Anton von Webern

Austrian composer

• Born: December 3, 1883
• Birthplace: Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Austria)
• Died: September 15, 1945
• Place of death: Mittersill, Austria

Webern brought to the second Viennese school a unique and highly individual compositional approach. Like his mentor Arnold Schoenberg, Webern broke with existing musical traditions and developed a new compositional language and perspective. His adaptation of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, based on his own contrapuntal proclivity and concise musical rhetoric, proved to be the major influence on the subsequent generation of composers.

Early Life

Anton von Webern (fuhn VAY-burn) was born in Vienna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Karl, a mining engineer and government official, had an aristocratic lineage; vacations at the Preglhof, the family estate, fostered Anton’s lifelong love of nature and mountain climbing, and provided a summer retreat for composition. Karl was well read but not particularly artistic, and planned for his son to pursue an agricultural career. Webern’s mother, Amalie (née Gehr), was an amateur pianist and singer. She taught her son piano from the age of five; with Webern’s two sisters, the family often held impromptu concerts. Webern was particularly close to his mother and was deeply affected by her death in 1906; he later declared the majority of his works to be in her memory.

Because of Karl’s career, the family moved from Vienna to Graz and finally settled in Klagenfurt in 1894. Webern received his first true music instruction there, studying cello, piano, and elementary harmony with Edwin Komauer, who also introduced Webern to contemporary works through piano reductions. Although Webern’s musical inclinations were by now clear (his graduation from gymnasium was celebrated with a pilgrimage to Bayreuth in 1902), his compositional proclivity was not as yet apparent. He entered the University of Vienna in 1902 to study musicology with Guido Adler; Webern’s study of the Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac for his Ph.D. would later motivate the importance of counterpoint in his own compositional style. He continued to study cello and piano, and also studied harmony with Hermann Graedener and counterpoint with Karl Navrátil. Webern’s work in composition to this point consisted of, for the most part, student efforts, but his increasing interest and productivity led him to seek out a true composition teacher. After a failed attempt to study with Hans Pfitzner, Webern began lessons in 1904 with Arnold Schoenberg, who, at nine years Webern’s senior, was just beginning to attract attention, if not notoriety, in Viennese music circles. Schoenberg’s instruction and the ensuing friendship that evolved proved to be the most crucial event in Webern’s development; Schoenberg remained a profound artistic influence and close friend throughout Webern’s life.

Life’s Work

The four years of Schoenberg’s tutelage brought Webern’s work to maturity, evident in the mastery of harmonic and formal considerations in the Passacaglia op. 1 (1908). Yet the competence of the Passacaglia hardly foreshadows the unique traits that would evolve to characterize Webern’s style: brevity, textural clarity, dynamic restraint, motivic conciseness, contrapuntal dexterity, harmonic stasis, and a delicate objectivity. While these traits evolved continually, Webern’s oeuvre does not display the drastic changes of style that mark Schoenberg’s evolution. Rather, Webern’s development loosely paralleled that of his mentor, tempering each stylistic advance with his own compositional sensibilities.

This process is clearly evident in the evolution of the remarkable series of aphoristic instrumental miniatures, opp. 5-11. The energetic terseness in the taut motivic construction of the Five Movements for String Quartet op. 5 (1909) devolves into the fleeting ephemerality of the Six Bagatelles for String Quartet op. 9 (1911-1913). Also, the surprisingly delicate, chamberlike scoring that belies the massive forces of the Six Pieces for Large Orchestra op. 6 (1909) is distilled into the exotic instrumentation of the Five Pieces for Orchestra op. 10 (1911-1913), which further explores the technique of Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color melody, in which the progression of instrumental timbres becomes a prime developmental consideration), first developed in Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 (1909). That coloristic effect has now become an integral aspect of development rhetoric and is apparent in the Four Pieces for Violin and Piano op. 7 (1910) but is particularly so in the Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano op. 11 (1914), whose extreme brevity (the total of thirty-two measures lasts no more than two minutes) demonstrates the ultimate compression of musical development. While Webern’s work would never again approach such extreme brevity, he found little need for extensive rhetoric in any of his work; at 269 measures (about ten minutes), the Passacaglia remained his most expansive single movement.

By 1910, his artistic development had convinced Webern of his compositional métier. Yet composition would never prove to be his livelihood nor the source of much local recognition. Rather, after receiving his Ph.D. in 1906, Webern embarked on a career as a conductor, a vocation that he appears to have taught himself. After a series of unsuccessful appointments in theater in Ischl, Teplitz, Danzig, Stettin, and Prague, he eventually settled in Mödling in 1918 to be near Schoenberg, conducting the Vienna Workers’ Symphony Concerts and Chorus (1922-1934). Conducting did not prove lucrative, however, and recognition of his compositions was late in coming (it was not until 1921 that his music was published by Universal Edition); he found it necessary to supplement his income by consulting for the Austrian radio station and by making arrangements for Schoenberg and the Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances, 1918-1922). Webern also taught piano at the Jewish Cultural Institute for the Blind (1925-1931); besides his periodic private students, this would be Webern’s sole teaching position. Financial difficulties plagued Webern throughout his life; he periodically received loans and gifts from his publisher, friends, family, and patrons, often through Schoenberg’s intercession. Financial constraints did not, however, markedly alter Webern’s reserved and prudent lifestyle; he was throughout his life a dedicated family man, devoted to his wife, Wilhelmine (née Mörtl), a cousin whom he married in 1911, and their four children.

Given the evident stylistic limitations of the aphoristic miniatures of 1909-1914, Webern turned in 1914 to writing songs, the use of text thus providing for and even dictating formal expansion. In fact, opp. 12-18, spanning 1914-1925, are exclusively songs and accompaniments ranging from piano to small mixed ensembles to chamber orchestra. Yet genre and length are not the only aspects different from the preceding works. Stylistically, the songs tend toward a heightened emotional tension, reflecting attitudes prevalent in the expressionist movement as manifested in music by the second Viennese school (that is, Schoenberg, Webern, and Alban Berg, Webern’s fellow student and close friend). Wide, dramatic leaps, exaggerated by sudden dynamic contrasts, mark the vocal lines, as they develop within an unsettling atonal harmonic context. Even with Webern’s adoption of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, consistently applied from the Three Traditional Rhymes op. 17 (1924-1925) onward, no sudden stylistic change is apparent. Rather, Webern’s individual style characteristics evolved throughout the series of songs. Leaps of major sevenths, minor ninths, and tritones become prominent, obscuring a sense of voice-leading. Melodic lines tend toward fragmentation, emphasizing motifs of only two to four notes. Natural and sacred imagery abounds in the texts (the authors range from Li Taibo to August Strindberg and Georg Trakl), reflecting Webern’s deep spirituality that often expressed itself in his lifelong reverence of nature. Most characteristic, however, is the increasing importance of strict contrapuntal techniques, particularly evident from the Five Canons on Latin Texts op. 16 (1923-1924) through the rest of his oeuvre. A lasting impression from his study of the Flemish composers, Webern’s contrapuntal dexterity allowed for the coalescence of all of these varied traits into the unique style characteristic of his late works.

The ordering principles inherent in the twelve-tone method brought renewed structural coherence to Webern’s work, which allowed for a return to purely instrumental works of greater expanse, beginning with the String Trio op. 20 (1926-1927) and the Symphony op. 21 (1927-1928). Beyond changes in length and genre, Webern’s application of the technique explored its powerful structural possibilities, both within the tone-row itself and by using the row as the generator of the form of larger structures. Webern’s general concern with contrapuntal clarity typically leads to the stratification of various row forms among the individual lines. Similarly, his predilection toward symmetrical and palindromic forms shaped not only the larger formal structures but also the internal structure of the rows as he devised them; internal motivic cells generate the row itself. Thus, the four-, three-, and even two-note motifs found within the rows carry on the motivic fragmentation characteristic of the earlier experiments in Klangfarbenmelodie, a process giving rise to musical pointillism. These formalistic concerns supersede earlier concerns of coloristic and melodic effect, giving late works such as the Piano Variations op. 27 (1935-1936), the String Quartet op. 28 (1937-1938), and the Variations for Orchestra op. 30 (1940) a detached, objective quality. Yet Webern’s eminently humanistic stance provides the motivation for his two Cantatas op. 29 (1938-1939) and op. 31 (1941-1943), the texts of which, written by his close friend Hildegard Jone, reflect his profound respect for nature through a simple spirituality.

The quantity of Webern’s creative output steadily declined after the burst of compositional activity of 1909-1914, a decline balanced, however, by the continual development of his individual artistic voice. External economic, social, and political factors had their effect here; events such as the sale of the Preglhof retreat by Webern’s father in 1912, Webern’s volunteer efforts in World War I (along with his efforts to secure Schoenberg’s release from duty), and his continual dependence on conducting for financial support all hampered his compositional activities. While his renown as a conductor was both local and international in scope (he made numerous conducting tours throughout Europe), his compositions sparked more interest abroad than at home. This situation worsened with the rise of the Nazi regime, which not only outlawed Webern’s work as “degenerate art” but also disbanded the Vienna Workers’ Concerts, Webern’s major source of income. World War II brought numerous tragedies, including the death of Webern’s son Peter in 1945, the emigration or death of numerous friends and colleagues (Schoenberg had fled to the United States in 1933), and the flight of his family to Mittersill to escape the bombings of Vienna. On September 15, 1945, Webern was accidentally shot and killed by a soldier from the occupying American forces during an attempt to arrest his son-in-law for selling on the black market.

Significance

Much of the initial recognition of Webern’s work was inextricably linked, often in a derogatory fashion, to his close relationship with Schoenberg as student, colleague, and friend. Webern’s veneration of Schoenberg, at times carried to extremes of obsessive idolization, did little to diffuse misunderstanding about the development of their individual musical styles. Basic to the dynamics of their relationship were the marked differences of their personalities. With fierce independence garnered from enduring years of harsh criticism, Schoenberg demanded utter loyalty from his coterie; Webern, more reserved and reticent, thus often appeared subsumed. Schoenberg left a legacy of students, textbooks, and critical writings; Webern, who taught only occasionally and left few writings, often deferred what little recognition he did attain to his mentor. Yet the two continually exchanged reciprocal support throughout their lives on artistic, personal, and financial planes.

Such reciprocity extended to the musical plane as well, often leading to the conflation of their individual and communal (including Berg) stylistic development. Schoenberg is often characterized not only as the mentor but also as the sole innovator, which relegates Webern’s development to a mere reinterpretation of Schoenberg’s advances. Their creative interaction, however, was more symbiotic than this perspective implies. For example, while the exploration of Klangfarbenmelodie in Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 (1909) predates Webern’s Six Pieces for Large Orchestra op. 6 (1909) by some months, the process of miniaturization seen in Webern’s opp. 5-11, begun in 1909, is only taken up by Schoenberg in his Three Orchestral Pieces (1910) and the Six Little Piano Pieces op. 19 (1911). In similar fashion, Webern’s application of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method is important not only as a demonstration of its stylistic flexibility but also for its deeper exploration of aspects of the method as reflected by Webern’s own musical proclivities. Whereas Schoenberg viewed the tone row as able to provide compositional unity through motivic manipulation of the row, Webern turned to motivic connections within the row itself not only to generate the row but also to provide compositional unity, a significant shift in compositional perspective. To Webern, this reflected the balances he observed in nature, where each component works in perfect balance not only as part of a larger system but also as an individual, self-contained aspect.

The continual distillation and atomization apparent in the evolution of the various aspects of Webern’s style grew to be of great influence to the succeeding generation of composers, particularly in Europe. Through courses taught by Webern’s student René Liebowitz at the Kranichstein Summer School at Darmstadt, many younger composers of the 1950’s took Webern to be their stylistic progenitor, most notably Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and Luciano Berio. These composers, whose compositional view in turn grew to great prominence, further distilled the serial, pointillistic, and objective aspects of Webern’s style, to extremes perhaps far beyond Webern’s broadest intentions, to a point at which musical rhetoric became solely an explication of compositional process. Thus, while in part construed in a manner seemingly at odds with his typically humanistic and deferential approach, Webern’s influence on the development of music in the twentieth century has been pervasive.

Bibliography

Bailey, Kathryn. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Reappraises Webern’s place within twentieth century music and analyzes all his twelve-note compositions.

Griffiths, Paul. “Anton Webern.” In Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Webern, Berg. Vol. 16 in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983. Second Viennese School is part of The New Grove Composer Biography series. This article provides a concise survey of Webern’s life and work as well as a brief discussion of his style and ideas. A thorough list of works and bibliography is appended.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “A Complete Webern, with ’New’ Works.” The New York Times, August 27, 2000, sec. 2, p. 23. Discusses the release of Webern’s complete recordings, describing his compositions and his arguments against serialism in music.

Kolneder, Walter. Anton Webern: An Introduction to His Works. Translated by Humphrey Searle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Following a short biographical sketch, Kolneder examines Webern’s works in chronological order, with emphasis on the evolution of stylistic traits. Chapters on Webern’s personality and influence round out the study. Includes a list of works and an extensive, if somewhat outdated, bibliography.

Moldenhauer, Hans, and Rosaleen Moldenhauer. Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. The most extensive and thorough biography available. Through interviews with Webern’s family and associates, coupled with exhaustive gathering of surviving letters, documents, and manuscripts, the Moldenhauers augment existing information with important and insightful new research. Chapters alternate between Webern’s life and works; the compendious detail is balanced by Moldenhauer’s lively prose style. Includes Webern’s own extensive analysis of his String Quartet op. 28. The appended work lists are perhaps the most comprehensive available, and the select bibliography is also thorough.

Rognoni, Luigi. The Second Vienna School. Translated by Robert W. Mann. London: John Calder, 1977. A study of the stylistic derivation of expressionism, as applied by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, and its relationship to other contemporaneous artistic trends. Webern’s works are described in chronological order, with emphasis on stylistic evolution rather than biographical context.

Webern, Anton. The Path to the New Music. Edited by Willi Reich. Translated by Leo Black. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Theodore Presser, 1963. Given the dearth of Webern’s extant critical prose, this transcription from shorthand of sixteen lectures given by Webern in 1932-1933 provides important insight into his aesthetic motivation. Traces the historic justification of the innovations in musical language developed by the second Viennese school. Includes as a postscript a number of personal letters from Webern to Reich.

Wildgans, Friedrich. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. London: Calder and Boyars, 1966. Wildgans discusses the evolution of Webern’s style in a biographical context, followed by a short critical description of the works in chronological order. Five tributes to and by Webern are appended. The short bibliography and discography have been surpassed.