Webern - Quartet op.22 Movement 1

Lets get some of the simpler things out the way

Webern - Quartet op.22 Movement 1

Tonality - Atonal - Absense of Key. Dodecaphonic music makes all 12 tones in an octave equal.

Lets get the Tone Row understood

Structure:

Could be a Ternary form piece, but it is actually a modernised Sonata form (oo another Neoclassical Feature)

Bars 1-5 Intro

6-15 - Exposition

16 - 23 - Development

24 - 27 - Link (retrograde of Intro)

28 - 39 - Recapitulation

40 - End - Coda

This is all based on one idea, as opposed to two. Everything in this piece is related in some way.

Instrumental Forces

Unusual Quartet of instruments here (all written at concert pitch to save our brains of transposition - Clarinet and Tenor Sax)

This piece will explore the extreme tessituras of these instruments - it will go really high and really low. At one point there is a 5 octave gap between inst

Use of extended instrumental techniques - look at piano in bar 14

The term Dampfer Auf - mute on.

This can get quite complex, but a tone row is a series of 12 pitches ( no repeats ) each with equal importance. When doing your prime order ( your initial and most important row) you must play each note in order.

Weberns tone row:

C# E F D D# B A# A G# F# C G Notice the 5 semitone leaps

This will then be made into a Matrix. For 2 mathletes you should be able to do this easy :)

See the sheets for Weberns Matrix. You do not need to memorise it, but you do need to understand what Prime Order, Inversion, Retrograde, and Retrograde Inversion is.

Every Listening

Tell me everything wrong/different/unusual about this piece.

So how does Webern use this?

Recap

To help focus, choose 3 areas each time:

Structure Dynamics

Tonality Style

Harmony

Melody

Texture

Forces / instruments

Rhythm

Good question, throughout the piece he only uses 15/48 of the possible rows. He will also use enharmonic equivalents throughout. He also uses octave displacement a lot to give very angular melodies (he wants his 7ths and 9ths).

Lets look at each section in more detail:

Intro:

He starts off with 2 tone rows together at the same time. They weave in a Mirror Canon to be exact. One will start then one will mirror this - the same intervals will move in opposite directions so we actually have an Inversion and Prime order row together here.

He uses only 3 rhythmic motives here, and they form almost the entire piece. Rests certainly play an important part here.

Notice the extended violin techniques and the dynamic markings, this attention to detail is applied to every note.

He will also frequently change time signature, but he mainly sticks to 3/8

Schoenbergs effect can definately be felt here.

KLANGFARBENMELODIE

Tone colour melody, the prime order swaps between the Violin clarinet and saxophone. The focus here is definately on the sound not the melody.

Coda

We then link back to the ending using our retrograded versions again. The piece becomes quieter and slower and slowly fades/dies away.

STYLE

1930 - Serialism - This is a world away from the Haydn. They share the name Quartet but really that is it.

This piece has only got 2 movements, a third was planned but never realised. This has to be performed by professionals at specialist concerts - imagine Elastics trying to perform this (would be entertaining).

Music had to take a new direction, the composers felt constricted so explored atonal music - music with no key.

This new direction was pushed largely by the Second Viennesse School (Any idea who was in the First?) This was a group of similar minded individuals massively explored this way of thinking. Comprised of Schoenberg (our dear friend, and teacher of the group), Berg, and Webern - both pupils of Schoenberg.

They found that having no boundaries, no tonal structures, very hard to actually piece together well so they developed Serialism (very mathematical in its approach) to help.

Serialist music is classed as Dodecaphonic music, and is largely based around a Tone Row. It is naturally very dissonant but can be very expressive.

Webern Characteristics

Webern had a very differing style to the other two. Whilst wanting to move music forward he often liked to reflect on some classical tendencies in his music

Interested in contrapuntal techniques

Loved 7th and 9th leaps

Often very condensed and short pieces

Liked unusual instrumental combinations

This piece does show some signs of Neoclassicalism (revival of classical music tendencies but with new modern techniques and less boundaries)

Specifically the counterpoint and symmetry in the piece are features of this style.

It is claimed he paid Homage to J.S Bach in this. Bach and Webern were both into Numerology. Bach will equal 14 in numbers (2+1+3+8). This piece is 41 bars long with second time bars labelled accordingly.

Exposition

Development

Here we continue the same patterns as the introduction. Notice though there are 2 rhythmic exceptions to the motives here (the crotchet and the set of 4 semiquavers).

He combines rows again to make it more interesting, but we do hear the prime order in its intended form, can you find it (it will be in just one instrument part and not swap between instruments).

As you would expect from the classical period, this gets busier.

There is more activity

Wider leaps

Louder dynamics

Wider ranges explored

The whole texture intensifies up to a big climax.

But notice how he resists temptation to just play

all the time.

The link

Brief Harmony and Texture points here

Frequently, this is monophonic throughout. Vertical structures (2+ notes at once) will normally consist of just 2 notes.

There will be no conventional harmonic procedures here

Due to this it is incredibly dissonant - no preparations and resolutions.

However we do have an example of a 3 note chord and a 4 note chord can you find them?

Due to the sparse nature of the texture, it makes the pulse very hard to determine and links to the art technique of pointilism.

This links straight back to the intro.

It uses the retrograded versions of the same rows from the intro.

Also the time signature will not change from here onwards