SOURCE: "Orgy in Covent Garden," in Saturday Book, Vol. 27, 1967, pp. 146-61.

In the following essay, Huggett recounts a performance of Moses and Aaron in Covent Garden.

On the first day's rehearsal I asked the stage manager if there was a chance of getting free tickets for any of the six scheduled performances of Moses and Aaron. He nodded with weary resignation: 'For this old thing?' he replied. 'Don't worry; they'll be giving them away in hundreds. Nobody will come. You'll see.'

His words summed up the general atmosphere of gloom and despondency. Schoenberg, undoubtedly the most non-popular composer of the day, was the darling of a small clique of intellectual musicians, but the general public didn't know his music or want to know. He had invented twelve-tone serial music, that strange and inaccessible world of sound, and Moses and Aaron was regarded as the supreme achievement...