Page 267 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

MODERN 1900–1950 265

See also: Canticum Canticorum 46–51 ■ The Art of Fugue 108–111 ■ Pierrot lunaire 240–245 ■ Gruppen 306–307

of the Western chromatic scale, of the next so that four unbroken,
deployed in a chosen and fixed slowly intertwining musical chains
order, which can also be inverted, are formed. The second movement
or reversed, or both at once. This presents a fast-moving, tightly
material determines the music’s compressed sequence of variations
linear aspect, or melody, and the Greater coherence cannot on an initial idea, with each of
row’s component notes can also be achieved. … The entire these reversing from its midway
be superimposed to create chords, movement thus represents point in a mirror-image of itself.
or harmony. These notes can be in itself a double canon The 12-note row used by Webern
played for any length and in any with retrograde motion. here is itself symmetrical, creating
rhythm, as long as they are played George Benjamin a complex and self-referential work.
in the right order.
Clear yet complex
The short symphony Compared to the teeming
Schoenberg’s 12-note idiom often hyperactivity of Schoenberg’s
resembles a modernist take on style, the spare, delicate sonorities
the Classical musical language of of Webern’s symphony use a similar
Beethoven or Haydn. Schoenberg’s less than 10 minutes, in a marriage technical method to achieve a
other celebrated pupil, Alban Berg, of 12-note chromaticism and the different effect—the distilled
liked to deploy serialism as one “serial” spareness of Renaissance essence of musical sound itself.
element in an otherwise more freely pieces, such as Palestrina’s. It British composer George Benjamin
composed work, as in his nostalgic, covers just 16 pages of music. praised the symphony for its
Mahler-influenced Violin Concerto Beethoven’s First Symphony, by kaleidoscope-like intricacy: “Gone
(1935). Webern was a more austere contrast, is more than 60 pages long. is the mono-directional thrust of
composer, drawn to the spiritual Symphonie’s first movement Classical and Romantic music; in
purity of Renaissance choral consists of four simultaneous its place a world of rotations and
music. The two ultra-concentrated musical lines, deployed in widely reflections, opening myriad paths
movements of Webern’s Symphonie, spaced points of sound: each line for the listener to trace through
Op. 21, written for a small orchestra consists of a 12-note row whose last textures of luminous clarity yet
without double bass, together last two notes overlap with the first two beguiling ambiguity.” ■

Anton von Webern of structure: some of his musical
statements were only a few
Born in 1883, Webern was seconds long. He adopted the
raised in Klagenfurt, in the 12-tone method in 1924 and
southern Austrian region of used it until the end of his life. In
Carinthia. He studied at Vienna 1945, Webern moved to Mittersill,
University, graduating with Austria, for his family’s safety but
a doctoral thesis on the Dutch was accidentally and fatally shot
Renaissance composer Heinrich by a member of the occupying
Isaac. Webern studied American army.
composition under Schoenberg
from 1904–1908, becoming a Other key works
lifelong friend of the composer.
After 1908, Webern’s work 1908 Passacaglia for orchestra
began to combine extreme 1913 Five Orchestral Pieces
chromatic harmony with 1927 String Trio, Op. 20
unprecedented concentration 1938–1939 Cantata No. 1

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