Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna

Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater

Caroline A. Kita

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780253040534
• eBook ISBN:
  9780253040541
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Jewish Literary Criticism

This study "brings to life a circle of writers and composers, with analyses of their major, minor . . . and forgotten works of Jewish music theater" (Abigail Gillman, author of Viennese Jewish Modernism).
During the mid-19th century, the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner sparked an impulse toward German cultural renewal and social change that drew on religious myth, metaphysics, and spiritualism. The only problem was that their works were deeply antisemitic and entangled with claims that Jews were incapable of creating compassionate art. By looking at the works of Jewish composers and writers who contributed to a lively and robust biblical theatre in fin de siècle Vienna, Caroline A. Kita shows how they reimagined myths of the Old Testament to offer new aesthetic and ethical views of compassion.
These Jewish artists, including Gustav Mahler, Siegfried Lipiner, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Stefan Zweig, and Arnold Schoenberg, reimagined biblical stories through the lens of the modern Jewish subject to plead for justice and compassion toward the Jewish community. By tracing responses to antisemitic discourses of compassion, Kita reflects on the explicitly and increasingly troubled political and social dynamics at the end of the Habsburg Empire.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Translation
• Introduction
• 1. A Case for Compassion: Siegfried Lipiner’s Adam
• 2. Voicing Compassion: Gustav Mahler’s Second and Third Symphonies
• 3. Polyphony as a Poetics of Compassion: Arnold Schoenberg’s Die Jakobsleiter
• 4. Dialogues of Compassion: Richard Beer-Hofmann’s Jaákobs Traum
• 5. Compassion as Communal Song: Stefan Zweig’s Jeremias
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author