Anton Webern: Letters to Hildegard Jone and Josef Humplik

In the 1950s and 1960s, many composers, influenced by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, embraced serial compositional techniques. Tonal music became atonal and composers, such as Pierre Boulez from France and the German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, championed this new compositional approach. This chapter defines serialism and how composers applied it to works for percussion instruments. Music examples include Stockhausen’s solo work, Zyklus, with its totally original notational system, and a setting of an E. E. Cummings poem, Circles, by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. American composer Charles Wuorinen’s use of Milton Babbitt’s “time point” system in both his solo work Janissary Music and his forty-five-minute Percussion Symphony is presented, as is the work of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, who contributed to the literature one of the twentieth century’s largest percussion works, Cantata para América Mágica, for dramatic soprano and fifty-three percussion instruments. A discussion of percussion solo and ensemble works by the Greek composer, architect, and mathematician Iannis Xenakis completes the chapter.

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A Struggle for Recognition, 1911–15

Berg ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190931445.003.0004 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 105-146

Author(s):

Simms Bryan

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Deep Structure ◽

Technical Analysis ◽

Anton Webern ◽

World War ◽

Struggle For Recognition ◽

New Procedures

Chapter 3 covers Berg’s life and music from the end of his apprenticeship until his conscription in the Austrian army during World War II. During this time Berg worked mainly as an assistant for his teacher, Schoenberg, and he also made several piano arrangements for the publisher Universal Edition. Berg was increasingly active as a writer on music, and in 1913 he completed a lengthy technical analysis of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. His compositions during the period contain many new procedures and materials that go beyond those approved of by Schoenberg. His Altenberg Songs (1912) and Orchestra Pieces (1914–15) reach a new level of complexity in their deep structure, and these works are intensely unified by the development and variation of themes. His Clarinet Pieces (1913) are brief works in an “aphoristic” style also used at the time by Schoenberg and Anton Webern.

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Le parti pris d'écrire/Compte tenu des sons: Anton Webern

Revue de musicologie ◽

10.2307/928774 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 72 (1) ◽

pp. 118

Author(s):

François Nicolas ◽

Francois Nicolas

Keyword(s):

Anton Webern

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