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Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most
radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...
of its milieu in its sheer concision, even
aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tra ...
, and steadfast embrace of then novel
atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...
and
twelve-tone The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
techniques. With his mentor
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
and his colleague
Alban Berg Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
, Webern was at the core of those within the broader circle of the
Second Viennese School The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
. Little known in the earlier part of his life, mostly as a student and follower of Schoenberg, but also as a peripatetic and often unhappy theater music director with a mixed reputation as an exacting conductor, Webern came to some prominence and increasingly high regard as a vocal coach, choirmaster, conductor, and teacher during
Red Vienna Red Vienna ( German: ''Rotes Wien'') was the colloquial name for the capital of Austria between 1918 and 1934, when the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAP) maintained almost unilateral political control over Vienna and, for a sho ...
. With Schoenberg away at the
Prussian Academy of Arts The Prussian Academy of Arts (German: ''Preußische Akademie der Künste'') was a state arts academy first established in Berlin, Brandenburg, in 1694/1696 by prince-elector Frederick III, in personal union Duke Frederick I of Prussia, and late ...
(and with the benefit of a publication agreement secured through
Universal Edition Universal Edition (UE) is a classical music publishing firm. Founded in 1901 in Vienna, they originally intended to provide the core classical works and educational works to the Austrian market (which had until then been dominated by Leipzig-bas ...
), Webern began writing music of increasing confidence, independence, and scale during the latter half of the 1920s—his mature chamber and orchestral works, music that, perhaps more than his earlier expressionist works, would later decisively influence a generation of composers. Amid
Austrofascism The Fatherland Front ( de-AT, Vaterländische Front, ''VF'') was the right-wing conservative, nationalist and corporatist ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan Nonpartisanism is a lack ...
,
Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
, and
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Webern remained nevertheless committed to taking the " path to the new music", as he styled it in a series of private lectures delivered in 1932–1933 (but unpublished until 1960). He continued writing some of his most mature and later celebrated music while increasingly ostracized from official musical life as a " cultural Bolshevist", taking occasional copyist jobs from his publisher as he lost students and his conducting career. Following his death shortly after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Webern became more widely celebrated and influential than ever before, albeit initially through pedagogy often lacking full context, and the thread of his work was taken by composers in directions far beyond any residual
post-Romanticism Post-romanticism or Postromanticism refers to a range of cultural endeavors and attitudes emerging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after the period of Romanticism. Post-romanticism in literature The period of post-romantici ...
and
expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
that had remained in his style. His gradual innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his later adaptation and generalization of imitative contrapuntal techniques such as
canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...
and
fugue In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the c ...
; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism variously informed and oriented European, typically serial or
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
composers such as
Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
,
Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mont ...
,
Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
,
Luigi Nono Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...
,
Bruno Maderna Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer. Life Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.Interview with Maderna‘s th ...
,
Henri Pousseur Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist. Biography Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to ...
,
Bernd Alois Zimmermann Bernd Alois Zimmermann (20 March 1918 – 10 August 1970) was a German composer. He is perhaps best known for his opera ''Die Soldaten'', which is regarded as one of the most important German operas of the 20th century, after those of Berg. As a ...
, and
György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" ...
. Later, both
Brian Ferneyhough Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and ...
and
Helmut Lachenmann Helmut Friedrich Lachenmann (born 27 November 1935) is a German composer of contemporary classical music. His work has been associated with "instrumental musique concrète". Life and works Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart and after the end of ...
also found much in Webern on the way to
complexity Complexity characterises the behaviour of a system or model whose components interaction, interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence. The term is generall ...
in the case of the former and ''musique concrète instrumentale'' in the case of the latter, engaging particularly with his atonal works by some contrast to earlier post-Webernism. Less so in the United States, his music attracted the interest of
Elliott Carter Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra- ...
and
Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm and fascination nonetheless;
Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...
, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and particularly
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by
Robert Craft Robert Lawson Craft (October 20, 1923 – November 10, 2015) was an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate professional relationship with Igor Stravinsky, on which Craft drew in producing numerous recordings and books. ...
, and without which Stravinsky's late works might have taken different shape. Indeed, Stravinsky staked his contract with
Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
to see that Webern's "complete" music was first both recorded and widely distributed. Among the more interdisciplinary New York School,
John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
and
Morton Feldman Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...
both cited the staggering effect of its ''sound'' on their own music, first meeting at a performance of the Symphony, Op. 21, and even singing the praises of Christian Wolff distinctly as "our Webern". A richer and more historically informed understanding of Webern and his music began to emerge during the latter half of the 20th century onward in the work of Kathryn Bailey Puffett, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, and Anne Shreffler as archivists, biographers, and musicologists, most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer, gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate.


Biography


1883–1918: Youth, education, and war in Austria-Hungary

Webern was born in
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
, then in
Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a descendent of , high-ranking civil servant, mining engineer, and owner of the Lamprechtsberg copper mine in the
Koralpe The Koralpe ( en, Kor Alps, sl, Golica or ), also referred to as ''Koralm'', is a mountain range in southern Austria which separates eastern Carinthia (state), Carinthia from southern Styria. The southern parts of the range extend into Slovenia. ...
; and Amalie (née Geer), a competent pianist, accomplished singer, and possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He lived in
Graz Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popul ...
and
Klagenfurt Klagenfurt am WörtherseeLandesgesetzblatt 2008 vom 16. Jänner 2008, Stück 1, Nr. 1: ''Gesetz vom 25. Oktober 2007, mit dem die Kärntner Landesverfassung und das Klagenfurter Stadtrecht 1998 geändert werden.'/ref> (; ; sl, Celovec), usually ...
for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of ''
Heimat ''Heimat'' () is a German word translating to 'home' or 'homeland'. The word has connotations specific to German culture, German society and specifically German Romanticism, German nationalism, German statehood and regionalism so that it ha ...
'' was shaped by readings of
Peter Rosegger Peter Rosegger (original ''Roßegger'') (31 July 1843 – 26 June 1918) was an Austrian writer and poet from Krieglach in the province of Styria. He was a son of a mountain farmer and grew up in the woodlands and mountains of Alpl. Rosegger (or ...
; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem ''Im Sommerwind'' (1904), both after
Bruno Wille Bruno Wille (6 February 186031 August 1928) was a German politician, writer and journalist. He was born in Magdeburg, and died in Aeschach near Lindau. He tried to make an end to the collective ideology of the Social Democratic Party of Germany ...
's
idyll An idyll (, ; from Greek , ''eidullion'', "short poem"; occasionally spelt ''idyl'' in American English) is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the ''Idylls'' (Εἰδύλλια). U ...
. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family grave at the cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at
Vienna University The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public university, public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the Geogra ...
. There he studied
musicology Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...
with
Guido Adler Guido Adler (1 November 1855, Ivančice (Eibenschütz), Moravia – 15 February 1941, Vienna) was a Bohemian-Austrian musicologist and writer. Biography Early life and education Adler was born at Eibenschütz in Moravia in 1855. He moved ...
, writing his thesis on the ''
Choralis Constantinus The ''Choralis Constantinus'' is a collection of over 375 Gregorian chant-based polyphonic motets for the proper (liturgy), proper of the mass (liturgy), mass composed by Heinrich Isaac and his pupil Ludwig Senfl. The genesis of the collection is a ...
'' of
Heinrich Isaac Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450 – 26 March 1517) was a Netherlandish Renaissance composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin de ...
. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of
palindromic A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the words ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date and time ''11/11/11 11:11,'' and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Pana ...
form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. Webern's cousin Ernst Dietz, an art historian studying in Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters
Arnold Böcklin Arnold Böcklin (16 October 182716 January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter. Biography He was born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk tra ...
and
Giovanni Segantini Giovanni Segantini (15 January 1858 – 28 September 1899) was an Italian painter known for his large pastoral landscapes of the Alps. He was one of the most famous artists in Europe in the late 19th century, and his paintings were collected by ...
, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. Young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of
Ludwig van Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
,
Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...
,
Franz Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...
("so genuinely Viennese"),
Hugo Wolf Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Ro ...
, and
Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
, visiting
Bayreuth Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...
in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of
Hector Berlioz In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense o ...
and
Georges Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', whi ...
. In 1903, besides describing some of
Alexander Scriabin Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...
's music as "languishing junk," Webern wrote of
Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that
Carl Maria von Weber Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18 or 19 November 17865 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic who was one of the first significant composers of the Romantic era. Best known for his opera ...
's ''Konzertstück'' in F minor was passé, and that he found
Johannes Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped wit ...
's Symphony No. 3 (which struck
Eduard Hanslick Eduard Hanslick (11 September 18256 August 1904) was an Austrian music critic, aesthetician and historian. Among the leading critics of his time, he was the chief music critic of the ''Neue Freie Presse'' from 1864 until the end of his life. H ...
as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." Writing about an all-Russian concert program, Webern praised one of
Alexander Glazunov Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov; ger, Glasunow (, 10 August 1865 – 21 March 1936) was a Russian composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Russian Romantic period. He was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 ...
's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" in contrast to some of
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov . At the time, his name was spelled Николай Андреевичъ Римскій-Корсаковъ. la, Nicolaus Andreae filius Rimskij-Korsakov. The composer romanized his name as ''Nicolas Rimsk ...
's music, of which he thought less. In 1904, he approached
Hans Pfitzner Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) was a German composer, conductor and polemicist who was a self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera ''Palestrina'' (1917), loosely based on the life of the s ...
for composition lessons but left angrily after hearing criticism of
Gustav Mahler Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
and
Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
. It may have been at
Guido Adler Guido Adler (1 November 1855, Ivančice (Eibenschütz), Moravia – 15 February 1941, Vienna) was a Bohemian-Austrian musicologist and writer. Biography Early life and education Adler was born at Eibenschütz in Moravia in 1855. He moved ...
's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them
Ischl Bad Ischl (Austrian German ) is a spa town in Austria. It lies in the southern part of Upper Austria, at the Traun River in the centre of the Salzkammergut region. The town consists of the Katastralgemeinden ''Ahorn'', ''Bad Ischl'', ''Haiden ...
,
Teplitz Teplice () (until 1948 Teplice-Šanov; german: Teplitz-Schönau or ''Teplitz'') is a city in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 49,000 inhabitants. It is the second largest Czech spa town, after Karlovy Vary. The hist ...
(now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland),
Stettin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin language, Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Po ...
(now Szczecin, Poland), and
Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
, before finally moving back to Vienna. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911, having written rapturously to Schoenberg about
Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
's opera '' Pelléas et Mélisande'' in 1908.


1918–1934: Rise in Red Vienna

From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the
Society for Private Musical Performances The Society for Private Musical Performances (in German, the ) was an organization founded in Vienna in the Autumn of 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg with the intention of making carefully rehearsed and comprehensible performances of newly composed mus ...
, which gave concerts of then recent or new music by
Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...
, Berg,
Ferruccio Busoni Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary ...
, Debussy,
Erich Wolfgang Korngold Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897November 29, 1957) was an Austrian-born American composer and conductor. A child prodigy, he became one of the most important and influential composers in Hollywood history. He was a noted pianist and compo ...
, Mahler,
Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...
,
Max Reger Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger (19 March 187311 May 1916) was a German composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and academic teacher. He worked as a concert pianist, as a musical director at the Paulinerkirche, Leipzig, Leipzig University ...
,
Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...
, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's ''
Berceuses du chat The ''Berceuses du chat'' (Russian: ''Kolibelniye'', English: ''Cat Lullabies'') is a cycle of four songs for contralto and three clarinetists composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1915. The work is usually referred to by its French title. Although it is ...
'' "
ove Ove or OVE may refer to * Ove (given name) * Ové, a surname * Ove Peak in Antarctica *'' A Man Called Ove (novel)'', a novel by Fredrik Backman *'' A Man Called Ove'', a 2015 Swedish film based on the novel * Danish Organisation for Renewable Ener ...
me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's '' Pribaoutki'' were "something really glorious"; like the ''
Berceuses du chat The ''Berceuses du chat'' (Russian: ''Kolibelniye'', English: ''Cat Lullabies'') is a cycle of four songs for contralto and three clarinetists composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1915. The work is usually referred to by its French title. Although it is ...
'', Webern's subsequent ''Five Canons'', Op. 16, were only several measures long each and scored for vocalist accompanied by clarinets (or in the case of Nos. 2 and 4, a clarinet). After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic
hyperinflation In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...
in 1921, Webern obtained work as director not only of the , but also, from 1922 until the dissolution of these institutions after the failed
February Uprising The February Uprising ( classical hy, Փետրուարեան ապստամբութիւն, reformed: Փետրվարյան ապստամբություն, ''P'etrvaryan apstambut'yun'') was an anti-Bolshevik rebellion by the nationalist Armenian R ...
, of the mixed-voice amateur and the through his relationship with DJ Bach, Director of the . His performances in this capacity were aired on ''
Österreichischer Rundfunk ('Austrian Broadcasting Corporation'; ORF) is an Austrian national public broadcaster. Funded from a combination of television licence fee revenue and limited on-air advertising, ORF is the dominant player in the Austrian broadcast media. Aus ...
'' no fewer than twenty times starting in 1927. In 1933 he engaged
Erich Leinsdorf Erich Leinsdorf (born Erich Landauer; February 4, 1912 – September 11, 1993) was an Austrian-born American conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a ...
as rehearsal and solo pianist for the , who later reflected on the experience as of "utmost value to my musical and critical development"; together they gave a performance of Stravinsky's dance cantata on folk idioms ''
Les Noces ''Les Noces'' (French for The Wedding; russian: Свадебка, ''Svadebka'') is a ballet and orchestral concert work composed by Igor Stravinsky for percussion, pianists, chorus, and vocal soloists. The composer gave it the descriptive title " ...
'', of which the '' popevki''-like 3-7A
cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life Cell may also refer to: Locations * Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...
and its 4–10 variant are not altogether unlike the rhythmized trichords of Webern's Op. 24 from the following year (1934) or the Op. 30 tetrachords (which Stravinsky later admired) apart from Stravinsky's tendency to anhemitony in marked contrast to Webern's hemitonicism. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling , a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Webern's music began to be performed more widely during and after the 1920s, yet he found no great success such as Berg enjoyed with ''
Wozzeck ''Wozzeck'' () is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama ''Woyzeck'', which the German playwright Georg Büchner left incomplete at h ...
'' nor even as Schoenberg did, to a lesser extent, with ''
Pierrot lunaire ''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a m ...
'' or in time with ''
Verklärte Nacht ''Verklärte Nacht'' (''Transfigured Night''), Op. 4, is a string sextet in one movement composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1899. Composed in just three weeks, it is considered his earliest important work. It was inspired by Richard Dehmel's p ...
''. His Symphony, Op. 21, was performed in New York through the
League of Composers The League of Composers/ International Society for Contemporary Music is a society whose stated mission is "to produce the highest quality performances of new music, to champion American composers in the United States and abroad, and to introduce Am ...
in 1929 and again in Oxford at the ninth festival of the
International Society for Contemporary Music The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) is a music organization that promotes contemporary classical music. The organization was established in Salzburg in 1922 as Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) following th ...
, and he was later awarded Music Prize of the City of Vienna. By the early 1930s, he had become President of the Vienna section of the ISCM and was developing a close working friendship with Krenek, alongside whom Webern lectured, whose music (taking a twelve-tone turn) Webern conducted, and with whom Webern shared certain affinities during what was again becoming an increasingly difficult time for both. As Stefan Zweig wrote before his suicide in 1942, "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."


1933–1938: Austrofascism and Anschluss

Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as
cultural Bolshevism Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
and proscribed as ''
Entartete Kunst Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
'' by the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
in Germany, and its publication and performance were forbidden, although neither did it fare well under
Austrofascism The Fatherland Front ( de-AT, Vaterländische Front, ''VF'') was the right-wing conservative, nationalist and corporatist ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan Nonpartisanism is a lack ...
. An Austrian ''
gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...
'' on ''
Bayerischer Rundfunk Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR; "Bavarian Broadcasting") is a public-service radio and television broadcaster, based in Munich, capital city of the Free State of Bavaria in Germany. BR is a member organization of the ARD consortium of public broadcas ...
'' labeled both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers in 1933, and Berg wrote to Adorno of prior instances. Amid the rise of fascism in the 1930s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, UE. In 1933, Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures; publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences." Violinist
Louis Krasner Louis Krasner (4 May 1995) was a Russian Empire-born American classical violinist who premiered the violin concertos of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. Biography Louis Krasner was born in Cherkasy, Russian Empire. He arrived in the United Stat ...
described Webern as naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience, contextualizing Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's
Violin Concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...
. Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously
anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When the Nazis invaded Austria, Krasner was visiting Webern in
Maria Enzersdorf Maria Enzersdorf (Central Bavarian: ''Maria Enzasduaf'') is a small city in the district of Mödling in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. There are several castles and ruins in the forests surrounding Maria Enzersdorf, including Liechtenstei ...
; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Krasner revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern, who wrote to Humplik and Jone on the day of the Anschluss to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work omposingand cannot, cannot be disturbed." Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and Bailey Puffett speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's attitude towards
Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
has been variously described. This may reflect Webern's own vacillations, ambivalence, or cognitive dissonance no less than the different contexts in which, or the audiences to whom, his views were expressed: a very wide variety of differences were represented in his friends, family, and colleagues, from active members of the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
within his family to the
Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
Schoenberg, who emigrated; the
left-leaning Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
Berg, who died in 1935; and others of their Social Democratic milieu in previously "
red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...
" Vienna, most of whom fled. Nazism itself, "not a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology,'" has been variously described. There is, moreover, political complexity to complicate individual culpability. After World War I, the
center-left Centre-left politics lean to the left on the left–right political spectrum but are closer to the centre than other left-wing politics. Those on the centre-left believe in working within the established systems to improve social justice. The c ...
Social Democrats Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...
had governed with the
right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...
Social Christians The Social Christians ( it, Cristiano Sociali) are a Christian social-democratic faction within the Democratic Party, a political party in Italy. Before that, they were a party (1993–1998) and a faction of the Democrats of the Left (1998–2007 ...
in increasingly tenuous coalition, with the emergence of
paramilitaries A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...
and
disorder Disorder may refer to randomness, non-order, or no intelligible pattern. Disorder may also refer to: Healthcare * Disorder (medicine), a functional abnormality or disturbance * Mental disorder or psychological disorder, a psychological pattern a ...
culminating in
civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
. As a matter of ''
Realpolitik ''Realpolitik'' (; ) refers to enacting or engaging in diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly binding itself to explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical ...
'' and
self-determination The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a ''jus cogens'' rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. It stat ...
, prominent
Austromarxists Austromarxism (also stylised as Austro-Marxism) was a Marxist theoretical current, led by Victor Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Renner, Max Adler and Rudolf Hilferding, members of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria in Austria-Hungary a ...
Otto Bauer Otto Bauer (5 September 1881 – 4 July 1938) was one of the founders and leading thinkers of the left-socialist Austromarxists who sought a middle ground between social democracy and revolutionary socialism. He was a member of the Austrian Parl ...
and
Karl Renner Karl Renner (14 December 1870 – 31 December 1950) was an Austrian politician and jurist of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria. He is often referred to as the "Father of the Republic" because he led the first government of German ...
, among other Social Democrats, endured in their support of a German-Austrian
Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...
, unanimously passed by the Provisional National Assembly in 1918 as an answer to the '' Grossdeutsche Lösung'' before the
peace treaty A peace treaty is an agreement between two or more hostile parties, usually countries or governments, which formally ends a state of war between the parties. It is different from an armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring ...
-imposed post-
Habsburg The House of Habsburg (), alternatively spelled Hapsburg in Englishgerman: Haus Habsburg, ; es, Casa de Habsburgo; hu, Habsburg család, it, Casa di Asburgo, nl, Huis van Habsburg, pl, dom Habsburgów, pt, Casa de Habsburgo, la, Domus Hab ...
rump state A rump state is the remnant of a once much larger state, left with a reduced territory in the wake of secession, annexation, occupation, decolonization, or a successful coup d'état or revolution on part of its former territory. In the last case, ...
(''" ce qui reste, c'est l'Autriche"''). With their party outlawed and some members interned under Austrofascism,
some Some may refer to: *''some'', an English word used as a determiner and pronoun; see use of ''some'' *The term associated with the existential quantifier *"Some", a song by Built to Spill from their 1994 album ''There's Nothing Wrong with Love'' *S ...
Social Democrats, at least initially, viewed
National Socialists Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
as no worse than what had become of Social Christians, merged by
Engelbert Dollfuss Engelbert Dollfuß (alternatively: ''Dolfuss'', ; 4 October 1892 – 25 July 1934) was an Austrian clerical fascist politician who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he a ...
into the clericofascist Vaterländische Front in concert with appeals to Austrians'
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
and
imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texa ...
history in order to maintain independence of Nazi Germany through
alliance An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
with Fascist Italy and
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
; thus Bauer, Renner, and others supported the Anschluss referendum even under
Nazi occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 ...
following
years A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the hou ...
of deteriorating German-Austrian relations and Austrian weakening, including the failed
Austrian Nazi Austrian Nazism or Austrian National Socialism was a pan-German movement that was formed at the beginning of the 20th century. The movement took a concrete form on 15 November 1903 when the German Worker's Party (DAP) was established in Austria ...
coup d'état A coup d'état (; French for 'stroke of state'), also known as a coup or overthrow, is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers. Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, politician, cult, rebel group, m ...
and continuing
economic warfare Economic warfare or economic war is an economic strategy utilized by belligerent nations with the goal of weakening the economy of other states. This is primarily achieved by the use of economic blockades. Ravaging the crops of the enemy is a cl ...
and destruction of infrastructure. Likewise, as an expression more of
pan-nationalism Pan-nationalism (from gr, πᾶν, "all", and french: nationalisme, "nationalism") is a specific term, used mainly in social sciences as a designation for those forms of nationalism that aim to transcend (overcome, expand) traditional boundari ...
and
populism Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed ...
than frank Nazism, many Austrians hoped for post-Anschluss political stability and prosperity. Bailey Puffett wrote that Webern may well have hoped to be able again to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family under a new regime that proclaimed itself "
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
" no less than
nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
.


1938–1945: German Reich, ''Kristallnacht'', and World War II

In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis to such an extent that by 1945 he had resolved to emigrate to England. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. On 2 May 1940, Webern described Hitler as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus
Alex Ross Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which he collaborated wi ...
characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Following , Webern checked on and aided Jewish colleagues DJ Bach, Otto Jokl, Josef Polnauer, and Hugo Winter. Polnauer, a fellow early Schoenberg pupil, historian, and librarian for whom Schoenberg was unable to secure passage to the US, managed to survive
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
as an
albino Albinism is the congenital absence of melanin in an animal or plant resulting in white hair, feathers, scales and skin and pink or blue eyes. Individuals with the condition are referred to as albino. Varied use and interpretation of the term ...
and later edited a 1959 publication by UE of Webern's correspondence from this time with , Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor
Josef Humplik Josef Humplik (17 August 1888 – 5 April 1958) was an Austrian sculptor. His work was part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936'') ...
. Webern's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. He attended the 1943
Winterthur , neighboring_municipalities = Brütten, Dinhard, Elsau, Hettlingen, Illnau-Effretikon, Kyburg, Lindau, Neftenbach, Oberembrach, Pfungen, Rickenbach, Schlatt, Seuzach, Wiesendangen, Zell , twintowns = Hall in Tirol (Austria), La ...
première of his Op. 30 only with the diplomatic intervention and financial support of
Werner Reinhart Werner Reinhart (19 March 1884 – 29 August 1951) was a Swiss merchant, philanthropist, amateur clarinetist, and patron of composers and writers, particularly Igor Stravinsky and Rainer Maria Rilke. Reinhart knew and corresponded with many artist ...
, its dedicatee. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern wrote that he was living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Toward the end of the war, the Weberns provided Schoenberg's first son Görgi and his family, for whom Schoenberg was unable to secure their passage to the US despite many attempts, food and shelter in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. With the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
approaching, the Weberns fled on foot to
Mittersill Mittersill ( bar, Mittasü) is a city in the federal state of Salzburg, Austria, in the Pinzgau region of the Alps. It is located on the Salzach River. It has a population of 5,408 as of 2011. Geography Mittersill lies approximately 25 km to the ...
, about 75 km. away; there, Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of "17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space." Görgi and his family stayed behind for their safety, but due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the apartment's storeroom, Görgi was held and nearly executed as a Nazi spy when he was discovered. He was able to convince a Jewish, German-speaking officer that he was not, drawing attention to his clothes, sewn with the yellow
Star of David The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles. A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative ...
. Görgi and his family continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969.


1945: Allied-administered Austria

On 15 September 1945, following the arrest of his son-in-law for
black-market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the ...
activities, Webern was smoking a cigar outside his home so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren about one hour before
curfew A curfew is a government order specifying a time during which certain regulations apply. Typically, curfews order all people affected by them to ''not'' be in public places or on roads within a certain time frame, typically in the evening and ...
when he was shot and killed by
US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who, overcome by remorse, died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife Wilhelmine "Minna" Mörtl was buried with him when she died in 1949. Her last years were marred by grief, illness, loneliness (as friends and family continued to emigrate), and continuing poverty and consequent embarrassment. She worked to get his 1907 Piano Quintet finally published by Bomart via Kurt List and Opp. 17, 24–25, and 29–31 published by UE at the behest of , who solicited her urgently, with the abolition of the ''
Entartete Kunst Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
'' ban, for Webern's manuscripts hidden in Vienna. News of performances abroad made her wish that Webern had lived to experience more successes, and her grief was compounded by the lack of commemoration in Vienna: she asked Jone in 1948, "Should Anton have already been forgotten? Or is it the fault of the dreadful time in which we live?" In 1947 she wrote to Dietz, who had emigrated to the US, that "during the summer of 1945
ebern Ebern () is a town in the Haßberge district of Bavaria, Germany. It is situated southwest of Coburg and northwest of Bamberg. Its population is about 8,000. Its mayor is Robert Herrmann. Ebern is about 1,000 years old and has an intact defen ...
became convinced that he could not live here n Austriaany more. He was firmly resolved to go to England and he would have carried it out, too"; likewise, in 1946, she wrote to DJ Bach, who had emigrated to London: "How difficult the last eight years had been for him. ewas so embittered that he 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."


Music

Webern's works are concise, distilled, and select; when Boulez, for a second time, recorded all of his then published compositions, including some of those without
opus numbers In musicology, the opus number is the "work number" that is assigned to a musical composition, or to a set of compositions, to indicate the chronological order of the composer's production. Opus numbers are used to distinguish among compositions ...
, the results fit on just six CDs. Not all of his works were or could be published in his lifetime, especially after 1934. His music is often considered inaccessible by listeners and difficult by performers alike; Babbitt observed that during Webern's life it "was regarded (to the very limited extent that it was regarded at all) as the ultimate in hermetic, specialized, and idiosyncratic composition." Though his ''œuvre'' comprises stylistic shifts, it is typified by spartan textures, in which every note can be heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques ( flutter tonguing,
col legno In music for bowed string instrument Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound. Despite th ...
, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave or more; and brevity: the Six
Bagatelles Bagatelle (from the Château de Bagatelle) is a billiards-derived indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls (set at nine in the 19th century) past wooden pins (which act as obstacles) into holes that are guarded by wooden ...
for string quartet, Op. 9, (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. The concerns and techniques of his music were cohesive, interrelated, and only very gradually transformed with the overlap of old and new, particularly in the case of his middle-period lieder (for example, his first use of twelve-tone technique in Op. 17, Nos. 2 and 3, was not especially stylistically significant and only eventually became realized as otherwise so in later works). A very general feature of Webern's music, as much of Schoenberg's, is a predilection toward the use of minor seconds, major sevenths, and minor ninths, as noted with some insight in 1934 by microtonalist
Alois Hába Alois Hába (21 June 1893 – 18 November 1973) was a Czech composer, music theorist and teacher. He belongs to the important discoverers in modern classical music, and major composers of microtonal music, especially using the quarter-tone scal ...
, writing of his and his students' affinities with Schoenberg in particular, and later by both Valentina Kholopova and
Yuri Kholopov Yuri Nikolaevich Kholopov (russian: link=no, Ю́рий Никола́евич Холóпов, ; August 14, 1932, Ryazan – April 24, 2003, Moscow) was a Russian musicologist and educator. Biography After graduating from Ryazan Music Regional C ...
in formulations more specific to Webern and with a more unifying emphasis on the
semitone A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. It is defined as the interval between two adjacent no ...
in the context of axial
inversional symmetry In music theory, an inversion is a type of change to intervals, chords, voices (in counterpoint), and melodies. In each of these cases, "inversion" has a distinct but related meaning. The concept of inversion also plays an important role in mu ...
and
octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...
equivalence (i.e.,
interval class In musical set theory, an interval class (often abbreviated: ic), also known as unordered pitch-class interval, interval distance, undirected interval, or "(even completely incorrectly) as 'interval mod 6'" (; ), is the shortest distance in pitch ...
1, or ic1), approaching
Allen Forte Allen, Allen's or Allens may refer to: Buildings * Allen Arena, an indoor arena at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee * Allen Center, a skyscraper complex in downtown Houston, Texas * Allen Fieldhouse, an indoor sports arena on the Univer ...
's more generalizing pitch-class set analysis. Webern's consistent and distinctive use of ic1 in particular within small subsets of other intervals, sometimes derived from a given twelve-tone row in his later practice, was well noted. Webern often musically expresses ic1 as a major seventh, minor ninth, or even wider interval. Webern's intervallic practices may be more globally understood as the outcome of a inversionally symmetrical treatment of pitch in a manner comparable to other modernists, including Berg, Bartók, Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, or more nascently even Liszt and Wagner, but often far more strictly and increasingly in schemes with other parameters (e.g., fixed or "frozen"
register Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...
, the association of articulations and dynamics with specific pitches).


1899–1908: Formative juvenilia and emergence from study

Webern published little of his early work in particular; like Brahms, Webern was meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity. Thus when Boulez ''first'' oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of ''
lied In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French s ...
er'', the genre that most testifies to his roots in
Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging.
Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example;
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (10 March 178826 November 1857) was a German poet, novelist, playwright, literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Eichendorff was one of the major writers and critics of Romanticism.Cf. J. A. Cuddon: ' ...
, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g.,
Richard Dehmel Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (18 November 1863 – 8 February 1920) was a German poet and writer. Life A forester's son, Richard Dehmel was born in Hermsdorf near Wendisch Buchholz (now a part of Münchehofe) in the Brandenburg Province, Ki ...
,
Gustav Falke Gustav Falke (11 January 1853 – 8 February 1916) was a German writer. Life Falke was born in Lübeck to merchant Johann Friedrich Christian Falke and his wife Elisabeth Franziska Hoyer. The historians Johannes and were his uncles, and the t ...
,
Theodor Storm Hans Theodor Woldsen Storm (; 14 September 18174 July 1888), commonly known as Theodor Storm, was a German writer. He is considered to be one of the most important figures of German realism. Life Storm was born in the small town of Husum, on the ...
) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Berg, Reger, Schoenberg, Strauss, Wolf, and
Alexander Zemlinsky Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky (14 October 1871 – 15 March 1942) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher. Biography Early life Zemlinsky was born in Vienna to a highly diverse family. Zemlinsky's grandfather, Anton ...
. Wolf's ''Mörike-Lieder'' were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these ''lieder'' alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908), Op. 1.
Harmonically In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However, ...
, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the
orchestration Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...
is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canon (music), canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto for Nine Instruments (Webern), Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet (Webern), String Quartet, and the Variations for piano (Webern), piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language.


1908–1924: Atonality, aphorism, and ''lieder''

Webern wrote freely
atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...
music somewhat in the style of Schoenberg starting with Op. 3. The two were so close in their artistic development that in 1951 Schoenberg reflected that he had sometimes no longer known who he was. But Webern did not merely follow Schoenberg. Ethan Haimo noted the swift, radical influence in summer 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting ''Fünf Sätze'' for string quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent ''Drei Klavierstücke (Schoenberg), Klavierstück'' Op. 11, No. 3 (which differs markedly from Op. 11, Nos. 1 and 2 of February 1909); ''Five Pieces for Orchestra, Fünf Orchesterstücke'' for orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama ''Erwartung'', Op. 17. In 1949 Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce Motif (music), motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". With Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg began to retreat somewhat. In ''
Pierrot lunaire ''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a m ...
'' (1912), Op. 21, there are elements of , neoclassicism (music), neoclassicism, and Neoromanticism (music), neo-Romanticism (e.g., canon and passacaglia in "Nacht," canon and fugue in "Der Mondfleck," waltz in "Serenade," triadic harmony in "O alter Duft," Black comedy#Nature and functions, grotesque satire throughout), as befits the Pierrot lunaire (book), text's Pierrot, protagonist. With its Counterpoint, contrapuntal procedures and Pierrot ensemble, nonstandard ensemble, ''Pierrot'' was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16. Of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked during and after World War I (1914–1926), he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two, carefully ordered into sets as Opp. 12–19. "How much I owe to your ''Pierrot''", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, distinctly, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. A recurring theme is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home or rest fits with two complex, interrelated concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the loss and veneration of the dead, memory of his mother, father, and nephew, usually from a religious experience, religious perspective; and second, Webern's broad and spirituality, spiritual, even pantheism, pantheistic sense of ''
Heimat ''Heimat'' () is a German word translating to 'home' or 'homeland'. The word has connotations specific to German culture, German society and specifically German Romanticism, German nationalism, German statehood and regionalism so that it ha ...
'' in the form of abstracted and idealized rural landscapes, such as that of the lost Preglhof esate or Alps, the Alps. In a stage play he wrote in October 1913, ''Tot'', Webern drew on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence (theology), correspondence to explore these concerns over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation. Johnson argues that the whole of Webern's music takes on the nature of such Scene (performing arts), dramatic and Tableau vivant, visual tableaux, if in a more abstract and formal manner in some of the late works. Melodies frequently begin and end on weak beats, settle into or arise out of Ostinato, ostinati, or otherwise dynamically and texturally emerge or fade away. Tonality, useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces, becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his textual selections for , especially from the poetry of Stefan George and Trakl. Expanding on the Orchestration#Mahler, orchestration of Mahler, Webern characteristically sought a colorful and novel but idiosyncratically fragile and intimate sound, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical , often in consistent association with certain lyrical topics, whether the female or an angelic voice as evoked by solo violin or the use of String harmonic, harmonics; luminosity or darkness as sought by different Voicing (music), voicings or the use of sul ponticello; absence, emptiness, or loneliness metaphorically through compressed range by contrast to fulfillment or (often spiritual) presence through registral expansion; the celestial and ethereal in the use of celesta, harp, glockenspiel; or angels and heaven, for example, in the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). For Webern especially, text-setting became a means of composing more than atonal aphorisms, but Schoenberg sought other means, "long ... yearning for a style for large forms ... to give personal things an objective, general form." From as early as 1906 Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern indulged a shared interest in Western esotericism, esotericism, Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg book), Swedenborgian mysticism, and Theosophy, reading Honoré de Balzac (''Louis Lambert (novel), Louis Lambert'' and ''Séraphîta'') and August Strindberg (''To Damascus, Till Damaskus'' and ''Jacob lutte'') as they explored ways forward in their own work. Gabriel, the protagonist of Schoenberg's semi-autobiographical ''Die Jakobsleiter'' (1914–1922, rev. 1944) begins by describing a Jacob's Ladder, journey: "whether right, whether left, forwards or backwards, uphill or down – one must keep on going without asking what lies ahead or behind." Webern interpreted this line as a metaphor for pitch space, as Schoenberg did later, ultimately considering ''Jakobsleiter'' a "real twelve-tone composition" for its opening hexachordal ostinato and referring to a "Scherzo [theme] ... which accidentally consisted of all the twelve tones," aware that "[a]n historian will probably one day find ... how enthusiastic [Webern and I] were about this." On the journey to composition with twelve tones, Webern revised many of his middle-period in the years after their apparent composition but before publication, increasingly prioritizing clarity of pitch relations, even against timbral effects, as Anne Shreffler and Felix Meyer have described.


1924–1945: Formal coherence and expansion

With the ''Drei Volkstexte'' (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, Webern's music is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations, and his commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. His tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries: a row may be divided into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as Melodic inversion, inversions and Retrograde (music), retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance (music), invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as ''Klangfarbenmelodie''. Webern's late cantatas seem to indicate new developments in style, which Webern himself noted ecstatically in letters to the Humpliks, or at least a thoroughgoing synthesis of the formal rigors of his mature instrumental works with the word painting of his ''lieder'' on a larger, orchestral scale. They are texturally somewhat denser and more homophony, homophonic at the structural level, surface through nonetheless counterpoint, contrapuntal polyphonic means, with "Schweigt auch die Welt" culminating in a twelve-tone simultaneity (music), simultaneity. An apparent third cantata (1944–1945), setting "Das Sonnenlicht spricht" from Jone's ''Lumen'' cycle, was left in his sketchbook, having been planned initially as a concerto.


Arrangements and orchestrations

In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of
Franz Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...
's various ''lieder'', giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from ''Rosamunde (Schubert), Rosamunde''), "Tränenregen" (from ''Die schöne Müllerin''), "Der Wegweiser" (from ''Winterreise''), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six ''Deutsche Tänze'' (''German Dances'') of 1824. For Schoenberg's
Society for Private Musical Performances The Society for Private Musical Performances (in German, the ) was an organization founded in Vienna in the Autumn of 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg with the intention of making carefully rehearsed and comprehensible performances of newly composed mus ...
in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 ''Schatz-Walzer'' (''Treasure Waltz'') of Johann Strauss II's ''Der Zigeunerbaron'' (''The Gypsy Baron'') for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged
Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
's ''Arbeiterchor'' (''Workers' Chorus'', c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the ''Amtliche 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"). The text, in English translation, reads 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." Liszt, initially inspired by his Hungarian Revolution of 1848, revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion.


Performance style

Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's ''Deutsche Tänze'' (arr. Webern) and Alban Berg, Berg's
Violin Concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...
under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores (including a specially marked score of the Variations for piano (Webern), Piano Variations), and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. Felix Galimir, of the Galimir Quartet, told ''The New York Times'' in 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." This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the ''hr-Sinfonieorchester'' is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work.


Reception, influence, and legacy

In 1947, Schoenberg remembered and expressed solidarity with Berg and Webern despite rumors of the latter's having "fallen into the Nazi trap": "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time 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, once perceived, 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." Krasner notes that this "puts 'Vienna's Three Modern Classicists' into historical perspective," summarizing it as "what bound us together was our idealism." In part because he had largely remained obscure and arcane during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased in the aftermath of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his acquiring "a saintly, visionary aura". This was made possible in large part by René Leibowitz as he championed, performed, promulgated, and published ''Schoenberg et son école'', but Theodor W. Adorno and others also contributed. When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Herbert Eimert, Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Stockhausen's journal ''Die Reihe'' was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by UE. It has been suggested that post-war composers' fascination with Webern's music was enabled by its apparent simplicity and concision facilitating musical analysis. Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductionism, reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Piet Mondrian, Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to ''Die Reihe'' Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the ''Darmstädter Tagblatt'' (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the ''Der Kurier'' was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and politics were not widely known or mooted, likely due to his personal associations in and Red Vienna, his Social exclusion, marginalization under fascism and ''Gleichschaltung'', his loyalty and assistance to his Jewish friends and colleagues (especially after ''Kristallnacht''), and his mysterious fate in the Aftermath of World War II#Immediate effects of World War II, immediate aftermath of World War II. Significantly as relates to his reception, Stravinsky noted that Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values. Somewhat independently and singularly, Luigi Dallapiccola found inspiration in Webern's lesser-known middle-period ''lieder'', with the 1953 ''Goethe-Lieder'' especially recalling Webern's Op. 16 in style. A later work, ''Dialoghi'' (1959–1960), testifies to his intimate familiarity with not only with Webern's procedures and works in particular, but also those of Schoenberg as well. Well into and beyond the 1960s, Webern's work continued to influence musicians even as far removed as Joel Thome and Frank Zappa, yet many post-war European musicians and scholars had already begun to look beyond as much as ''back'' at Webern: there was some rapprochement with Berg and advocacy for more engagement with the Expressionist music, expressionism of Webern's atonal works in contrast to some earlier post-Webernism. In Adorno's 1954 lecture "The Aging of the Neue Musik#Institutionalisation and the new musical beginning after 1945, New Music," he claimed that in the prevailing climate "artists like Berg or Webern would hardly be able to make it"; against the "static idea of music" and "Totalitarianism, total Dialectic of Enlightenment#Topics and themes, rationalization" of the "pointillist constructivists," he advocated for more Subject (philosophy), subjectivity, citing ''Wassily Kandinsky#Concerning the spiritual in art, 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." Even as the first scene of Pousseur's ''Votre Faust'' (1960–1968) quotes the opening of "Schweigt auch die Welt," dramatizing the composer Henri's analysis of Webern's Op. 31, it already has several elements of late modernism, late or postmodernism, with its extreme eclecticism, plurality of historically developed styles, Indeterminacy (music), mobile form, and polyvalent roles in the service of a Self-reference, self-reflexive theme of relativism, relative, Difference (philosophy), unstable Identity (philosophy), identity (traces perhaps of Berg, whose example Pousseur cites, from whose music he quotes in the second scene, and whose writings he translated into French in the 1950s). 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 Kammerkonzert (Berg), Chamber Concerto and echoing Adorno's praise for ''Lulu'', the première of which Boulez conducted in 1979 after its finished orchestration by Friedrich Cerha. Both Ferneyhough and Lachenmann sympathetically expanded upon and poetically went further than Webern in attention to the smallest of details and the use of ever more radically extended techniques: for example, Ferneyhough's 1967 Sonatas for string quartet comprise not only serial, but also atonal sections much in the style of Webern's Op. 9 yet more intensely sustained; and Lachenmann wrote in the 1985 essay, "Hearing [Hören] is Defenseless—without Listening [Hören]," of "a melody made of a ''single'' note [...] in the viola part" in mm. 2–4 of Webern's Op. 10, No. 4, amid "the mere ruins of the traditional linguistic context," in a comparison to his own 1969 ''Air'', in which even "the pure tone, now living in tonal exile, has in this new context no aesthetic advantage over pure noise." In the Communist Bloc, the music of the Second Viennese School proved an often bewildering or professionally dangerous but sometimes exciting or inspiring alternative to socialist realism, socialist realist art music, given access. Whereas Berg's ''Lyric Suite (Berg), Lyric Suite'', performed by the Kolisch Quartet at the 1927 Baden-Baden ISCM festival where Bartók performed his own Piano Sonata (Bartók), Piano Sonata, could inspire Bartók in his subsequent String Quartet No. 3 (Bartók), third and String Quartet No. 4 (Bartók), fourth string quartets and later Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók), Concerto for Orchestra, Second Viennese influence on composers behind the Iron Curtain was mediated by Resistance during World War II, anti-fascist and Anti-German sentiment#Postwar, anti-German sentiment and obstructed by Formalism (music)#Soviet Union, anti-formalist Cultural policy, cultural policies and Cold War separation more generally. In 1970 Ligeti explained, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution of 1956, uprising in Hungary, the influence of Webern initially predominated, bearing on Pál Kadosa, Endre Szervánszky, and György Kurtág. Among Czechs, Marek Kopelent, who discovered the Second Viennese School as an editor and was particularly taken by Webern, was ostracized and blacklisted for his avant-garde music at home and despaired, unable to attend performances of his own works abroad; while Pavel Blatný, who attended the and wrote music with serial techniques in the late 1960s, returned to tonality in Brno and was rewarded. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an Inner emigration, escape from the sociopolitical atmosphere of Stalinism, post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both Johann Sebastian Bach, JS Bach and Webern in particular; she emigrated to Germany in 1992. Webern's music remains polarizing and provocative within various community of practice, communities of musicians and scholars. Its legacy (or Western canon, canonic status) has been celebrated, confirmed, and challenged with recourse or reference to Cultural studies, culture, history, ideology, philosophy, politics, Social environment, social context, and public opinion or audience reception as a Critical theory, critical basis, ranging from the earlier interdisciplinary aesthetics and sociomusicology of Adorno and Ernst Bloch to the New Musicology of Susan McClary and more adjacently Richard Taruskin in the US. Complementing Formalism (music), formal musical analysis, which itself was enriched by David Lewin's work toward a more integrative and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenological approach, Julian Johnson worked toward a hermeneutics of Webern's music, building on the middle-period ''lieder'' Sketch (music), sketch studies of Felix Meyer and Anne Shreffler as well as the work of the Moldenhauers. Since the "Restoration of the 1980s," as Martin Kaltenecker termed a paradigm shift from structure more toward perception within the discourse of Neue Musik, New Music, challenges have been raised within Musicology#Historical musicology, historical musicology, prompting controversy and admonishments: Charles Rosen scorned a "kind of historical criticism ... avoiding any serious engagement with a work or style that one happens not to like"; Andreas Holzer warned of "the spread of post-factual tendencies in musicology"; and Pamela M. Potter cautioned that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon." Though noted for his polemicism, Taruskin's work on Neue Musik, New Music since and including the
Second Viennese School The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
; ; ; in particular was criticized not only by Holzer and Rosen, but also by Max Erwin, Larson Powell, , , and particularly Franklin Cox, who faulted him as an unreliable historian and "ideologist of tonal restoration," arguing that his "reactionary historicist" project opposed the Second Viennese School's "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admitted to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and noted that he was described as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In relation to post-Webernism more generally, Holzer warned of attempts "to place Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Darmstadt in a fascistoid corner or even identifying it as a US propaganda institution amid the Cold War" through "unbelievable distortions, exaggerations, reductions and propagation of clichés".


Recordings by Webern

* Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" * Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances


Notes


References


Bibliography

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Further reading

* Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. ''Anton Webern''. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. {{doi, 10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0238.{{subscription * Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (musicologist), Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015.
Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte
'. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. {{ISBN, 978-3-85151-083-6. * Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016.
Webern-Philologien
'. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. {{ISBN, 978-3-85151-084-3. * Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019.
Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert
'. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. {{ISBN, 978-3-85151-098-0. * Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In ''Composers of Tomorrow's Music'', by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. {{ISBN, 978-0-396-06286-8. * Forte, Allen. 1998. ''The Atonal Music of Anton Webern'' New Haven: Yale University Press. {{ISBN, 978-0-300-07352-2. * Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. {{ISBN, 978-2-213-63457-9. * Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015.
Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900
'. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. {{ISBN, 978-3-85151-082-9. * Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". ''Music Theory Spectrum'' 15, no. 2:173–204. {{doi, 10.2307/745813 * * Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. ''Anton von Webern Perspectives''. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. * Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". ''Neue Zeitschrift für Musik''151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. * Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012.
Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle
'. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. {{ISBN, 978-3-85151-080-5. * Perle, George. 1991. ''Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern''. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. * John Rockwell, Rockwell, John. 1983. ''All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century''. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. {{ISBN, 978-0-306-80750-3, {{ISBN, 978-0-306-80750-3. * Tsang, Lee. 2002. "''The Atonal Music of Anton Webern'' (1998) by Allen Forte". ''Music Analysis'' 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. * Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. ''Anton Webern''. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House.


External links

{{Commons category {{Wikiquote * {{IMSLP, id=Webern, Anton * {{ChoralWiki
Anton Webern
biography and works on the UE website (publisher)
Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe
(Complete Edition) {{Anton Webern {{Twelve-tone composers {{Second Viennese School {{Portal bar, Biography, Classical music {{Authority control {{DEFAULTSORT:Webern, Anton Von 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims