Arnold Schönberg
Prelude for Genesis op. 44
Record cover Artist JS 10

The composer, arranger and conductor Nathaniel Shilkret was awarding commissions to six American composers – including, in addition to Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Ernst Toch, Alexandre Tansman, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Darius Milhaud – to compose one part of a large-scale Genesis Suite for speaker, choir, and orchestra; the piece would appear on record immediately after the premiere. He sought with this “Bible Album” to reach out to the wider public: “My idea is strictly one for the masses – I wanted to appeal to all record buyers. […] not only music lovers of the ultra modern type but to all buyers and lovers of music and the bible.” Schönberg agreed to compose a short Prelude for choir and orchestra that would appear at the beginning of the Suite. Despite the concise and formally straightforward structure of the work, Nathaniel Shilkret expressed concerns about it to his wife: “Schoenberg’s music is so ultramodern and in the 12 tone scale that even you with all your experience will think that the cat is just jumping all over the piano – It is a great piece of music but oh – so new in sound.” He was similarly concerned about Igor Stravinsky’s composition Babel. In order not to frighten his public, Shilkret decided to place both works at the end of the pastiche, thereby somewhat arbitrarily transforming Schönberg’s Prelude into a Postlude.