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Anton von Webern (1883-1945)
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Anton Webern (December 3, 1883 - September 15, 1945) was a composer of classical music and a member of the so called Second Viennese School. He was born Anton von Webern but dropped the von in 1918.
Webern was born in Vienna in Austria. After spending much of his youth in Graz and Klagenfurt, Webern attended Vienna University from 1902. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years.
He studied composition under Arnold Schoenberg, writing his Passacaglia, Op. 1 as his graduation piece in 1908. He met Alban Berg, who was also a pupil of Schoenberg's, and these two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. After graduating, he took a series of conducting posts at theatres in Ischl, Teplitz, Danzig, Stettin, and Prague before moving back to Vienna. There he helped to run Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances and conducted the Vienna Workers Symphony Orchestra from 1922 to 1934.
Webern's music was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" when the Nazi Party seized power in Austria in 1938. As a result, he found it harder to earn a living, and had to take on work as an editor and proof-reader for his publishers, Universal Edition. Webern left Vienna in 1945 and moved to Mittersill in Salzburg, believing he would be safer there. On September 15 however, during Allied occupation of Austria, he was accidentally shot dead by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities.
Webern was not a prolific composer; just thirty one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, the results fitted on just six CDs. However, his influence on later composers, and particularly on the post-war avant garde is acknowledged as immense. His mature works, using Arnold Schoenberg's twelve tone technique, have a textural clarity and emotional coolness which greatly influenced composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The works with opus numbers are the ones that Webern saw fit to have published in his own lifetime. They constitute the main body of his work, although several pieces of juvenalia and a few mature pieces that do not have opus numbers are ocassionally performed today. - Passacaglia, for orchestra, opus 1 (1908)
- Entflieht auf Leichten Kähnen, for a capellachoir on a text by Stefan George, opus 2 (1908)
- Five Lieder on Der Siebente Ring, for voice and piano, opus 3 (1907-08)
- Five Lieder after Stefan George, for voice and piano, opus 4 (1908-09)
- Five Movements for string quartet, opus 5 (1909)
- Six Pieces for large orchestra, opus 6 (1909-10, revised 1928)
- Four Pieces for violin and piano, opus 7 (1910)
- Two Lieder, on texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, for voice and piano, opus 8 (1910)
- Six Bagatelles for string quartet, opus 9 (1913)
- Five Pieces for orchestra, opus 10 (1911-13)
- Three Little Pieces for cello and piano, opus 11, (1914)
- Four Lieder, for voice and piano, opus 12 (1915-17)
- Four Lieder, for voice and piano, opus 13 (1914-18)
- Six Lieder for voice, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin and cello, opus 14 (1917-21)
- Five Sacred Songs, for voice and small ensemble, opus 15 (1917-22)
- Five Canons on Latin texts, for high soprano, clarinet and bass clarinet, opus 16 (1923-24)
- Three Traditional Rhymes, for voice, violin (doubling viola), clarinet and bass clarinet, opus 17 (1924)
- Three Lieder, for voice, E flat clarinet and guitar, opus 18 (1925)
- Two Lieder, for mixed choir, celesta, guitar, violin, clarinet and bass clarinet, opus 19 (1926)
- String Trio, opus 20 (1927)
- Symphony, opus 21 (1928)
- Quartet for violin, clarinet, tenor saxophone and piano, opus 22 (1930)
- Three Songs on Hildegard Jone's
Viae inviae, for voice and piano, opus 23 (1934)
- Concerto for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, violin, viola and piano, opus 24 (1934)
- Three Lieder on texts by Hildegard Jone, for voice and piano, opus 25 (1934-35)
- Das Augenlicht, for mixed choir and orchestra, on a text by Hildegard Jone, opus 26 (1935)
- Variations, for solo piano, opus 27 (1936)
- String Quartet, opus 28 (1937-38)
- Cantata No. 1, for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra, opus 29 (1938-39)
- Variations, for orchestra, opus 30 (1940)
- Cantata No. 2, for soprano, bass, choir and orchestra, opus 31 (1941-43)
[This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Anton von Webern.]
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