Shreffler, Mein weg geht jetzt vorüber - The vocal origins of Webern's Twelve-Tone Composition...

"Mein Weg geht jetzt vorüber": The Vocal Origins of Webern's Twelve-Tone CompositionAuthor(s): Anne C. ShrefflerSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp.275-339Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3128880 .

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"Mein Weg geht jetzt vortiber": The Vocal Origins of Webern's

Twelve-Tone Composition*

BY ANNE C. SHREFFLER

To the memory of Howard Mayer Brown

LTHOUGH WEBERN'S TWELVE-TONE WORKS remain his best known, how he found his own twelve-tone voice has been almost

completely unexamined.' While the uniqueness of that voice, with its economy of means, symmetries, and severe clarity, has been justly celebrated, its origins are usually described as a gradual acquisition and assimilation of Schoenberg's techniques. But if measuring We-

* An early version of this essay was presented at the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Oakland, November I990. I am grateful to the Paul Sacher Stiftung and the American Philosophical Society for research support during the summer of i99o. I would also like to thank Richard Cohn and Felix Meyer for their helpful comments on drafts of this essay.

' There have been no single studies devoted to Webern's acquisition of twelve- tone technique. General books on Webern by Rene Leibowitz, Wallace McKenzie, Walter Kolneder, Luigi Rognoni, and Friedrich Wildgans assess Webern's evolution (by necessity) only in terms of his published works; moreover all of these authors take Webern's later twelve-tone technique as a model, viewing earlier works as experi- mental and incomplete: Leibowitz, Introduction a la musique de douze sons (Paris: L'Arche, 1949); McKenzie, "The Music of Anton Webern" (Ph.D. diss., North Texas State College, i96o); Kolneder, Anton Webern: An Introduction to His Works, trans. Humphrey Searle (London: Faber and Faber, 1968); Rognoni, The Second Vienna School: Expressionism and Dodecaphony, trans. Robert W. Mann (London: John Calder, i977); Wildgans, Anton Webern, trans. Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle (London: Calder and Boyars, 1966). Hans Moldenhauer and Rosaleen Mold- enhauer's ground-breaking (and still essential) biography is based on source material not available to earlier authors, but does not attempt to alter the prevailing view of Webern's twelve-tone development: Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of Hir Life and Work (New York: Knopf, i979). Recent works by Kathryn Bailey and Donna Levern Lynn discuss Webern's twelve-tone technique from 1924 and after. Bailey's book, The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I991), focuses primarily on works after op. 19. Lynn's dissertation, based on a new assessment of the sources, emphasizes published works: "Genesis, Process, and Reception of Anton Webern's Twelve-Tone Music: A Study of the Sketches for Opp. I7-19, 21, and 22/2 (1924-1930)" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1992).



276 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

bern's "progress" in Schoenbergian terms presents a distorted picture, the postwar reception of Webern as "super-serialist" who naturally and fluently absorbed twelve-tone technique is equally misleading.

In this essay, I shall focus on the very earliest stages of Webern's twelve-tone development, before he began to make row charts or to work out the kinds of systematic organization characteristic of his later music. I attempt to show, first, that Webern's adoption of the twelve-tone system is better seen not as a gradual development or "path" (as he himself would later describe it), but instead as a period of broad experimentation, during which he alternately rejected and embraced the new method. This can be seen in sketches and drafts for transitional works, some of which became available only recently and have not been discussed before.2 Second, in adopting the method, Webern drew from it radically different consequences than Schoen- berg had drawn. While Schoenberg valued above all the unifying force of serial operations, Webern's transitional and early twelve-tone works, almost all for voice, seem deliberately designed to prevent the

perception of unity. With these pieces, which are among his most nonsystematic, Webern created the most complex, even disordered, musical surface of any of his works up to that time. Though his later serial works show a more ordered face, some of the consequences of this early struggle with twelve-tone technique remain. Third, I shall

suggest that an account of how Webern came to terms with Schoen- berg's method should not be primarily about technical acquisition. Rather, Webern's version of twelve-tone composition grew out of a decade's preoccupation with vocal music, and more specifically out of the religious and mystical aesthetic embodied in the song texts he chose during these years. These texts have created problems---one might say embarrassment-for post-Darmstadt-minded scholars. Of- ten dismissed because they do not belong to the "high" poetic tradition, the texts, drawn from everyday books like the prayer-book and hymnal, provided Webern with a richly symbolic language that

closely corresponded to his ideas about twelve-tone technique.

2 Most of the earliest twelve-tone sketches (for opp. 15, 16, and 17, no. I) are in the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel (hereafter PSS; manuscript pages will be identified

by microfilm number). The Library of Congress holds significant manuscripts of Webern's opp. 15, 16, and 18. The main source for Webern's sketches for op. 17, nos. 2 and 3, and opp. i8 and 19 is "Sketchbook I" in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, whose contents have been described briefly by Bailey (Tbe Twelve-Note Music) and more extensively by Lynn ("Genesis, Process, and Reception").



WEBERN'S TWELVE-TONE COMPOSITION 277

Even from the purely technical point of view of row conceptual- ization, Webern's story was not Schoenberg's story.3 Schoenberg's formulation of his twelve-tone method was a conscious act in response to a musical and personal crisis; for this Carl Dahlhaus has called him a "musical decisionist."4 Accordingly, Schoenberg's first twelve-tone efforts represent a conscious rationalization of musical technique (which Dahlhaus described so aptly as a "renewed state of legality" after the "state of emergency").s This is demonstrated not only in the dance forms that organize the individual movements of the Suite, op. 25, but also in the increasing control exerted by serial techniques throughout the composition of Five Piano Pieces, op. 23, Serenade, op. 24, and Piano Suite, op. 25 between i920 and 1923, works which have come to be seen as neoclassical in spirit and design.

When Webern first began using rows, by contrast, he produced some of his most irrational and disorganized works. The first pieces with opus numbers that rely on row technique to any extent are the

3 Schoenberg's twelve-tone development (unlike Webern's) has been the subject of prolonged study. Josef Rufer, in Die Komposition mit zwdilf Tnen (Berlin and Wunsiedel: Max Hesses Verlag, 1952), attempted a comprehensive description of the technique as Schoenberg understood it. In Das Werk Arnold Schinbergs (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1959), Rufer undertook the monumental task of cataloging, ordering, and evaluating Schoenberg's manuscripts, now collected in the Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles. Jan Maegaard continued the project, refining the chronology and giving more precise descriptions of the manuscripts; he also developed an analytical methodology to chart the evolution of Schoenberg's twelve-tone method stage by stage: "A Study in the Chronology of Op. 23-26 by Arnold Schoenberg," Dansk Arbog for Musikforskning 2 (1962): 93-115; and Studien zur Entwicklung des dodekaphonen Satzes bei Arnold Schonberg, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, 1972). In a series of analyses of Schoenberg's opp. 23, 24, and 25, George Perle described their transitional serial and twelve-tone techniques: Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962). The sketches for opp. 23 and 25 were published in the Schoenberg Gesamtausgabe, with a detailed commentary by Reinhold Brinkmann: Kritischer Bericht, Werke fir Klavier zu zwei Handen. Arnold Schoenberg, Sdmtliche Werke, Reihe B, Band 4 (Mainz: Schott; and Vienna: Universal Edition, i975). The Schoenberg Institute during the I980s fostered significant discoveries of fact and chronology: see Ethan Haimo, "Redating Schoenberg's Passacaglia for Orchestra," this JOURNAL 40 (1987): 471-94; idem, "Schoenberg's Unknown Twelve-Tone Fragments," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 11 (1988): 52-69; Martha Hyde, Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Harmony: The Suite Op. 29 and the Compositional Sketches (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982); Harald Krebs, "Schoenberg's 'Liebeslied': An Early Example of Serial Writing," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 11 (1988): 23-37; and Haimo, Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey: The Evolution of His Twelve-Tone Method, 1914-1928 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, i99o).

4 Carl Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 90.

s Ibid.




Three Traditional Rhymes, op. 17 (1924-25), and Three Songs, op. i8 (1925); both have resisted analysis and performance. They are

fiercely difficult to play, even by the virtuosic standard set by other works of Webern, Schoenberg, and Berg. As short as Webern's

prewar instrumental miniatures but much denser in texture, these

pieces are hard to follow; surely Webern's early twelve-tone and transitional songs are his least accessible works. Moreover, his decision to adopt the twelve-tone technique did not spring from an artistic crisis, as Schoenberg's did. Webern's crisis had come earlier, before the First World War, when his works had miniaturized practically to the vanishing point. Webern then turned to composing songs in order to be able to write longer pieces. He achieved this goal by producing the song sets opp. 12, I 3, and 14 (composed between 1915 and 1921), in which he cultivated an atonal technique based on longer lines and

contrapuntal textures, and drew upon an ever-increasing mastery of motivic connections.6

Schoenberg's twelve-tone discoveries interrupted Webern's com-

positional fluency. Absorbing the new ideas, which Webern learned about in the summer of 1922 or earlier, required a major rethinking of his compositional habits and seriously disrupted what had been a

reasonably steady flow of work. Webern's first row sketches in the summer of i922, a setting of the text "Mein Weg geht jetzt voriiber" (later op. 15, no. 4), were not successful; he ultimately finished the

piece in a free atonal style. After this attempt his compositional output ground practically to a halt. Over the next two years he produced only the minute, non-dodecaphonic Five Canons, op. i6. In the fall of

1924, he finally resumed sketching with twelve-tone rows, completing the Kinderstiick (posthumous) and the song op. 17, no. i, each of which is based on a single twelve-tone row. Only after completing the second of the Three Songs, op. i8, in October 1925, did Webern admit feeling comfortable with the technique: "Twelve-tone composition is now completely clear to me," he wrote, yet the results were

quite unlike Schoenberg's.7

6 For an account of Webern's Trakl settings (op. 14 and others), see my forthcoming book, Webern and the Lyric Impulse: Songs and Fragments on Poems of Georg Trakl (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, i994).

7 "Die Zw61lftonkomposition ist mir jetzt eine bereits vollkommen klare Sache"

(letter to Berg, in Opus Anton Webern, ed. Dieter Rexroth [Berlin: Quadriga, 1983], 91). Evidence about the transition to the twelve-tone method is to be gleaned from sketches and early drafts. A line between what might be called precompositional working and the finished piece is sometimes difficult to draw during this period, since Webern often considered pieces to be essentially finished well before the fair copy




Webern has been viewed as having had a particular affinity for twelve-tone composition; some have even granted him a fluency and understanding of the method greater than Schoenberg's. In an early essay, Gyorgy Ligeti sounded a theme that has not been substantially altered since 1961: "Webern's works composed before op. 17 already exhibit a construction that is closely related to row composition, so that the later use of twelve-tone rows appears not as a change of style, but rather as a completely logical and organic evolution of earlier compositional thinking."8 Ligeti and others assumed unquestioningly that the twelve-tone method represented the goal and ultimate attainment of the Second Viennese School, which served in turn as a stepping-stone to postwar serialism (this point of view couched in the correspondingly organicist language).9 Even a quite recent book refers similarly to the linear nature of Webern's progress in his opp. 17, 18, and 19: Kathryn Bailey writes, "We see each step [of the twelve-tone method] ... addressed individually and then assimilated in the course of these eight pieces."'1

The model I propose would significantly modify the prevailing view that Webern absorbed twelve-tone technique gradually, seam- lessly, and effortlessly. Rather than being a process of gentle assimilation, Webern's discovery of his own idiolect of twelve-tone writing took a relatively long time and proceeded in fits and starts. The desire to turn the evidence into a goal-directed sequence of events has obscured the zigzag quality of the actual journey. A central paradox of Webern as twelve-tone composer is that the Schoenberg disciple long

stage. For a summary of the problem, see Felix Meyer and Anne Shreffler, "Webern's Revisions: Some Analytical Implications," Music Analysis 12 (1993): 355-80.

8 "Bereits die Werke Weberns, die vor den genannten Liedern op. 17 enstanden, weisen eine Konstruktion auf, die der Reihenkomposition sehr verwandt ist, so daB die spitere Benutzung von Zw6lftonreihen dann nicht als Stilwandel erscheint, vielmehr als eine ganz logische und organische Weiterentwicklung der friiheren kompositorischen Denkweise" (Gy6rgi Ligeti, "Die Komposition mit Reihen und ihre Konsequenzen bei Anton Webern, Osterreihische Musikzeitschrift 16 [196 I]: 297-302, here 297. Wildgans, Webern's first biographer, echoed this: "The observer may rightly assume that Webern's development as a composer was along an organic, logical, and clear path. Intuitively, he seemed to have sensed the development, possibilities and laws of composition with twelve notes. Thus no new components appeared [as a result of the twelve-tone method]" (Anton Webern, 91). See also William W. Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Norton, 1966), 351.

9 See Ligeti, "Die Komposition mit Reihen," 299: "Die serielle Musik ist eine Konsequenz der Webernschen Kompositionsweise, wie die Zw6lftonmusik eine solche der freien Atonalitat."

So Bailey, The Twelve-Note Music, 33.




considered to be the most "advanced" practitioner of the method was the one who initially resisted it the most.

Art historian James Ackerman points out the dangers of tracing a

path:

What is called evolution in the arts should not be described as a succession of steps toward a solution to a given problem, but as a succession of steps away from one or more original statements of a problem. Each step, for the artist who takes it, is a probe that reaches to the limits of his imagination; he cannot consciously make a transition to a succeeding step, for if he visualizes something he regards as preferable to what he is doing, he presumably will proceed to do it, unless he is constrained in some way. So we cannot speak properly of a sequence of solutions to a given problem, since with each solution the nature of the problem changes."

In this spirit, rather than examining Webern's confrontation with the twelve-tone method as "a succession of steps" toward a mature

technique, I shall view his work from the perspective of his earlier

practice: the vocal expression of poetic texts. His earliest rows grew out of concrete melodic gestures, a conception that remained potent for a long time. Later he approached the notion of an abstract row as he sought to realize the essence of the religious and folk poems that attracted him.

I shall suggest that instead of assimilating Schoenberg's method bit

by bit, Webern began with an idea that was quite radical: that the mere presence of a twelve-tone row could provide a subconscious

unity for the whole piece. Musical gestures could then be freed from their previous role of ensuring surface comprehensibility. In the songs opp. 17 and 8 and the choruses op. 19, Webern attained extremes of

complexity that he would never again reach, yet paradoxically the twelve-tone technique in these works is quite "rudimentary" in terms of the number of row forms and transpositions used. After the String Trio, op. 20, he began to retreat from this extremist position by finding ways to organize the surface again; to this end, he employed canon and traditional forms such as sonata and theme and variations. Seen in this light, Webern's earliest twelve-tone works and sketches do not seem to be inadequate foreshadowings of a later sophistication; instead they are the radical culmination of a previous complex atonal

practice.

" James Ackerman, Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1991), Io.



WEBERN'S TWELVE-TONE COMPOSITION 2 8 I

I

Ich habe in meinem Skizzenbuch die chromatische Skala aufgeschrieben und in ihr einzelne T6ne abgestrichen.

-Webern

Webern's assimilation of the twelve-tone technique was compli- cated by the conflict between two desires: to win Schoenberg's approval and yet to remain independent. That Schoenberg was the most important person in Webern's life for over twenty-five years there can be no doubt. Because of the strong emotional ties, at issue for Webern was not whether, but how, to adopt the method. It is therefore crucial to establish how much Schoenberg told Webern about his ongoing discoveries, and what effect these revelations had on Webern's compositions. The answers to these questions are by no means always clear, in part because of Schoenberg's later sensitivity to the issue of priority.

When Schoenberg was living in California, he collected his personal notes into "a series of 'memorials' " about some of his contemporaries." Many of Schoenberg's comments defend his status as inventor of the twelve-tone method against Josef Matthias Hauer, Fritz Klein, and Webern. Webern, due to his intimacy with Schoen- berg, was seen to be especially threatening:

[Webern] always tries to surpass everything (exaggerates). 1914 (5) [sic] I start a symphony, wrote about it to Webern-mention: singing without words (Jacob's Ladder)-mention: Scherzo theme including all twelve tones.

After 1915: Webern seems to have used twelve tones in some of his compositions-without telling me ...

Webern committed at this period (I9o8-1918) many acts of infidelity with the intention of making himself the innovator.13

Schoenberg may have been annoyed by Webern's claims, in a lecture of I932 (later published as The Path to the New Music), that he had employed a nascent twelve-tone procedure as early as 1911, during composition of his Bagatelles for string quartet, op. 9:

" H. H. Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work, trans. Humphrey

Searle (New York: Schirmer, 1978), 442. '3 Cited in Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 442-43. Although not precisely dated, the

notes (written in English) must have been jotted down between 1933, when Schoenberg emigrated to the United States, and i94o, the date of a postscript.



2 8 2 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Here I had the feeling, "When all twelve notes have gone by, the piece is over." Much later I discovered that all this was a part of the necessary development. In my sketch-book I wrote out the chromatic scale and crossed off the individual notes.'4

Whereas this statement has been interpreted as suggesting that Webern anticipated Schoenberg's discovery, it reads much more like rationalization after the fact.'s In describing the chromatic circulation that one finds in all of his atonal music, Webern emphasized the notion of twelve that was now so important. He even admits that he

only later came to realize the significance of these passages. Further- more, although this comment has been often quoted, no one has been able to produce the relevant sketch from the Bagatelleks (for which

admittedly few sketches survive). Given the prominence of chromatic fields in Webern's atonal

music, it is odd that sketches with notes crossed off as he described are almost nonexistent. Yet there may be some basis for Webern's recollection. I am aware of only one such sketch, not for the Bagatelles, but for a fragmentary setting of "Kunfttag III" (Stefan George) made in April 1914.' The last sketch page shows a list of twelve notes in the

margin; nine are crossed off and three remain. The list, arranged chromatically from A to GO, seems to have assisted Webern in

constructing the twelve-note sonority that closes the piece. The instruments play a nine-pitch chord, while the voice fills in the remaining three-B (B6), Cis (C#), and D--which correspond to the three pitches not crossed off (see Fig. i and Ex. i).

Webern's self-conscious effort to include all twelve tones in "Kunfttag III" could well have been inspired by conversations with Schoenberg, who, as Ethan Haimo has shown, did experiment with controlling the total chromatic between 1914 and 1918, and he later claimed to have told

'4 "Ich habe dabei das Gefiihl gehabt: Wenn die zw6lf T6ne abgelaufen sind, ist das Stiick zu Ende. Viel spAiter bin ich daraufgekommen, daB das alles im Zuge der

notwendigen Entwicklung war. Ich habe in meinem Skizzenbuch die chromatische Skala aufgeschrieben und in ihr einzelne T6ne abgestrichen" (Webern, The Path to the New Music, ed. Willi Reich, trans. Leo Black [London and Vienna: Universal Edition,

1975], 51; German original: Der Weg zur neuen Musik, ed. Willi Reich [Vienna: Universal Edition, i96o], 55). Hereafter, page references to the German version will be designated "Ger."

'5s The Moldenhauers write, "[Schoenberg's] music had foreshadowed the prin- ciples of that system from 1914 on, but Webern's string quartet pieces were probing in the same direction even earlier" (Anton von Webern, I94).

'6 The draft is dated 2 April 1914 (PSS, film ro3:oo49-005oo ). This song, on a

poem by Stefan George, was reconstructed by Peter Westergaard and published by Carl Fischer in 1968.



WEBERN'S TWELVE-TONE COMPOSITION 2 83

I f

'RW- i A M 4 :wo"Nop"

Figure i. Webern, "Kunfttag III" (Stefan George), third sketch page. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

Example 1 "Kunfttag III," mm. 23-24. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

hei lig Herz

Webern about it.'7 Twelve-note chords in particular were something of an obsession of Schoenberg and Berg during the early atonal period. Schoenberg had discussed one such sonority in his Harmonielebre of 19 11.

7 Haimo, Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey, 42. Schoenberg's draft for a scherzo using all twelve tones, dated 27 May 1914, postdates Webern's draft by about a month. "I had




Berg responded with the third of his Altenberg Lieder, "Uber die Grenzen des All," whose pitch organization is ruled by a single twelve-note chord. Rather than an adumbration of twelve-tone technique, Webern's cross-

ing off the notes to construct a twelve-note sonority in "Kunfttag III"

represents yet another example of early experimentation with the total chromatic. It is even possible that the entire source of Webern's anecdote about the Bagatelles lies here, shifted in his memory from a never-

published vocal fragment onto one of his most successful and widely known compositions.

Years later, Schoenberg reached a critical point in his development of the method with the procedure he called "composing with tones." (The chronology discussed below is summarized in Table i.) The

Priludium (op. 25, no. i), completed in July 1921, is usually acknowledged as his first twelve-tone serial piece, although he only later characterized the material of the piece as a "row."'8 Almost two

years later, in February 1923, he went public, holding a meeting at which he explained his new method.'9 Though a few of Schoenberg's remarks on this occasion have been recorded, later accounts dwell

mostly on emotional impressions of being present at what was clearly perceived as an event of great historic importance.

Although Schoenberg later claimed to have been "silent for nearly two years" (between the composition of the Praludium in 192 I and the

1923 meeting), he did apparently confide to one or more friends

during this time.20 Both Erwin Stein and Josef Rufer recalled being

sketched many themes, among them one for a scherzo which consisted of all the twelve tones," Schoenberg recalled. "An historian will probably some day find in the

exchange of letters between Webern and me how enthusiastic we were about this"

("Composition with Twelve Tones [2]," in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold

Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black [Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univer-

sity of California Press, 1984], 247)- '8 The set is more accurately described as a composite of three tetrachords than

as a row; in fact it is never presented linearly. See Brinkmann, Kritiscber Bericht, 71, 76-77; and Haimo, Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey, 86.

'9 See Joan Smith's oral history Schoenberg and His Circle: A Viennese Portrait (New York: Schirmer; and London: Collier Macmillan, 1986), 197. The basic technical information presented at the meeting was evidently the source for Erwin Stein's article "Neue Formprinzipien," which appeared in the Schoenberg fiftieth birthday issue of Musikbliitter des Anbruch (September 1924)-

20 "At the very beginning, when I used for the first time rows of twelve tones in the fall of 1921, I foresaw the confusion which would arise in case I were to make

publicly known this method. Consequently I was silent for nearly two years. And when I gathered about twenty of my pupils together to explain to them the new method in 1923, I did it because I was afraid to be taken as an imitator of Hauer, who, at this time, published his Vom Melos zur Pauke" (Schoenberg, Style and Idea, 213). Schoenberg must have meant either Hauer's Vom Wesen des Musikalischen (published in




TABLE I

Chronology

Webern Schoenberg July 1920 Five Pieces, op. 23, nos. I, 2; no. 4 begun Aug. 1920 Serenade, op. 24, nos. i, 3, 5 begun July 1921 Suite, op. 25, (no. i); (no. 4) begun Aug. 1921 Six Songs, op. 14, no. I

Five Sacred Songs, op. 15, no. I Sept. 1921 Five Sacred Songs, op. 15, no. 3 Serenade, op. 24, no. I completed Oct. 192i Serenade, op. 24, no. 2 begun spring] i922 (Berg: Wozzeck completed)

Apr.-June 1922 Bach orchestrations July 1922 Five Sacred Songs, op. 15, nos.

2, 4* Oct. 1922 Serenade , op. 24, (no. 4) begun Feb. I923 Five Pieces, op. 23, nos. 3, (5); no. 4

completed Suite, op. 25, (no. 2); (no. 4) completed

Mar. 1923 Serenade, op. 24, no. 6; nos. 2, 3, (4) completed Suite, op. 25, (nos. 3, 5, 6)

Apr. 1923 Serenade, op. 24, no. 7; no. 5 completed (Wind Quintet, op. 26, no. )qbegun

May 1923 (Wind Quintet, op. 26, no. i) completed UUly] 1923 Canons, op. i6, no. 2 (Wind Quintet, op. 26, no. 2) Aug. 1923 Canons, op. 16, nos. 3, 4 [spring] 1924 "Morgenglanz der Ewigkeit"

sketches July 1924 (Wind Quintet, op. 26, no. 4) Aug. i924 Canons, op. i6, no. 5* begun (Wind Quintet, op. 26, no. 3) 29 Oct. 1924 Canons, op. 16, no. 5* (Suite, op. 29) begun

completed I2 Nov. 1924 Canons, op. i6, no. I [autumn] 1924 [Kinderstiick] M. 266* Autumn 1924 (Kinderstiick, M. 267) io Dec. 1924 (Three Trad. Rhymes, op. 17,

no. i); "Mutig trigst du die Last" sketches

(1923-25) (Berg: Chamber Concerto) [spring] 1925 String Trio movt., M. 273,*

with orchestral sketch* June 1925 Three Songs, op. i8, no. 2, first (Suite, op. 29, nos. I, 2)

draft* July 1925 (Three Trad. Rhymes, op. 17,

nos. 3, 2) [summer] 1925 Klavierstiick, M. 277*; "Dein

Leib geht jetzt der Erde zu," sketches*

Aug. 1925 (String Trio movt., M. 278); (Suite, op. 29, nos. 3, 4) String Quartet movt., M. 279, sketches*; Klavierstiick, M. 280 sketches

Sept. 1925 (Three Songs, op. I8, nos. I, 2) (Four Pieces, op. 27, no. i) Oct. 1925 (Three Songs, op. i8, no. 3) (Four Pieces, op. 27, nos. 3, 2); (Berg: (Schliesse mir die Augen beide)) Nov. 1925 (Four Pieces, op. 27, no. 4); (Three Satires, op. 28, no. I)

Dec. 1925 (op. 19, no. i) begun (Three Satires, op. 28, nos. 3, 2)

Note: Asterisks denote that although row sketches were made, either they were not used in the piece or the work remained a fragment. Works within canted brackets are based on a twelve-tone row throughout.




entrusted with "secret" confidences between 1921 and 1923; testi- mony is mixed on this point." One of these recollections is famous, in which Schoenberg is reported to have said, "I have made a

discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years."" Whether Schoenberg said this first in private or not, he evidently did say something to this effect at the meeting of

February 1923. Here again accounts differ; while Max Deutsch remembered the time period of "leadership" as fifty years, Kolisch recalled mention of a "hegemony of German music for centuries."23

Whether it was Stein or Rufer (or both) to whom Schoenberg confided before the meeting, the one person he did not tell, Schoen-

berg later emphasized, was Webern. In 1951 (the last year of

Schoenberg's life), he claimed, "I . . . immediately and exhaustively explained to him [Webern] each of my new ideas (with the exception of the method of composition with twelve tones-that I long kept secret, because, as I said to Erwin Stein, Webern immediately uses

everything I do, plan or say, so that ... 'By now I haven't the slightest idea who I am.')"'4

The evidence is overwhelming that Schoenberg did indeed share his discoveries with several friends and students, including Webern, before his formal announcement in February of 1923. In a letter written to Hauer in August 1922, Schoenberg related quite a different version of events: "Where my inquiry has led me and where it stands at the present I communicated to my students in a few lectures given several months ago."25 Even though these "lectures" are not con-

1920) or Deutung des Melos (1923), not Vom Melos zur Pauke (1925). 21 See Stein, "Neue Formprinzipien," 296: "Es war an der Hand diese Stiickes

[op. 23, no. 3, composed in February 1923]... daB dem Verfasser von Sch6nberg die

ersten Mitteilungen uber die neuen Formprinzipien gemacht wurden." In some notes from around 1940, Schoenberg claimed to have told Stein about the new method in

1921 (Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 442). Stuckenschmidt reports that Rufer was the one in whom Schoenberg confided (Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 277)-

22 Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, 277. 23 Smith, Schoenberg and His Circle, 202, 205. Schoenberg's famous statement

echoes further at the end of Berg's essay "Warum ist Sch6nbergs Musik so schwer verstandlich?" from 1924: "So daB man schon heute, an Sch6nbergs fiinfzigstem Geburtstage, ohne ein Prophet zu sein, sagen kann, daB durch das Werk, das er der Welt bisher geschenkt hat, die Vorherrschaft nicht nur seiner pers6nlichen Kunst

gesichert erscheint, sondern, was noch mehr ist: die der deutschen Musik fir die

nichsten fiinfzig Jahre" (reprinted in Willi Reich, Alban Berg: Leben und Werk [Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1963], 193)-

24 Schoenberg, Style and Idea, 484. 25 "Woher mein Weg war und wo ich gegenwirtig halte, habe ich vor mehreren

Monaten in einigen Vortragen meinen Schiilern mitgeteilt" (letter to Josef Hauer, 25 August 1922 [not sent], Archives of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, transcribed by




firmed in the published reminiscences, some communication almost certainly did take place (even if Schoenberg perhaps exaggerated in calling informal conversations "lectures"). The talks might have taken place as early as 1921, when Webern visited Schoenberg at Traun- kirchen for several days in August.26 Webern and Schoenberg also spent the summer there together in 1922.

Why Schoenberg later denied telling Webern about the new method makes sense in light of the reception of the twelve-tone technique and Schoenberg's subsequent attempts at myth building. From the moment the method was announced-which happened earlier than planned, Schoenberg acknowledged, because Josef Hau- er's own version of twelve-tone composition was beginning to become known-Schoenberg was to fight two battles for the rest of his life: first, the issue of priority, and second, his reputation as a "construc- tor." Schoenberg's battle for acknowledgment of his priority in discovering the twelve-tone method was fought first with the living Hauer and later with the dead Webern. Schoenberg fought against his reputation as a "cerebral" composer by continually urging his friends and disciples not to emphasize the technical aspects of twelve-tone composition when discussing his work." His lecture "Composition with Twelve Tones," first written in 1933, was designed primarily to combat the impression that he was a constructivist composer, by explaining the method's origin as a result of both inevitable historical forces and artistic inspiration. When twelve-tone composition is viewed this way, the body of atonal music composed prior to the discovery of the technique would seem as though in anticipation of it. As Webern put it, "At that time we were not conscious of the law, but had been sensing it for a long time."•8

Schoenberg's concern with establishing the twelve-tone method as his exclusive intellectual property-which also led him to require Thomas Mann to add a statement to that effect in his book Doktor Faustus--caused him to mistrust the motives of his most loyal student

Anita M. Luginbihl). Cited by Bryan R. Simms, "Who First Composed Twelve- Tone Music, Schoenberg or Hauer?"Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute

i0o (1987): 122.

26 Webern later thanked Schoenberg for his hospitality and ventured, "und liebster Freund, bitte, teile mir etwas mit iber deine Arbeit!" (unpublished letter in the Library of Congress, Moldenhauer collection, dated 31 August 1921).

27 See, for example, his letter to Rudolf Kolisch, in Arnold Schoenberg Letters, selected and edited by Erwin Stein, translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), 164-65.

28 "Das Gesetz war uns damals noch nicht bewusst, aber es war lingst gefiihlt" (Webern, Path, 51 [Ger. 551).




(for Webern always, at least in public, effusively acknowledged Schoenberg's priority).29 This sensitivity about priority led Schoen-

berg to rewrite history, portraying the origins of the method--even to himself, for I am not suggesting that he consciously misrepresented the truth-as the work of a solitary genius.

Webern's Earliest Twelve-Tone Sketch, Op. 15, No. 4 (1922)

Webern first attempted to compose with a row in the summer of

1922. But the twelve-tone sketches he made on the chorale text "Mein

Weg geht jetzt voriiber" were soon abandoned. He completed the

piece as op. 15, no. 4, retaining elements from the original row, but

reverting to the familiar atonal style of earlier works. The sketches

manipulate a row in transposition, inversion, retrograde, and retro-

grade inversion. The permutations are nonetheless remarkable at this

early date, for Webern's twelve-tone efforts two and even three years later commonly employ only one form of the row. These sketches show moreover how Webern first tried the new method by simply extending his previous practice of vocal writing. The attempt foundered on his inability to reconcile an inflexibly ordered series with the

freely developing vocal line that normally served as Hauptstimme. By 1922, when Webern began to sketch the song, he had already

selected three songs from what later became op. 15 (nos. i, 3, and 5) to form a complete set, which he called "Drei geistliche Lieder op. 16" [sic]. "Mein Weg" (and its companion drafted four days earlier: "Steht

auf, ihr lieben Kinderlein," later op. 15, no. 2) did not at first belong to the set of "geistliche Lieder," but rather to a projected sacred cantata (this aspect will be discussed more thoroughly later).3o

The first of four sketch pages for "Mein Weg" preserves Webern's initial attempts to sketch the vocal line, together with his formulation of the twelve-tone row and its transformations.3' Then follow two

pages on which Webern attempted to develop the twelve-tone idea

further; both break off after a short instrumental introduction and the

29 See Webern, Path, 32 (Ger. 34)- Schoenberg's reaction should also be inter-

preted in light of the fact that he was in America at the time and had no direct contact with Webern. Schoenberg was also highly suspicious of Webern's political sympathies.

30 Letter from Webern to Berg, in Schoenberg, Berg, Webern: The String Quartets, a

Documentary Study, ed. Ursula v. Rauchhaupt, trans. Eugene Hartzell (Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, 197 i), 12 I.

3' PSS, film ioi:o647, 0649, o658, 0659. The manuscript sources for all the works under discussion are listed below in the Appendix.




first line of text. Shortly after these experiments, Webern gave up composing with the row and sketched a continuity draft of the whole piece dated 26 July 1922, only four days or so after sketching had begun.3' The ending is incompletely notated and reached its final form only in the second fair copy. A facsimile of the first sketch page was first published by the Moldenhauers, who note that it is "highly enigmatic" that the sketch anticipates Schoenberg's formal announcement of the twelve-tone method by several months.33 This crucial sketch has not yet received the attention it deserves (see a transcription in Ex. 2).

The top two systems of page I look very much like dozens of other song sketches Webern had made over the last decade. The passage consists of the vocal line alone, extending through the whole poem. Although different from the voice part of the published version, this first sketch anticipates the latest stage in both its pitches and its intervals. Both versions begin with the descending pair E9-C. The vocal high points of the sketch occur on the words "Himmel" and "Gottes," as in the final version, though the sketch's tessitura is higher, reaching even to b" and cl"'. Though certain intervals are used consistently in the sketch, there is no systematic ordering of pitches; the first phrase of thirteen notes repeats the pitch-class E, while the other phrases freely circulate the total chromatic with many repetitions.

If Webern, having finished the vocal line, had gone on to fill in the instrumental parts, this sketch would be like many other sketches

32 I estimate four days because Webern sketched the piece on the verso of a draft of op. 15,

no. 2, dated 22 July 1922. At the end of the op. I5, no. 2, draft, Webern made some changes dated 3 January 1924. I carefully considered, then rejected, the possibility that the rows for op. 15, no. 4, were sketched in 1924, after the piece was completed. The row sketches must have preceded the completion of the atonal version of the piece for the following reasons: (i) a complete row and allusions to other forms of the row are present in the final version of the piece, (2) all the handwriting on the sketch page containing the first melodic idea and the rows is similar (this and their musical connections strongly suggest that the rows immediately followed the first, nonserial idea), and (3) the first complete draft has more in common with the row sketches than do later drafts.

33 I have not reproduced this page because it is now available in facsimile in two sources: in black and white, in Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern, 311 (with discussion on p. 3 o); and in color, in Hans Oesch, "Webern und das SATOR-Palindrom," in Quellenstudien I: Gustav Mabler-Igor Strawinsky--Anton Webern-Frank Martin, ed. Hans Oesch (Winterthur: Amadeus, 199i), 114-15. Oesch is primarily interested in how the early sketch anticipates the later, more controlled serialism of the Concerto, op. 24. Like many other writers, he emphasizes those aspects of Webern's twelve-tone music that he saw as leading to postwar total serialism.



Example 2

"Mein Weg geht jetzt voriiber," op. 15, no. 4, sketch p. 1 (encircled numbers added). Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

04 ?-

lieber Mich nicht bin

Gnaden dahin

D.F.

Mein Weg geht jetzt vo - - er Welt was acht' ich dein



Example 2 (continued)

- HIM- ' I d er

BF, r.

Fl6te

Klar

"

reb__s_ _ _

ar

r r| IA' I

l •.

I- ri mdKre b sr ( . . - .. ,

1R, 4F -F 'IF-

WE, ,. vU. UB.F.




from these years. But at this point he strayed from his usual procedure and began to write the vocal line again, this time as a sequence of twelve different pitches (see Ex. 2, at 0). Even given the certain influence of Schoenberg, this was a conceptual leap. Whereas at first Webern was still sketching a vocal line, in the later sketch he was

composing a row. (He made sure he used all twelve pitches by crossing off notes in the right margin, a later instance of his reported experience with the Bagatelles.) Webern's earlier compositional practice-reacting to a poem's sounds and meters-had begun to shift toward the more abstract process of fashioning material that would serve for an entire work.

This first row clearly betrays its origins in the preceding vocal sketch, for the first three pitches of the row match those of the sketch. The pattern of two descending minor thirds a half step apart appears also at "da muss ich fah[ren]" in the sketch; moreover the EJ-C from the beginning recurs at the last phrase of the sketch: "fahr' ich [mit Freud dahin]." Similarly, the row's pitch pair b-b' occurs also in the sketch's first phrase. The last four notes of the row (which have only three pitches because of the repetition of A) match the sketch at "lieber/da [muss ich]." In short, the two intervals most prominent in the sketch-minor third and major seventh--have been taken over into the row both at their original pitch levels and in transposition.

After fashioning the row, Webern wrote out its retrograde (Krebs) and inversion (Umkehrung) forms (see Ex. 2 at ().34 These are constructed literally, following the exact registers of the original. The inversion is particularly awkward, resulting in a high register that

requires many ledger lines. Why would Webern have avoided trans-

posing registers? Octave equivalence is for us such a fundamental

assumption of twelve-tone music that Webern's attempt to write a literal inversion seems naive. Here is evidence that the row in question was not yet an abstract formulation, but a specific musical gesture. As such its special contour was conceived simultaneously with its

pitches, and Webern apparently did not want to separate the two

properties. The second row (Ex. 2 at 0) is significant for both its new profile

and its relationship with the transposed form. Though some segments have been preserved-the groups E9-C and F$#-A-G~ and the reordered pairs Bb-B and G-C0, for example--others have been changed so that the minor third is much more prominent. The text distribution

34 Webern inverts the row about its first pitch, a procedure that became the standard "inversion form" for him as well as for Schoenberg and Berg.




emphasizes this interval even more, since three of the six accented syllables now fall at the end of a minor third pair. Because of the meter of the poetry, the row is divided not into hexachords, but instead into two groups of seven and five pitches each: "Mein Weg geht jetzt voriiber" (seven syllables, seven pitches) / "0 Welt, was acht' ich dein" (six syllables, five pitches). The first group of seven pitches ends with a tritone, while the last group ends with the pair

B,-B. This pattern had been reversed in the earlier version of the row,

suggesting that Webern was beginning to think of specific pitch groups as movable units. He still had the vocal line clearly in mind, as we can see from the accompanying text and the repeated note (G#) on the words "was acht' " (this pitch is repeated in all of the transformations as well, even the retrogrades!).

Next Webern sketched the transposition at the tritone, which is labeled "D.F." for "Dominant Form" (Ex. 2 at 0) (this terminology was common practice at this time, as I shall explain below). 35 He then used this form in the instrumental sketch below (Ex. 2 at D). He scored these staves for flute, clarinet, and viola, with a blank line for the voice (the final version is for flute and clarinet only). The viola begins alone with the tritone transposition of the row, the first six pitches stated in their original register; perhaps the range of this row suggested the choice of instrument. Then the sketch breaks off, and one can easily imagine why. When the register of each pitch is preserved, the contour of an answering D.F.--or even an occurrence of the original form--would be too similar to the opening idea.

Webern then wrote out all three transformations of his row and its transposition, perhaps as a way of generating new material. The order is not systematic; first he sketched the retrogrades of both the D.F. and the original, then the inversion of the original and its retrograde. Then he wrote out the remaining two possibilities, the inversion and retrograde inversion of the D.F.

At some point, Webern sought to explore the harmonic properties of the two row forms, arranging them to create vertical sonorities of overlapping trichords. At the top of the next page, he divided up the D.F. among the three instruments (see Ex. 3). He then transposed the whole pattern down a half step. The chordal disposition of the D.F. alone reduces the similarity between this row form and the upcoming vocal line, which uses the original form of the row; furthermore, by transposing the D.F., Webern diverged from the row forms sketched

35 The row is hexachord combinatorial at T6, a property that Webern does not exploit and of which he may not have even been aware.




on the previous page. Yet he did not continue this idea; instead, the accompanying treble instrument (either flute or clarinet) presents isolated trichords of the original row, out of order so as not to double the voice's statement of the same row. The sketch breaks off where all the others have (except the very first non-dodecaphonic draft of the whole vocal line), at the end of the first line of text.

On the next page, we can see all of Webern's careful preparations coming to pieces (see Ex. 4). He simply could not make the row do what he wanted, either horizontally or vertically. First he tried to continue the chordal approach from the previous page, using the notes of the row only in the upper voice (D.F.: A F# Ab). The chords underneath are not derived from the row, and there are many pitch repetitions. Then came the ultimate crisis: Webern changed the row. Both attempts to write a new vocal line are incomplete; surprisingly, these fragments hark back to the

very first version of the row (Ex. 2, fourth staff). Then Webern tried a more traditional contrapuntal approach; the sketch indicates schemati-

cally that certain lines are to be heard in rhythmic diminution or

augmentation ("Umk[ehrung] verkl[einert]," "Umk[ehrung] vergr[6s- sert]"). The "row" has only seven pitches here, and it is unclear whether Webern intended to introduce the rest.

That Webern could even attempt relatively sophisticated row tech-

niques in the summer of 1922 is explicable only through contact with

Schoenberg, which has now been established. In particular, the sketch for "Mein Weg" resembles-in its row structure, choice of transposition, and harmonic disposition-Schoenberg's sketches for the Prfiludium (later op. 25, no. i), which he had completed the previous summer.

Schoenberg, like Webern, does not present a "row" as an abstract

entity here, but instead forms his material from the process of composing with motives. In one sketch page, Schoenberg lined up the three tetrachords on top of one another, exactly as Webern did on the first sketch page for "Mein Weg" (see Ex. 5). Webern's row is also very similar to Schoenberg's. First, the last tetrachord of both consists of a chromatic

group. In addition, the pitch pairs E-F and (more significantly) G-C#

appear in both rows. Both composers chose a single transpositional level: at the tritone. This choice results in the pair G-CQ as an invariant tritone, a property Schoenberg used to advantage in the Priiludium (see Ex. 6).36

Webern also follows Schoenberg's labeling for the most part, although not exactly. They both call the transposition at the tritone

36 In his lecture "Composition with Twelve Tones (i)," Schoenberg pointed out that the transposition at the tritone is desirable here because it avoids doubling the

pitches of the original row (Style and Idea, 23 3).



Example 3

"Mein Weg geht jetzt voriiber," op. 15, no. 4, sketches p. 2 (order numbers added). Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

[U.F.] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

A9-

Mein Weg geht jetzt vor-ji - ber O Welt was acht' ich dein

Fl6te ____________ -__

_____- 9 10 11 12

.p ..pp [U.F.] , 6l

Klar.__ _ __I _ _ _-If_ _

I 2 3 4 6 7 8 1 2 3

Br.__

5 6 7 8 >

.... i ?

N

Nol




Example 4

"Mein Weg geht jetzt voruber," op. 15, no. 4, sketches p. 3. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

Mein Mein Weg geht jetzt vor - tiber

' ' I " ' L

"A

• ,• - •-•-D" I- [Br.

W I t

Umk. verkl. Ges

Umk. vergr.

Fl6te

Verkl. ges. Klar. 40 F

,,

the D, or Dominante, form. This unusual designation was common

practice among the Second Viennese School in the early years of twelve-tone composition. In sketches for the Lyric Suite, Berg not only indicates the tritone transposition as the "Dominante Form," but also the transposition at the third as "Mediante unten, Mediante oben," and so forth.37 The terminology of tonal music is invoked during the

37 See sketch page reproduced in Franz Grasberger and Rudolf Stephan, eds., Alban Berg Studien, vol. I, Katalog der Musikbandscbriften, Scbriften, und Studien Alban

Bergs im Fond Alban Berg und der Weiteren Handscbriftlicben Quellen im Besitz der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliotbek (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1981), Abb. I8a, Kat. Nr. 208. I am very grateful to Felix Meyer for bringing this to my attention.




Example 5

Schoenberg, Priludium, op. 25, no. i, sketch. From Samtliche Werke, Kritischer Bericht, p. 77. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.

Ti iL v-

KU

r-T r -K

_Dm k ADeKr

% b I/

Example 6

Schoenberg, PrAludium, op. 25, no. I, mm. 1-3. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.

Rasch (. = 80) P-0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1 2 3 4 ~ 5 6 7 8 P-6 .

9 10 11 12 9f!




grappling with a new technique, which had as yet no rules and no

vocabulary. Webern's labeling of rows differs somewhat from Schoen-

berg's. In place of Schoenberg's T (presumably "Tonika") for the

original row form, Webern invented his own term, abbreviated as "U" (for "Ur-form" or "Urspriingliche Form"). (Webern then had to write "Umk" for the inversion forms.)

The failure of Webern's attempted imitation also sheds light on his curious reaction to Schoenberg's explanations at the 1923 meeting, as

reported by Felix Greissle:

We all tried to understand and I think we came pretty close to what he meant except there was one person who resisted-who resisted more by being silent and not saying anything, and that was Anton Webern. He was the one who resisted most. At one point, when Schoenberg said, "There I used the row transposition and transposed it into the tritone," so Webern said, "Why?" Schoenberg looked at him and said, "I don't know," and then Webern burst out, "Ah, ah!," because Webern was waiting for some intuitive sign in the whole matter and this was it, you see.38

While Greissle interprets Webern's exclamation as an expression of relief in discovering an "intuitive" aspect of the twelve-tone method, other explanations are more likely given Webern's earlier furtive experiments. Perhaps he felt guilty about sneaking a look at Schoen-

berg's sketches, or perhaps he was already convinced that the method could never work; in any case, Webern's discomfort clearly came across.

At the same meeting, Webern reportedly "confessed that he had written also something in 12 tones . . . and he said: 'I never knew, what to do after the 12 tones.' "39 (This statement, always interpreted without reference to the early sketch, has until now seemed obscure.) He was perhaps reluctant to tell Schoenberg anything more for fear of

arousing the other's jealousy, as suggested in a letter Webern wrote to him in the summer of 1923: "My work is, I believe, now under way. At first I experimented a good deal, discarding what I had begun. For this reason I have not given you details."40 Schoenberg was indeed

jealous, as his later recollections show. Evidently when Webern found out about the twelve-tone method, he did try to imitate Schoenberg, thus confirming the latter's worst fears. And Schoenberg's influence,

38 Smith, Schoenberg and His Circle, 198. Smith's interviews were conducted in

English (see p. xi). 39 Ibid., 199. 4o Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern, 272.




whether obtained through "lectures," informal discussions, or surrep- titious glances at Schoenberg's sketches, is apparent on every page of the sketches for op. 15, no. 4.4'

What went wrong with Webern's attempt to "follow the path to the other side"? The problem was not the potential of the material. On the contrary, the ingredients for a successful composition are present. Webern created an interesting row with combinatorial properties, while exploring strategies for working out both the horizontal and the vertical implications of the row. The resulting eight row forms (four forms of To and T6) provide plenty of material; he used just this configuration in several later works. The problem lay instead in a conflict between old and new technique: more precisely, between composition based on specific gestures and motives, and composition based on a globally functioning ordered series.

He preserved the row only in the first four measures of the vocal line, where it appears with the same pitches and contour as it did in the second page of row sketches. The instrumental parts do not seem to be derived from the row or any of its related sketches. Some pitch groupings can with difficulty be related to the D.F., but the ordering is not preserved. The instrumental parts repeat pitches before all twelve have been stated, as do all subsequent phrases in the voice.

Instead of organizing the piece around a fixed succession of pitches, Webern adopted fragments-often pitch pairs-from his row sketches, allowing more flexible manipulation of pitches than a serial ordering would permit. He drew not only on the row's final form, but also on the earlier version of the row and even its non-dodecaphonic predecessor. Successive drafts reveal a curious pattern; while the first draft refers to the row sketches, later layers of revisions return in many cases to the earliest, pre-row sketches.42

The result is a freely chromatic context not bound by the demands of pitch order. Rather, certain pitch classes anchor crucial points in the piece. The most prominent of these are the last two notes in the first vocal phrase, B6 and B (these are also paired in both the "U" and the "D" forms of the row, as well as in the earliest sketch). This

4' Given the discrepancies between these and Schoenberg's first twelve-tone sketches, it is possible that he did not get a very close look. It is also possible that Webern got his information thirdhand, perhaps from Stein or Rufer. (By not mentioning Schoenberg at all, Oesch, in "Webern und das SATOR-Palindrom," implies that the sketches confirm Webern's precocity in composing with twelve-tone method. This case now seems strongly undermined.)

42 This is most apparent in the Library of Congress manuscript (source B in the Appendix).




pitch-class pair marks the beginning of the second half of the piece, at "Mich nicht zu sehr beladen" (m. 9). The same pitch classes, up an octave, produce the vocal climax, appropriately enough on the words "in Gottes [Fried]" (m. i i). The opening measure foreshadows this climax with a B-Bb leap in the exact register in which it later appears (flute, m. i). An inversion of the B-B6 pair, Bb and A, first pushes the voice up into its high register, on the word "Himmel" (m. 5); this is

anticipated by the clarinet's leap on the same pitches in the previous measure (this is conspicuously one of only two leaps of this size in the clarinet part; the other, also from A, occurs in m. 2). The piece ends with the same note

pair-B, and A, around C# this time-which now,

however, defines a new low register, just as it had articulated the high point before. The pitch connection of the Bk-A pair in both measure

5 and measure 13 implies a text connection as well, between "Him- mel" (heaven) and "Freud' dahin" (I go there [to heaven] joyfully). (The last vocal gesture also echoes the climax at measure i i, which features a descending leap from Bb over another pitch to the A a minor ninth lower.) The major seventh (or minor ninth) is of course one of the most commonly encountered intervals in Webern's music. But the motivic references in this tiny piece come from the recurrence of certain pitch classes, which results in an interconnected network of

relationships spanning the work. In "Mein Weg," composition of a specific gesture--designed for a

specific text-led to the formulation of a row that preserved both its

shape and its textual associations. Because of these associations, Webern treated the row very cautiously; he often preserved notes in their original registers, used only one transposition, and was reluctant to combine row forms. The harmonic use of the row proved especially problematic. Clearly the four chords formed by the superimposition of three tetrachords was not going to provide enough harmonic material for a piece, and Webern was unable to come up with other solutions.

His strategy in the final version of the piece depended on the free circulation of small intervallic cells and fixed-pitch motives, which was not possible within the twelve-tone method as Webern understood it at that time. The main obstacle was the ordering of the

pitches, since an unordered twelve-tone set-the total chromatic- cannot be perceived as a structural element in itself. A paradoxical result of the emphasis on pitch order in twelve-tone writing is that

pitch itself is de-emphasized; intervals, rhythms, and textures become the primary means of differentiation. When on the other hand a set smaller than twelve is used, it can be identified by its pitch classes




alone. Schoenberg solved a similar problem by using ordered sets of fewer than twelve notes, as he did in his op. 23. Schoenberg also experimented from the very beginning with various kinds of partitioning of a twelve-tone set that permit notes to be chosen "out of order."43 Webern overcame this obstacle of course; in his later twelve-tone works, he found different ways to emphasize certain pitch classes and registers. His original conviction that a row was a primarily melodic entity apparently prevented him from going further at this stage.

Webern's sketches for "Mein Weg" embody a clash between two fundamentally different modes of musical thought: the earlier one, in which the piece grew out of a direct response to the poem, and the later, in which the composition is governed by a twelve-tone row. His failure to reconcile them here is apparent and informative.

Delaying Tactics (1922-24): Five Canons on Latin Texts

In The Path to the New Music, Webern recalled how difficult it had been to decide to adopt the twelve-tone method: "This compulsion, adherence, is so powerful that one has to consider very carefully before finally committing oneself to it for a prolonged period, almost as if taking the decision to marry."44 The experience of "Mein Weg" had evidently soured him on twelve-tone technique, and perhaps slowed his compositional output; between August 1922 and the autumn of 1924, Webern was able to complete only the Five Canons, op. i6. For a full year after finishing "Mein Weg," Webern composed nothing. When he resumed in the summer of 1923, he did not even try to sketch a twelve-tone row. He produced instead three atonal canons in quick succession.4s Though at this time Webern considered these a complete set, over a year later he wrote two more Latin canons for the same ensemble and added them to the three already completed.

All commentators writing about op. i6 before the publication of the Moldenhauers' biography of Webern (and there have been no substantial accounts since then) have had to assume that Webern

43 See Haimo's discussion of isomorphic partitioning in Schoenberg's Serenade, op. 24, in Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey, 80-83.

44 "Der Zwang, die Bindung ist so gewaltig, daB man es sich sehr fiberlegen muss, bevor man sie endgiiltig ffir lange Zeit eingeht-fast, als ob man sich zum Heiraten entschliesst" (Webern, Path, 54 [Ger. 58]).

4s Shortly after finishing these in August, he wrote out at least two manuscript fair copies containing what later became op. I6, nos. 2, 3, and 4; these were entitled "Lateinische Lieder" and were presumably given away as presents.




wrote the canons before having had any direct experience with the twelve-tone method, and so they have viewed the canonic technique as evidence of a natural propensity for serial composition.46 When we know that Webern had experimented with the method's specific properties as early as 1922, the picture looks rather different. Instead of viewing the canons as a prescient anticipation of twelve-tone technique, we can now see how they helped Webern to work through some of its known demands. On the other hand, the existence of five brief atonal canons, the only fruits of a two-year dry spell, hardly suggests an all-out effort to come to terms with the new method. Although in op. i6 Webern adopted several of the operations used in twelve-tone music, he avoided the heart of the matter: the use of a twelve-tone row itself. Op. i6-and its halting progress--could therefore document Webern's struggle to compromise, to adapt aspects of Schoenberg's discovery without embracing its full implications. If Webern was not yet ready to adopt twelve-tone serialism, in these canons he explored other ways of controlling his materials.

Schoenberg first solved the problem of how to impose order on free materials by what he called "composing with tones of a motive," that is, manipulating ordered sets smaller than twelve. Webern's op. 16 represents an alternative solution. With canonic technique he achieved horizontal and vertical control of pitch as well as uniformity of rhythm and contour. While adapting parts of Schoenberg's method, Webern shifted its emphasis from "composing with tones" to what could be characterized as "composing with inversion and

transposition." Webern's op. 16 explores serial techniques such as transposition,

inversion, and invariance within a firmly non-dodecaphonic context. The canons introduce two features that had not been a part of Webern's practice for many years and that play an important role in serial composition: equal parts and ordered pitches.47 First, the equal disposition of voices in a canon represented a real change in Webern's

compositional procedures, which in this period normally allotted the

primary role to the singing voice. Then, by writing canons Webern

46 Wallace McKenzie notes, for example, that in op. 16, no. T, the predominant intervals are found both horizontally and vertically, creating a unity "which is basic to serial composition" ("The Music of Anton Webern,", 354)-

47 In 1917 Webern had written the atonal canon "Fahr' hin, o Seel'," op. 15, no.

5, and in 19o8 the tonal canon "Entflieht auf leichten Kihnen," op. 2. Webern's interest in strict counterpoint goes back at least to his edition of Isaac's Choralis Constantinus for his doctoral dissertation in 1904: Webern, ed., Heinrich Isaac: Choralis Constantinus II, Denkmiler der Tonkunst in Osterreich, vol. 32 (1909).




had a perfect opportunity to practice composing within the constraints of fixed order. By adopting a procedure that requires an unchanging ordering of pitches and rhythms in all parts, he could subject the freely developing motives of his earlier style to more rigorous control. Webern had foundered on precisely this aspect of twelve-tone composition the previous summer; the demands of pitch order had not permitted repetition sufficient to create motives based on certain fixed pitches. Not surprisingly, these new steps taken with op. i6 led to a change in composing habits; he sketched, drafted, and revised much more than he had before.

Webern also used canonic technique to explore inversional relationships between parts and the transposition of ordered sets. In doing this he discovered how to control the invariance that results from the combination of transposed or inverted forms of the same set. Three of the five canons of op. 16 use an inverted voice. In each case, the voice is literally inverted (by exact interval and by register) and therefore forms the mirror image of the dux; the two voices will balance around a pitch axis of symmetry. In "Dormi Jesu" (op. i6, no. 2, drafted in August 1923), the two voices are arranged in a canon at inversion at the tritone. Because the first note of the dux (clarinet) is Bb and the comes (voice) is E, the two lines unfold symmetrically around g'. Such a property means, for example, that a C# in one voice would be answered by C# in the other, and G would likewise be answered by another G. Other notes produce the relationships shown in Example 7.

Although there are no notations resembling Example 7b in any of Webern's sketches for op. i6, Schoenberg made sketches very much like this in the summer of 1921 for the Prailudium (see Ex. 8). Here he inverted each tetrachord separately, around the axis of the last note of the first tetrachord. This is shown below (extracted from Ex. 5):

T: E F G D,

U (around D6): B6 A G DI G,

Eb Ab D Ab Cb G, C

B C A Bb Eb D F E

This kind of inversion differs from what became the standard procedure for the Second Viennese School of inverting the row from its first note.

Of course simply writing a canon at inversion would produce symmetrical relationships, whether Webern was thinking in terms of serial operations or not (and no sketches for "Dormi Jesu" survive that might explain whether he was). The relationship between the two canonic lines in this piece is, however, exactly that which would obtain




Example 7

(a) "Dormi Jesu," op. i6, no. 2, mm. 1-2, final version

Ruhig ( = ca 72) 2 P ==-

S 1 L3

Dor - mi Je - su,

A p -• ------- pp symmetry around G and C

(b) inversional symmetry around G and C_

(I L , I imL

0)k UI

Webern Fiinf Canons

Copyright 1928 by Universal Edition

Copyright renewed All Rights Reserved Used by permission of European American Music Distributors Corporation, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Universal Edition.

Example 8

Schoenberg, Priludium sketches. From Samtliche Werke, Kritischer Bericht, p. 75. Used by permission of Belmont Music Publishers, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.

- iA I I IgJ I

between a row containing the tritone G-C•, like the one he had sketched for "Mein Weg." The pitch classes G and C# would be invariant, with the other notes paired as shown above. Example 9 shows these relation-

ships with two of the canonic voices of "Dormi Jesu" lined up. Writing canons enabled Webern to work intensively with inversional pitch relationships; manipulation of such relationships was of course to become an integral part of his later twelve-tone technique.

Between August and the end of October 1924, Webern completed the three-voice canon "Crucem tuam" (op. I6, no. 5). The canonic texture is more complex than before: one voice imitates at transposition and the other at inversion. At some point during the composition




Example 9

"Dormi Jesu," op. i6, no. 2, final version. Dux and comes from mm. 5-7, lined up.

r--- 3-. ,

-- •3---- .

comes 6-7 , 3-. ,3 r------ 3-----

- I -

dux 5-6 . Webern Fiinf Canons Copyright 1928 by Universal Edition

Copyright renewed All Rights Reserved Used by permission of European American Music Distributors Corporation, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Universal Edition.

of the piece, Webern sketched a twelve-tone row, his first in over two years. A tentative effort, the row was quickly abandoned. Though it clearly originates among the sketches for "Crucem tuam," it was never integrated into any stage of the composition and does not appear in the finished piece. Moreover Webern did not attempt to transform the row through transposition, inversion, or retrograde. This seems peculiar, given his previous experimentation with the method and his familiarity with Schoenberg's twelve-tone music, which by now included the Serenade, op. 24, the Suite, op. 25, and the Wind Quintet, op. 26. His confidence in Schoenbergian twelve-tone technique had clearly not grown in the year since he expressed his initial reservations.

The row sketches for "Crucem tuam" are found on the back of a sheet belonging to draft 3.48 The row is sketched four times (see Ex. i o and Fig. 2). Webern numbered the notes of the first row i through 12, something he had failed to do in his first twelve-tone sketches. In

48 PSS, film 101o:o7oo (the page with the row sketches is not on film). The row sketch is undated, and therefore its placement within the loose sketch pages cannot be determined exactly. Webern probably sketched the row either between drafts I and 3 or during composition of draft 2. Since only drafts 2 and 3 have any material in common with the row, it is probable that he made the twelve-tone sketches either after he was unable to complete the second draft, or after essaying the first bars of draft 2.



Example 0o

"Crucem tuam," op. 16, no. 5, row sketches. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

tLr

[sic]

0 o

I ., LJ -.-M

' •NOW

0 oN




.. E, r r i '' A _ ______ _~-~.-~..... ~-, --I--?.-

__..._. -TI-?j- - .__I --?-?----------.-^--.--- -?-I--- -I_ I, ~

-- ' -?---- --?--?------~~------- -- -- ~-.--I-- =-~----------------------- _-------i---t--?-- ---- -- ~-~----;L~- -- I--

- --- ----- --"I'.-.--..-. --- --- -- - ~---.~-.1.--^~------- ---I --~--- .- --

--

___~_ --'-----~---= ---?---s ~-~---------- ? - ---- ---

Figure 2. Webern, op. 16, no. 5, row sketches. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

the final draft of the row, the two hexachords are written out on two staves, with the second and third trichords overlapping.49

A striking feature of these sketches is how Webern constructed the rows with fixed registers. Each of the four row drafts is notated in a specific registral disposition and, in one case, specific rhythmic values (in the last three drafts, Webern even needed bass clef to notate the second hexachord). These rows are not abstract arrangements of pitch classes, but rather melodic gestalts that span one and a half to two octaves. While the first row fits (with difficulty) into a vocal range (f-eb"), the second and third rows span two octaves and a fourth, between B6 and eb". Although this range does not match that of any instrument used in op. 16, no. 5, its total span exactly corresponds to the range of each part in the final version: voice, g#-c "; clarinet,

bb--d"'; bass clarinet, G-c".

The effect of the final, non-dodecaphonic version of "Crucem tuam" largely depends upon the registral placement of pitches; the

energy and momentum of the individual lines comes as much from the wide spaces they traverse as from their bristly dissonance. Through-

49 The "final" version of the row found among the "Crucem tuam" sketches conforms in certain respects to a familiar Webernian type. Each of its hexachords is a member of set class 6-5; this is Bailey's "type d" (see The Twelve-Note Music, 3 35-36). This row is notated in such an idiosyncratic manner, however, that I hesitate to view it as closely related to other type d rows such as the String Trio (op. 20) or String Quartet (op. 28). Another unusual feature of the row is the overwhelming prominence of interval class 5. The two trichords formed by order pitches 6, 7, 8 and 1o, 11, 12

would be switched at the tritone transposition of both P and I forms. This kind of invariance later interested Webern greatly and culminated in the row for the Concerto, op. 24, in which under certain transpositions each trichord changes places with another and preserves its pitch classes.




out the piece, pitches are introduced in new registers whenever

possible. For example, when Bb is heard for the second time in the vocal line (m. 2, beat i), it is sounded two octaves higher than before (m. i, beat 2), resulting in a particularly extreme contrast for the voice. In measure 3, no new pitch classes are heard, but six pitches occur in registers different from those in which they first appeared. Webern continues to place new pitches in crucial places, such as vocal

high points. Even the last two pitches of the piece occur in new

registers; the voice sings g# to a", which creates its largest leap. The resulting two-and-a-half-octave space for each canonic voice

functions as an alternative to twelve-tone space. By treating each pitch as an individual entity (instead of as a member of a pitch class), Webern created a "mega-row" of some thirty pitches in each voice. This gave him much more room to play out the canonic voices than a twelve-tone set would have allowed. This also explains Webern's

peculiar notation of the twelve-tone row that he sketched while

working on the canon. With this experiment, he created a twelve-tone collection that could operate within the wide registral space that he had so carefully worked out.

Why did this second attempt to create a row also fail? Probably because Webern had still not made the conceptual leap between an idea generated as part of a musical process, on the one hand, and the set of properties and relationships extracted from that idea and applied to the rest of piece, on the other. His one experiment with a twelve-tone row during composition of op. 16 shows that he did not

yet think of the row as an abstract entity that exists apart from a

particular melodic gestalt. In designating a specific range, contour, and even (in one draft) rhythm, Webern designed the row as a possible canonic voice; like the row for "Mein Weg," which began as a vocal

line, the "Crucem tuam" row serves a particular musical situation. In the sketch, Webern had perhaps hoped to overcome the limitations he had experienced with the earlier row by giving the new one an

expansive registral profile. But even with its wide-ranging shape, the row's ordered sequence of twelve pitches would severely limit the kinds of melodic lines that could result. In fact Webern was soon to discover that the solution lay in a different direction. Instead of

making the row more specific, it was necessary to make it more

abstract. Only by de-emphasizing the row as an individual musical

gesture was it possible for its properties to become more generally applicable to the whole piece.




II

During the next year, Webern finally completed his first works based on the twelve-tone method. He continued to progress sporad- ically, however, alternating between what we would characterize as "complex" and "simple" attempts. His first twelve-tone serial compositions were a Kinderstiick for piano (M. 267) and a song, "Armer

Siinder, du" (op. 17, no. i), both written in the fall and early winter of 1924. Upon completion of these two works, Webern ended his resistance to the method. From this point on he employed the technique for everything he wrote. The two pieces explore quite different solutions to the problem of twelve-tone composition. The dense, knotty surface of "Armer Suinder, du" contrasts markedly with the spare texture of the Kinderstiick. The piano piece projects the quiet minimalism for which Webern's music is known. With only seventy- six attacks in seventeen measures, it seems typically--even stereotyp- ically--Webernian, while the song, with its busy nervous rhythms and loud dynamics, seems to come from another hand entirely.

These works also illustrate two approaches to handling a twelve- tone row, a distinction that runs through the rest of Webern's output. In the Kinderstiick, the row is treated as a horizontal event; the few simultaneities that occur are heard as part of a linear flow. In "Armer Sunder, du," by contrast, the row is broken up and distributed among all the parts; completely a-thematic, it is heard as a succession of unordered aggregates. While the "horizontal" approach is characteristic of many of Webern's later works (for example, the canonic first movement of the Symphony, op. 2 i), the "vertical" technique (which Bailey calls "block topography") also occurs, for example in the String Trio, op. 20.5s These first successful twelve-tone efforts show that both modes of Webern's serial discourse were present at the very beginning. Moreover they achieve the opposite aims; whereas the Kinderstiick row is projected transparently and audibly (perhaps too much so), the song "Armer Suinder, du" obscures the row's very existence within a dense, disordered texture.

Sketching Children's Pieces

The Kinderstiick (1924), probably completed before "Armer Sun- der, du," was composed in response to a request by Emil Hertzka of

5so Bailey, The Twelve-Note Music, 3 1.




Universal Edition for a cycle of children's pieces for piano, and remained unpublished during Webern's lifetime.s' The tiny work was to have been part of a larger group of children's piano pieces; on a sketch page, Webern lists sixteen possible types, including dance forms and "Charakterstiicke" such as Waltzer, Polka, Menuett, and Landler, as well as stricter forms such as variations, fugue, passacaglia, and canon. These types are clearly evocative of Schoenbergian models: the Five Pieces, op. 23 (whose fifth movement is a waltz), Serenade, op. 24 (which includes movements entitled Variationen and Tanzscene), and Suite, op. 25 (whose six movements are entitled Praludium, Gavotte, Musette, Intermezzo, Menuett, and Gigue). By proposing dance types and strict forms for his projected cycle of children's pieces, Webern was emulating Schoenberg's solution to the problem of form in twelve-tone music.

Though no sketches for the completed Kinderstiick survive, those for another serially organized children's piece that Webern did not finish (M. 266) show exactly what he was up against: specifically, the conflict between composing with an ordered set and exercising his previous techniques of motivic variation."5

For the Kinderstiick fragment, Webern sketched two rows, one with only eleven notes (accompanied by the remark "ohne a") and one with twelve; the fragment uses the eleven-note row exclusively (see Ex. I I). As early as the third measure Webern found it difficult to keep to the rules of an ordered set. His mistakes are informative. Consistent with the kind of motivic variation he used often in his atonal music, he tried in measure 3 to invert the B-Bb simultaneity of measure I to B-A (as the original row is restated). But this would have introduced the note A, which is not part of his eleven-note row. In the same measure Webern tries another familiar procedure: reinterpreting the C#-D of measure I as D-C0 in measure 3, with the registers inverted. Changing the order of pitches is of course not allowed under the restrictions Webern has set for himself. Noting these "mistakes," he deleted the whole measure (by encircling it, his customary mark for deletion). The only remaining solutions are changes in rhythm and register. Whereas Webern had originally planned to repeat in measure

s' Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern, 312. As a result, its existence was unknown until i965, when the Moldenhauers discovered an ink fair

copy of the piece. See Raymond Ericson, "New Webern Haul Found in a Dark

Attic," New York Times, Sunday, io April 1966, section X, p. i i. The piece was

published by Carl Fischer in 1966. 52 PSS, film o01:o684.




Example i i Kinderstiick sketch, M. 266. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. (a) eleven-note row

(b) mm. 1-3

3 33 I I L 1 11 io i k

L",,M

3 both the opening rhythms and the contour, he arrived instead at solutions with different note values and octave positions.

With this sketch we can see Webern finally coming to terms with the method. This cannot have been easy. Even after two years of constant exposure to it and several rather sophisticated attempts on his own, composing within these constraints required significant modifi- cations of his normal techniques of motivic development. Realizing that two favored types of motivic transformation-inversion around an axis and reordering of pitches--were no longer available (in the unrestricted sense in which they had earlier been used), Webern focused on rhythm and register. Now confronting the immediate problem of how to continue after all twelve notes have sounded, the difficulty of extreme brevity still remained: after six row statements, the sketch ends with a double bar after only nine measures.

In the completed Kinderstiick (M. 267), Webern began to solve the problem of length, not by adding any rows, but by using repeated notes, creating a "Morse-code" effect that resonates through many of his early twelve-tone works. Here he also used six statements of the row, but the piece at seventeen measures lasts almost twice as long as




the previous sketch. Since the repeated notes emphasize the first pitches of the row, it is quite audible, even perhaps overarticulated (see Ex. 12).53

By drawing attention to the row's boundaries, Webern puts the row itself in high relief, treating it as an extended melody. This conception departs radically from Schoenberg's practice; his rows are often broken up into tetrachords or trichords, which are then reordered so that their identity as part of a series is aurally obscured. Even when Schoenberg treated the row melodically, as in the vocal line of the Sonnet (in the Serenade, op. 24), he rotated the fourteen-note series through lines of thirteen syllables, so that its beginning and end points were not audibly marked.

Example 12

Kinderstiick, M. 267, mm. 4-8. Notated according to fair copy (order numbers added). Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 12 2 3 4

A 1 6 L

At ? ?

- ?I

"Armer Siinder, Du," Op. 17, No. I

Instead of continuing his keyboard cycle, Webern returned to his familiar practice of song composition by setting the folk poem "Armer

Suinder, du" (completed io December 1924). The date of completion, the exact identity of its row, and the existence of an early version were unknown until recently, when some sketches that were thought to be lost resurfaced.4" The final version of the piece became the first song of the Three Traditional Rhymes, which Webern grouped together as op.

i7, although the songs were not published as a set in his lifetime.ss

s3 Webern originally intended to end not with the last notes of the row, but with a return to the first dyad. This would have brought the row full circle and

reemphasized the prominent repeated Eb-E4s heard throughout the piece. If Webern had kept this reading, perhaps the editors' otherwise inexplicable "D.C. ad libitum" instruction would make sense.

54 PSS, op. 17, no. i, sketches (from the Wildgans estate). ss Webern offered this set to Universal Edition for publication in at least three

letters to Hertzka in 1926 and 1927 (photocopies in the PSS). This contradicts Oesch, who implies that Webern did not want to publish op. 17 because of its rudimentary




In "Armer Siinder, du," Webern again faced the problem of how to distribute the row among several parts. The complexities of the four-part texture (voice, violin, clarinet, and bass clarinet) forced Webern away from the simple deployment of the row in a single line, as he had practiced in the Kinderstiick. Webern instead opted for a vertical distribution of the total chromatic and a correspondingly dense texture. Rather than emphasizing the row's presence, he now attempted to obscure it. The row has so little identity that even its order is unclear. The version given in Example 13, which differs from the commonly accepted one, comes from the sketches.56 The twelve pitches are notated in the space of one octave and lie within the treble staff. The row is divided by bar lines into four trichords, which belong to only two trichord types: o, 1,6 (trichords I and 3) and o, 1,2

(trichords 2 and 4). It is probably no coincidence that Webern de-emphasized the row's presence as a melodic gesture precisely when he first notated it in a single octave, indicating that he conceived of it more abstractly than he had before. The twelve-tone series, no longer associated with specific properties such as register or rhythm, can now function globally, and this in turn allows much greater freedom in the handling of the musical surface.

The best evidence for this conceptual shift is the simple fact that the voice does not follow the row. When sketching "Mein Weg" two and a half years earlier, Webern was able to conceive of the twelve- tone row only as it was manifested in the concrete musical instance of a vocal line. In the Kinderstiick of the fall of 1924, Webern likewise

Example 13 Row for op. 17, no. i. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

0i t ij,.

row technique: "Weberns Plan einer Gesamtausgabe," in Neue Musik und Tradition: Festschrift Rudolf Stephan zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Josef Kuckertz et al. (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 99go), 508. "Liebste Jungfrau" (op. 17, no. 2) was published as "Geistlicher Volkstext" in New Music, 193o.

56 PSS, op. 17, no. I, sketches. This is the version most often given: B B6 F F# E E G G# A C C# D. See Rognoni, The Second Vienna School, 356; and Jan Maegaard, "Weberns Zwolftonreihen," in Analytica: Studies in the Description and Analysis of Music, ed. Anders Linn and Erik Kjellberg (Uppsala: Borgstroms Tryckeri, 1985), 251. Lynn provides the correct row and makes the plausible conjecture that Webern derived it from the opening measures ("Genesis, Process, and Reception," 82).




treated the series as a kind of extended melody. Although he had composed with ordered sets in his op. 16 canons, in "Armer Sunder, du" he tried something different: using the row as a source for motives. For the vocal line he freely chose from among the twelve pitches, often forming new associations between nonadjacent pitches of the row. After the voice sounds order numbers 9 through 12 at the beginning of the piece, it never stays that close to the row again. Instead, it focuses on interval-class i relationships, some of which are present in the highly chromatic row, others created by juxtaposing pitches out of order. A prominent example of the latter is the frequent pairing of G# and A in the vocal line, order numbers 6 and 9 in the row (see Ex. 14).57

Webern in effect freed the voice part of "Armer Suinder, du" from a controlling dodecaphonic organization, shaping it much as he had

shaped earlier vocal lines. The line rises from beginning to end; the

high points in each phrase ascend incrementally, marked by important words such as "Mark," "Blut," "Himmel," and others.s8 In the final version, many of the extremely wide leaps present in the sketches and the first fair copy were compressed, lending the finished piece a more plausibly "Volkslied" character. In the last quarter of the piece

Example 14 "Armer Siinder, du," op. 17, no. i, final version, excerpts from the vocal line (mm. 2-3, 7-8, and 13-14; order numbers added)

6 9 10 11 12 1 6 9 2 5 4 3 6 9 3 6 9

Ar-mer Siin-der, du der Him mel ist dein Hut. du hei- li-ge Drei - fal-tig-keit

Webern Drei Volkstexte Copyright 1955 by Universal Edition Copyright renewed All Rights Reserved Used by permission of European American Music Distributors Corporation, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Universal Edition.

s7 These chromatic pairs are prominent in (and between) the instrumental parts as well. Even in the sketches and early draft, Webern treated these two-note gestures as fixed units, replacing one with another or shifting their positions.

s8 As Joachim Noller has noted in "Das dodekaphone Volkslied," in Musik-

Konzepte Sonderband Anton Webern II, ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn

(Munich: Edition Text und Kritik, 1984), 143.




(mm. I3-16), motives heard at the beginning recur; as in many of Webern's atonal songs, the recurring pitches are reordered and registrally displaced.59

The Ineffable Row

All of Webern's twelve-tone efforts in the fall of 1924 were carried out with the same family of closely related rows. In spite of the different compositional strategies behind them, the rows in the Kinderstiick sketch, the completed Kinderstiick, the "Crucem tuam" sketch, and "Armer Sfinder, du" are all quite similar (see Ex. i5). In developing these rows, Webern did not manipulate intervallic relationships, as he would do later, but instead explored the different placement of pitch classes. Groups of notes are moved en bloc from row to row; some even occur in all four rows. The rows, which grew out of concrete musical gestures, are treated almost as different versions of a melodic gesture rather than as neutral raw material.

Webern's awareness of a row's complex properties very soon followed, even as he continued to write pieces that did not explore these properties. In the spring of 1925, he sketched a string trio movement that bears a remarkable resemblance, in both row structure and finished surface, to the String Trio, op. 20, completed two years

Example I5

Rows Webern used in autumn 1924

Op. 16, _ . no.

5- 266 - e

wp I

Op. 17, no. 1I v

59 In the sketches for the piece, this connection with the opening phrase is even clearer: the violin's last gesture uses order numbers 9, 10, I I, t2--a sequence heard before only in the voice in measures

2-3.




later.6' The row is worth observing, since it represents Webern's earliest "complex" row, and because it has not been described in the literature (see Ex. i6 and Fig. 3).

The most striking feature of this row is the high degree of invariance it displays with many of its prime and inverted forms.6' The sophistication of the row seems inconsistent with its typically early notational features, however. Archaic aspects include the way Webern wrote each pitch of the row with stems, gave the row a distinct registral contour, and labeled the rows in tonal terms (with the prime as T[onika] and the tritone transposition as D[ominant]). In the bottom two staves, he experimented with writing the twelve tones in overlapping tetrachords, just as he had done in sketches for "Mein

Weg." Yet the properties of tetrachordal invariance are also clearly displayed in the transpositions and transformations which he wrote out; notice, for example, the tetrachordal invariance among P-o ("T"), P-6 ("D"), and I-i i (unlabeled, staff 6).6,

It seems odd, from an evolutionary standpoint at least, that even after this "advanced" row sketch, Webern continued for the next ten months or so to compose pieces that use much simpler row technique. A fragmentary setting of "Erl6sung" (later op. I8, no. 2) attempted in

June 1925 is based on a single row form; Webern was undecided only whether to use the row horizontally or to distribute it vertically throughout the texture. A complete setting of "Heiland, unsere Missetaten" (op. 17, no. 3) presents the row continuously in the vocal

line, while the instruments echo with disjunct fragments of the series. In the next work, "Liebste Jungfrau" (op. 17, no. 2), Webern scatters one row among all the parts. He did not use even the simple transformations of a row-its retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion--until late September and early October of i925, in settings of "Erl6sung" (op. I8, no. 2) and "Ave Regina Coelorum" (op. 18, no.

3). Only in late 1925, in his Two Songs for chorus, op. i9, did he

employ even a transposed form of a row (this almost a year after his

forward-looking string trio sketches). On one level, this seemingly

6 String trio, M. 273. PSS, film o03:o834-o841. 61 Even-numbered prime forms and odd-numbered inverted forms preserve the

content of the three unordered tetrachordal partitions, although not necessarily their order with respect to each other. The P-6, 1-5, R-io, and RI-3 forms are completely invariant with the original at the tetrachord level. For any P form and its I form a half step higher, the last tetrachord of the former will match the first tetrachord of the latter.

62 He even uses both types of inversion on the same page: the later standard method of inverting around the first note (as he does with the TU), and the earlier one of inverting around a tritone axis (as he seems to do with the "DU," although this

labeling of what is apparently the TU could simply have been a mistake).



Example 16

String trio fragment, M. 273, sketches. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

Reihen zum Streich-Trio

X b• b

![•

~Krebs •

8 TU.

DU

d . , ' I.




, , --... -.- --? --

4 19 *1 0 . r

K A

.. -"d I X&

* i • +, " 7

.-

I ;I

• " ?, •., • . . • " • . . . • • ".

Figure 3. Webern, string trio fragment, M. 273, sketches. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel.

inconsistent progress simply indicates a gap between what Webern

explored in his sketches and what he was able to realize in completed works.

But the differences between the "sophisticated" string trio sketches and the "rudimentary" setting of "Armer Siinder, du" should not be measured solely on the basis of serial complexity. For even a work based on a single untransposed and untransformed row reveals much about how Webern viewed the row's function and purpose; such works confidently assume that the mere presence of a series- however imperceptible-can serve as an organizing force. This belief allowed Webern to liberate the musical surface. His apparently simple efforts in op. 17 and op. i8 were aimed not at "mastering" the twelve-tone apparatus (by which standards they fail), but rather at

seeing how far he could separate the perceived music from its

underlying structure. In this sense, these songs are not simple at all.

Hardly a tentative first step into twelve-tone technique, "Armer Suinder, du" suggests rather a headlong plunge. With this piece Webern pushed the organizational capability of the row to the limits of perception. The frenetically rapid rhythms and the stratified

repeated-note figures disrupt the row, which has been pushed into the

background. The work's highly disordered surface is essentially a-thematic. This approach was very different from that of Schoen-




berg, who chose to exert control over the technique by working it out within strict formal types. Webern opted, it seems, to relinquish control.

He could do this only because he placed great faith in the power of the twelve-tone row to provide a subconscious order. He believed in this power all his life, as these remarks from The Path to the New Music suggest: "The twelve-note row is, as a rule, not a 'theme.' But I can also work without thematicism, that's to say much more freely, because of the unity that's now been achieved in another way; the row ensures unity. . . . Only now is it possible to compose in free fantasy, adhering to nothing except the row.""6 Webern's comments, usually interpreted metaphorically, can now be seen as literal statements of belief. The songs op. 17, nos. 2 and 3, and op. I8, based on more conventional row techniques than "Armer Siinder, du," still show supreme confidence in the row's organizing power and-by taking away the safety net of the "well-marked" row-great nerve. From Schoenberg's model, which Webern had tried to resist, he had developed a new solution that was at the same time individual and quite radical.

III

The history of twelve-tone composition does not entirely concern technique, as Dahlhaus has warned.64 In freeing the twelve-tone row from the musical surface, Webern granted it a metaphysical significance that far surpassed any structural role. He had shifted away from his original conception of the row as concrete gesture toward a formulation of the row as an abstract model (even though it still often originated as part of a melodic gesture). The religious and folk texts that Webern used in the transitional works opp. I5- 8, far from being irrelevant kitsch, reflect some of his central aesthetic concerns. Indeed, Webern's early twelve-tone technique developed, in part, in response to the images and symbols resident in these texts.

63 Path, 55 (Ger. 59-60). 64 "Thus historians investigating the prehistory of dodecaphony should not only search for substantial preconditions-for twelve-note complexes or permutations of

interval structures-but should also reconstruct the problems as the solution to which, within the system of reference of Schoenberg's musical poetics, dodecaphony acquired a significance that would hardly have been accorded to it if it had been merely a technique" (Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music, 80).




Many Austrian intellectuals became more overtly religious after the First World War.6s The unprecedented destruction of the war and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire overwhelmed many with a sense of their own powerlessness. For Schoenberg, the war, which "overturned everything we formerly believed in," also inspired the growing intensity of his own faith (which was at the time a mystical Protestantism). He described this to Kandinsky in 1922: "You would, I think, see what I mean best from my libretto 'Jacob's Ladder' (an oratorio): what I mean is---even though without any organisational fetters-religion. This was my one and only support during those years-here let this be said for the first time."66

Another example of increasing religiosity can be found in the journal Der Brenner, which had introduced Webern to Georg Trakl's poetry in the 191os. Its editorial orientation shifted from an avant-

garde artistic stance to a reactionary, mystical Catholicism (this outlook was later to attract Hildegard Jone to the Brenner circle). Webern's religious beliefs, a pantheistic piety that blended elements of Lutheranism and nature worship with his native Catholicism, were never closely associated with an institutional church. For religious inspiration Webern drew upon musical and literary sources more than

theological ones; the folk poetry of Rosegger, the music of Mahler, and the ideas of Goethe figured larger in his conception of God's role in the world than the teachings of any religion. Examining Webern's choice of texts for opp. 15-I 9--never taken seriously or in many cases even identified--can illuminate this aesthetic stance.

In place of the contemporary poetry by George, Rilke, Kraus, and Trakl that had attracted him earlier, Webern now drew upon "everyday" texts from the breviary and hymnal, along with equally familiar folk songs. (Later he was to find in the poems of Hildegard Jone a

sympathetic blend of modernist complexity, religiosity, and Volkstiim- lichkeit.) The "anonymous" texts Webern used between 1921 and 1925

65 H. H. Stuckenschmidt notes: "These religious songs [op. I5] give Webern a

place within the religious movement that overtook German expressionism in the years following 1918. The same tide of feeling gave rise to the religious, visionary works of

painters and sculptors such as Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff, Rouault and Barlach" (Twentieth Century Music, trans. Richard Deveson [New York and Toronto: McGraw-

Hill, 1970], '45)- 66 "Was ich meine, wiirde Ihnen am besten meine Dichtung 'Jakobsleiter' (ein

Oratorium) sagen: ich meine--wenn auch ohne alle organisatorischen Fesseln--die Religion. Mir war sie in diesen Jahren meine einzige Stiitze--es sei das hier zum

erstenmal gesagt" (Arnold Schoenberg Lettern, 71 [Erwin Stein, ed., Arnold Schoenberg Briefe (Mainz: B. Schott's S6hne, 1958), 70]). This letter evoked a cruelly anti-Semitic

response from Kandinsky, which ended their friendship.




are shown in Table 2. They come from two main sources: church liturgy (both Catholic and Lutheran) and folk song (as adapted in the collection Des Knaben Wunderborn and by the novels and stories of Peter Rosegger).67 Uncharacteristically for Webern, he left most of these texts unidentified in his manuscripts.68 Perhaps he thought they were

TABLE 2

Webern's "Anonymous" Texts

Work First Line Text Source

Op. 12, no. I(1915) Der Tag ist vergangen Rosegger, Peter Mayr and Waldheimat Fragment (1918) *Der du bist drel in einigkeit Chorale Op. 15, no. I (1921) Das Kreuz, das muBt' er tragen Rosegger, Mein Himmelreich Op. 15, no. 2 (1922) *Steht auf, ihr lieben Kinderlein Chorale and Des Knaben Wunderborn Op. 15, no. 3 (1921) *In Gottes Namen aufstehn Rosegger, Waldheimat . I5, no. 4 (1922) *Mein Weg geht jetzt voriber Chorale

. 15, no. 5 (1917) Fahr hin, o Seel' Roseger, Erdsegen and Das Buch der Novew& I

Op. 16, no. I (1924) Christus factus est Gradual, Maundy Thursday Op. i6, no. 2 (1923) Dormi, Jesu Des Knaben Wunderborn Op. 16, no. 3 (1923) Crux fidelis Hymn, Good Friday Op. 16, no. 4 (1923) Asperges me Antiphon, Ordinary Op. 16, no. 5 (1924) Crucem tuam adoramus Antiphon, Good Friday Fragment (1924) Morgenglanz der Ewigkeit Chorale Fragment (1924) *Mudtg trigst du die Last Karl Kraus Op. 17, no. (1924) Armer Suinder, du Rosegger, Die Alper .. Op. i7,

no. 2 (1925) *Liebste Jungfrau Rosegger, Das Bucb der Novellen I Op. 17, no. 3 (1925) Heiland, unsre Missetaten Fragment (1925) *Dein Leib geht jetzt der Erde zu Rosegger, Das Bucb der Novellen I Op. 18, no. I (1925) Schatzerl klein Rosegger, Das Buch der Novellen II Op. i8, no. 2 (1925) Erl6sung Des Ktiaben Wunderborn Op. 18, no. 3 (1925) Ave Regina Coelorum Marian antiphon

Note: Asterisks in the Table indicate a new identification. Sources: [PSS] below indicates a source in Webern's library at the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. L. A. v. Arnim and Clemens Brentano, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Berlin, 1846). Albert Fischer, ed., Kirchenlieder-Lexicon (Gotha, i878) (chorales). Karl Kraus, Worte in Versen, vol. 7 of Werke von KarlKraus, ed. Heinrich Fischer (Munich: Kosel Verlag, 1959). Peter Rosegger, in Gesammelte Werke, vom Verfasser neu bearbeitete und neu eingeteilte Ausgabe, vols. i-4o

(Leipzig: Staackmann, 1913-16): Ds Buch der Novellekn I (GW 2). [PSS] Die Alper in ibren Wald- aund Dorfrypen gcbildert (GW 3). Peter Mayr, der Wirt an der Mabr. Eine Geschicbte aus deutscbher Heldenzeit (GW i9). Das Buc i der Novellen II (GW 24). [PSS] Erd~egen: Vertrauliche Sonntagsbr• e Bauernknecbts (Ein Kulturroman) (GW 25). [PSS] Mein Himmererich: Ein Glaubesbekenntnis (GW 34). [PSS]

Peter Rosegger, other editions: Mein Himnmelreich: Bekenntnise, Gestiindnisse und Erfabrungen aus dem relgieien Leben (Leipzig: Staackmann,

1910). [PSS] Waldheimat (Pressburg and Leipzig: Gustav Heckenast, 1877). Waldheimat. Erinnerungen aus dkrfugendzt, Bd. 2,

Leh'ahre (Leipzig: Staackmann, 1902). Johannes Zahn, ed., Psalter und Harft fir das deutsche Haus. Ein evangelischer Liedenscbatz (Gditersloh, 1886) (chorales).

67 The Moldenhauers identified only "Fahr' hin, o Seel' " as Rosegger's; in 1983 Peter Andraschke attributed more of the "anonymous" folk poems to Rosegger ("Webern und Rosegger," in Opus Anton Webern, ed. Rexroth, o8-12). Felix Meyer of the PSS identified Kraus as the author of "Mutig triigst du die Last." I located the rest (new attributions marked with asterisks) with the invaluable help of Dr. Meyer.

68 With the exception of the two poems from Des Knaben Wunderborn, op. I6, no. 2, and op. I8, no. 2.




so familiar that identification was unnecessary. More likely, he simply viewed liturgical, chorale, and folk poetry as common property.

In discussing Webern's songs opp. 15, 16, 17, and 18 (themselves rarely studied), most commentators have simply ignored the texts.'6 This stance reflects the greater interest shown in the technical aspects of Webern's music than in the aesthetic (which is demonstrated also in the general bias in the Webern literature in favor of his instrumental music).70 But if the poems had come from a high art tradition, their reception-and perhaps that of the pieces as well-would probably have been different.

There is clearly a wide gulf between anonymous, "public" literature and the high modernist aesthetic of ever-increasing assertion of individuality that Webern embraced in his music. Two explanations, neither altogether convincing, come to mind: that the "simple" texts correspond well to the "rudimentary" twelve-tone technique; and that texts which make fewer literary demands allow the composer greater freedom to fashion musical structures. With regard to the first, I have argued that Webern's early twelve-tone efforts are hardly simple except by the barest technical standards. Besides, it has never been considered necessary for poem and musical setting to match in terms of difficulty or literary pretension (just think of Schubert's Klopstock settings). The second hypothesis is more plausible, since it supposes that Webern needed room to develop his twelve-tone technique freely, without the constraints imposed by the dense, multivalent

poetry of Trakl, for example. But if this were true, then the best solution would be to write music without texts at all. Webern was in fact unable to complete any of the larger-scale instrumental works he

attempted during these years (not even the set of Kinderstiicke). He still needed a text both to begin composition and to carry it out. It was

69 In his analysis of "Schatzerl klein" (op. 18, no. i), for example, Reinhard Schulz claims that the only significant relationship between text and music consists of structural factors (metrical patterns, number of syllables, etc.) (1Jber das Verbiltnis von Konstruktion und Ausdruck in den Werken Anton Weberns [Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1982], oo- i o i). Ren6 Leibowitz does not mention the text of "Liebste Jungfrau" (op.

i7, no. 2) in his analysis; in fact he omits the words from the musical examples (Introduction, 86-87). Wildgans (Anton Webern) likewise focuses exclusively on the technical features of these works. Two notable exceptions to this tendency are H. H. Stuckenschmidt, who treats Webern's opp. i6 and I7 as sacred music in a chapter entitled "The Music of Commitment" (Twentieth Century Music, i45-47), and Joachim Noller, who writes sensitively about the text of "Armer Siinder, du" (without, however, exploring its context, since its source was unknown to him) ("Das dodekaphone Volkslied," 142-43).

70 My forthcoming book, Webern and the Lyric Impulse, attempts to redress the balance somewhat.




only with the String Trio, op. 20, completed in 1927, that Webern finished an instrumental work for the first time in over a decade.

Webern, I suggest, saw no inconsistency between such "simple" poetry and twelve-tone technique. Nor was the naivete of the poems a foil for greater musical complexity; rather he viewed the two as compatible. What he valued most in the texts corresponded exactly to what he valued most in twelve-tone composition: unity, immediacy, and most of all, a kind of eternally present meaning that he found also in nature. Both the familiarity of the poems and their artless-even naive-mode of expression served the composer to advantage by allowing the texts to communicate with an ingenuous directness.

Webern's treatment of the religious texts he chose, even the liturgical ones, closely reflects his humane beliefs. He selected Latin texts not to serve as distant icons or religious symbols, but rather to communicate directly. (In this he differed from Stravinsky, who chose Latin for Oedipus Rex precisely because of its objectifying, distancing effect.) In a letter to Schoenberg, Webern expressed enthusiasm for these poems: "I have borrowed the breviary from the priest. It contains everything: hymns, psalms, and so forth. The breviary is a glorious work.""7' He also assumed that the texts would be intelligible to his audience, describing to Berg how the three songs he first envisioned as a set, "Dormi Jesu," "Crux fidelis," and "Asperges me" (later part of op. 16), create a kind of narrative progression: "The first is, textually, a kind of lullaby of Mary; the second an antiphon: song (prayer) to the crucifix; the third an invocation (holy water). Musically the whole represents a unit in form and expression, I believe.""7 While the canonic technique of op. 16 itself alludes to the Netherlands Renaissance masters, Webern also believed the liturgical texts to be expressive in themselves.73 Even as a musicology student editing the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac, Webern did not distinguish between the ritual function of a text and the personal viewpoint of the composer: "One must not suppose that the reason for doing this [composing a polyphonic Gradual cycle] was entirely practical; rather one should also consider the profound piety of the master and his love for the beauty of these liturgical poems."74

7' Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern, 272. 72 Ibid., 273. 73 Stuckenschmidt finds in the use of canon a symbol of "the Imitation of Christ"

(Twentieth Century Music, 146). 74 "Die Initiative zu dieser Tat wird man nicht ausschlieBlich in praktischen

Bedfirfnissen suchen diirfen, sondern auch in der tiefen Religiositit des Meisters und




We can now add that Webern was involved with the Lutheran liturgy during these years as well, by setting or drafting four German chorale texts (see Table 2). In 1922, after completing "Morgenlied" (later op. 15, no. 2), Webern wrote to Berg of his plans to compose a "sacred cantata." Here he refers to "Morgenlied" and "Mein Weg," both based on chorale texts.75 Four years earlier he had sketched another chorale setting, "Der du bist drei in einigkeit."76 By 1924, he had even sketched an instrumental "Vorspiel," possibly to the planned cantata, along with a draft of another chorale, "Morgenglanz der Ewigkeit." This "chorale cantata" anticipates not only Webern's later cantatas on Hildegard Jone's texts, but also reflects his lifelong involvement with the music of J. S. Bach, with whom the concept of "chorale" would have been indelibly associated. (Webern's continued admiration for Bach is shown by his reverent orchestration, in 1934-35, of the Ricercar from the Musical Offering.)77

That Webern's plans to compose a sacred cantata date precisely from the time of his first attempt at twelve-tone composition is

probably no coincidence. After more than a decade of composing instrumental miniatures and songs, he would have been anxious to

produce something in a larger form again, perhaps in response to

Schoenberg's massive oratorio project, Die Jakobsleiter. The two chorales with which Webern began, "Steht auf, ihr lieben Kinderlein" and "Mein Weg geht jetzt voriiber," could represent the start and end of a personal religious journey: the first belongs to the category of

"Morgenlieder," while the latter is the second verse of "Ich hab mich Gott ergeben," a funeral chorale.78 The text of "Mein Weg"-"My path now goes to the other side / Oh world, what do I care of you; / Heaven is closer to me, / So I must go there"-can also be read as a

in seiner Liebe zur Sch6nheit dieser kirchlichen Dichtungen" (Webern, ed., Heinrich Isaac: Choralis Constantinus II, vii).

75 Morgenlied is also found in Des Knaben Wunderborn (the Moldenhauers give this source only). I am grateful to Daniel Melamed, who first suggested to me that "Mein

Weg" might be a chorale text. 76 PSS, film io3:0798. 77 A colleague of Webern's during the i92os related how he spontaneously played

a Bach chorale after a chorus rehearsal: "Webern, lighting a cigarette, sat down at the

piano and began to play the chorale 'Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden' from Bach's St. Matthew Passion: 'Now, that chorale was very well known to me. Yet I stood there and was deeply moved. Webern played it with so much expression and deep emo- tion.

.... I could see one aspect of his personality I had not recognized before: that

Webern was essentially a religious man' " (Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer, Anton von

Webern, 289). 78 As they are classified in Johannes Zahn, Psalter und Harfefiir das deutsche Haus:

Ein evangelischer Liederscbatz (Giitersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1886).




literal statement of intent to "go over" to new compositional realms, much as Schoenberg's foray into atonality in his Second String Quartet had been heralded by the George text "Ich fiihle Luft von anderem Planeten."

Webern made his actual transition to twelve-tone composition not with liturgical texts, but with religious "folk poetry." Frowned upon by mainstream religion-the editor of a major chorale collection expressed the hope that the book "might also help to drive back the mawkish, trivial so-called sacred folk songs, which are inundating the populace and corrupting its taste"79-this poetry, especially that of the folk novelist Peter Rosegger, was immensely popular.

Rosegger (i84 3-1918), a self-educated man from the peasant class, spent almost his whole life in his native Styria and devoted himself to describing its customs, people, and landscape. His direct, intention- ally nonliterary style-which seems designed to be read aloud-was characteristic of other Volksschriftsteller of the time as well.8s Roseg- ger's stories are aimed at a distinctly modem, urban audience, however; when reporting an old-fashioned local custom, for example, he often stops to explain it and even to ridicule it in a humorous fashion. His descriptions are often heavy with irony. Reading Roseg- ger allowed first- or second-generation urban dwellers to indulge in a little nostalgia for the countryside without damaging their sense of superiority. If Rosegger's work was relegated to anthologies of children's literature shortly after the Second World War, in the early part of the century he enjoyed respect in literary circles as well as popular acclaim.8'

Webem had been reading Rosegger for years: in 1912, he wrote to Berg that, in spite of moments of apparent banality (which, he explained, were like the profound "banalities" of Mahler), Rosegger "is the greatest German poet living today.""'8 In Rosegger's books Webern found a rich source of poetry that was direct and artless, fashioned as if it came straight out of the mouth of the Volk (whether

79 "Mochte es auch dazu beitragen die siiflichen, tindelnden, sogenannten geistlichen Volkslieder zuruickzudraingen, mit denen man gegenwartig das Volk fiberschwemmt und seinen Geschmack verdirbt" (Zahn, introduction to Psalter und Harfe, n.p.).

o Peter Horwath discusses Rosegger in a chapter together with the Heimatdich- ter Ludwig Anzengruber (i839-89): Der Kampf gegen die religiose Tradition: Die Kulturkampfliteratur Osterreichs, 1780-1918 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1978), 2oi-i i.

81 See Dean Garrett Stroud, The Sacred Journey: The Religious Function of Nature Mot, in Selected Works by Peter Rosegger (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag, i986), i. "Er ist der gr68te deutsche Dichter, der heute lebt" (Anton Webern: 1883-1983, ed. Ernst Hilmar [Vienna: Universal Edition, 1983], 66).




it actually did or not). 83 Rosegger's characters sing in many situations, ranging from the comic to the sublime: there are songs for waking up, songs for courting, songs for church, weddings, and funerals. Many poems are given in dialect.

The contexts of Rosegger's poems can cast new light on Webern's

settings.84 "Armer Siinder, du" (op. 17, no. i), for example, is a humorous, even irreverent poem from a story called "Der Winkeldok- tor" ("The Quack"). The quack, an Augustinian monk, offers a dark

potion called "Sympathiemittel" to his gullible customers, claiming it can cure the most severe illnesses. As he "blesses" them he sings the

following rhyme:

Armer Siinder, du You poor sinner die Erde ist dein Schuh; the earth is your shoe; Mark und Blut, marrow and blood, der Himmel ist dein Hut. heaven is your hat. Fleisch und Bein Flesh and bone sollen von dir gesegnet sein, should be blessed by you, du Heilige Dreifaltigkeit you holy Trinity, von nun an bis in Ewigkeit! from now until eternity!

The crudely simple imagery ("die Erde ist dein Schuh," "der Himmel

ist dein Hut"), the irregular line lengths, and the fractured idioms

("Mark und Blut" instead of "Mark und Bein," "Fleisch und Bein" instead of "Fleisch und Blut")8s suggest that the monk may have taken a drop too many of his own "Sympathiemittel." Even the narrator claims to have forgotten most of what went on during the ceremony because of his own consumption of the potion. Some of the perceived peculiarities in Webern's setting of the monk's song could even be attributed to his attempt to reflect in music not only the simple nature of the quack but also his drunken state. Both can be heard in the

rhythm of the vocal line. It begins simply, folklike in regular eighth notes with two balanced phrases. Then, just when the quack starts to mix his idioms (mm. 5-6, "Mark und Blut"), the voice strays off the beat in triplet subdivisions. After briefly regaining metrical regularity

83 Whether Rosegger made up these poems or merely recorded traditional songs from the region is still open to question. The former is more probable. Andraschke notes that most of Rosegger's poems are not listed in the Volkslied-Archiv in Freiburg i.Br. ("Webern und Rosegger," io8). The vocabulary and idioms of the poems also

imply an "artificial" origin (see below). 84Webern's only source for the poems would have been in Rosegger's writings;

the poems were never published separately. He owned several volumes of Rosegger. 5 I am indebted to my late colleague Martin Hoyer for this observation.




(mm. 7-9, "der Himmel ist dein Hut"), the singer "gets off" again at "Fleisch und Bein," as if trying unsuccessfully to "rhyme" with the parallel "Mark und Blut.""86 The vocal range gets increasingly wide- culminating in the final leap on the word "Ewigkeit"-as the note values halve to sixteenths, reflecting the singer's mounting agitation and progressive loss of control. Even the chaotic, mostly unordered treatment of the twelve-tone row may have been a conscious reflection of the character depicted in Rosegger's story. (And we have already seen how, since Webern had composed with an ordered row in the Kinderstiick, his failure to do it here was not due to inability.)

Although Rosegger often poked fun at the clergy and the organized church, religion was a subject he took very seriously indeed. His religious liberalism-particularly his belief in the possibility of a close relationship between humankind and God-would have been very attractive to Webern, who owned a copy of Rosegger's testament of his own faith, Mein Himmelreich, and set a poem from it.87 Though Rosegger remained nominally a Catholic, he recognized no automatic authority of priest or pope. Because of Rosegger's belief that divine redemption comes from human charity, his writings were often attacked by the Catholic church.88

Another recurring motif in Rosegger's work-and the one that would have resonated most strongly with Webern's beliefs-is that of God represented in nature. In Mein Himmelreich, Rosegger explains:

I would still have found such a tightly knit, unified world of belief upon the awakening of my reason. And if I had not encountered something like this, no church, no pulpit, no altar, no pious mother and no father to point me to God, I believe that I would still have believed from the depths of my being. I imagine that for example the flower, the storm, the stars in the heavens, the mountains, the sea, the entire world-essence

86 Webern sketched "Fleisch und Bein" many times, each time placing it more off the beat, at the same time increasingly matching the contour to "Mark und Blut" (PSS, op. I7, no. i, sketches).

87 Peter Rosegger, Mein Himmelreich: Ein Glaubensbekenntnis (Leipzig: Staackmann, 1924). The poem Webern set is "Das Kreuz, das muBt' er tragen," op. 15, no. I (1921).

88 Some of these attacks are documented in Henry Charles Sorg, S.D.S., Rosegger's Religion: A Critical Study of His Works (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1938), 9. This book, which comes to the conclusion that Rosegger's views were so unorthodox that he can scarcely be considered a Christian at all (see especially PP- 46-74), represents another such attack. Rosegger also opposed prevailing anti-Semitic views, although without avoiding conventional anti-Semitic stereotypes in making his arguments: see Karl Wagner, Die literarische Offentlicbkeit der Provinzlit- eratur: Der Volkscbriftsteller Peter Rosegger (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1991), 237-47.




would have gradually but urgently said to me: one God, one eternal life!89

God's presence in nature, according to Rosegger, is revealed most

immediately and purely on the mountain peaks. As Dean Garrett Stroud has pointed out, "The metropolis and the mountain top form a polarity in Rosegger's philosophy in which the metropolis represents the physical side of life and the mountain symbolizes the spiritual side.""' This ancient conceit had special resonance for Rosegger, who refashioned the notion of pilgrimage into a vertical journey rather than a horizontal one. The mountain excursions that figure so prominently in his stories represent the voyage into the soul, in which "the mountain represents the goal of the journey, and . . . serves as the

place where union with the Divine is most likely to take place."'' The familiar topos-the dichotomy between "irdische" and "himmlische" and its spiritual associations--plays out audibly in Mahler's works as well.

Webern's religious feelings were similarly pantheistic. His lifelong habit of mountain excursions has been well documented; these

expeditions were not merely recreational, but served as spiritual journeys. Webern's own early poems, "O sanftes Glihn der Berge" and "Schmerz immer blick nach oben," testify to his veneration of the mountains.9' His sketchbooks are filled with notations about mountain excursions. These, as Joachim Noller has pointed out, are not incidental remarks, but formed the direct impetus for many of his later works.93 Webern was a passionate amateur botanist as well, with a special interest in mountain flora; many of the books he owned still contain specimens of pressed flowers.

89 "Eine solche enggeschloffene, einheitliche Welt des Glaubens hatte ich noch vorgefunden bei dem Aufwachen meiner Vernunft. Und hitte ich nichts desgleichen vorgefunden, keine Kirche, keine Kanzel, keinen Altar, keine fromme Mutter und keinen zu Gott weisenden Vater, so meine ich doch, daB ich meiner ganzen Natur nach glauben hitte muissen .... ich vermute, daB z.B. die Blume, der Sturm, der Sternenhimmel, die Gebirgswelt, das Meer, die ganze Wesenheit der Welt allmAhlich so eindringlich zu mir gesprochen hiitten: Ein Gott, ein ewiges Leben!" (Rosegger, Mein Himmelreich, 9).

90 Stroud, The Sacred Journey, o102. 9' Ibid., 18. Rosegger, like Webern, hated to travel outside his native country. 92 See Felix Meyer, " 'O sanftes Glihn der Berge': Ein verworfenes 'Stuck mit

Gesang' von Anton Webern," in Quellenstudien II: ZwdilfKomponisten des 20. Jahrbun- derts, ed. Felix Meyer (Winterthur: Amadeus, 1993), 12-17.

93Joachim Noller, "Bedeutungsstrukturen: Zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Pro-

grammen," Neue Zeitscbriftfiur Musik 151, no. 9 (1990): 12-I8.




What does this have to do with compositional technique? A good deal, evidently, since Webern believed that music, as a part of nature, could reflect the divine order. Specifically, his view of nature as a manifestation of the divine is reflected in his metaphysical conception of the twelve-tone row. Let us look more closely at this connection in light of a revealing letter from Webern to Berg in 1925:

The significance [Sinn] of this flora, unfathomable: that is the greatest magic to me. I perceive an unimaginable [unerbhrten] idea behind it. And I can say: to reproduce musically what I perceive there, for that I have struggled my whole life. A greater part of my musical production can be traced back to that. Namely: just as the scent and shape [Gestalt] of these plants--as a model given by God--come over me, that is what I want from my musical shapes [Gestalten] also. If it does not sound too presumptuous; then I immediately add: vain struggle to grasp the ungraspable. But perhaps you will understand if, in connection with this folksong that I told you about recently, I tell you what has been, so to speak, formative: rosemary.94

In reacting with gratitude and enthusiasm to Berg's descriptions of a mountain-climbing trip, Webern moves easily from nature to music to God, as if they belong in a seamless continuum. He does not emphasize the technical details about the pieces he is writing. Rather he focuses on the divine order expressed in nature. This is not a simple correlation; the underlying Presence is mysterious, hidden, and difficult to grasp ("I feel an unimaginable idea behind [the sensory impression of the plants]"). More crucially, Webern states his desire to capture in his music just this ineffable aspect of nature. To recreate his impression of the smell and shape of the plants (which are "a model given by God") had been a major part of his musical efforts for a long time, he tells Berg. In the face of this daunting task, he continues the "vain struggle to grasp the ungraspable."

9 "Der Sinn dieser Flora, unerforschlich: das ist der gr68ite Zauber for mich. Ich spiire einen unerh6rten Gedanken dahinter. Und ich kann wohl sagen: musikalisch wiederzugeben, was ich da spire, danach ringe ich schon mein ganzes Leben. Ein Hauptteil meiner musikalischen Produktion liBt sich darauf zuriickfiihren. Nimlich: so wie der Duft und die Gestalt dieser Pflanzen--als ein von Gott gegebenes Vorbild-auf mich zukommen, so m6chte ich es auch von meinen musikalischen Gestalten. M6ge das nicht als Oberhebung klingen; denn ich setze gleich hinzu: vergebliches Bemuihen, das Unfaflbare zu fassen. Aber so wirst Du vielleicht verstehen, wenn ich im Zusammenhang mit diesem Volkslied, von dem ich Dir neulich erzahlt habe, sozusagen als richtunggebend gesagt habe: Rosmarin" (Opus Anton Webern, ed. Rexroth, 90-9i). All citations from the letter in the next few paragraphs come from this source, pp. 90-92.



3 30 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Even without directly addressing musical technique, Webern's remarks do illuminate how he conceived of the twelve-tone method, which, he states in the same letter, is now "completely clear" to him. The key analogy can be found in his metaphysical attitude toward nature. In his early twelve-tone songs, as we have seen, the row's

presence is inaudible; it serves an imperceptible underlying frame- work, as ineffable as the "unerh6rten Gedanken" behind the sense of the plants. Just as the plants were created by and are subordinate to a larger Being, the piece of music exists in the same relationship to its twelve-tone row. Later he refined and developed this idea, finding an

analogy between the twelve-tone row and Goethe's Urpflanze, the

(imagined) primeval plant, from which all other existing plants have evolved: "Goethe's primeval plant; the root is in fact no different from the stalk, the stalk no different from the leaf, and the leaf no different from the flower: variations of the same idea."9s The mere presence of the row ensures this unity; unlike a basic motive in tonal music, the row need not be perceptible: "This is how unity is ensured; something surely sticks in the ear, even if one's unaware of it."96

Webern's cycle Three Songs, op. 18 (composed in 1925), shows

just how abstract this unity is: the set uses three different text sources

(in two languages), three different rows, and three distinct kinds of twelve-tone technique. Op. 18 has commonly been viewed as an

example of how Webern's twelve-tone technique "evolved" from

simple to more complex. Rather than merely showing a gradual acquisition of technique,

the different technical strategies in the three songs, I suggest, serve a

symbolic purpose. The cycle pays homage to the Virgin Mary, each

song forming part of an elaborate theological progression. As Webern described it, "The three songs, the first on a folk-like bridal song, the second on a Wunderhorn song 'Erl6sung,' the third on a Latin Marian

hymn, form a complete whole, something in the sense of Dr. Marianus's invocation from the second part of 'Faust': 'Virgin, Mother, Queen of Heaven.' "97 Here Webern makes a remarkable

9s Webern, Path, 53 (Ger. 56). 96 Ibid., 55 (Ger. 59). For a detailed and fascinating discussion of how Webern

understood Goethean philosophy, see Barbara Zuber, "Reihe, Gesetz, Urpflanze, Nomos: Anton Weberns musikalisch-philosophisch-botanische Streifiige," Musik-Konzepte Sonderband Anton Webern H (1984): 304-36.

97 "Die drei Lieder, das erste nach einem volkstiimlichen Brautlied, das zweite nach einem Wunderhornlied 'Erl6sung,' das dritte nach einem lateinischen Marien-

hymnus, bilden ein geschlossenes Ganzes, etwa im Sinne der Anrufung des Dr. Marianus aus dem II. Teile des 'Faust': 'Jungfrau, Mutter, Himmelsk6nigin' "(Letter



WEBERN'S TWELVE-TONE COMPOSITION 33I

allusion to one of the most famous scenes in German literature: the closing scene of the second part of Goethe's Faust, in which the Lutheran (and not at all God-fearing) Faust is inexplicably redeemed and carried up to the heavens amid a panoply of medieval Catholic imagery.98 Webern's interest in these lines was probably awakened by Mahler's setting of them in his Eighth Symphony, which Webern was preparing to conduct around this time.99 For Webern (however he understood this cryptic passage), the crucial point was the three-part invocation of the Virgin; this resonated with a lifelong veneration of Mary that can be seen in many other of the texts that he set.,oo This tripartite unity-itself a reflection of the Holy Trinity-points to a tripartite symbol structure that exists in op. I8 on several levels.

First, each song text corresponds to one part of the trinity "Jungfrau-Mutter-Himmelsk6nigin." "Schatzerl klein" (op. 18, no. I), sung by "Felix, der Begehrte," the young hero of Rosegger's story, to the Cinderella-like character of Konstanze, represents the youthful, virginal part of the trinity.'0' The second song, "Erl6sung," a sacred dialogue that begins with Mary addressing Jesus, represents the "Mutter" stage. The third part, "Himmelsk6nigin," is depicted by a Marian antiphon: "Ave regina coelorum." The three disparate texts therefore represent different aspects of their common subject: the Virgin Mary.

to Hertzka, 2 February 1926, in Anton Webern: 1883-1983, ed. Hilmar, 76). 98 The Faust literature is of course vast. My thoughts on the closing scene have

been influenced by the following: Jane K. Brown, Goethe's Faust: The German Tragedy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986); Ernst Busch, "Die Tranzendenz der Gottheit und der naturmystische Gottesbegriff im Miitter-Symbol," in Aufsitze zu Goethes "Faust II," ed. Werner Keller (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell- schaft, I991), 70-79; Walter Kaufmann, introduction to Goethe's Faust, bilingual ed., trans. Walter Kaufmann (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1963); and Helmut Kobligk, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust II: Grundlagen und Gedanken zum Verstandnis des Dramas (Frankfurt: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, i99o).

99 He conducted the symphony in April 1926 with the Arbeiter-Symphonie and several Viennese choral groups (Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern, 290-92).

'" These include the Rosegger poems "Der Tag ist vergangen" (op. 12, no. I), a prayer to Mary; "Das Kreuz, das muBt' er tragen" (op. 15, no. I), which in Rosegger's Mein Himmelreicb represents the disciple Peter's report to Mary about the crucifixion; "Liebste Jungfrau" (op. 17, no. 2), a prayer to the Virgin; and "Dormi Jesu" (op. I6, no. 2), a lullaby sung by Mary to the infant Jesus. The Moldenhauers propose that the op. 18 cycle is silently dedicated to Webern's wife and represents the three roles she held in the family (Anton von Webern, 317)- Meyer describes Webern's veneration of his own mother after her death, in " '0 sanftes Glihn der Berge,' "

12-17- o"' The "Rosmarin" mentioned twice in the poem was a symbol of virginity; according to Rosegger it was used to make garlands for young girls on "Jungfrautag." See "Der Hintersch6pp" in Bucb der Novellen I (Leipzig: Staackmann, 1913).




At the center of the three works, in the second song ("Erl6sung"), a further tripartite structure unfolds. The dialogue text from Des Knaben Wunderborn explains the mystery of redemption (see Ex.

i7a).2"' There are three speakers, Mother (Mary), Son (Christ), and Father (God); the Father's and Mother's lines are arranged symmetrically around the four lines of the Son (see Ex. I7b). Webern's setting emphasizes the centrality of the Son's utterances. The midpoint of the piece (at "Vater," just after the text's middle point) is marked by the highest note in the voice (d'") and the subsequent rapid sweep across the entire vocal range (down to g). The final clarinet gesture, which presents a near retrograde of its opening figure, hints at a larger symmetry.

This song, Webern's first completed work that uses the transformations of a row-inversion, retrograde inversion, and retrograde--

Example 17

"Erl6sung," op. i8, no. 2

(a) text, from Des Knaben Wunderborn

Erl6sung (Knaben Wunderhorn)

(Mother) Mein Kind, sieh an die BrUste mein, kein Sunder laB verloren sein.

(Son) Mutter, sieh an die Wunden, die ich fur dein Siind trag alle Stunden.

(Son) Vater, laB dir die Wunden mein ein Opfer fir die Sunde sein.

(Father) Sohn, lieber Sohn mein, alles was du begehrst, das soil sein.

(b) poetic structure and row forms

(prime forms)

Mary

(retrograde forms) Jesus God

Jesus

"'o2 This text may have had a further Mahlerian association for Webern: the motto for the sixth movement of the Third Symphony reads, "Vater, sieh an die Wunden mein! / Kein Wesen laB verloren sein!" Webern was of course intimately familiar with the symphony, having conducted it in 1922 (Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern, 246). Whether he knew the motto or not--it does not appear in modern

published editions but was apparently inscribed in an autograph score--remains a

question.




remains a landmark in his path to twelve-tone composition, although we know now that Webern had worked with these kinds of transformations for three years. The work's organization seems quite logical: each of the four couplets in the dialogue text is set to one of the four forms of the row. Yet the row, distributed vertically among the voice and instruments and repeated several times per section, never appears linearly, and only rarely are segments of it heard together (consecutive row pitches are found only in the Eb clarinet, in mm. o, 5, and I8). Nor does the row function as a source of motives; sevenths, ninths, and tritones figure prominently in all parts, while major and minor thirds are predominant in the row. Moreover, the row is so configured that there is very little difference between its four forms: the inverted forms preserve many of the same pitch groupings as the prime (see Ex. 18). The relationship between the four parts of the dialogue and the four row forms functions therefore on an abstract, even hermetic, level.

The first song, "Schatzerl klein," is also arranged around a central point. In the letter quoted above, Webern told Berg that the single word "Rosmarin" was "formative" ("richtunggebend") for his conception of the piece. He could have meant this metaphorically; he claims to have tried to capture the "Duft und die Gestalt dieser Pflanzen" in all his music. But in the song, the word itself is emphasized in several ways. The second statement of the word "Rosmarin" falls at the exact midpoint of the piece: measure 7 is preceded and followed by six measures. Further, this measure is marked by three features: the only deviation from row order in the piece (the vocal high C is repeated), registral extremes in

E, clarinet

and guitar, and the first completion of the total chromatic in both voice and Eb clarinet parts.

The third song, "Ave, Regina coelorum," represents Webern's first use of simultaneous row forms in a completed composition. This

Example I8

Row of op. I8, no. 2, prime and inversion forms

P

0 _ _ ,

~It . ..oL ,

eyI ,

•.0.J._ •' - i -'--.•..L_




piece also makes a nod to the symmetry of the whole; it ends with the reversed forms of the rows with which it began:

Beginning End Eb clarinet: P R Guitar: RI I

The invocation to the Virgin that occurs at the midpoint of the poem-"Gaude, Virgo gloriosa"--is marked in the vocal part by its relatively long duration, its high pitch (c', the highest note in the voice up to that point), and the voice's first use of the RI form.

The symbol "Jungfrau-Mutter-Himmelsk6nigin" with which Webern associated the three songs of op. i8 goes beyond simple correspondence of each image with a song, and beyond the reflection of the tripartite shape of each song. This trinity is by its nature progressive, moving chronologically in the life of the Virgin Mary from youth to maturity to her assumption. The three stages of one being ascend from earth (mortality) to heaven (immortality), recapit- ulating the inexorable ascent depicted in the last scene of Faust as well. The texts that Webern chose for op. 18 reflect this progression in several ways: "Schatzerl klein" is firmly rooted in human events on earth, while "Ave regina coelorum" praises the Queen of Heaven. The second song, "Erl6sung," mediates between the earthly and

heavenly realms as it describes the redemption of human penitents. The language used also progresses from the local vernacular of "Schatzerl klein" to the more formal high German of "Erl6sung" to the universal Latin of "Ave regina coelorum."

The different kinds of twelve-tone technique in these songs could

represent yet another manifestation of the progressive model that We- bern adopted for the cycle. The first song, which represents youth, employs a single row form (even though three forms were sketched).'o3 The second, associated with "Mutter," uses four forms in succession, while the last, the hymn to the Queen of Heaven, deploys two or more row forms simultaneously throughout, using all four transformations. Even if the progression reflects an actual advance in the technical exercise

(praxis) of serial procedure (theory), it can also metaphorically represent the sequence "Jungfrau"--"Mutter"-*"Himmelsk6nigin" (see Ex. I9). When Webern wrote that twelve-tone composition was now clear to

him,'?4 he was referring not to basic competence, which his op. 17 songs

0o3 Pierpont Morgan Library sketchbook, p. 18. 104 Opus Anton Webern, ed. Rexroth, 91.




Example 19

Progressive relationships in op. I8

1. Schatzerl klein peasants earth dialect 1 row form "Jungfrau"

2. Erl6sung human/divine earth, pointing High German 4 forms in "Mutter" toward heaven succession

3. Ave, Regina coelorum divine heaven Latin 4 forms, 2 or "Himmelsk6nigin" more simult.

and row sketches demonstrate, but instead to his control over different kinds of twelve-tone techniques, which he could now deploy according to the poetic situation at hand.

Webern evidently did not judge the third song of op. I8 to be superior to the other two because of its more advanced row technique. For the anthology prepared in honor of Emil Hertzka's twenty-fifth anniversary at Universal Edition in 1925, Webern chose "Schatzerl klein," the first and "simplest" of the three songs from op. 18. This occasion represented the public debut of both Webern and Berg in twelve-tone composition. Berg's contribution-two settings of "Schliesse mir die Augen beide," one tonal and one using the twelve-tone method-makes a rather self-conscious assertion about the progress of musical technique. In choosing his "Rosmarinlied," Webern was concerned only about the appropriateness of the text as a dedication song, but finally decided in its favor: "I'll just call it 'Schatzerl klein, muBt nicht traurig sein', as in my song," he wrote to Berg. He expressed no reservations about the technical level of his contribution. 'I

In adopting the twelve-tone method, Webern was convinced neither of its historical inevitability (at least at first) nor of the need to "ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years." Rather, he came to the decision from a personal desire that was more modest and at the same time more ambitious: to reflect Nature's order in music. This could take a literal form, as in the texted vocal melody that led to his first twelve-tone row, or in the more abstract presentation of the row in his later works. But whether he used one row or several, the technique was never an end in itself. For Webern, it served as a metaphor for the ineffable in nature and heaven, and

105 "Ich uiberlege nur noch wegen des Textes; aber schlieglich der hat doch nichts zu bedeuten, d.h. wenn ich jemandem ein Lied oder Lieder widme . . . mug doch nicht der Text unbedingt eine Beziehung ausdrticken ... Also meine ich kann es doch auch wie in meinem Lied ruhig heiBen: 'Schatzerl klein, muBt nicht traurig sein' " (ibid.).




provided a way for him to realize one of his longest-held goals in music: to grasp the ungraspable. He would later design elaborate structures in order to ensure what he and Schoenberg called

Faflichkeit. In the earliest twelve-tone compositions, on the other hand, he found unprecedented freedom in relying on the row to function the way nature does, "als ein von Gott gegebenes Vor-

bild."'"6 This freedom, verging on the chaotic, was grounded in the row's origin in musical gesture and its echo in the artless power of the texts.

The University of Chicago

APPENDIX

Sources 107

Sources for "Mein Weggebtjetzt voruber" (Op. i5, No. 4)

A. Pencil sketches, 4 pp. Paul Sacher Foundation. i. First sketches of vocal line; rows, transpositions, and permutations. Flute,

clar., viola. N.d. (verso of sketch of op. 15, no. 2, dated 22 July 1922). 2. Sketch using rows. Flute, clar., viola. N.d. 3. Sketch using rows, contrapuntal operations indicated. Flute, clar., viola. N.d. 4. Draft of entire piece. Flute, clar. Dated 26 July 1922.

B. Ink score with pencil sketches, 2 pp. Library of Congress. One sheet, two sides, with no title or remarks. Flute, clar. Ink score to m. 8,

then pencil sketches. C. Ink score with corrections, 2 pp. Paul Sacher Foundation.

"Anton Webern op. I6." Flute, clar. "Ruhig [half note] = ca." D. Ink fair copy (Stichvorlage). Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman

Collection. "Fiinf geistliche Lieder / fir / Gesang, Fl6te, Klarinette / (Bass-Klar.),

Trompete, / Harfe und Geige (Viola) / von / Anton Webern / op. I5 / Partitur" [between Feb. and May 1924].

E. Ink fair copy (piano/vocal reduction). Paul Sacher Foundation. "Finf geistliche Lieder / for / Gesang, Flite, Klarinette (auch Bass-Klar.),

Trompete, (mit Diimpfer) / und Geige (auch Bratsche) / von / Anton Webern / op. 15 / Klavierauszug" [between Feb. and May 1924].

Sources for "DormiJesu" and "Crucem tuam," Op. i6, Nos. 2 and 5

A. Pencil sketches for no. 5, 8 pp. Paul Sacher Foundation. i. Sketches, three-voice canon. No instr. designations. Marked "5. Kanon, op.

16 (schon Somer 1923 ?)- 2. Draft i, two-voice canon. No. instr. designations or remarks.

'"6 Ibid. 107 This list includes only the manuscripts relevant to the present study. Omitted

manuscripts are usually fair copies that Webern made for presentation; these are

especially numerous for op. 15, no. 5, and for op. i6.




3. Continuation of draft I, two-voice canon. Marked "5. Kanon op. I6 (schon Somer 1923?)."

4. Draft 2, three-voice canon. No instr. designations. Marked "5. Kanon, op. 16."

5. Continuation of draft 2. Marked "5. Canon, op. I6." 6. Continuation of draft 2. Marked "Canon V op. I7[X]6." 7. Row sketches. 8. Draft 3, three-voice canon. Clar. and bass clar. Marked "V. Canon op. 16,"

dated 29 October 1924 ("Angefangen August 1924"). B. Ink fair copy, nos. 2, 3, and 4. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman

Collection. "Lateinische Lieder / fiir / Gesang, Klarinette u. Bass-Klarinette / von / Anton

Webern." C. Ink fair copy, nos. 2, 3, and 4. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman

Collection. "Anton Webern / Lateinische Lieder / fiir / Gesang, Klarinette u. Bass-

Klarinette / M6dling, Neusiedlerstr. 58" (provenance Marya Freund). D. Ink scores with corrections. Paul Sacher Foundation.

"Lateinische Lieder op. 16 / Januar 1923 / Dormi Jesu ('Wunderhorn') / Crux fidelis (Brevier) / Asperges me ([Brevier]) / Crucem tuam ([Brevier]) (1924) / Christus factus est [Brevier] 1924."

No. 2, I p.: "Dormi Jesu ... Canon in motu contrario" "Ruhig ([quarter note] = 72)"

No. 5, I p. [no title] "Bewegt ([quarter note] = ca 63-72)"

E. Ink fair copy (Stichvorlage). Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman Collection.

"Fuinf Canons / nach / lateinischen Texten / ftir / hohen Sopran [crossed out: Gesang], Klarinette u. Bass-Klarinette / von / Anton Webern / op. 16."

Sources for Kinderstiicke, M. 266 and 267

A. Pencil sketches for M. 266, I p. Paul Sacher Foundation. Also on same sheet: sketches for op. i6, no. I (completed 12 November 1924).

Top of page: Wintergriin Mussette 2 Variationen I Waltzer Melodie Charakterstficke i Priludium I Polka

mit Titeln 3 fuge i Menuett ohne I Passacaglia I Liindler

I Kanons [sic] i Reigen I Etude I Mazurka Chorvariationen

Tempo: "Lieblich" B. Ink fair copy of M. 267. Paul Sacher Foundation.

"Kinderstiick (Herbst 1924)."

Sources for Three Traditional Rhymes, Op. 17

A. Pencil sketches for no. I, 3 pp. Paul Sacher Foundation. i. Draft of entire piece, dated Io December 1924. Bass clar., violin, horn (later

clar.?). 2. Sketches of individual passages; also sketches for "Mutig tr~gst du die Last"

(Karl Kraus): clar., violin, horn, cello. 3. Sketches of individual passages; row. Marked "3 Lieder, op.

17 No. i."




B. Ink score with corrections, no. I, 2 pp. Paul Sacher Foundation. I. Mm. 1-13- 2. Mm. 14-16; pencil sketches of individual passages.

C. Pencil sketches for no. 3, 3 pp. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman Collection.

Sketchbook I, pp. 3, 4, 5. Dated ii July 1925. D. Pencil sketches for no. 2, 3 pp. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman

Collection. Sketchbook I, pp. 6, 7, Io. Dated 17 July I925-

E. Pencil sketches for no. 2, I p. Paul Sacher Foundation. Sketches of mm. 13-14-

F. Ink score with corrections of op. 17, 15 pp. (3 blank). Paul Sacher Foundation. "Drei Volkstexte / fiir / Gesang, Geige (auch Bratsche), Klarinette u. Bass-

klarinette / von / Anton Webern / op. 17." Order of songs as in published version, but Inhalt page designates that nos. 2 and 3 should be switched.

G. Ink fair copy in another hand, 8 pp. Stadtbibliothek Winterthur Dep. RS 72/1. "Anton Webern / Drei Volkstexte / ffir Gesang, Violine (auch Bratsche),

Klarinette und Bassklarinette / op. 17." Order of songs: I, III, II.

Sources for String Trio, M. 273

A. Pencil sketches, 7 pp. Paul Sacher Foundation.

i. "Ruhig," 3/8. Page numbered i, marked "Streich-Trio friihjahr 1925." 2. Page numbered 2. 3. Verso of 2. 4. Page numbered 3 (continued from p. 2).

5. "Str.-Trio (friihjahr 1925)." New draft. 6. Preliminary row sketches. 7. Row sketches: "Reihen zum Streich-Trio, Friihjahr 1925."

Sources for Tbree Songs, Op. 18

A. Pencil sketches for no. 2, 6 pp. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman Collection. i. Sketchbook i, pp. 1, 2, 3. Sketches for early version. Clar., bass clar., viola.

"Begonnen Juni 1925." 2. Sketchbook i, pp. 19, 22, 23. Dated 27 September 1925-

B. Pencil sketches for no. i, 4 pp. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman Collection.

Sketchbook 1, pp. i8, 19, 20, 21. Dated io September 1925- C. Pencil sketches for no. 3, 4 pp. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman

Collection. Sketchbook I, pp. 24, 25, 26, 27. Dated 28 October 1925. Row charts pasted

into sketchbook. D. Pencil sketches for no. 3, 3 Pp. Paul Sacher Foundation.

Canonic sketches, undated (possibly 1923-24, in connection with Five Canons).

E. Ink fair copy of no. i, 2 pp. Library of Congress. Made for 25th anniversary of founding of Universal Edition: "Die innigsten

Gluckwiinsche, sehr verehrter Herr Direktor, von Ihrem Ihnen treu und dankbar ergebenen Anton Webern." "September 1925, M6dling."

F. Ink score with corrections of op. i8, io pp. Paul Sacher Foundation.

"3 Lieder ffir Gesang, Es-Klarinette u. Gitarre op. 18 (1925)." G. Ink fair copy. Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman Collection.




"Drei Lieder fuir Gesang, Es-Klarinette u. Gitarre von Anton Webern op. i8." Verso of title page: "Herrn Direktor Emil Hertzka in Verehrung u. Dankbarkeit / Anton Webern M6dling, Mai 1926."

H. Ink fair copy (Stichvorlage). Pierpont Morgan Library, Robert Owen Lehman Collection.

"Drei Lieder ftir Gesang, Es-Klarinette u. Gitarre von Anton Webern op. I8."

ABSTRACT

The essay explores Anton Webern's earliest encounters with the twelve- tone method in the context of his previous decade-long preoccupation with vocal music. Examination of Five Sacred Songs, op. 15, Five Canons, op. 16, Three Traditional Rhymes, op. 17, Three Songs, op. I8, and sketches and drafts from 1922 to 1925 suggests that Webern did not accept Arnold Schoenberg's method uncritically, but alternately rejected and embraced it. The religious and folk texts that Webern set during these years, hardly anonymous ciphers, were essential in helping him to articulate his own twelve-tone technique.



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