Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques. His 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. Webern, Schoenberg, and their colleague Alban Berg were at the core of what became known as the Second Viennese School.
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. He treated themes of loss, love, nature, and spirituality, working from personal experiences. Unhappily peripatetic and often assigned light music or operetta in his early conducting career, he aspired to conduct what was seen as more respectable, serious music at home in Vienna. Following Schoenberg's guidance, Webern attempted to write music of greater length during and after their World War I service, relying on the structural support of texts in many Lieder.
He rose as a choirmaster and conductor, championing Gustav Mahler's music in Red Vienna and abroad. With Schoenberg based in Berlin, Webern began writing music of increasing confidence, independence, and scale using twelve-tone technique. Marginalized as a "cultural Bolshevist" in Fascist Austria and Nazi Germany, he maintained "the path to the new music", enjoyed international recognition, and relied more on teaching for income. He opposed fascist cultural positions but always espoused pan-Germanism and was torn, like divided friends and family, among uncertainties. His hope for moderate, stable, and successful governance of Austria within Nazi Germany proved misplaced, and he helped Jewish friends emigrate and hide while repeatedly considering emigrating himself.
A soldier accidentally killed Webern after World War II. In a phenomenon known as post-Webernism, his music was celebrated by composers, musicians, and scholars. René Leibowitz, Pierre Boulez, Robert Craft, and Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer established it as an important part of modernism through performance, study, and advocacy. Igor Stravinsky assimilated it. To many, it represented a path to serialism. Broader understanding of Webern's expressive agenda, performance practice, and complex sociocultural and political context lagged. An historical edition of his music is underway.
Biography
1883–1908: Upbringing between late Imperial Vienna and countryside
Bucolic
Webern, of the, was born 3 December 1883 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a decorated army veteran, high-ranking civil servant, and mining engineer who owned the Lamprechtsberg copper mine. He grew up mainly in Graz and Klagenfurt, with one stay in Olomouc and more in Vienna for his father's work. He excelled only in the humanities and likely sang in choir at school.He began piano and sang opera with his mother Amalie, a trained pianist and accomplished singer, danced with his sisters Rosa and Maria, and received drums, then a trumpet, and later a violin as Christmas gifts. Local musician Edwin Komauer also taught him piano, cello, and likely counterpoint from Bach's music and cello suites. The family played chamber music, including Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven, and Webern played in local orchestras.
The children spent Easter holidays and summer vacations at the Preglhof, the extended family's country estate near Schwabegg in Carinthia. They played in forests under the Koralpe and on a high meadow by the parish church, where cattle grazed pasture under the care of herders. Webern drove horses to a fair in Bleiburg, fought a wildfire, and saved Rosa from drowning in the bathing pond. In winter, they ice-skated the to the Wörthersee. These experiences, and reading Peter Rosegger, an Austrian contributor to the broader movement, shaped his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat.
University
Before studying at the University of Vienna, Webern immersed himself in concerts, operas, plays, galleries, and cultural history, visiting the Bayreuth Festival, Musikverein, Neue Pinakothek, Prinzregententheater, and Wahnfried. He took counterpoint with Karel Navrátil, harmony with Hermann Graedener, cello with, and piano, in which he was less proficient, with an unidentified Theodor Leschetizky pupil.While enrolled, he kept attending many performances to learn the standard and emerging repertoire at the Burgtheater, Vienna Court Opera, and other venues, listening to many works by Brahms, Mahler, Schumann, Strauss, Wagner, and Wolf. He encountered singers like Theodor Bertram, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, and Hermann Winkelmann and conductors like Mahler, Strauss, Arthur Nikisch, and Felix Weingartner. He sang under Siegfried Wagner in Bruckner's Te Deum as a Wagner Society member and visited the Munich Kammerspiele for Frank Wedekind's Hidalla.
At school, he analyzed Beethoven's late quartets at the piano with classmate Egon Wellesz, took a Wagner seminar, and learned the historical development of musical styles and techniques mainly from Guido Adler, an acquaintance of Wagner and Liszt, pupil of Bruckner, and friend of Mahler. For his musicology doctorate under Adler, he edited the Choralis Constantinus II. As a composer, he would emulate its "subtle organization in the interplay of parts", which he described at length:
He also studied art history and philosophy with Max Dvořák,, and Franz Wickhoff, and joined the Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft in 1903, later serving on its board. His cousin, then a University of Graz art history student, may have introduced him to the work of Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, which he admired along with that of Ferdinand Hodler and Moritz von Schwind. He prized Segantini's landscapes as highly as Beethoven's music, diarying in 1904:
Finally, Webern studied Catholic liturgy and nationalism, shaped by his upbringing. He first found those in his new milieu smug, alien, and distinctly Jewish amid antisemitic reaction to the December Constitution's 1867 Jewish emancipation. By 1902, he had close Jewish friends like fellow student Heinrich Jalowetz, likely altering his views.
Schoenberg and his circle
Adler pupil Karl Weigl brought Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande to class in 1903, riveting Webern, who attended performances of his songs and Verklärte Nacht in 1903–04. In 1904, Webern tried Hans Pfitzner's composition lessons in Berlin but left over attacks on Mahler and R. Strauss. Adler admired and may have recommended Schoenberg, or Webern may have seen his Schwarzwald School newspaper ads before starting lessons in fall 1904, perhaps as his first Vienna pupil.Thus Webern met Berg as another Schoenberg pupil, and Schoenberg's brother-in-law Alexander Zemlinsky, through whom he may have worked as an assistant coach at the Volksoper in Vienna. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern became lifelong friends following similar musical paths. Adler, Jalowetz, and Webern played Schoenberg's quartets under the composer, accompanying Gutheil-Schoder in rehearsals for Op. 10.
Also through Schoenberg, who painted and had a 1910 solo exhibition at 's bookstore, Webern met Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Oppenheimer, Egon Schiele, and Emil Stumpp. In 1920, Webern wrote Berg about the "indescribable impression" Klimt's work made on him, "that of a luminous, tender, heavenly realm". He also met Karl Kraus, whose lyrics he later set, but only to completion in Op. 13/i.
1908–1918: Early adulthood in Austria-Hungary and German Empire
Marriage
Webern married Wilhelmine "Minna" Mörtl in a 1911 civil ceremony in Danzig. She had become pregnant in 1910 and feared disapproval, as they were cousins. Thus the Catholic Church only solemnized their lasting union in 1915, after three children.They met in 1902, later hiking along the Kamp from Rosenburg-Mold to Allentsteig in 1905. He wooed her with John Ruskin essays, dedicating his Langsamer Satz to her. Webern diaried about their time together "with obvious literary aspirations":
Early conducting career
Webern conducted and coached singers and choirs mostly in operetta, musical theater, light music, and some opera in his early career. Operetta was in its Viennese Silver Age. Much of it was regarded as "low-" or "middlebrow"; Kraus, Theodor Adorno, and Ernst Krenek found it "uppity" in its pretensions. In 1924 Ernst Décsey recalled he once found operetta, with its "old laziness and unbearable musical blandness", beneath him. J. P. Hodin contextualized the opposition of the "youthful intelligentsia" to operetta with a quote from Hermann Bahr's 1907 essay Wien:"What benefit... if all operettas... were destroyed", Webern told Diez in 1908. But by 1912, he told Berg that Zeller's Vogelhändler was "quite nice" and Schoenberg that J. Strauss II's Nacht in Venedig was "such fine, delicate music. I now believe... Strauss is a master." A summer 1908 engagement with Bad Ischl's was "hell". Webern walked out on an engagement in Innsbruck, writing in distress to Schoenberg: Webern wrote Zemlinsky seeking work at the Berlin or Vienna Volksoper instead. He 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. His repertoire likely included Fall's Dollarprinzessin, Lehár's Graf von Luxemburg, O. Straus's Walzertraum, J. Strauss II's Fledermaus, and Schumann's Manfred. There were only 22 musicians in the orchestra, too few to perform Puccini's operas, he noted.
Webern then summered at the Preglhof, composing his Op. 7 and planning an opera. In September, he attended the Munich premiere of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand and visited with his idol, who gave Webern a sketch of "Lob der Kritik". Webern then worked with Jalowetz as assistant conductor in Danzig, where he first saw the "almost frightening" ocean. He conducted von Flotow's Wintermärchen, George's Försterchristl, Jones' Geisha, Lehár's Lustige Witwe, Lortzing's Waffenschmied, Offenbach's Belle Hélène, and J. Strauss II's Zigeunerbaron. He particularly enjoyed Offenbach's Contes d'Hoffmann and Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia, but only Jalowetz was allowed to conduct this more established repertoire.
Webern soon expressed homesickness to Berg; he could not bear the separation from Schoenberg and their world in Vienna. He returned after resigning in spring 1911, and the three were pallbearers at Mahler's funeral in May 1911. Then in summer 1911, a neighbor's antisemitic abuse and aggression caused Schoenberg to quit work, abandon Vienna, and go with his family to stay with Zemlinsky on the Starnbergersee. Webern and others fundraised for Schoenberg's return, circulating more than one hundred leaflets with forty-eight signatories, including G. Adler, H. Bahr, Klimt, Kraus, and R. Strauss, among others. But Schoenberg was resolved to move to Berlin, and not for the first or last time, convinced of Vienna's fundamental hostility.
Webern soon joined him, finishing no new music in his devoted work on Schoenberg's behalf, which entailed many editing and writing projects. He gradually became tired, unhappy, and homesick. He 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 Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst due to his prior experiences in Vienna. At the same time, Webern began a cycle of repeatedly quitting and being rehired by Zemlinsky at the State Opera .
He had a short-lived conducting post in Stettin, which, as all the others, kept him from composing and alienated him. On the verge of a breakdown, he wrote Berg shortly after arriving :