Arnold Schönbergs
Modern Psalm, op. 50C
“Die Wunder Reihe (The Miracle Set).“ 1951

Arnold Schönberg increasingly turned to religious topics in his late works. Whereas his opus 50A was a setting of a poem by Dagobert D. Runes thematizing exile and Zionist aspirations, the text for his opus 50B was taken from the biblical Psalms. Up to the final days before his death, Schönberg worked on a series of his own prose-poems, which he considered as “psalms, prayers, and other conversations with and about God.“ Schönberg’s spirit remained as unbroken as his never-ending passion for innovation. The twelve-tone row of the work was meant to establish a new dimension of compositional freedom and concomitant deepening of links between all elements of the music. It promised greater variety, “than double counterpoint of all sorts. Of course, you have to invent your themes as ordinarily; but you have more possibilities of producing strongly related configurations, which in sound are essentially different.“