2shreffler Webern Libre

Anne C. Shreffler

Reclaiming Tradition

The instrumental and vocal miniatures that Webern composed between 1909 and1914 sound at first so utterly strange that they seem to exist outside of any tradition.1

Their extreme brevity, timbral richness, quiet dynamics, and most of all, the fleetingquality of their gestures were unprecedented at the time of their composition andstill sound fresh in the twenty-first century. Single notes, fragments of melodies,fragile chords, and ostinatos emerge but vanish just as quickly. Not least because ofits lack of redundancy, the music resists description using common analyticalmetaphors drawn from language (such as “phrase” or “exposition”). Instead of layingout a premise or developing an argument (as in the typical Beethovenian or Schoen-bergian exposition), each of Webern’s miniatures seems to articulate and inhabit aspace, created not by a linear unfolding, but by the potentiality implied by the mul-tiple connections that the listener’s ear is able to make between musical events. Everydetail is compositionally significant: dynamics, articulation, register, timbre, and silences play an equal role to pitch and rhythm. While the extremely short durationof each piece or movement may estrange a listener who approaches the experiencewith normal concert expectations, it allows the attentive listener better to hold thepiece in memory.2 Since in Webern’s densely-composed music there are more poten-tial relationships than it is humanly possible to hear at any one time, different listeners (or the same listener on different hearings) will relate the events in multipleways, resulting in different articulations of the space within the same piece. LikeMorton Feldman’s music too, Webern’s invites the listener into the process of makingthe piece. Of course a culturally informed, understanding mind is necessary for anymusic to be heard as music and not random sounds.3 But Webern’s aphorisms leavemore imaginative space for the listener to fill than most other music, particularlywhen compared with the rhetoric-based music of the German classical tradition.

1 | These include Fünf Sätze für Streichquartet, Op. 5 (except No. 1), Vier Stücke für Geige und Klavier, Op. 7,Zwei Lieder, Op. 8 (early version for voice and large orchestra), Sechs Bagatellen für Streichquartett,Op. 9, Fünf Stücke für Orchester, Op. 10, Drei kleine Stücke für Violoncello und Klavier, Op. 11, as well asthe songs “Die Einsame” (later Op. 13, No. 2) and “Leise Düte” (originally grouped together as“Zwei Lieder, op. 7”), “O santes Glühn der Berge” (originally grouped with Nos. 2, 3, and 5 of Op. 10as “Vier Stücke für Orchester, das 3. mit Gesang, op. 6”), “Schmerz immer […]” (originally groupedwith Nos. 1 and 6 of Op. 9 as “Drei Stücke für Streichquartet [mit Gesang], op. 3, No. 3”), as well asthe drat of the orchestra song, “Kunttag III.”

2| For a detailed investigation of how musical brevity affects the listener’s experience, see SimonObert, Musikalische Kürze zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Beihete zum Archiv für Musikwissen -schat 63 (Stutgart: Steiner, 2008).

3| See Albrecht von Massow, Musikalisches Subjekt: Idee und Erscheinung in der Moderne. RombachWissen schaten. Reihe Literae 84 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2001).

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Beethoven’s Trills, Webern’s Sixth Bagatelle, and the Shards of Tradition

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Webern’s music seems therefore to look more towards the future than the past,historically speaking; this view lay behind his enormous influence on New Musicafter 1945. But while Webern’s music may sound like “luft von anderem planeten,”its distance from tradition does not mean the absence of tradition. His miniaturesare suffused with gestures, textures, and forms of tonal music, even if these are trans-formed beyond immediate recognition.4 The funeral march of Op. 6 is an obviousexample, but there are also echoes of Schubertian melody (Op. 7, No. 3, piano righthand), of Mahlerian orchestration (Op. 10, No. 5), and of tonal gestures, such as suspensions (Op. 5, No. 5, end, here left poignantly “unresolved”). One could evenhear the fade-out ending of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony echoed in Webern’s endingsthat dissolve into silence, marked “verklingend” or “verlöschend,” as for exampleOp. 5, Nos. 2 and 5; Op. 7, No. 4; Op. 9, Nos. 3 and 4; and Op. 10, No. 1. These topoifrom the Classic-Romantic tradition, however attenuated, are accompanied by othersignifying gestures that are unique to Webern’s music.5 While all these topoi are sub-tle if not sublimated in the earlier works, Webern’s later works display their affinitiesto the classical tradition more overtly: in terms of genre (symphony, concerto, cantata), form (variations, sonata, and rondo forms), and technique (canon).

The category of topoi in Webern’s miniatures may be expanded to include musicalfigures: traditional ways of grouping tones, such as appogiaturas, turns, mordents,grace notes, ostinatos, tremolos, and trills, all of which are plentiful in his earlier music.Although these figures do not serve a tonal function here – which is why the conven-tional name “ornament” is not appropriate –, they still evoke connections with tradi-tion. Each figure forms a textural, timbral, rhythmic and possibly metric or registralshape that is recognizable only in terms of its past usage as a convention (someone whohas never heard a grace note will not be able to identify one). If genre rests on a kindof contract between listeners and composers, then a figure – which is a very small subset of the manifold elements that make up a genre – would analogously require a knowledge of many similar figures in order to be recognizable. As a conventionalgrouping, a figure can immediately refer to other such figures; it participates in its localmusical discourse and at the same time in a larger historical nexus. Whereas a singlepitch, an interval, or a simple rhythm usually does not carry any particular associationsfrom work to work because of its ubiquitousness, a figure remains identifiable as a discrete element, even though the different manifestations of the type may vary considerably. Nonetheless the nature of the figure’s reference to other pieces of musicis general rather than specific; whereas pitch and rhythmic elements can be used to

4| As Adorno put it: “Indem sie [die Neue Musik] nämlich die traditionellen Formen vermeidet, bewahrt sie diese auf. Noch die freiesten und unschematischsten Gebilde enthalten die Spur ge-schichtlicher Tektonik.” In his “Interpretationsanalysen neuer Musik,” chapter “Anton Webern: SechsBagatellen für Streichquartet op. 9,” Der getreue Korrepetitor: Lehrschriten zur musikalischen Praxis, ed.Rolf Tiedemann. Gesammelte Schriten 15 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976), p. 279 (originally published in 1963).

5| Julian Johnson has identified specific topoi in Webern’s music from this period, such as the ostinato, the filling of chromatic space, and the descending solo violin line, that invoke ideas ofnature and the maternal (which were intertwined in Webern’s private mythology); see his Webernand the Transformation of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 99–127.

38 Beethoven’s Trills, Webern’s Sixth Bagatelle, and the Shards of Tradition


quote or to allude to other works, it is impossible to quote a specific pre-existing ap-pogiatura or trill. Figures, therefore, have a kind of generic familiarity, but due to theirbrevity and conventionality lack the ability to refer to specific passages in other works.

Listening to echoes of the past in Webern’s music is very different from a struc-tural hearing, in which only internal relationships are considered. If we hear hismusic as alluding to other music, then we cannot consider it to be self-contained,but open. This has important implications for how we interpret the music. For if the music is not completely hermetic, we have to employ analytical approaches that will recognize topoi, and be willing to ascribe meanings to them. Given music’s non-referential nature, the interpretation of meaning in music resides with the listenerand analyst, not with the composer. Although a convincing interpretation will be in-formed by all the relevant historical and biographical information available (as I hope this one is), it does not claim to invoke the composer’s intention as proof orauthority. Even if it were possible to know what Webern had really intended with a given work, his interpretation would not have as much meaning for us as it did forhim. The following essay should be understood as an experiment in intertextualanalysis, an attempt to hear one of the layers of history within the work. This inter-pretation may seem subjective and indeed it is so, if “subjective” is defined as the ac-tive understanding of an aesthetic phenomenon as constituted by a listening subject.If Webern’s music allows room for the listener to create meaning, then many differ-ent kinds of meaning can result, although since musical meaning in our culture isconstituted in fairly specific ways, the number of plausible readings is not infinite.I make no claim that Webern thought any of these things. But if the essay inducesothers to hear Webern’s music in a new way, it will have succeeded.

On this basis I shall propose a thesis that not only is the sixth Bagatelle, which isthe focus of this essay, suffused with references to tradition, but that these referencesmean something; not in the sense of specific semantic meanings perhaps, but ratherthat they articulate an attitude towards the cultural past which can be described as simultaneously yearning for transcendence and mourning its loss. In his introductoryessay to this volume, Simon Obert presents and examines three distinct modes of interpretation of the sixth Bagatelle: structural (relationships internal to the work), poetic (programmatic on the personal level), and historical/topical (“ExpressionistischeMiniatur”/“Volksmusik?”).6 My hearing of “Webern-and-tradition” partakes of the lattertwo. Adorno’s identification of topics in the sixth Bagatelle that evoke specific historicalmodels (although “Volkslied” is surely meant tongue in cheek) and his focus on trills as a feature have inspired my own interpretation. I also read the sixth Bagatelle as the conclusion of a personal poetic statement whose core is the vocal setting of “Schmerz immer […],” originally the second piece of “Drei Stücke für Streichquartett (mit Gesang), op. 3, No. 3” (Op. 9, Nos. 1 and 6 were the first and third, respectively). In this reading, as Obert explains, the sixth Bagatelle hints at a moment of redemption

6| Simon Obert, “‘Der unfaßliche Zustand’: Fragen an Weberns sechste Bagatelle,” in this volume,pp. 11–35.

39Anne C. Shreffler


after the trauma.7 In fact many musical features of the sixth Bagatelle imply a recoveryor release into another realm: the quick tempo, the high register, the fluid progressionof musical events.8 My interpretation builds on this one, with a modification: the utopiacan be only glimpsed, and the trauma returns after its disappearance. The sixth Bagatelle,like much of Webern’s music from this period, seems to balance precariously betweenstasis and instability, straining to evoke an other-worldly peace while perched on theedge of the abyss.

Starting from the observation that Webern’s early pieces for string quartet havesomething to do with past music, especially that of late Beethoven, I shall focus onthe trill as one element – of the many that could have been chosen – of Webern’s compositional Beethoven reception.9 As already mentioned about figures in general,Webern’s trills do not imitate or reproduce Beethoven’s trills, but rather evoke themin highly compressed form; drawing upon the historical figure of the trill in its specific late-Beethovenian guise allows Webern to express the notion of a longed-forbut unattainable utopia with the merest of gestures.

The second part of my thesis is that this link does not collapse the distance between Beethoven and Webern, but rather emphasizes it. Webern does not try to approach Beethoven’s language in a classicizing gesture, or out of nostalgia, butrather to reclaim its essence by reinventing it. In other words, that Webern’s musicevokes the past is a significant feature of its modernity.

Reclaiming the past is a necessary move with regard to tradition, which, in thecultural sense, does not ever simply “exist,” but has to be (re)constituted by artistsworking within a particular social context. This is doubly true of music, whose textstatus is not as stable as that of literature, and which lacks the object status of the visual arts. Musical tradition is invisible and inaudible by itself; it can only be ac-cessed by being re-heard through a “lens” from the present (whether it be performingan older work, hearing a recording, reading a score, or writing / performing a newwork). The creation of tradition must be done anew by every generation and indeedby each individual composer. One of the central features of art since the late eight -eenth century is that tradition is no longer automatically transmitted and availablein a self-explanatory package to members of a national or cultural group. By the

7 | Julian Johnson offers a similar interpretation of the sixth Bagatelle, whose sound world erodes “any de-fined corporeal quality” by emphasizing the “high register for the ensemble as a whole and a displace-ment of verticalities between parts through the simultaneous use of triple and duple rhythms.” This piece,like the song “Schmerz immer […]” that originally preceded it in the cycle “Drei Stücke für Streichquar-tet,” is “concerned with the poetics of the angelic presence which Webern identified with the conti-nuing sense of his mother’s memory.” Webern and the Transformation of Nature (note 5), p. 125 and 127.

8| Obert, “Der unfaßliche Zustand,” in this volume, lists these features on pp. 30 f. and observes: “In deutlichem Gegensatz zu dem Bewusstsein von Schmerz, Tod und Verlust, wie es im Gedichtzur Sprache kommt, artikuliert die sechste Bagatelle mitels musikalischer Merkmale eine Haltungdes Trostes, der Hoffnung und vielleicht sogar der Utopie” (p. 31).

9| I am not aware of any studies of Webern’s Beethoven reception, which is a large topic that can onlybe touched upon here. Whereas Beethoven’s main legacy to Béla Bartók and Arnold Schoenbergwas formal and motivic organization, Webern’s music seems to have more to do with the specificqualities of Beethoven’s late works: simplicity, sparseness, high-register sound, but even morewith the ecstatic moments of transcendence depicted in these works.



twentieth century, the ability to pick and choose one’s tradition, to combine previously separate traditions, and even to create “new traditions” from scratch had become necessary characteristics of musical creativity.10

Hannah Arendt wrote, “Insofar as the past has been transmitted as tradition,it possesses authority; insofar as authority presents itself historically, it becomes tradition.” 11 For the Second Viennese School, Beethoven was (with the possible ex-ception of Johann Sebastian Bach) the supreme authority in their musical heritage.But after the crisis of expression at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was nolonger possible to take elements from tradition and employ them without reflection.To try to recreate an unbroken organic work would be an artificial and illusionaryconstruct. In describing how Walter Benjamin dealt with the break in tradition,Arendt suggests that he “discovered that the transmissibility of the past had been replaced by its citability.” She offers the image of the physical transformation of the body at the bottom of the sea from Ariel’s song in The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies,

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.12

While it is impossible to dredge up the entire body anymore, one can still dive intothe water and retrieve bits and pieces of it. Only now, there is nothing left of the original body, as its substance has been transformed: instead of bones, there is coral,instead of eyes, there are pearls. Arendt’s name for Benjamin the collector, of objectsas well as of quotations, was “the pearl diver.” 13

The image of the pearl diver is an apt one for Webern as well.14 For when Webern’s music alludes to tradition, it does not (re)present it as a whole, but in frag-ments; the act of taking them transforms the fragments into “something rich and

10| See Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965) (1st ed. 1959).11 | Hannah Arendt, “Introduction: Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940,” in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations,

ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), p. 38. (Arendt’s introduction originally appeared as an article in The New Yorker in 1968.)

12| William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Stephen Orgel. The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1987), p. 123 (I, 2, 397–402).

13 | Arendt, “Introduction: Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940” (note 11), p. 38.14 | Adorno has compared Benjamin and Webern in a different way: “In dem mikrologischen Hang,

dem Vertrauen darauf, daß die Konkretion eines erfüllten Augenblicks alle bloß abstrakt anbefoh-lene Entfaltung aufwiegt, hat Webern etwas mit Walter Benjamin gemein. Die Handschriten derbeiden, des Philosophen und des fanatisch an sein Material gebundenen Musikers, die sich nichtkannten und kaum viel voneinander wußten, waren einander überaus ähnlich; beide sahen auswie Post aus einem Zwergenreich, Miniaturformate, die doch stets wie aus einem sehr großen ver-kleinert wirkten.” “Anton von Webern,” Musikalische Schriten I –III, ed. Rolf Tiedemann. GesammelteSchriten 16 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 113 (originally published in Merkur 13/3 [1959]).One could also fruitfully compare Webern with the great miniaturist Robert Walser.

41Anne C. Shreffler


strange.” Both the fragmentary, incomplete recovery and the “sea-change” of the ele-ments are necessary for any kind of continuity of tradition. In this sense, Webern’searly pieces for string quartet (Op. 5 and Op. 9) contain shards of the history of thestring quartet, and especially of Beethoven’s music in general (not only his stringquartets), but these fragments have been irrevocably transmuted in their substance.The distance to the past has not been bridged; evoking it means recognizing its loss.

Webern’s Trills, Beethoven’s Trills

A trill is an extremely rapid, a-metric alternation between two pitches (a trill movesat 640 beats per minute or more). Trills in tonal music have the important functionof introducing additional dissonance and textural complication to harmonically un-stable pitches that require resolution. A cadential trill prolongs one of the notes ofthe dominant seventh chord before it is resolved into the tonic. Like suspensionsand appoggiaturas, cadential trills begin on strong beats. The upper note of the trillintroduces a non-chord tone; the dissonance is heightened by the trill’s rapid motionand the noise produced by the clapping of keys, striking of strings with hammers,or fingers on the fingerboard. This moment is also usually drawn out durationallyto increase the sense of satisfaction when the resolution arrives. The tonal pro -gression of dissonance to consonance is therefore paralleled by the timbral pro -gression of noisy (complex) to pure (single tone) sound. As ornaments, trills areoften employed by solo instruments in concertos, sonatas, or chamber music toheighten the virtuosic effect. Of course, they are found in tutti instruments as well,but they have an especially thrilling quality (pun intended) when produced by a sin-gle instrument or voice. A trill is a high-wire act, volatile and elusive, and the extraeffort it takes to maintain it is apparent. It cannot be sustained for very long; after awhile it will become uneven or slow down as the fingers or vocal chords tire. Becauseof its inherent dissonance, its added noise and density, and the extra energy requiredto produce it, trills have for centuries, in many different musical idioms, been em-ployed to increase tension in music.

Even in an atonal context, there are trills in Webern’s music that are analogousto cadential trills. These are produced like trills in the Classic-Romantic tradition,except without a preceding appoggiatura or a termination. (That the cadential trillwith termination was still an active practice as late as 1909 is suggested by the factthat Webern found it necessary to indicate “ohne Ausgang” after a trill, see Op. 6,No. 6 [first version], mm. 1–4 cellos.) In Op. 10, No. 2, for example, the tremendouscrescendo at the end of the piece, from p to fff, is produced by trills in the glocken-spiel, horn, Bb and Eb clarinets, oboe, and piccolo. Combining the trills in the differ-ent instruments multiplies the noise, and since each trill adds a second note, thepitches are multiplied too: in the last measure (m. 14), which is the culmination ofthe crescendo, ten pitch classes are heard (only E and Ab are missing).

15 | Brass trills mark the climax in Op. 6, No. 2 (at rehearsal no. 7; mm. 22, 24–27); in “Kunttag III,”there are five horn trills in a row (combined with flutertongued trombones) in mm. 18–19.



Characteristic here is the series of horn trills in measures 13 and 14, similar to those found in other of Webern’s early works.15 These examples are analogous tocadential trills, since they propel the music forward by increasing its density anddynamic level. The only difference is that Webern’s trills do not elevate a moment of dissonance that is subsequently resolved, but rather are used by themselves – without resolution – to increase tension and thicken the texture.

One has only to think of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 106 (the “Hammer -klavier”) to remember that, even in tonal music, cadential trills do not have to be formulaic. At the end of the recapitulation in the first movement, a trill on the tonic (Bb), after the tonic arrival (mm. 338–343), helps to transform Bb functionallyinto a dominant and propels the music into the new tonal region of the coda (Eb minor, mm. 362 ff.).

A little later, a double trill (both hands trill Bb–C an octave apart) sounds like a conventional dominant to the local tonic of E b major/minor (mm. 365–371), but then freezes on a Bb chord (m. 372).

43Anne C. Shreffler

Example 1a: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata,Op. 106/I, mm. 335–346

Example 1b: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata,Op. 106/I, mm. 365–373

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The trill shifts to the third of the chord, D, in what seems to be a very conventionalemphasis of the double suspension that a chord usually brings about, but thereis no resolution to the dominant; the music continues in untroubled Bbmajor – thetonic of the movement – as if nothing had happened. In these passages, the trill isemployed precisely for its cadential connotations, but Beethoven subverts theprocesses normally associated with it.

The trill gets another twist in the fugue subject in the last movement; this is the apotheosis of the cadential trill, complete with termination, but its function has been inverted from a closing, cadential figure to a thematic, opening one:

Webern’s trills more often have the opposite function from traditional ones. Instead of increasing tension, they mark a moment of repose. A good example is the orchestral song, “O sanftes Glühn der Berge,” which was originally the third piecein a set with the orchestra pieces Op. 10, Nos. 2, 3, and 5.16

The poem by Webern conveys impressions of seeing a vision of a beloved mother’sface in the evening glow of the mountains. In the second measure, the muted trum-pet’s trill, B–C#, ppp, is soft but clearly audible; it begins alone (with the voice) andis joined by the [solo] cello. The whole step of the trill is not just a convention:

16| A fair copy of this manuscript is in the Robert Owen Lehman Collection of the Morgan Library,New York (W376.V665).


6 – 54 – 3

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Example 1c: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata,Op. 106/IV, mm. 16–19

Example 2a: Anton Webern, “O sanftes Glühn der Berge,” mm. 1–4


it echoes and anticipates other major seconds, which are heard often in the openingbars (see violin m. 1, Ab⁄–Bb , viola m. 1, Eb–C#, voice m. 1–2, D–E, cello m. 3, F#–E,voice m. 3, G–F, and 4, Bb–C. The inverted form of the interval is also heard, in theviolin upbeat and m. 1, Gb–Ab, and viola m. 1, F–Eb.)

The trill in measure 2 of “O sanftes Glühn” accompanies the word “sanftes,”which of course does not necessarily have to lend the trill a semantic meaning. How-ever, this trill, taken together with other similar trills in Webern’s vocal music, sug-gests that soft trills did in fact have a certain broad association with gentleness,peace, or ecstasy. For example, in “Kunfttag III” (text by Stefan George), a clarinettrill, E–F# , pp, is the sole accompaniment to the vocal line, which sings the words,“[Nun] wird es wieder lenz.”17

Other examples can be found in the “Zwei Lieder für Mezzosopran und Orchester,op. 7,” of 1914.18 In the first song, “Die Einsame” (later, after substantial changes in orchestration, Op. 13, No. 2), a trill on the muted solo violin (am Steg, pp) enters at the word “Himmel”; another trill, on the muted solo contrabass (ppp), marks the word “Mond.” (The text is a translation from the Chinese by Hans Bethge.)

17 | A detailed pencil drat of this song is found in the Anton Webern Collection in the Paul SacherFoundation in Basel.

18 | A fair copy of this manuscript is in the Robert Owen Lehman Collection of the Morgan Library,New York (W376.L532).

45Anne C. Shreffler

Example 2b: Anton Webern,“Kunfttag III,”mm. 1–3

Example 2c: Anton Webern,“Die Einsame,”mm. 3–8


In the second song, “Leise Düfte” (text by Webern), a trill in the muted viola, pp, isheard at the word “Düfte.” Here the figure of the trill has been multiplied: the entiretexture is saturated with fluttertonguing and tremolos.

Whereas in tonal music the trill contrasts with the pure sound quality of theother notes, Webern’s trills are closely related to other timbral effects, such astremolo (if marked on the same note, as quick repeated notes, and if marked betweentwo pitches a third or more apart, a quick alternation between them) and flutter-tongue. All these are used to produce an “impure,” flickering, unstable sound. YetWebern always indicates the exact pitches to be trilled or tremoloed, and experienceshows that however “noisy” the sound, the notated pitches are always significant.19

In Webern’s atonal language, neither of the trilled pitches functions as a dissonance,but by introducing a second pitch, a trill multiplies the possible pitch relationships.The ostinatos so common in Webern’s atonal music could even be considered the next step on the trill-tremolo continuum: all three produce Klangflächen, withdiffering surface articulation. (Trills and tremolos are basically sped-up ostinatos.)

19| Kathryn Bailey has shown that, in the twelve-tone music, even the grace notes are row tones; see her “A Note on Webern’s Graces,” in Studies in Music (Canada) 6 (1981), pp. 1–6.


Example 2d: Anton Webern,“Leise Düfte,” mm. 1–6


47Anne C. Shreffler

Example 3: Anton Webern, Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10, No. 4 (published version, with changes marked)

© Copyright 1923 by Universal Edition A.G.,Wien /PH449


Trills and both kinds of tremolos also share a paradoxical feature: they are constantlyin motion, but at the same time they prolong a steady stream of sound. Since theirmotion is the same for the duration of the event, the ear accepts the complex soundas a single event; a trill can therefore be heard both as forward moving or as sus-tained. (This is true of trills in tonal music too.)

If Webern’s trills can be either forceful and active (“cadential”) or quiet andstatic, the single trill in the orchestra piece Op. 10, No. 4, is an interesting case because it seems to function as both kinds at the same time. Webern later revised its instrumentation to bring it more into the latter realm, but I believe that vestigesof its original power can still be heard. Let us consider the original version, composedin 1913 as “Nr. 5 aus VII Kammerstücke für Orchester.”20 This differs from the finalversion in several slight but significant details (for any detail in a piece of only sixmeasures is significant!) (see Ex. 3, p. 47). The main difference for our purposes is the C–D b trill in measure 5, which here is played by muted horn instead of the clarinet, as in the published version. This means, first, that each instrument (except for the mandolin and the harp) plays only once, resulting in a maximum of timbral variety. Second, the horn trill in the first version is associated timbrallywith the preceding trumpet and trombone solos, thereby connecting their twomelodic gestures with the horn’s static trill.

The trill in the fifth measure is part of a contrasting section in the piece, in which the previous melodic events have ceased and a series of overlapping static,“noisy” events take their place. Starting with the snare drum, followed by harp, then the horn trill, celesta, and mandolin, all play either repeated or sustained notes(mm. 4–6). All have a noise component: of course the unpitched snare drum, but also the harp, celesta, and mandolin attacks, as well as the horn trill. If we recall that horn trills in Webern’s other music of the time are usually employed inloud climactic music, this passage does not seem to belong to that type of trill, especially because it and everything around it is very soft. Yet measures 4–5 of this piece clearly do not evoke an island of repose, as in “Die Einsame” or “LeiseDüfte,” but rather something much more disorienting. Once the snare drum (which can be associated with military drumming) begins in measure 4, there are no more melodic orientation points until the violin gesture at the end, and themusic seems in danger of slipping away into incoherence, or at least of dissolvinginto unformed stasis. The ppp, diminuendo trill on the muted horn is not only “noisier” and harder to produce than the same notes on the clarinet would be, it isalso a markedly lower dynamic level than that at which the horn, which can be one of the loudest instruments in the orchestra, usually plays. Adorno captured the threatening quality of passages like this one in his well-known remark about Webern’s pianissimos:

20| There is a manuscript of this piece in the Stadtbibliothek Winterthur (Rudolf Hunziker CollectionBRH MS 1063). It was discovered by Martin Staehelin and is reproduced in Felix Meyer and AnneShreffler, “Webern’s Revisions: Some Analytical Implications,” in Music Analysis 12 (1993), p. 358;see also pp. 357–63.



Dies Pianissimo darf man nicht nehmen, wie es klingt, nicht bloß als Reflex der zartesten

Regung der Seele, die es auch ist. Oft, gerade in Weberns Orchesterstücken, […] ist dies

dreifache Pianissimo, das Allerleiseste, der drohende Schatten eines unendlich entfernten

und unendlich mächtigen Lärms: so klang, im Jahre 1916, auf einer Waldchaussee bei

Frankfurt, der Kanonendonner von Verdun, der bis dahin trug.21

By reorchestrating the trill, Webern changes the piece in ways that are far from trivial.First, by changing the instrumentation of the trill to clarinet, Webern separated the“lyrical” solos of trumpet and trombone timbrally from the static elements (the Bb har-monic in the viola in mm. 1–3, the A in the clarinet in mm. 2–3, and the trill in m. 5).Second, the original horn trill sounds noisier and “rougher” than it would if it wereplayed on the clarinet; at a crucial transition in the piece from pure sounds to noisyones, the horn trill bridges the two realms, combining associations from both the cadential (tension-increasing) and static (relaxed) kinds of trills in Webern’s music.The violin solo at the close, which recalls aspects of the mandolin’s and trumpet’smelodies, tries in vain to restore order after the threat of catastrophe, but its high register and soft dynamic prevent it from exerting much force; the unease remains.

If Webern’s trills have the dialectic quality of repose laced with instability, terrafirma that threatens to crumble under one’s feet, they have this in common withmany of the trills in Beethoven’s late music.22 One of the most striking features ofthis music, as many have pointed out, is that Beethoven does not shy away from mixing and juxtaposing styles from different historical periods and different levelsof seriousness: Baroque-type textures exist in proximity with simple Classicalmelody and accompaniment figures, diatonic popular and dance music is juxtaposedwith dissonant chromaticism.23 Another paradox of late Beethoven is that while traditional forms are recast and reinvented beyond recognition (particularly the first-movement sonata form), forms such as fugue and variation are preserved in their essential outlines, even if filled with astoundingly novel content.

It is in the late variation movements of Beethoven’s piano sonatas that I hear trillsthat remind me somewhat of Webern’s. (These observations apply to similar passagesin the string quartets as well; if the substance in the late-Beethoven “body” has beentransmuted to coral and pearls, as it were, then fragments can be reclaimed regardlessof the works’ original instrumentation.) In the second and final movement of the PianoSonata Op. 111, for example, trills near the end of the piece grow out of the increasingrhythmic diminution, which is explored systematically in the first four variations:

21| Adorno, “Anton von Webern” (note 14), pp. 117–18.22| Adorno writes, “Sie [die letzten Klaviersonaten] sind voller schmückender Trillerketen, Kadenzen

und Fiorituren; otmals wird kahl, unverhüllt, unverwandelt die Konvention sichtbar,” “SpätstilBeethovens,” Musikalische Schriten IV, ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Gesammelte Schriten 17 (Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, 1982), pp. 14–5 (originally published in Der Auftakt 17/5–6 [1937]). For an excel-lent discussion of those moments in Beethoven’s piano sonatas that seem to shit to another sphere,see Karol Berger, “Beethoven and the Aesthetic State,” in Beethoven Forum 7 (1999), pp. 17–44.

23| A good example of the later is the enormous stylistic contrast between the fourth movement (“Alladanza tedesca”) and the original sixth and final movement (Große Fuge) of the String Quartet, Op. 130.

49Anne C. Shreffler


The Theme, marked “Arietta: Adagio molto semplice e cantabile” is a famously simpletwo-part theme of sixteen bars in 9/16 meter, which except for a brief A minor pas-sage at the beginning of the second part, stays firmly in C major. The first three vari-ations introduce successive rhythmic diminutions; by the third variation, the pointof max imum density is reached with groups of triplet thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths. The fourth variation returns to the 9/16 of the beginning (Variations 2 and3 had shortened the measure to 6/16 and 12/32, respectively); the slow triple pulseof the beginning is clearly audible, as is the Theme. The left-hand accompanimentfigure is metrically interesting, because it is made up of thirty-second notes thatought to be grouped in threes (as triplet subdivisions of the sixteenth notes), but thealternation between two pitches, C and G, undermines the triple subdivisions. Infact, at the beginning of Variation 4, the thirty-second note “tremolo” C to G con -tinues for so long (more than five measures) that it ceases to sound fast and denseand turns into a smooth, sustained, pedal point. (This is exactly the paradox that wesaw with Webern’s tremolos and ostinatos.) The thirty-second-note rhythm moves


Example 4: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, Op. 111/II: Diagram of rhythmic diminution


into the right hand and into increasingly higher registers, until it leaves the strictvariation form behind and spills over into a cadenza, which is permeated with sustained and (after an initial f) soft trills in the upper register (see Ex. 5). This mo-ment seems suspended in time;24 the trills blur the metric clarity and create a texturethat is constantly moving and at the same time static and outside of the piece’s metricaltime world. At first there are fragments of the Theme, but these fall away, leaving onlythe high-register trills suspended in mid-air. Then left hand enters (after a pause of almost three measures) in the low register, moving slowly from Bb below the staff tothe F below and back up again. After the trills cease, the right hand continues upwards;at the moment of their widest separation, the two hands are five and a half octavesapart. Without the trills or any of the figuration that has been omni present since thefirst variation, the music sounds strangely bare and empty. The Ebmajor of this passagestands out tonally as well; this is also the only time in the entire movement that a keyother than the C major / A minor of the Theme is heard. Here the sudden absence ofthe trills, combined with the slow tempo, the change of key, and the yawning gap between the upper and lower voices, create music that strains at the boundaries of the work (and possibly also of the physical limits of the piano keyboard at that time),implying a yearning towards a new, “other” realm beyond earthly music.25

24| See Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Expanded edition (New York: Norton, 1998), p. 446.

25| This remarkable passage has been oten commented upon, most famously in Thomas Mann’snovel Doktor Faustus, in which the narrator observes, during a lecture by the music teacher WendellKretschmar, “The characteristic of the movement of course is the wide gap between bass and treble,between the right and the let hand, and a moment comes, an uterly extreme situation, when the poor litle motif seems to hover alone and forsaken above a giddy yawning abyss – a procedureof awe-inspiring unearthliness […].” Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 55. (“Das Charakteristikum des Satzes ist ja das weite Auseinander

51Anne C. Shreffler

Example 5: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, Op. 111/II, “cadenza” after Variation 4, mm. 106–120


Trills in Webern’s Sixth Bagatelle

While Webern’s sixth Bagatelle does not have a chain of trills as in the Beethovenpiano sonata, with its six trills in nine measures it has quite a conspicuous number.It is the only one of the Six Bagatelles to contain trills at all, in the final or the earlyversions. There are no trills in the song for voice and string quartet, “Schmerz immer[…],” or in the Fünf Sätze für Streichquartett, Op. 5. Although trills are quite commonin Webern’s early music, as we have seen, they are rare in his string quartet pieces.It is also interesting that the last two of the six trills in the sixth Bagatelle were addedat a second compositional stage.26

In a texture characterized by extreme fragmentation, the trills stand out be-cause of their length – all last a full quarter note or more, and the two longest dura-tions of the piece (a half note and a dotted half note in mm. 5 and 8) are trills – andtheir relatively stable pitch. As usual, Webern takes great care to notate the trill’supper pitch, which is always either a half step or a whole step above the main one,and both pitches are clearly audible. The trills are (relative) islands of security in aphantasmagoric world of fleeting sounds, which are made even more evanescent bythe use of mutes in all instruments throughout the piece. The trills, because of theirduration, can swell, diminish, or be sustained at the same dynamic. The dialecticquality of the trill – that it is in one sense continuous and in another, constantlychanging – seems to encapsulate the volatile, elusive quality of this tiny piece.27

In the first measure, the trill Bb–Cb in the first violin, ppp and crescendo, propelsthe music from the A immediately preceding it into nowhere; the sharply articulateddyads in the second violin and viola break off the momentum as abruptly as itstarted. Here the trill articulates a filled chromatic space from A to C# (even if thecello’s C is here an octave lower than the other four chromatic notes). The viola picksup the trill idea in the next measure; like no other event so far, it is heard entirely byitself. The pitches, E–F#, are new to this register, which gives the trill a fresh sound.The length and isolation of the trill as well as the rest in all four voices that followsit allow the trill to be heard as a small closing gesture, marking off the first two

von Baß und Diskant, von rechter und linker Hand, und ein Augenblick kommt, eine extreme Situation, wo das arme Motiv einsam und verlassen über einem schwindelnd klaffenden Abgrundzu schweben scheint – ein Vorgang bleicher Erhabenheit […].” Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde, ed. Ruprecht Wimmer.Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe 10.1, [Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2007], p. 84.)Adorno, who advised Mann about the musical aspects of the novel, could have been thinking of this passage in Op. 111 when he wrote of late Beethoven: “Die Gewalt der Subjektivität in den späten Kunstwerken ist die auffahrende Geste, mit welcher sie die Kunstwerke verläßt. Sie sprengtsie, nicht um sich auszudrücken, sondern um ausdruckslos den Schein der Kunst abzuwerfen. Von den Werken läßt sie Trümmer zurück und teilt sich, wie mit Chiffren, nur vermöge der Hohl-stellen mit, aus welchen sie ausbricht.” “Spätstil Beethovens” (note 22), p. 15.

26| See Benjamin K. Davies, “Inside Webern’s Workshop: A Glimpse of Op. 9 No. 6 in the Making,” in Tempo, No. 222 (October 2002), pp. 2–7.

27| Johnson describes the texture of the sixth Bagatelle as the “intrusion into the foreground of abackground layer,” as the surface is suffused with elements that are usually considered back-ground in other contexts. Webern and the Transformation of Nature (note 5), p. 125.



measures of the pieces as a unit.28 The chord in measure 3 – the only time all four instruments have a simultaneous attack – pulls the texture abruptly upwards, leavingthe viola’s trill, in retrospect, interrupted and alone.

The trill immediately following in measure 3 (F#–G # in the second violin) draws on two pitches previously heard adjacent to each other (end m. 1 and beg.m. 2), and starts on the upper pitch of the previous trill, transposed up an octave. It also pre sents the F# for the first time in this register. Like the trill in measure 1,this one is also imbedded in a chromatic cluster, spanning from F# to A in register 5(which in fact connects seamlessly with the A–C# constellation of the beginning).This trill/cluster launches the piece’s first real expansion of registral space at the endof measure 3 and beginning of measure 4.

The cello’s trill A b–B b in measure 5, marked am Steg, forte and crescendo and up to now the longest note in the piece, leads into the climax in measures 5–6.29

The bottom note of the trill, the lowest note in the texture (except for the sixteenthB in the first violin), is new in this register (the Bb4 was played by the viola in m. 3).Here the wide spacing means that there is no chromatic cluster; the A that would“fill” the trill is sounded, to be sure, in the first violin three octaves higher, and G and B, further surrounding chromatic pitches, are also present in the “wrong” octaves. But since all twelve pitches are sounded in measure 5, there is a much higher degree of chromatic saturation than before.

The piece’s denouement follows after the fermata. Webern re-wrote the ending,continuing the trill idea from the beginning of the piece (the original ending had notrills after m. 6).30 The cello’s trill in measure 8, at three beats the longest sustainedduration in the piece, provides a stable if flickering background against which othercolors play. Its bottom pitch, D 5, is new in this register, although the upper note Eb5(like the first trill, a half step) recalls the same pitch in measures 1 and 2 in the viola.Taken together with the two immediately preceding pitches, the Ab in the viola andthe G in the second violin in measure 7, the trill pitches create a sonority made up ofintervals that have been very prominent up to now: tritone, perfect fourth, and majorthird. As such it resembles the sonority on the last eighth of measure 1 and severalothers as well (the pitch-class set of this sonority, 0 1 5 6, is the same as that of thelast beat of m. 3.) The cello trill forms a cluster between C# and E that unfolds overthe course of the measure (with the doubled E displaced into the upper registers).This trill, which like the ones in measures 2 and 3 begins by itself, provides a momentof stasis, which is emphasized by the fact that it neither crescendos nor dimenuendos.The sense of momentary calm is underlined by the relatively long note values, the sparsity of the texture and the luminous E octave in the viola and second violin.

28| The caesura is clearly marked in the performance by the Pro Arte Quartet, with Rudolf Kolisch as first violinist (this performance is available on CD: In Honor of Rudolf Kolisch, 1896–1978: Works by Schubert, Bartok, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern [Berkeley: Music & Arts, CD-1056, 2003]).

29| In the early version, the trill is played normally (there is no am Steg marking), which would make it even louder. See the fair copy of “Drei Stücke für Streichquartet (mit Gesang), op. 3 No. 3,” in the Robert Owen Lehman Collection of the Morgan Library, New York (W376.D771).

30| See Davies, “Inside Webern’s Workshop” (note 26).

53Anne C. Shreffler


The piece closes with a viola trill (G–A) in the middle register. The first violinplays G# in the same register, producing another three-half-step cluster. The trill is similar in timbre, intervallic structure and register to the one in measure 2, also played by the viola.31 This is the end of a chromatic descent that started in measure 8, proceeding not quite in order (trilled notes shown in boldface): Eb–D–E–C#–C–A#–B–A–G#–G. This descent, along with the thinning texture and slowing tempo – the piece ends at half the tempo at which it began –, create an end-ing that simply dissolves into nothingness.32 There seems to be no more energy for extremely high or low notes, as the texture settles into the middle range and peters out. While the first violin’s G# in the last bar is shaped with a crescendo anddecrescendo, the viola trill simply fades away dynamically from ppp into silence.

At the same time, this chromatic descent and dissolution of texture is notamorphous, but is articulated into discrete stages. The actual beginning is markedby the cello’s trill in measure 8, not by the E’s in the second violin and viola, whichare in the “wrong” register.33 With the exception of the cello’s A#–B, every subsequentnote in the descent is altered timbrally (from mm. 8–10: trill / am Steg, harmonic, am Griff brett, am Steg, naturale, am Steg, trill). The two naturale notes in measure 9– which are further distinguished by their upwards motion, contrary to the pre -

vail ing tendency – create a tiny lyrical gesture, which Webern indicates should be played sehr zart. This gesture, although not a trill, echoes the half step interval of itsim mediately preceding trill in the same instrument; moreover, it shares not only the interval but also the exact pitch classes of the trill in m. 1 (which is also played naturale), an octave lower. This gesture combines a subtle recapitulatory momentwith a deliberately slowed-down fragment of a trill.

The chromatic cluster, though not the trill, is also prominent in the song,“Schmerz immer […],” which immediately precedes the Bagatelle in its original version. “Schmerz immer […]” begins with a four-note sonority, E–F–G–Ab (whereonly F and G are in the same register), which is “filled in” chromatically by the voice’sGb at its entrance. A very similar chromatic sonority is heard at the end: taking the last three notes in the vocal line with the single note that accompanies them inthe viola, we hear: E–F–Gb–G (where again only F and G are in the same register).

31 | There is less timbral similarity between these two trills in the early version; there, the trill in mea-sure 2 is to be played am Steg, and the one in the last measure col legno. In both cases (as elsewhere in the piece in this version), the pitches would be less distinct.

32| This is also markedly different in the early version, in which measure 8 is to be played at the original tempo, and the ritardando only begins at the last measure. On the chromatic line, seeReinhold Brinkmann, “Anton Webern: Eine Situationsbeschreibung,” in Vom Einfall zum Kunstwerk:Der Kompositionsprozeß in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hermann Danuser and Günter Katzen-berger. Publikationen der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover 4 (Laaber: Laaber, 1993),pp. 280–82.

33| On this passage, see Regina Busch, “Octaves in Webern’s Bagatelles,” in Tempo, No. 178 (September1991), pp. 12–15; or in German as “Oktaven in Weberns Bagatellen,” in dissonanz, No. 27 (February1991), pp. 10–12. In the performance by the Pro Arte Quartet with Rudolf Kolisch cited above (note 28),the top note (in the viola) is changed to an Eb to remove the octave.



Just because they share chromatic sonorities does not mean that “Schmerz immer[…]” and the sixth Bagatelle have the same poetic content, whatever the structuralconnection. They are after all quite different in terms of affect: the song is very slow,and long note values predominate, whereas the Bagatelle is much faster (at least atthe beginning) and has a much more active, quicksilver quality. But it is surely plausible that Webern’s original aesthetic impulse for the Bagatelle was, like“Schmerz immer […],” his response to the death of his mother (as indeed he claimed was the case with practically all his music written during these years34). Thisinterpretation would still not necessarily be meaningful to those not intimately involved with Webern’s family. But knowing this does lend support to the “Engel-Stimmung” interpretation that Webern explained in his letter of November 24, 1913,to Arnold Schoenberg. As Obert shows, a reading of the sixth Bagatelle that connectsit with the content of “Schmerz immer […]” could interpret the fragmented, fragile,disconnected, and evanescent sounds of the Bagatelle as a kind of vision.35 As in “O sanftes Glühn der Berge,” the Bagatelle depicts the heavens that have granted a view of the beloved, but unlike the song, the Bagatelle describes not a complete vision, but one only glimpsed or imagined. Moreover, the dissolving ending suggeststhe gradual dying away of this vision, or perhaps recognizes the impossibility of ever grasping it.

Beethoven, Webern, and the Shards of Tradition

But trills, high register sounds, and dissolutions of texture have historical associa-tions apart from Webern’s private mythology. We do not need to know anythingabout the song, “Schmerz immer […],” or about Webern’s life to associate the numer -ous and prominent trills in the sixth Bagatelle with a vision of transcendence. Manytrill-laden passages in late Beethoven, including the one in Op. 111/II discussed

34| Johnson shows how this sublimated grief was transformed into specific musical topoi that recur inWebern’s works of this period; Webern and the Transformation of Nature (note 5), p. 84. Webern’s leterof July 12, 1912, to Alban Berg in which he describes how the death of his mother has affected hiscomposing is published in Opus Anton Webern, ed. Dieter Rexroth (Berlin: Quadriga, 1983), pp. 86–87.

35| Obert, “Der unfaßliche Zustand,” in this volume, pp. 25–31.

55Anne C. Shreffler

Example 6: Anton Webern, “Schmerz immer […],” mm. 1–2, 12–13



Example 7: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata,Op. 111/II, interrupted Variation 6, mm. 162–175


earlier, have precisely these connotations. We have seen how the chain of trills thatcome in a kind of “cadenza” after the fourth variation are set apart formally, tonally,and timbrally from the rest of the music. The trills climb to a very high register, justas the left hand descends into the depths. The surface rhythm slows to a third of its former density, and the trills blur the meter even more. It is not hard to hear thispassage as something “outside” the music’s normal frame.

The sustained, high-register trill as a symbol for transcendence is developedmore explicitly later in the second and final movement of Beethoven’s Op. 111, at thebeginning of the sixth variation (see Ex. 7). Here a state of balance and repose hasfinally been reached after those variations of increasing rhythmic diminution. Allthe voices of this three-part texture are in the upper treble register; the melody ofthe Theme is played in the middle, and it is accompanied by the “tremolo” figure(thirty-second-notes) from Variation 4 in the left hand and a continuously trilled G 6in the right hand (for the second four measures of the Theme, the melody moves into the topmost register and the trill moves down to G5). The melody is thereforeliterally surrounded by shimmering, high-register tremolo/trills, as if by a halo. The transcendence alluded in the cadenza after Variation 4 would seem to have been achieved.36 But this purported Variation 6 dissipates after reaching the first ending of the Theme’s first section; it seems to “get stuck” and repeats the one-mea-sure cadential figure twice, the G5 trill sounding all the while. The Theme breaks off,and the variation too, dissolving into thirty-second-note figuration. The movement(and the sonata) concludes six measures later with repeated restatements of theTheme’s head motive. Beethoven could not or was not willing to represent a pure,unbroken vision of transcendence, even for the length of a single variation (and even though it would have only taken another eight bars to finish the Theme withoutits repeats).

Beethoven’s trills seem to evoke another dimension, one of transcendence orecstasy. Yet the interruption of the sixth variation of Op. 111 seems to imply that suchtranscendence is not possible to achieve in this world, but can only be imagined.While Adorno reads passages like these in Beethoven’s late works as allegories of thesubject’s contemplation of death, I hear Beethoven’s late music as enacting momentsof transcendence in order to depict – for only a brief moment – an alternative,utopian, possibility of existence. While it lasts, the vision of utopia in the secondmovement of Op. 111 is represented in as pure and unmediated a fashion as possible.(This vision could well result from the contemplation of death, but the music engages all the codes available to it in the Western classical tradition in order to evoke images of an ecstasy, perhaps of a theological heaven, rather than the nothingness and impotence of death itself.) Thomas Mann (through Adorno) inter-preted the end of this movement as a farewell to the sonata:

36| The key (C major) evokes a further topos of transcendence or purity. Another symbolic layer couldpossibly be found in the 9/16 meter, unusual for music of that time, resembles, in its triple meterwith three levels of triple subdivisions, the Renaissance tempus perfectum.

57Anne C. Shreffler


not only this one in C minor, but the sonata in general, as a species, as traditional art-form;

it itself was here at an end, brought to its end, it had fulfilled its destiny, reached its goal,

beyond which there was no going, it cancelled and resolved itself, it took leave – the gesture

of farewell of the D G G motif, consoled by the C sharp, was a leave-taking in this sense too,

great as the whole piece itself, the farewell of the sonata form. 37

This reading embodies a cultural-pessimistic tone that was characteristic of (and ap-propriate to) the mid-twentieth century, but it is hard to hear this apocalyptic moodin the music.38

Webern’s specific appropriation of similar moments in late Beethoven (in 1913) im-plies that their meaning resided for him as well in their evocation of a trans cendent state.This transcendence may have figured in Webern’s private mythology about his deadmother; he expresses it to Schoenberg in terms of angels (“Engel”). Although I hearWebern’s trills as refracting Beethoven’s, prism-like, I would not want to claim thatthey have exactly the same meaning as Beethoven’s. Webern’s trills are much brieferand more evanescent than Beethoven’s; the sixth Bagatelle does not adopt the “trill/trans cendence” topos whole, but rather in fragments, as if it were put together usingshards of the sixth variation of Beethoven’s Op. 111/II after an explosion.39 In the sixthBagatelle, the fragmented, flickering textures seem to imply that not only is the trans -cendent sphere literally unattainable, but that we can’t even imagine it. Whereas lateBeethoven allows us to see a vision of transcendence, however ephemeral, Webern’smusic invokes a faint recollection of a utopia partially imagined and ultimately un grasp -able. Not literally recoverable at the beginning of the twentieth century, Beethoven’s trillshave suffered a sea-change. The only way to reclaim them from the past is to dredgethem up, piece by piece, and to recast them, transmuted, into a new substance. ForWebern does not simply remake the trill according to some entirely new function.We as listeners could not hear it that way, knowing as we do thousands of trills in theclassical tradition. Webern’s trills do not erase their memory; the struggles over disso-nance that they had carried out for three centuries still shine through, however faintly.

37| Mann, Doctor Faustus (note 25), pp. 55–6. (“Und wenn er sage: ‘Die Sonate’, so meine er nicht diesenur, in c-moll, sondern er meine die Sonate überhaupt, als Gatung, als überlieferte Kunstform: sie selber sei hier zu Ende, ans Ende geführt, sie habe ihr Schicksal erfüllt, ihr Ziel erreicht, überdas hinaus es nicht gehe, sie hebe und löse sich auf, sie nehme Abschied, – das Abschiedswinkendes vom cis melodisch getrösteten d-g-g-Motivs, es sei ein Abschied auch dieses Sinnes, ein Abschied, groß wie das Stück, der Abschied von der Sonate.” Mann, Doktor Faustus, p. 85.)

38| Jost Hermand also points to the “strahlende, ja fast utopisch verklärte Durpassagen” in late Bee -thoven, where “von Kälte oder zerbrechenden Formen, um auf die Interpretation Thomas Mannsoder Theodor W. Adornos von Beethovens op. 111 zurückzukommen, nichts zu spüren [ist]. Im Ge-genteil, fast alle diese Werke haben einen obstinaten, manchmal sogar ins Vitalistisch-Freuden-volle umschlagenden Trotzcharakter.” “‘Weitermachen’ auch in ‘wüsten Zeiten’: BeethovensKlaviersonate op. 111,” in Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 56 (1999), pp. 97.

39| Adorno writes, “Mit dem Ausbruch von Subjektivität splitern sie [die Konventionen] ab. Als Spliter,zerfallen und verlassen, schlagen sie endlich selber in Ausdruck um,” “Spätstil Beethovens” (note 22),p. 16. These remarks, writen in 1937, seem more appropriate for the music of the Second VienneseSchool than for Beethoven’s. I wonder if Adorno could have writen these lines if he had not heardWebern’s Bagatelles, or his Op. 5, Schoenberg’s piano pieces, Op. 11, or most of all, Berg’s Wozzeck, in which the re-making of traditional forms and conventions is one of its generating ideas.



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