1914

The output that Webern published was thirty-one works; which might be seen such a not much production for an artistic liveness that was extended thirty-six years, but nevertheless, his music is meticulously calculated in an impressive way.

Looking at his entire life work, it lasts about three hours in total being 15 minutes his longest composition and just a few seconds the shortest.

When Webern was 20 years old, thanks to a newspaper advertisement, he met Arnold Schoenberg and, consequently, Alban Berg. Both becoming students and disciples of Schoenberg. The three composers are the maximum exponents of what is known as the Second Viennese School.

Between 1908 and 1913 he worked as coach and as conductor in Vienna, Innsbruck, Stettin and Danzig among others, although these works were short-lived since he detested theatre routine and preferred the free creative work. During this period, the works he composed (from op. 5 until 11) show a tilt toward the abbreviation and a compact compositional style without forget the maximum music expression. But this own style crashed with the non-understanding by the public and the press. For instance, The Five Pieces for orchestra op. 10 provoked a scandal at their performance in Vienna in 1913. We have to stand out that the longest piece of this work includes 32 measures and the shortest just 7 measures.

Webern has been known as the only real atonal composer, because both Schonberg and Berg accepted the limited coexistence of tonal and atonal elements. This Webern style is both pure and economy, even he took out all repetition of material. Webern carried this idea about brevity much farther than either of his partners.

In 1911, Webern got married with Wilhelmine Mörtl, the daughter of his mother’s sister. This was a turbulent period due an unwanted pregnancy and the attempted abortion of Webern's first child, born finally six weeks after his marriage.

Webern had a special devotion for Schoenberg, and proof of it is what he wrote to him in 1911: “The disciples of Jesus Christ could not have felt more deeply for the Lord than we for you. (...) You are set up in my heart as my highest ideal whom I love more and more, to whom I am more and more devoted.”

The reality is that Webern was never financially secure, and could earn almost nothing from his compositions; it was necessary for him to work in the theatre conducting opera. As a result, unable to compose, he would become unhappy and leave his job, only to search again for employment. This sickness nearly incapacitated him, and in 1913, he entered in a sanatorium for a psychoanalysis.

During World War I, Webern joined to the army service but he was sent home at the end of 1916 because of poor eyesight. After this, he settled in Modling, a suburb 14 kilometres from Vienna, where he lived quietly, dedicating himself to composition and teaching.

The Nazis forbade Webern music and they prohibited its performance and burned his writings when Austria became part of the Third Reich between 1938 and 1945. In order to avoid the Allied bombings of Vienna, Webern and his wife went at their son-in-law's home in MittersiII, and it was there where a fatality befell: On September 15, in 1945, although the War had ended five months before, MittersiII was still under a curfew. It was then when Webern stepped out of the house in the evening to smoke a cigarette and he did not understand an order to halt and was shot by the American occupying forces.

“The day of Anton Webern's death should be a day of mourning for any receptive musician. We must hail not only this great composer but also a real hero. Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had such a perfect knowledge”

(Igor Stravinsky 1882 –1971)

There is a conspiracy theory, attributed to Associated Press, which accuses the Second Viennese School, and especially Webern, of being a Nazi spy during the Second World War. According to this theory, Webern helped to steal secrets from the atomic bomb of the USA. Through his music and the serial technique he encrypted the messages. Even, they said that the notes in the score of the Variations for orchestra op. 30 (1940) alludes a mathematical system where the neutron radiations of isotopes 235 and 238 of Uranium were described… Although all of this is just a legend.

The second work written by Webern for this two instruments is the Sonata for cello and piano (1914), published in 1966.

In this piece there is a trait of his first effort to return to more expanded forms, but we could say that it was not an entirely success: In a letter to Schoenberg in May, 1914, Webern said: “I shall now write a major piece for cello and piano. My father asked me for it. He likes cello music. For me, however, his wish becomes the occasion to find at last an approach to longer movements again – your idea”. But in the same letter he apologizes:

“I beg you not to be indignant that it has again become something so short. I should like to tell you how this happened and thereby try to justify myself. I already had the quite distinct conception of a major two-movement composition for cello and piano and at once began working it out. However, when I was already far along with the first movement, it became ever more compellingly clear to me that I had to write something else. I felt with complete certainty that I would leave something unwritten if I suppressed the urge. Thus I broke off that major work, although my progress in it had been smooth, and quickly wrote these small pieces”.

Thanks to this letter, we can understand why the Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op.11 written (see video) is the composer’s best-known work for cello and piano and why he interrupted his work when he was composing the sonata’s first movement. Sadly, before he could return to the sonata, after these words were written, the First World War started, and Webern never again returned to the composition of that piece.

Sources:

Willi Reich. Anton Webern The Path To The New Music. Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company in association with Universal Edition, 1965.

Robert Harry Hallis, “Reevaluating the Compositional Process of Anton Webern: 1910-1925.” PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 2004.

Joseph Machlis. Introduction to Contemporary Music. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979.

Hristo Ivanov. The Twentieth Century's Most Significant Works for Cello: Historical Review and Analysis. PhD diss., Florida State University, 2007.