Editing Anton Webern (section)

=== 1908–1914: Atonality and aphorisms ===
{{Listen|type=music|image=none|help=no|filename=Excerpt of Fünf Sätze für Streichquartett, Op. 5, I. Heftig bewegt; Anton Webern, composer, Schloss Preglhof, spring 1909; Emerson String Quartet, State University of New York at Purchase, 19 October 1992.ogg|title=Fünf Sätze for string quartet, Op. 5, I. Heftig bewegt (Schloss Preglhof, spring 1909) – Emerson String Quartet|description=Spending summer 1909 with Webern (et al.) and seeing his Op. 5 manuscript reinvigorated Schoenberg's music, inspiring him to write Busoni: "... away with 'motivic working out.' Away with harmony as cement or bricks of a building. Harmony is ''[[Expressionist music|expression]]'' and nothing else. ... Away with [[Pathos]] [and] [[Symphony#Late-Romantic, modernist and postmodernist eras|protracted ten-ton]] scores ... . My music must be ''brief''. Concise! [[Aphorism|In two notes]]: not built, but ''expressed!!'' ... no stylized and sterile protracted emotion. People are not like that" (Schoenberg's emphases).{{sfnm|Busoni|1987|1loc=388–9|Haimo|2010|2loc=100–104|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|3loc=123–125, 706–707}}}}

Webern's music, like Schoenberg's, was freely atonal after Op. 2. Some of their and Berg's music from this time was published in ''[[Der Blaue Reiter]]''.{{sfn|Street|2005|loc=86}} Schoenberg and Webern were so mutually influential, the former later joked, "I haven't the slightest idea who I am".{{sfn|Schoenberg|1950|loc=484}} In Op. 5/iii, Webern borrowed from Schoenberg's Op. 10/ii. In Op. 5/iv, he borrowed from Schoenberg's Op. 10/iv setting of "Ich fühle luft von anderen planeten".{{sfn|Brinkmann|2000|loc=9–12}}{{efn|"I feel the air of other planets"}}

The first of Webern's innovative and increasingly extremely aphoristic Opp. 5–11 (1909–1914) radically influenced Schoenberg's Opp. [[Drei Klavierstücke (Schoenberg)|11]]/iii{{efn|Op. 11/iii (mid-1909) so differed from Op. 11/i–ii (Feb. 1909) that when Bartók performed Op. 11 (23 Apr. 1921 Budapest, 4 Apr. 1922 Paris), he omitted it.{{sfn|Krones|2017|loc=125}}}} and [[Five Pieces for Orchestra|16]]–[[Erwartung|17]] (and Berg's Opp. [[List of compositions by Alban Berg|4]]–[[Altenberg Lieder|5]]).{{sfnm|Adorno|1984|1loc=448|Bailey Puffett|1997|2loc=83–86|Haimo|2010|3loc=100–104|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|4loc=64, 93–97, 117–134, 190–208, 263, 279, 656}} Here, {{ill|Martin Zenck|de}} considered, Webern did not seek "the new ... in [music of] the past but in the future".{{sfn|Zenck|1989|loc=301}} In writing the Op. 9 [[Bagatelle (music)|bagatelle]]s, Webern reflected in 1932, "I had the feeling that when the twelve notes had all been played the piece was over."{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=194}} "[H]aving freed music from the shackles of tonality," Schoenberg wrote, he and his pupils believed "music could renounce motivic features".{{sfn|Haimo|2006|loc=318–352}} This "intuitive aesthetic" arguably proved to be aspirational insofar as motives persisted in their music.{{sfn|Boss|2015|loc=2, 5, 10–12, 46, n8}}

Two enduring topics emerged in Webern's work: familial (especially maternal) loss and [[veneration of the dead|memory]], often involving some [[religious experience]]; and abstracted [[landscape]]s idealized as [[spirituality|spiritual]], even [[pantheism|pantheistic]], {{lang|de|Heimat}} (e.g., the Preglhof, the [[Eastern Alps]]).{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=121}} Webern explored these ideas explicitly in his [[Symbolism (movement)|Symbolist]] stage play ''Tot: Sechs Bilder für die Bühne'' (''Dead: Six Scenes for the Stage'', Oct. 1913).{{sfnm|Crawford and Crawford|1993|1loc=243–244|Johnson|1999|2loc=33–34, 75, 101–108, 132–134}} The play comprises six [[tableaux vivants]]{{efn|[[Maurice Maeterlinck#Static drama|Maurice Maeterlinck's notion of static drama]] influenced Webern.{{sfn|Crawford and Crawford|1993|loc=243–244}}}} set in the Alps, over the course of which a mother and father reflect on and come to terms with the loss of their son.{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=33–34, 75, 101–108, 132–134}}{{efn|Webern was likely inspired by the sudden death of his nephew, Theo Clementschitsch, who died on holiday in Italy.{{sfnm|Crawford and Crawford|1993|1loc=243–244|Johnson|1999|2loc=101}} Webern had to negotiate the return of his body to Austria.{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=101}}}} The script specifies exact lighting, sounds, delivery, and gestures to match mood, time, and place, with birds, bells, and flowers as important elements of a still, holy world.{{sfn|Crawford and Crawford|1993|loc=243–244}} Webern drew so heavily from Swedenborg's [[correspondence (theology)|theological doctrine of correspondence]]s, quoting from ''Vera Christiana Religio'' at length, that Schoenberg considered the play unoriginal.{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=107–108, 132–134}}

It is known that Webern sublimated these concerns into his music, particularly in the case of his Op. 6.{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=107–108, 132–134}} Confiding in Berg and Schoenberg, Webern told the latter some about the programmatic narrative for that music in Jan. 1913, as Schoenberg prepared to premiere it at what would become the {{lang|de|[[Skandalkonzert]]|italic=no}} that March:{{sfnm|Johnson|1999|1loc=103–104 {{lang|lt|et passim}} 40, 85, 99–127|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|2loc=126}}{{blockquote|The first piece is to express my frame of mind ... already sensing the disaster, yet ... maintaining the hope that I would find my mother still alive. It was a beautiful day—for a minute I believed ... nothing had happened. Only during the train ride to [[Carinthia]] ... did I learn the truth. The third piece conveys ... the fragrance of the {{lang|lt|[[Erica (plant)|Erica]]}}, which I gathered ... in the forest ... and ... laid on the [[bier]].{{efn|Webern wrote Berg that August, "the heather from the middle of August is my favourite flower. It's most beautiful in a forest clearing, where the sun can reach, that wonderful sun, where it is against the grass, and the bees and bumble-bees are upon it, and that scent. I've indulged in orgies there, standing motionless, my eyes closed, that's my favourite. Have I already told you, that the 3rd piece of my orchestral pieces was born from such an impression. Directly. The scent of heather. But of course, that is the scent of heather which I laid on my mother's coffin."{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=104 {{lang|lt|et passim}} 40, 85, 99–127, quoting his own translation of Webern's Aug 1913 letter from Rexroth's ''Opus Anton Webern'' (77)}}}} The fourth piece I later entitled {{lang|it|[[funeral march|marcia funebre]]}}. Even today I do not understand my feelings as I walked behind the coffin to the cemetery. ... The evening ... was miraculous. With my wife I went ... again to the cemetery ... . I had the feeling of my mother's ... presence.}}

As Webern's music took on the character of such static dramaticovisual [[Scene (performing arts)|scenes]], his pieces frequently culminated in the accumulation and amalgamation (often the [[developing variation]]) of compositional material. [[Fragmentation (music)|Fragmented]] melodies frequently began and ended on weak [[Beat (music)|beats]], settled into or emerged from [[Ostinato|ostinati]], and were dynamically and texturally faded, mixed, or contrasted.{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=105–108}} Tonality became less directional, [[Function (music)|functional]], or narrative than tenuous, spatial, or symbolic as fit Webern's topics and literary settings. Stein thought that "his compositions should be understood as musical [[Vision (spirituality)|visions]]".{{efn|"Ecstasy was [Webern's] natural state of mind", Stein recalled.{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=205}}}} [[Oliver Korte]] traced Webern's {{lang|de|Klangfelder}}{{efn|"fields of sound", sound-fields}} to Mahler's "suspensions".{{efn|For Adorno, these were an "essential" Mahlerian formal "genre", often episodic as in a section of music marked {{lang|it|senza tempo}}. Korte compared Webern's Op. 10/iii to the passage before Mahler's "[[Symphony of a Thousand|Chorus mysticus]]".}}

Expanding on [[Orchestration#Mahler|Mahler's orchestration]], Webern linked colorful, novel, fragile, and intimate sounds, often nearly silent at {{serif|'''''ppp'''''}}, to lyrical topics: solo violin to female voice; closed or open [[Voicing (music)|voicings]], sometimes {{lang|it|[[sul ponticello]]}}, to dark or light respectively; compressed range to absence, emptiness, or loneliness; registral expansion to fulfillment, (spiritual) presence, or transcendence;{{efn|Beethoven's similar use of registral expansion was noted (e.g., [[Piano Sonata No. 32 (Beethoven)|Op. 111, No. 2, Var. 5]] when the theme re-emerges in a strange harmonic context after a long section of trills).}} celesta, harp, and glockenspiel to the celestial or ethereal; and trumpet, harp, and [[string harmonic]]s to angels or heaven.{{sfnm|Dolan and Rehding|2021|1loc=135, 144, 157–159, 183, 514, 527–529, 534|Johnson|1999|2loc=57, 94, 110–112, 121, 125, 141, 201}}{{efn|Examples included the circling ostinati of Op. 6/v and the end of Op. 15/v.}}

With elements of {{lang|de|[[Kabarett]]|italic=no}},{{efn|See {{lang|de|[[Sprechgesang]]|italic=no}}. Schoenberg briefly directed and wrote for the [[Überbrettl]], for example, in the 1901 ''Brettl-Lieder''.}} [[neoclassicism (music)|neoclassicism]],{{efn|Examples included passacaglia in "Nacht", fugue in "Der Mondfleck", and canon in both.}} and ironic Romanticism{{efn|Examples included the [[virtuoso]] solo and waltz in "Serenade" and triadic harmony in "O alter Duft".}} in ''[[Pierrot lunaire]]'', Op. 21 (1912), Schoenberg began{{efn|"Galgenlied" was still quite short.}} to distance himself from Webern's and latterly Berg's aphoristic expressionism, which provoked the {{lang|de|Skandalkonzert|italic=no}}. Alma recalled Schoenberg telling her and [[Franz Werfel]] "how much he was suffering under the dangerous influence of Webern", drawing on "all his strength to extricate himself from it".{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=660n9, quoting a 1915 note from Alma Mahler published in her ''Mein Leben'' (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1960): 77}}