Webern symphony op 21 pdf

Contents 1 Performances 1. Pub lisher. Holograph manuscript, This file is part of the Submission Project. Javascript is required for this feature. Vienna: Universal Edition , Plate U. The work marks the beginning of a period of extreme compression in Webern 's music. Dedicated to his daughter Christine, the Symphony is a work of severe economy and restrained expression. Its symmetrical structure and pointillistic texture are quintessential hallmarks of Webern 's mature compositional style.

Scored for clarinet, bass clarinet, two horns, harp, first and second violins, viola, and cello, the Symphony is widely regarded as a masterpiece in miniature: Webern 's teacher and mentor Arnold Schoenberg was astounded and moved by the work's concision.

Like most of Webern 's tone works, the Symphony is based on a single series dominated by semitones. The work consists of two short movements. The first is in two parts -- statement and development -- and begins with a double canon in four parts; the second movement is a theme with seven variations and a coda, and also includes the use of canon.

The Symphony is perhaps most remarkable for its use of symmetry, which in some quarters has stirred accusations against Webern of a certain excessive pedantry. That symmetry takes several forms, from the work's palindromic series to the canonic variations that work in both directions from the exact center of the piece outwards. The astute listener can spend a lifetime hearing an intricate web of such structural correlations within the Symphony, which is a sort of super palindrome.

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When we have equivalences of this kind, there are no longer 48 distinct row forms. Webern brings out this symmetrical row by overlapping the ends of rows forms with the beginning of the next. Does that remind you of something symphonic? The repeat markings and the material distribution are loosely suggestive of the Exposition and Development — Recapitulation repeats in Sonata form works, or at least rounded binary.

So that might be chalked up in favor of the symphonic reading. Recapitulations and cyclic forms are one thing, but for Western classical music, serious adherence to symmetry is a peculiarly 20th Century concept.

Another key consideration at odds with the notion of sonata form are the extensive canons in each section. Notice the similar timbral sequences in the two pairs. For instance, in the first pair, we have a horn part, then a clarinet part, and finally a lower string instrument before returning yes, you guessed it! Variation 1 related to variation 7. Variation 2 related to variation 6. Variation 3 related to variation 5.

Variation 5 related to variation 3. Variation 6 related to variation 2. Variation 7 related to variation 1. Does this make it thoroughly modern? Or does the symmetry contribute to a new kind of goal-directed teleological music typical of at least 19th Century music since at least Beethoven?

Most importantly, what is the aural effect of all this symmetry? Did the Harvey quote above make you bristle? That said, Webern has gone to considerable lengths at least in places to illuminate the structure of the work. If nothing else these works seem to speak of a conviction to the musical traditions these composers inherited, just as Schoenberg was so keen to locate his apparently radical, modernist works in that tradition, and particularly as heir to the work of Brahms.

This time, those trichords are all instances of the same pitch class set : []. This structural division is made abundantly clear in the first few measures in which the row is set out in its four parts in separate instruments, pulse values, and registers. There follows a fermata. If you permute the order of those trichord cells, you can get other, related rows forms:.