Anton Webern was an Austrian
composerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and
conductorConducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
. He was a member of the
Second Viennese SchoolThe Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
. As a student and significant follower of
Arnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, he became one of the best-known exponents of the
twelve-tone techniqueTwelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of pitch, rhythm and dynamics were formative in the musical technique later known as
total serialismIn music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
.
Biography
Webern was born in
ViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, as
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amelie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer — the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the
von in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. After spending much of his youth in
GrazThe more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
and
Klagenfurt-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
, Webern attended Vienna University from 1902. There he studied
musicologyMusicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
with
Guido AdlerGuido Adler was a Bohemian-Austrian musicologist and writer.His father Joachim, a physician, died of typhoid fever in 1857...
, writing his thesis on the
Choralis ConstantinusThe Choralis Constantinus is a collection of over 375 Gregorian chant-based polyphonic motets for the proper of the mass composed by Heinrich Isaac and his pupil Ludwig Senfl...
of
Heinrich IsaacHeinrich Isaac was a Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs , and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin des Prez, Isaac influenced the development of music in Germany...
. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years by employing palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials.
He studied composition under
Arnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, writing his
Passacaglia, Op. 1 as his graduation piece in 1908. He met
Alban BergAlban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
, who was also a pupil of Schoenberg's, and these two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. After graduating, he took a series of
conductingConducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
posts at theatres in Ischl, Teplitz,
DanzigGdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
, Stettin, and
PraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
before moving back to Vienna. There he helped run Schoenberg's
Society for Private Musical PerformancesThe Society for Private Musical Performances 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 available to genuinely interested members of the musical public...
from 1918 through 1922 and conducted the "Vienna Workers Symphony Orchestra" from 1922 to 1934.
Webern's music was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "
degenerate artDegenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...
" by the Nazi Party in Germany, even before the Austrian
AnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
of 1938. Although Webern had sharply attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, their intended publication did not take place at that time, which proved fortunate since this later "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences." As a result of official disapproval, he found it harder (though at no stage impossible) to earn a living, and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers,
Universal EditionUniversal Edition is a classical music publishing firm. Founded in 1901 in Vienna, and originally intended to provide the core classical works and educational works to the Austrian market...
.
It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist
Werner ReinhartWerner Reinhart was a Swiss industrialist, philanthropist, amateur clarinetist, and patron of composers and writers, particularly Igor Stravinsky and Rainer Maria Rilke...
that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his
Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30 in
WinterthurWinterthur is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people. In the local dialect and by its inhabitants, it is usually abbreviated to Winti...
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him.
He left Vienna near the end of the war, and moved to
MittersillMittersill 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 had a population of 5,464 in 2005.- Geography :...
in
SalzburgSalzburg is a state or Land of Austria with an area of 7,156 km2, located adjacent to the German border. It is also known as Salzburgerland, to distinguish it from its capital city, also named Salzburg...
, believing he would be safer there. On 15 September 1945, during the Allied occupation of Austria, he was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities, when, despite the curfew in effect, he stepped outside the house to enjoy a cigar so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren. The soldier responsible, army cook Pfc. Raymond Norwood Bell, was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955.
Webern was survived by his wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, and their three daughters. His only son, Peter, died on 14 February 1945 of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier.
Webern's music
Webern was not a prolific composer; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when
Pierre BoulezPierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. However, his influence on later composers, and particularly on the post-war avant garde, was immense. His mature works, using
Arnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
's
twelve-tone techniqueTwelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
, have a textural clarity and emotional coolness which greatly influenced composers such as
Pierre BoulezPierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
,
Luigi NonoLuigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, and
Karlheinz StockhausenKarlheinz Stockhausen 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. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
.
Like almost every composer who had a career of any length, Webern's music changed over time. However, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen
timbreIn music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
s, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing,
col legnoIn music for bowed string instruments, col legno, or more precisely col legno battuto , is an instruction to strike the string with the stick of the bow, rather than by drawing the hair of the bow across the strings. This results in a quiet but eerie percussive sound.Col legno is used in the final...
, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the
Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total.
Webern's earliest works are in a late
RomanticRomantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
style. They were neither published nor performed in his lifetime, though they are sometimes performed today. They include the
orchestraAn orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
l tone poem
Im Sommerwind (1904) and the
Langsamer Satz (1905) for
string quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
.
Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the
Passacaglia for orchestra (1908).
HarmonicallyIn music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the
orchestrationOrchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
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
canonsIn music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration . The initial melody is called the leader , while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower...
) and forms (the
Symphony, the
Concerto, the
String Trio and
String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral
Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language.
For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely
atonalAtonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. With the
Drei Geistliche Volkslieder (1925) he used Schoenberg's twelve tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The
String Trio (1927) was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve tone technique (the other pieces were
songIn music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s) and the first cast in a traditional musical form.
Webern's
tone rowIn music, a tone row or note row , also series and set, refers to a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets are sometimes found.-History and usage:Tone rows are the basis of...
s are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating 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
KlangfarbenmelodieKlangfarbenmelodie is a musical technique that involves distributing a musical line or melody to several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument, thereby adding color and texture to the melodic line...
.
Webern's last pieces seem to indicate another development in style. The two late
Cantatas, for example, use larger
ensemblesA musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
than earlier pieces, last longer (No. 1 around nine minutes; No. 2 around sixteen), and are texturally somewhat denser.
Recordings by Webern
- Webern conducts "Berg - Violin Concerto"
- Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances
Works with opus numbers
The works with opus numbers are the ones that Webern saw fit to have published in his own lifetime, plus a few late works published after his death. They constitute the main body of his work, although several pieces of juvenilia and a few mature pieces that do not have opus numbers are occasionally performed today.
- Op. 1, Passacaglia for orchestra (1908)
- Op. 2, Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen for a-cappella choir, on a poem by Stefan George
Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...
(1908)
- Op. 3, Fünf Lieder (Five Songs) for voice and piano, on Der Siebente Ring by Stefan George
Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...
(1907–08)
- Op. 4, Fünf Lieder for voice and piano, poems by Stefan George
Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...
(1908–09)
- Op. 5, Five Movements for string quartet (1909); version for string orchestra (1929)
- Op. 6, Six Pieces for large orchestra (1909–10, revised 1928)
- Op. 7, Four Pieces for violin and piano (1910)
- Op. 8, Zwei Lieder (Two Songs) for voice and 8 instruments, on poems by Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
(1910)
- Op. 9, Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913)
- Op. 10, Five Pieces for orchestra (1911–13)
- Op. 11, Three Little Pieces for cello and piano (1914)
- Op. 12, Vier Lieder (Four Songs) for voice and piano (1915–17)
- Op. 13, Vier Lieder for voice and orchestra (1914–18)
- Op. 14, Sechs Lieder (Six Songs) for voice, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin and cello on poems by Georg Trakl
Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.- Life and work :Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria...
(1917–21)
- Op. 15, Five Sacred Songs for voice and small ensemble (1917–22)
- Op. 16, Five Canons for high soprano, clarinet and bass clarinet (1923–24)
- Op. 17, Three Traditional Rhymes for voice, violin (doubling viola), clarinet and bass clarinet(1924)
- Op. 18, Drei Lieder (Three Songs) for voice, E-flat clarinet and guitar (1925)
- Op. 19, Zwei Lieder, for mixed choir, celesta, guitar, violin, clarinet and bass clarinet, on poems by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1926)
- Op. 20, String Trio (1927)
- Op. 21, Symphony (1928)
- Op. 22, Quartet for violin, clarinet, tenor saxophone and piano (1930)
- Op. 23, Drei Lieder for voice and piano, on Hildegard Jone's Viae inviae (1934)
- Op. 24, Concerto for Nine Instruments (1934)
- Op. 25, Drei Lieder for voice and piano, on poems by Hildegard Jone (1934–35)
- Op. 26, Das Augenlicht for mixed choir and orchestra, on a poem by Hildegard Jone (1935)
- Op. 27, Variations for piano
Variations for piano, op. 27, is a twelve-tone piece for piano composed by Anton Webern in 1936. It consists of three movements:# Sehr mäßig # Sehr schnell # Ruhig fließend...
(1936)
- Op. 28, String Quartet
The String Quartet, Op. 28 by Anton Webern is written for the standard string quartet group of two violins, viola and cello. It was the last piece of chamber music that Webern wrote The String Quartet, Op. 28 by Anton Webern is written for the standard string quartet group of two violins, viola and...
(1937–38)
- Op. 29, Cantata No. 1 for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra, on a poem by Hildegard Jone (1938–39)
- Op. 30, Variations for orchestra (1940)
- Op. 31, Cantata No. 2 for soprano, bass, choir and orchestra, on a poem by Hildegard Jone (1941–43)
Works without opus numbers
- Two Pieces for cello and piano (1899)
- Three Poems for voice and piano (1899–1902)
- Eight Early Songs for voice and piano (1901–03)
- Three Songs after Ferdinand Avenarius (1903–04)
- Im Sommerwind, idyl for large orchestra after a poem by Bruno Wille (1904)
- Langsamer Satz (Slow Movement) for string quartet (1905)
- String Quartet (1905)
- Piece for piano (1906)
- Rondo for piano (1906)
- Rondo for string quartet (1906)
- Five Songs after Richar Dehmel (1906–08)
- Piano Quintet (1907)
- Four Songs after Stefan George (1908–09)
- Five Pieces for orchestra (1913) - related to op. 10, first pub. 1971, edited by Friedrich Cerha
Friedrich Cerha is an Austrian composer and conductor.-Biography:Cerha was born in Vienna.He received his education at the Viennese Music Academy and at the University of Vienna...
- Three Songs for voice and orchestra (1913–14)
- Cello Sonata (1914)
- Piece for children for piano (1924)
- Piece for piano, in the tempo of a minuet (1925)
- Piece for string trio (1925)
Arrangements
- "Thränenregen", "Ihr Bild", Romance [from Rosamunde], "Der Wegweiser", and "Du bist die Ruh’", by Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, arranged for voice and orchestra (1903)
- Schatzwalzer
Schatz-Walzer op. 418 is a waltz by Johann Strauss II composed in 1885. The melodies from this waltz was drawn from Strauss' operetta Der Zigeunerbaron which premiered to critical acclaim on 24 October 1885....
by Johann Strauss IIJohann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
for string quartet, harmonium, and piano (1921)
- Chamber Symphony No. 1, op. 9, by Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, arranged for flute (or violin), clarinet (or viola), piano, violin, and cello (1922–23)
- Arbeiterchor by Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, arranged for bass solo, chorus, and orchestra (1924)
- Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) by Schubert (1824), orchestrated by Webern (1931)
- Fuga (Ricercata) a 6 voci [Fugue No. 2] from Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's "Musical Offering", orchestrated (1934–35)
Further reading
- Tsang, Lee (2002). "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis, 21/iii (October), 417–427.
Software
- WebernUhrWerk - generative music generator by Karlheinz Essl
Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser and composition teacher.- Biography :Essl was born in Vienna. His studies at the University of Music in Vienna included: composition , electro-acoustic music and double bass...
, based on Anton Webern's last twelve-tone row, commemorating his sudden death on 15 September 1945. - Free download for Mac OS X and Windows XP.
External links