Self-Revelation and the Law - Arnold Schoenberg in his Religious Works

Nearing his death, Arnold Schoenberg wrote to Josef Rufer on June 13, 1951: 'In Grove's Dictionary of Music there is quite a good article that includes a discussion of Moses and Aaron. Partly nonsensical, in that it brings the artist in. That's late-19^th-century stuff, but not me. The subject matter and the treatment of it are purely of a religious-philosophical kind'. So categorical a statement would seem, on the face of it, to rule out any consideration of possible autobiographical elements in Moses and Aaron - or, indeed, in any of Schoenberg's other works of religious and philosophical cast. But such a conclusion would be premature. We know, from Schoenberg's own utterances, that a number of his seemingly 'abstract' instrumental works were in reality autobiographical in character. Many times he used to speak of the 'secret program' of the First String Quartet (though he never, to my knowledge, revealed it to anyone). And it is rather widely known that his String Trio of 1946 partially depicts the course of his near fatal illness of that year even his resuscitation from apparent death by an injection into the heart is described in striking musical language. Why, then, should self revelation be rigorously excluded from precisely those works - I am thinking particularly of Die Jakob sleiter and Moses and Aaron - which preoccupied him during so many years of his life? Does not the 'dying statement' to Rufer, in a strange way, conceal more than it reveals?