The Berlin Philharmonic has been giving due honor to Arnold Schoenberg on the 150th anniversary of his birth, not only playing a fair number of his works but also remaking the lower lobby into a Schoenberg exhibition. It would have been wonderful to see something similar at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in a city where the composer lived longer than he did in Berlin. I always wonder, though, why German-speaking countries fail to honor Schoenberg's decision to change the spelling of his name when he reconverted to Judaism in Paris in 1933. The dropping of the umlaut was not merely a matter of convenience; it had a more personal dimension. In August 1933, in a postcard to Alban Berg, he calls himself "Schoenberg" while his wife, Gertrud, still writes "Schönberg."
