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(b Vienna, 3 Dec 1883; d Mittersill, 15 Sept 1945). Austrian composer. He studied at Vienna University under Adler (1902-6), taking the doctorate for work on Isaac; in composition he was one of Schoenberg's first pupils (1904-8), along with Berg. Like Berg, he developed rapidly under Schoenberg's guidance, achieving a fusion of Brahms, Reger and tonal Schoenberg in his orchestral Passacaglia, already highly characteristic in its modest dynamic level and its brevity. But he was closer than Berg in following Schoenberg into atonality, even choosing verses by the same poet, George, to take the step in songs of 1908-9. His other step was into a conducting career which he began with modest provincial engagements before World War I.
After the war he settled close to Schoenberg in Mödling and took charge of the Vienna Workers Symphony Concerts (1922-34). Meanwhile he had continued his atonal style, mostly in songs: the relatively few instrumental pieces of 1909-14 had grown ever shorter, ostensibly because of the lack of any means of formal extension in a language without key or theme. However the songs of 1910-25 show a reintroduction of traditional formal patterns even before the arrival of serialism (especially canonic patterns, no doubt stimulated, as was the instrumentation of many of these songs, by Pierrot lunaire), to the extent that the eventual adoption of the 12-note method in the Three Traditional Rhymes (1925) seems almost incidental, making little change to a musical style that was already systematized by strict counterpoint.
However, Webern soon recognized that the 12-note principle sanctioned a severity and virtuosity of polyphony that he could compare with that of the Renaissance masters he had studied. Unlike Schoenberg, he never again sought to compose in any other way. Rather, the highly controlled, pure style of his Symphony appears to have represented an ideal which later works could only repeat, showing different facets. His use of the series as a source of similar motifs, especially in instrumental works, merely emphasizes the almost geometrical perfection of this music, for which he found literary stimulus in Goethe and, more nearly, in the poetry of his friend and neighbour Hildegard Jone, whose words he set exclusively during his last dozen years. With Schoenberg gone, Berg dead and himself deprived of his posts, Webern saw Jone as one of his few allies during World War II. He was shot in error by a soldier after the end of hostilities, leaving a total acknowledged output of about three hours' duration.
works:| Biography: Anton Webern |
The Austrian composer Anton Webern (1883-1945), one of the first important disciples of Schoenberg, carried many of that master's ideas to their logical extremes. Webern's music was very influential on postwar European composers.
Anton von Webern was born in Vienna on Dec. 3, 1883, to the mining engineer Karl von Webern and his wife, Amalia. When he was ten years old, the family moved to Klagenfurt. There Webern began his first music lessons; he studied piano, cello, and the rudiments of theory and began to compose songs. At the gymnasium he studied the traditional courses in the humanities.
After graduation in 1902, Webern traveled to Bayreuth to hear performances of Richard Wagner's works. This experience impressed Webern deeply, and on entering the University of Vienna in the fall of 1902, he devoted himself more intensely to studies in harmony and counterpoint, as well as to courses in musicology under Guido Adler. A typical piece of this period is a ballade with orchestral accompaniment, Jung Siegfried, which shows the influence of Wagnerian ideas.
In 1904, after an abortive attempt to study with Hans Pfitzner in Berlin, Webern began lessons with Arnold Schoenberg, who was the dominating figure of his life, even though Webern carried some of Schoenberg's ideas further than the older composer could entirely approve. At this time, too, Webern became friendly with another Schoenberg pupil, Alban Berg. The friendship lasted till Berg's death in 1935; it was a personally and artistically stimulating relationship for both composers.
While Webern was developing his distinctive style under Schoenberg's guidance, he was also completing a major project in musicology. In 1906 he received his doctorate from the University of Vienna for his dissertation on Heinrich Isaac's Choralis Constantinus, an important Renaissance collection of liturgical compositions. His edition of part two of this work is still standard.
Webern's studies with Schoenberg lasted till 1908. Some works written during this 4-year period are the Passacaglia for Orchestra, the chorus Entflieht auf leichten kähnen (text by Stefan George), and the Five Songs (also with texts by George), as well as a Piano Quintet in C Major. In the Five Songs, Webern already followed Schoenberg in transcending the limitations of classical tonality. His following works are atonal, that is, written without reference to a key center.
Webern's compositions of the next 10 years became more and more concise; some are less than a minute long. His dynamic effects were often delicate; he made use of the idea of Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color melody), frequently dividing a melody among a succession of different instruments with resultant subtle changes in tone color. Works representative of this new style are the Five Pieces for String Quartet (1909), the Four Pieces for Violin and Piano (1910), the Six Bagatelles for String Quartet (1913), and the Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano (1914), as well as groups of orchestral pieces and songs. Schoenberg's preface to the Six Bagatelles, which he wrote in 1924 for their publication by Universal-Edition, gives a vivid impression of the style:
"Just as the brevity of these pieces speaks in their favor, even so it is necessary to speak in favor of this brevity. Think of the concision which expression in such brief form demands! Every glance is a poem, every sigh a novel. But to achieve such concentration - to express a novel in a single gesture, a great joy in a single breath - every trace of sentimentality must be correspondingly banished."
During these years Webern was going from job to job as theater conductor. He worked in Bad Ischl, Vienna, Teplitz, Danzig, and Stettin. But these positions did not suit him. The introverted, sensitive composer was unhappy with the low standards of the opera houses in provincial towns, and he did not like theatrical life. His marriage to his cousin Wilhelmine Mörtl in 1911 brought a welcome stability to this rather frustrating existence. In 1915 he joined the Austrian army as a volunteer but was dismissed after a year because of poor eyesight.
After World War I Webern took an active part in Schoenberg's Society for Private Performances in Vienna. This organization did valuable work in presenting major contemporary compositions to a highly selective audience. When it had to dissolve in 1922 because of rising costs, Webern took over the direction of the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and, in the following year, added the responsibility of the Vienna Workers' Singing Society. The performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony by these groups under his direction in 1926 was long remembered.
Webern's adoption of the twelve-tone method came in 1924, with the Drei Volkstexte for soprano, violin, clarinet, and bass clarinet. These songs, based on religious folk poetry, were the first works in which Webern used strict twelve-tone rows in the Schoenbergian sense. His acceptance of the new technique was wholehearted, and he used it till the end of his life. Important twelve-tone compositions of the 1920s were the String Trio (1927) and the Symphony (1928), as well as two groups of songs.
After 1933 Webern led a very retired existence. Political conditions in Germany and Austria did not favor his radical kind of music. He earned his living mainly by giving private lessons; after 1941 he was employed as a reader by Universal-Edition, evaluating new scores that were sent to them for consideration. Major works composed between 1933 and 1945 included the Concerto for Nine Instruments (1934), Variations for Piano (1936), String Quartet (1938), First Cantata for soprano solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra (1939), Variations for Orchestra, and Second Cantata for soprano and bass solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra (1941-1943). The texts for the two cantatas are by Hildegard Jone; she and her husband, the sculptor Josef Humplik, were among Webern's closest friends.
Webern remained in retirement during World War II, staying in his home in Mödling near Vienna. In Easter, 1945, he moved his family to Mittersill, near Salzburg, where he thought they would be safer. There, through a tragic error, he was shot to death by an American occupation soldier on Sept. 15, 1945.
After World War II it was Webern's work rather than Schoenberg's that inspired the young European composers. Webern's radical position led these composers to consider him as the true founder of the new music.
Further Reading
Webern's ascetic personality is glimpsed in his writings, The Path to the New Music (trans. 1963) and Letters to Hildegard Jone and Josef Humplik (1963; trans. 1967). Friedrich Wildgans, Anton Webern (1966), is a straightforward narrative with brief comments on the works. A moving account of the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death is Hans Moldenhauer, The Death of Anton Webern: A Drama in Documents (1961). Detailed musical analysis are in Walter Kolneder, Anton Webern: An Introduction to His Works (1961; trans. 1968), and in Anton von Webern: Perspectives, compiled by Hans Moldenhauer and edited by Demar Irvine (1966).
René Leibowitz, Schoenberg and His School (1947; trans. 1949), offers an enthusiastic introduction to Webern, as does George Perle, Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern (1962; 2d rev. ed. 1968). Also useful are the sections on Webern in Pierre Boulez, Notes of an Apprenticeship (1966; trans. 1968); Wilfrid Mellers, Caliban Reborn: Renewal in Twentieth-century Music (1967); and Joan Peyser, The New Music: The Sense behind the Sound (1971).
Additional Sources
Moldenhauer, Hans, Anton von Webern, a chronicle of his life and work, New York: Knopf: distributed by Random House, 1979, 1978.
Neighbour, O. W. (Oliver Wray), The New Grove Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, New York: Norton, 1983.
| Dictionary of Dance: Anton von Webern |
Webern, Anton von (b Vienna, 3 Dec. 1883, d Mittersill, 15 Sept. 1945). Austrian composer. He wrote no ballet scores but his music has frequently been used for dance, such as Graham and Balanchine's Episodes (Martha Graham Dance Company and New York City Ballet, 1959) in which Graham used the Passacaglia, Op. 1, and Six Pieces for Orchestra, and Balanchine used the Sinfonie, Op. 21, Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6, Concerto for Orchestra, Op. 24, Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, and the Ricercare from Bach's Musical Offering. Other music which has been used includes Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 and 10 (chor. Béjart in Temps, 1960, and MacMillan in My Brother, My Sisters, 1978), Passacaglia, Op. 1 (chor. Cranko, Opus 1, 1965), six Bagatelles, Op. 9, and String Quartet, Op. 5 (chor. van Dantzig in Moments, 1968), and various excerpted pieces (chor. Kylián in No More Play, 1988 and Sweet Dreams, 1990).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Anton von Webern |
Bibliography
See his letters, ed. by J. Polnauer (tr. 1967); his The Path to the New Music, ed. by W. Reich (tr. 1963); biography by F. Wildgans (tr. 1966); study by R. Leibowitz (tr. 1949, repr. 1970).
| Artist: Anton von Webern |
| Wikipedia: Anton Webern |
Anton Webern (3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of pitch, rhythm and dynamics were formative in the musical technique later known as total serialism.
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Webern was born in Vienna, Austria, as Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amelie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer - the only obvious source of the future composer's talent.[1] He never used his middle names and dropped the von in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. After spending much of his youth in Graz and Klagenfurt, Webern attended Vienna University from 1902. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years by employing palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economic use of musical materials.
He studied composition under Arnold Schoenberg, writing his Passacaglia, Op. 1 as his graduation piece in 1908. He met Alban Berg, who was also a pupil of Schoenberg's, and these two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. After graduating, he took a series of conducting posts at theatres in Ischl, Teplitz, Danzig, Stettin, and Prague before moving back to Vienna. There he helped run Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances from 1918 through 1922 and conducted the "Vienna Workers Symphony Orchestra" from 1922 to 1934.
Webern's music was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, even before they seized power in Austria in 1938.[2] Although Webern had sharply attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, their intended publication did not take place at that time, which proved fortunate since this later "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences."[3] During the war, however, his patriotic fervor led him to endorse the regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, where he described Hitler on 2 May 1940 as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany.[4] As a result of official disapproval, he found it harder (though at no stage impossible) to earn a living, and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition.
It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30 in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him.[5]
He left Vienna near the end of the war, and moved to Mittersill in Salzburg, believing he would be safer there. On 15 September 1945, during the Allied occupation of Austria, he was shot dead by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities, when, despite the curfew in effect, he stepped outside the house to enjoy a cigar without disturbing his sleeping grandchildren. The soldier responsible, army cook Pfc. Raymond Norwood Bell, was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955.[6]
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Webern was not a prolific composer; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs.[8] However, his influence on later composers, and particularly on the post-war avant garde, was immense. His mature works, using Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, have a textural clarity and emotional coolness which greatly influenced composers such as Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Like almost every composer who had a career of any length, Webern's music changed over time. However, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total.
Webern's earliest works are in a late Romantic style. They were neither published nor performed in his lifetime, though they are sometimes performed today. They include the orchestral tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904) and the Langsamer Satz (1905) for string quartet.
Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically speaking, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language.
For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. With the Drei Geistliche Volkslieder (1925) he used Schoenberg's twelve tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1927) was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form.
Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument (sometimes, and somewhat erroneously, called Klangfarbenmelodie).
Webern's last pieces seem to indicate another development in style. The two late Cantatas, for example, use larger ensembles than earlier pieces, last longer (No. 1 around nine minutes; No. 2 around sixteen), and are texturally somewhat denser.
The works with opus numbers are the ones that Webern saw fit to have published in his own lifetime, plus a few late works published after his death. They constitute the main body of his work, although several pieces of juvenilia and a few mature pieces that do not have opus numbers are occasionally performed today.
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