Nuria Schoenberg Nono paints a portrait of Arnold Schönberg the family man, which is radically different from the familiar image of Schönberg the twelve-tone revolutionary. An interview by Max Nyffeler.
Deutsche Fassung
Nuria Schoenberg Nono, you were born in 1932, and just two years later your parents emigrated to America to escape the Nazis. You spent your childhood and youth in Los Angeles. What was your experience of your father then, in public and in private?
He was hardly known to the general public. We were emigrants, and his music was foreign to the Americans. In Los Angeles, someone might say to him: “Ah, I know who you are. You are the father of Ronny, who won the tennis tournament.” Granted, he was a professor at the university, but he was no god. In Europe, it was different. When I went to Hamburg in 1954 for the posthumous premiere of his opera Moses und Aron, I experienced the strangest things. People came up to me and said, “Oh, you’re Schönberg’s daughter. May I touch you?”
And in your private life? When did you first realize that your father was a famous composer?
I was still a child. Our mother told me and my two younger brothers very early on that he was special. When the mother of a school friend once asked me what my father did for a living, I replied with conviction: “He is the greatest composer in the world.” She said that we must be very rich. But we didn’t have much money. The university didn’t pay him very well, and when he asked for a raise, they said, “If we give it to you, we have to give it to everyone.” The fact that he was an internationally renowned composer was of little concern to the university administration.
Your father faced intense hostility throughout his life, and René Leibowitz, a champion of twelve-tone music after World War II, even said that he was the most fiercely opposed composer of all time. Did he tell you about the injuries he suffered in Europe?
I didn’t really notice much of that. My parents didn’t want to burden us children with the past. The family was concerned with completely different things. For example, he told us stories he made up at the dinner table. One of them was also published as a book: “The Princess.” And when I was very little, he wrote the song “Nullele – Pullele” for me.
At Christmas, he played the harmonium, and we sang English Christmas carols before we were allowed to open the presents. He was a fantastic father and devoted a lot of time to us children.
Stair sitting
How did that manifest itself in everyday life?
For example, we regularly did “stair sitting”. The stairs to the upper floor were in the middle of the house and you could walk around them. In the late afternoon, we would sit there and talk to our father about all kinds of things that happened to us in our daily lives. We also formed a Gentlemen’s Club, which included my father and my brother Ronny, who was four years younger than me, and a Ladies‘ Club, consisting of my mother, me and my brother Lawrence, who was still very young and was carried by her. Then we marched around the stairs, and each group sang their song. My father composed the song for the Gentlemen’s Club (sings): “pimpiam, pimpiam pampam”, and my mother composed the song for the Ladies‘ Club: “ta-tii, ta-tii, ta-taa, bumm”, and every time my little brother enthusiastically shouted “bumm” along with it.
Your father obviously loved games.
He was also very interested in my brother Ronny’s tennis game and went to the tournaments with him. There he kept a kind of record for him, noting every point in the game in order to discuss the course of the game with him afterwards. He wanted to understand: why did he win, why did he lose? What could be done better? He was convinced of the necessity of analysis, just as in music lessons. That was typical of the way he thought and acted. Incidentally, these notes are all available to view at the Schönberg Center in Vienna.
He also played tennis himself, among others with George Gershwin, who was a friend of his. When did he start playing tennis?
He started in Europe. He learned from my mother Gertrud Kolisch, who was an accomplished tennis player.
He was incredibly strict in his music. One example of his uncompromising thinking is the Second Chorus Piece, op. 27, from 1925, a rigid twelve-tone composition that states: “You shall not worship the small! You must believe in the spirit! Directly, unfeelingly and selflessly. You must, chosen one, must, if you want to remain so!” That sounds quite Mosaic.
He was consistent in the things he was convinced of.
In 1947, he composed “A Survivor from Warsaw” under the impression of the news from the Warsaw Ghetto. Working on a topic like that must have been a heavy burden for an artist. How did he process it? Surely you can’t just close the door of your study and then indulge in a carefree family life.
But he could. Composing and family life were two completely separate spheres for him.
What did his working environment look like?
He had a study that we children were not allowed to enter without his permission. He composed here, and there was also a piano.
Then there was a second room where he did handicrafts. For example, he constructed a musical typewriter or a bookbinding machine that he used to bind his scores. He was a fantastic craftsman. Most of these things can be seen today at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna.
Did the strictness of his compositional thinking also show itself in family life?
Not at all. He rarely swore or ranted. His method was different. Once, I treated my brother badly, and my father took a cardboard box, put him in it and said, “All right, then we’ll just send him away.” I got scared and shouted, “No, Dad, please don’t!” He knew, of course, that I would immediately regret my behavior.
A form of applied dialectics: to escalate an issue until it tips over into the opposite.
The worst thing was when we had done something wrong. That hurt him, and we didn’t want that. Once, when I had forgotten to pick up my little brother at school, he ordered me: “Go to your room and think about what you have done to him.” But after just ten minutes, he stood repentantly in the doorway and said – I will never forget this: “You can ask me for forgiveness now.” The role of strict disciplinarian was not his.
What was lifelike in the émigré community in Los Angeles? Did you meet up regularly there?
Not regularly. But for a while my grandmother, my mother and I would make very good afternoon snacks on Sundays, as is the custom in Austria, and we would have visitors. At first it was only intended for the extended family and a few invited guests, such as the Kolisches and the members of the Kolisch Quartet.
Nuria Schoenberg Nono, your mother Gertrud, was the sister of the violinist Rudolf Kolisch.
Exactly. Word of these invitations got around, and so it happened that some people who were coming from the beach at around four o’clock on Sunday met at “Café Schoenberg” and simply ate all our pastries. My father came up with the idea of taking a trip with us at that time, and so the uninvited visitors stood in front of the closed garden gate (laughs).
Among the emigrants were the crème de la crème of European classical musicians, including Arthur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, members of the famous chamber music trio. Did you have contact with them?
Only with Piatigorsky. He visited my father when he was already quite ill and no longer left the house much. They talked for a whole afternoon, and my father was very happy about it. In his last years, he didn’t have many visitors, except for students he taught privately.
Another famous émigré was Igor Stravinsky. You didn’t live too far away from him, but your father and Stravinsky had no contact.
But there was no rivalry or even hostility between them, as one could often read. They just left each other alone. Once, at a concert, they greeted each other, but nothing more. When a journalist once wrote disparagingly about Stravinsky, my father even wrote him a letter in which he defended Strawinsky.
Robert Craft was a link between the two. In the late 1940s, when he was living with Stravinsky, he often came to see you. What memories do you have of him?
He was a strange person. But he had great respect for my father. He was very interested in the twelve-tone technique and took scores with him, which he then showed to Stravinsky.
Craft also organized and conducted concerts in Los Angeles with works by your father. He said that Stravinsky was often present at the rehearsals, with his head buried in the scores.
He also conducted my father’s pieces in Venice later on, and Stravinsky also came to the rehearsals.
Among the private students who came to your house in 1935-37 was John Cage. Did you still know him as a child?
I think so, but I don’t remember it. However, I saw him quite often later.
Cage reports that Schönberg once stood before a packed lecture hall at the university and said, “The aim of this seminar is to make it impossible for you to write music.” That doesn’t sound particularly encouraging.
He loved to speak in paradoxes and of course meant the opposite. The Americans don’t understand that. They think in a straight line. My father was a fantastic teacher. He took care of each and every student individually. At family lunch, he would happily report that he succeeded in teaching something to a girl who had difficulties grasping it. Most of them had no background at all. Many were young women who wanted to become kindergarten teachers and thought music was easy.
So what did he teach? Beethoven or Brahms? Twelve-tone method?
No, no. The students lacked prior knowledge for that. He only did rather basic analyses, without going into too much depth, to make it easier for them to access the works. This applied to compositions roughly from Bach to Brahms. He never taught the twelve-tone method; that was his own world.
Your father converted to Protestantism in 1898 and then back to Judaism around 1930 in the face of rampant anti-Semitism in Europe. What role did religious issues play in the family?
Not a big one. He didn’t go to synagogue either. Once we drove past a large synagogue in Los Angeles, and when I asked what kind of building it was, he said, “That’s where the Jews pray.” Another time, when I was about ten, I heard a schoolmate being reprimanded by his mother because he had greeted a Catholic boy. At home, I asked my father what being Catholic meant. He explained it to me and said, “There are many religions, and all are good if people believe in God and don’t do bad things to others.” Religion can help you to become a better person.
Did your father have a religious funeral?
Only to some extent. My mother, who was Catholic, wanted the funeral service to take place in one of those buildings in Los Angeles that were open to all religions. A rabbi spoke, then a priest who had no idea who my father was. There were only about forty people present.
At the age of twenty-three, you married Luigi Nono and moved to Venice. When you look back on your years in America, what are your memories of that time?
We had a harmonious family life, and my parents raised us children in an exemplary manner. I experienced a happy time in Los Angeles.
The conversation took place on August 13, 2024 in the apartment of Nuria Schoenberg Nono in Venice. The color photo of her was also taken on this occasion.
This interview was also published as a print version in German in the Schweizer Musikzeitung, December 2024.
A shorter version was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on September 13, 2024, the 150th birthday of Arnold Schoenberg.
Deutsche Fassung, Volltext