Anton Webern

A disciple of Arnold Schoenberg, composer and conductor Anton Webern embraced the ideas of the Second Viennese School, deploying his art of atonality, dodecaphony and serial music in some fifty works. Born Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on December 3, 1883, the nobility particle in his name was removed by Austrian law in 1918. Son of a mining engineer, he grew up in Graz from 1890 to 1894, then in Klagenfurt until 1902. He learned the basics of piano and opera singing from his mother, then took lessons in Klagenfurt with Edwin Komauer, who continued his keyboard training and taught him cello and Bach counterpoint. In addition to practicing chamber music with his family, he played in a local orchestra and, after a stay at the Bayreuth Festival, entered the University of Vienna to study musicology with Guido Adler, a committed Wagnerian who was a pupil of Bruckner and a friend of Mahler. He continued to study piano and cello with Josef Háša, harmony with Hermann Graedener and counterpoint with Karel Navrátil. After attending a performance of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night, Webern became his first pupil in the autumn of 1904. His fellow student was Alban Berg, and he continued research for his thesis on Heinrich Isaac's motet collection Choralis Constantinus II, for which he provided a modern edition. Accepting his doctorate in 1906, Webern worked as an assistant to Schoenberg's brother-in-law Alexander Zemlinsky at the Vienna Volksoper for three years. Having become close to Schoenberg, he took part in quartet practice with the master and frequented the Viennese artistic milieu, notably Gustav Klimt. In the summer of 1908, he began his career as an operetta and opera conductor in Bad Ischl, then the following year in Innsbruck, and in 1910 in Bad Teplitz and Danzig (Gdańsk). His opus 1, the Passacaglia for orchestra, which at ten minutes is his longest work, premiered in Vienna on November 4, 1908. A choral work and a series of lieder followed, before Cinq mouvement for string quartet (1909). On March 31, 1913, Schoenberg conducted the premiere of Six Pieces for Large Orchestra, which caused one of the most resounding scandals of the period. Along with the preceding work and the Passacaglia, it remains one of Schoenberg's most popular works, and was revised in 1928. The Four Pieces for Violin and Piano, composed in 1910, were performed on April 24, 1911. In the same year, after a period of absence due to his conducting duties, Webern reunited with Schoenberg and Berg as pallbearer at Gustav Mahler's funeral. He then married his cousin Wilhelmine "Minna" Mörtl, who was pregnant at the time and gave birth to two more children. He followed Schoenberg to Berlin during his exile and tried unsuccessfully to get him to return to Vienna, then worked sporadically with Zemlinsky at the German Theater in Prague between 1911 and 1918. After composing Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10, to which he applied the Klangfarbenmelodie ("tone melody"), Webern conducted for a season in Stettin. Depressed since the death of his mother, and frustrated at having to give priority to conducting over composition, he signed Trois petites pièces for cello and piano, considered hermetic, when the First World War broke out. The composer served in the army for almost two years, before being discharged for excessive myopia. In 1917, he took over as conductor of the Deutsches Theater in Prague for a season, then moved to Mödling, near Vienna, where he gave lessons. During this period, he composed several lieder cycles and worked on programming for the Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances), founded by Schoenberg. He went on to conduct the Schubertband (1921-1922) and the Mödling Men's Choir (1921-1926), as well as the Vienna Workers' Symphonic Concerts (1922-1924) and his Choir (1923-1934), both affiliated with the Social Democratic Party. In 1924, his Kinderstück for piano was his first dodecaphonic piece, a method he continued to follow thereafter, notably for his Symphony op. 21, premiered in New York on December 18, 1929. In 1926, his meeting with the poet Hildegard Jone marked the start of a collaboration on all the texts for his forthcoming vocal works, including Cantatas opp. 29 and 31. Although he accepted a job as conductor at Austrian Radio in 1927, his material situation remained precarious, leaving him little time to compose. In 1934, when the Austrian Civil War broke out and the Social Democratic Party was dissolved, his condition only worsened. The Concerto for Nine Instruments op. 24 (1934), the Piano Variations op. 27 (1936) and the String Quartet op. 28 (1937-1938), featuring a series based on the "BACH" motif, date from this period. In 1938, with the Anchluss annexation of Austria by Germany, he had to leave his post but, unlike his Jewish friends, did not leave the country. Marginalized by the Nazi regime, his music was banned and his name included in the list of "degenerate artists". Webern entered "internal exile" when the Second World War broke out. Briefly mobilized for air defense, he was allowed to attend a concert of his Passacaglia in Switzerland in 1940, and the premiere of his Variations for Orchestra Op. 30 in Winterthur in 1943. Needy enough to apply for a survival grant for needy musicians, the Künstlerdank, he lost his son Peter in the bombing of a train in Zagreb in February 1945. Two months later, the couple left their home in Mödling to join their daughters and children in Mittersill, near Salzburg. On the evening of September 15, 1945, while the American army was watching the area, he went out for a smoke despite the curfew and was accidentally killed by a soldier. Anton Webern died at the age of 61, leaving 31 works with opus numbers and some twenty others.

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