Quest
to the
United States


Arnold Schoenberg's kids, Ronald and Nuria

Immigration document
But disarmament is as slow here as it is in other areas; so long as there continue to be nations which, in art, have not yet won their place in the sun, so long will America demand large orchestras and Europe maintain them; Europeans will remain incapable of acquiring that finesse of the ear that artists long to see more generally acquired as long as they continue to maintain large orchestras.
From this point of view, I place great hope in jazz. As late as 1918 they were crowding brass instruments into rooms of the smallest dimensions. Now we are beginning to find that a piano and four or five instruments suffice in a large garden, so great has been the transformation in the auditory sense of one part of the public.
Interview with myself, 1928
Ode to Napoleon
buonaparte, op.41

“The conquered”

“The conquerer”
CONNECTIONS
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LITERARY: Lord Byron’s Poem + Maeterlinck's Life of the Bees
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PERSONAL-PROFESSIONAL: League of Composers commission
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POLITICAL: Day of Infamy speech by Roosevelt + against Hitler
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MUSICAL: melodramatic chamber piece with speaker, string quartet, and piano with “Marseillaise” and the motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (“the earthquake voice of victory”) and speaking