Anton Webern

Born 3 December 1883, Vienna.
Died 15 September 1945, Mittersill.

Webern, one of the pioneers (with Schoenberg and Berg) of serialism, was educated in Vienna, where he earned a doctoral degree in musicology (on the music of the Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac) simultaneous with his composition studies with Schoenberg. For a decade he conducted orchestras in cities to the east, then in 1918, settled permanently in a suburb of Vienna, where he organized and encouraged new music groups and worked in radio broadcasting.

Though wholeheartedly a disciple and colleague of Schoenberg, he went resolutely his own way, developing a terse, epigrammatic, packed serial language: a typical movement by Webern lasts a minute or less. (His complete work fits on three CDs.) Webern was particularly interested in symmetrical organizations of musical form (the palindrome, for example, where a piece pivots at the center and turns back on itself) and in serial arrangements of rhythm, dynamics, and modes of attack.

Dismissed from his positions after the Nazis took over Austria, Webern lived out World War II in seclusion. Just after the war, the Weberns traveled to visit their daughter near Salzburg, where he was shot by an American soldier when he stepped outside to smoke.

Works

Orchestra
Passacaglia (1908)
Five Pieces (1913)
Symphony, op. 21 (1928)
    movt. II. Theme and Variations
Variations (1949)

Cantatas (2), ch., pf.

Chamber Music
5 movts., str. qt. (1909)
6 Bagatelles, str. qt. (1913)
String Trio (1927)
String Quartet (1938)
Piano Variations (1936)

Songs (c. 40)