Schoenberg's son-in-law Felix Greissle [de] also recalled Webern's labile antisemitism, contextualizing it as part of Webern's vacillating resentment and respect toward Schoenberg[115] while also noting that Schoenberg had internalized some antisemitism ("mildly" antisemitic jokes were common in Schoenberg's home, Greissle's son George recalled, which Julie Brown contextualized as "unexceptional").[116] Schoenberg was self-conscious of his Jewish and class background, having confronted antisemitism in reading Otto Weininger.[117] He repeatedly engaged with controversies surrounding Richard Wagner, who he also read and whose possible Jewish lineage interested him.[117] He contended with Wagnerian charges as to Jewish artists' creative inabilities.[117] While working on Die Jakobsleiter on family holiday at Mattsee in summer 1921, Schoenberg was given notice that all Jews should leave the town, angering him and sparking his return from Protestantism to Judaism.[118] In response, Wassily Kandinsky wrote to him from the Bauhaus in 1923, "I reject you as a Jew. ... Better to be a human being".[116] Schoenberg responded, "what is anti-Semitism to lead to if not to acts of violence?"[116]
He was responding to Krenek's essay "Freiheit und Verantwortung" ("Freedom and Responsibility") in Willi Reich [de]'s 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift (1934). Elsewhere Krenek advocated for "a Catholic Austrian avante garde", opposing "the Austrian provincialism that National Socialism wants to force on us."[181] German Wikisource has original text related to this article: 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift.
Rosen charged Taruskin's "hostile presentation ... does not result in historical objectivity".[529] Max Erwin considered Taruskin's work on the Darmstädter Ferienkurse "passionately negative"[583] and "thoroughly discredited",[584] particularly that "Adorno or Leibowitz officiated with near-dictatorial power".[585] Rodney Lister wrote, "Taruskin's purpose ... is to bury Webern, not to praise him", noting "the increasing importance of 'motivization' over the course of the 19th century and of the 'collapse' of (traditional) tonality [is] something which Taruskin flatly states never took place."[586] Larson Powell found "Taruskin's ... references to Webern's politics ... to discredit the music."[587]Christian Utz [de] agreed with Martin Zenck [de] that Taruskin's claims were "simplifying and distorting", granting "authoritarian rhetoric ... in ... the 1950s and 60s" and the nonexistence of "'apolitical music'".[588] Holzer also sympathized with but found Taruskin inappropriate and simplistic.[589]
In a case study, Martin Kaltenecker noted Taruskin's taking aim at avant-garde prestige in opposition to Célestin Deliège [fr]'s Cinquante ans de modernité musicale: De Darmstadt à l'IRCAM.[592] He contrasted their polarized nomothetic "plots" with more idiographic approaches' "juxtapositions" and thick description. He considered how to move beyond this nomothetic–idiographic historiographical dichotomy.[593]
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He was responding to Krenek's essay "Freiheit und Verantwortung" ("Freedom and Responsibility") in Willi Reich [de]'s 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift (1934). Elsewhere Krenek advocated for "a Catholic Austrian avante garde", opposing "the Austrian provincialism that National Socialism wants to force on us."[181] German Wikisource has original text related to this article: 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift.