Webern was arguably the first and certainly the last of the three to write music in anaphoristic andexpressionist style, reflecting his instincts and the idiosyncrasy of his compositional process.[4] He treated themes of loss, love, nature, and spirituality, working from personal experiences. Unhappily peripatetic and often assignedlight music oroperetta in his early conducting career, he aspired to conduct what was seen as more respectable,serious music at home in Vienna. Following Schoenberg's guidance, Webern attempted to write music of greater length during and after theirWorld War I service, relying on the structural support of texts in manyLieder.
He rose as a choirmaster and conductor, championingGustav Mahler's music inRed Vienna and abroad. With Schoenberg based in Berlin, Webern began writing music of increasing confidence, independence, and scale using twelve-tone technique.Marginalized as a "cultural Bolshevist" inFascist Austria andNazi Germany, he maintained "the path to the new music", enjoyed international recognition, and relied more on teaching[b] for income. He opposedfascist cultural positions but always espousedpan-Germanism and was torn, like divided friends and family, among uncertainties. His hope for moderate, stable, and successful governance ofAustria within Nazi Germany proved misplaced, and he helped Jewish friends emigrate and hide while repeatedly considering emigrating himself.
He began piano and sang opera with his mother Amalie (née Geer), a trained pianist and accomplished singer, danced with his sisters Rosa and Maria, and received drums, then a trumpet, and later a violin asChristmas gifts.[19] Local musicianEdwin Komauer also taught him piano, cello, and likelycounterpoint from Bach's music andcello suites.[20] The family playedchamber music, includingMozart,Schubert, andBeethoven, and Webern played in local orchestras.[21]
The voices proceed ... in [much] equality[, each with] its owndevelopment [as] a completely self-contained, separately comprehensible, wonderfully animated structural unit [...]. ...[C]anonic devices [are used] in the greatest profusion [with] the keenest observation of tone colourings in the variousregisters of thehuman voice [and] frequent ...interlacing of voices ... byleaps.[27]
I long for an artist in music such as Segantini was in painting ... far away from all turmoil of the world, in contemplation of theglaciers, of eternal ice and snow, of the sombre mountain giants. ... [A]nalpine storm, ... the radiance of the summer sun onflower-covered meadows—all these would have to be in the music, born ... of alpine solitude. That man would then be the Beethoven of our day.[32]
Adler pupilKarl Weigl brought Schoenberg'sPelleas und Melisande to class in 1903, riveting Webern, who attended performances of his songs andVerklärte Nacht in 1903–04.[35] In 1904, Webern triedHans Pfitzner's composition lessons in Berlin but left over attacks on Mahler and R. Strauss.[36] Adler admired and may have recommended Schoenberg,[37] or Webern may have seen hisSchwarzwald School newspaper ads before starting lessons in fall 1904, perhaps as his first Vienna pupil.[35]
Thus Webern met Berg as another Schoenberg pupil, and Schoenberg's brother-in-lawAlexander Zemlinsky, through whom he may have worked as an assistant coach at theVolksoper in Vienna (1906–1909).[38] Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern became lifelong friends following similar musical paths.[39] Adler, Jalowetz, and Webern played Schoenberg's quartets under the composer, accompanying Gutheil-Schoder in rehearsals forOp. 10.[40]
Also through Schoenberg, who painted and had a 1910 solo exhibition atHugo Heller [de]'s bookstore, Webern metGustav Klimt,Oskar Kokoschka,Max Oppenheimer (with whom he corresponded onich–Du terms),Egon Schiele, andEmil Stumpp.[41] In 1920, Webern wrote Berg about the "indescribable impression" Klimt's work made on him, "that of a luminous, tender, heavenly realm".[42][f] He also metKarl Kraus, whoselyrics he later set, but only to completion in Op. 13/i.[44]
1908–1918: Early adulthood in Austria-Hungary and German Empire
Webern married Wilhelmine "Minna" Mörtl in a 1911civil ceremony in Danzig. She had become pregnant in 1910 and feared disapproval, as they werecousins. Thus theCatholic Church only solemnized their lasting union in 1915, after three children.[45]
They met in 1902,[46] laterhiking along theKamp fromRosenburg-Mold toAllentsteig in 1905. He wooed her withJohn Ruskin essays (in German translation), dedicating hisLangsamer Satz to her. Webern diaried about their time together "with obvious literary aspirations":
We wandered [...]. The forest symphony resounded. ... A walk in the moonlight on flowery meadows—Then the night—"what the night gave to me, will long make me tremble."—Two souls had wed.[g]
[E]veryone knows ... it is always Sunday in Vienna ... one lives in a world of half-poetry which is very dangerous for the real thing. They can recognize a few waltzes byLanner and Strauss ... a few Viennese songs ... It is a well-known fact that Vienna has the finest cakes ... and the most cheerful, friendly people. ... But those who are condemned to live here cannot understand all this.
"What benefit ... if all operettas ... were destroyed", Webern told Diez in 1908.[54] But by 1912, he told Berg that Zeller'sVogelhändler was "quite nice" and Schoenberg that J. Strauss II'sNacht in Venedig was "such fine, delicate music. I now believe ... Strauss is a master."[55] A summer 1908 engagement withBad Ischl'sKurorchester [de] was "hell".[54] Webern walked out on an engagement inInnsbruck (1909), writing in distress to Schoenberg:
[A] young good-for-nothing ... my 'superior!' ... what do I have to do with such a theatre? ... do I have to perform all this filth?[56][i]
Webern wrote Zemlinsky seeking work at the Berlin or Vienna Volksoper instead.[58][j] He started atBad Teplitz's Civic Theater in early 1910, where the local news reported his "sensitive, devoted guidance" as conductor of Fall'sGeschiedene Frau, but he quit within months due to disagreements.[60] His repertoire likely included Fall'sDollarprinzessin, Lehár'sGraf von Luxemburg, O. Straus'sWalzertraum, J. Strauss II'sFledermaus, and Schumann'sManfred.[61] There were only 22 musicians in the orchestra, too few to performPuccini's operas, he noted.[61]
Webern then summered at the Preglhof, composing his Op. 7 and planning an opera.[62] In September, he attended theMunich premiere of Mahler'sSymphony of a Thousand and visited with his idol,[k] who gave Webern a sketch of "Lob der Kritik".[l] Webern then worked with Jalowetz as assistant conductor inDanzig (1910–1911), where he first saw the "almost frightening" ocean.[65] He conductedvon Flotow'sWintermärchen, George'sFörsterchristl, Jones'Geisha, Lehár'sLustige Witwe, Lortzing'sWaffenschmied, Offenbach'sBelle Hélène, and J. Strauss II'sZigeunerbaron.[66] He particularly enjoyed Offenbach'sContes d'Hoffmann and Rossini'sBarbiere di Siviglia, but only Jalowetz was allowed to conduct this more established repertoire.[67]
Webern soon expressed homesickness to Berg; he could not bear the separation from Schoenberg and their world in Vienna.[68] He returned after resigning in spring 1911, and the three werepallbearers at Mahler's funeral in May 1911.[69] Then in summer 1911, a neighbor's antisemitic abuse and aggression caused Schoenberg to quit work, abandon Vienna, and go with his family to stay with Zemlinsky on theStarnbergersee.[70] Webern and others fundraised for Schoenberg's return, circulating more than one hundred leaflets with forty-eight signatories, including G. Adler, H. Bahr, Klimt, Kraus, and R. Strauss, among others.[71][m] But Schoenberg was resolved to move to Berlin, and not for the first or last time, convinced of Vienna's fundamental hostility.[73]
Webern soon joined him (1910–1912), finishing no new music in his devoted work on Schoenberg's behalf, which entailed many editing and writing projects.[74] He gradually became tired, unhappy, and homesick.[74] He tried to persuade Schoenberg to return home to Vienna, continuing the fundraising campaign and lobbying for a position there for Schoenberg, but Schoenberg could not bear to return to theAkademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst due to his prior experiences in Vienna.[75] At the same time, Webern began a cycle of repeatedly quitting and being rehired by Zemlinsky at theDeutsches Landestheater Prague (1911–1918).[76]
He had a short-lived conducting post inStettin (1912–1913), which, as all the others, kept him from composing and alienated him.[77] On the verge of abreakdown, he wrote Berg shortly after arriving (Jul. 1912):[78]
I find myself under the dregs of mankind ... with ... absurd music; I'm ... seriously ill. My nerves torture me [...]. I want to be far away [...]. In the mountains. There everything is clear, the water, the air, the earth. Here everything is dismal. I'm poisoned by drinking the water.
Webern's father sold the Preglhof in 1912, and Webern mourned it as a "lostparadise".[79] He revisited it and the family grave in nearby Schwabegg his entire life, associating these places with the memory of his mother, whose 1906 loss profoundly affected him.[80] In July 1912, he confided in Schoenberg:
(right) Webern family grave at the cemetery inSchwabegg, on a meander spur of theDrava
I am overwhelmed with emotion when I imagine everything [...]. My daily way to the grave of my mother. The infinite mildness of the entire countryside, all the thousand things there. Now everything is over. ... If only you could ... have seen [...]. The seclusion, the quiet, the house, the forests, the garden, and the cemetery. About this time, I had always composed diligently.[81]
Shortly after the anniversary of his mother's death, he wrote Schoenberg in September 1912:[81]
When I read letters from my mother, I could die of longing for the places where all these things have occurred. How far back and ... beautiful. ... Often a ... soft ... radiance, a supernatural warmth falls upon me— ... from my mother.[81]
Childhood days and childhood home! It is that old song of Paradise. There are people for whom ... Paradise is never lost ... in them God's kingdom ... rises ... more ... in ... memory than ... ever ... in reality; ... children are poets and retrace their steps.[83]
Rosegger's account of his mother's death at the book's end ("An meine Mutter") resonated with Webern, who connected it to his Op. 6 orchestral pieces.[84] In a January 1913 letter to Schoenberg, Webern revealed that these pieces were a kind ofprogram music, each reflecting details and emotions tied to his mother's death.[84] He had written Berg in July 1912, "my compositions ... relate to the death of my mother", specifying in addition the "Passacaglia, [String] Quartet, most [early] songs, ... second Quartet, ... second [orchestral pieces, Op. 10] (with some exceptions)".[85][n]
Johnson contended that Webern understood his cultural origins with a maternal view of nature andHeimat, which became central themes in his music and thought.[87] He noted that Webern's deeply personal idea of a maternal homeland—built from memories of pilgrimages to his mother's grave, the "mild", "lost paradise" of home, and the "warmth" of her memory—reflected his sense of loss and his yearning for return.[88] Drawing loosely onV. Kofi Agawu's semiotic approach to classical music, specifically his idea ofmusical topics, Johnson held that all of Webern's music, though rarely directlyrepresentational, was enriched by its associative references and more specific musical and extra-musical meanings.[89] In this he claimed to echo Craft, Jalowetz, Krenek, the Moldenhauers, and Webern himself.[90]
In particular, Webern associated nature with his personal (often youthful and spiritual) experiences, forming a topical nexus that recurred in his diaries, letters, and music, sometimes explicitly in sketches and set texts. He frequented the surrounding mountains, summering inresort towns likeMürzzuschlag andbackpacking (sometimessummiting) theGaisstein,Grossglockner,Hochschober,Hochschwab, andSchneealpe (among others) throughout his life. Thealpine climate andföhn, glaciers,pine trees, andsprings "crystal clear down to the bottom" fascinated him. He treasured this time "up there, in the heights", where "one should stay".[91]
He collected and organized "mysterious" alpine herbs and cemetery flowers inpressed albums, and he tended gardens at his father's home in Klagenfurt and later at his own homes in theMödling District (first inMödling, then inMaria Enzersdorf).[92]Karl Amadeus Hartmann remembered that Webern gardened "as a devotion" to Goethe'sMetamorphosis of Plants, and Johnson drew a parallel between Webern's gardening and composing, emphasizing his connection to nature and his structured, methodical approach in both pursuits.[93] Johnson noted that gardens and cemeteries are alike in being cultivated, closed spaces of rebirth and quiet reflection.[94]
These habits and preoccupations endured in Webern's life andœuvre.[87] In 1933, Joseph Hueber recalled Webern stopped in a fragrantmeadow, dug his hands into the soil, and breathed in the flowers and grass before rising to ask: "Do you sense 'Him' ... as strongly as I, 'Him,Pan'?"[95] In 1934, Webern'slyricist and collaboratorHildegard Jone described his work as "filled ... with the endless love and delicacy of the memory of ... childhood". Webern told her, "through my work, all that is past becomes like a childhood".[96]
In 1912–1913, Webern had a breakdown and sawAlfred Adler, who noted his idealism and perfectionism.[97] There were many factors involved.[98] Webern had little time (mostly summers) to compose.[99] There were conflicts at work (e.g., he emphasized that a director called him a"little man").[100] His ambivalence toward sales-oriented popular music theater contributed ("I ... stir the sauce", he wrote).[100] "It appears ... improbable that I should remain with the theatre. It is ... terrible. ... I can hardly ... adjust to being away from home", he had written Schoenberg in 1910.[101] Miserably ill and alienated, he first had sought medical advice and taken rest at asanatorium inSemmering [de].[102] Adler later evaluated his symptoms aspsychogenic responses to unmet expectations.[97] Webern wrote Schoenberg that Adler'spsychoanalysis was helpful and insightful.[97]
AsWorld War I broke out and nationalist fervor swept Europe, Webern found it "inconceivable", he wrote Schoenberg in August 1914, "that the German Reich, and we along with it, should perish."[103] Yielding in his distrust ofProtestant Germany, he compared Catholic France to "cannibals" and expressed pan-German patriotism amid wartime propaganda.[104] He cited his "faith in the German spirit" as having "created, almost exclusively, the culture of mankind".[105] Despite his high regard of French classical music, especially Debussy's, Webern revered the tradition as centered on counterpoint and form, and as mainly German since Bach.[106]
Webern served intermittently for nearly two years.[107] The war cost him professional opportunities, much of his social life, and the necessary leisure time to compose (he completed only nineLieder).[107] Moving frequently and tiring,[108] he began to despair, explaining to Schoenberg in November 1916 that the reality of war was "Old Testament" and "'Eye for eye'", "as ifChrist had never existed".[109] Webern was discharged in December 1916 for myopia, which had disqualified him from frontline service.[110]
His 1917Lieder show that he reflected on his patriotism and processed his sorrow.[111] He treated the loss of life and, with the 1916 death ofFranz Joseph I of Austria, the end of an era.[112] In "Fahr hin, o Seel'", he selected a lament sung at a funeral in a Rosegger novel.[112] In "Wiese im Park", he selected a text from Kraus recognizing that the day was "dead","und alles ... so alt"[112] ("and everything ... so old"). Webern also set several disturbing poems ofGeorg Trakl, not all of which he could finish.[113] With uninterrupted contrapuntal density, by turns muscular and murmured, heword painted Trakl's "great cities" and "dying peoples", "leafless trees", "violent alarm", and "falling stars" in "Abendland III".[111]
During and after the end of the war, Webern, like other Austrians, contended with food shortages, insufficient heating, socioeconomic volatility, and geopolitical disaster in defeat.[114] He had considered retreating to the countryside and purchasing a farm since 1917, specifically as an asset better thanwar bonds at shielding his family's wealth from inflation.[115] (In the end, he lost all that remained of his family's wealth tohyperinflation by 1924.)[114] He proposed to Schoenberg that they might besmallholders together.[115]
Despite Schoenberg's and his father's advice that he not quit conducting, Webern followed to Schoenberg to Mödling in early 1918, hoping to be reunited with his mentor and to compose more.[116] But Webern's finances were so poor that he soon explored a "voluntary exile" to Prague again.[115] Nonetheless, he continued to raise funds, including his own, for Schoenberg,[115] with whom he spent every day.[117]
Yet soon after he arrived, Webern broke his friendship with Schoenberg.[118][o] The break was multifactorial[122] but involved Webern's dissatisfaction with his career[123] and financial turmoil.[124] Berg learned of the Weberns' ill temperaments and "latent antisemitism" from Schoenberg,[125][p] and noted that Schoenberg "wouldn't explain" further than "'Webern wants to go to Prague again'".[117] Bailey Puffett argued that Webern's actions in and after the 1930s suggested that he was not antisemitic, at least in his maturity.[130] She noted that Webern later wrote Schoenberg that he felt "a sense of the most vehement aversion" against German-speaking people who were.[131]
After meeting with Webern, Berg saw "the matter in a different light", considering Webern "by and large innocent" in light of what Webern said was Schoenberg's "kick in the teeth": after laying plans for a New Music society, Schoenberg angrily called Webern "secretive and deceitful" upon learning that Webern was instead considering Prague again.[132] They reconciled in October 1918, not long before Webern's father died in 1919.[133] Webern was changed by these events; he slowly began to grow more independent of Schoenberg, who was like a father to him.[134] For his part, Schoenberg was not infrequently dubious of Webern, who he still considered his closest friend.[135][q]
Webern stayed in Vienna and worked with Berg, Schoenberg, andErwin Stein at theSociety for Private Musical Performances (1918–1921), promotingnew music through performances and contests. Music included that ofBartók, Berg,Busoni,Debussy,[r]Korngold, Mahler,Novák,Ravel,Reger,Satie, Strauss,Stravinsky, and Webern himself. Webern wrote Berg about Stravinsky's "indescribably touching"Berceuses du chat and "glorious"Pribaoutki, which Schoenberg conducted at a sold-out 1919 Society concert.[137] There was perhaps some shared influence among Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern at this time.[138] The Society dissolved amid hyperinflation in 1921, having boasted some 320 members and sponsored more than a hundred concerts.[120]
Webern obtained work asmusic director of theWiener Schubertbund 1921, having made an excellent impression as the vocal coach Schoenberg recommended for their 1920 performance ofGurre-Lieder.[139] They nearly abandoned this project before Webern stepped in.[139] He led them in performances of Brahms, Mahler, Reger, and Schumann, among others.[139] But low salary, mandatory touring, and challenges to Webern's thorough rehearsals prompted him to resign in 1922.[139] He was also chorusmaster of the MödlingMännergesangverein[s] (1922–1926) until he resigned in controversy over hiring a Jewish soprano, Greta Wilheim, as a stand-in soloist for Schubert'sMirjams Siegesgesang.[140]
From 1922, Webern led the mixed-voice amateurSingverein der Sozialdemokratischen Kunstelle[t] andArbeiter-Sinfonie-Konzerte[u] throughDavid Josef Bach, Director of theSozialdemokratische Kunststelle.[141][v] Webern won DJ Bach's confidence with a 1922 performance of Mahler'sSymphony No. 3 that established his reputation, prompting Berg to praise him as "the greatest conductor since Mahler himself".[142][w] Webern's Mahler interpretations continued to be widely celebrated.[144][x] From 1927,RAVAG aired twenty-two of Webern's performances.[149]
Webern's finances were often precarious, even in his years of relative success. Relief came from family, friends, patrons, and prizes.[164] He twice received thePreis der Stadt Wien für Musik [de].[aa] To compose more, he sought income while trying not to overcommit himself as a conductor.[168] He contracted withUniversal Edition only after 1919, reaching better terms in 1927,[169] and he was not very ambitious or astute in business.[170] Even with a doctorate and Guido Adler's respect, he never secured a remunerative university position, whereas in 1925 Schoenberg was invited to thePrussian Academy of Arts, ending their seven years together in Mödling.[26]
In 1928, Berg celebrated the "lasting works" and successes of composers "whose point of departure was ... late Mahler, Reger, and Debussy and whose temporary end point is in ... Schoenberg" in their rise from "pitiful 'cliques'" to a large, diverse, international, and "irresistible movement".[176] But they were soonmarginalized andostracized in Central Europe with few exceptions,[177][af] and in 1929 Webern wrote Schoenberg that "it is getting worse and worse here".[179] He declined a RAVAG executive role, citing time constraints and fearing further affiliation with the Social Democrats.[180][ag]
Webern's music was performed and publicized more widely starting in the latter half of the 1920s.[182] Yet he found no great success as Berg enjoyed withWozzeck[183] nor as Schoenberg did, to a lesser extent, withPierrot lunaire or in time withVerklärte Nacht. HisSymphony, Op. 21, was performed as a chamber piece in New York by theLeague of Composers (1929) and separately in London at the1931 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival.Louis Krasner sensed some resentment, noting that Webern had "very little".[184] Krenek's impression was that Webern resented his financial hardships and lack of wider recognition.[162]
1933–1938: Perseverance inSchwarzes Wien (Austrofascist Vienna)
Stigmatized by his decade-long association with Social Democrats, Webern lost a promising domestic conducting career, which might have been better recorded.[189] He eventually abandoned efforts with what remained of the workers' choir in the form of the much constrainedFreie Typographia in 1935,[190] instead working as a UE editor andIGNM-Sektion Österreich [de] board member and president (1933–1938, 1945).[191]
By the late 1920s, antisemitism had become epidemic, and the socioculturally mixed milieu of Vienna's modern arts and entertainment, including the music of Webern, Schoenberg, Berg, and Mahler, was mocked as foreign and Jewish in aracialized sense, contrasting with what was touted as truly German (and typically conservative, traditional, or rural).[192][aj] Webern's admission to the Prussian Academy of Arts was withdrawn asAdolf Hitler rose in Germany,[186] and an AustrianGauleiter labeled Berg and Webern "Jewish" onBayerischer Rundfunk in 1933.[194][ak] In the late 1930s, theirs was exhibited as"Entartete Musik" in Nazi Germany[199][al] and later at theVienna Künstlerhaus inNazi Austria.[201]
Webern delivered an eight-lecture seriesDer Weg zur Neuen Musik[am] atRita Kurzmann-Leuchter [de]'s and her physician husband Rudolf Kurzman's home (Feb.–Apr. 1933).[203] He attacked fascistcultural policy, asking "What will come of our struggle?" He observed that "'cultural Bolshevism' is the name given to everything that is going on around Schoenberg, Berg, and myself (Krenek too)"[an] and warned, "Imagine what will be destroyed, wiped out, by this hate of culture!"[205] He lectured more at the Kurzmann-Leuchter home, privately in 1934–1935 onBeethoven's piano sonatas to about 40 attendees and later in 1937–1938.[206]
Persevering, Webern wrote Krenek that "art has its own laws ... if one wants to achieve something in it, only these laws and nothing else can have validity";[ao] upon completing Op. 26 (1935), he wrote DJ Bach, "I hope it is so good that (if people ever get to know it) they will declare me ready for aconcentration camp or aninsane asylum!"[208] The Vienna Philharmonic nearly refused to play Berg'sViolin Concerto in 1936.[ap]Peter Stadlen's 1937 Op. 27 premieres were the last Viennese Webern performances until after World War II.[210] The critical success ofHermann Scherchen's 1938 ISCM London Op. 26 premiere encouraged Webern to write more cantatas and reassured him after a cellist quit Op. 20 mid-performance, declaring it unplayable.[211]
Webern's milieu comprised increasingly vast differences.[212] Like most Austrians, he and his family wereCatholic, though not church regulars; Webern was perhaps devout if unorthodox.[213] They became politically divided.[aq] His friends (e.g., thenZionist Schoenberg,[ar]left-leaning Berg[as]) were of a mostly Jewish milieu fromlate Imperial to "red" (Social Democratic) Vienna.[221]Alma Mahler, Krenek,Willi Reich [de], and Stein preferred or supported the "lesser evil"[at] of theAustrofascists (or alignedItalian fascists)vis-à-vis the Nazis.[223] Presuming power would moderate Hitler, Webern mediated among friends with an optimistic or self-soothing complacency, exasperating those who were at risk.[224]
Webern found himself surrounded mostly by one side as Schoenbergimmigrated to the US (1933),Rudolf Ploderer died by suicide (1933),[au] Berg died (1935), and DJ Bach, among others (e.g., Greissle, Jalowetz, Krenek, Reich, Steuermann, Wellesz), fled or worse.[226] Webern immediately considered following Schoenberg to the US, which Schoenberg discouraged despite seeking opportunities there for Webern.[227] Schoenberg knew that Webern was deeply attached to home, and he told Webern that conditions in the US were poor, mentioning the ongoingGreat Depression.[228]
Webern's views ofNational Socialism have been variously described.[av] His published items[aw] reflected his audience or context.[231] Secondary literature reflected limited evidence or ideological orientations[ax] and admitted uncertainty.[233] Julie Brown noted hesitancy to approach the topic and echoed the Moldenhauers, considering the issue "vexed" and Webern a "political enigma".[234] Bailey Puffett considered Webern's politics "somewhat vague" and his situation "complex", noting that he seemed to avoid definitive political association as a practical strategy.[235] Webern's apparent sympathies with some of the Nazis' program later became a sensation in his reception, but the matter was often oversimplified or decontextualized and rested on limited evidence (mostly letters), Johnson wrote, sometimes with the larger aim of politicizing Webern's music and his musical language.[236]
Krasner and the Moldenhauers surmised Webern'scognitive dissonance, finding him "idealistic and rather naive".[237] In 1943 Kurt List described Webern as "utterly ignorant" and "perpetual[ly] confus[ed]" about politics, "a ready prey to the personal influence of family and friends".[ay] Johnson described him as "personally shy, a man of private feeling and essentiallyapolitical",[240] and as "prone toidentify with Nazi politics as ... other ... Austrians".[241] Webern may have believed that the Nazis shared his own ideals, Johnson wrote, explaining that "it is possible that ... naiveté, ... ignorance and ... adherence to his own beliefs allowed Webern to see in Nazi ideology only ... elements ... he wanted to find".[242]
Webern conducted nine concerts as aBBC Symphony visiting conductor (1929–1936). Atalkie on his first London visit inspired him to ask Steuermann about writingfilm music, and Steuermann wrote his relatives in the film industry,Salka Viertel andBerthold Viertel, for their suggestions.[243] For the BBC, Webern selected then little-known Mahler (including bothnocturnes from theSymphony No. 7 in 1934).[244] He insisted on rehearsing at the piano with vocalists and was criticized for coachingmusical phrasing.[244]
InBarcelona, he withdrew from the1936 world premiere of Berg's Violin Concerto, grief-stricken after Berg's death and overwhelmed by difficulties.[245] There Krasner recalled,
[Webern] pleaded and exhorted the players to feel the inner expressive content of one, two, or three notes at a time—rehearsing repeatedly a single motif, one bar of music and only finally, a two- or four-barphrase.
The two then played the concerto in London with BBC musicians, who rehearsed before Webern conducted.Kenneth Anthony Wright noted Webern's "funny little explanations of the varying dynamics and flexibility of tempo", but "every syllable and every gesture of Webern was understood and lovingly heeded", Krasner recalled. The musicians "all admired and respected Webern", according toSidonie Goossens. ButFelix Aprahamian,Benjamin Britten, andBerthold Goldschmidt criticized Webern's conducting, and BBC management did not invite him back after 1936.[245][az]
Krasner's last visit with Webern was interrupted byKurt Schuschnigg's broadcast speech that theAnschluss was imminent.[246] Krasner had been playing some of Schoenberg'sViolin Concerto for Webern and trying to convince him to write a sonata for solo violin.[247] When Webern turned on the radio and heard this speech, he urged Krasner to flee.[248] Because Webern's family included Nazis, Krasner wondered whether Webern had already known that the Anschluss was planned for that day.[249] He also wondered whether Webern's warning had been solely for his safety or whether it had also been to save Webern the embarrassment of the violinist's presence in the event of celebration at the Webern home.[250]
Much of Austria did celebrate.[251] But Webern made only a terse note of the Anschluss in his notebook without registering any clear emotion.[252] In fact, he wrote Jone and her husbandJosef Humplik asking not to be disturbed as he was "totally immersed" in work on Op. 28.[253] Thus, Bailey Puffett suggested that Webern may have received Krasner's visit as a distraction.[254]
By now,Hartmut Krones wrote, Webern likely realized his error in anticipating the Nazis' self-moderation.[186] Bailey Puffett proposed that Krasner, with the benefit of hindsight from the perspective of his 1987 account, may have resented Webern for "refusing to see the reality of Hitler's antisemitism", at least until after 1936.[254] That year, Webern had insisted that Krasner and he travel through Nazi Germany to stop at aMunich train station café, where Krasner said "anything untoward was the least likely to happen", in an attempt to demonstrate the lack of danger.[255]
Support for the Anschluss rested on antisemitism, economic prospects,[ba] and the idea of aGreater Germany.[257][bb] Under some duress,Theodor Innitzer ushered in Catholic support.[267] TheAustrian Nazis and Social Democrats, both outlawed, were linked in opposition to the Austrofascists.[268]Karl Renner supported unification as a matter ofself-determination before the years (1933–1938) ofGleichschaltung and Nazisoft power,[bc] and he and others now supported (or accepted as inevitable) the 1938 Anschluss.[270]Otto Bauer, in exile, expressed some acceptance with profound resignation and misgivings, having worked toward Austria's German incorporation sinceProvisional National Assembly's 1918 vote.[271] Webern had long shared in common pan-German sentiments, especially during wartime.[272] He also likely hoped to conduct again, securing a firmer future for his family under a new regime proclaiming itself "socialist" no less thannationalist.[273] According to what Josef Polnauer, a fellow early Schoenberg pupil, historian, and librarian, told the Moldenhauers, Webern's optimism was not dispelled until 1941.[274]
Krasner emphasized Webern's "naiveté" but acknowledged that he himself had been "foolhardy" as to the danger of antisemitism, recalling "read[ing] in the papers ... denials" and "want[ing] to see for myself" in 1938.[275][bd] Consensus had emerged on the center, left, and in some mainstream Jewish organizations that antisemitism was only a means to political power since its 1890s definition as the "socialism of fools".[277] TheFrankfurt School first treated it within the rubric ofclass conflict (Adorno began to consider it otherwise in his 1939 "Fragments on Wagner"),[278] andFranz Neumann briefly contended that the Nazis would "never allow a complete extermination of the Jews" in his 1942Behemoth (before revisions in 1944).[277]
Kristallnacht shocked Webern,[279] who thought that reports of Nazi atrocities were politicized, unreliable propaganda.[280] He visited and aided Jewish colleagues DJ Bach,Otto Jokl [de], Polnauer, and Hugo Winter.[279] For Jokl, a former Berg pupil, Webern wrote a recommendation letter to facilitate emigration. When that failed, Webern served as hisgodfather in a 1939baptism.[281] Polnauer, whose emigrationMark Brunswick, Schoenberg, and Webern were unable to secure,[282] managed to survivethe Holocaust as analbino; he later edited a 1959 UE publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Humplik and Jone.[283] Webern moved Humplik's 1929 gift of a Mahlerbust to his bedroom,[284] having toldFelix Greissle [de] in 1936 or 1937 that Mahler's time would come within a GermanKulturnation[285] and DJ Bach that "not all Germans are Nazis".[286]
With "almost all his friends and old pupils ... gone",[287] Webern found himself increasingly alone,[288] and his financial situation was poor. He talked to Polnauer about emigrating but was reluctant to leave home and family.[289] He entered a period of "inward emigration" and focused on composition,[290] writing to artist Franz Rederer in 1939, "We live completely withdrawn. I work a lot."[281] He corresponded extensively to maintain relationships, imploring his studentGeorge Robert to play Schoenberg in New York[291] and expressing his loneliness and isolation to Schoenberg.[292] Then war limited postal service,[293] disrupting their direct correspondence completely by 1941.
1939–1945: Hope and disillusionment during World War II
Webern's mature music was performed mostly outside theReich, where only his tonal music and arrangements were allowed as works not in the style of a"Judenknecht". His arrangement of two of Schubert'sGerman Dances was performed in Leipzig and broadcast in theReich and Fascist Italy (1941).[294] His Passacaglia was considered for a Viennese contemporary music festival in 1942,Karl Böhm orWilhelm Furtwängler conducting, but this did not happen.[294]Hans Rosbaud likely performed it inoccupied Strasbourg that year, andLuigi Dallapiccola sought to have it performed in Venice in 1943.[294]Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt planned Webern's arrangement of the six-voicericercar from Bach'sMusical Offering at theDeutsche Oper Berlin in 1943, but war intervened.[294]
In theReich, he met with former Society violistOthmar Steinbauer about a formal teaching role in Vienna in early 1940, but nothing materialized.[298] He lectured at the homes ofErwin Ratz andCarl Prohaska [de]'s widow Margaret (1940–1942).[299] Many private pupils came to him between 1940 and 1943, even from afar, among them briefly Hartmann.[300] Hartmann, who opposed the Nazis, remembered that Webern counseled him to respect authority, at least publicly, for the sake of order.[268]
Sharing in wartime public sentiment at the height of Hitler's popularity (spring 1940), Webern expressed high hopes, crediting him as "unique" and"singular"[be] for "the new state for which the seed was laid twenty years ago". These were patriotic letters to Joseph Hueber, an active soldier,baritone, close friend, andmountaineering companion who often sent Webern gifts.[301] Indeed, Hueber had just sent WebernMein Kampf.[bf]
Unaware ofStefan George's aversion to the Nazis, Webern rereadDas neue Reich [de] and marveled suggestively at the wartime leader envisioned therein, but "I am not taking a position!" he wrote active soldier, singer, and onetime Social Democrat, Hans Humpelstetter.[303] For Johnson, "Webern's own image of aneue Reich was never of this world; if his politics were ultimately complicitous it was largely because hisutopian apoliticism played so easily into ... thestatus quo."[304]
By Aug. 1940, Webern depended financially on his children.[305] He sought wartime emergency relief funds fromKünstlerhilfe Wien and theReichsmusikkammerKünstlerdank [de] (1940–1944), which he received despite indicating non-membership in the Nazi Party on an application.[306] Whether Webern everjoined the party was unknown.[307][bg] This represented his only income after 1942.[310] He nearly exhausted his savings by 1944.[310]
His 1943–1945 letters were strewn with references to bombings, death, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order, but several grandchildren were born.[311] In Dec. 1943, aged 60, he wrote from abarrack that he was working 6 am–5 pm as an air-raid protection police officer,conscripted into thewar effort.[311] He corresponded with Willi Reich aboutIGNM-Sektion Basel's concert marking his sixtieth, in whichPaul Baumgartner played Op. 27, Walter Kägi Op. 7, andAugust Wenzinger Op. 11. Gradmann-Lüscher sang both Opp. 3 and the world premiere of 23.[312] For Schoenberg's 70th birthday (1944), Webern asked Reich to convey "my most heartfelt remembrances, ... longing! ... hopes for a happy future!"[313] In Feb. 1945, Webern's only son Peter, intermittently conscripted since 1940,[314] was killed in an air attack; airstrike sirens interrupted the family's mourning at the funeral.[315]
Grave of Webern and his wife Minna at the cemetery inMittersill
The Weberns assisted Schoenberg's eldest son, Georg, during the war; with theRed Army's April 1945 arrival imminent, they gave him their Mödling apartment, the property and childhood home of Webern's son-in-law Benno Mattl.[bh] Georg later told Krasner that Webern "felt he'd betrayed his best friends."[317] The Weberns fled west, resorting to traveling partly on foot toMittersill to rejoin their family of "17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space".[318]
On the night of 15 Sept. 1945, Webern was outside smoking when he was shot and killed by a US soldier in an apparent accident.[319] He had been following Thomas Mann's work, which the Nazis had burned, noting in 1944 that Mann had finishedJoseph and His Brothers.[320] In his last notebook entry, Webern quotedRainer Maria Rilke: "Who speaks of victory? To endure is everything."[321][bi]
Webern's wife Minna suffered final years of grief, poverty, and loneliness as friends and family continued emigrating. She wished Webern had lived to see more success.[324] With the abolition ofEntartete Kunst policies,Alfred Schlee [de] solicited her for hidden manuscripts; thus Opp. 17, 24–25, and 29–31 were published.[324] She worked to get Webern's 1907 Piano Quintet published via Kurt List.[324]
In 1947 she wrote Diez, now in the US, that by 1945 Webern was "firmly resolved to go to England".[324] Likewise, in 1946 she wrote DJ Bach in London: "How difficult the last eight years had been for him. ... [H]e had only the one wish: to flee from this country. But one was caught, without a will of one's own. ... It was close to the limit of endurance what we had to suffer."[324] Minna died in 1949.[324]
Tell me, can one at all denote thinking and feeling as things entirely separable? I cannot imagine a sublime intellect without the ardor of emotion.
Webern wrote to Schoenberg (June 1910).[325]Theodor Adorno described Webern as "propound[ing] musical expressionism in its strictest sense, ... to such a point that it reverts of its own weight to a new objectivity".[326]
Webern's music was generally concise,organic, and parsimonious,[bj] with very smallmotifs,palindromes, andparameterization on both the micro- and macro-scale.[332] His idiosyncratic approach reflected affinities with Schoenberg, Mahler,[bk] Guido Adler andearly music; interest inesotericism andNaturphilosophie; and thorough perfectionism.[bl] He engaged with the work ofGoethe, Bach,[bm] and theFranco-Flemish School in addition to that of Wolf,Brahms,[bn] Wagner, Liszt,Schumann, Beethoven, Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), and Mozart.[347][bo] Stylistic shifts were not neatly coterminous with gradually developed technical devices, particularly in the case of his mid-periodLieder.[bp]
His music was also characteristically linear andsong-like.[355] Much of it (and Berg's[356] and Schoenberg's)[357] was for singing.[39][bq] Johnson described the song-likegestures of Op. 11/i.[360] In Webern's mid-periodLieder, some heard instrumentalizing of the voice[361] (often in relation to the clarinet)[362] representing yet some continuity withbel canto.[363][br] Lukas Näf described one of Webern's signature hairpins (on the Op. 21/i mm. 8–9bass clarinettenuto note) as amessa di voce requiring somerubato to execute faithfully.[365][bs] Adventuroustextures andtimbres, and melodies of wide leaps and sometimes extremeranges and registers were typical.[367]
For Johnson, Webern'srubato compressed Mahler's "'surging and ebbing'" tempi; this and Webern's dynamics indicated a "vestigial lyrical subjectivity."[368] Webern often set carefully chosen lyric poetry.[369] He related his music not only to nostalgia for the lost family and home of his youth, but also to his Alpinism and fascination withplant aromatics andmorphology.[370] He was compared to Mahler in his orchestration and semantic preoccupations (e.g., memory, landscapes, nature, loss, oftenCatholicmysticism).[371] In Jone, who he met with her husband Humplik via theHagenbund, Webern found a lyricist who shared his esoteric, natural, and spiritual interests. She provided texts for his late vocal works.[372]
Relatively few of Webern's works were published in his lifetime. Amid fascism andEmil Hertzka's passing, this included late as well as early works (in addition to others without opus numbers). His rediscovery prompted many publications, but some early works were unknown until after the work of the Moldenhauers well into the 1980s,[381] obscuring formative facets of his musical identity.[382] Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record Webern's music, the results fit on three CDs and the second time, six.[383][bx] Anhistorical edition of his music has remained in progress.
1899–1908: Formative juvenilia and emergence from study
Webern published littlejuvenilia; like Brahms, he was meticulous and self-conscious, revising extensively.[385] His earliest works were mostlyLieder on works ofRichard Dehmel,Gustav Falke, andTheodor Storm.[386] He set sevenFerdinand Avenarius poems on the "changing moods" of life and nature (1899–1904).[387] Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf were important models. With its brief, potent expressivity and utopianization of the natural world, the (German)RomanticLied had a lasting influence on Webern's musical aesthetic.[388] He never abandoned its lyricism, intimacy, and wistful or nostalgic topics, though his music became more abstract, idealized, and introverted.[386]
Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in thetone poemIm Sommerwind (1904), both afterBruno Wille'sidyll. In Webern'sSommerwind, Derrick Puffett found affinities with Strauss'sAlpensinfonie, Charpentier'sLouise, and Delius'sParis.
At the Preglhof in summer 1905, Webern wrote his tripartite, single-movement string quartet in a highlymodifiedsonata form, likely responding to Schoenberg'sOp. 7.[389] He quotedJakob Böhme in the preface[390] and mentioned the panels[by] of Segantini'sTrittico della natura[bz] as "Werden–Sein–Vergehen"[ca] in sketches.[391] Sebastian Wedler argued that this quartet bore the influence of Richard Strauss'sAlso Sprach Zarathustra in its germinal three-note motive, openingfugato of its third (development) section, andNietzschean reading (viaeternal recurrence) of Segantini's triptych.[392] In its opening harmonies,Allen Forte andHeinz-Klaus Metzger noted Webern's anticipation of Schoenberg'satonality inOp. 10.[393]
In 1906, Schoenberg assigned WebernBach chorales to harmonize and figure; Webern completed eighteen in a highly chromatic idiom.[394] Then the Passacaglia, Op. 1 (1908) was his graduation piece, and the Op. 2 choral canons soon followed. The passacaglia's chromaticharmonic language and less conventionalorchestration distinguished it from prior works; its form foreshadowed those of his later works.[395] Conducting the 1911 Danzig premiere of Op. 1 at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Schützenhaus [de], he paired it with Debussy's 1894Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune,Ludwig Thuille's 1896Romantische Ouvertüre, and Mahler's 1901–1904Kindertotenlieder in a poorly attendedModerner Abend[cb] concert. TheDanziger Zeitung [de]critic derided Op. 1 as an "insane experiment".[396]
In 1908 Webern also began an opera onMaeterlinck'sAlladine et Palomides [fr], of which only unfinished sketches remained,[397] and in 1912 he wrote Berg that he had finished one or more scenes for another planned but unrealized opera,Die sieben Prinzessinnen, on Maeterlinck'sLes Sept Princesses [fr].[398] He had been an opera enthusiast from his student days.[399] Debussy'sPelléas et Mélisande enraptured him twice in Dec. 1908 Berlin and again in 1911 Vienna.[400] As a vocal coach and opera conductor, he knew the repertoire "perfectly ... everycut, ...unmarkedcadenza, and in thecomic operas every theatrical joke".[401] He "adored" Mozart'sIl Seraglio and revered Strauss, predictingSalome would last. When in high spirits, Webern would sing bits of Lortzing'sZar und Zimmermann, a personal favorite. He expressed interest (toMax Deutsch) in writing an opera pending a good text and adequate time; in 1930, he asked Jone for "opera texts, or rather dramatic texts", planning cantatas instead.[402]
Spending summer 1909 with Webern (et al.) and seeing his Op. 5 manuscript reinvigorated Schoenberg's music, inspiring him to write Busoni: "... away with 'motivic working out.' Away with harmony as cement or bricks of a building. Harmony isexpression and nothing else. ... Away withPathos [and]protracted ten-ton scores ... . My music must bebrief. Concise!In two notes: not built, butexpressed!! ... no stylized and sterile protracted emotion. People are not like that" (Schoenberg's emphases).[403]
Webern's music, like Schoenberg's, was freely atonal after Op. 2. Some of their and Berg's music from this time was published inDer Blaue Reiter.[404] Schoenberg and Webern were so mutually influential, the former later joked, "I haven't the slightest idea who I am".[405] In Op. 5/iii, Webern borrowed from Schoenberg's Op. 10/ii. In Op. 5/iv, he borrowed from Schoenberg's Op. 10/iv setting of "Ich fühle luft von anderen planeten".[406][cc]
The first of Webern's innovative and increasingly extremely aphoristic Opp. 5–11 (1909–1914) radically influenced Schoenberg's Opp.11/iii[cd] and16–17 (and Berg's Opp.4–5).[408] Here,Martin Zenck [de] considered, Webern did not seek "the new ... in [music of] the past but in the future".[409] In writing the Op. 9bagatelles, Webern reflected in 1932, "I had the feeling that when the twelve notes had all been played the piece was over."[410] "[H]aving freed music from the shackles of tonality," Schoenberg wrote, he and his pupils believed "music could renounce motivic features".[411] This "intuitive aesthetic" arguably proved to be aspirational insofar as motives persisted in their music.[412]
Two enduring topics emerged in Webern's work: familial (especially maternal) loss andmemory, often involving somereligious experience; and abstractedlandscapes idealized asspiritual, evenpantheistic,Heimat (e.g., the Preglhof, theEastern Alps).[413] Webern explored these ideas explicitly in hisSymbolist stage playTot: Sechs Bilder für die Bühne (Dead: Six Scenes for the Stage, Oct. 1913).[414] The play comprises sixtableaux vivants[ce] set in the Alps, over the course of which a mother and father reflect on and come to terms with the loss of their son.[416][cf] The script specifies exact lighting, sounds, delivery, and gestures to match mood, time, and place, with birds, bells, and flowers as important elements of a still, holy world.[415] Webern drew so heavily from Swedenborg'stheological doctrine of correspondences, quoting fromVera Christiana Religio at length, that Schoenberg considered the play unoriginal.[419]
It is known that Webern sublimated these concerns into his music, particularly in the case of his Op. 6.[419] Confiding in Berg and Schoenberg, Webern told the latter some about the programmatic narrative for that music in Jan. 1913, as Schoenberg prepared to premiere it at what would become theSkandalkonzert that March:[420]
The first piece is to express my frame of mind ... already sensing the disaster, yet ... maintaining the hope that I would find my mother still alive. It was a beautiful day—for a minute I believed ... nothing had happened. Only during the train ride toCarinthia ... did I learn the truth. The third piece conveys ... the fragrance of theErica, which I gathered ... in the forest ... and ... laid on thebier.[cg] The fourth piece I later entitledmarcia funebre. Even today I do not understand my feelings as I walked behind the coffin to the cemetery. ... The evening ... was miraculous. With my wife I went ... again to the cemetery ... . I had the feeling of my mother's ... presence.
As Webern's music took on the character of such static dramaticovisualscenes, his pieces frequently culminated in the accumulation and amalgamation (often thedeveloping variation) of compositional material.Fragmented melodies frequently began and ended on weakbeats, settled into or emerged fromostinati, and were dynamically and texturally faded, mixed, or contrasted.[422] Tonality became less directional,functional, or narrative than tenuous, spatial, or symbolic as fit Webern's topics and literary settings. Stein thought that "his compositions should be understood as musicalvisions".[ch]Oliver Korte traced Webern'sKlangfelder[ci] to Mahler's "suspensions".[cj]
Expanding onMahler's orchestration, Webern linked colorful, novel, fragile, and intimate sounds, often nearly silent atppp, to lyrical topics: solo violin to female voice; closed or openvoicings, sometimessul ponticello, to dark or light respectively; compressed range to absence, emptiness, or loneliness; registral expansion to fulfillment, (spiritual) presence, or transcendence;[ck] celesta, harp, and glockenspiel to the celestial or ethereal; and trumpet, harp, andstring harmonics to angels or heaven.[424][cl]
With elements ofKabarett,[cm]neoclassicism,[cn] and ironic Romanticism[co] inPierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (1912), Schoenberg began[cp] to distance himself from Webern's and latterly Berg's aphoristic expressionism, which provoked theSkandalkonzert. Alma recalled Schoenberg telling her andFranz Werfel "how much he was suffering under the dangerous influence of Webern", drawing on "all his strength to extricate himself from it".[425]
During and afterWorld War I (1914–1926) Webern worked on some fifty-six songs.[428] He finished thirty-two, ordered into sets (in ways that do not always align with their chronology) as Opp. 12–19.[428] Schoenberg's recent vocal music had been motivated by the idea that "absolute purity" in composition couldn't be sustained,[429] and Webern took Schoenberg's advice to write songs as a means of composing something more substantial than aphorisms, often making earnest settings of folk, lyric, or spiritual texts.[430] The first of these mid-periodLieder was an unfinished setting of a passage ("In einer lichten Rose ...") from Dante'sParadiso,Canto XXXI.[431]
By comparison to melodic "atomization" in Op. 11,Walter Kolneder noted relatively "long arcs" melodic writing in Op. 12[432] and polyphonicpart writing to "control the ... expression" in Opp. 12–16 more generally.[433] "How much I owe to yourPierrot", Webern told Schoenberg after setting Trakl's "Abendland III" (Op. 14/iv),[434] in which, distinctly, there was no silence until a pause at the concluding gesture. Thecontrapuntal procedures andnonstandard ensemble ofPierrot are both evident in Webern's Opp. 14–16.[435]
Schoenberg "yearn[ed] for a style for large forms ... to give personal things an objective, general form."[cr] Berg, Webern, and he had indulged their shared interest inSwedenborgian mysticism andTheosophy since 1906, reading Balzac'sLouis Lambert andSéraphîta and Strindberg'sTill Damaskus andJacob lutte.Gabriel, protagonist of Schoenberg's semi-autobiographicalDie Jakobsleiter (1914–1922, rev. 1944)[cs] described ajourney: "whether right, whether left, forwards or backwards, uphill or down – one must keep on going without asking what lies ahead or behind",[ct] which Webern interpreted as aconceptual metaphor for (twelve-tone)pitch space.[442] Schoenberg later reflected on "how enthusiastic we were about this."[cu]
On the journey to composition with twelve tones, Webern revised many of his mid-periodLieder in the years after their apparent composition but before publication, increasingly prioritizing clarity of pitch relations, even against timbral effects, asAnne C. Shreffler[444] and Felix Meyer described. His and Schoenberg's music had long been marked by its contrapuntal rigor, formal schemes, systematic pitch organization, and rich motivic design, all of which they found in the music of Brahms before them.[445] Webern had written music preoccupied with the idea of dodecaphony since at least thetotal chromaticism of his Op. 9 bagatelles (1911).[446] and Op. 11 cello pieces (1914).[447][cv] He began preparing these aphoristic works for publication while composing most of his mid-periodLieder, which may have reoriented him to his own lyricism.[449]
There are twelve-tone sets with repeated notes at the start of Op. 12/i and in some bars of Op. 12/iv, in addition to many ten- and eleven-tone sets throughout Op. 12.[450] Webern wrote to Jalowetz in 1922 about Schoenberg's lectures on "a new type ofmotivic work", one that "unfolds the entire development of, if I may say so,our technique (harmony, etc.)".[451] It was "almost everything that has occupied me for about ten years", Webern continued.[452] He regarded Schoenberg'stransformation of twelve-tone rows as the "solution" to their compositional concerns.[453] In Op. 15/iv (1922), Webern first used a tone row (in the voice's opening twelve notes), chartedthe four basic row forms, and integratedtri- andtetrachords into the harmonic and melodic texture.[454] He systematically usedtwelve-tone technique for the first time in Op. 16/iv–v (1924).[455]
An excerpt (mm. 49–59) from the first movement of Webern's String Trio, Op. 20. At 0:07–0:18 in this excerpt (mm. 51–56), there are repeatedfigures infixed (or "frozen") register, comprising the first B section of this movement's seven-part ABACABArondo.[456] Kathryn Bailey Puffett likened them tobell ringers' technique inringing changes.[457]
With Schoenberg leaving Mödling in 1925 and this compositional approach at his disposal, Webern obtained more artistic autonomy and aspired to write in larger forms, expanding on the extreme concentration of expression and material in his earlier music.[458] Until theKinderstück for piano (1924, intended as one of a set),Klavierstück (1925), andSatz for string trio (1925), Webern had finished nothing butLieder since a 1914 cello sonata.[459][cw] The 1926–1927 String Trio, Op. 20, was his first large-scale non-vocal work in more than a decade. For its 1927 publication, Webern helped Stein write an introduction emphasizing continuity with tradition:[461]
The principle of developing a movement by variation of motives and themes is the same as with the classical masters ... [only] varied more radically here ... . One 'tone series' furnishes the basic material ... . The parts are composed in amosaic-like manner ...
Webern's large-scale, non-vocal music in more traditional genres,[cy] written from 1926 to 1940, has been celebrated as his most rigorous and abstract music.[465] Yet he always wrote his music and tried his new compositional procedures with concern for (or at least some latent reference to) expressivity and representation.[466][cz] In sketches for his Op. 22 quartet, Webern conceived of his themes in programmatic association with his experiences—as an "outlook into the highest region" or a "coolness of early spring (Anninger,[da] first flora,primroses,anemones,pasqueflowers)", for example.[471] Studying his compositional materials and sketches, Bailey Puffett wrote,[472]
... [Webern] seems perhaps not ... a prodigy whose music was the result of reasoned calculations [but a composer] who used his row tables as Stravinsky used his piano, to reveal wonderful surprises ... [like] he found on his walks in the Alps.
In Webern's late cantatas and songs,[db]George Rochberg observed, "the principles of 'the structural spatial dimension' ... join[ed] forces with lyrico-dramatic demands".[474] Specifically in his cantatas, Bailey Puffett wrote, Webern synthesized the rigorous style of his mature instrumental works with the word painting of hisLieder on an orchestral scale.[475] Webern qualified the apparent connection between his cantatas and Bach's as general and referred to connections between the second cantata and the music of theFranco-Flemish School.[476] His textures became somewhat denser yet morehomophonic at the surface through nonethelesscontrapuntal polyphonic means.[477] In Op. 31/i he alternated lines andpoints, culminating twice[dc] in twelve-notesimultaneities.[478]
At his death he left sketches for the movement of an apparent third cantata (1944–1945), first planned as a concerto, setting "Das Sonnenlicht spricht" from Jone'sLumen cycle.[479]
In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated five or more SchubertLieder for an appropriately Schubertian orchestra (strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns). Among these were "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze fromRosamunde), "Tränenregen" (fromDie schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (fromWinterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild".[480]
After attendingHugo Wolf's funeral and memorial concert (1903), he arranged threeLieder for a larger orchestra, adding brass, harp, and percussion to the Schubertian orchestra. He chose "Lebe wohl", "Der Knabe und das Immlein", and "Denk es, o Seele", of which only the latter was finished or wholly survived.[481]
In 1924 Webern arranged Liszt'sArbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848)[482] for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; thus Liszt's work was finally premièred[dd] when Webern conducted the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir (13 and 14 March 1925). A review in theWiener 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").[181] The text (in English translation) read in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/All who create things great or small."
In orchestrating the six-voice ricercar from Bach'sMusical Offering, Webern timbrally defined the internal organization (or latent subsets) of the Bach'ssubject.[484] Joseph N. Straus argued that Webern (and other modernists) effectively recomposed earlier music, "projecting motivic density" onto tradition.[485] After more conservatively orchestrating two of Schubert's 1824Six German Dances on UE commission in 1931, he wrote Schoenberg:
I took pains to remain on the solid ground of classical ideas of instrumentation, yet to place them into the service ofour idea, i.e., as a means toward the greatest possible clarification of thought and context.[de]
Webern's music was generally considered difficult by performers and inaccessible by listeners alike.[487] "To the limited extent that it was regarded",Milton Babbitt observed, it represented "the ultimate in hermetic, specialized, and idiosyncratic composition".[488]
Composers and performers first tended to take Webern's work, with its residualpost-Romanticism and initial expressionism, in mostlyformalist directions with a certainliteralism, departing from Webern's own practices and preferences in extrapolating from elements of his late style. This became known as post-Webernism.[489] A richer, morehistorically informed understanding of Webern's music and his performance practice began to emerge in the latter half of the 20th century as scholars, especially the Moldenhauers, sought and archivedsketches, letters, lectures, recordings, and other articles of Webern's (and others') estates.[df]
In theimmediate aftermath of World War II, Webern's marginalization underGleichschaltung was appreciated, but his pan-Germanism, politics, and social attitudes (especially regarding antisemitism) were not as known or often mooted.[490] For many, like Stravinsky, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, but for others the matter was less simple.[dg]
Eric Simon ... related ... : 'Webern was obviously upset by Klemperer's sober time-beating. ... [T]o the concert master [he] said: "... the phrase there ... must be playedTiiiiiiiiiii-aaaaaaaaa." Klemperer, overhearing ... said sarcastically: "... [N]ow you probably know exactly how you have to play the passage!"'Peter Stadlen ... [described Webern]'s reaction after the performance: ... '"A high note, a low note, a note in the middle—like the music of a madman!"'
The Moldenhauers detailed Webern's reaction toOtto Klemperer's 1936 Vienna performance of his Symphony (1928), Op. 21, which Webern played on piano for Klemperer "with ... intensity and fanaticism ... passionately".[492]
Webern notatedarticulations,dynamics,tempo rubato, and othermusical expressions, coaching performers to adhere to these instructions but urging them to maximize expressivity throughmusical phrasing.[492][dh] This was supported by personal accounts, letters, and extant recordings of Schubert'sDeutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) andBerg'sViolin Concerto under Webern's direction.Ian Pace consideredPeter Stadlen's account of Webern's coaching forOp. 27 as indicating Webern's "desire for an extremely flexible, highly diaphanous, and almost expressively overloaded approach".[494][di]
This aspect of Webern's work was often overlooked in his immediate post-war reception,[496] which was roughly coterminous with theearly music revival. Stravinsky engaged with Webern andRenaissance music in his later music; his amanuensis Craft performed Webern as well asMonteverdi,Schütz,Gabrieli, andTallis.[497] Many musicians performed "music that is at the same time oldand new", asNicholas Cook and Anthony Pople glossed it and asRichard Taruskin addressed.J. Peter Burkholder noted early and new music audience overlap.[498]
Felix Galimir of the Galimir Quartet toldThe New York Times (1981): "Berg asked for enormous correctness in the performance of his music. But the moment this was achieved, he asked for a very Romanticized treatment. Webern, you know, was also terribly Romantic—as a person, and when he conducted. Everything was almost over-sentimentalized. It was entirely different from what we have been led to believe today. His music should be played very freely, very emotionally."[499]
Many artists portrayed Webern (often from life) in their work. Kokoschka (1912), Schiele (1917 and 1918),B. F. Dolbin [de] (1920 and 1924), and Rederer (1934) made drawings of him. Oppenheimer (1908), Kokoschka (1914), andTom von Dreger [de] (1934) painted him. Stumpp made two lithographs of him (1927). Humplik twice sculpted him (1927 and 1928). Jone variously portrayed him (1943 lithograph, several posthumous drawings, 1945 oil painting). Rederer made a large woodcut of him (1964).[500]
Schoenberg admired Webern's concision, writing in the foreword to Op. 9 upon its 1924 publication: "to express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath—such concentration can only be present in proportion to the absence of self-indulgence".[501] But Berg joked about Webern's brevity.Hendrik Andriessen found Webern's music "pitiful" in this regard.[502] In their second (1925)Abbruch[dj] self-parody,Anbruch [de][dk] editors jested that "Webern's" (Mahler's) "extensive"Symphony of a Thousand had to be abbreviated.[dl]
Felix Khuner remembered Webern was "just as revolutionary" as Schoenberg.[503] In 1927,Hans Mersmann wrote that "Webern's music shows the frontiers and ... limits of a development which tried to outgrow Schoenberg's work."[504]
Identifying with Webern as a "solitary soul" amid 1940s wartime fascism,[505] Dallapiccola independently and somewhat singularly[dm] found inspiration especially in Webern's lesser-known mid-periodLieder, blending its ethereal qualities and Viennese expressionism withbel canto.[506] Stunned by Webern's Op. 24 at its 1935 ISCM festival world première under Jalowetz in Prague, Dallapiccola's impression was of unsurpassable "aesthetic and stylistic unity".[507] He dedicatedSex carmina alcaei[dn] "with humility and devotion" to Webern, who he met in 1942 through Schlee, coming away surprised at Webern's emphasis on "our great Central European tradition."[508] Dallapiccola's 1953Goethe-lieder especially recall Webern's Op. 16 in style.[509]
In 1947, Schoenberg remembered and stood firm with Berg and Webern despite rumors of the latter's having "fallen into the Nazi trap":[do] "... [F]orget all that might have ... divided us. For there remains for our future what could only have begun to be realized posthumously: One will have to consider us three—Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern—as a unity, a oneness, because we believed in ideals ... with intensity and selfless devotion; nor would we ever have been deterred from them, even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us."[dp] For Krasner this put "'Vienna's Three Modern Classicists' into historical perspective". He summarized it as "what bound us together was our idealism."[510]
Webern's death should be a day of mourning for any receptive musician. We must hail ... this great ... a real hero. Doomed to ... failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference he ... kept on cutting ... dazzling diamonds, the mines of which he had ... perfect knowledge.
After World War II, there was unprecedented engagement with Webern's music. It came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, especially at theDarmstädter Ferienkurse.[515]René Leibowitz performed, promulgated, and publishedSchoenberg et son école;[516] Adorno,[517]Herbert Eimert, Scherchen,[518] and others contributed. Composers and students[dr] listened in a quasi-religious trance to Peter Stadlen's 1948 Op. 27 performance.[519]
In the US, Babbitt[522] and initially Rochberg[523] found more in Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice.Elliott Carter's andAaron Copland's critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm and fascination nonetheless.[524] Craft fruitfully reintroduced Stravinsky to Webern's music, without which Stravinsky's late works would have taken different shape. Stravinsky staked his contract withColumbia Records to see Webern's then known music first both recorded and widely distributed.[525] Stravinsky lauded Webern's "not yet canonized art" in 1959.[526]
Gottfried Michael Koenig suggested some early interest in Webern's music may have been that its concision and apparent simplicity facilitated didacticmusical analysis.Robert Beyer [de] criticized serial approaches to Webern's music asreductive, narrowly focused more on Webern's procedures than his music while neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28.[528] Webern's music sounded like "aMondrian canvas", "crude and unfinished", toKarel Goeyvaerts.[529]Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski criticized some Darmstadt music as "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing" (Darmstädter Tagblatt [de], 1959); aDer Kurier article of his was headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at".[530]
[H]ermetic constructivism seems infused with intense emotion, ... diffused across the ... surface of the music. Gone is the mono-directional thrust of Classical and Romantic music; in its place a world of rotations and reflections, opening myriad paths for the listener to trace through textures of luminous clarity yet beguiling ambiguity.
George Benjamin described Webern's Op. 21.[531] Many[dt] noted floating, spatial, static, orsuspended qualities in some of Webern's music. Johnson noted spatial metaphors.[534]
Through late 1950s onward, Webern's work reached musicians as far removed asFrank Zappa,[535] yet many post-war European musicians and scholars had already begun to look beyond[536] as much asback at Webern in his context. Nono advocated for a more humanistic understanding of Webern's music.[537]
Adorno lectured that in the prevailing climate "artists like Berg or Webern would hardly be able to make it" ("The Aging of the New Music", 1954). Against the "static idea of music" and "totalrationalization" of the "pointillist constructivists," he advocated for moresubjectivity, citingÜber das Geistige in der Kunst (1911), in whichWassily Kandinsky wrote: "Schoenberg's [expressionist] music leads us to where musical experience is a matter not of the ear, but of the soul—and from this point begins the music of the future."
In the 1960s, many began to describe Webern and his like as a "dead end".[538][du] Rochberg felt "Webern's music leaves his followers no new, unexplored territory."[541] Stravinsky judged Webern "too original ... too purely himself. ... [T]he entire world had to imitate him [and] fail; of course it will blame Webern"; he blamed post-Webernism: "[T]he music now being charged to his name can neither diminish his strength nor stale his perfection."[542]
InVotre Faust (1960–1968), Pousseur quoted and his protagonist Henri analyzed Webern's Op. 31. Yet there were already several elements oflate orpostmodernism (e.g.,eclecticism of historical styles,mobile form, polyvalent roles).[543] This coincided with a wider rapprochement with Berg,[544] whose example Pousseur cited,[545] from whose music he also quoted, and whose writings he translated into French in the 1950s.[546] Boulez was "thrilled" by Berg's "universe ... never completed, always in expansion—a world so ... inexhaustible," referring to the rigorously organized, only partly twelve-toneChamber Concerto.[dv]
Engaging with Webern's atonal works by some contrast to earlier post-Webernism, bothFerneyhough andLachenmann expanded upon and went further than Webern in attention to the smallest of details and the use of ever more radicallyextended techniques. Ferneyhough's 1967 Sonatas for string quartet included atonal sections much in the style of Webern's Op. 9, yet more intensely sustained. In a comparison to his own 1969Air, Lachenmann wrote of "a melody made of asingle note ... in the viola part" of Webern's Op. 10/iv (mm. 2–4) amid "the mere ruins of the traditional linguistic context," observing that "the pure tone, now living in tonal exile, has in this new context no aesthetic advantage over pure noise" ("Hearing [Hören] is Defenseless—without Listening [Hören]", 1985).
Webern's influence predominated after theHungarian Revolution of 1956, bearing onPál Kadosa,Endre Szervánszky, andGyörgy Kurtág.[552] AmongCzechs,Pavel Blatný attended theDarmstädter Ferienkurse and wrote music with serial techniques in the late 1960s. He returned to tonality inBrno and was rewarded.[553]Marek Kopelent discovered the Second Viennese as an editor and was particularly taken by Webern.[554] Kopelent was blacklisted for his music and despaired, unable to attend international performances of his work.[555]
InSoviet Music,Marcel Rubin criticized "Webern and His Followers" (1959), by contrast to Berg and Schoenberg, for going too far.[560]Alfred Schnittke complained in an open letter (1961) of composers' restricted education.[561] Through Grigory Shneyerson's anti-formalistOn Music Living and Dead (1960) andJohannes Paul Thilman's anti-modernist "On the Dodecaphonic Method of Composition" (1958), many (e.g.,Eduard Artemyev,Victor Ekimovsky,Vladimir Martynov,Boris Tischenko[dx]) ironically learned more about what had been and even was still forbidden.[563] Kruschchev warned, "dodecaphonic music, music of noises ... this cacophonic music we totally reject. Our people cannot include such trash".[564]
ThroughAndrei Volkonsky,Lydia Davydova recalled, Schoenberg's and Webern's music came to Russia alongsideRenaissance and earlyBaroque music.[565] Tischenko remembered that in the 1960s, Volkonsky "was the first swallow of the avant-garde. [T]hose who came after him ... already followed in his tracks. I consider [him] the discoverer."[565]Edison Denisov described the 1960s as his "second conservatory", crediting Volkonsky not only for introducing Webern, but alsoGesualdo.[566]
Webern's legacy, contested in the "serial wars",[ea] remained subject topolemic vicissitudes.Musicologists quarreled[575][eb] amid the "Restoration of the 1980s", as Martin Kaltenecker termed aparadigm shift from structure to perception within musicological discourse.[ec]Charles Rosen scorned "historical criticism ... avoiding any serious engagement with a work or style ... one happens not to like".[576] Andreas Holzer warned of "post-factual tendencies".[577][ed] Pamela M. Potter advised considering "the complexity of ... day-to-day existence" under Nazism, partly in considering the relevance of composers' politics to theircanonic status.[579] MeanwhileAllen Forte and Bailey Puffett formallyanalyzed Webern's atonal and twelve-toneœuvres respectively.
Tim Page noted less formalist readings of Webern's work at his 1983 birth centenary.[580] The occasion "went almost unmarked",Glenn Watkins observed in the United States, "a fate hardly imaginable for Berg [on his] 1985 [centenary]". After Webern's mid-century "meteoric ascension and ultimate canonization",[581] Watkins described "quick shifts of interest" tapering to neglect.[582] Webern's music was established but infrequent instandard (repeating) orchestralrepertoire.[583][ee] Hisœuvre was played at theVenice Festival of Contemporary Music (1983),[587]Juilliard (1995), and theVienna Festival (2004), echoing six international festivals in his name (1962–1978).[ef] In some obscurity (1941 or 1942), Webern had been quietly sure that "in the future even the postman will whistle my melodies!"[589] But many did not acquire such anaesthetic taste.[590][eg] He remained polarizing and provocative.[598][eh]
Noting this aspect of his reception, Johnson described Webern's "almost unique position in the canon of Western composers".[600] Christian Thorau argued Webern's innovations impeded his "exoterischen Kanonisierung".[601][ei] By contrast to the "concert canon", Shreffler considered Webern's better standing in a "separate canon" of technical and formal innovation.[602][ej] Burkholder argued that music of the "historicist tradition",[ek] including Webern's, was secure in "a musical museum", "for that is what the concert hall has become".[608][el] Mark Berry described Webern, already among Boulez's "big five", as one of five "canonical pillars of classic historical early twentieth-century modernism".[em] David H. Miller suggested Webern "achieved a certain kind of acceptance and canonization".[615]
Pascal Decroupet observed an unquestioned "canon of polarizations" in prior histories.[638][es] Johnson noted the "co-existence and interaction of diverse stylistic practices" with "remarkable similarities", challenging "conservative and progressive" campism[641] and decenteringmusicology's technicalperiodizations[642] via thelongue durée ofglobalmodernity.[643][et] Thus he ventured continuity[645] between the "brokenhomeland" of Webern's Opp. 12–18 and the "brokenpastoral" of Monteverdi'sL'Orfeo and Vaughan Williams'Pastoral Symphony;[646][eu] between Webern's "evanescent images of musical fullness"[647] and the brief, fragmentary nature of Chopin'sOp. 28, which Schumann likened to "ruins".[649]
Building on Shreffler's and Felix Meyer's work, includingsketch studies, as institutions like thePaul-Sacher-Stiftung [de] acquired and made the Moldenhauers' estate accessible,[650][ev] Johnson noted Webern's concern for the relation betweenform and content,[652][ew] and pursued ahermeneutics of Webern's (and Mahler's) music.[654] (He argued that Webern, following Mahler, fundamentally treated nature not merely as something to express or to represent musically, but as a deeper formal principle or structural model, yielding inseparably richer musical expression.)[655]
Wedler argued byantinomy anddemythologization that the complex, seemingly contradictory reception of Webern and his music stemmed from thisunity of opposites imaginativelymediated within Webern's underlying aesthetic of musical lyricism (or musical poetry, as Schoenberg called it). Adorno termed it "absolute lyricism", perhaps (Wedler suggested) after Hegel, who saw concentration as the lyric's essence, permitting "the greatest wealth of steps and nuances" todialectically resolve thedilemma between "almost dumb conciseness" and "the eloquent clarity of a [fully developed] idea".[656]
^Bruckner told students he was no longer guided by the rules he taught, broadening Adler'snormative ideas about music.
^Guido Adler asked him to edit the third volume in 1925, but Webern declined due to lack of time and money, instead proposing lectures oninstrumentation and "modern music (Strauss, Mahler, Reger, Schoenberg)" taught through "Formenlehre [or] formal principles (musical logic)" and links to "older masters".[26]
^Webern and others gave Schoenberg Klimt prints for his 1921 birthday.[43]
^In 1926, he counseled his pupil Ludwig Zenk, then in an analogous situation, not to resign ("Do not allow yourself to be angered"), citing the examples of Mahler's conflicts withFelix von Kraus over tempi and "How Mahler had to suffer under[Bernhard] Pollini for so many years!"[57]
^Most references to a Volksoper in the Moldenhauers'Chronicle are to the famous one in Vienna, but Webern's father referred to one in Berlin.[59]
^Webern was "effusive and ecstatic" in his veneration of Mahler.[63]
^This "Praise of Criticism" was an early version of "Lob des hohen Verstandes" ("Praise of Lofty Intellect") fromDes Knaben Wunderhorn.[64]
^By then Webern had written several early works for string quartet.[86] He did not specify which ones he meant.
^Berg himself experienced breaks in his friendship with Schoenberg,[119] who could be overbearing.[120] When Webern broke his friendship with Berg (1915–1916), he cited Schoenberg's influence in the matter.[121]
^Schoenberg's son-in-lawFelix Greissle [de] also recalled Webern's labile antisemitism, contextualizing it as part of Webern's vacillating resentment and respect toward Schoenberg[126] while also noting that Schoenberg hadinternalized some antisemitism ("mildly" antisemitic jokes were common in Schoenberg's home, Greissle's son George recalled, which Julie Brown contextualized as "unexceptional").[127] Schoenberg was self-conscious of his Jewish andclass background, having confronted antisemitism in readingOtto Weininger.[128] He repeatedly engaged withcontroversies surrounding Richard Wagner, who he also read and whose possible Jewish lineage interested him.[128] He contended with Wagnerian charges as to Jewish artists' creative inabilities.[128] While working onDie Jakobsleiter on family holiday atMattsee in summer 1921, Schoenberg was given notice that all Jews should leave the town, angering him and sparking his return from Protestantism toJudaism.[129] In response,Wassily Kandinsky wrote to him from theBauhaus in 1923, "I reject you as a Jew. ... Better to be a human being".[127] Schoenberg responded, "what is anti-Semitism to lead to if not to acts of violence?"[127]
^In and after the 1930s, Schoenberg worried that adherents toAryanism would deny his standing as the originator of twelve-tone technique, writing that Webern might "someday use his chance ... of the Aryan against the Jew" and that "[Josef Matthias] Hauer ... does the same".[135]
^Debussy, who died in 1918, once wished for a "'Society of Musical Esotericism'".[136]
^Since 1902, Webern idolized Mahler as a leading musician, studying his conducting and viewing him as a "serious" and "introspective" if sometimes sentimental composer—perhaps his favorite alongside Beethoven and Schoenberg.[145] Mahler's music resonated with Webern as confiding "inner experiences", from an early "worship of nature" to a more abstract spirituality later.[146] In 1911, Webern aimed to convince his father of his conducting aspirations by taking him to back-to-back performances of Mahler'sSymphony of a Thousand.[147] In 1912, he wrote Berg that he "must conduct ... must perform Schoenberg and Mahler and everything that is sacred".[148]
^Leinsdorf considered the experience of "utmost value to my musical and critical development".[153] Thepopevki-like3-7Acell and4–10 variant[154] ofLes Noces are not altogether unlike the rhythmized trichords of Webern's laterOp. 24[155] or the tetrachords of Op. 30[156] (which Stravinsky later admired),[157] apart from Stravinsky's tendency toanhemitony[158] in marked contrast to Webern's hemitonicism.[159]
^"Die Kundgebung des geistigen Wien," April 20, 1927; it read in part, with emphasis in original: "The essence of Spirit [Geist] is above allFreedom, which is now endangered and we feel obligated to protect it. The struggle for a higher humanity and the battle against indolence [Trägheit] and sclerosis [Verödung] will always find us ready. Today, it also finds us prepared for battle."[172]
^Before his suicide in 1942,Stefan Zweig wrote, "the short decade between 1924 and 1933, from the end of German inflation to Hitler's seizure of power, represents—in spite of all—an intermission in the catastrophic sequence of events whose witnesses and victims our generation has been since 1914."[178]
^In 1920, Webern warned his cousin Heinrich Diez (Ernst's brother) not to accept aHofburg apartment because theHabsburg monarchy would be restored.[181]
^Conversely, popular selections (e.g., Mahler'sLieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) were selectivelyAryanized when convenient. "I will determine who is a Jew" effectively became policy.[193]
^Berg wrote Adorno of prior instances,[195] and theReichskulturkammer called him an "émigré musical Jew" inDie Musik (afterErich Kleiber's 1935 Berlin premiere of theLulu Suite).[196] Conversely, when in 1933 Berg askedEdward Dent for help finding an academic post to facilitate Adorno's immigration to England, Dent refused, not only citingprotectionism andunderfunding,[197] but also dubbing them "Hitlerian": "You [note in Berg's hand: '(The Jews?)'] are indeed Hitlerians, as you consider Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia and perhaps even England as belonging to 'Germany'!!!"[198]
^At theReichsmusiktage, Webern's photo boreHans Severus Ziegler's caption: "this 'master student' of Arnold Schoenberg outdoes his training even in the length of his nose." Schoenberg, Ziegler said, created atonality by subverting the fundamental German musical principle of thetriad. A non-musician, Ziegler relied on shallow polemics to instruct youth. The Nazis practiced an incoherentpopulism that at times sparedjazz and some modernist music.[200]
^The transcript ofThe Path to the New Music went unpublished until 1960 to avoid "expos[ing] Webern to serious consequences".[202]
^From 1928 onward, Webern grew closer to Krenek, alongside whom he lectured, whose music (taking a twelve-tone turn) he conducted, and with whom he, Berg, and Adorno shared concerns about the future.[204]
^He was responding to Krenek's essay "Freiheit und Verantwortung" ("Freedom and Responsibility") inWilli Reich [de]'s23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift (1934). Elsewhere Krenek advocated for "a Catholic Austrian avante garde", opposing "the Austrian provincialism that National Socialism wants to force on us."[207] GermanWikisource has original text related to this article:23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift.
^Only guest conductorOtto Klemperer's status sufficed to overcome their refusal, and even then, the entire orchestra abruptly walked off stage afterward, leaving Krasner, Klemperer, andArnold Rosé to stand alone. Rosé, retired, had returned to pay his respects to the late Berg as honoraryconcertmaster.[209]
^Webern's only son Peter was an avidAustrian National Socialist. His eldest daughter Amalie married businessman Gunter Waller, who joined the Nazi Party as a business formality. His youngest daughter Christine marriedKreisleiter andSchutzstaffel member Benno Mattl, "little liked by the family", in Jun. 1938.[214] His middle daughter Maria Halbich almost emigrated with a man "of Jewish origin". She and Webern's wife Wilhelmine "Minna" Mörtl were wary of Hitler and the Nazis. Webern avoided politics at home.[215]
^Webern told Krasner, "Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!"[212] For Bailey Puffett, this likely referred to Schoenberg's politics,[216] which were vaguely conservative and German nationalist before becomingZionist. See also "My Attitude towards Politics" in Schoenberg'sStyle and Idea.
^Composers' correspondence was conducted with some regard to the possibility of later publication, especially after the nineteenth century.[230] Accounts were often self-admittedlyperspectival.
^Tito M. Tonietti observed of Schoenberg's reception history: "The many aspects of his complex life and artistic personality have ... been drastically simplified and isolated from their context. There has been a tendency to prefer only one, the most in line with the thesis that the writer wished to demonstrate. ... Schönberg has unfortunately not been understood ... [but] used ... for ... controversy ..., for ... purpose ... ."[232]
^List ventured that "[n]ationalist ideas may have saved [Webern] from the concentration camp".[238] Dissent was punishable under theHeimtückegesetz.[239]
^Goldschmidt reported that Webern was called "Kapellmeister Zig-Zag", perhaps at theBerlin Philharmonic.[143]
^Austrian pan-Germans,Grossdeutschen, orDeutschnationalisten hoped for stable prosperity via some form of Greater Germannation-state like theReich.[258] This hope was shared by some Social Democrats and was not alien to Social Christians.[259] TheGreater German People's Party received a maximum of 17% of the vote during 1919–1933 elections, mostly from students, teachers, and civil servants.[260] They were most popular inStyria andCarinthia.[261] First they governed with the Social Christians.[262]Austrian Nazis won their parliamentary seats by 1933.[263] That year they joined forces with the Social Democrats.[264] They had Nazi affinity, though not identity, as of 1934.[265] Schuschnigg described Hitler's plans for Austria as "pan-German" in 1936.[266]
^Deteriorating German-Austrian relations and Austrian weakening were marked by theJuly Putsch, assassinations (includingEngelbert Dollfuss's), and terror (including bombings "almost daily" in Austria).[269]
^Krasner further recalled that only his US passport saved him from locals and police when revisiting Vienna in 1941 to help friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude, her husband Felix Greissle) emigrate.[276]
^Webern's immediate reply (March 1940) was: "I ... with reference ... to my ... experiences ... wondered how such opposites could have become possible next to each other."[302]
^In the tradition of parties seeking a dues-paying mass membership, formal NSDAP affiliation could oblige one to pay registration fees ordues, or even to labor.[308] Nazis dissuaded some prospective members from formal affiliation as a strategic matter.[309]
^Schoenberg was unable to secure Georg's emigration despite many attempts. Between the Russian–Germanlanguage barrier and Nazi munitions and propaganda in the apartment's storeroom, Georg was held and nearly executed as a Nazi spy but was able to convince a German-speaking Jewish officer otherwise. Georg and his family remained there until 1969.[316]
^Webern had not set Rilke's work since Op. 8.[322] Schoenberg dedicated a 1915 setting of Rilke's "Alle, welche dich suchen", Op. 22/ii, to Webern.[323]
^Webern repeatedly emphasizedZusammenhang, translated as unity, coherence, or connection.Jonathan Kramer wrote that Webern's definition of unity was "utmost relatedness" and that he sought "to develop everything else fromone principal idea!"[327] Kramer noted that most prior music and theory shared Webern's emphasis.[328] But Webern's zeal and rigor fit more with twentieth-century modernism, and his approach added complexity, Kramer argued.[329]Sibelius was also noted for his organicism and natural topics. British concert programs posed him as an alternative to the Second Viennese School.[330] Adorno and Leibowitz criticized him.[331]
^Taruskin noted Webern's "descent from Mahler".[333] Keith Fitch glossed Webern as "crystallized Mahler". The opening of Webern's Op. 21 echoed that of Mahler'sNinth.[334]
^Webern engaged with Bach in two phases, first as a student.[336] Later, he conducted Bach's music ten times (1927–1935), finding inspiration in it while writing his twelve-tone music.[337] He made some connections between his and Bach's music to make his own more easily understandable and to emphasize his place in established tradition.[338] Webern cited the two-movement (overture–dance suite) form of Bach'sorchestral suites as one model for the two-movement form of his Op. 21 (writing to Schoenberg),[339] the instrumentation of theBrandenburg Concertos as inspiration for that of his Op. 24 (writing to Hertzka),[340] and Bach'sB-minor badinerie as the model for the Op. 27/iischerzo (in coaching Peter Stadlen).[341] Writing to Stein, Webern confirmed (as Polnauer had already noticed) that theBACH motif was the motivic basis of his Op. 28, but "secretly ...never ... in this ostentatious transposition!!!"[342] He asked Stein not to publicize this inTempo.[343] In the same letter, Webern also outlined a complex synthesis of musical forms in Op. 28/iii, specifically identifying Bach's influence in the fugal element.[344]
^Webern often referred to the Franco-Flemish School as "the Netherlanders." In Feb. 1905 Webern recorded in his diary, "Mahler pointed out ...Rameau ... Bach, Brahms, and Wagner as ... contrapuntalists ... . '... Just as in nature the entire universe has developed from the primeval cell ... beyond to God ... so also in music should a large structure develop [entirely] from a single motive ... .' Variation is ... most important ... . A theme [must] be ... beautiful ... to make its unaltered return ... . ... [M]usicians [should] combine ... contrapuntal skill ... with ... melodiousness".[348] In Jan. 1931, Schoenberg responded to Webern's plan for lectures: "... show the logical development towards twelve-tone composition. ... [T]he Netherlands School, Bach for counterpoint, Mozart for phrase formation [and] motivic treatment, Beethoven [and] Bach for development, Brahms, and ... Mahler for varied and highly complex treatment. ... [T]itle ... : 'The path to twelve-tone composition.'"[349]J. Peter Burkholder generalized his claim that "the use of existing music as a basis for new music is pervasive in all periods";[350] he had focused on "thehistoricist mainstream" within the proximal eighteenth and especially nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[351]Adriaan Peperzak, writing about the taste of "most intellectuals" at the end of the 20th century as "a plurality of cultural homes" (or about "the 'modern museum of cultures'"),[352] stressed a general connection between new and old represented also in music (i.e., both"after" andbeforetonality orcommon practice), observing that "whereas certain works of Bartók and Stravinsky already are experienced as difficult," "Josquin des Prez,Gesualdo, Webern and Boulez seem to be reserved to a small elite, and we continue to refer to traditional art in learning how to compose new works and how to listen to the extraordinary works made according to non-traditional codes."[353]
^For example, his first use of twelve-tone technique in Op. 17, Nos. 2 and 3, was more technical than stylistic, and Adorno felt that Op. 14 sounded twelve-tone.[354]
^Their instrumental music has been related to vocal idioms: the "concealed vocality" and "latent opera" of Berg'sLyric Suite[358] and the Bach chorale and folk melody of hisViolin Concerto; the "recitative" of Schoenberg'sOp. 16/v and theaccentedmusical prose of his twelve-tone music. Unlike Berg and Schoenberg, Webern did not useHauptstimmen andNebenstimmen, but he endorsed textures of accompanied melody in his music's polyphony. He could not stop writing songs, he told Berg (1921) and Hertzka (1927), noting his work's "almost exclusively lyrical nature" and apologizing to Hertzka for the consequently inauspiciouscommercial implications.[359]
^Berg endorsed an innovative, pluralist approach emphasizing somebel canto and like Webern, expressed faith in singers to execute challenging lines.[364]
^Eliahu Inbal, whose work with thehr-Sinfonieorchester in the 1980s was part of a Bruckner reappraisal,[378] found additional connections between Bruckner and Webern and Romantics and modernists more generally,[379] echoingDika Newlin and Mahler himself.
^Op. 11/iii (mid-1909) so differed from Op. 11/i–ii (Feb. 1909) that when Bartók performed Op. 11 (23 Apr. 1921 Budapest, 4 Apr. 1922 Paris), he omitted it.[407]
^Webern was likely inspired by the sudden death of his nephew, Theo Clementschitsch, who died on holiday in Italy.[417] Webern had to negotiate the return of his body to Austria.[418]
^Webern wrote Berg that August, "the heather from the middle of August is my favourite flower. It's most beautiful in a forest clearing, where the sun can reach, that wonderful sun, where it is against the grass, and the bees and bumble-bees are upon it, and that scent. I've indulged in orgies there, standing motionless, my eyes closed, that's my favourite. Have I already told you, that the 3rd piece of my orchestral pieces was born from such an impression. Directly. The scent of heather. But of course, that is the scent of heather which I laid on my mother's coffin."[421]
^"Ecstasy was [Webern's] natural state of mind", Stein recalled.[423]
^For Adorno, these were an "essential" Mahlerian formal "genre", often episodic as in a section of music markedsenza tempo. Korte compared Webern's Op. 10/iii to the passage before Mahler's "Chorus mysticus".
^Beethoven's similar use of registral expansion was noted (e.g.,Op. 111, No. 2, Var. 5 when the theme re-emerges in a strange harmonic context after a long section of trills).
^Examples included the circling ostinati of Op. 6/v and the end of Op. 15/v.
^SeeSprechgesang. Schoenberg briefly directed and wrote for theÜberbrettl, for example, in the 1901Brettl-Lieder.
^Examples included passacaglia in "Nacht", fugue in "Der Mondfleck", and canon in both.
^Examples included thevirtuoso solo and waltz in "Serenade" and triadic harmony in "O alter Duft".
^"[God ... lifts you] mercifully into that better life"
^In Apr. 1914, afterOp. 22/i, "Seraphita," so wrote Schoenberg to Alma Mahler.[436]
^Scholarship varied as to the genesis ofJakobsleiter.[437] Two scholars noted work from 1914.[438]Winfried Zillig finished it after Schoenberg's death.[439] Schoenberg told Berg about setting Strindberg'sJacob lutte in spring 1911. Webern introduced Schoenberg to Balzac'sLouis Lambert andSéraphîta in Mar. 1911.[440]
^"Ob rechts, ob links, vorwärts oder rückwärts, bergauf oder bergab – man hat weiterzugehen, ohne zu fragen, was vor oder hinter einem liegt."[441]
^In 1941 Schoenberg lectured: "the ... law of the unity of musical spacedemands an absolute and unitary perception. In this space, as in Swedenborg's heaven (described in Balzac'sSéraphîta) there is no absolute down, no right or left, forward or backward." Schoenberg then consideredJakobsleiter a "real twelve-tone composition" for its openinghexachordal ostinato and "Scherzo ... of all the twelve tones".[443]
^Schoenberg hinted at the idea inHarmonielehre (1911),[448]
^Among six non-vocal drafts and sketches were an abandoned string quartet (1917–1918); seventeen measures of music scored for clarinet, trumpet, and violin (1920); and four twelve-tone fragments.[460]
^Webern wrote, "What you see here (retrograde, canon, etc.—it is always the same) is not to be thought of as "Kunststückerln" [artistic tricks]—that would be ridiculous!"[464]
^viz. the String Trio, Op. 20; Symphony, Op. 21; Quartet, Op. 22; Concerto, Op. 24; Variations for Piano, Op. 27; String Quartet, Op. 28; and Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30[465]
^Webern understood his own (and Mahler's) work as crystallizations of personal experience.[467] He wrote Berg in 1912 that an experience would occupy him until it became music "that quite decidedly had to do with the experience—often down to the details".[468] He wrote Schoenberg in 1910 that "[Mahler's symphonies] must be most closely connected with his inner experiences. I also see a development: from the most intense worship of nature to an ever more spiritual, more detached content. ... This ... abstraction ... is more important for me ... than ... techni[que]."[469]
^The Anninger to which Webern referred was a hill in theVienna Woods above Mödling that he enjoyed hiking and wrote about in his diary, including while working on Op. 22.[470]
^viz. the Drei Gesänge, Op. 23; Drei Lieder, Op. 25;Das Augenlicht, Op. 26; Cantata No. 1, Op. 29; and Cantata No. 2, Op. 31[474]
^First byhexachordal aggregation in its center; second in a registrally expansive, open voicing at the end.
^In 2013, the Moldenhauers' dogged investigation into Webern's death and the experiences and testimony of those involved were portrayed in a one-act opera,The Death of Webern, which, though written in the eclectic style of its composerMichael Dellaira, paraphrases and quotes from Webern's music (e.g., the Passacaglia, Op. 1 in the third and final scenes,Klangfarbenmelodie in the sixth scene).
^For example, theBACH motif ofOp. 28 (1938) troubled some, like Tarukin and Sebastian Wedler, as did Op. 29 (1938–1939, orch. 1944).[491]
^This is Krasner's phrase, by which he interpreted Schoenberg's "those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us" as referring to Webern.[510] But Douglas Jarman noted Schoenberg's discomfort with and Stein's (and laterCerha's andPerle's) defense of Berg after the Jewish banker scene in Act III ofLulu.[511] When Schoenberg asked Webern about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern replied, "Who dares to come between you and me?" When Steuermann asked Krasner on behalf of Schoenberg, Krasner soothed Schoenberg with a self-described lie. Schoenberg's 1934 (or 1935)–1936Violin Concerto kept its dedication to Webern, though worded very simply ("to Anton von Webern"), whether due to Schoenberg's suspicions or to protect Webern from danger or Nazi suspicion. Schoenberg and Webern continued to correspond at least through 1939.[512]
^Schoenberg prepared his statement for publication as a handwritten inscription by facsimile reproduction in Leibowitz's 1948 didactic score of Webern's then unpublishedOp. 24,[513] which Webern dedicated to Schoenberg in 1934 for his sixtieth birthday.
^Or possibly Craft, who oftenghostwrote for Stravinsky.
^Olin Downes described Op. 28 as "Dead End music" in 1941.[539] Another critic wrote in 1929: "If modernism depended for progress upon the Weberns, it would get nowhere."[540]
^Adorno advocated for the completion ofLulu, writing that it "reveals the extent of its quality the longer and more deeply one immerses oneself in it". Boulez conducted the 1979 première afterCerha's orchestration.
^Robert Fink described a "general disciplinary crisis". Innew musicology andpostmodernism, canons were questioned, and pluralism was promoted.Lawrence Kramer andSusan McClary emphasized musical meaning. Taruskin criticized the canon'sEurocentrism, Germanism (especially in Schoenberg's, Webern's, and Dahlhaus's work), andcolonialism.
^In relation to post-Webernism more generally, Holzer slammed attempts "to placeDarmstadt in a fascistoid corner or even identifying it as a US propaganda institution amid theCold War" ("Darmstadt in ein 'faschistoides' Eck zu stellen oder es gar als Propagandainstitution der USA im Kalten Krieg auszuweisen") via "unbelievable distortions, exaggerations, reductions and propagation of clichés" ("unglaublichen Verdrehungen, Übertreibungen, Verkürzungen und Propagierungen von Klischeebildern").[578]
^In a survey of five prestigious British and French orchestras, his music was played 121 times[584] and Beethoven's 1,198 times between 1967 and 2017.[585] In a US orchestra survey of the "top 100 composers in terms of works performed", his music was played 175 times and Mozart's 7,103 times between 2000 and 2009.[586]
^"[A]tonal music is [like] random notes" in itsmacroharmony,Dmitri Tymoczko suggested as one reason.[591] Building on Tymoczko's work, Joshua Ballance described Webern's Opp. 1–31 partly in its macroharmonies, emphasizing the alreadytotally chromatic macroharmonies of the pre-dodecaphonic mid-periodLieder.[592] J. Kramer believed such music as Webern's required the listener to learn more about it in order to understand it and noted that only some listeners did.[593] In this sense, he wrote, it is elitist music.[594] While he asserted that Schoenberg and Stravinsky were "generally understood to be well within the cultural mainstream" by contrast to avant-garde radicals like Satie,Henry Cowell, orLuigi Russolo,[595] he considered that Ives and Webern straddled radical and progressive sensibilities.[596] He also noted that modernism fared better in Europe than in the US, which he ascribed to differences in education and also to the commercialization of increasingly unsubsidized art music particularly in the US.[597]
^J. Kramer noted that audiences gradually became less shocked and more indifferent, at least in the US.[599]
^"Don't write music entirely by ear", Webern told Searle: "Your ears will always guide you ... but you mustknow why" (emphasis in original).[603] Webern's music was associated with "intellectual order".[600] He innovated musically and conceptually, challenging audiences.[604] Julian Johnson argued that criticisms of composers' innovations were a "constant of musical modernity for four hundred years", fromil nuove musiche todie neue Musik. He quotedGirolamo Mei writing toVincenzo Galilei in 1572: "[N]ot to appear ... inferior ... these musicians precipitated themselves at breakneck speed ... to discover always new styles and new forms of song [which] were not understood [or] felt".[605] Mei wrote Galilei that in these innovations composers followed their ears, not their intellects.[606]
^ForJ. Peter Burkholder,musical historicism as a mainstream intellectual tradition proper began in Brahms's generation'sl'art pour l'art and more introverted musical experience. It intensified in Schoenberg's generation with increasing engagement withstylistic history as impetus to compositional innovation. Distantly and obliquely echoingCharles Burney's work, it flowered amidHegelianism and theories ofbiological andsocial evolution orprogress. Burkholder distinguished between more progressive historicism (Schoenberg'sErwartung), more emulative cases (Strauss'sAriadne auf Naxos), and mixed examples (Berg'sWozzeck). He noted the assimilation of peripheralnationalmusic traditions for novelty but emphasized that innovation occurred even within those contexts.[607]
^Burkholder andLydia Goehr, among others, traced the history of orchestras' (and other institutions')museum-like function in producing and presenting "civilized", "elite", or "important" (if sometimes "difficult", "serious", or "unpopular") music as artwork, not without regard to audiences.[609]
^The others, in both cases, were Bartók, Berg, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.[610] In Joseph N. Straus's account of how modernists recast tradition,[611] they were "the exemplars" on whom he focused.[612]Ensemble intercontemporain played them often at Boulez'sIRCAM as "classics" in the 1980s, whichGeorgina Born argued contributed to their canonization.[613] In considering the US context, J. Kramer wrote that Bartók, Stravinsky, and especially Schoenberg and Webern were not often played or widely understood but nonetheless backed as central to canon of20th-century classical music in terms of theory and analysis by academics with a shared perspective (who constituted a significant plurality of composers).[614] He considered Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern "quintessential modernists of the early twentieth century".[599]
^For Taruskin, pitch sets did not "conform to the physics of sound", and "optimism about human adaptability ... is the same ... that drives all utopian thinking."[617]
^J. Kramer characterized early modernists (e.g., Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern) and even the early modernist avant-garde (e.g., Satie, Cowell, Russolo,Edgar Varèse) as "trapped" in continuous historical development.[619] Seeing themselves as innovators entailed both conceiving of history as linear progress and rejecting prior concepts of music, he explained.[619] Modernists engaged and competed with the dominant music of the past, which they reinvented.[620]
^For Taruskin, "the legacy of fascism is an inseparable ... facet of the lofty legacy of modernism".[623] Krasner toldFanfare Webern "packed me off quickly" upon the Anschluss "for my safety but perhaps ... to avoid ... embarrassment ... had his family arrived, or friends celebrating ... Nazi entry".[250] Taruskin cited Krasner to claim Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis upon the Anschluss.[624] In his "How Talented Composers Become Useless" postscript, Taruskin wrote, "The Nazis had every right to criticize Schoenberg ... . It is not for their criticism that we all revile them."[625] He compared Leibowitz toGoebbels, found "Nazi resonances" in Eimert's "only composers who follow Webern are worthy of the name," and likened Boulez's "[s]ince the Viennese discoveries, any musician who has not experienced ... the necessity of dodecaphonic language is USELESS" to theZhdanov Doctrine.[626]
^"Of all in the volumes in this series," Taruskin referred to hisOxford History, "this one, covering the first half of the twentieth century, surely differs the most radically from previous accounts".[628]
^Rosen charged Taruskin's "hostile presentation ... does not result in historical objectivity".[576] Max Erwin considered Taruskin's work on theDarmstädter Ferienkurse "passionately negative"[630] and "thoroughly discredited",[631] particularly that "Adorno or Leibowitz officiated with near-dictatorial power".[632] Rodney Lister wrote, "Taruskin's purpose ... is to bury Webern, not to praise him", noting "the increasing importance of 'motivization' over the course of the 19th century and of the 'collapse' of (traditional) tonality [is] something which Taruskin flatly states never took place."[633] Larson Powell found "Taruskin's ... references to Webern's politics ... to discredit the music."[634]Christian Utz [de] agreed withMartin Zenck [de] that Taruskin's claims were "simplifying and distorting", granting "authoritarian rhetoric ... in ... the 1950s and 60s" and the nonexistence of "'apolitical music'".[635] Holzer also sympathized with but found Taruskin inappropriate and simplistic.[636]
^In a case study, Martin Kaltenecker noted Taruskin's taking aim at avant-garde prestige in opposition toCélestin Deliège [fr]'sCinquante ans de modernité musicale: De Darmstadt à l'IRCAM.[639] He contrasted their polarizednomothetic "plots" with moreidiographic approaches' "juxtapositions" andthick description. He considered how to move beyond this nomothetic–idiographic historiographical dichotomy.[640]
^Johnson described music in modernity as "broken off from the past", "broken in itself", and "of individual subjectivity". It no longer "elaborate[s] ... divine unity", by contrast tomedieval music, but "rema[d]e it", he argued, "as Wagner'sSiegfried ... from ... his father's sword, or as Webern piece[d] together ... atomized ... interval[s]."[644]
^For Johnson, modernism foregrounded the "brokenness that always lay at the heart of the pastoral".[647] Thomas Peattie wrote about brokenness in Mahler's pastoral music.[648]
^Julie Brown described a "greening" of Webern literature in the 1990s.[651]
^In 1912, Webern wrote that Schoenberg's music "creates entirely new expressive values; therefore it also needs new means of expression". "Content and form", he continued, "cannot be separated." The Moldenhauers wrote that "Webern's remarks ... could readily serve as commentaries on his own compositions".[653]
^Johnson 1999, 99–100, quoting his own translation of Hanspeter Krellmann'sAnton Webern in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1975; p. 29);Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer 1978, 156–173.
^Johnson 1999, 4–11, 264 cf.V. Kofi Agawu'sPlaying with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classical Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) andMusic as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
^Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer 1978, 499, 683n8: "According to Polnauer, Webern only very gradually came to realize what was happening ... It took ... three years [after 1938] until his childlike faith ... was definitely shaken"; cf. 458, 474, 529, 538, 588: "optimism".
^Johnson 1999, "one scene" as on 84, quoting his own translation of Webern's July 1912 letter from Rexroth'sOpus Anton Webern;Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer 1978, 113, 132, "several scenes" as on 190, 736–737.
^Wedler 2023, 87–96et passim, quoting Schoenberg's Preface to Webern's Bagatelles, Adorno's review from the premiere of Webern's Op. 10, and Hegel'sLectures on Aesthetics.
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