The Classical Music Book

265

See also: Canticum Canticorum 46–51 ■ The Art of Fugue 10 8 –111 ■ Pierrot lunaire 240–245 ■ Gruppen 306–307

MODERN 1900 –1950

of the Western chromatic scale,

deployed in a chosen and fixed

order, which can also be inverted,

or reversed, or both at once. This

material determines the music’s

linear aspect, or melody, and the

row’s component notes can also

be superimposed to create chords,

or harmony. These notes can be

played for any length and in any

rhythm, as long as they are played

in the right order.

The short symphony

Schoenberg’s 12-note idiom often

resembles a modernist take on

the Classical musical language of

Beethoven or Haydn. Schoenberg’s

other celebrated pupil, Alban Berg,

liked to deploy serialism as one

element in an otherwise more freely

composed work, as in his nostalgic,

Mahler-influenced Violin Concerto

(1935). Webern was a more austere

composer, drawn to the spiritual

purity of Renaissance choral

music. The two ultra-concentrated

movements of Webern’s Symphonie,

Op. 21, written for a small orchestra

without double bass, together last

less than 10 minutes, in a marriage

of 12-note chromaticism and the

“serial” spareness of Renaissance

pieces, such as Palestrina’s. It

covers just 16 pages of music.

Beethoven’s First Symphony, by

contrast, is more than 60 pages long.

Symphonie’s first movement

consists of four simultaneous

musical lines, deployed in widely

spaced points of sound: each line

consists of a 12-note row whose last

two notes overlap with the first two

of the next so that four unbroken,

slowly intertwining musical chains

are formed. The second movement

presents a fast-moving, tightly

compressed sequence of variations

on an initial idea, with each of

these reversing from its midway

point in a mirror-image of itself.

The 12-note row used by Webern

here is itself symmetrical, creating

a complex and self-referential work.

Clear yet complex

Compared to the teeming

hyperactivity of Schoenberg’s

style, the spare, delicate sonorities

of Webern’s symphony use a similar

technical method to achieve a

different effect—the distilled

essence of musical sound itself.

British composer George Benjamin

praised the symphony for its

kaleidoscope-like intricacy: “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.” ■

Anton von Webern

Born in 1883, Webern was

raised in Klagenfurt, in the

southern Austrian region of

Carinthia. He studied at Vienna

University, graduating with

a doctoral thesis on the Dutch

Renaissance composer Heinrich

Isaac. Webern studied

composition under Schoenberg

from 1904–1908, becoming a

lifelong friend of the composer.

After 1908, Webern’s work

began to combine extreme

chromatic harmony with

unprecedented concentration

of structure: some of his musical

statements were only a few

seconds long. He adopted the

12-tone method in 1924 and

used it until the end of his life. In

1945, Webern moved to Mittersill,

Austria, for his family’s safety but

was accidentally and fatally shot

by a member of the occupying

A mer ican ar my.

Greater coherence cannot

be achieved. ... The entire

movement thus represents

in itself a double canon

with retrograde motion.

George Benjamin

Other key works

1908 Passacaglia for orchestra

1913 Five Orchestral Pieces

1927 String Trio, Op. 20

1938–1939 Cantata No. 1

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