Anton Webern (3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer… Read Full Bio ↴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.
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. 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, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt.
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 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 political upheaval brought to a halt the publication of his works. With almost no private pupils left, Webern had to resort to accepting such tasks as piano arrangements of works by lesser composers. Always of a retiring disposition, he fell into total obscurity with the outbreak of World War II. Webern's disillusionment with the Hitler regime was deepened by increasing bombing raids. In February 1945 his only son, Peter, was killed in a strafing attack on a train. When the Russian Army neared Vienna, the composer and his wife fled to Mittersill near Salzburg, where their three daughters and grandchildren had sought refuge. Webern was accidentally shot and killed there by a soldier in the U.S. occupation forces.
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. 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, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt.
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 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 political upheaval brought to a halt the publication of his works. With almost no private pupils left, Webern had to resort to accepting such tasks as piano arrangements of works by lesser composers. Always of a retiring disposition, he fell into total obscurity with the outbreak of World War II. Webern's disillusionment with the Hitler regime was deepened by increasing bombing raids. In February 1945 his only son, Peter, was killed in a strafing attack on a train. When the Russian Army neared Vienna, the composer and his wife fled to Mittersill near Salzburg, where their three daughters and grandchildren had sought refuge. Webern was accidentally shot and killed there by a soldier in the U.S. occupation forces.
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Massig
Anton Webern Lyrics
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The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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Jonáš Starý
Thank you very much! One of the most magical, sophisticated and stunning composition from Webern. So beautiful...
Voice Over
Only trumped by his six pieces for Orchestra op. 6
Tom Furgas
Incredibly radical when it was first composed, this work is scintillating and beautiful. No doubt many classical listeners still find it off-putting, but give it a chance and you will find yourself drawn into Webern's magic. Poetic, mysterious, and utterly ravishing.
Tom Furgas
@Sonder It's a sign of cultural decadence that postmodern composers are only able to create ironic paste-ups. Not just the composers but also the audiences, who loathed all atonal music. So now many composers give them what they want; watered-down retreads of Mahler and 1930's movie music. Bah!
Sonder
It's still highly radical even today.
Webern's music gazed into the future far more than contemporary postmodern composers have, who have been trapped in the world of pastiche and irony.
Gwailo54
@Verschlungen I read somewhere that Craft was allocated studio time with the session musicians (who made up a fictitious studio only orchestra), to record these small pieces once larger works were in the can and there was still time on the clock. Several of these session musicians were emigrés who fled Europe during the time of Hitler, mainly because they were Jews or were considered "impure" for whatever reason, and it is likely they would have known the music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern from their time in Austria or Germany by reputation of not as performers. Hollywood was awash with high calibre musicians who could sight read Webern's scores.
I still treasure the idea (provided my memory isn't playing tricks on me) of Marni Nixon rehearsed the Webern songs in Stravinsky's home. I still wish that Stravinsky had written something specifically for her in his serial period on the back of those rehearsals. I wonder how many lovers of her work in The King and I, West Side Story and My Fair Lady would recognise her as the same singer!
Without the patronage of CBS, albeit piecemeal rather than wholehearted, the Craft recordings would not have been made and Webern's music could well have languished until Boulez had a higher profile. Remember also the recordings were issued in 1957 (but it took two years to record Webern's tiny output), 12 years after Webern died, so this was very much new music. We had to wait until 1979 for the first of the Boulez box set recordings. I aim the proud possessor of all three sets. I have a strong affection for the Craft recordings, despite the excellence of Boulez sets.
Robert Slagle
There is so much music like this from my college days. At first I found them impenetrable, now I find them sources of never-ending beauty. Specifically the Schoenberg Vln. Con., Piano Con., and wind quintet. Wouldn't Schoenberg be suprised by the number of recordings of his Violin Concerto.
Verschlungen
I also wanted to say, 'Well said!' but someone beat me to it.
During high school, circa 1960, I listened to this piece many times, as conducted by Robert Craft. This piece (along with several other Webern compositions) became lodged in me, deeper than my own DNA, so to speak. Craft was wonderful for his time (using studio musicians from the LA area, I believe, like mercenary soldiers, who may or may not have loved the music?); not surprisingly, this performance is, in various ways, better -- as exquisite as the music itself, one might say.
Salvador Olvera Cháidez
Han transcurrido cien años y estas composiciones siguen siendo innovadoras. Las prácticas de ejecución mucho han venido contribuyendo a desarrollar el gusto: este es un ejemplo admirable.
Pienso que una diferencia sustancial con las artes plásticas, es que no tienen un precio de mercado conforme al apetito de coleccionistas en las subastas internacionales.
La música es algo mucho más abstracto, más conceptual, más accesible: es algo que se puede atesorar en la memoria y en el corazón de un público mucho más amplio, que aprende a disfrutarla sin necesidad de poseerla.
Stuart Segan
The equivalent of listening to Bach somewhere around the 1850's. Old school and undeniably brilliant. Who needs ultra modern when you have this? Brahm's says to himself it's time to bring out a symphony.