Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) Was born of Jewish parents in Vienna. His father was a prosperous shopkeeper and his mother gave piano lessons. He gave early indications of his musical talent, writing his first compositions when he was seventeen. Although he took some lessons in counterpoint from the Polish-born conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, his future brother-in-law who was only two years his senior, he was virtually self-taught.

During eight years in Vienna, as a conductor, as well as a teacher, he became the friend of Mahler and attracted Berg and Webern into his circle of pupils. In 1911 Strauss provided him with the opportunity of returning to Berlin as teacher of composition at the Stern conservatory.

When the Nazis came to power he left Germany, he took refuge for a while in Spain, then in Paris, where his presence remained unnoticed. He had become a convert to Roman Catholicism, but in 1933 he reverted to his original faith as a mark of solidarity with the Jewish victims of Hitler's persecution. In 1934 he travelled to the United States where he was successively professor at the Malkin Conservatory of Boston and then director of the department of music as the University of California, Los Angeles (1936 - 44).