Editing Anton Webern (section)

=== 1924–1945: Formal coherence and expansion ===

{{Listen|type=music|image=none|help=no|filename=Webern - Sehr langsam.ogg|title=String Trio, Op. 20, I. Sehr langsam (1926–1927) – LaSalle String Quartet members|description=An excerpt (mm. 49–59) from the first movement of Webern's String Trio, Op. 20. At 0:07–0:18 in this excerpt (mm. 51–56), there are repeated [[figure (music)|figure]]s in [[fixed register|fixed (or "frozen") register]], comprising the first B section of this movement's seven-part ABACABA [[rondo]].{{sfn|Bailey Puffett|1991|loc=41–42, 238–242}} Kathryn Bailey Puffett likened them to [[bell-ringer|bell ringers]]' technique in [[change ringing|ringing changes]].{{sfn|Bailey Puffett|1991|loc=41–42}}}}With Schoenberg leaving Mödling in 1925 and this compositional approach at his disposal, Webern obtained more artistic autonomy and aspired to write in larger forms, expanding on the extreme concentration of expression and material in his earlier music.{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=259, 285–287, 322}} Until the ''Kinderstück'' for piano (1924, intended as one of a set), ''Klavierstück'' (1925), and ''Satz'' for string trio (1925), Webern had finished nothing but {{lang|de|Lieder}} since a 1914 cello sonata.{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=278–279, 285}}{{efn|Among six non-vocal drafts and sketches were an abandoned string quartet (1917–1918); seventeen measures of music scored for clarinet, trumpet, and violin (1920); and four twelve-tone fragments.{{sfnm|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|1loc=278–279, 311–320|Perle|1995|2loc=125}}}} The 1926–1927 String Trio, Op. 20, was his first large-scale non-vocal work in more than a decade. For its 1927 publication, Webern helped Stein write an introduction emphasizing continuity with tradition:{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=321–322}}{{blockquote|The principle of developing a movement by variation of motives and themes is the same as with the classical masters ... [only] varied more radically here ... . One 'tone series' furnishes the basic material ... . The parts are composed in a [[mosaic]]-like manner ...}}

Schoenberg exploited [[Combinatoriality|combinatorial]] properties of particular [[tone row]]s,{{sfn|Straus|1990|loc=169–170, 180–184}} but Webern focused on prior aspects of a row's internal organization. He exploited small, [[invariant (music)|invariant]] pitch [[set (music)|subsets]] (or [[Derived row|partitions]]) symmetrically [[Derived row|derived]] via [[Melodic inversion|inversion]], [[Retrograde (music)|retrograde]], or both ([[retrograde inversion]]). He understood his compositional (and [[precomposition]]al) work with reference to ideas about growth, morphology, and unity that he found represented in Goethe's ''{{ill|Urpflanze|de}}'' and in [[Goethean science]] more generally.{{sfnm|Bailey Puffett|1996|1loc=171|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|2loc=75–76, 318–319, 327, 513–514, 575, 689n9}}{{efn|Webern wrote, "What you see here (retrograde, canon, etc.—it is always the same) is not to be thought of as "Kunststückerln" [artistic tricks]—that would be ridiculous!"{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=194, 327–328}}}}

[[File:Webern Variations op. 30 tone row.png|thumb|right|[[File:Webern Variations op. 30 tone row.mid|center]]The [[tone row]] from Webern's Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, has only two [[Interval (music)|interval]]s ([[minor second]]s and [[minor third]]s) and is [[derivation (music)|derived]] from two [[hexachord]]s or three [[tetrachord]]s, yielding half as many [[Tone row#Theory and compositional techniques|basic tone-row forms]] and ensuring a unity of chords and motives.{{sfn|Leeuw|2005|loc=161}}]]Webern's large-scale, non-vocal music in more traditional genres,{{efn|viz. the String Trio, Op. 20; Symphony, Op. 21; Quartet, Op. 22; Concerto, Op. 24; Variations for Piano, Op. 27; String Quartet, Op. 28; and Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=184}}}} written from 1926 to 1940, has been celebrated as his most rigorous and abstract music.{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=184}} Yet he always wrote his music and tried his new compositional procedures with concern for (or at least some latent reference to) expressivity and representation.{{sfnm|Bailey Puffett|1996|1loc=170–173|Johnson|1999|2loc=4–11, 184–185|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|3loc=190, 308–309, 315–316, 342}}{{efn|Webern understood his own (and Mahler's) work as crystallizations of personal experience.{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=113–114, 190}} He wrote Berg in 1912 that an experience would occupy him until it became music "that quite decidedly had to do with the experience—often down to the details".{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=190}} He wrote Schoenberg in 1910 that "[Mahler's symphonies] must be most closely connected with his inner experiences. I also see a development: from the most intense worship of nature to an ever more spiritual, more detached content. ... This ... abstraction ... is more important for me ... than ... techni[que]."{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=113–114}}}} In sketches for his Op. 22 quartet, Webern conceived of his themes in programmatic association with his experiences—as an "outlook into the highest region" or a "coolness of early spring (Anninger,{{efn|The Anninger to which Webern referred was a hill in the [[Vienna Woods]] above Mödling that he enjoyed hiking and wrote about in his diary, including while working on Op. 22.{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=348, 423, 670n4}}}} first flora, [[Primulaceae|primroses]], [[anemone]]s, [[Pulsatilla|pasqueflowers]])", for example.{{sfnm|Bailey Puffett|1996|1loc=171|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|2loc=423}} Studying his compositional materials and sketches, Bailey Puffett wrote,{{sfn|Bailey Puffett|1996|loc=171}}{{blockquote|... [Webern] seems perhaps not ... a prodigy whose music was the result of reasoned calculations [but a composer] who used his row tables as Stravinsky used his piano, to reveal wonderful surprises ... [like] he found on his walks in the Alps.}} While writing the [[Concerto for Nine Instruments (Webern)|Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24]], Webern was inspired by the [[Sator square]], which is like a [[Matrix (music)|twelve-tone matrix]].{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=431–434}} He concluded his ''{{lang|de|Weg zur Neuen Musik}}'' with this [[magic square]].

In Webern's late cantatas and songs,{{efn|viz. the Drei Gesänge, Op. 23; Drei Lieder, Op. 25; ''Das Augenlicht'', Op. 26; Cantata No. 1, Op. 29; and Cantata No. 2, Op. 31{{sfn|Rochberg|2004|loc=15}}}} [[George Rochberg]] observed, "the principles of 'the structural spatial dimension' ... join[ed] forces with lyrico-dramatic demands".{{sfn|Rochberg|2004|loc=15}} Specifically in his cantatas, Bailey Puffett wrote, Webern synthesized the rigorous style of his mature instrumental works with the word painting of his ''Lieder'' on an orchestral scale.{{sfn|Bailey Puffett|2001}} Webern qualified the apparent connection between his cantatas and Bach's as general and referred to connections between the second cantata and the music of the [[Franco-Flemish School]].{{sfnm|Zenck|1989|1loc=301|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|2loc=571, 576–578}} His textures became somewhat denser yet more [[homophony|homophonic]] at the surface through nonetheless [[counterpoint|contrapuntal polyphonic]] means.{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=576–578}} In Op. 31/i he alternated lines and [[Pointillism#Music|points]], culminating twice{{efn|First by [[hexachord]]al aggregation in its center; second in a registrally expansive, open voicing at the end.}} in twelve-note [[simultaneity (music)|simultaneities]].{{sfn|Johnson|1999|loc=182}}

At his death he left sketches for the movement of an apparent third cantata (1944–1945), first planned as a concerto, setting "Das Sonnenlicht spricht" from Jone's ''Lumen'' cycle.{{sfn|Moldenhauer and Moldenhauer|1978|loc=742}}