Berlin to Paris on May 17, 1933, returned there to Judaism on July 24, and left Europe for the United States on October 25.

The Rebbe had lived in Berlin from 1929 until 1933, and in Nissan 1933 he moved to Paris. Thus Schoenberg and the Rebbe overlapped in Berlin for approximately four years, and then again during the transition to Paris. It is known that during those years the Rebbe met with great Torah leaders and with Jews of many different backgrounds.⁵ Naturally, this raises an intriguing question: did Schoenberg ever meet the Rebbe? At present, we have no evidence of such a meeting.

And yet the historical overlap itself is thought-provoking. In an assimilated, reforming, and shaken Europe — at a time when many Jews were torn between European culture and Jewish identity — Schoenberg’s Jewish faith emerged with a clarity and force that are striking. Even if we do not know from where he drew it, it is clear that this was not merely a reaction to antisemitism. It was a deep inner point of Judaism and faith, reawakened within him precisely in those fateful days.

Judaism in Schoenberg’s Works

A significant part of Schoenberg’s creative world revolves around explicitly Jewish and religious themes: the prayer of Kol Nidrei, the oratorio Jacob’s Ladder, the opera Moses and Aaron, the cantata A Survivor from Warsaw, and several later works in Hebrew.

Regarding Jacob’s Ladder, Schoenberg wrote:

“For a long time I have wanted to compose an oratorio about a modern man who has passed through materialism, socialism, anarchy — a former atheist in whom a spark of inner faith has nevertheless remained — and how this man ultimately finds God, becomes religious, and learns to pray.”⁶

Jacob’s Ladder, a work to which Schoenberg devoted many years of his life, is based on the biblical narrative. He saw the ladder not merely as a scriptural image, but as a symbol of spiritual ascent: the rungs of the ladder represent different stages in drawing near to God. The one who stands on the highest rung, he writes, “resembles the Shechinah, like a distant overtone to the fundamental tone.” And, in his words, “one who prays becomes one with God.”

The work contains mystical and almost Kabbalistic themes: souls in the world of truth destined to descend again into bodies through reincarnation, as well as the figure of the angel Gabriel.

The scholars themselves write: “It is difficult to know how Schoenberg came into contact with theology.”⁷

Perhaps, one may suggest, he touched it through the roots of his Judaism.

His Kol Nidrei, composed for cantor, chorus, and orchestra, likewise reflects a deep Jewish identification. The work was written at the request of a rabbi in the United States. Schoenberg described its meaning as follows:

“Kol Nidrei is about the fact that all those who converted willingly or under compulsion — as during the Inquisition — and thereby left the Jewish community, can on Yom Kippur make peace with their God.”⁸

For the composition, Schoenberg searched for the traditional Kol Nidrei melody. According to the description in the book, the entire work is filled with grandeur and unfolds as a movement of divine service.

At the center of the cantata A Survivor from Warsaw stands a chilling moment: a Nazi enters a concentration camp in order to lead Jews to extermination, orders them to be counted, and suddenly they all burst forth together in Shema Yisrael — in unison, with one voice, prepared to give up their lives.

Schoenberg wrote to the composer Kurt List:

“The Shema Yisrael at the end of the work carries a special meaning for me. Shema Yisrael is the acceptance of faith; it is our perception and recognition of the one God, eternal, invisible, incomparable... The wonder is that all these people, who apparently for many long years had forgotten that they were Jews, suddenly, in the face of death, remembered who they really were.”

Thus, even though the work describes a moment of unspeakable tragedy, the Shema Yisrael is heard in it as a moment of spiritual victory.

The opera Moses and Aaron occupied Schoenberg for nearly three decades, and he did not live to complete it. It is considered one of his masterpieces. In one of his letters, Schoenberg wrote that there were two works without whose completion his life would not be complete: Moses and Aaron and Jacob’s Ladder.

The subject of the opera is the Exodus from Egypt: from God’s speech to Moses out of the burning bush until the death of Aaron.

In his final years, Schoenberg devoted himself increasingly to religious compositions. Among other works, he composed Shir HaMa’alot: MiMa’amakim Keraticha — “Out of the depths I have called You” — using the Hebrew language. In a personal psalm he composed, he wrote:

“When I say ‘God,’ I know that I am speaking of the one God: eternal, omnipotent, ruler of all, and inconceivable... I pray because all living creatures pray, because I do not wish to lose the feeling of unity and connection with You.”⁹

It becomes clear, then, that the Jewish element in Schoenberg’s work was not a marginal detail and not a cultural ornament. It entered the depths of his creativity: prayer, faith, revelation, self-sacrifice, and the search for the Divine unity behind all sounds.

Music as an Act of Creation

At the foundation of Schoenberg’s musical worldview stands the belief that art is not merely human expression, but a divine mission.¹⁰ Music opens before the human being “the kingdom of infinity,”¹¹ and expresses “the longing of the eternal soul, the soul’s longing for the Divine.” When a composer creates music, he submits himself to the guidance of a higher power that “dictates” to him. In Schoenberg’s world, “a great man is one who clings to faith.”¹²

Artistic creation, for him, does not take place merely on the rational, conscious plane. It belongs to the subconscious. In composing music, the composer moves beyond the limits of his own personality and touches a realm beyond himself.¹³ From here we can understand Schoenberg’s bold comparison between “musical thought” and the thought of the Creator — thought that brings reality into being.¹⁴

From here, Schoenberg’s spiritual conception moves into the very structure of the work itself: composition becomes something like a process of bringing “something from nothing” into form.

The original musical form is simple — a kind of inner seed. Nothing in it is superfluous; nothing is in vain. Every detail serves the inner point.¹⁵ Everything that takes place within the composition emerges from this seed or strives toward it. Upon this seed, the work is built through variations; upon it, different coverings are placed. Musical style, and even harmony itself, are only garments.¹⁶

Through the lens of Chassidic thought, one may hear here an echo of the movement from ayin to yesh — from “nothingness” into “being”: the point of chochmah, an initial, undeveloped flash of insight, expands and becomes clothed in binah, until it takes on intelligible and detailed form.

Schoenberg’s method of variation — almost mathematical in character — recalls the teaching of the Tanya regarding the “exchanges and substitutions of letters and gematriot” within the Ten Utterances through which the world was created: just as combinations of Divine letters generate new created beings, so too, in music, the exchanges and combinations of tones generate new musical creations.¹⁷

In Schoenberg’s conception:

“The musical work is like a perfect organism, so unified within itself that in every detail, even the smallest, the essence of the whole is reflected.”¹⁸

In other words, a musical composition is one living body, a complete structure — almost a full spiritual organism.¹⁹

And in one brief statement, Schoenberg defines the foundation of the whole matter:

“There is no form without logic,

and no logic without unity.”²⁰

The Theory of Relativity in Music

One tone — a tone.

Two tones — a relation.

Three tones — a principle.²¹

Here, faith in unity becomes a musical method. At the foundation of Schoenberg’s system stands the “unity of musical space” — a space in which there is no absolute above or below,²² and all twelve tones become equal in possibility.

Music, then, is not a collection of isolated notes, but a system of relations.

Between all tones there exists a relation that binds separate sounds into one complete form. Even contrast is, in essence, a kind of relation — a complementary relation. This recalls the Torah’s expression ezer kenegdo, “a helpmate opposite him”: even that which stands “opposite” is, in truth, a form of help.²³ Thus even contradiction itself is not absolute separation, but part of a larger unity.

There is a positive connection, and there is a connection by way of negation — which is also a kind of connection, producing the effect of “the superiority of light from within darkness.”

Even between two tones that do not appear openly connected, there exists a hidden bond through a shared fundamental tone.²⁴

Thus all twelve tones are, in a sense, one family, within which there are five different degrees of closeness.²⁵

From this conception of unity, Schoenberg arrives at one of his most revolutionary conclusions:

“The great innovation is not the step toward the twelve tones, but the recognition of the infinite possibilities that can be created from one foundation.”²⁶

But this unity is not static. It is built precisely through movement:

“In every harmonic structure there are problem and resolution: deviation, and return to the original tone”; and “the more frequent and intense the conflict, the stronger the means required to restore tonality.”²⁷

This is, in essence, the idea of ratzo v’shov — running forth and returning.

From this perspective, even what initially sounds like contradiction or disorder is not necessarily the absence of meaning. Sometimes it is a riddle — a deeper layer of perception that has not yet opened itself to the ear. Schoenberg writes:

“We must recognize that we are surrounded by riddles... The riddles are reflections of the unattainable... and through them we can come closer to God.”²⁸

From here emerges his view of dissonance:

“The difference between consonances and dissonances is not a matter of beauty — more beautiful or less beautiful — but a matter of comprehension: more comprehensible or less comprehensible.”²⁹

In other words, dissonance is not “less beautiful.” It is less grasped. Its reception depends upon a more refined power of hearing — something like a zikkuch hakeilim, a refinement of the vessels.

Thus, everything that had been considered “atonal” before Schoenberg became, in his world, “tonal.” Every tonality was now only one particular possibility within the infinite.³⁰

It is not accidental that Schoenberg has been compared to Einstein. Just as Einstein transformed the understanding of absolute time and space in physics, so Schoenberg created something like a musical “theory of relativity,” in which no tone possesses absolute meaning in itself; every meaning emerges from a system of relations.

Viewed more deeply, this carries an echo of the yesod ha-yesodot, the “foundation of foundations” of faith: God alone is the absolute reality, while all beings other than Him are relative realities, receiving their meaning and life-force from the Divine source.³¹

In the twelve-tone method, Schoenberg reflected a state beyond time and space — a dimension in which the usual boundaries of time and space cease to apply. Time can be carried backward, and space becomes equivalent at every point.³²

Here Schoenberg’s genius reaches a very fine line: between a profound aspiration toward infinite unity — and the complete destabilization of center and hierarchy.

And precisely at this point, the great critique of his revolution begins.

When Infinity Blurs the Boundaries

Schoenberg shattered the most basic conventions of Western music. He destabilized the tonal center, blurred the hierarchy between primary and secondary tones, and granted dissonance a status almost equal to consonance. In a certain sense, he intensified the “left line” and placed it on a level with the “right line.”³³

In classical tonal music, there is a center, attraction, hierarchy, rest, and movement. There is a tone that serves as home, and there are tones that revolve around it. In Schoenberg, by contrast, a kind of “equal rights” emerges among all degrees of tones: every tone can become primary, and therefore no tone is absolutely primary.³⁴

Here the complex side of his genius becomes visible. On the one hand, he revealed a genuine depth: all tones belong to one space, and even the farthest and most tense belongs to the whole. On the other hand, when unity erases center, boundaries, and hierarchy, it can turn from rectified unity into an overload of tohu — an imbalance, an inner disruption, an excess that tries to contain everything at once, born from a “striving toward the impossible.”³⁵

At this point, it recalls the Chassidic explanation of Korach’s error. Korach’s claim — “the entire congregation is holy” — sounds, at first, like a demand for higher unity and absolute equality. But precisely there, Chassidic thought explains that true unity does not mean erasing the boundaries established by God.

On the contrary: when the partitions and definitions between one thing and another are abolished, the result is not necessarily unity. Often, it is the beginning of conflict. Chassidic thought explains that unity does not negate the distinctions God established; rather, it is precisely the preservation of boundaries that makes true unity possible. The abolition of partitions can lead not to peace, but to its opposite.³⁶

This is the crucial distinction: unity does not mean that all powers become equal in function. True unity is when each force remains within its own definition, place, and role — and through that, joins a single harmony.

Like fire and water: precisely when there is a vessel, a boundary, and a proper partition between them, they can work together. But when the difference between them is erased completely, this is not unity. It is the cancellation of one of them.

Therefore, from a Chassidic point of view, Schoenberg touched a great truth of the unlimited. He sought to reveal that all tones are included within one space, that every opposition is part of relation, and that even dissonance is not truly foreign.

But when the unlimited comes without the power of limitation — without center, without hierarchy, without inner order — unity itself begins to blur.

In other words: Schoenberg aspired to infinity.

But his infinity struggled to clothe itself in form.

The Power of Limitation Within Infinity

Was Schoenberg’s intuition, then, true?

Chassidic thought offers a profound answer: yes — but not the whole truth.

Schoenberg touched a great truth of the unlimited: the truth of simplicity, infinity, a space in which everything is included in one simple unity beyond all hierarchy. This is the truth of or hasovev — the encompassing light, which is not measured according to the level of the worlds, but surrounds them all equally.

But Chassidic thought teaches that the Divine Infinite is not expressed only in the capacity to be unlimited. On the contrary: the perfection of infinity is that it also possesses the power to be revealed within limitation.

As the classic formulation states: just as He has the power of the unlimited, so He has the power of limitation; for if He lacked the power of limitation, that itself would be a deficiency in His perfection.³⁷

Therefore, God did not create a world in which everything dissolves into formless unity. He created a world of order, measure, structure, degrees, and roles — a world founded upon “ten and not nine, ten and not eleven.”³⁸ A world in which there are chesed and gevurah, right and left, time and space, mitzvot with precise boundaries and measure.

These boundaries do not contradict Divine unity. They are its vessel.

Rectified unity does not erase differences. It gives each force its precise place, and from that, creates harmony. Not a unity in which “everything is the same,” but a unity in which every detail remains within its definition — and precisely from within that definition, reveals the one source.

This is the deep distinction between Yachid and Echad.³⁹

Yachid expresses a simple oneness beyond details: a unity that does not yet give room for multiplicity. But Echad is a greater wonder: many details, levels, and roles — all becoming one without losing their form.

This is the ultimate purpose of unity: not a world erased into infinity, but a world that, precisely through its definitions, details, and boundaries, reflects Divine unity.⁴⁰

And this is also the Chassidic answer to Schoenberg.

He aspired in music toward infinity — toward a space in which all tones belong to one unity. But complete infinity is not merely the erasure of center and boundaries. Divine infinity also knows how to contract, arrange, measure, and give every tone a place and a function within a harmonious system.

Schoenberg searched for the unity above the tones.

Chassidic thought reveals the unity within the tones.

Not Yachid that cancels multiplicity, but Echad that unites it.

Not infinity that blurs the boundaries, but infinity that is revealed precisely through boundary.

And here, perhaps, the circle closes.

The great revolutionary of modern music sought to hear the Infinite.

But Chassidic thought teaches that the most complete melody is not one in which all tones lose their place — but one in which every tone, precisely from its own place, reveals the Divine unity that gives life to them all.

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Footnotes

1. See the essays “Mahler and the Talmud” and “Mahler and Kabbalah” by the late musicologist Yehuda Wexler; see also Negina Le’or HaChassidut, pp. 42–43.

2. p. 405.

3. Letter of August 4, 1933.

4. p. 406.

5. See Early Years, JEM, regarding this period.

6. p. 257.

7. p. 260.

8. p. 358ff.

9. pp. 399–400.

10. p. 11.

11. p. 12.

12. p. 13.

13. p. 15.

14. pp. 26–27.

15. Because “music cannot be understood without repetition,” pp. 30–31.

16. pp. 58, 68.

17. See Tanya, Sha’ar HaYichud VehaEmunah, ch. 1, end of ch. 7, and ch. 12.

18. p. 37.

19. As in the human body, where every limb is included in all the other limbs; see Derech Mitzvotecha of the Tzemach Tzedek, mitzvat Ahavat Yisrael; Sefer HaArachim — Chabad, vol. 1, entry “Eivarim,” p. 97ff.

20. p. 25.

21. p. 48, cited in the name of one of his students.

22. p. 17: “There is no absolute above and below, no direction right or left, no forward and backward”; see also p. 59ff. In Chassidic terms, see at length Hemshech 5672, vol. 1, ch. 33ff., where inner light contains gradations of above and below, whereas encompassing light has no above and below. From the perspective of the great circle, all worlds are truly equal; see ibid., ch. 59. See also Kir HaNigunim, “The Secret of the Musical Circle.”

23. Genesis 2:18; Torah Or 5b.

24. p. 72.

25. Comparable to degrees of familial closeness; see Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat, sec. 33, regarding laws of testimony.

26. p. 68.

27. p. 64.

28. pp. 16–17.

29. p. 70.

30. p. 74.

31. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, 1:1.

32. p. 267.

33. p. 69.

34. p. 73.

35. p. 32ff.

36. See Sefer HaArachim — Chabad, vol. 9, entry “Unity Through Preserving Boundaries,” p. 99ff. and p. 112ff.

37. Avodat HaKodesh, part 1, ch. 8; Derech Emunah (Kehot, 1988), ch. 2; see also Hemshech 5672, vol. 2, p. 940.

38. Sefer Yetzirah 1:4; see Hemshech 5672, vol. 1, p. 159, ch. 83.

39. See Sefer HaArachim — Chabad, vol. 8, entry “Echad in Relation to Yachid,” p. 335ff.

40. See Sefer HaArachim — Chabad, vol. 9, entry “Unity in Creation,” p. 15ff.