154 Facts About Anton Webern

Anton Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu in its concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques.

Anton Webern's approach was typically rigorous, inspired by his studies of the Franco-Flemish School under Guido Adler and by Arnold Schoenberg's emphasis on structure in teaching composition from the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the First Viennese School, and Johannes Brahms.

Anton Webern was arguably the first and certainly the last of the three to write music in an aphoristic and expressionist style, reflecting his instincts and the idiosyncrasy of his compositional process.

Anton Webern treated themes of loss, love, nature, and spirituality, working from his experiences.

Anton Webern rose as a choirmaster and conductor in Red Vienna as a champion of the music of Gustav Mahler.

Anton Webern maintained his "path to the new music" while marginalized as a "cultural Bolshevist" in Fascist Austria and Nazi Germany, enjoying mostly international recognition and relying more on teaching for income.

Anton Webern's music was then celebrated by composers who took it as a point of departure in a phenomenon known as post-Webernism, closely linking his legacy to serialism.

Anton Webern's mother Amalie was a pianist and accomplished singer.

Anton Webern taught Webern piano and sang opera with him.

Anton Webern received first drums, then a trumpet, and later a violin as Christmas gifts.

The extended Anton Webern family spent summers, holidays, and vacations at their country estate, the Preglhof.

Anton Webern drove horses to Bleiburg and fought a wildfire encroaching on the estate.

Anton Webern quickly joined the Wagner Society, meeting popular conductors and musicians.

Egon Wellesz recalled he and Anton Webern analyzed Beethoven's late quartets at the piano in Adler's seminars.

Anton Webern learned the historical development of musical styles and techniques, editing the second volume of Heinrich Isaac's Choralis Constantinus as his doctoral thesis.

Anton Webern especially praised Isaac's voice leading or "subtle organization in the interplay of parts":.

Anton Webern studied art history and philosophy under professors Max Dvorak, Laurenz Mullner, and Franz Wickhoff, joining the Albrecht Durer Gesellschaft in 1903.

Anton Webern idolized Segantini's landscapes on a par with Beethoven's music, diarying in 1904:.

Anton Webern studied nationalism and Catholic liturgy, shaped by his mostly provincial Catholic upbringing, which provided little exposure to the relatively cosmopolitan people of Vienna.

Anton Webern first viewed his Jewish peers as ostentatious and unfriendly, but his attitude shifted by 1902.

In 1904, Anton Webern approached Hans Pfitzner for composition lessons but left angrily when Pfitzner criticized Mahler and Richard Strauss.

Schoenberg, Berg, and Anton Webern became devoted, lifelong friends with similar musical trajectories.

Adler, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Anton Webern played Schoenberg's quartets under the composer, accompanying Marie Gutheil-Schoder in rehearsals for Op.

Also through Schoenberg, who painted and had a 1910 solo exhibition at Hugo Heller's bookstore, Anton Webern met Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Oppenheimer, Egon Schiele, and Emil Stumpp.

In 1920, Anton Webern wrote Berg about the "indescribable impression" Klimt's work made on him, "that of a luminous, tender, heavenly realm".

Anton Webern met Karl Kraus, whose lyrics he later set, but only to completion in Op.

Anton Webern married Wilhelmine "Minna" Mortl in a 1911 civil ceremony in Danzig.

Anton Webern had become pregnant in 1910 and feared disapproval, as they were cousins.

Anton Webern wooed her with John Ruskin essays, dedicating his Langsamer Satz to her.

Anton Webern conducted and coached singers and choirs mostly in operetta, musical theater, light music, and some opera in his early career.

Anton Webern walked out on an engagement in Innsbruck, writing in distress to Schoenberg:.

Anton Webern wrote Zemlinsky seeking work at the Berlin or Vienna Volksoper instead.

Anton Webern started at Bad Teplitz's Civic Theater in early 1910, where the local news reported his "sensitive, devoted guidance" as conductor of Fall's Geschiedene Frau, but he quit within months due to disagreements.

Anton Webern then worked with Jalowetz as assistant conductor in Danzig, where he first saw the "almost frightening" ocean.

Anton Webern particularly enjoyed Offenbach's Contes d'Hoffmann and Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia, but only Jalowetz was allowed to conduct this more established repertoire.

Anton Webern soon expressed homesickness to Berg; he could not bear the separation from Schoenberg and their world in Vienna.

Anton Webern returned after resigning in spring 1911, and the three were pallbearers at Mahler's funeral in May 1911.

Anton Webern soon joined him, finishing no new music in his devoted work on Schoenberg's behalf, which entailed many editing and writing projects.

Anton Webern tried to persuade Schoenberg to return home to Vienna, continuing the fundraising campaign and lobbying for a position there for Schoenberg, but Schoenberg could not bear to return to the due to his prior experiences in Vienna.

Anton Webern had a short-lived conducting post in Stettin, which, as all the others, kept him from composing and alienated him.

Anton Webern's father sold the Preglhof in 1912, and Anton Webern mourned it as a "lost paradise".

Anton Webern revisited it and the family grave in nearby Schwabegg his entire life, associating these places with the memory of his mother, whose 1906 loss profoundly affected him.

Rosegger's account of his mother's death at the book's end resonated with Anton Webern, who connected it to his Op.

Johnson contended that Anton Webern understood his cultural origins with a maternal view of nature and, which became central themes in his music and thought.

In particular, Anton Webern associated nature with his personal experiences, forming a topical nexus that recurred in his diaries, letters, and music, sometimes explicitly in sketches and set texts.

Anton Webern frequented the surrounding mountains, summering in resort towns like Murzzuschlag and backpacking the Gaisstein, Grossglockner, Hochschober, Hochschwab, and Schneealpe throughout his life.

Anton Webern treasured this time "up there, in the heights", where "one should stay".

Anton Webern collected and organized "mysterious" alpine herbs and cemetery flowers in pressed albums, and he tended gardens at his father's home in Klagenfurt and later at his own homes in the Modling District.

Karl Amadeus Hartmann remembered that Anton Webern gardened "as a devotion" to Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants, and Johnson drew a parallel between Anton Webern's gardening and composing, emphasizing his connection to nature and his structured, methodical approach in both pursuits.

Anton Webern told her, "through my work, all that is past becomes like a childhood".

Anton Webern wrote Schoenberg that Adler's psychoanalysis was helpful and insightful.

Anton Webern cited his "faith in the German spirit" as having "created, almost exclusively, the culture of mankind".

Anton Webern was discharged in December 1916 for myopia, which had disqualified him from frontline service.

Anton Webern's 1917 show that he reflected on his patriotism and processed his sorrow.

Anton Webern treated the loss of life and, with the 1916 death of Franz Joseph I of Austria, the end of an era.

Anton Webern set several disturbing poems of Georg Trakl, not all of which he could finish.

Anton Webern had considered retreating to the countryside and purchasing a farm since 1917, specifically as an asset better than war bonds at shielding his family's wealth from inflation.

Yet soon after he arrived, Anton Webern broke his friendship with Schoenberg.

Anton Webern noted that Webern later wrote Schoenberg that he felt "a sense of the most vehement aversion" against German-speaking people who were.

Anton Webern was changed by these events; he slowly began to grow more independent of Schoenberg, who was like a father to him.

Anton Webern stayed in Vienna and worked with Berg, Schoenberg, and Erwin Stein at the Society for Private Musical Performances, promoting new music through performances and contests.

Anton Webern wrote Berg about Stravinsky's "indescribably touching" Berceuses du chat and "glorious" Pribaoutki, which Schoenberg conducted at a sold-out 1919 Society concert.

Anton Webern obtained work as music director of the 1921, having made an excellent impression as the vocal coach Schoenberg recommended for their 1920 performance of Gurre-Lieder.

Anton Webern led them in performances of Brahms, Mahler, Reger, and Schumann, among others.

Anton Webern was chorusmaster of the Modling until he resigned in controversy over hiring a Jewish soprano, Greta Wilheim, as a stand-in soloist for Schubert's Mirjams Siegesgesang.

From 1922, Anton Webern led the mixed-voice amateur and through David Josef Bach, Director of the.

Anton Webern won DJ Bach's confidence with a 1922 performance of Mahler's Symphony No 3 that established his reputation, prompting Berg to praise him as "the greatest conductor since Mahler himself".

Anton Webern premiered Berg's Chamber Concerto with soloists Rudolf Kolisch and Eduard Steuermann in 1927 and led Stravinsky's Les Noces with Erich Leinsdorf among the pianists in 1933.

Anton Webern's finances were often precarious, even in his years of relative success.

Anton Webern twice received the Preis der Stadt Wien fur Musik.

Anton Webern contracted with Universal Edition only after 1919, reaching better terms in 1927, but he was not very ambitious or astute in business.

Anton Webern declined a RAVAG executive role, citing time constraints and fearing further affiliation with the Social Democrats.

Anton Webern's music was performed and publicized more widely starting in the latter half of the 1920s.

Louis Krasner sensed some resentment, noting that Anton Webern had "very little".

Krenek's impression was that Anton Webern resented his financial hardships and lack of wider recognition.

Stigmatized by his decade-long association with Social Democrats, Anton Webern lost a promising domestic conducting career, which might have been better recorded.

Anton Webern eventually abandoned efforts with what remained of the workers' choir in the form of the much constrained in 1935, instead working as a UE editor and IGNM-Sektion Osterreich board member and president.

Anton Webern immediately considered following Schoenberg to the US, which Schoenberg discouraged despite seeking opportunities there for Anton Webern.

Schoenberg knew that Anton Webern was deeply attached to home, and he told Anton Webern that conditions in the US were poor, mentioning the ongoing Great Depression.

Anton Webern conducted nine concerts as a BBC Symphony visiting conductor.

Anton Webern insisted on rehearsing at the piano with vocalists and was criticized for coaching musical phrasing.

The musicians "all admired and respected Anton Webern", according to Sidonie Goossens.

Krasner's last visit with Anton Webern was interrupted by Kurt Schuschnigg's broadcast speech that the Anschluss was imminent.

Krasner had been playing some of Schoenberg's Violin Concerto for Anton Webern and trying to convince him to write a sonata for solo violin.

Anton Webern wondered whether Webern's warning had been solely for his safety or whether it had been to save Webern the embarrassment of the violinist's presence in the event of celebration at the Webern home.

Bailey Puffett proposed that Krasner, with the benefit of hindsight from the perspective of his 1987 account, may have resented Anton Webern for "refusing to see the reality of Hitler's antisemitism", at least until after 1936.

That year, Anton Webern had insisted that Krasner and he travel through Nazi Germany to stop at a Munich train station cafe, where Krasner said "anything untoward was the least likely to happen", in an attempt to demonstrate the lack of danger.

Anton Webern had long shared in common pan-German sentiments, especially during wartime.

Anton Webern likely hoped to conduct again, securing a firmer future for his family under a new regime proclaiming itself "socialist" no less than nationalist.

Anton Webern visited and aided Jewish colleagues DJ Bach, Otto Jokl, Polnauer, and Hugo Winter.

For Jokl, a former Berg pupil, Anton Webern wrote a recommendation letter to facilitate emigration.

When that failed, Anton Webern served as his godfather in a 1939 baptism.

Polnauer, whose emigration Mark Brunswick, Schoenberg, and Anton Webern were unable to secure, managed to survive the Holocaust as an albino; he later edited a 1959 UE publication of Anton Webern's correspondence from this time with Humplik and Jone.

Anton Webern moved Humplik's 1929 gift of a Mahler bust to his bedroom, having told Felix Greissle in 1936 or 1937 that Mahler's time would come within a German and DJ Bach that "not all Germans are Nazis".

Anton Webern talked to Polnauer about emigrating but was reluctant to leave home and family.

Anton Webern's Passacaglia was considered for a Viennese contemporary music festival in 1942, Karl Bohm or Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting, but this did not happen.

Anton Webern lectured at the homes of Erwin Ratz and Carl Prohaska's widow Margaret.

Hartmann, who opposed the Nazis, remembered that Anton Webern counseled him to respect authority, at least publicly, for the sake of order.

Anton Webern sought wartime emergency relief funds from and the Kunstlerdank, which he received despite indicating non-membership in the Nazi Party on an application.

Anton Webern corresponded with Willi Reich about IGNM-Sektion Basel's concert marking his sixtieth, in which Paul Baumgartner played Op.

Anton Webern had been following Thomas Mann's work, which the Nazis had burned, noting in 1944 that Mann had finished Joseph and His Brothers.

Anton Webern worked to get Webern's 1907 Piano Quintet published via Kurt List.

In 1947 she wrote Diez, now in the US, that by 1945 Anton Webern was "firmly resolved to go to England".

Anton Webern's music was generally concise, organic, and parsimonious, with very small motifs, palindromes, and parameterization on both the micro- and macro-scale.

Anton Webern engaged with the work of Goethe, Bach, and the Franco-Flemish School in addition to that of Wolf, Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, Schumann, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart.

Anton Webern related his music not only to nostalgia for the lost family and home of his youth, but to his Alpinism and fascination with plant aromatics and morphology.

In Jone, who he met with her husband Humplik via the, Anton Webern found a lyricist who shared his esoteric, natural, and spiritual interests.

Berg and Anton Webern took symmetric approaches to elements of music beyond pitch.

Relatively few of Anton Webern's works were published in his lifetime.

Anton Webern's rediscovery prompted many publications, but some early works were unknown until after the work of the Moldenhauers well into the 1980s, obscuring formative facets of his musical identity.

Anton Webern published little juvenilia; like Brahms, he was meticulous and self-conscious, revising extensively.

Anton Webern set seven Ferdinand Avenarius poems on the "changing moods" of life and nature.

Anton Webern never abandoned its lyricism, intimacy, and wistful or nostalgic topics, though his music became more abstract, idealized, and introverted.

Anton Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind, both after Bruno Wille's idyll.

At the Preglhof in summer 1905, Anton Webern wrote his tripartite, single-movement string quartet in a highly modified sonata form, likely responding to Schoenberg's Op.

Anton Webern quoted Jakob Bohme in the preface and mentioned the panels of Segantini's as "" in sketches.

In 1908 Anton Webern began an opera on Maeterlinck's Alladine et Palomides, of which only unfinished sketches remained, and in 1912 he wrote Berg that he had finished one or more scenes for another planned but unrealized opera, Die sieben Prinzessinnen, on Maeterlinck's Les Sept Princesses.

Anton Webern had been an opera enthusiast from his student days.

Anton Webern "adored" Mozart's Il Seraglio and revered Strauss, predicting Salome would last.

When in high spirits, Anton Webern would sing bits of Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann, a personal favorite.

Anton Webern expressed interest in writing an opera pending a good text and adequate time; in 1930, he asked Jone for "opera texts, or rather dramatic texts", planning cantatas instead.

Schoenberg and Anton Webern were so mutually influential, the former later joked, "I haven't the slightest idea who I am".

Anton Webern explored these ideas explicitly in his stage play Tot, which comprises six tableaux vivants 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.

Anton Webern drew so heavily from Swedenborg's theological doctrine of correspondences, quoting from Vera Christiana Religio at length, that Schoenberg considered the play unoriginal.

Alma recalled Schoenberg telling her and Franz Werfel "how much he was suffering under the dangerous influence of Anton Webern", drawing on "all his strength to extricate himself from it".

Anton Webern finished thirty-two, ordered into sets as Opp.

Schoenberg's recent vocal music had been motivated by the idea that "absolute purity" in composition couldn't be sustained, and Anton Webern took Schoenberg's advice to write songs as a means of composing something more substantial than aphorisms, often making earnest settings of folk, lyric, or spiritual texts.

Anton Webern had written music preoccupied with the idea of dodecaphony since at least the total chromaticism of his Op.

Anton Webern wrote to Jalowetz in 1922 about Schoenberg's lectures on "a new type of motivic work", one that "unfolds the entire development of, if I may say so, our technique ".

Anton Webern regarded Schoenberg's transformation of twelve-tone rows as the "solution" to their compositional concerns.

Anton Webern systematically used twelve-tone technique for the first time in Op.

Until the Kinderstuck for piano, Klavierstuck, and Satz for string trio, Anton Webern had finished nothing but since a 1914 cello sonata.

For its 1927 publication, Anton Webern helped Stein write an introduction emphasizing continuity with tradition:.

Schoenberg exploited combinatorial properties of particular tone rows, but Anton Webern focused on prior aspects of a row's internal organization.

Anton Webern exploited small, invariant pitch subsets symmetrically derived via inversion, retrograde, or both.

Anton Webern understood his compositional work with reference to ideas about growth, morphology, and unity that he found represented in Goethe's Urpflanze and in Goethean science more generally.

Specifically in his cantatas, Bailey Puffett wrote, Anton Webern synthesized the rigorous style of his mature instrumental works with the word painting of his Lieder on an orchestral scale.

Anton Webern's textures became somewhat denser yet more homophonic at the surface through nonetheless contrapuntal polyphonic means.

For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Anton Webern arranged, among other music, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron for string quartet, harmonium, and piano.

In 1924 Webern arranged Liszt's Arbeiterchor for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; thus Liszt's work was finally premiered when Webern conducted the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir.

In orchestrating the six-voice ricercar from Bach's Musical Offering, Anton Webern timbrally defined the internal organization of the Bach's subject.

Joseph N Straus argued that Webern effectively recomposed earlier music, "projecting motivic density" onto tradition.

Anton Webern's music was generally considered difficult by performers and inaccessible by listeners alike.

For many, like Stravinsky, Anton Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, but for others the matter was less simple.

Ian Pace considered Peter Stadlen's account of Anton Webern's coaching for Op.

Schoenberg admired Anton Webern's concision, writing in the foreword to Op.

Felix Khuner remembered Anton Webern was "just as revolutionary" as Schoenberg.

Stravinsky staked his contract with Columbia Records to see Anton Webern's then known music first both recorded and widely distributed.

Anton Webern's music sounded like "a Mondrian canvas", "crude and unfinished", to Karel Goeyvaerts.

Anton Webern returned to tonality in Brno and was rewarded.

In practice like that of Anton Webern, Karetnikov derived the tone row of his Symphony No 4 from motives as small as two notes related by semitone.

Anton Webern's music was established but infrequent in standard orchestral repertoire.

Anton Webern's was played at the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music, Juilliard, and the Vienna Festival, echoing six international festivals in his name.

David H Miller suggested Webern "achieved a certain kind of acceptance and canonization".