Arnold Schönberg
Jacob’s Ladder
for choirs, soli and orchestra. Fragment
Sketch. 1917

Schönberg oratorio Jacob’s Ladder was originally planned as the final movement of a Symphony and eventually evolved into an independent work. The upper staves of a sketchbook page contain the beginning of the piece. A row of six tones unfurls as an ostinato in the low strings. Against this, the wind instruments successively introduce six corresponding tones to produce an aggregate of all twelve tones. Schönberg refers to the six-note sequence as one of the “most important themes“ of the work. He had originally planned to derive all the main subjects of the oratorio from the six tones of the ostinato by changing their sequence, rhythm, and register, but would only realize his intention rudimentarily. In the short score of the oratorio fragment, variations of the sequence are linked with the appearance of quite opposite dramatis personae. It is, thereby, not so much a distinctive event, the return of which can be heard; rather, it is a structural tool that brings unity to a plurality of independent melodic ideas.