Anton Webern[a] (German:[ˈantoːnˈveːbɐn]ⓘ; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer and conductor. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques in an increasingly rigorous manner, somewhat after the Franco-Flemish School of his studies under Guido Adler. With his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was at the core of those within the broader circle of the Second Viennese School. He was arguably the first and certainly the last of the three to write music in an aphoristic, expressionist style, reflecting his instincts and the idiosyncrasy of his compositional process.
Peripatetic and unhappy in his early conducting career, Webern came to some prominence and increasingly high regard as a vocal coach, choirmaster, conductor, and teacher[b] in Red Vienna. With a publication agreement through Emil Hertzka's Universal Edition and Schoenberg away at the Prussian Academy of Arts, Webern wrote music of increasing confidence, independence, and scale from the 1920s onward. He maintained his "path to the new music" while marginalized as a "cultural Bolshevist".
Posthumously Webern's later music was celebrated by a variety of mid-century musicians, especially composers, in a phenomenon known as post-Webernism.[c] Yet most understanding was fledgling after years of severe disruption when his work was dismissed or opposed, nor were his musical semantics or semiotics, performance practices, or sociocultural contexts widely studied. This situation was gradually improved by musicians and scholars who helped publish and record his complete works as well as establish his music as modernistrepertoire.
Biography
1883–1908: Upbringing between late Imperial Vienna and countryside
(left) Schloss Preglhof, Webern's childhood home, in Oberdorf
(middle) A brick barn in a field of wildflowers on the Preglhof estate[5]
(right) Family grave at the cemetery in Schwabegg, on a meander spur of the Drava
Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a descendent of minor nobility [de], high-ranking civil servant, mining engineer,[6] and owner of the Lamprechtsberg copper mine in the Koralpe; and Amalie (née Geer), a competent pianist and accomplished singer.[7] He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth, but his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by reading Rosegger[8][d] and by summers with his parents, sisters, and cousins at their country estate, the Preglhof.[9]
In 1904, he approached Hans Pfitzner for composition lessons but left angrily when Pfitzner criticized Mahler and Richard Strauss.[14] Adler admired Schoenberg's work and may have[h] sent Webern to him for composition lessons.[16] Thus Webern met Berg, another Schoenberg pupil, and Schoenberg's brother-in-law Alexander Zemlinsky, through whom Webern may have worked as an assistant coach at the Volksoper (1906–1908).[17] Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern became devoted, lifelong friends with similar musical trajectories.[18]
1908–1918: Early adulthood and war in Austria-Hungary
Webern, 1912
Webern conducted and coached singers and choirs in light music, musical theater, operetta, and opera in his early career. A summer 1908 engagement with Bad Ischl's Kurorchester [de] was "hell".[17] He walked out on engagements in Innsbruck (1909) and at Bad Teplitz's Civic Theater (1910).[19] He worked with Heinrich Jalowetz in Danzig (1910–1911) and Stettin (1912–1913), briefly following Schoenberg to Berlin (1911–1912) in-between.[20] He repeatedly quit and was taken back by Zemlinsky at the Deutsches Landestheater Prague (1911–1918).[21]
Webern had little time to compose and often felt mistreated. Miserably ill, he sought medical advice and took rest at the Kurhaus Semmering [de].[22] In 1912–1913 he had a breakdown and saw Alfred Adler, who noted his idealism and perfectionism. Adler evaluated his symptoms as psychogenic responses to unmet expectations. Webern wrote Schoenberg that Adler's psychoanalysis was helpful and insightful.[23]
He revisited the Preglhof (sold by his father in 1912 and mourned as a "lost paradise"), the family grave at the cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding Carinthian-Styrian Alps (he was an avid mountaineer) for the rest of his life.[24] He associated these places with the memory of his mother, whose 1906 loss profoundly affected him.[25] He wrote Schoenberg (Sept. 1912), "When I read letters from my mother, I could die of longing for the places where all these things have occurred".[26] His music enduringly reflected these memories: "my compositions ... relate to the death of my mother";[i] "through my work, all that is past becomes like a childhood".[j]
He served intermittently and patriotically in World War I, moving frequently and tiring. Eventually he hoped for its end. Despite Schoenberg's and his father's advice that he not quit conducting, in 1918 Webern returned to Schoenberg in Mödling, hoping to compose more.[28] His finances were so poor that he soon explored a return to Prague,[29] but other opportunities arose.
Webern worked as director of the Wiener Schubertbund and in 1922 of the mixed-voice amateur Singverein der Sozialdemokratischen Kunstelle[m] and the Arbeiter-Sinfonie-Konzerte[n] through David Josef Bach, Director of the Sozialdemokratische Kunststelle.[33][o] In 1926, Webern resigned as chorusmaster of the Mödling Männergesangverein[p] for hiring Jewish soprano Greta Wilheim as a stand-in soloist for Schubert's cantataMirjams Siegesgesang.[34]Österreichischer Rundfunk aired his performances at least twenty times starting in 1927. In 1933 he hired Erich Leinsdorf as Singverein pianist;[q] they performed Stravinsky's ballet-cantata Les Noces.[36][r]
Webern's music was performed more widely starting in the latter half of 1920s, yet he found no great success as Berg enjoyed with Wozzeck nor as Schoenberg did, to a lesser extent, with Pierrot lunaire or in time with Verklärte Nacht. His Symphony, Op. 21, was performed in New York by the League of Composers (1929) and in London at the 1931 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival. He twice received the Preis der Stadt Wien für Musik [de].[w]Ernst Krenek's impression was that Webern resented his financial hardships and lack of wider recognition. Perhaps on religious grounds, Krenek speculated, Webern may have been uneasily dependent on the Social Democrats for conducting work.[51][x] Some on the left, notably Oscar Pollak [de] in Der Kampf (1929), criticized Webern's programming as more ambitious and bourgeois than popular and proletarian.[53]
Though Berg celebrated the "lasting works" and successes of composers "whose point of departure was ... late Mahler, Reger, and Debussy and whose temporary end point is in ... Schoenberg" in their rise from "pitiful 'cliques'" to a large, diverse, international, and "irresistible movement" (1928),[54] they were marginalized and ostracized in Central Europe with few exceptions.[55][y] In Der Weg zur Neuen Musik,[z] an eight-lecture series Webern delivered at Rita Kurzmann-Leuchter [de]'s and her physician husband Rudolf Kurzman's home (Feb.–Apr. 1933),[aa][58] Webern attacked fascistcultural policy, asking "What will come of our struggle?" He observed that "'cultural Bolshevism' is the name given to everything that is going on around Schoenberg, Berg, and myself (Krenek too)"[ab] and warned, "Imagine what will be destroyed, wiped out, by this hate of culture!"[60]
1933–1938: Perseverance in Schwarzes Wien (Austrofascist Vienna)
Financial crises, complex social and political movements, pervasive antisemitism, culture wars, and renewed military conflicts[ac] continued to shape Webern's world, profoundly circumscribing his life.[61] In the Austrian Civil War, Austrofascists[ad] executed, exiled, and imprisoned Social Democrats, outlawed their party,[63] and abolished cultural institutions. Stigmatized by his decade-long association with Social Democrats, Webern lost a promising conducting career, which might have been better recorded.[64] He worked as a UE editor and IGNM-Sektion Österreich [de] board member and president (1933–1938, 1945).[65] He lectured more at the Kurzmann-Leuchter home, privately in 1934–1935 on Beethoven's piano sonatas to about 40 attendees and later in 1937–1938.[66]
His music and that of Berg, Krenek, Schoenberg, et al. was declared "Jewish" in Austria[ae] and "Entartete Kunst" by Nazis.[72] Persevering, Webern wrote Krenek that "art has its own laws ... if one wants to achieve something in it, only these laws and nothing else can have validity";[af] upon completing Op. 26 (1935), he wrote DJ Bach, "I hope it is so good that (if people ever get to know it) they will declare me ready for a concentration camp or an insane asylum!"[74] The Vienna Philharmonic nearly refused to play Berg's Violin Concerto (1936).[ag]Peter Stadlen's 1937 Op. 27 premières were the last Viennese Webern performances until after World War II.[76] The critical success of Hermann Scherchen's 1938 ISCM London Op. 26 première encouraged Webern to write more cantatas and reassured him after a cellist quit Op. 20 mid-performance, declaring it unplayable.[77]
Webern's milieu comprised vast differences.[78] Like most Austrians, he and his family were Catholic, though not church regulars; Webern was devout if unorthodox.[79] They became politically divided.[ah] His friends (e.g., then Zionist Schoenberg,[ai]left-leaning Berg[aj]) were of a mostly Jewish milieu in late Imperial and then "red" (Social Democratic) Vienna.[91]Alma Mahler, Krenek, Willi Reich [de], and Erwin Stein preferred or supported the "lesser evil"[ak] of Austrofascists (or aligned Italian fascists) vis-à-vis the more antisemitic Nazis.[93] Presuming power would moderate Hitler, Webern mediated among friends with an optimistic, perhaps self-soothing, complacency, exasperating those who were at risk.[94] He found himself surrounded mostly by one side as Schoenberg emigrated to the US (1933), Berg died (1935), and DJ Bach, among others, fled or worse.[95]
Webern's views of National Socialism were variously described.[al] His published items[am] reflected his audience or context.[97] Secondary literature reflected limited evidence or ideological orientations[an] and admitted uncertainty.[99] Julie Brown noted hesitancy to approach the topic and echoed the Moldenhauers, considering the issue "vexed" and Webern a "political enigma".[100] Bailey Puffett considered his politics "somewhat vague" and his situation "complex", noting that he practically avoided definitive political association.[101] Julian Johnson described him as "personally shy, a man of private feeling and essentially apolitical",[102] "prone to identify with Nazi politics as ... other ... Austrians".[103] Violinist Louis Krasner surmised Webern's cognitive dissonance,[ao] finding him "idealistic and rather naive".[ap] In 1943 Kurt List described Webern as "utterly ignorant" and "perpetual[ly] confus[ed]" about politics, "a ready prey to the personal influence of family and friends".[aq]
1938–1939: Inner emigration in Nazi Germany
Krasner's last Webern visit was interrupted by the Anschluss: Webern turned on the radio to hear the news, urging Krasner to flee.[109] Krasner wondered whether Webern knew the Anschluss was planned that day, as Webern's family included Nazis, and whether this was for his safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in Webern's home or indeed in most of Mödling.[110] Bailey Puffett suggested otherwise, noting Webern wrote his lyricist and collaborator Hildegard Jone [de] and her spouse, sculptor Josef Humplik that day, "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed."[111]
Kristallnacht shocked Webern. He visited and aided Jewish colleagues DJ Bach, Otto Jokl [de], Josef Polnauer, and Hugo Winter.[114] For Jokl, a former Berg pupil, Webern wrote a recommendation letter to facilitate emigration. When that failed, Webern served as his godfather in a 1939 baptism.[115] Polnauer, a fellow early Schoenberg pupil, historian, and librarian whose emigration Schoenberg and Webern were unable to secure,[116] managed to survive the Holocaust as an albino; he later edited a 1959 UE publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Humplik and Jone.[117] Webern moved Humplik's 1929 gift of a Mahler bust to his bedroom.[118]
Webern found himself increasingly alone,[119] with "almost all his friends and old pupils ... gone",[120] and his financial situation was poor. He had considered joining Schoenberg in the US since 1933[121] but was reluctant to leave home and family. He entered a period of "inward emigration",[122] writing to artist Franz Rederer in 1939, "We live completely withdrawn. I work a lot."[115] He corresponded extensively to maintain relationships, imploring his student George Robert to play Schoenberg in New York[123] and expressing his loneliness and isolation to Schoenberg.[124] Then war limited postal service.[125]
1939–1945: Hope and disillusionment during World War II
Webern's music was performed mostly outside the Reich, where only his tonal music and arrangements were allowed as works not in the style of a "Judenknecht".[ax] Supported by IGNM-Sektion Basel, the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur, and Werner Reinhart, he attended three Swiss concerts. Webern intimated to Willi Reich that he might emigrate, joking (Oct. 1939) "Anything of the sort did seem quite out of the question for me!" But he failed to obtain conducting opportunities. In 1940, Erich Schmid conducted Op. 1 in Winterthur; soprano Marguerite Gradmann-Lüscher sang Op. 4 and most of Op. 12 (not No. 3) at the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel, Schmid accompanying. In Feb. 1943, Scherchen gave the world premiere of Op. 30 at the Winterthur Stadthaus [de]. These were Webern's last trips outside the Reich, where he also hoped for opportunities.[127]
Webern met with former Society violistOthmar Steinbauer about a formal teaching role in Vienna in early 1940, but nothing materialized.[128] He lectured at the homes of Erwin Ratz and Carl Prohaska [de]'s widow Margaret (1940–1942).[129] Many private pupils came to him between 1940 and 1943, even from afar, among them briefly Karl Amadeus Hartmann.[130]
Sharing in wartime public sentiment at the height of Hitler's popularity (spring 1940), Webern expressed high hopes, crediting him as "unique" and "singular"[ay] for "the new state for which the seed was laid twenty years ago". These were patriotic letters to Joseph Hueber, an active soldier, baritone, close friend, and mountaineering companion who often sent Webern gifts.[131] Indeed, Hueber had just sent Webern Mein Kampf.[az] Unaware of Stefan George's aversion to the Nazis, Webern marveled suggestively at the wartime leader envisioned in rereading Das neue Reich [de], but "I am not taking a position!" he wrote active soldier, singer, and onetime Social Democrat, Hans Humpelstetter.[133] For Johnson, "Webern's own image of a neue Reich was never of this world; if his politics were ultimately complicitous it was largely because his utopian apoliticism played so easily into ... the status quo."[134]
By Aug. 1940, Webern depended financially on his children.[135] He sought wartime emergency relief funds from Künstlerhilfe Wien and the Reichsmusikkammer Künstlerdank [de] (1940–1944), which he received despite indicating non-membership in the Nazi Party on an application.[136] Whether Webern ever joined the party was unknown.[ba][139] This represented his only income after mid-1942. He nearly exhausted his savings by 1944.[140]
His 1943–1945 letters were strewn with references to bombings, death, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order, but several grandchildren were born.[141] In Dec. 1943, aged 60, he wrote from a barrack that he was working 6 am–5 pm as an air-raid protection police officer, conscripted into the war effort.[141] He corresponded with Reich about IGNM-Sektion Basel's concert marking his sixtieth, in which Paul Baumgartner played Op. 27, Walter Kägi Op. 7, and August Wenzinger Op. 11. Gradmann-Lüscher sang both Opp. 3 and 23 (world premiere).[142] His only son Peter, intermittently conscripted since 1940,[143] was killed in an air attack (14 Feb. 1945). Airstrikesirens interrupted the family's mourning.[144]
1945: Refuge and death in Mittersill
Grave of Webern and his wife Minna at the cemetery in Mittersill
The Weberns assisted Schoenberg's first son Görgi during the war; with the Red Army's April 1945 arrival imminent, they gave him their Mödling apartment, the property and childhood home of Webern's son-in-law Benno Mattl.[bb] Görgi later told Krasner that Webern "felt he'd betrayed his best friends." The Weberns fled west, resorting to traveling partly on foot to Mittersill to rejoin their family of "17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space".[141]
On the night of 15 Sept. 1945, Webern was outside smoking when he was shot and killed by a US soldier in an apparent accident.[146] Webern's wife Wilhelmine "Minna" Mörtl's last years were marred by grief, poverty, and loneliness as friends and family continued emigrating. She wished Webern lived to see more success. With the abolition of Entartete Kunst policies, Alfred Schlee [de] solicited her for hidden manuscripts; thus Opp. 17, 24–25, and 29–31 were published. She worked to get Webern's 1907 Piano Quintet published via Kurt List.
In 1947 she wrote Dietz, now in the US, that by 1945 Webern was "firmly resolved to go to England". Likewise, in 1946 she wrote DJ Bach in London: "How difficult the last eight years had been for him. ... [H]e had only the one wish: to flee from this country. But one was caught, without a will of one's own. ... It was close to the limit of endurance what we had to suffer."[147] Minna died in 1949.
Music
Tell me, can one at all denote thinking and feeling as things entirely separable? I cannot imagine a sublime intellect without the ardor of emotion.
Webern wrote to Schoenberg (June 1910).[148] Adorno described Webern as "propound[ing] musical expressionism in its strictest sense, ... to such a point that it reverts of its own weight to a new objectivity".[149]
His music was also characteristically linear and song-like.[166] Much of it (and Berg's[167] and Schoenberg's)[168] was for singing.[18][bj] Johnson described the song-like gestures of Op. 11/i.[171] In Webern's mid-period Lieder, some heard instrumentalizing of the voice[172] (often in relation to the clarinet)[173] representing yet some continuity with bel canto.[174][bk] Lukas Näf described one of Webern's signature hairpins (the Op. 21/i mm. 8–9 bass clarinettenuto note) as a messa di voce requiring some rubato to execute faithfully.[bl][177] Concision, adventurous textures and timbres, and melodies of wide leaps and sometimes extreme ranges and registers were typical.[178]
For Johnson, Webern's rubato compressed Mahler's "'surging and ebbing'" tempi; this and Webern's dynamics indicated a "vestigial lyrical subjectivity."[179] Webern often set carefully chosen lyric poetry.[180] He related his music not only to nostalgia for the lost family and home of his youth, but also to his Alpinism and fascination with botanicalaromatics and morphology.[181] He was compared to Mahler in his orchestration and semantic preoccupations (e.g., memory, landscapes, nature, loss, often Catholicmysticism).[182] In Jone, who he met with her husband Humplik via the Hagenbund, Webern found a lyricist who shared his esoteric, natural, and spiritual interests. She provided texts for his late vocal works.[183]
Webern's and Schoenberg's music distinctively prioritized minor seconds, major sevenths, and minor ninths[bm] as noted in 1934 by microtonalistAlois Hába.[184] The Kholopov siblings noted the semitone's unifying role by axial inversional symmetry and octave equivalence as interval class 1 (ic1), approaching Allen Forte's generalized pitch-class set analysis.[185] Webern's consistent use of ic1 in cells and sets, often expressed as a wide interval musically,[186] was well noted.[bn] Symmetric pitch-interval practices varied in rigor and use by others (e.g., Berg, Schoenberg, Bartók, Debussy, Stravinsky; more nascently Mahler, Brahms, Bruckner,[bo] Liszt, Wagner). Berg and Webern took symmetric approaches to elements of music beyond pitch. Webern later linked pitches and other parameters in schemes (e.g., fixed or "frozen" register).[190]
Relatively few of Webern's works were published in his lifetime. Amid fascism and Emil Hertzka's passing, this included late as well as early works and those without opus numbers. His rediscovery prompted many publications, but some early works were unknown until after the work of the Moldenhauers well into the 1980s,[191] obscuring formative facets of his musical identity.[192] Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record Webern's music, the results fit on three CDs and the second time, six.[193][bp] A Gesamtausgabe has remained in progress.
1899–1908: Formative juvenilia and emergence from study
Webern published little juvenilia; like Brahms, he was meticulous and self-conscious, revising extensively.[194] His earliest works were mostly Lieder on works of Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, and Theodor Storm.[195] He set seven Ferdinand Avenarius poems on the "changing moods" of life and especially nature (1899–1904).[196] Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf were important models. With its brief, potent expressivity and utopianization of the natural world, the (German) RomanticLied had a lasting influence on Webern's musical aesthetic.[197] He never abandoned its lyricism, intimacy, and wistful or nostalgic topics, though his music became more abstract, idealized, and introverted.[195]
Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poemIm Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. In Webern's Sommerwind, Derrick Puffett found affinities with Strauss's Alpensinfonie, Charpentier's Louise, and Delius's Paris.
At the Pregholf in summer 1905, Webern wrote his tripartite, single-movement string quartet in a highly modifiedsonata form, likely responding to Schoenberg's Op. 7.[198] He quoted Jakob Böhme in the preface[199] and mentioned the panels[bq] of Segantini's Trittico della natura[br] as "Werden–Sein–Vergehen" in sketches.[200][bs] Sebastian Wedler argued that it bore the influence of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, particularly in its germinal three-note motive, the opening fugato of its third (development) section, and perhaps in its Nietzschean reading (via Thus Spoke Zarathustra's eternal recurrence) of Segantini's triptych.[201] In its opening harmonies, Allen Forte and Heinz-Klaus Metzger noted Webern's anticipation of Schoenberg's atonality in Op. 10.[202]
Danzig's Friedrich-Wilhelm-Schützenhaus [de] in a 1906 postcard photograph
The Passacaglia, Op. 1 (1908) was Webern's graduation piece after study with Schoenberg. Its chromatic harmonic language and less conventional orchestration distinguished it from prior works; its form foreshadowed those of his later works.[203] Conducting the 1911 Danzig premiere of Op. 1 at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Schützenhaus [de], he paired it with Debussy's 1894 Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Ludwig Thuille's 1896 Romantische Ouvertüre, and Mahler's 1901–1904 Kindertotenlieder in a poorly attended Moderner Abend[bt] concert. The Danziger Zeitung [de]critic derided Op. 1 as an "insane experiment".[204]
In 1908 Webern also began an opera on Maeterlinck's Alladine et Palomides [fr], of which only unfinished sketches remained.[205][bu] As an opera conductor, he knew "perfectly ... every cut, ... unmarkedcadenza, ... theatrical joke". When in high spirits, he would sing bits of Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann, a personal favorite. He "adored" Mozart's Il Seraglio and revered Strauss, predicting Salome would last. He later expressed interest in writing an opera to Max Deutsch, "if I ... find a good text". In 1930, he asked Jone for "opera texts, or rather dramatic texts", planning cantatas instead.[207]
1908–1914: Atonality and aphorism
Fünf Sätze for string quartet, Op. 5, I. Heftig bewegt (Schloss Preglhof, spring 1909) – Emerson String Quartet
Spending summer 1909 with Webern (et al.) and seeing his Op. 5 manuscript reinvigorated Schoenberg's music, inspiring him to write Busoni: "... away with 'motivic working out.' Away with harmony as cement or bricks of a building. Harmony is expression and nothing else. ... Away with Pathos [and] protracted ten-ton scores .... My music must be brief. Concise! In two notes: not built, but expressed!! ... no stylized and sterile protracted emotion. People are not like that" (Schoenberg's emphases).[208]
Webern's music, like Schoenberg's, was freely atonal after Op. 2. Some of their and Berg's music from this time was published in Der Blaue Reiter.[209]
Schoenberg and Webern were so mutually influential, the former later joked, "I haven't the slightest idea who I am".[210] In Op. 5/iii, Webern borrowed from Schoenberg's Op. 10/ii. In Op. 5/iv, he borrowed from Schoenberg's Op. 10/iv setting of "Ich fühle luft von anderen planeten".[211][bv]
But Webern was no epigone.[212] The first of his innovative and increasingly extremely aphoristic Opp. 5–11 (1909–1914) radically influenced Schoenberg's Opp. 11/iii[bw] and 16–17 (and Berg's Opp. 4–5).[214] "[H]aving freed music from the shackles of tonality," Schoenberg wrote, he and his pupils believed "music could renounce motivic features".[215] This "intuitive aesthetic" arguably proved to be aspirational insofar as motives persisted in their music.[216]
Webern's music took on the character of such static dramaticovisual scenes, with pieces frequently culminating in the accumulation and amalgamation (often the developing variation) of compositional material. Fragmented melodies frequently began and ended on weak beats, settled into or emerged from ostinati, and were dynamically and texturally faded, mixed, or contrasted.[218] Tonality became less directional, functional, or narrative than tenuous, spatial, or symbolic as fit Webern's topics and literary settings. Oliver Korte traced Webern's Klangfelder[bx] to Mahler's "suspensions".[by]
Expanding on Mahler's orchestration, Webern linked colorful, novel, fragile, and intimate sounds, often nearly silent at ppp, to lyrical topics: solo violin to female voice; closed or open voicings, sometimes sul ponticello, to dark or light; compressed range to absence, emptiness, or loneliness and registral expansion to fulfillment, (spiritual) presence, or transcendence;[bz] celesta, harp, and glockenspiel to the celestial or ethereal; and trumpet, harp, and string harmonics to angels or heaven.[219][ca]
With elements of Kabarett,[cb] neoclassicism,[cc] and ironic Romanticism[cd] in Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (1912), Schoenberg began[ce] to distance himself from Webern's and latterly Berg's aphoristic expressionism, which provoked the 1913 Skandalkonzert.
1914–1924: Mid-period Lieder
"Fahr hin, o Seel', zu deinem Gott" (Klagenfurt, 20 July 1917) – soprano Halina Lukomska and conductor Pierre Boulez
Webern, influenced by Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, was characteristically earnest, not ironic,[220] often setting sacred and folk-like texts. He subtitled Op. 15/v as a "Double canon in motu contrario". In Opp. 12–16 more generally, Kolneder noted "a tendency towards "polyphon[y] ... to control ... expression".[221]
During and after World War I (1914–1926) Webern worked on some fifty-six songs, following Schoenberg's advice to set texts as a means of composing something more substantial than aphorisms. He finished thirty-two, ordered into sets as Opp. 12–19.[222]
Walter Kolneder noted "regression" to relatively "long arcs of melody" in Op. 12 by comparison to "'atomization' of the melodic line" in Op. 11. Adorno wrote that in Op. 12 "Webern's music secretly expands: he is mastering the solution which Schoenberg first displayed in Pierrot ... and ... Op. 22: that one cannot persist with the method of absolute purity".[223] The contrapuntal procedures and nonstandard ensemble of Pierrot influenced Webern's Opp. 14–16:[224] "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he told Schoenberg after setting Trakl's "Abendland III" (Op. 14/iv),[225] in which, distinctly, there was no silence until a pause at the concluding gesture. Webern mingled his usual topics with recurrent wartime themes of wandering in search of home or solace.
Schoenberg "yearn[ed] for a style for large forms ... to give personal things an objective, general form."[cf] Since 1906 Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern indulged shared interest in Swedenborgian mysticism and Theosophy, reading Balzac's Louis Lambert and Séraphîta and Strindberg's Till Damaskus and Jacob lutte. Gabriel, protagonist of Schoenberg's semi-autobiographical Die Jakobsleiter (1914–1922, rev. 1944)[cg] described a journey: "whether right, whether left, forwards or backwards, uphill or down – one must keep on going without asking what lies ahead or behind",[ch] which Webern interpreted as a pitch-space metaphor. Schoenberg later reflected on "how enthusiastic [Webern and I] were about this."[ci] On the journey to composition with twelve tones, Webern revised many of his mid-period Lieder in the years after their apparent composition but before publication, increasingly prioritizing clarity of pitch relations, even against timbral effects, as Anne Shreffler[231] and Felix Meyer described.
After Op. 16, Webern used twelve-tone technique for the first time, though he[cj] and Schoenberg had long experimented with the idea. Twelve-tone sets appear at the start of Op. 12/i (with repeated notes) and in some bars of Op. 12/iv, with many further examples of ten- and eleven-tone sets.[233]
1924–1945: Formal coherence and expansion
"Sehr langsam"
A sample from Webern's String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, "Sehr langsam", Webern's first use of twelve-tone technique on a large scale.
The symmetry of Webern's tone row from Variations, Op. 30, was apparent from the equivalent, P1=IR1 and R12=I12, and thus reduced number of row forms, two, P and R, plus transpositions. Consisting of three related tetrachords: a and c consisting of two minor seconds and one minor third and b consisting of two minor thirds and one minor second. Notes 4–7 and 6–9 also consist of two minor seconds and one minor third. "The entire series thus consists of two intervals and has the greatest possible unity of series form, interval, motif, and chords.[39]
Webern's 1926–1927 String Trio, Op. 20, was his first large-scale non-vocal work since the 1914 Cello Sonata. He produced many sketches and drafts toward this goal, including an abandoned 1917 string quartet; other efforts toward a string trio; a seventeen-measure 1920 movement scored for clarinet, trumpet, and violin; and piano works including Kinderstück (1924, intended as one of a set) and Klavierstück (1925).[234]
Like Brahms's and Schoenberg's, Webern's music was marked by contrapuntal rigor, formal schemes, and systematic pitch organization long before twelve-tone technique.[235] His tone rows comprised pitch groups symmetrically related by inversion, retrograde, or both (retrograde inversion), yielding invariance. He varied this structural and motivic unity superficially as before (e.g., fragmentation, Klangfarbenmelodie, and octave displacement).[236]
Webern made further strides in his cantatas as he ecstatically wrote the Humpliks,[237] synthesizing the rigorous style of his mature instrumental works with the word painting of his Lieder on a orchestral scale.[238] His textures were somewhat denser yet more homophonic at the surface through nonetheless contrapuntal polyphonic means.[237] In Op. 31/i he alternated lines and points, culminating twice[ck] in twelve-note simultaneities.[239] For Rochberg "the principles of 'the structural spatial dimension' ... "join[ed] forces with lyrico-dramatic demands" in Webern's late cantatas and songs (Opp. 23, 25–26, 29, and 31).[240]
At his death he left sketches for the movement of an apparent third cantata (1944–1945), first planned as a concerto, setting "Das Sonnenlicht spricht" from Jone's Lumen cycle.[241]
Arrangements and orchestrations
In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated five or more Schubert Lieder[cl] for an appropriately Schubertian orchestra (strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns). In 1934, he did the same for two of Schubert's 1824 Six German Dances.
In 1924 Webern arranged Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848)[244] for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; thus Liszt's work was finally premièred[cm] when Webern conducted the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir (13 and 14 March 1925). A review in the Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy").[246] The text (in English translation) read in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/All who create things great or small."
Reception, influence, and legacy
Webern's music was generally considered difficult by performers and inaccessible by listeners alike.[247] "To the limited extent that it was regarded", Milton Babbitt observed, it represented "the ultimate in hermetic, specialized, and idiosyncratic composition".[248]
Composers and performers first tended to take Webern's work, with its residual post-Romanticism and initial expressionism, in mostly formalist directions with a certain literalism, departing from Webern's own practices and preferences in extrapolating from elements of his late style. This became known as post-Webernism.[249] A richer, more historically informed understanding of Webern's music and its performance practice began to emerge in the latter half of the 20th century. Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer sought and archived sketches, letters, lectures, recordings, and other articles of Webern's (and others') estates.[cn]
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Webern's marginalization under Gleichschaltung was appreciated, but his pan-Germanism and assistance to Jewish friends were not as known or often mooted.[250] For many, like Stravinsky, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, but for others the matter was less simple.[co]
Performance practice
Eric Simon ... related ... : 'Webern was obviously upset by Klemperer's sober time-beating. ... [T]o the concert master [he] said: "... the phrase there ... must be played Tiiiiiiiiiii-aaaaaaaaa." Klemperer, overhearing ... said sarcastically: "... [N]ow you probably know exactly how you have to play the passage!"' Peter Stadlen ... [described Webern]'s reaction after the performance: ... '"A high note, a low note, a note in the middle—like the music of a madman!"'
The Moldenhauers detailed Webern's reaction to Otto Klemperer's 1936 Vienna performance of his Symphony (1928), Op. 21, which Webern played on piano for Klemperer "with ... intensity and fanaticism ... passionately".[251]
Webern notated articulations, dynamics, tempo rubato, and other musical expressions, coaching performers to adhere to these instructions but urging them to maximize expressivity through musical phrasing.[251][cp] This was supported by personal accounts, correspondence, and extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under Webern's direction. Ian Pace considered Peter Stadlen's account of Webern's coaching for Op. 27 as indicating Webern's "desire for an extremely flexible, highly diaphanous, and almost expressively overloaded approach".[253][cq]
Felix Galimir of the Galimir Quartet told The New York Times (1981): "Berg asked for enormous correctness in the performance of his music. But the moment this was achieved, he asked for a very Romanticized treatment. Webern, you know, was also terribly Romantic—as a person, and when he conducted. Everything was almost over-sentimentalized. It was entirely different from what we have been led to believe today. His music should be played very freely, very emotionally."[258]
Contemporaries
Schoenberg admired Webern's concision. Berg joked about his brevity. Hendrik Andriessen found Webern's music "pitiful" in this regard.[259] In their second (1925) Abbruch[cr] self-parody, Anbruch [de][cs] editors jested that "Webern's" (Mahler's) "extensive" Symphony of a Thousand had to be abbreviated.
For Felix Khuner, Webern was "just as revolutionary" as Schoenberg.[260] In 1927, Hans Mersmann wrote that "Webern's music shows the frontiers and ... limits of a development which tried to outgrow Schoenberg's work."[261]
Identifying with Webern as a "solitary soul" amid 1940s wartime fascism,[262]Luigi Dallapiccola independently and somewhat singularly[ct] found inspiration especially in Webern's lesser-known mid-period Lieder, blending its ethereal qualities and Viennese expressionism with bel canto.[263] Stunned by Webern's Op. 24 at its 1935 ISCM festival world première under Jalowetz in Prague, Dallapiccola's impression was of unsurpassable "aesthetic and stylistic unity".[264] He dedicated Sex carmina alcaei[cu] "with humility and devotion" to Webern, who he met in 1942 through Schlee, coming away surprised at Webern's emphasis on "our great Central European tradition."[265] Dallapiccola's 1953 Goethe-lieder especially recall Webern's Op. 16 in style.[266]
In 1947, Schoenberg remembered and stood firm with Berg and Webern despite rumors of the latter's having "fallen into the Nazi trap":[cv] "... [F]orget all that might have ... divided us. For there remains for our future what could only have begun to be realized posthumously: One will have to consider us three—Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern—as a unity, a oneness, because we believed in ideals ... with intensity and selfless devotion; nor would we ever have been deterred from them, even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us."[cw] For Krasner this put "'Vienna's Three Modern Classicists' into historical perspective". He summarized it as "what bound us together was our idealism."[267]
1947–1950s: (Re)discovery and post-Webernism
Webern's death should be a day of mourning for any receptive musician. We must hail ... this great ... a real hero. Doomed to ... failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference he ... kept on cutting ... dazzling diamonds, the mines of which he had ... perfect knowledge.
After World War II, there was unprecedented engagement with Webern's music. It came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, especially at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.[272]René Leibowitz performed, promulgated, and published Schoenberg et son école;[273] Adorno,[274]Herbert Eimert, Scherchen,[275] and others contributed. Composers and students[cy] listened in a quasi-religious trance to Peter Stadlen's 1948 Op. 27 performance.[276]
In the US, Babbitt[279] and initially George Rochberg[280] found more in Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice. Elliott Carter's and Aaron Copland's critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm and fascination nonetheless.[281] Robert Craft fruitfully reintroduced Stravinsky to Webern's music, without which Stravinsky's late works would have taken different shape. Stravinsky staked his contract with Columbia Records to see Webern's then known music first both recorded and widely distributed.[282] Stravinsky lauded Webern's "not yet canonized art" in 1959.[283]
Gottfried Michael Koenig suggested some early interest in Webern's music may have been that its concision and apparent simplicity facilitated didactic musical analysis. Robert Beyer [de] criticized serial approaches to Webern's music as reductive, narrowly focused more on Webern's procedures than his music while neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28.[285] Webern's music sounded like "a Mondrian canvas", "crude and unfinished", to Karel Goeyvaerts.[286]Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski criticized some Darmstadt music as "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing" (Darmstädter Tagblatt [de], 1959); a Der Kurier article of his was headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at".[287]
1950s onward: Beyond (late) Webern
[H]ermetic constructivism seems infused with intense emotion, ... diffused across the ... surface of the music. Gone is the mono-directional thrust of Classical and Romantic music; in its place a world of rotations and reflections, opening myriad paths for the listener to trace through textures of luminous clarity yet beguiling ambiguity.
George Benjamin described Webern's Op. 21.[288] Many[da] noted floating, spatial, static, or suspended qualities in some of Webern's music. Johnson noted spatial metaphors.[291]
Through late 1950s onward, Webern's work reached musicians as far removed as Joel Thome and Frank Zappa,[292] yet many post-war European musicians and scholars had already begun to look beyond[293] as much as back at Webern in his context. Nono advocated for a more cultural and historical understanding of Webern's music.[294]
Adorno lectured that in the prevailing climate "artists like Berg or Webern would hardly be able to make it" ("The Aging of the New Music", 1954). Against the "static idea of music" and "totalrationalization" of the "pointillist constructivists," he advocated for more subjectivity, citing Über das Geistige in der Kunst (1911), in which Wassily Kandinsky wrote: "Schoenberg's [expressionist] music leads us to where musical experience is a matter not of the ear, but of the soul—and from this point begins the music of the future."
In the 1960s, many began to describe Webern and his like as a "dead end".[295][db] Rochberg felt "Webern's music leaves his followers no new, unexplored territory."[298] Stravinsky judged Webern "too original ... too purely himself. ... [T]he entire world had to imitate him [and] fail; of course it will blame Webern"; he blamed post-Webernism: "[T]he music now being charged to his name can neither diminish his strength nor stale his perfection."[299]
In Votre Faust (1960–1968), Pousseur quoted and his protagonist Henri analyzed Webern's Op. 31. Yet there were already several elements of late or postmodernism (e.g., eclecticism of historical styles, mobile form, polyvalent roles).[300] This coincided with a wider rapprochement with Berg,[301] whose example Pousseur cited,[302] from whose music he also quoted, and whose writings he translated into French in the 1950s.[303] Boulez was "thrilled" by Berg's "universe ... never completed, always in expansion—a world so ... inexhaustible," referring to the rigorously organized, only partly twelve-tone Chamber Concerto.[dc]
Engaging with Webern's atonal works by some contrast to earlier post-Webernism, both Ferneyhough and Lachenmann expanded upon and went further than Webern in attention to the smallest of details and the use of ever more radically extended techniques. Ferneyhough's 1967 Sonatas for string quartet included atonal sections much in the style of Webern's Op. 9, yet more intensely sustained. In a comparison to his own 1969 Air, Lachenmann wrote of "a melody made of a single note [...] in the viola part" of Webern's Op. 10/iv (mm. 2–4) amid "the mere ruins of the traditional linguistic context," observing that "the pure tone, now living in tonal exile, has in this new context no aesthetic advantage over pure noise" ("Hearing [Hören] is Defenseless—without Listening [Hören]", 1985).
Webern's influence predominated after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, bearing on Pál Kadosa, Endre Szervánszky, and György Kurtág.[309] Among Czechs, Pavel Blatný attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and wrote music with serial techniques in the late 1960s. He returned to tonality in Brno and was rewarded.[310]Marek Kopelent discovered the Second Viennese as an editor and was particularly taken by Webern.[311] Kopelent was blacklisted for his music and despaired, unable to attend international performances of his work.[312]
Philip Herschkowitz, poverty-stricken, taught privately in Moscow with cautious emphasis on Beethoven and the tradition from which Webern emerged.[316] His pupil Nikolai Karetnikov taped Glenn Gould's 1957 Moscow Conservatory performance of Webern's Op. 27.[317] In practice like that of Webern, Karetnikov derived the tone row of his Symphony No. 4 from motives as small as two notes related by semitone.[153]
In Soviet Music, Marcel Rubin criticized "Webern and His Followers" (1959), by contrast to Berg and Schoenberg, for going too far.[318]Alfred Schnittke complained in an open letter (1961) of composers' restricted education.[319] Through Grigory Shneyerson's anti-formalist On Music Living and Dead (1960) and Johannes Paul Thilman's anti-modernist "On the Dodecaphonic Method of Composition" (1958), many (e.g., Eduard Artemyev, Victor Ekimovsky, Vladimir Martynov, Boris Tischenko[de]) ironically learned more about what had been and even was still forbidden.[321]
Through Andrei Volkonsky, Lydia Davydova recalled, Schoenberg's and Webern's music came to Russia alongside Renaissance and early Baroque music.[322] Tischenko remembered that in the 1960s, Volkonsky "was the first swallow of the avant-garde. [T]hose who came after him ... already followed in his tracks. I consider [him] the discoverer."[322]Edison Denisov described the 1960s as his "second conservatory", crediting Volkonsky not only for introducing Webern, but also Gesualdo.[323]
Webern's legacy, bitterly contested in the "serial wars",[dh] remained subject to polemic vicissitudes. Amid the "Restoration of the 1980s", as Martin Kaltenecker termed a paradigm shift from structure to perception within musicological discourse,[di] musicologists quarreled.[331][dj]Charles Rosen scorned "historical criticism ... avoiding any serious engagement with a work or style ... one happens not to like".[332] Andreas Holzer warned of "post-factual tendencies".[333][dk] Pamela M. Potter advised considering "the complexity of ... day-to-day existence" under Nazism, partly in considering the relevance of composers' politics to their canonic status.[335] Meanwhile Allen Forte and Bailey Puffett formally analyzed Webern's atonal and twelve-tone œuvres respectively.
On Webern's 1983 birth centenary, Tim Page noted less formalist readings of his work.[356] The occasion "went almost unmarked", Glenn Watkins observed, "a fate hardly imaginable for Berg [on his] 1985 [centenary]". After Webern's mid-century "meteoric ascension and ultimate canonization",[357] Watkins described "quick shifts of interest" tapering to neglect.[358] Webern's music was established but infrequent in standard (repeating) orchestral repertoire.[359][dq] His œuvre was played at the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music (1983),[363]Juilliard (1995), and the Vienna Festival (2004), echoing six international festivals in his name (1962–1978).[dr] In some obscurity (1941 or 1942), Webern had been quietly sure that "in the future even the postman will whistle my melodies!"[365] But many did not acquire such a taste.[366][ds] He remained polarizing and provocative.[369]
Noting this aspect of his reception, Johnson described Webern's "almost unique position in the canon of Western composers".[370] Michael Walter [de] argued Webern's innovations impeded his "exoteric canonization". By contrast to the "concert canon", Anne C. Shreffler considered Webern's better standing in a "separate canon" of technical and formal innovation.[dt] Burkholder argued that music of the "historicist tradition", including Webern's, was secure in "a musical museum", "for that is what the concert hall has become".[375][du] Mark Berry described Webern, already among Boulez's "big five", as one of five "canonical pillars of classic historical early twentieth-century modernism".[dv] David H. Miller suggested Webern "achieved a certain kind of acceptance and canonization".[381]
Pascal Decroupet observed an unquestioned "canon of polarizations" in prior histories.[382][dw] Johnson noted the "co-existence and interaction of diverse stylistic practices" with "remarkable similarities", challenging "conservative and progressive" campism[385] and decentering musicology's technical periodizations[386] via the longue durée of globalmodernity.[387][dx] Thus he ventured continuity[389] between the "broken homeland" of Webern's Opp. 12–18 and the "broken pastoral" of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony;[390][dy] between Webern's "evanescent images of musical fullness"[391] and the brief, fragmentary nature of Chopin's Op. 28, which Schumann likened to "ruins".[393] Building on Shreffler's and Felix Meyer's sketch studies as institutions acquired and made the Moldenhauers' estate accessible,[dz] Johnson worked toward a hermeneutics of Webern's (and Mahler's) music.
^Webern may have seen newspaper ads for Schoenberg's Schwarzwald School courses in 1904. Karl Weigl, another Adler student, impressed Webern with the score of Schoenberg's Op. 5 in 1902. In 1903–1904, Webern attended performances of Schoenberg's Lieder and Op. 4.[15]
^Webern specified which ones to Berg in July 1912: "Passacaglia, [String] Quartet, most [early] songs, ... second Quartet [Op. 5], ... first orchestral pieces [Op. 6], ... second [orchestral pieces, Op. 10] (with some exceptions)". Johnson argued this held for most of Webern's œuvre as part of "larger and more complex bundle of ideas whose genealogy and weight are cultural ...".[27]
^So wrote Webern to Hildegard Jone [de], who read his music as "filled ... with the endless love and delicacy of the memory of ... childhood".[27]
^Leinsdorf considered the experience of "utmost value to my musical and critical development".[35]
^Its popevki-like 3-7A cell and its 4–10 variant[37] were not altogether unlike the rhythmized trichords of Webern's later Op. 24[38] or the tetrachords of Op. 30[39] (which Stravinsky later admired),[40] apart from Stravinsky's tendency to anhemitony[41] in marked contrast to Webern's hemitonicism.[42]
^"Die Kundgebung des geistigen Wien," April 20, 1927; it read in part, with emphasis in original: "The essence of Spirit [Geist] is above all Freedom, which is now endangered and we feel obligated to protect it. The struggle for a higher humanity and the battle against indolence [Trägheit] and sclerosis [Verödung] will always find us ready. Today, it also finds us prepared for battle."[44]
^The first 1924 prize, juried by Julius Bittner, Joseph Marx, and Richard Strauss, was shared by several, including Berg, Carl Prohaska [de], Franz Schmidt, Max Springer, and Karl Weigl; the note was signed by Karl Seitz, who asked Webern at a concert two weeks prior, "Are you a professional musician?"[48] Berg and Webern later served as jurists.[49] Only Webern received the prize in 1931.[50]
^Before his suicide in 1942, Stefan Zweig wrote, "the short decade between 1924 and 1933, from the end of German inflation to Hitler's seizure of power, represents—in spite of all—an intermission in the catastrophic sequence of events whose witnesses and victims our generation has been since 1914."[56]
^The transcript went unpublished until 1960 to avoid "expos[ing] Webern to serious consequences".[57]
^From 1928 onward, Webern grew closer to Ernst Krenek, alongside whom he lectured, whose music (taking a twelve-tone turn) he conducted, and with whom he, Berg, and Adorno shared concerns about the future.[59]
^An Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk named Berg and Webern as Jewish composers in 1933.[67] Berg wrote Adorno of prior instances,[68] and the Reichskulturkammer referred to Berg as an "émigré musical Jew" in Die Musik following Erich Kleiber's 1935 Berlin première of Berg's Lulu Suite.[69] Conversely, when Berg wrote in 1933 seeking an academic position for Adorno to emigrate to England, Edward Dent declined on the basis of protectionism and underfunding,[70] dubbing Berg "Hitlerian": "You [note in Berg's hand: '(The Jews?)'] are indeed Hitlerians, as you consider Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia and perhaps even England as belonging to 'Germany'!!!"[71]
^He was responding to Krenek's essay "Freiheit und Verantwortung" ("Freedom and Responsibility") in Willi Reich [de]'s 23—eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift (1934). Elsewhere Krenek advocated for "a Catholic Austrian avante garde", opposing "the Austrian provincialism that National Socialism wants to force on us."[73]
^Only guest conductor Otto Klemperer's status sufficed to overcome their refusal, and even then, the entire orchestra abruptly walked off stage afterward, leaving Krasner, Klemperer, and Arnold Rosé to stand alone. Rosé, retired, had returned to pay his respects to the late Berg as honorary concertmaster.[75]
^Webern's only son Peter was an avid Austrian National Socialist. His eldest daughter Amalie married businessman Gunter Waller, who joined the Nazi Party as a business formality. His youngest daughter Christine married Kreisleiter and Schutzstaffel member Benno Mattl, "little liked by the family", in Jun. 1938.[80] His middle daughter Maria Halbich almost emigrated with a man "of Jewish origin". She and Webern's wife Wilhelmine "Minna" Mörtl were wary of Hitler and the Nazis. Webern avoided politics at home.[81]
^Webern told Krasner, "Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!"[78] For Bailey Puffett, this likely referred to Schoenberg's politics,[82] which were vaguely conservative and German nationalist, then Zionist.
^Adorno wrote that "Berg was little concerned with politics, although he saw himself implicitly a socialist."[83] Following the 1918 Jännerstreik and 1919 Spartacist uprising, Berg wrote to Erwin Schulhoff, who was sympathetic, "What names does the Entente have (outside of Russia) that ring of idealism as [Rosa] Luxemburg and [Karl] Liebknecht do?"[84] In weary opposition to World War I, Berg had been adapting Junges Deutschland playwright Georg Büchner's proto-Naturalist Woyzeck, with its Vormärz theme of alienation,[85] in his opera Wozzeck. Büchner's revolutionary 1834 call in The Hessian Courier for "Peace to the huts! War on the palaces!" (Friede den Hütten! Krieg den Palästen!)[84] had endured, paraphrased by August Bebel (1871 Paris Commune)[86] and Vladimir Lenin (1916, "Peace Without Annexations and the Independence of Poland as Slogans of the Day in Russia"; 1917, "Appeal to the Soldiers of All the Belligerent Countries") amid the revolutions of 1917–1923 ending World War I, the February Revolution first among them. Premièred by Erich Kleiber at the Berlin State Opera (1925), Wozzeck was then taken to Prague by Otakar Ostrčil at the National Theatre (1926), provoking a "scandal," as Berg wrote Adorno, staged by "Czech Nationalists (virtually Nazis)" and "clerical lobbies [that] was purely political! (To them I am the Berlin Jew Alban (Aaron?) Berg. Ostrčil bribed by the Russian Bolsheviks, the whole thing arranged by the 'Elders of Zion' etc)."[87] In Rudé právo, Zdeněk Nejedlý praised Berg's music, ridiculing the idea that Wozzeck was staged as a Bolshevik conspiracy, which Antonín Šilhan insinuated in Národní listy. Emanuel Žák, writing for Čech, ascribed its "degenerate" nature to Jewish influence.[88] The Bohemian State Committee forbade further performances.[87] In its third première (1927), Nikolai Roslavets' Association for Contemporary Music staged Wozzeck at the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad with Berg and Shostakovich attending.[89] Berg wired his wife Helene [de] "huge, tumultuous success," though critical reception was mixed.[90] Amid Stalinism and deteriorating Germany–Soviet Union relations, Wozzeck was not restaged in Russia for 82 years.
^This was Erwin Stein's phrase about "what we have [in Vienna]" in a 1934 letter to Schoenberg.[92]
^Composers' correspondence was conducted with some regard to the possibility of later publication, especially after the nineteenth century. Accounts were often self-admittedly perspectival.
^Tito M. Tonietti similarly observed of Schoenberg's reception history: "The many aspects of his complex life and artistic personality have ... been drastically simplified and isolated from their context. There has been a tendency to prefer only one, the most in line with the thesis that the writer wished to demonstrate. ... Schönberg has unfortunately not been understood ... [but] used ... for ... controversy ..., for ... purpose ... ."[98]
^Webern insisted they stop at a Munich train station café in 1936 to show Krasner that antisemitism posed no real danger.[46] Krasner reflected in 1987 that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty" but that he had been "foolhardy" as to the full potential of antisemitism: revisiting Vienna in 1941 to help friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude, her husband Felix Greissle) emigrate, only his US passport saved him from locals and police.[105] Likewise, Franz Neumann reassessed the Nazis' antisemitism as late as 1944, revising his 1942 Behemoth accordingly.[106]
^List ventured that "[n]ationalist ideas may have saved [Webern] from the concentration camp".[107] Dissent was punishable under the Heimtückegesetz.[108]
^Deteriorating German-Austrian relations and Austrian weakening were marked by the July Putsch, terror, economic warfare (e.g., the thousand-mark ban), and infrastructure destruction.
^Webern's immediate reply (March 1940) was: "I ... with reference ... to my ... experiences ... wondered how such opposites could have become possible next to each other."[132]
^In the tradition of parties seeking a dues-paying mass membership, formal NSDAP affiliation could oblige one to pay registration fees or dues, or even to labor.[137] Nazis dissuaded some prospective members from formal affiliation as a strategic matter.[138]
^Schoenberg was unable to secure Görgi's emigration despite many attempts. Between the Russian–German language barrier and Nazi munitions and propaganda in the apartment's storeroom, Görgi was held and nearly executed as a Nazi spy but was able to convince a German-speaking Jewish officer otherwise. Görgi and his family remained there until 1969.[145]
^Webern repeatedly emphasized Zusammenhang, translated as unity, coherence, or connection. Sibelius was also noted for his organicism and natural topics. British concert programs posed him as an alternative to the Second Viennese School.[150] Adorno and Leibowitz criticized him.[151]
^Taruskin noted Webern's "descent from Mahler".[153] Keith Fitch glossed Webern as "crystallized Mahler". The opening of Webern's Op. 21 echoed that of Mahler's Ninth.[154]
^Webern compared Op. 27/ii to the Badinerie from Bach's BWV 1067.
^Webern's Op. 1 was openly modeled on that of Brahms's Fourth.[156] Webern's Op. 27/i was perhaps modeled on Brahms's Op. 116/v.[157]
^Webern often referred to the Franco-Flemish School as "the Netherlanders." In Feb. 1905 Webern recorded in his diary, "Mahler pointed out ... Rameau ... Bach, Brahms, and Wagner as ... contrapuntalists ... . '... Just as in nature the entire universe has developed from the primeval cell ... beyond to God ... so also in music should a large structure develop [entirely] from a single motive ... .' Variation is ... most important ... . A theme [must] be ... beautiful ... to make its unaltered return ... . ... [M]usicians [should] combine ... contrapuntal skill ... with ... melodiousness".[159] In Jan. 1931, Schoenberg responded to Webern's plan for lectures: "... show the logical development towards twelve-tone composition. ... [T]he Netherlands School, Bach for counterpoint, Mozart for phrase formation [and] motivic treatment, Beethoven [and] Bach for development, Brahms, and ... Mahler for varied and highly complex treatment. ... [T]itle ... : 'The path to twelve-tone composition.'"[160]J. Peter Burkholder generalized his claim that "the use of existing music as a basis for new music is pervasive in all periods";[161] he had focused on "the historicist mainstream" within the proximal eighteenth and especially nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[162]Adriaan Peperzak, writing about the taste of "most intellectuals" at the end of the 20th century as "a plurality of cultural homes" (or about "the 'modern museum of cultures'"),[163] stressed a general connection between new and old represented also in music (i.e., both "after" and beforetonality or common practice), observing that "whereas certain works of Bartók and Stravinsky already are experienced as difficult," "Josquin des Prez, Gesualdo, Webern and Boulez seem to be reserved to a small elite, and we continue to refer to traditional art in learning how to compose new works and how to listen to the extraordinary works made according to non-traditional codes."[164]
^For example, his first use of twelve-tone technique in Op. 17, Nos. 2 and 3, was more technical than stylistic, and Adorno felt that Op. 14 sounded twelve-tone.[165]
^Their instrumental music has been related to vocal idioms: the "concealed vocality" and "latent opera" of Berg's Lyric Suite[169] and the Bach chorale and folk melody of his Violin Concerto; the "recitative" of Schoenberg's Op. 16/v and the accented musical prose of his twelve-tone music. Unlike Berg and Schoenberg, Webern did not use Hauptstimmen and Nebenstimmen, but he endorsed textures of accompanied melody in his music's polyphony. He could not stop writing songs, he told Berg (1921) and Hertzka (1927), noting his work's "almost exclusively lyrical nature" and apologizing to Hertzka for the consequently inauspicious commercial implications.[170]
^Berg endorsed an innovative, pluralist approach emphasizing some bel canto and like Webern, expressed faith in singers to execute challenging lines.[175]
^Eliahu Inbal, whose work with the hr-Sinfonieorchester in the 1980s was part of a Bruckner reappraisal,[188] found additional connections between Bruckner and Webern and Romantics and modernists more generally,[189] echoing Dika Newlin and Mahler himself.
^Op. 11/iii (mid-1909) so differed from Op. 11/i–ii (Feb. 1909) that when Bartók performed Op. 11 (23 Apr. 1921 Budapest, 4 Apr. 1922 Paris), he omitted it.[213]
^For Adorno, these were an "essential" Mahlerian formal "genre", often episodic as in a section of music marked senza tempo. Korte compared Webern's Op. 10/iii to the passage before Mahler's "Chorus mysticus".
^Beethoven's similar use of registral expansion was noted (e.g., Op. 111, No. 2, Var. 5 when the theme re-emerges in a strange harmonic context after a long section of trills).
^Examples included the circling ostinati of Op. 6/v and the end of Op. 15/v.
^See Sprechgesang. Schoenberg briefly directed and wrote for the Überbrettl, for example, in the 1901 Brettl-Lieder.
^Examples included passacaglia in "Nacht", fugue in "Der Mondfleck", and canon in both.
^Examples included the virtuoso solo and waltz in "Serenade" and triadic harmony in "O alter Duft".
^In Apr. 1914, after Op. 22/i, "Seraphita," so wrote Schoenberg to Alma Mahler.[226]
^Scholarship varied as to the genesis of Jakobsleiter. Joseph Auner noted a scherzo fragment dated May 1914.[227] Schoenberg told Berg about setting Strindberg's Jacob lutte in spring 1911. Webern introduced Schoenberg to Balzac's Louis Lambert and Séraphîta in Mar. 1911.[228]
^"Ob rechts, ob links, vorwärts oder rückwärts, bergauf oder bergab – man hat weiterzugehen, ohne zu fragen, was vor oder hinter einem liegt."[229]
^In 1941 Schoenberg lectured: "the ... law of the unity of musical space demands an absolute and unitary perception. In this space, as in Swedenborg's heaven (described in Balzac's Séraphîta) there is no absolute down, no right or left, forward or backward." Schoenberg then considered Jakobsleiter a "real twelve-tone composition" for its opening hexachordal ostinato and "Scherzo ... of all the twelve tones".[230]
^Examples include Op. 9, Op. 15/iv, and Op. 16.[232]
^First by hexachordal aggregation in its center; second in a registrally expansive, open voicing at the end.
^Among these were "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild".[242]
^Initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, Liszt left it in manuscript at Carl Haslinger [de]'s discretion.[245]
^In 2013, the Moldenhauers' dogged investigation into Webern's death and the experiences and testimony of those involved were portrayed in a one-act opera, The Death of Webern, which, though written in the eclectic style of its composer Michael Dellaira, paraphrases and quotes from Webern's music (e.g., the Passacaglia, Op. 1 in the third and final scenes, Klangfarbenmelodie in the sixth scene).
^For example, Op. 28's BACH motif (1938) and Op. 29/i, "Zündender Lichtblitz", (1938–1939, orch. 1944) troubled some commentators.
^Dallapiccola's 1943 Sex carmina alcaei, on some of the Lirici greci [it] of Salvatore Quasimodo after Alcaeus of Mytilene, were one of three groups of Lieder from his Liriche greche set (1942–1945).[263]
^This is Krasner's phrase, by which he interpreted Schoenberg's "those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us" as referring to Webern.[267] But Douglas Jarman noted Schoenberg's discomfort with and Erwin Stein's (and later Cerha's and Perle's) defense of Berg after the Jewish banker scene in Act III of Lulu.[268] When Schoenberg asked Webern about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern replied, "Who dares to come between you and me?" When Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner on behalf of Schoenberg, Krasner soothed Schoenberg with a self-described lie. Schoenberg's 1934 (or 1935)–1936 Violin Concerto kept its dedication to Webern, though worded very simply ("to Anton von Webern"), whether due to Schoenberg's suspicions or to protect Webern from danger or Nazi suspicion. Schoenberg and Webern continued to correspond at least through 1939.[269]
^Schoenberg prepared his statement for publication as a handwritten inscription by facsimile reproduction in Leibowitz's 1948 didactic score of Webern's then unpublished Op. 24,[270] which Webern dedicated to Schoenberg in 1934 for his sixtieth birthday.
^Or possibly Craft, who often ghostwrote for Stravinsky.
^Olin Downes described Op. 28 as "Dead End music" in 1941.[296] Another critic wrote in 1929: "If modernism depended for progress upon the Weberns, it would get nowhere."[297]
^Adorno advocated for the completion of Lulu, writing that it "reveals the extent of its quality the longer and more deeply one immerses oneself in it". Boulez conducted the 1979 première after Cerha's orchestration.
^By contrast, the Kolisch Quartet's 1927 performance of Berg's Lyric Suite at the Baden-Baden ISCM festival (where Bartók performed his own Piano Sonata) inspired Bartók in his subsequent third and fourth string quartets[306] and Concerto for Orchestra.[307]
^Tischenko's anti-Stalinist Requiem is a noted example of Soviet post-Webernism.[320]
^Robert Fink described a "general disciplinary crisis". In new musicology and postmodernism, canons were questioned, and pluralism was promoted. Lawrence Kramer and Susan McClary emphasized musical meaning. Taruskin criticized the canon's Eurocentrism, Germanism (especially in Schoenberg's, Webern's, and Carl Dahlhaus's work), and colonialism.
^In relation to post-Webernism more generally, Holzer slammed attempts "to place Darmstadt in a fascistoid corner or even identifying it as a US propaganda institution amid the Cold War" ("Darmstadt in ein 'faschistoides' Eck zu stellen oder es gar als Propagandainstitution der USA im Kalten Krieg auszuweisen") via "unbelievable distortions, exaggerations, reductions and propagation of clichés" ("unglaublichen Verdrehungen, Übertreibungen, Verkürzungen und Propagierungen von Klischeebildern").[334]
^For Taruskin, pitch sets did not "conform to the physics of sound", and "optimism about human adaptability ... is the same ... that drives all utopian thinking."[336]
^For J. Peter Burkholder, musical historicism as a mainstream intellectual tradition proper began in Brahms's generation's l'art pour l'art and more introverted musical experience. It intensified in Schoenberg's generation with increasing engagement with stylistic history as impetus to compositional innovation. Distantly and obliquely echoing Charles Burney's work, it flowered amid Hegelianism and theories of biological and social evolution or progress. Burkholder distinguished between more progressive historicism (Schoenberg's Erwartung), more emulative cases (Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos), and mixed examples (Berg's Wozzeck). He noted the assimilation of peripheral nationalmusic traditions for novelty but emphasized that innovation occurred even within those contexts.[339]
^For Taruskin, "the legacy of fascism is an inseparable ... facet of the lofty legacy of modernism". Krasner told Fanfare Webern "packed me off quickly" upon the Anschluss "for my safety but perhaps ... to avoid ... embarrassment ... had his family arrived, or friends celebrating ... Nazi entry".[341] Taruskin cited Krasner to claim Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis upon the Anschluss.[342] In his "How Talented Composers Become Useless" postscript, Taruskin wrote, "The Nazis had every right to criticize Schoenberg ... . It is not for their criticism that we all revile them."[343] He compared Leibowitz to Goebbels, found "Nazi resonances" in Eimert's "only composers who follow Webern are worthy of the name," and likened Boulez's "[s]ince the Viennese discoveries, any musician who has not experienced ... the necessity of dodecaphonic language is USELESS" to the Zhdanov Doctrine.[344]
^"Of all in the volumes in this series," Taruskin referred to his Oxford History, "this one, covering the first half of the twentieth century, surely differs the most radically from previous accounts".[346]
^Rosen charged Taruskin's "hostile presentation ... does not result in historical objectivity".[332] Max Erwin considered Taruskin's work on the Darmstädter Ferienkurse "passionately negative"[348] and "thoroughly discredited",[349] particularly that "Adorno or Leibowitz officiated with near-dictatorial power".[350] Rodney Lister wrote, "Taruskin's purpose ... is to bury Webern, not to praise him", noting "the increasing importance of 'motivization' over the course of the 19th century and of the 'collapse' of (traditional) tonality [is] something which Taruskin flatly states never took place."[351] Larson Powell found "Taruskin's ... references to Webern's politics ... to discredit the music."[352] Christian Utz [de] agreed with Martin Zenck [de] that Taruskin's claims were "simplifying and distorting", granting "authoritarian rhetoric ... in ... the 1950s and 60s" and the nonexistence of "'apolitical music'".[353] Holzer also sympathized with but found Taruskin inappropriate and simplistic.[354]
^In a survey of five prestigious British and French orchestras, his music was played 121 times[360] and Beethoven’s 1,198 times between 1967 and 2017.[361] In a US orchestra survey of the "top 100 composers in terms of works performed", his music was played 175 times and Mozart's 7,103 times between 2000 and 2009.[362]
^"[A]tonal music is [like] random notes" in its macroharmony, Dmitri Tymoczko suggested as one reason.[367] Building on Tymoczko's work, Joshua Ballance described Webern's Opp. 1–31 partly in its macroharmonies, emphasizing the already totally chromatic macroharmonies of the pre-dodecaphonic mid-period Lieder.[368]
^"Don't write music entirely by ear", Webern told Searle: "Your ears will always guide you ... but you must know why" (emphasis in original).[371] Webern's music was associated with "intellectual order".[370] He innovated musically and conceptually, challenging audiences.[372] Julian Johnson argued that criticisms of composers' innovations were a "constant of musical modernity for four hundred years", from il nuove musiche to die neue Musik. He quoted Girolamo Mei writing to Vincenzo Galilei in 1572: "[N]ot to appear ... inferior ... these musicians precipitated themselves at breakneck speed ... to discover always new styles and new forms of song [which] were not understood [or] felt".[373] Mei wrote Galilei that in these innovations composers followed their ears, not their intellects.[374]
^Burkholder and Lydia Goehr, among others, traced the history of orchestras' (and other institutions') museum-like function in producing and presenting "civilized", "elite", or "important" (if sometimes "difficult", "serious", or "unpopular") music as artwork, not without regard to audiences.[376]
^The others, in both cases, were Bartók, Berg, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.[377] In Joseph N. Straus's account of how modernists recast tradition,[378] they were "the exemplars" on whom he focused.[379]Ensemble intercontemporain played them often at Boulez's IRCAM as "classics" in the 1980s, which Georgina Born argued contributed to their canonization.[380]
^In a case study, Martin Kaltenecker noted Taruskin's taking aim at avant-garde prestige in opposition to Célestin Deliège [fr]'s Cinquante ans de modernité musicale: De Darmstadt à l'IRCAM.[383] He contrasted their polarized nomothetic "plots" with more idiographic approaches' "juxtapositions" and thick description. He considered how to move beyond this nomothetic–idiographic historiographical dichotomy.[384]
^Johnson described music in modernity as "broken off from the past", "broken in itself", and "of individual subjectivity". It no longer "elaborate[s] ... divine unity", by contrast to medieval music, but "rema[d]e it", he argued, "as Wagner's Siegfried ... from ... his father's sword, or as Webern piece[d] together ... atomized ... interval[s]."[388]
^For Johnson, modernism foregrounded the "brokenness that always lay at the heart of the pastoral".[391] Thomas Peattie wrote about brokenness in Mahler's pastoral music.[392]
^Julie Brown described a "greening" of Webern literature.[394]
^Holland, Bernard (12 September 1993). "Erich Leinsdorf, 81, a Conductor of Intelligence and Utility, Is Dead". The New York Times.; Antokoletz 2014, 75, 225; Moldenhauer 1961, 327
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