“If Mahler had provided the portal through which younger Jewish composers could walk, embracing their uniqueness as artists, it comes as no surprise to discover that much of this uniqueness stemmed from their ethical projections onto music – by no means a uniquely Jewish prerogative. Beethoven’s Fidelio and his setting of Schiller’s An die Freude in the Ninth Symphony are unambiguous in their ethical, humanist views. But, as the conductor Leon Botstein points out, Schoenberg was also attempting to move away from irrational nineteenth-century Romanticism and return to the values of the Enlightenment.”

– from Forbidden Music